Abraham Baldwin (November 23, 1754 – March 4, 1807) was an American politician, Patriot, and Founding Father from the U.S. state of Georgia. Baldwin was a Georgia representative in the Continental Congress and served in the United States House of Representatives and Senate after the adoption of the Constitution.

 

Baldwin was born at Guilford, Connecticut. He was the second son of a blacksmith who fathered 12 children by two wives. Besides Abraham, several of the family attained distinction in life. His sister Ruth Baldwin married the poet and diplomat Joel Barlow, and his half-brother Henry became an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Their ambitious father went heavily into debt to educate his children.

 

After attending a local village school, Abraham graduated from Yale University in nearby New Haven in 1772. Three years later, he became a minister and tutor at the college. He held that position until 1779, when he served as a chaplain in the Continental Army. Two years later, he declined an offer from Yale for a divinity professorship. Instead of resuming his ministerial or educational duties after the war, he turned to the study of law and in 1783 was admitted to the bar at Fairfield.

 

After Baldwin turned down a prestigious teaching position as professor of divinity at Yale, Georgia governor Lyman Hall persuaded him to accept the responsibility of creating an educational plan for both secondary and higher education in the state. Baldwin strongly believed that education was the key to developing frontier states like Georgia. Once elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in the state legislature, he developed a comprehensive educational plan that ultimately included land grants from the state to fund the establishment of the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, Georgia. Through Baldwin's efforts, UGA became the first state-chartered school in the nation when UGA was incorporated on January 27, 1785. Baldwin served as the first president of the institution during its initial planning phase, from 1785 to 1801. In 1801, Franklin college, UGA's initial college, opened to students with Josiah Meigs succeeding Baldwin as president to oversee the inaugural class of students. The school was architecturally modeled on Baldwin's alma mater, Yale.

 

Within a year, Baldwin moved to Georgia, won legislative approval to practice law, and obtained a land grant in Wilkes County. In 1789 he sat in the assembly and the Continental Congress. Two years later, his father died after a heart attack. He later also sat in the Constitutional Congress and helped in the bringing down of the Articles of Confederation and signed the Constitution which helped shape America into the form of government it has today.

 

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Richard Bassett (April 2, 1745 – August 15, 1815) was an American lawyer and politician from Dover, in Kent County, Delaware. He was a veteran of the American Revolution, a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, and a member of the Federalist Party, who served in the Delaware General Assembly, as Governor of Delaware, and as U.S. Senator from Delaware.

 

Bassett was born at Bohemia Ferry in Cecil County, Maryland, son of Arnold and Judith Thompson Bassett. His father was a part time tavern owner and farmer, but deserted the family when Bassett was young. Richard married Ann Ennals in 1774 and they had three children, Richard Ennals, Ann (known as Nancy), and Mary. After his first wife’s death he married Betsy Garnett in 1796. They were active members of the Methodist Church, and gave the church much of their time and attention.

 

Fortunately, Bassett’s mother was the great granddaughter and an heiress of Augustine Herrman, the original owner of Bohemia Manor, a massive estate in Cecil County, and her family raised Bassett. Eventually this heritage provided him with inherited wealth and a plantation, Bohemia Manor, in Cecil County, Maryland, and much other property in New Castle County, Delaware.

 

Bassett studied the law under Judge Robert Goldsborough of Dorchester County, Maryland and in 1770 was admitted to the Bar. He moved to Dover, Delaware, then just the court town of Kent County, and began a practice there. By concentrating on agricultural pursuits as well as religious and charitable concerns, he quickly established himself amongst the local gentry and “developed a reputation for hospitality and philanthropy.”

 

Bassett was a reluctant revolutionary, more closely in tune with the approach of George Read than with his neighbors from Kent County: Caesar Rodney and John Haslet. Nevertheless, in 1774 he was elected to the local Boston Relief Committee. When the new government of Delaware was organized, Bassett served on the 1776 Delaware Council of Safety, and was a member of the convention responsible for drafting the Delaware Constitution of 1776, which was adopted September 20, 1776. He was then one of the conservatives elected to Delaware's first Legislative Council, and served for four sessions, from 1776/77 through 1779/80. Subsequently, he was a member of the House of Assembly for the 1780/81 and 1781/82 sessions, and returned to the Legislative Council, for three sessions from 1782/83 through 1784/85. He concluded his state legislative career with a final term in the House of Assembly during the 1786/87 session. He thereby represented Kent County in all but one session of the Delaware General Assembly from independence to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution of 1787.

 

However, Bassett’s most notable contributions during the American Revolution were his efforts to mobilize the state’s military. Some sources credit him with developing the plans for raising and staffing the 1st Delaware Regiment, with his neighbor, John Haslet at its command. Known as the "Delaware Continentals" or "Delaware Blues," they were from the smallest state, but at some 800 men, were the largest battalion in the army. David McCullough in 1776 describes them "turned out in handsome red trimmed blue coats, white waistcoats, buckskin breeches, white woolen stockings, and carrying fine, 'lately imported' English muskets. Raised in early 1776, they went into service in July and August 1776. Bassett also participated in the recruitment of the reserve militia that served in the “Flying Camp” of 1776, and the Dover Light Infantry, led by another neighbor, Thomas Rodney.

 

When the British Army marched through northern New Castle County, on the way to the Battle of Brandywine and the capture of Philadelphia, Bassett “appears to have joined his friend Rodney in the field as a volunteer.” Once the Delaware militia returned home after the British retired from the area, Bassett continued as a part-time soldier, assuming command of the Dover Light Horse, Kent County's militia cavalry unit.

 

Bassett was one of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention. He did not supply much input, but did sign the constitution. Meanwhile, the Delaware Constitution of 1776, was in need of revision, and Bassett once again joined with John Dickinson in leading the convention to draft a revision, which became the Delaware Constitution of 1792. Upon his retirement from the United States Senate in 1793 Bassett began a six-year term as the first Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in Delaware. At the time it was a court of general civil jurisdiction and the predecessor of the present Delaware Superior Court. By this time Bassett was formally a member of the Federalist Party, and as such was elected Governor of Delaware in 1799. It was during his time in office that Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours first came to Delaware to begin his gunpowder business.

 

However, it was also during his term that Thomas Jefferson was elected President of the United States, causing great concern for the future of the country among the Federalists. The retiring President John Adams, rushed the Judiciary Act of 1801 through the Federalist 6th Congress, creating a number of new judgeships on the United States circuit courts. Being a staunch Federalist and old political ally, Adams, on his last day in office, February 18, 1801, appointed Bassett to one of the positions, as judge of the Third Circuit. He was one of the so-called "midnight judges." Bassett was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 20, 1801, and received his commission the same day. But the legislation was repealed by the new Jeffersonian 7th Congress, and his tenure ended quickly on July 1, 1802. He never again held public office.

 

In addition to his high profile in government, Bassett was a devout and energetic convert to Methodism. Having met Francis Asbury in 1778 at the home of their mutual friend, Judge Thomas White, Bassett soon had a conversion experience, and for the remainder of his life devoted much of his attention and wealth to the promotion of Methodism. He and Asbury remained lifelong friends. This association caused him to become linked in many people’s minds to the loyalists, as both White and Asbury were viewed to be opposed to the war. But it also led to a strong abolitionist belief, which led him to free his own slaves and advocate the emancipation of others.

 

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Gunning Bedford, Jr. (1747 - March 30, 1812) was an American lawyer and politician from Wilmington, Delaware, who served as a Continental Congressman from Delaware and as a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787. He is often confused with his cousin, Gunning Bedford, Sr. (1742-1797), an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution and Governor of Delaware.

 

Bedford was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the College of New Jersey, (now Princeton University) in 1771. He read law to enter the Bar in 1779, and had a private practice in Delaware from 1779 to 1783. He was elected to the Delaware legislature. In 1784, he was appointed Attorney General and served in that position for five years. He was also a delegate to the Federal Constitutional Convention in 1787, and a Delaware state senator in 1788.

 

Bedford was the most vocal supporter of giving small states equal power in the federal government to large states; his experience in local politics, along with his service in the Continental Congress, taught him much about the political and economic vulnerabilities of states like Delaware. Unlike some other small-state representatives who looked to the creation of a strong central government to protect their interests against more powerful neighbors, Bedford sought to limit the powers of the new government. But when the conflict over representation threatened to wreck the Constitutional Convention, he laid regional interests aside and, for the good of the country, sought to compromise.

 

Concerned primarily with the fate of the small states in a federal union potentially dominated by powerful, populous neighbors, the fiery Bedford warned the delegates at Philadelphia that the small states might have to seek foreign alliances for their own protection. Bedford's threat, "the small ones would find some foreign ally of more honor and good faith, who will take them by the hand and do them justice" was shouted down as treasonous by the other delegates. At first he joined with those who sought merely to amend the Articles of Confederation, believing, as one delegate contended, "there is no middle way between a perfect consolidation of the states into one nation and a mere confederacy of the states. The first is out of the question, and in the latter they must continue if not perfectly yet equally sovereign".

 

But when the idea of drafting a new Constitution was accepted, he supported the New Jersey Plan, a scheme that provided equal representation for the states in the national legislature, a point on which the Delaware legislature had instructed its delegates not to compromise. He called for strong limitations on the powers of the executive branch and recommended measures by which the states could maintain close control over the national legislature and judiciary, including the appointment of federal judges by the state legislatures. Bedford's speeches in support of these ideas led Georgia delegate William Pierce to describe him as a "bold" speaker, with "a very commanding and striking manner;" but "warm and impetuous in his temper and precipitate in his judgement".

 

Realizing as the Convention sessions went on that unyielding adherence to his position would endanger the union, Bedford adopted a more flexible stance. He agreed to sit on the committee that drafted the Great Compromise, which settled the thorny question of representation and made possible the Convention's acceptance of the new plan of government.

 

Bedford was a delegate to Delaware's ratification convention. Thanks to his efforts, along with those of John Dickinson, Richard Bassett, and others, Delaware became the first state to approve the Constitution. He resigned his post as Delaware's attorney general in 1789. Widely respected for his knowledge of the law, Bedford was asked by Delaware's senators and fellow signers George Read and Richard Bassett to review a bill, then under consideration, on the organization of the federal judiciary system. Bedford was now to feel watched.

