Charles Austin Beard

(b. near Knightstown, Ind., 27 Nov. 1874; d. New Haven, Conn., 1 Sept. 1948), constitutional historian and political scientist. The son of William Beard, a farmer and banker, Beard received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1904. He served on the faculties of history and public law at Columbia until 1917, when he resigned to protest the university's decision not to reappoint several faculty members critical of United States involvement in World War I.

Beard was the foremost Progressive historian of judicial review and public law. In The Supreme Court and the Constitution (1912), he argued unequivocally that the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention had intended to clothe the justices with power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional. Beard, like most Progressive writers on the Supreme Court, took his intellectual cues from sociological jurisprudence, which treated the Constitution not as divine revelation but as a political testament. The justices who interpreted it were, according to Beard, subject to human emotions and failings. In 1913, Beard published his most famous work, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, in which he asserted that the framers of the Constitution were actuated more by a concern for property rights than by either principles of political science or concern for the public good. Although recent scholarship has criticized Beard's faulty methodology and economic determinism, his work continues to enjoy currency in universities and public schools.

See also History, Court Uses of.

— Kermit L. Hall

Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948), American historian and political scientist, was probably the most influential historical scholar of his time. He is best known for his emphasis on the role of economic interests in American history.

Charles A. Beard was born into a well-to-do family on a farm near Knightstown, Ind., on Nov. 27, 1874. He graduated from DePauw University in 1898. His interest in social problems was stimulated by a visit to Chicago's Hull House and subsequent study at Oxford in England, where he came in contact with economic reformers and helped found Ruskin Hall, a workingmen's school. In 1900 he married Mary Ritter, whom he had met at DePauw; they had a daughter and a son.

After taking his doctorate at Columbia University in 1904, Beard taught there until he resigned in 1917 in the midst of a controversy over academic freedom and the right of professors to criticize the government's war policy. After that, except for his participation in the New School for Social Research, he never again held a regular academic post. Financially well-off and the author of highly successful textbooks, Beard worked at his farm in New Milford, Conn. An amazingly prolific writer, he published, alone or with collaborators (particularly his wife), some 60 books and 300 articles. Between world Wars I and II he was nationally and internationally prominent as scholar, adviser, publicist, and polemicist on questions of public administration and various aspects of social and foreign policy.

Beard caused an early sensation with An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913), a study of the property holdings of the Founding Fathers; it concluded that they "were, with few exceptions, immediately, directly, and personally interested in, and derived economic advantages from, the establishment of the new system, " and maintained that "the Constitution was essentially an economic document." Viewing American history as a conflict between financial and agrarian interests, Beard carried his analysis further in his Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (1915) and most brilliantly in his and Mary Beard's The Rise of American Civilization (1927). The latter volume popularized a view of the Civil War as a "Second American Revolution, " in which capitalists carried out against the property interests of slave-holding planters "the most stupendous act of sequestration in the history of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence." In addition, the Beards charged that the 14th Amendment was planned from the beginning to be a bulwark for the property rights of corporations.

Ever a reformer and a longtime advocate of a planned democratic economy, Beard, in the manner of his teacher and colleague at Columbia, James Harvey Robinson, saw the writing of history as providing tools for progressive social change. By 1933, when he gave his presidential address to the American Historical Association, he was convinced of the radical subjectivity of historical knowledge: "written history" was merely "an act of faith, "and the ideal of objectivity, he later asserted, was only a "noble dream." As his economic determinist viewpoint lost rigidity, he was able to assess the Founding Fathers more traditionally in The Republic (1943).

During the 1930s Beard was a staunch continentalist and isolationist and vigorously opposed American involvement in World War II. His last years were devoted to a highly controversial study of the approach of war, in which he placed heavy blame upon Franklin D. Roosevelt: President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (1948). Since Beard's death on Sept. 1, 1948, his historical methods and characteristic views of American history have been seriously attacked by new generations of historians.

Further Reading

Some biographical material appears in Mary Beard, The Making of Charles A. Beard: An Interpretation (1955). Beard's career is insightfully discussed and appraised in Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (1968), and in Cushing Strout, The Pragmatic Revolt in American History: Carl Becker and Charles Beard (1958). Howard K. Beale, ed., Charles A. Beard: An Appraisal (1954), contains a number of useful assessments.

Additional Sources

Borning, Bernard C., The political and social thought of Charles A. Beard, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984, 1962.

Nore, Ellen, Charles A. Beard, an intellectual biography, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983.

For more information on Charles Austin Beard, visit Britannica.com.

Beard, Charles Austin, 1874–1948, American historian, b. near Knightstown, Ind. A year at Oxford as a graduate student gave him an interest in English local government, and after further study at Cornell and Columbia universities he wrote, for his doctoral dissertation at Columbia, The Office of Justice of the Peace in England (1904, repr. 1962). While teaching (1904–17) history and politics at Columbia, he joined James Harvey Robinson in promoting the teaching of history that would encompass all aspects of civilization, including economics, politics, the intellectual life, and culture. Together they wrote The Development of Modern Europe (1907) and compiled an accompanying book of readings.

