Source E Now, the Federalist explanation—and the Federalists is the name that the promoters of the national constitution gave themselves, quite shrewdly, because they really were nationalists, not federalists. . . . The Federalists had an explanation that was best expressed in a book written a hundred years later in 1888. John Fiske, a popular historian, wrote a book called The Critical Period of American History. He said that society was falling into chaos and anarchy, with the country's finances near ruin. The confederation government was collapsing, and the various state governments were beset by debt. . . . It was a desperate situation, said Fiske, retrieved only in the eleventh hour by this group of high-minded Founding Fathers who came in and saved the country from disaster.

Now, the trouble with this interpretation, which was the general interpretation through the nineteenth century . . . is that there was no near-collapse of the society or the economy. There was no anarchy, no financial crisis. In fact, it seemed as if there was no real critical period after all. You have a series of studies, beginning in the 1890s after Fiske's book and running through the Progressive period of American history, up through about 1950, which were critical of the so-called Federalist interpretation. . . . They showed that the "critical period" was not so critical. The states were moving to solve the credit crisis and paying off their debts. There was economic dislocation and unsettlement, but not a desperate situation. The country was coming out of it by 1785, and many of the Federalists knew that as well. The commercial outlook was not bleak. Americans could move goods freely amongst themselves and were trading with much of the world at that time. It was a time of great excitement, of exuberance. People were crossing the Appalachians, and Kentucky was settled in this period with about twenty thousand white settlers. There was a tremendous outburst of energy and a great sense of elevation of sprit and exuberance in society.

QUESTION
What is the value of source E in helping historians understand the United States goals and problems following the revolutionary war?