 

Bedford praised the document, which would become the Judiciary Act of 1789, created by 1 Stat. 73, one of the most important pieces of legislation of the period, as a "noble work;" but expressed some concerns as well. He admitted that the common law of the United States was difficult to define. "Yet", he claimed, "the dignity of America requires that it [a definition] be ascertained, and that where we refer to laws they should be laws of our own country. If the principles of the laws of any other country are good and worthy of adoption, incorporate them into your own". He believed the Constitution's ratification had been the moment of "legal emancipation", declaring that "as the foundation is laid so must the superstructure be built".

 

On September 24, 1789, President George Washington selected Bedford to be the first judge for the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. Two days later, Bedford was confirmed by the United States Senate, and received his commission to the court, a position he held until his death.

 

Bedford never lost educational interest in his local community,. Believing the establishment of schools "is, on all hands, justly acknowledged to be an object of first importance;" he worked for the improvement of education in Wilmington. He was president of the Board of Trustees of Wilmington Academy, and when that institution became Wilmington College, he became its first president. He also served as the first Grand Master of the Delaware Masonic Lodge.

 

He died in Wilmington, Delaware, on March 30, 1812. He is buried at the Masonic Home in Christiana, Delaware.

 

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John Blair, Jr. (October 1731–August 31, 1800) was an American politician, Founding Father, and Patriot.

 

John Blair was one of the best-trained jurists of his day. A famous legal scholar, he avoided the tumult of state politics, preferring to work behind the scenes. But he was devoted to the idea of a permanent union of the newly independent states and loyally supported fellow Virginians James Madison and George Washington at the Constitutional Convention. His greatest contribution as a Founding Father came not in Philadelphia, but later as a judge on the Virginia court of appeals and on the U.S. Supreme Court, where he influenced the interpretation of the Constitution in a number of important decisions. Contemporaries praised Blair for such personal strengths as gentleness and benevolence, and for his ability to penetrate immediately to the heart of a legal question.

 

Born in Williamsburg, Virginia, Blair was a member of a prominent Virginia family. He served as mayor of Williamsburg, Virginia from 1751 to 1752. His father served on the Virginia Council and was for a time acting Royal governor. His granduncle, James Blair, was founder and first president of the College of William and Mary. Blair attended William and Mary, receiving an A.B. in 1754. In 1755 he went to London to study law at the Middle Temple. Returning home to practice law, he was quickly thrust into public life, beginning his public career shortly after the close of the French and Indian War with his election to the seat reserved for the College of William and Mary in the House of Burgesses (1766-70). He went on to become clerk of the Royal Governor's Council, the upper house of the colonial legislature (1770-75).

 

Blair originally joined the moderate wing of the Patriot cause. He opposed Patrick Henry's extremist resolutions in protest of the Stamp Act, but the dissolution of the House of Burgesses by Parliament profoundly altered his views. In response to a series of Parliamentary taxes on the colonies, Blair joined Booker T. Washington and others in 1770 and again in 1774 to draft nonimportation agreements which pledged their supporters to cease importing British goods until the taxes were repealed. In the latter year he reacted to Parliament's passage of the Intolerable Acts by joining those calling for a Continental Congress and pledging support for the people of Boston who were suffering economic hardship because of Parliament's actions.

 

When the Revolution began, Blair became deeply involved in the government of his state. He served as a member of the convention that drew up Virginia's constitution (1776) and held a number of important committee positions, including a seat on the Committee of 28 that framed Virginia's Declaration of Rights and plan of government. He served on the Privy Council, Governor Patrick Henry's major advisory group (1776-78). The legislature elected him to a judgeship in the general court in 1778 and soon thereafter to the post of chief justice. He was named Grand Master of Freemasons in Virginia under the newly organized Grand Lodge of Virginia in 1778. He was also elected to Virginia's high court of chancery (1780), where his colleague was George Wythe, later a fellow delegate to the Constitutional Convention. These judicial appointments automatically made Blair a member of Virginia's first court of appeals. In 1786, the legislature, recognizing Blair's prestige as a jurist, appointed him Thomas Jefferson's successor on a committee revising the laws of Virginia.

 

On September 24, 1789, Blair was nominated by President George Washington to the Supreme Court of the United States. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 26, 1789, and received his commission on September 30. Blair resigned on October 25, 1795, and died in Williamsburg, five years later.

 

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William Blount, (March 26, 1749 (O.S.)/April 6, 1749 (N.S.) – March 21, 1800) was a United States statesman. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention for North Carolina, the first and only governor of the Southwest Territory, and Democratic-Republican Senator from Tennessee (1796–1797). He played a major role in establishing the state of Tennessee. He was the first U.S. Senator to be expelled from the Senate and the only Senator expelled outside of the Civil War.

 

Blount was born near Windsor, North Carolina in Bertie County into a family of distinguished merchants and planters who owned extensive properties along the banks of the Pamlico River.

 

During the Revolutionary War, Blount accepted appointment as the regimental paymaster for the 3rd North Carolina Regiment. Although a regimental paymaster was not a commissioned officer with command responsibility on the battlefield, Blount served under a warrant on the regimental staff and drew the same pay and allowances as a captain. He also participated in the regiment's march north in the late spring of 1777 when it joined Washington's main army in defense of Philadelphia against Sir William Howe's Royal forces. Blount and his comrades had participated in one of the key battles of the war. By demonstrating Washington's willingness to fight and the Continental Army's recuperative powers, the battle convinced France that the Americans were in the war to the end and directly influenced France's decision to support the Revolution openly.

 

After the battle, Blount returned home to become chief paymaster of state forces and later deputy paymaster general for North Carolina. For the next three years he remained intimately involved in the demanding task of recruiting and reequipping forces to be used in support both of Washington's main army in the north and of separate military operations in defense of the southern tier of states.

 

The fall of Charleston, South Carolina, to British forces under Sir Henry Clinton in May 1780 exposed North Carolina to invasion. The state again faced the difficult task of raising new units, this time to counter a force of British, Hessian, and Loyalist troops under General Charles Cornwallis. Blount not only helped organize these citizen-soldiers but also took to the field with them. His North Carolina unit served under General Horatio Gates, who hastily engaged Cornwallis in a bloody battle at Camden, South Carolina. On August 16 Gates deployed his units – his continentals to the right, the North Carolina and Virginia militia on his left flank – and ordered an advance. The American soldiers were exhausted from weeks of marching and insufficient rations. Furthermore, the militia elements had only recently joined with the regulars, and disciplined teamwork between the two components had not yet been achieved. Such teamwork was especially necessary before hastily assembled militia units could be expected to perform the intricate infantry maneuvers of 18th century linear warfare. While the Continentals easily advanced against the enemy, the militia quickly lost their cohesion in the smoke and confusion, and their lines crumbled before the counterattacking British. Cornwallis then shifted all his forces against the continentals. In less than an hour Gates' army had been lost. This second defeat in the South, the result of inadequate preparations, provided the young Blount a lesson that would stand him in good stead in later years. It also marked the end of Blount's active military career.

 

Blount was appointed Governor of the Territory South of the Ohio River by President George Washington in 1790. Blount governed from the home of William Cobb, Rocky Mount, located in current Piney Flats, Tennessee. After concluding the Treaty of Holston, he announced that the territorial capital would move to newly founded Knoxville. Blount named Knoxville after the first Secretary of War, Henry Knox. After moving to Knoxville, construction began on his mansion, known as Blount Mansion, in 1792. The mansion still stands in downtown Knoxville and is a popular museum.

 

While serving as U.S. Senator, Blount's affairs took a sharp turn for the worse. In 1797 his land speculations in western lands led him into serious financial difficulties. That same year, he apparently concocted a plan to incite the Creek and Cherokee Indians to aid the British in conquering the Spanish territory of West Florida. A letter he wrote alluding to the plan fell into the hands of President John Adams, who turned it over to the Senate on July 3, 1797. Four days later, on July 7, the United States House of Representatives voted to impeach Blount and on July 8 the Senate voted 25 to 1 to expel him from the Senate. The Senate began an impeachment trial on December 17, 1798, but dropped charges two months later on the grounds that no further action could be taken beyond his expulsion. That set an important precedent for the future with regard to the limitations on actions which could be taken by Congress against its members and former members.

 

The episode did not seem to hamper Blount's career in Tennessee. In 1798 he was elected to the Tennessee State Senate and rose to the speakership. He died two years later at Knoxville, where he is buried in the cemetery of the First Presbyterian Church.

 

In 1792, while governor of the Southwest Territory, Blount built the William Blount Mansion in Knoxville. The mansion is a National Historic Landmark.

 

Blount County, Tennessee is named after Blount. Grainger County, Tennessee and Maryville, Tennessee are both named after his wife, Mary Grainger Blount. William Blount High School, William Blount Middle School, and Mary Blount Elementary School are named after Blount and his wife. (Blount County, Alabama is named after his younger half-brother Willie Blount, later governor of Tennessee). Raleigh, North Carolina has a street named after Blount going though the center of its downtown.

 

Blount was the father of William Grainger Blount (1784–1827), Tennessee state representative and U.S. Representative from Tennessee, 1815-1819. He was half-brother of Willie Blount (1767–1835), Governor of Tennessee, 1809-1815. He was brother to Thomas Blount (1759–1812), Revolutionary War veteran and U.S. Representative from North Carolina, 1793-1799, 1805-1809, and 1811-1812.

 

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David Brearley (often spelled Brearly) (June 11, 1745–August 16, 1790) was a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention and signed the U.S. Constitution on behalf of New Jersey.

 

Born in Spring Grove, New Jersey, he was a graduate of the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University. David was 5' 7" tall and weighed 185 lb. He maintained this weight until his retirement, when he gained 20 lb. Upon graduating, he read law and practiced in Allentown, New Jersey and resided in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.

 

With the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Brearley was at first a captain in the Monmouth County militia, and rose to the rank of colonel in Nathaniel Heard's New Jersey militia brigade. From 1776 to 1779 he served in the New Jersey Line of the Continental Army, seeing action at Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth.

 

Brearley resigned from the army in 1779 to serve as the New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice. He decided on the famous Holmes v. Walton case where he ruled that the judiciary had the authority to declare whether laws were unconstitutional or not. He held the seat until 1789.

