There was a school of thought in the 20th century to the effect that the Constitution was the product of wealthy landowners and businessmen who were primarily concerned about protecting their property from the radical redistributive desires of struggling small backwoods farmers. Is there a reasonable basis for this argument?
No, for two reasons. First, the drafting of the Constitution was driven by longstanding concerns that the country was ungovernable, and could never reach its full potential, under the Articles of Confederation. Shays’ Rebellion, often cited as the catalyst for the Constitutional Convention, was actually just a talking point to support it ; Washington, Hamilton, and Madison had expressed their concerns about the flaws in the Articles much earlier. Second, if the FFs had desired a truly reactionary document, they would have limited the franchise for the House in Article I. Instead, they left the voting qualifications issue to the states, and gave the House the exclusive right to initiate money bills, which suggests an analogy to the House of Commons in the UK. The Constitution, in that sense, was neither progressive or reactionary; a more appropriate word would be “normal,” as it neither broke new ground nor turned the clock back.