During the mid-1780s many American states actively managed their economies in the face of widespread financial and social instability following the Revolutionary War. Seven states authorized paper money emissions, and there were unsuccessful efforts to obtain them in others. Several states adopted extensive debtor-relief measures. Some historians of these state anti-recession measures conclude that such efforts to fight deflation, increase money circulation, and protect debtors were beneficial for various reasons. But despite that, the Constitution, as contemporaries understood it, abrogated state powers to issue paper money or provide debtor relief such as property tender laws in Article I, Section 10. Terry Bouton writes that Section 10 left a host of popular policies in ruins-all in less than fifty words. . . . [it] created a tidal shift in power that favored the interests of moneyed Americans (and European financiers) over ordinary Americans. Moreover, contemporary observers saw Section 10 as a major weakening of state sovereignty.1Nevertheless, Anti-Federalists in the eleven originally ratifying states were often silent on Section 10 despite Federalist claims that it was one of the Constitution's most important provisions. However, they did make various attacks tailored to local circumstances. For example, some AntiFederalists argued that it harmed states; others, that it was also bad policy that favored the wealthy and would hurt ordinary citizens. Ultimately, though, Anti-Federalists did not propose a single amendment to change its key provisions in any of the thirteen states. What light can this sharp disparity between widespread support for economic management and the remarkably constrained public opposition to Section 10 shed on Anti-Federalism and the ratification of the Constitution? Past answers to this question have usually depended heavily on a historian's perspective on what was at stake, who the Anti-Federalists were, and what they stood for.2Charles A. Beard, for example, famously asserted that economic forces played a central role in the Constitution's creation. On ratification, his primary conclusion was that personalty property owners and their allies engaged in rent-seeking were its main supporters, while those who lacked property or had other forms of it, including many paper money supporters, were its principal opponents. For Beard, Section 10 was central to ratification. He contended that popular forces lost largely because the process was illegitimate. He argued that ratification's franchise was unrepresentative; that the convention process and media were manipulated by Federalists to prevent a fair contest; and that some delegates and states accepted the Constitution due to extraneous considerations such as economic coercion. Later historians advanced other explanations for ratification, including social, generational, ideological, and state-building theories, and were thus far less interested in the controversy over Section 10.3Pauline Maier's ratification history avoids taking sides in that historiographical debate. Instead, she begins by canvassing various process arguments, many similar to Beard's, and endorses some, such as Federalist media dominance and pressure to rush to judgment. Maier's work shows that groups generally favoring the Constitution included city residents, commercial interests, and large federal creditors. Though she describes Anti-Federalism as a spectrum of opinions, Maier portrays ratification not as a series of conflicts between different social or economic groups but instead as a series of largely distinct contests between shifting interest groups, often influenced by local concerns. Particularly on the paper money issue, with the exceptions of Rhode Island and North Carolina, she repeatedly notes the lack of debate over it without offering any explanation, implying that it played little role nationally. As a result, her work adds relatively little to our understanding of ratification's economic dimensions. …