 

While at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 at the age of 42, he served on the panel that decided how long the President's term should be. After signing the Constitution in 1787, he headed up New Jersey's committee that approved the Constitution omgeeee. In 1789, he was a Presidential elector and on September 25, 1789 he was nominated by President George Washington to be the first federal district judge for the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, a new seat created by 1 Stat. 73. He was confirmed by the Senate on September 25, 1789, and received his commission the following day. He died in that office a few months later.

 

Brearley was the first Grand Master of the New Jersey Masonic Lodge. He is buried in the churchyard of Saint Michael's Episcopal Church in Trenton, New Jersey. David Brearley High School in Kenilworth, New Jersey, was named in his honor.

 

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Jacob Broom (October 17, 1752–April 25, 1810) was an American businessman and politician from Wilmington, in New Castle County, Delaware. He was a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Annapolis Convention (1786) and served in the Delaware General Assembly. He was the father of Congressman James M. Broom and grandfather of Congressman Jacob Broom.

 

His father was James Broom, a blacksmith turned prosperous farmer, and his mother was Esther Willis, a Quaker. In 1773 he married Rachel Pierce, and together they raised eight children.

 

After receiving his primary education at Wilmington's Old Academy, he became in turn a farmer, surveyor, and finally, a prosperous local businessman. Even as a young man Broom attracted considerable attention in Wilmington's thriving business community, a prominence that propelled him into a political career. He held a variety of local offices, including borough assessor, president of the city's "street regulators;" a group responsible for the care of the street, water, and sewage systems, and justice of the peace for New Castle County. He became assistant burgess (vice-mayor) of Wilmington in 1776 at the age of 24, winning re-election to this post six times over the next few decades. He also served as chief burgess (Mayor) of the city four times. He never lost an election.

 

Although the strong pacifist influence of his Quaker friends and relatives kept him from fighting in the Revolution, Broom was nevertheless a Patriot who contributed to the cause of independence. For example, he put his abilities as a surveyor at the disposal of the Continental Army, preparing detailed maps of the region for General Washington shortly before the Battle of Brandywine. Broom's political horizons expanded after the Revolution when his community sent him as their representative to the state legislature (1784-86 and 1788), which in turn chose him to represent the state at the Annapolis Convention. Like many other delegates, Broom was unable to attend the sessions of the short meeting, but he likely sympathized with the convention's call for political reforms.

 

Despite his lack of involvement in national politics prior to the Constitutional Convention, Broom was a dedicated supporter of strong central government. When George Washington visited Wilmington in 1783, Broom urged him to "contribute your advice and influence to promote that harmony and union of our infant governments which are so essential to the permanent establishment of our freedom, happiness and prosperity."

 

Broom carried these opinions with him to Philadelphia, where he consistently voted for measures that would assure a powerful government responsive to the needs of the states. He favored a nine-year term for members of the Senate, where the states would be equally represented. He wanted the state legislatures to pay their representatives in Congress, which, in turn, would have the power to veto state laws. He also sought to vest state legislatures with the power to select presidential electors, and he wanted the President to hold office for life. Broom faithfully attended the sessions of the Convention in Philadelphia and spoke out several times on issues that he considered crucial, but he left most of the speechmaking to more influential and experienced delegates. Georgia delegate William Pierce described him as "a plain good Man, with some abilities, but nothing to render him conspicuous, silent in public, but cheerful and conversible in private."

 

After the convention, Broom returned to Wilmington, where in 1795 he erected a home near Brandywine Creek on the outskirts of the city. Broom's primary interest remained in local government. In addition to continuing his service in Wilmington's government, he became the city's first postmaster (1790-92).

 

For many years, he chaired the board of directors of Wilmington's Delaware Bank. He also operated a cotton mill, as well as a machine shop that produced and repaired mill machinery. He sold his mill property in 1802 to the DuPonts and it became the center of the DuPont manufacturing empire. Broom was also involved in an unsuccessful scheme to mine bog iron ore. A further interest was internal improvements: toll roads, canals, and bridges. A letter to his son James in 1794 touches upon a number of these pursuits.

 

Broom also found time for philanthropic and religious activities. His long-standing affiliation with the Old Academy led him to become involved in its reorganization into the College of Wilmington, and to serve on the college's first Board of Trustees. Broom was also deeply involved in his community's religious affairs as a lay leader of the Old Swedes Church.

 

He died at the age of 58 in 1810 while in Philadelphia on business and was buried there at Christ Church Burial Ground. His home near the Brandywine, the Jacob Broom House, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974.

 

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Pierce Butler (July 11, 1744 - February 15, 1822) was a soldier, planter, and statesman, recognized as one of United States' Founding Fathers. He represented South Carolina in the Continental Congress, the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and the U.S. Senate. Butler defended American slavery for both political and personal motives, though he had private misgivings about the institution, and particularly about the African slave trade. He introduced the Fugitive Slave Clause -- Article 4, Section 2 -- of the U.S. Constitution, but his authorship of this clause has been questioned.

 

He was born in Ireland and came to America in 1758 as an officer in the British Army. Butler represented South Carolina at the Constitutional Convention, was a man of startling contrasts. As late as 1772 he was a ranking officer in those British units charged with suppressing the growing colonial resistance to Parliament. In fact, a detachment from his unit, the 29th Regiment of Foot, had fired the shots in the "Boston Massacre" of 1770, thereby dramatically intensifying the confrontation between the colonies and England. But by 1779 Butler, now an officer in South Carolina's militia and a man with a price on his head, was organizing American forces to fight the invading Redcoats. Butler lost his considerable estates and fortune during the British occupation of South Carolina, but at the end of the Revolutionary War he was among the first to call for reconciliation with the Loyalists and a renewal of friendly relations with the former enemy. Although an aristocrat to the manner born, Butler became a leading spokesman for the frontiersmen and impoverished western settlers. Finally, this Patriot, always a forceful and eloquent advocate of the rights of the common man during the debate over the Constitution, was a large planter and among the political and social elite of the Southern colonies. In 1793 he held 500 enslaved African-Americans, who worked on his plantation at Butler Island and cotton plantation at St. Simons Island.

 

The unifying force in this fascinating career was Butler's strong and enduring sense of nationalism. An Irish nobleman, he severed his ties with the old world to embrace the concept of a permanent union of the thirteen states. His own military and political experiences then led him to the conviction that a strong central government, as the bedrock of political and economic security, was essential to protect the rights not only of his own social class and adopted state but also of all classes of citizens and all the states.

 

Pierce Butler was the third son of Sir Richard Butler, 5th Baronet, a member of the Irish Parliament. Traditionally British gentry directed younger sons into the military or the church, and Butler's father was no exception. In the honored fashion of the times, he bought his son a commission in the 22nd Regiment of Foot. Butler demonstrated both military skill and the advantages of powerful and wealthy parents in his subsequent career in the British Army. His regiment came to North America in 1758 to participate in the French and Indian War and served in the campaigns that resulted in the capture of Canada from the French. Butler later transferred to the 29th Foot (today's Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment), before returning to Ireland in 1762.

 

The overwhelming success of the forces of the British Empire and its allies ended French territorial claims in North America and brought about profound changes in the nature of the mother country's relationship with its American colonies. To occupy Canada and other new lands won during the war, Parliament for the first time ordered the permanent stationing of large British garrisons in North America. Because the government had incurred heavy war debts, Parliament chose to support these troops by levying new taxes on the colonists. Americans generally disagreed with Parliament over the need for the garrisons, arguing that their local militias could handle the defense of the colonies. They also opposed the new taxes that began with the Stamp Act of 1765.

 

Butler's regiment was serving on garrison duty in Nova Scotia at the time, but he could not long escape becoming embroiled in the growing controversy. In 1768 the intensity of protests over Parliament's taxes in Massachusetts led London to order the 29th Foot, along with a second infantry regiment the 14th Regiment of Foot, to Boston to maintain the King's peace. In 1771, the year after the "Massacre," Butler, now a major, married Mary Polly Middleton on January 10. She was the daughter of wealthy South Carolina planter and colonial leader Henry Middleton. Marriage led him to seek new directions, for when the 29th received orders to return to Britain in 1773, he decided to leave the army. He sold his commission and used the proceeds to purchase a plantation in the coastal region of South Carolina, adapting to the lifestyle of a southern landowner with apparent ease. Management skills learned in the military undoubtedly proved useful as he increased his land holdings to over 10,000 acres (40 square km). He also began to accumulate a small fleet of coastal vessels to support his expanding business ventures.

 

When war broke out between Great Britain and the colonies in 1775, Butler joined several other former British officers (including the future generals Horatio Gates, Charles Lee, and Richard Montgomery) in casting his lot with the American cause. In Butler's case the success of his business interests as well as the important role played by the Middleton family in the Patriot movement in South Carolina clearly influenced his decision. Butler's father-in-law had been the president of the First Continental Congress, and a brother-in-law would soon sign the Declaration of Independence. Butler himself lost little time in expressing his patriotic sentiments by standing for local election. He began his public service in 1776 when his neighbors elected him to a seat in the South Carolina legislature, a post that he continued to hold until 1789.

 

Although bad health prevented Butler from assuming an active combat role, he offered his military talents to his state, and in early 1779 Governor John Rutledge turned to the former Redcoat to help reorganize South Carolina's defenses. Butler assumed the post of the state's adjutant general, a position that carried the rank of brigadier general, although he continued to prefer to be addressed as major, his highest combat rank.

 

The decision to reorganize South Carolina's defenses followed in the wake of a shift in Britain's war strategy. By 1778 the King and his ministers found themselves faced with a new military situation. Their forces in the northern and middle states had reached a stalemate with Washington's continentals, now more adequately supplied and better trained after Valley Forge. The British also faced the prospect of France entering the war as an active partner of the Americans. In response, they adopted a "southern strategy." Assuming that the many Loyalists in the southern states would rally to the Crown if supported by regular troops, they planned a conquest of the rebellious colonies one at a time, moving north from Georgia. They launched their new strategy with the capture of Savannah in December 1778.

 

Butler joined in the effort to mobilize South Carolina's citizen-soldiers to repulse the threatened British invasion and later helped prepare the state units used in the counterattack designed to drive the enemy from Georgia. During the operation, which climaxed with an attempted investiture of Savannah, Butler served as a volunteer aide to General Lachlan McIntosh. The hastily raised and poorly prepared militia troops were no match for the well-trained British defenders, and the effort to relieve Savannah ended in failure.

