Some portion of Baldwin's fortune was invested in public securities. When his father died, in 1787, he was able to pay the debts of the insolvent estate, and he educated his six half brothers and sisters "in a great measure at his own expense.” A short sketch of him states that by "his constant habits of economy and temperance," he accumulated enough to enable him to assist many young men in their education and establishment in business. He soon rose to eminence in his profession, and was reckoned among the ablest and shrewdest lawyers of his adopted commonwealth. His father was evidently well-to-do, for he enjoyed the advantage of a classical education at Yale before he established himself in the practice of law at Savannah, Georgia. Of Abraham Baldwin's private fortune there is little known. The names of the attending members of the Convention are given in alphabetical order.
They would be meagre, indeed, were it not for the rich unpublished records of the Treasury Department which are here used for the first time in this connection and they would doubtless have been fuller were it not for the fact that most of the books showing the central operations of the Treasury Department under Hamilton have disappeared.
The pages which follow are, therefore, more an evidence of what ought to be done than a record of results actually accomplished. Unfortunately, the materials for such a study are very scanty, because the average biographer usually considers as negligible the processes by which his hero gained his livelihood. The only point here considered is: Did they represent distinct groups whose economic interests they understood and felt in concrete, definite form through their own personal experience with identical property rights, or were they working merely under the guidance of abstract principles of political science? Neither is it of any moment to discover how many hundred thousand dollars accrued to them as a result of the foundation of the new government. The purpose of such an inquiry is not, of course, to show that the Constitution was made for the personal benefit of the members of the Convention. In other words, did the men who formulated the fundamental law of the land possess the kinds of property which were immediately and directly increased in value or made more secure by the results of their labors at Philadelphia? Did they have money at interest? Did they own public securities? Did they hold western lands for appreciation? Were they interested in shipping and manufactures? Having shown that four groups of property rights were adversely affected by the government under the Articles of Confederation, and that economic motives were behind the movement for a reconstruction of the system, it is now necessary to inquire whether the members of the Convention which drafted the Constitution represented in their own property affiliations any or all of these groups. The Economic Interests of the Members of the Convention
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