Beyond Progressivism: Charles A. Beard's Social Democratic Theory of American Political Development

Abstract

In one of his last published works, Vernon Louis Parrington authored the introduction to a book entitledThe Growth and Decadence of Constitutional Government. In it he endorsed the book's claim that ratification of the U.S. Constitution had been accompanied by “bitter class divisions.” In Parrington's view, the struggle for ratification was accurately described as both a political “clash between aristocracy and democracy” and an economic class struggle “between the greater landed and financial interests and the agrarian interests” of the new republic. He concurred with the author that “the two [struggles] in reality were one.” Hence, he suggested, relative to this historical context, the Constitution should be regarded as “a deliberate and well considered protective measure designed by able men who represented the aristocracy and wealth of America; a class instrument directed against the democracy.”