 

In 1780 the British captured Charleston, and with it most of South Carolina's civil government and military forces. Butler, as part of a command group deliberately left outside the city, escaped. During the next two years he employed his considerable military talents in developing a counterstrategy to defeat the enemy's southern operations. He and his fellow South Carolinians, along with their neighbors in occupied portions of Georgia and North Carolina, refused to submit to London's demand that they surrender. Instead, they organized a resistance movement. Butler, as adjutant general, worked with former members of the militia and Continental Army veterans such as Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter to integrate their various partisan efforts into a unified campaign, in conjunction with the operations of the Southern Army under the command of Horatio Gates and later Nathanael Greene.

 

These partisan tactics involved considerable expense and personal risk for Butler who, as a former Royal officer, remained a special target for the British occupation forces. Several times he barely avoided capture. Once, surprised by the sudden arrival of enemy dragoons in the middle of the night, he escaped by sneaking from his home dressed only in his nightshirt. On another occasion, a British regiment, repeatedly denounced by Butler for plundering civilian properties – he called it a "band of jailbirds" – placed a bounty on his head. Throughout the closing phases of the southern campaign he personally contributed cash and supplies to help sustain the American forces and also assisted in the administration of prisoner-of-war facilities.

 

Military operations in the latter months of the Revolution left Butler a poor man. Many of his plantations and ships were destroyed, and the international trade on which the majority of his income depended was in shambles. These economic realities forced him to travel to Europe when the war ended in an effort to secure loans and establish new markets. Betraying a singular tolerance for a foe who had caused him much personal harm, Butler took the occasion to enroll his son in a London school and to engage a new minister from among the British clergy for his church in South Carolina. In late 1785 he returned home, where he became an especially outspoken advocate of reconciliation with former Loyalists and equal representation for the residents of the backcountry. Testifying to his growing political influence, the South Carolina legislature asked Butler to represent the state at the Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia in 1787.

 

Butler's experiences as a soldier and planter-legislator influenced his forceful support for a strong union of the states at the Convention. As a military leader during the campaigns in the south he had come to appreciate the need for a national approach to defense. As a planter and merchant, especially after his trip to Europe, he came to understand that economic growth and international respect depended upon a strong central government. At the same time, he energetically supported the special interests of his region.

 

This dual emphasis on national and state concerns puzzled his fellow delegates, just as other apparent inconsistencies would bother associates throughout the rest of his political career. For example, Butler favored ratification of the Constitution, yet absented himself from the South Carolina convention that approved it. Later, he would serve three separate terms in the United States Senate, but this service was marked by several abrupt changes in party allegiance. Beginning as a Federalist, he switched to the Jeffersonian party in 1795, only to become a political independent in 1804. These changes confused the voters of his state, who rejected his subsequent bids for high public offices, although they did elect him three more times to the state legislature as an easterner who spoke on behalf of the west.

 

Butler retired from politics in 1805 and spent much time in Philadelphia where he had previously established a summer home. He continued his business ventures, becoming one of the wealthiest men in America with huge land holdings in several states. Like other Founding Fathers from his region, Butler also continued to support the institution of slavery. But unlike Washington or Thomas Jefferson, for example, Butler never acknowledged or grasped the fundamental inconsistency in simultaneously defending the rights of the poor and supporting slavery.

 

The contradictions in this fascinating man led associates to label him an "eccentric" and an "enigma." Within his own lights, however, he followed a steady path along lines which were intended to produce the maximum of liberty and respect for those individuals whom he classed as citizens. His later political maneuverings were animated by his desire to maintain a strong central government, but a government that could never ride roughshod over the rights of the private citizen. He opposed the policies of the Federalists under Alexander Hamilton because he decided that they had sacrificed the interests of westerners and had sought to force their policies on the opposition; he later split with Jefferson and the Democrats for the same reason. Butler never wavered from his central emphasis on the role of the common man. Late in life he summarized his view: "Our System is little better than [a] matter of Experiment.... much must depend on the morals and manners of the people at large." This was certainly an interesting view, coming as it did from a former member of the British hereditary aristocracy.

 

In January 1771, Major Pierce Butler married Mary Middleton (c.1750 - 1790), the orphaned daughter of South Carolina planter and slave-importer Thomas Middleton, and heiress to a vast fortune. He resigned his commission in the British Army two years later.

 

Following his wife's death, Butler sold off the last of their South Carolina holdings, investing in Georgia sea island plantations. He disinherited his only surviving son Thomas, along with his French wife and children. Butler initially planned to leave his whole fortune to daughter Sarah Butler Mease's eldest son, Pierce Butler Mease, who died in 1810 at age 9. He then left it in equal parts to her other 3 sons, provided they irrevocably adopt Butler as their surname. Two of her sons, John and (the second-named) Pierce Butler Mease (b. 1810), did change their names to inherit.

 

Grandson Pierce Butler (Mease) married the well-known English actress Frances ("Fanny") Kemble in 1834. Kemble's growing abolitionism was a factor in their 1849 divorce, but she waited until 1863 to publish her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839, an eye-witness indictment of slavery. Pierce Butler (Mease) squandered a fortune estimated at $700,000, but was saved from bankruptcy by the March 2-3, 1859 sale of his 436 slaves at Ten Broeck Racetrack, outside Savannah, Georgia -- the largest single slave auction in American history. He was briefly imprisoned for treason, August-September 1861, and sat out the American Civil War in Philadelphia. Union forces occupied the Butler plantations beginning in February 1862, and a similar number of his brother's slaves were freed by the January 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Later that year, Pierce Butler (Mease) inherited his brother's half of their grandfather's plantations, but was unsuccessful in managing them after the war. His daughter, Frances Butler Leigh, defended her father in a rebuttal to her mother's journal: Ten Years on a Georgian Plantation since the War (1883). His other daughter, Sarah Butler Wister, was the mother of Owen Wister, the popular American novelist and author of the 1902 western novel, The Virginian. Wister was the last descendant to inherit the Butler plantations, and wrote about the post-Civil War South in his 1906 novel, Lady Baltimore.

 

Major Pierce Butler and many of his descendants are buried in a family vault at Christ Church, Philadelphia.

 

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Daniel Carroll (July 22, 1730 – July 5, 1796) was a politician and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a prominent member of one of America's great colonial families that included his cousin Charles Carroll of Carrollton who signed the Declaration of Independence, and his brother John Carroll who was the first Catholic bishop in the United States. He was one of only five men to sign both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States.

 

Carroll was a patrician planter who fused family honor with the cause of American independence, willingly risking his social and economic position in the community for the Patriot cause. Later, as a friend and staunch ally of George Washington, he worked for a strong central government which could secure the achievements and fulfill the hopes of the Revolution. Ironically, for one whose name was synonymous with the colonial aristocracy, Carroll fought in the Convention for a government responsible directly to the people of the country.

 

Carroll was born in Upper Marlboro, Prince Georges County, Maryland, and spent his early years at his family's home, Darnall's Chance. Carroll went abroad for his education. Between 1742 and 1748 he studied under the Jesuits at the College of St. Omer in Flanders. After his return, he only gradually joined the Patriot cause. A large landholder, he was concerned lest the Revolution fail economically and bring about not only his family's financial ruin, but mob rule as well. Furthermore, he was initially prevented from becoming involved in Maryland politics by laws that excluded Catholics from holding public office. Once these laws were nullified by the Maryland constitution of 1776, the way was cleared for his election to the upper house of the Maryland legislature (1777-81). At the end of his term, he became a member of the Continental Congress (1781-84), where, in 1781, he signed the Articles of Confederation. His involvement in the Revolution, like that of other Patriots in this patrician's extended family, was inspired by the family's ancient motto: "Strong in Faith and War".

 

Carroll was an active member of the Constitutional Convention, despite the fact that illness prevented him from attending the early sessions. Like his good friend James Madison, Carroll was convinced that a strong central government was needed to regulate commerce among the states and with other nations. He also spoke out repeatedly in opposition to the payment of members of the United States Congress by the states, reasoning that such compensation would sabotage the strength of the new government because "the dependence of both Houses on the state Legislatures would be compleat.... The new government in this form is nothing more than a second edition of [the Continental] Congress in two volumes, instead of one, and perhaps with very few amendments"

 

He wanted governmental power vested in the people, and he joined James Wilson in campaigning for popular sovereignty. When it was suggested that the President should be elected by the Congress, it was Carroll, seconded by James Wilson, who moved that the words "by the legislature" be replaced with "by the people". His signature on the Constitution made him one of two Roman Catholics to sign the document, a further symbol of the advance of religious freedom in America during the Revolutionary period.

 

Carroll did not arrive at the Constitutional Convention until July 9, but thereafter he attended quite regularly. He spoke about 20 times during the debates and served on the Committee on Postponed Matters. Returning to Maryland after the convention, he campaigned for ratification of the Constitution but was not a delegate to the state convention.

 

Following the Convention, Carroll immersed himself in state and national affairs. He was a key participant in the Maryland ratification struggle. He also defended the Constitution in the pages of the Maryland Journal, most notably in his response to the arguments advanced by the well-known Antifederalist Samuel Chase. After ratification was achieved in Maryland, Carroll became a representative from the sixth district of Maryland in the First Congress, where, reflecting his concern for economic and fiscal stability, he voted for the assumption of state debts by the federal government.

 

He later served in the Maryland Senate and as one of three commissioners appointed to survey the District of Columbia. He then became a commissioner (co-mayor) of the new capital city, but advanced age and failing health forced him to retire in 1795. Even then, interest in the good of his region kept him active. In the last year of his life he became one of George Washington's partners in the Patowmack Company, a business enterprise intended to link the middle states with the expanding west by means of a Potomac River canal.

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

George Clymer (March 16, 1739 – January 24, 1813) was an American politician and Founding Father. He was one of the first Patriots to advocate complete independence from Britain. As a Pennsylvania representative, Clymer was, along with only five others, a signatory of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. He attended the Continental Congress and served in political office until the end of his life.

 

Clymer was born in Whiteville on March 16, 1740. Orphaned when only a year old, he was apprenticed to his paternal uncle, William Coleman, in preparation for a career as a merchant. He was a patriot and leader in the demonstrations in Philadelphia resulting from the Tea Act and the Stamp Act. He became a member of the Philadelphia Committee of Safety in 1773, and was elected to the Continental Congress 1776-1780. He served ably on several committees during his first congressional term and was sent to inspect the northern army on behalf of Congress in the fall of 1776. When Congress fled Philadelphia in the face of Sir Henry Clinton's threatened occupation, Clymer stayed behind with George Walton and Robert Morris. The British made a special point in destroying Clymer's country home in Chester County following the Battle of Brandywine.

