How would anyone know what really influenced the writers?
their numerous writings outside the constitution rife with quotes from enlightment philosophers, and allusions to freemasonry perhaps?
From the published writings of the period; pamphlets, circular letters, records of debate, newspaper articles, memoirs, collected correspondence, etc.
The Founders came from a highly literate society, it smells fishy to me that these revisionist historians are unable to cite more than vague passing references in the published record of the period to support their “Iroquois Origins” theory of American federalism.
I do know the founders cite numerous classical sources and examples of constitutional arrangements in antiquity; republics, democracies, monarchies, oligarchies, etc.
The classical examples and the memory of English constitutional history; the English Civil War, the English Bill of Rights, the Glorious Revolution, etc., were foremost in their minds, giving us the “mixed” republican system we have.
The revisionists are simply a species of professional malcontents, dissatisfied with current arrangements and their place in the scheme of things, ie., marginal.
Their only source of satisfaction is p*ssing in the soup!
By reading the "Federalist Papers," their correspondence, and their debates. In the eighteenth century there were far fewer opportunities for verbal interaction than there are today with modern communication by telephone, for example. Travel for face to face meetings was even more difficult. Thus, to explain and persuade, they were forced to rely primarily on written communication, from which historians can pretty well determine what they were thinking about and why they did what they did.