Forrest McDonald

Forrest McDonald is an American historian who has written extensively on the early national period, on republicanism, and on the presidency. He is considered a leading conservative scholar.

He was born in Orange Texas, Jan 7, 1927. He took his BA and PhD degrees (1955) from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied with Fulmer Mood. He taught at Brown U. (1959-67), Wayne State University (1967-76), and the University of Alabama (1976 to present)

In We The People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution he argued that Charles Beard had misinterpreted the economic intrests 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.

• Online Bio-Bibliography

His Books

• Let There Be Light: The Electric Utility Industry in Wisconsin (Madison: American History Research Center, 1957)
• We The People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958; new ed. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1992)
• Insull (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)
• E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the American Republic (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1965; new ed., Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979)
• The Presidency of George Washington (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1974, paperback ed., 1985)
• The Phaeton Ride: The Crisis of American Success (New York: Doubleday, 1974)
• The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 1976; paperback ed., 1987)
• Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1979; paperback ed., 1980)
• Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985; paperback ed., 1987)
• Requiem: Variations on Eighteenth-Century Themes (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), with Ellen Shapiro McDonald
• The American Presidency: An Intellectual History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994; paperback ed., 1995)
• Recovering the Past: A Historian's Memoir (2004), autobiography