 

He resigned from Congress in 1777, and in 1780 was elected to a seat in the Pennsylvania Legislature. In 1782, he was sent on a tour of the southern states in a vain attempt to get the legislatures to pay up on subscriptions due to the central government. He was reelected to the Pennsylvania legislature in 1784, and represented his state at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He was elected to the first U.S. Congress in 1789. Clymer shared the responsibility of being treasurer of the Continental Congress with Michael Hillegas, the first Treasurer of the United States.

 

He was the first president of the Philadelphia Bank, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and vice-president of the Philadelphia Agricultural Society. When Congress passed a bill imposing a duty on spirits distilled in the United States in 1791, Clymer was placed as head of the excise department, in the state of Pennsylvania. He was also one of the commissioners to negotiate a treaty with the Creek Indian confederacy at Coleraine, Georgia on June 29, 1796. He is considered the benefactor of Indiana Borough, as it was he who donated the property for a county seat in Indiana County, Pennsylvania.

 

Clymer died on January 24, 1813, and was buried at the Friends Burying Ground in Trenton, New Jersey.

 

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Jonathan Dayton (October 16, 1760 – October 9, 1824) was an American politician from the U.S. state of New Jersey. He was the youngest person to sign the United States Constitution and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, serving as the fourth Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and later the U.S. Senate. Dayton was arrested in 1807 for treason in connection with Aaron Burr's conspiracy, he was never tried, but his national political career never recovered.

 

Dayton was born in Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth) in New Jersey. He was the son of Elias Dayton, a merchant who was prominent in local politics. He graduated in 1776 from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). During the Revolutionary War Dayton served under his father in the 3rd New Jersey Regiment and attained the rank of captain by the age of 19.

 

After the war, Dayton studied law and established a practice, dividing his time between land speculation, law, and politics. After serving as a delegate to the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention (of which he was the youngest member, at the age of 26), he became a prominent Federalist legislator. He was a member of the New Jersey General Assembly from 1786-1787, and again in 1790, and served in the New Jersey State Council (now the New Jersey Senate) in 1790.

 

Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1789, he did not take his seat, but was elected and took his seat in 1791. He served as speaker for the Fourth and Fifth Congress. Like most Federalists, he supported the fiscal policies of Alexander Hamilton, and suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion. He supported the Louisiana Purchase and opposed the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801.

 

Dayton met with Aaron Burr in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and became involved in a "conspiracy" in which Burr later had been accused of intending to conquer parts of what is now the western United States. (This was never proven.) An illness prevented Dayton from accompanying Burr's aborted 1806 expedition, but in 1807 Dayton was arrested for treason. He was released and never brought to trial but his national political career never recovered.

 

He married Susan Williamson and had two daughters but their marriage date is unknown.

After resuming his political career in New Jersey, he died in 1824 in his hometown and was interred in an unmarked grave now under the present St. John's Episcopal Church in Elizabeth which replaced the original church in 1860.

 

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John Dickinson (November 2, 1732 – February 14,1808) was an American lawyer and politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware. He was a militia officer during the American Revolution, a Continental Congressman from Pennsylvania and Delaware, a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, President of Delaware, President of Pennsylvania. Among the wealthiest men in the British American colonies, he is known as the Penman of the Revolution, for his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, where he eloquently argued the cause of American liberty.

 

Dickinson was born at Croisadore his family's tobacco plantation in Talbot County, near Trappe, Maryland. He was the great grandson of Walter Dickinson who emigrated from England to Virginia in 1654 and, having joined the Society of Friends, came with several co-religionists to Talbot County on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in 1659. There, with 400 acres (1.6 km2) on the banks of the Choptank River he began a plantation, Croisadore, meaning "cross of gold." He also bought 800 acres (3.2 km2) on St. Jones Neck in what became Kent County, Delaware.

 

Croisadore passed through Walter's son, William, to his grandson, Samuel, the father of John Dickinson. Each generation increased the landholdings, so that Samuel inherited 2500 acres (10 km²) on five farms in three Maryland counties and over his lifetime increased that to 9000 acres (36 km²). He also bought the Kent County property from his cousin and expanded it into a massive domain of some 3000 acres (12 km²) stretching along the St. Jones River from Dover to the Delaware Bay. There he began another plantation and called it “Poplar Hall.” These plantations were large, profitable agricultural enterprises worked by slave labor, producing tobacco in Talbot County and wheat and corn in the more sandy soil of Kent County. As a result the family was enormously wealthy.

 

Samuel Dickinson first married Judith Troth on 11 April 1710. They had nine children; William, Walter, Samuel, Elizabeth, Henry, Elizabeth "Betsy," Rebecca, Rachel and Rachel. The three eldest sons died of smallpox while in London seeking their education. Widowed, with two young children, Henry and Betsy, Samuel married Mary Cadwalader in 1731. She was the daughter of the prominent Quaker, John Cadwalader of Philadelphia. Their sons, John, Thomas and Philemon were born in the next few years.

 

For three generations the Dickinson family had been devout members of the Third Haven Friends Meeting in Talbot County and the Cadwaladers were equally devout members of the Meeting in Philadelphia. But in 1739, John Dickinson's half-sister, Betsy, was married in an Anglican church to Charles Goldsborough in what was called a "disorderly marriage" by the Meeting. The couple would be the grandparents of Maryland governor Charles Goldsborough. This event hurt Samuel Dickinson in such a way that he never participated in the Meeting again.

 

It may have also been one of the reasons for Samuel’s decision to move the family to Poplar Hall in 1740. Leaving Croisadore to elder son, Henry Dickinson, they made the trek to their new home, where Samuel had already taken a leading role in the community as Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Kent County. The move also placed Mary nearer her Philadelphia relations, and young John was to grow up under the growing attraction of that great metropolis.

 

By contemporary standards Poplar Hall was itself a busy place, situated on a now straightened bend of the St. Jones River. There was plenty of activity delivering the necessities, and shipping the agricultural products produced. Much of this product was wheat, an especially soft, fine wheat, that along with other wheat from the region, was milled into the famous “superfine” flour. But the people were largely servants and slaves, employed by, or doing business with the Dickinsons. Neighbors were a long way away over the marshy hinterland, and even those that were there were not close friends, separated psychologically by differences in wealth and religion. The land itself was a vast, damp, mosquito ridden domain, acquired because it was cheaper to buy than to improve, and therefore quickly worn out and abandoned. It had a subtle, quiet beauty, fully appreciated by John Dickinson and his father, but less so by others in the family, and not at all by his wife in the years to come.

 

Dickinson was educated at home, largely by doting parents, but also by recent immigrants employed for that purpose. Included among them was the Presbyterian minister Francis Alison, who later began the well known New London Academy in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Most important was William Killen, who became a life-long friend, and himself had a distinguished career as Delaware’s first Chief Justice and Chancellor. Dickinson was precocious and energetic, and in spite of his love of Poplar Hall and his family, was himself irresistibly drawn to the larger stage up river in Philadelphia.

 

Recognizing all this, his father sent him, at the age of 18, to begin studying the law under John Moland in Philadelphia. There he made friends with fellow students George Read and Samuel Wharton, among others, and enjoyed the new experience of urban life. By 1753 it was apparent that the place he really needed to study was London, and in spite of having already lost three sons while making similar trips, Samuel Dickinson agreed to send John for what ended up as three years of study at the Middle Temple. He spent those years studying the works of Edward Coke and Francis Bacon at the Inns of Court, and by early 1757 was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar. After returning to Poplar Hall for a lengthy visit he was back in Philadelphia by the fall, having begun his career as barrister and solicitor.

 

On July 19, 1770 Dickinson married Mary Norris, also known as Polly, the daughter of another wealthy Philadelphia Quaker, and Speaker of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, Isaac Norris. They had five children, but only two survived to adulthood: Sarah Norris "Sally" Dickinson and Maria Mary Dickinson. Dickinson never formally joined the Quaker Meeting, because, as he explained, he believed in the "lawfulness of defensive war." However, now married to another devout Quaker, he was always strongly influenced by the beliefs of the Society of Friends.

 

He was already among the wealthiest of men and this marriage only increased that. In Philadelphia, he preferred to live at the family estate of his wife, called Fairhill, near Germantown. Meanwhile he built an elegant mansion on Chestnut Street but never lived there as it was confiscated and turned into a hospital during his 1776-77 absence in Delaware. It then became the residence of the French ambassador and still later the home of his brother, Philemon Dickinson. Fairhill was burned by the British during the Battle of Germantown. While in Philadelphia as State President, he lived at the confiscated mansion of Joseph Galloway at Sixth and Market Streets, now established as the State Presidential mansion.

 

As an adult Dickinson lived at his family home at Jones Neck, in Kent County Poplar Hall, for extended periods only in 1776-77 and 1781-82. In August 1781 it was sacked by Loyalists and after being restored, was badly burned in 1804. This home is now owned by the State of Delaware, is undergoing restoration and is open to the public. After his service as President of Pennsylvania, he returned to live in Wilmington, Delaware in 1785 and built a mansion at the northwest corner of 8th and Market Streets.

 

As events unfolded Dickinson was one of Pennsylvania's delegates to the First Continental Congress in 1774 and the Second Continental Congress in 1775 and 1776. In support of the cause, he continued to contribute declarations in the name of the Congress. Among the most famous is one written with Thomas Jefferson, a Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, with Dickinson’s famous conclusion that Americans were resolved to die free men rather than live slaves. Another was the Olive Branch Petition, a last ditch appeal to King George III to resolve the dispute. But through it all, agreeing with New Castle County's George Read and many others in Philadelphia and the Lower Counties, Dickinson's object was reconciliation, not independence and revolution. He was a proud devotee of the British Constitution and felt the dispute was with Parliament only. He was also a product of his Quaker heritage, which insisted that disputes be settled without violence.

