Forrest McDonald , is an American historian who has written extensively on the early national period, on republicanism, and on the presidency. He is widely considered one of the foremost historians of the Constitution and of the early national period. McDonald was born in Orange, Texas. He took his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied with Fulmer Mood. He taught at Brown University , Wayne State University , and the University of Alabama , and is now retired from teaching. In his book We The People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution, McDonald... argued that Charles A. Beard had misinterpreted the economic interests involved in writing the Constitution. Instead of just two interests, landed and mercantile, which conflicted, there were three dozen identifiable interests that forced the delegates to bargain.
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