Social studies teacher here, didn't see any responses yet so hopefully someone who has studied this time period and subject more thoroughly can respond. If you're doing research, I suggest diving into the Federalist Papers, debates over the Bill of Rights, the FEC's website and history, the recent Supreme Court decisions and SCOTUSblog, the recent Charles Koch op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and responses to it, and probably many more sources that I can't think of since it's 12:45 AM and I'm on my smartphone.

Anyways, campaigns were just different back in the era of the Founding Fathers. They weren't really campaigns as we know them today. Candidates, per the norms of the day, weren't even supposed to actively campaign or appeal to the masses for votes less they lower their standing or look like the want higher office. Also, there wasn't a first amendment protection of speech until 1789 (adoption of the Bill of Rights), the electoral process underwent a series of changes early on after the Constitution, again after the Civil War, during the Progressive Era, and following Nixon/Watergate, when campaign finance became something that attracted more attention.

On top of this mild history, remember that candidates didn't have to appeal to a relatively large number of people like they have to today. The restrictions on voting (women and slaves aside) kept the number of actual voters low compared to modern campaigns. Political parties, while quick to form, weren't close to their modern day equivalents and fundraisers didn't have nation networks of donors they could email anytime someone spoke or wrote and op-ed.

And communications... well, news and information took time to travel back then. Candidates weren't buying ads in multiple markets while polling for real-time data and coordinating it with their twitter feed. Sure, there was campaigning, but usually by surrogates and party bosses on local levels until Mark Hanna (McKinley campaign) changed that around a

The need more massive amounts of money in campaigns has developed with the growth and expansion of our country, media and communications (think JFK, with his wealthy father bankrolling his campaign along with TV really becoming mass media), technology, etc... along with candidates actively campaigning nationally, and probably almost equally to the rise of wealth inequality and more mega donors jumping into politics to sway regulations and otherwise buy influence, for better or worse. Money = speech is really a fairly recent development/argument stemming from the Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions from the Supreme Court, and the rise of the Koch brothers and superpacs which has made the money/speech virtually, if not literally, impossible to track, let alone hold any accountable for.

If the Founding Father had anything to say about money equaling speech, it would probably be interrupted by vomiting with disgust over the current state of politics and the recent Supreme Court decisions.