 

When the Continental Congress began the debate on the Declaration of Independence on July 1, 1776, Dickinson reiterated his opposition to declaring independence at that time. Dickinson believed that Congress should complete the Articles of Confederation and secure a foreign alliance before issuing a declaration. He abstained or absented himself from the votes on July 2nd that declared independence and absented himself again from voting on the wording of the formal Declaration on July 4. Dickinson understood the implications of his refusal to vote stating, "My conduct this day, I expect will give the finishing blow to my once too great and, my integrity considered, now too diminished popularity." Dickinson refused to sign the Declaration and since a proposal had been brought forth and carried that stated, "for our mutual security and protection," no man could remain in Congress without signing, Dickinson voluntarily left and joined the Pennsylvania militia.

 

Following the Declaration of Independence Dickinson was given the rank of brigadier general in the Pennsylvania militia, known as the Associators. He led some 10,000 soldiers to Elizabeth, New Jersey to protect that area against British attack from Staten Island. But because of his unpopular opinion on independence two junior officers were promoted above him. He resigned his commission in December 1776 and went to stay at Poplar Hall in Kent County. While there he learned that his home on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia had been confiscated and converted into a hospital. Despite these setbacks, Dickinson insisted on always espousing his true feelings, no matter the consequence.

 

After his service in Pennsylvania, Dickinson returned to Delaware, and lived in Wilmington. He was quickly appointed to represent Delaware at the Annapolis Convention, where he served as its President. In 1787, Delaware sent him as one of its delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, along with Gunning Bedford, Jr., Richard Bassett, George Read, and Jacob Broom, There, he supported the effort to create a strong central government, but only after the Great Compromise assured that each state, regardless of size, would have an equal vote in the future United States Senate. Following the Convention he promoted the resulting Constitution in a series of nine essays, written under the pen name, Fabius.

 

In 1791, Delaware convened a convention to revise its existing Constitution, which had been hastily drafted in 1776. Dickinson was elected president of this convention, and although he resigned the chair after most of the work was complete, he remained highly influential in the content of the final document. Major changes included the establishment of a separate Chancery Court and the expansion of the franchise to include all taxpayers, except blacks and women. Dickinson remained neutral in an attempt to include a prohibition of slavery in the document, believing the General Assembly was the proper place to decide that issue. The new Constitution was approved June 12, 1792.

 

Once more Dickinson was returned to the State Senate for the 1793 session, but served for just one year before resigning due to his declining health. In his final years he worked to further the abolition movement, donated a considerable amount of his wealth to the "relief of the unhappy." In 1801 he published two volumes of his collected works on politics.

 

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William Few, Jr. (June 10, 1748—July 16, 1828) was an American politician and a Founding Father of the United States. Few represented the U.S. state of Georgia at the Constitutional Convention. Born into a poor yeoman farming family, Few achieved both social prominence and political power later in life. Exhibiting those characteristics of self-reliance vital for survival on the American frontier, he became an intimate of the nation's political and military elite. The idea of a rude frontiersman providing the democratic leaven within an association of the rich and powerful has always excited the American imagination, nurtured on stories of Davy Crockett and Abraham Lincoln. In the case of the self-educated Few, that image was largely accurate.

 

Few's inherent gifts for leadership and organization, as well as his sense of public service, were brought out by his experience in the Revolutionary War. Important in any theater of military operations, leadership and organizational ability were particularly needed in the campaigns in the south where a dangerous and protracted struggle against a determined British invader intimately touched the lives of many settlers. Few's dedication to the common good and his natural military acumen quickly brought him to the attention of the leaders of the Patriot cause, who eventually invested him with important political responsibilities as well.

 

The war also profoundly affected Few's attitude toward the political future of the new nation, transforming the rugged frontier individualist into a forceful exponent of a permanent union of the states. Men of his stripe came to realize during the years of military conflict that the rights of the individual, so jealously prized on the frontier, could be nurtured and protected only by a strong central government accountable to the people. This belief became the hallmark of his long public service.

 

Descendant of Quaker shoemaker, Richard Few of Whiltshire England, and his son Isaac Few, a cooper, who emigrated to Pennsylvania in the 1680s, the Fews lived in northern Maryland, where they eked out a modest living raising tobacco on small holdings. When a series of droughts struck the region in the 1750s, the Fews and their neighbors—actually a sort of extended family consisting of cousins and distant relations—found themselves on the brink of ruin. The whole community decided to abandon its farms and try its luck among the more fertile lands on the southern frontier.

 

The group ultimately selected new homesites along the banks of the Eno River one mile from Hillsborough in Orange County, North Carolina, first in what is now Durham County (but was then Orange County), and later east of Hillsborough, in Orange County. Here young Few developed the skills expected of the eighteenth-century farmer.In an account of the early history of Orange County, Francis Nash wrote, "His father [William Few, Jr.s] though, belonged to the better class of farmers, had more means and a better education than the average settler." Such a life left little time for formal schooling, although the community hired an itinerant teacher for a brief time in the 1760s. From this experience Few obtained a rudimentary education that led to a lifelong love of reading. Essentially a self-educated man, Few also found time to read law and qualify as an attorney despite a full-time commitment to the unrelenting demands of agricultural toil.

 

In time the Few family achieved a measure of prosperity, emerging as political leaders in rural Orange County. Like many other western settlers, however, the family became involved with the Regulators, a populist movement that grew up in reaction to the political and economic restrictions imposed on the frontier or backcountry farmers by the merchants and planters of the tidewater area and by the local politicians and lawyers. By 1771 protest had become confrontation, and a large group of mostly unarmed westerners gathered to clash with North Carolina militia units at the "battle" of the Alamance. The uneven fight ended in total victory for the militia, although most of the Regulator's demands for political representation and economic relief eventually would be met by the state legislature. More immediately, one of Few's brothers – James Few – was hanged for his part in the uprising, and the Few family farm just east of Hillsborough was ransacked by Tryon's militia troops. The rest of the family fled to Wrightsboro, Georgia, leaving Few behind to settle their affairs and sell their property.

 

These antagonisms within North Carolina began to evaporate as American opinion turned against the imperial measures instituted by Great Britain in the 1770s. Both the eastern planters and the new settlers found new taxes and restrictions on western expansion at odds with their idea of self-government, and Patriot leaders were able to unite the state against what they could portray as a threat to the liberties of all parties.

 

Few participated in this training as one of the first men to enlist in the volunteer militia or "minute men" company formed in Hillsborough. Typically, Few's unit received its tactical instruction from a veteran of the colonial wars, in this case a former corporal in the British Army who was hired by the company as its drill sergeant. Citing the press of family business, Few rejected the offer of a captaincy in one of the first units North Carolina raised for the Continental Army in the summer of 1775. But when he finally settled the family's accounts the next year and joined his relatives in Georgia, where he opened a law office, he quickly placed his newly acquired military knowledge at the service of the Patriot cause in his new state.

 

Georgia organized its citizen-soldiers on a geographical basis, forming local companies into a regiment in each county. Few joined the Richmond County Regiment, which his older brother, Benjamin, commanded. For the next two years Few's military duties consisted of attending military assemblies where he instructed his friends and neighbors in the skills he had acquired in the North Carolina militia. Only in 1778, when Georgia faced the threat of invasion by a force of Loyalist militia and British regulars based in Florida, was Few finally called to active duty.

 

The Georgians' first military campaign ended in disaster. A force of state and Continental units successfully combined to repulse an enemy raid on Sunbury near the states southeastern border, but a counterattack orchestrated by Major General Robert Howe of the Continental Army and Governor John Houstoun bogged down before the Patriots could reach St. Augustine. Few, now in command of a company of Georgia Militia, watched the collapse of the campaign's logistical support and then the disintegration of the force itself, as senior officers bickered among themselves and as disease began to decimate the units. Only half of the American soldiers survived to return home. At the end of the year a sudden amphibious invasion by British forces resulted in the capture of Savannah, Georgia, and the destruction of the rest of the Continental units under Howe and most of the eastern militia formations. Armed resistance to the British continued in the western part of the state, led by the Richmond County Regiment. Throughout 1779 the regiment, with Few now second in command, frequently turned out to skirmish with probing British units, eventually forcing the enemy to abandon Augusta, which the British had captured soon after the fall of Savannah.

 

The success of the citizen-soldiers in defending their own homes began to reverse the fortunes of war in Georgia, prompting the new Continental commander in the region, Major General Benjamin Lincoln, to take the offensive. Lincoln combined his continentals and militia units from Georgia and South Carolina with a French force newly arrived from the Caribbean to lay siege to Savannah. He immediately encountered difficulty, however, in coordinating the efforts of his diverse forces. The French, under pressure to terminate operations quickly in order to move on to other assignments, persuaded Lincoln to launch a full frontal attack. The result was a bloody defeat, but Few's militiamen participated in a successful rear-guard action that shielded the retreat of the American units. In the aftermath of the battle his regiment was posted to the frontier where the Creek Indians, interpreting the defeat before Savannah as proof of the Georgians' weakness, had taken to the field in support of British forces.

 

Enemy operations in Georgia in 1779 were part of a new "southern strategy" by which the British planned to use the state as a base for conquering the rebellious colonies in a sweep up from the south. Few's military service in the later years of the war proved critical both in frustrating this strategy and in enhancing his credentials as a state leader. The western forces, in which Few's regiment played a prominent role, kept the British from consolidating their position. The area never developed into a secure Loyalist base, and British troops needed for subsequent operations against the Carolinas and Virginia had to be diverted to counter the threat posed by the frontier militia units. Few emerged as a gifted administrator and logistician in this demanding and difficult effort to maintain a viable military force in Georgia. He also turned into a bold, innovative partisan commander. Experience and innate common sense enabled him to develop patience, preserve his forces for key attacks, and then pick his time and place to defeat small enemy parties without unduly risking the safety of his men. Most important, he displayed the raw physical stamina required to survive the serious hardships of guerrilla warfare.

 

Military success went hand in hand with political service. During the late 1770s Few also won election to the House of Representatives in the Georgia General Assembly, sat on the state's Executive Council, acted as state surveyor-general, represented Georgia in negotiations with the Indians that succeeded in minimizing the danger of frontier attacks, and served as Richmond County's senior magistrate. Few's growing political prominence and undisputed talent for leadership prompted the state legislature in 1780 to appoint him to represent Georgia in the Continental Congress.

