His works included a radical re-evaluation of the Founding Fathers of the United States, whom he believed to be more motivated by economics than by philosophical principles.

[3] An icon of the progressive school of historical interpretation, his reputation suffered during the Cold War when the assumption of economic class conflict was dropped by most American historians.

The consensus historian Richard Hofstadter concluded in 1968, "Today Beard's reputation stands like an imposing ruin in the landscape of American historiography.

He compiled a large collection of essays and excerpts in a single volume: An Introduction to the English Historians (1906), a compendium which was an innovation at the time.

I am convinced that while I remain in the pay of the Trustees of Columbia University I cannot do effectively my part in sustaining public opinion in support of the just war on the German Empire.

[12] Beard was active in helping to found the New School for Social Research in the Greenwich Village district of Manhattan, where the faculty would control its own membership.

Enlarging upon his interest in urban affairs, he toured Japan and produced a volume of recommendations for the reconstruction of Tokyo after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake.

In fact, "Beard refrained from endorsing direct democracy measures as a blueprint for reform, focusing instead on streamlining the American system of government to incorporate in a transparent fashion, both political parties and interest groups.

Consistent with Beard's Quaker roots, he became one of the leading proponents of non-interventionism and sought to avoid American involvement in World War II.

He promoted "American Continentalism" as an alternative and argued that the United States had no vital interests at stake in Europe and that a foreign war could lead to domestic dictatorship.

For example, Andrew Bacevich, a diplomatic historian at Boston University, has cited Beardian skepticism towards armed overseas intervention as a starting point for a critique of US foreign policy after the Cold War in his American Empire (2004).

[26] The historian Carl L. Becker's History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760–1776 (1909) formulated the progressive interpretation of the American Revolution.

Beard argued the Constitution was designed to reverse the radical democratic tendencies unleashed by the Revolution among the common people, especially farmers and debtors.

Other historians supported the class conflict interpretation by noting the states confiscated great semifeudal landholdings of Loyalists and gave them out in small parcels to ordinary farmers.

American historians came to see... the framers of the Constitution, rather than having self-interested motives, were led by concern for political unity, national economic development, and diplomatic security.

[30] In a strong sense, that view simply involved a reaffirmation of the position that Beard had always criticized by saying that parties were prone to switch rhetorical ideals when their interest dictated.

[31] Beard's economic determinism was largely replaced by the intellectual history approach, which stressed the power of ideas, especially republicanism, in stimulating the Revolution.

Beard ignored constitutional issues of states' rights and even ignored American nationalism as the force that finally led to victory in the war.

Charles Ramsdell says Beard emphasized that the Civil War was caused by economic issues and was not basically about the rights or wrongs of slavery.

[34] Thomas J. Pressly says that Beard fought against the prevailing nationalist interpretation that depicted "a conflict between rival section-nations rooted in social, economic, cultural, and ideological differences."

Beard announced that the Civil War was really a "social cataclysm in which the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South," arguing that the events were a second American Revolution.

[36] Beard was especially interested in the postwar era, as the industrialists of the Northeast and the farmers of the West cashed in on their great victory over the southern aristocracy.

[37]Dealing with the Reconstruction Era and the Gilded Age, disciples of Beard, such as Howard Beale and C. Vann Woodward, focused on greed and economic causation and emphasized the centrality of corruption.