Beard was especially concerned with the relationship of economic interests and politics. His study of the conservative economic interests of the men at the Federal Constitutional Convention, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913), caused much stir; he also wrote Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (1915, repr. 1965) and The Economic Basis of Politics (1922). His interest in city government led to American City Government (1912) as well as the long-standard American Government and Politics (1910). After resigning from Columbia in World War I, he helped to found the New School for Social Research (now New School Univ.), was director (1917–22) of the Training School for Public Service in New York City, and was an adviser on administration in Tokyo after the disastrous Japanese earthquake of 1923. Beard wrote A Charter for the Social Sciences in the Schools (1932), which had an enormous influence on the teaching of history.

Beard became widely known to the general reading public through The Rise of American Civilization (2 vol., 1927, repr. 1933) and its sequels (Vol. III and Vol. IV), America in Midpassage (1939), and The American Spirit (1943), all written in collaboration with his wife, Mary Ritter Beard, 1876–1958. This panoramic work is an example of the broad historical view that Beard championed; the great store of fact is laid open with easy and graceful literary style. With his wife he also later wrote a brief survey, The Beards' Basic History of the United States (1944, rev. ed. 1960).

Charles Beard, much criticized as a radical in his earlier years, was just as much criticized by the liberals in his later years for his violent opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, especially in the struggle over the Supreme Court and in foreign policy. Beard's last work was President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (1948, repr. 1968). Mary R. Beard, a historian in her own right, was particularly interested in feminism and the labor movement and wrote a number of works on the subjects, notably Women's Work in Municipalities (1915), A Short History of the American Labor Movement (1920), On Understanding Women (1931), and Woman as Force in History (1946).

Bibliography

See studies by B. C. Borning (1962) and R. Hofstadter (1968, repr. 1970).

(1874-1948)

1913	An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. This is the first of the Columbia University political scientist's two important early economic analyses that radically reinterpret the basis for American democracy. The other is The Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (1915). Both would have a significant impact on subsequent historical approaches to the founding fathers and the evolution of American government and institutions. Beard helped found the New School for Social Research after resigning from Columbia in 1917 to protest the dismissal of pacifist professors.
1927	The Rise of American Civilization. This two-volume study, intended for a general audience, is a social and economic analysis of American values and institutions. Sequels, America in Mid-Passage (1939) and The American Spirit (1943) would follow.
1948	President Roosevelt and the Coming of The War. Beard makes the controversial charge that the Japanese were intentionally maneuvered by Franklin Roosevelt into assaulting the United States in World War II.

Few academicians achieve the public recognition and professional respect accorded to historian Charles Austin Beard. His polemic An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States stirred debate among fellow scholars and the U.S. public by contradicting the popular understanding of how and why the United States was founded. A brilliant, original thinker, Beard achieved a unique prominence among twentieth-century historians and political scientists.

Beard was born to well-to-do parents in Knightstown, Indiana, on November 27, 1874. After graduating from Indiana's DePauw University in 1898, he sailed to England to attend the University of Oxford. While at Oxford, he helped establish Ruskin Hall, a college for British working men that represented to Beard the liberation of the English masses from upper-class domination. In Beard's mind, Ruskin Hall was a symbol and precursor of the true political democracy that would be ushered in by the industrial revolution.

In 1900 Beard returned briefly to the United States to marry Mary Ritter. An intellectual in her own right, Mary Ritter Beard became an invaluable critic and collaborator in the more than fifty books produced during Beard's prolific career. After his marriage, Beard resumed his studies in England, then returned permanently to the United States. He earned his doctor's degree from New York City's Columbia University and in 1904 accepted a teaching position in political science at Columbia.

In 1913, Beard published An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. The book created a mild sensation because it suggested that the United States was not yet a true democracy. Even more disturbing to some U.S. citizens was Beard's argument that the U.S. Constitution was designed primarily to protect the property rights of the wealthy capitalists attending the Constitutional Convention. He insisted that self-interest, not democratic principles, motivated the Founding Fathers. To Beard, the Constitution was a tribute to the power of class, not democracy.

Although several U.S. politicians criticized Beard's unorthodox view of U.S. history, many of his colleagues praised his innovative approach. They understood how the private economic interests of the colonial ruling class could have had a far-reaching effect on the nascent U.S. government.

In 1917 Beard protested the firing of several Columbia University faculty members by resigning his own position. Beard had been outraged when the university dismissed his colleagues for their refusal to support the United States' involvement in World War I. In 1919 he helped found the New School for Social Research in New York City.

In 1927 Beard produced another remarkable tome, The Rise of American Civilization. Coauthored by his wife, it provided an overview of U.S. history with further insights into the government's origins. This sprawling, two-volume set was followed by America in Midpassage, in 1939, and The American Spirit, in 1942.

During the early 1930s, Beard wrote extensively about the nature of historical knowledge. He was particularly interested in historians' personal biases and the effect of those biases on the presentation of historical facts.

Although Beard was closely associated with the U.S. progressive movement and social reforms, he disagreed with several aspects of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs. In 1934 he began an acrimonious, decade-long campaign against Roosevelt's foreign policy. In American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940 (1946) and President Roosevelt and the Coming of War (1948), Beard maintained that the United States had backed Japan into a corner and had forced the country into a war. His extreme isolationist views damaged his professional reputation to some extent.

Beard died in 1948, at the age of seventy-three. He is remembered as an accomplished historian who influenced the way U.S. citizens view their own history.

Quotes:

"I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and woman trample themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amid the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail."

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