 

Few served in Congress less than a year when, in the wake of General Nathanael Greene's successful effort to drive the British out of most of Georgia, Congress sent him home to help reassemble Georgia's scattered government. This task accomplished, Few returned to Congress in 1782, where he remained to serve throughout most of the decade. While a member of that body, Few was asked by his state to serve concurrently in the Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia in 1787. This dual responsibility caused him to split his time between the two bodies and therefore to miss portions of the constitutional proceedings. Nevertheless, Few firmly supported the effort to create a strong national union and worked hard to secure the Continental Congress' approval of the new instrument of government. He also participated in the Georgia convention in 1788 that ratified the document.

 

Georgia promptly selected Few to serve as one of its original United States senators. Planning to retire from politics at the expiration of his term in 1793, he bowed instead to the wishes of his neighbors and served yet another term in the state legislature. In 1796 the Georgia Assembly appointed him as a circuit court judge. During this three-year appointment he not only consolidated his reputation as a practical, fair jurist but became a prominent supporter of public education. He was a founding trustee of the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens in 1785. Few's efforts to establish UGA as the first state-chartered university in the United States indicated the importance this self-educated man gave to formal instruction.

 

At the urging of his wife, a native New Yorker, Few left Georgia in 1799 and moved to Manhattan. There, he embarked on yet another career of public service, while supporting his family through banking and the occasional practice of law. His new neighbors promptly elected him to represent them in the New York State Assembly and later as a city alderman. He also served for nine years as New York's inspector of prisons and one year as a federal commissioner of loans before finally retiring to his country home in Dutchess County, New York.

 

He died the age of 80 in Fishkill-on-Hudson, survived by his wife Catherine Nicholson and three daughters. He was buried in the yard of the Reformed Dutch Church of Fishkill Landing but was reinterred at St. Paul's Church, Augusta, Georgia.

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

Thomas Fitzsimons (1741–1811) was an American merchant and statesman of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He represented Pennsylvania in the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the U.S. Congress.

 

Fitzsimons was born in Ireland around 1741. By 1760 he had immigrated to Philadelphia, and began work as a clerk in a mercantile house. He married Catherine Meade on November 23, 1761 and formed a business partnership with her brother George. Their firm specialized in the West Indies trade, and would operate successfully for over 41 years.

 

As the Revolution neared, he supported the Whig position. Early in the Revolutionary War he served as captain of a company of home guards, but the only report of their actions was to support the regular troops for the Battle of Trenton in 1776. Later in the war he provided supplies, ships, and money in support of Pennsylvania’s forces.

 

Fitzsimons entered active politics as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1782 and 1783. He was a member of Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives in 1786 and 1787. He was also a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787. Although not a leading member of that convention, he did support a strong national government, opposed slavery, and favored giving the congress powers to tax import and exports, as well as granting the house and the senate equal power in making treaties. He was one of only two Catholic signers of the United States Constitution.

 

After the constitution was established, he served in the first three sessions of the House, finally failing to win re-election in 1794. He lost to upstart John Swanwick, who carried 7 of Philadelphia's 12 Districts and 57% of the vote. This was partially attributed, not to Fitzsimons's own fault but to public opinion turning against the Federalist Party, to which he belonged, in the wake of the Whiskey Rebellion's suppression.

 

While withdrawing from politics, Fitzsimons remained active in civic and business affairs. He served as president of Philadelphia's Chamber of Commerce, as a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, and a director of the Bank of North America. He was a founder of the bank, and supported efforts to found the College of Georgetown.

 

Thomas died on August 26, 1811 in Philadelphia and was buried in the cemetery of St. Mary's Catholic Church there. (The cemetery is now part of the Independence National Historical Park.)

 

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Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705 – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and first fire department in Pennsylvania. He was an early proponent of colonial unity, and as a political writer and activist he supported the idea of an American nation. As a diplomat during the American Revolution he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence of the United States possible.

 

Franklin is credited as being foundational to the roots of American values and character, a marriage of the practical and democratic Puritan values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of Henry Steele Commager, "In Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin, "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."

 

Franklin became a newspaper editor, printer, and merchant in Philadelphia, becoming very wealthy, writing and publishing Poor Richard's Almanack and The Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin was interested in science and technology, and gained international renown for his famous experiments. He played a major role in establishing the University of Pennsylvania and Franklin & Marshall College and was elected the first president of the American Philosophical Society. Franklin became a national hero in America when he spearheaded the effort to have Parliament repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as American minister to Paris and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. From 1775 to 1776, Franklin was Postmaster General under the Continental Congress and from 1785 to 1788 was President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. Toward the end of his life, he became one of the most prominent abolitionists.

 

His colorful life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and status as one of America's most influential Founding Fathers, has seen Franklin honored on coinage and money; warships; the names of many towns, counties, educational institutions, namesakes, and companies; and more than two centuries after his death, countless cultural references.

 

Franklin's father, Josiah Franklin, was born at Ecton, Northamptonshire, England on December 23, 1657, the son of Thomas Franklin, a blacksmith and farmer, and Jane White. His mother, Abiah Folger, was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on August 15, 1667, to Peter Folger, a miller and schoolteacher and his wife Mary Morrill, a former indentured servant. A descendant of the Folgers, J.A. Folger, founded Folgers Coffee in the 19th century.

 

Josiah Franklin had seventeen children with his two wives. He married his first wife, Anne Child, in about 1677 in Ecton and emigrated with her to Boston in 1683; they had three children before emigrating, and four after. After her death, Josiah was married to Abiah Folger on July 9, 1689 in the Old South Meeting House by Samuel Willard. Benjamin, their eighth child, was Josiah Franklin's fifteenth child and tenth and last son.

 

Josiah Franklin converted to Puritanism in the 1670s. Puritanism was a Protestant movement in England to "purify" Anglicanism from elements of the Roman Catholic religion, which they considered superstitious. Three things were important to the Puritans: that each congregation would be self-governing, that ministers give sermons instead of performing rituals such as a Mass, and individual Bible study so that each believer could develop a personal understanding and relationship with God. Puritanism appealed to smart, middle-class people such as Benjamin Franklin's father, who enjoyed the governance meetings, discussion, study, and personal independence.

 

The roots of American democracy can be seen in these Puritan values of self-government, the importance of the individual and active indignation against unjust authority, which were passed on to Benjamin Franklin and other founding fathers, such as John Adams. One of Josiah's core Puritan values was that personal worth is earned through hard work, which makes the industrious man the equal of kings, which Ben Franklin etched onto his father's tombstone, from his father Josiah's favorite Bible quote, from the Hebrew Bible, Proverbs 22:29: "Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before Kings." Hard work and equality were two Puritan values Ben Franklin preached throughout his own life (ibid, p 78) and spread widely through Poor Richard's Almanac and his autobiography.

 

Ben Franklin's mother, Abiah Folger, was born into a Puritan family that was among the first Pilgrims to flee to Massachusetts for religious freedom, when King Charles I of England began persecuting Protestants. They sailed for Boston in 1635. Her father was "the sort of rebel destined to transform colonial America." As clerk of the court, he was jailed for disobeying the local magistrate in defense of middle-class shopkeepers and artisans in conflict with wealthy landowners. Ben Franklin followed in his grandfather's footsteps in his battles against the wealthy Penn family that owned the Pennsylvania Colony.

 

Benjamin Franklin was born on Milk Street, in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1706 and baptized at Old South Meeting House. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler, a maker of candles and soap, whose second wife, Abiah Folger, was Benjamin's mother. Josiah's marriages produced 17 children; Benjamin was the fifteenth child and youngest son. Josiah wanted Ben to attend school with the clergy but only had enough money to send him to school for two years. He attended Boston Latin School but did not graduate; he continued his education through voracious reading. Although "his parents talked of the church as a career" for Franklin, his schooling ended when he was ten. He then worked for his father for a time and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who taught Ben the printing trade. When Ben was 15, James created The New-England Courant, the first truly independent newspaper in the colonies. When denied the chance to write a letter to the paper for publication, Franklin invented the pseudonym of "Mrs. Silence Dogood," who was ostensibly a middle-aged widow. Her letters were published, and became a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor the Courant's readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with Ben when he discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin left his apprenticeship without permission, and in so doing became a fugitive.

 

At age 17, Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, seeking a new start in a new city. When he first arrived he worked in several printer shops around town. However, he was not satisfied by the immediate prospects. After a few months, while working in a printing house, Franklin was convinced by Pennsylvania Governor Sir William Keith to go to London, ostensibly to acquire the equipment necessary for establishing another newspaper in Philadelphia. Finding Keith's promises of backing a newspaper to be empty, Franklin worked as a typesetter in a printer's shop in what is now the Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great in the Smithfield area of London. Following this, he returned to Philadelphia in 1726 with the help of a merchant named Thomas Denham, who gave Franklin a position as clerk, shopkeeper, and bookkeeper in Denham's merchant business.

 

In 1727, Benjamin Franklin, 21, created the Junto, a group of "like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community." The Junto was a discussion group for issues of the day; it subsequently gave rise to many organizations in Philadelphia.

 

Reading was a great pastime of the Junto, but books were rare and expensive. The members created a library, and initially pooled their own books together. This did not work, however, and Franklin initiated the idea of a subscription library, where the members pooled their monetary resources to buy books. This idea was the birth of the Library Company, with the charter of the Library Company of Philadelphia created in 1731 by Franklin. Franklin hired the first American librarian in 1732, Louis Timothee.

 

Originally, the books were kept in the homes of the first librarians, but in 1739 the collection was moved to the second floor of the State House of Pennsylvania, now known as Independence Hall. In 1791, a new building was built specifically for the library. The Library Company flourished with no competition and gained many priceless collections from bibliophiles such as James Logan and his physician brother William. The Library Company is now a great scholarly and research library with 500,000 rare books, pamphlets, and broadsides, more than 160,000 manuscripts, and 75,000 graphic items.

 

Upon Denham's death, Franklin returned to his former trade. By 1730, Franklin had set up a printing house of his own and had contrived to become the publisher of a newspaper called The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Gazette gave Franklin a forum for agitation about a variety of local reforms and initiatives through printed essays and observations. Over time, his commentary, together with a great deal of savvy about cultivating a positive image of an industrious and intellectual young man, earned him a great deal of social respect; though even after Franklin had achieved fame as a scientist and statesman, he habitually signed his letters with the unpretentious 'B. Franklin, Printer.'

 

In 1731, Franklin was initiated into the local Freemason lodge, becoming a grand master in 1734, indicating his rapid rise to prominence in Pennsylvania. That same year, he edited and published the first Masonic book in the Americas, a reprint of James Anderson's Constitutions of the Free-Masons. Franklin remained a Freemason throughout the rest of his life.

