Forrest McDonald

Forrest McDonald (January 7, 1927 – January 19, 2016) was an American historian, who wrote extensively on the early national period of the United States, on republicanism, and on the presidency. He was based at the University of Alabama. He stated in 2011: "I am an unreconstructed Hamiltonian Federalist, and out of my admiration for Alexander Hamilton I have long been disposed to believe the worst about Thomas Jefferson." Steven Siry says:

Andrew Ferguson stated:

He died in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on January 19, 2016 at 89.

McDonald was born in Orange, Texas. He took his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees (1955) from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied with Fulmer Mood. He taught at Brown University (1959–67), Wayne State University (1967–76), and the University of Alabama (1976–2002), before retiring. He was for a time the President of the Philadelphia Society.

In his book We The People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution, McDonald argued that Charles A. Beard (in his book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States) 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. Reviewer David M. Potter said: "he has tumbled a very large Humpty Dumpty [Beard's economic interpretation] from a very high wall of history, and American historical literature will never be entirely the same."

...
Wikipedia