It is true that the Founding Fathers were wealthy men. They had a great interest in protecting their wealth, and increasing it, reasons for wanting to escape from the hold of the British Empire and the taxes they were imposing on the wealth of the colonists. As stated in Parenti, most of the wealth in the colonies was controlled by a relatively few people. The Founding Fathers had no intention of having their power in the colonies change .
Some examples of the extreme disparities of wealth amongst the colonists included, as reported by Parenti, land ownership controlled by few people. By the year 1700, 75% of the acreage in New York State was owned by fewer than 36 people. In Virginia, only seven people owned 1.7 million acres. Business matters were controlled by few men as well. In five colonial cities, less than 500 men controlled almost all of the manufacturing, mining, shipping, banking, and commerce businesses on the east coast. Between the years of 1776-1787, the period of the American Revolution to the Constitutional Convention, it was the wealthy men, namely the large landowners, the merchants, and the bankers who had the greatest control in politics and economics in the colonies .
Fresia gives examples of three particular Founding Fathers and their great influences in society. George Washington amassed great wealth. By 1787, he may have been the wealthiest man in the colonies. He owned 216 slaves and owned 35,000 acres in Virginia, 1,119 acres in Maryland along with additional land in Washington, Alexandria, Winchester, and in Bath. He owned U.S. securities, shares in the James River Company, and stock in two banks. He also owned a significant amount of livestock .
John Adams was a lawyer who admired the monarchy and not the common people. He represented the soldiers that were acquitted after the Boston Massacre. He was quite outspoken in his derogatory speech towards many groups such as blacks, Irish, and other groups who he thought of as lesser than he .
Thomas Jefferson owned over 10,000 acres. Although he wanted slavery abolished, he himself owned 185 slaves. He gave his daughter a gift of 25 slaves for her wedding gift. Embarrassed of fathering children with one of his slaves, he arranged for them to run away rather than face consequences for his actions .
Pennsylvania was the only state where non-property owners could vote. Most people did not own enough property in other states to qualify to vote. Additionally, it was only white males who were eligible. Most people living in the colonies had difficulty surviving day to day. The Founding Fathers had no intention of letting these men, and certainly not the women, have any say in government. The wealthy class saw the masses as people who were careless with their money and wanted to use paper money with inflated value as an easy way out of their situation.
In truth, most of the people of the white early colonial era were tenants of the land, indentured servants, poor freeholders, and artisans. The average farm family often had a large plot of land with little else. There were no out buildings as one would expect on a farm. Instead, the family survived in one room. It was also the family that pulled the plow.
At the time of the Constitutional Convention, to accommodate a large debtor class, there existed poorhouses. Poor farmers went further into debt by putting mortgages on future crops at interest rates of 25%-40%. Prisons were filled with the poor. These people were distraught and felt that there was no hope. They felt that they were worse off now than they had been before the Revolutionary War. Revolts, such as Shay’s Rebellion, began by the oppressed.
References
Fresia, J. (n.d.). Toward and American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and other illusions.
Parenti, M. (2011.). Democracy for the few. (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth.