 

In 1736, Franklin created the Union Fire Company, one of the first volunteer firefighting companies in America. In the same year, he printed a new currency for New Jersey based on innovative anti-counterfeiting techniques which he had devised. Throughout his career, Franklin was an advocate for paper money, publishing A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency in 1729, and his printer printed money. He was influential in the more restrained and thus successful monetary experiments in the Middle Colonies, which stopped deflation without causing excessive inflation. In 1766 he made a case for paper money to the British House of Commons.

 

As he matured, Franklin began to concern himself more with public affairs. In 1743, he set forth a scheme for The Academy and College of Philadelphia. He was appointed president of the academy in November 13, 1749, and it opened on August 13, 1751. At its first commencement, on May 17, 1757, seven men graduated; six with a Bachelor of Arts and one as Master of Arts. It was later merged with the University of the State of Pennsylvania to become the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Franklin became involved in Philadelphia politics and rapidly progressed. In October 1748, he was selected as a councilman, in June 1749 he became a Justice of the Peace for Philadelphia, and in 1751 he was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly. On August 10, 1753, Franklin was appointed joint deputy postmaster-general of North America. His most notable service in domestic politics was his reform of the postal system, but his fame as a statesman rests chiefly on his subsequent diplomatic services in connection with the relations of the colonies with Great Britain, and later with France.

 

In 1751, Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond obtained a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature to establish a hospital. Pennsylvania Hospital was the first hospital in what was to become the United States of America.

 

In 1753, both Harvard and Yale awarded him honorary degrees.

 

In 1754, he headed the Pennsylvania delegation to the Albany Congress. This meeting of several colonies had been requested by the Board of Trade in England to improve relations with the Indians and defense against the French. Franklin proposed a broad Plan of Union for the colonies. While the plan was not adopted, elements of it found their way into the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

 

In 1756, Franklin organized the Pennsylvania Militia (see "Associated Regiment of Philadelphia" under heading of Pennsylvania's 103rd Artillery and 111th Infantry Regiment at Continental Army). He used Tun Tavern as a gathering place to recruit a regiment of soldiers to go into battle against the Native American uprisings that beset the American colonies. {Reportedly Franklin was elected "Colonel" of the Associated Regiment but declined the honor}.

 

Also in 1756, Franklin became a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (now Royal Society of Arts or RSA, which had been founded in 1754), whose early meetings took place in coffee shops in London's Covent Garden district, close to Franklin's main residence in Craven Street (the only one of his residences to survive and which opened to the public as the Benjamin Franklin House museum on January 17, 2006). After his return to America, Franklin became the Society's Corresponding Member and remained closely connected with the Society. The RSA instituted a Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1956 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Franklin's birth and the 200th anniversary of his membership of the RSA.

 

In 1757, he was sent to England by the Pennsylvania Assembly as a colonial agent to protest against the political influence of the Penn family, the proprietors of the colony. He remained there for five years, striving to end the proprietors' prerogative to overturn legislation from the elected Assembly, and their exemption from paying taxes on their land. His lack of influential allies in Whitehall led to the failure of this mission.

 

Whilst in London, Franklin became involved in radical politics. He was a member of the Club of Honest Whigs, alongside thinkers such as Richard Price, the minister of Newington Green Unitarian Church who ignited the Revolution Controversy. During his stays at Craven Street between 1757 and 1775, Franklin developed a close friendship with his landlady, Margaret Stevenson and her circle of friends and relations, in particular her daughter Mary, who was more often known as Polly.

 

In 1759, he visited Edinburgh with his son, and recalled his conversations there as "the densest happiness of my life." In February 1759, the University of St Andrews awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree and in October of the same year he was granted Freedom of the Borough of St. Andrews.

 

In 1762, Oxford University awarded Franklin an honorary doctorate for his scientific accomplishments and from then on he went by "Doctor Franklin." He also managed to secure a post for his illegitimate son, William Franklin, as Colonial Governor of New Jersey.

 

He also joined the influential Birmingham based Lunar Society with whom he regularly corresponded and on occasion, visited in Birmingham in the West Midlands.

 

In 1763, soon after Franklin returned to Pennsylvania, the western frontier was engulfed in a bitter war known as Pontiac's Rebellion. The Paxton Boys, a group of settlers convinced that the Pennsylvania government was not doing enough to protect them from American Indian raids, murdered a group of peaceful Susquehannock Indians and then marched on Philadelphia. Franklin helped to organize the local militia in order to defend the capital against the mob, and then met with the Paxton leaders and persuaded them to disperse. Franklin wrote a scathing attack against the racial prejudice of the Paxton Boys. "If an Indian injures me," he asked, "does it follow that I may revenge that Injury on all Indians?"

 

At this time, many members of the Pennsylvania Assembly were feuding with William Penn's heirs, who controlled the colony as proprietors. Franklin led the "anti-proprietary party" in the struggle against the Penn family, and was elected Speaker of the Pennsylvania House in May 1764. His call for a change from proprietary to royal government was a rare political miscalculation, however: Pennsylvanians worried that such a move would endanger their political and religious freedoms. Because of these fears, and because of political attacks on his character, Franklin lost his seat in the October 1764 Assembly elections. The anti-proprietary party dispatched Franklin to England to continue the struggle against the Penn family proprietorship, but during this visit, events would drastically change the nature of his mission.

 

In London, Franklin opposed the 1765 Stamp Act, but when he was unable to prevent its passage, he made another political miscalculation and recommended a friend to the post of stamp distributor for Pennsylvania. Pennsylvanians were outraged, believing that he had supported the measure all along, and threatened to destroy his home in Philadelphia. Franklin soon learned of the extent of colonial resistance to the Stamp Act, and his testimony before the House of Commons led to its repeal. With this, Franklin suddenly emerged as the leading spokesman for American interests in England. He wrote popular essays on behalf of the colonies, and Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts also appointed him as their agent to the Crown.

 

In September 1767, Franklin visited Paris with his usual traveling partner, Sir John Pringle. News of his electrical discoveries was widespread in France. His reputation meant that he was introduced to many influential scientists and politicians, and also to King Louis XV.

 

While living in London in 1768, he developed a phonetic alphabet in A Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling. This reformed alphabet discarded six letters Franklin regarded as redundant (c, j, q, w, x, and y), and substituted six new letters for sounds he felt lacked letters of their own. His new alphabet, however, never caught on and he eventually lost interest.

 

In 1771, Franklin traveled extensively around the British Isles staying with, among others, Joseph Priestley and David Hume. In Dublin, Franklin was invited to sit with the members of the Irish Parliament rather than in the gallery. He was the first American to be given this honor. While touring Ireland, he was moved by the level of poverty he saw. Ireland's economy was affected by the same trade regulations and laws of Britain which governed America. Franklin feared that America could suffer the same effects should Britain’s "colonial exploitation" continue.

 

In 1773, Franklin published two of his most celebrated pro-American satirical essays: Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One, and An Edict by the King of Prussia. He also published an Abridgment of the Book of Common Prayer, anonymously with Francis Dashwood. Among the unusual features of this work is a funeral service reduced to six minutes in length, "to preserve the health and lives of the living."

 

By the time Franklin arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, the American Revolution had begun with fighting at Lexington and Concord. The New England militia had trapped the main British army in Boston. The Pennsylvania Assembly unanimously chose Franklin as their delegate to the Second Continental Congress. In June, 1776, he was appointed a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Although he was temporarily disabled by gout and unable to attend most meetings of the Committee, Franklin made several small changes to the draft sent to him by Thomas Jefferson.

 

At the signing, he is quoted as having replied to a comment by Hancock that they must all hang together: "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

 

In December, 1776, Franklin was dispatched to France as commissioner for the United States. He lived in a home in the Parisian suburb of Passy, donated by Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont who supported the United States. Franklin remained in France until 1785. He conducted the affairs of his country towards the French nation with great success, which included securing a critical military alliance in 1778 and negotiating the Treaty of Paris (1783). During his stay in France, Benjamin Franklin as a freemason was Grand Master of the Lodge Les Neuf Sœurs from 1779 until 1781. His number was 24 in the Lodge. He was also a Past Grand Master of Pennsylvania. In 1784, when Franz Mesmer began to publicize his theory of "animal magnetism", which was considered offensive by many, Louis XVI appointed a commission to investigate it. These included the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, and Benjamin Franklin.

 

When he finally returned home in 1785, Franklin occupied a position only second to that of George Washington as the champion of American independence. Le Ray honored him with a commissioned portrait painted by Joseph Duplessis that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. After his return, Franklin became an abolitionist, freeing both of his slaves. He eventually became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.

 

In 1787, Franklin served as a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention. He held an honorary position and seldom engaged in debate. He is the only Founding Father who is a signatory of all four of the major documents of the founding of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, the Treaty of Alliance with France, and the United States Constitution.

 

In 1787, a group of prominent ministers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, proposed the foundation of a new college to be named in Franklin's honor. Franklin donated £200 towards the development of Franklin College, which is now called Franklin & Marshall College.

 

Between 1771 and 1788, he finished his autobiography. While it was at first addressed to his son, it was later completed for the benefit of mankind at the request of a friend.

 

In his later years, as Congress was forced to deal with the issue of slavery, Franklin wrote several essays that attempted to convince his readers of the importance of the abolition of slavery and of the integration of blacks into American society. These writings included: An Address to the Public, (1789); A Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks (1789); and Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the Slave Trade (1790).

 

In 1790, Quakers from New York and Pennsylvania presented their petition for abolition. Their argument against slavery was backed by the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society and its president, Benjamin Franklin.

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

Nicholas Gilman, Jr. (August 3, 1755–May 2, 1814) was a soldier in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, a delegate to the Continental Congress, and a signer of the U.S. Constitution, representing New Hampshire. He was a member of the United States House of Representatives during the first four Congresses, and served in the U.S. Senate from 1804 until his death in 1814.

 

His brother John Taylor Gilman was also very active in New Hampshire politics, serving as Governor of New Hampshire for 14 years, as well as a principal benefactor of Phillips Exeter Academy.

 

Gilman was the second son in a family of eight children. Born during the French and Indian War, he was soon aware of the military responsibilities that went with citizenship in a New England colony. After attending local public schools, he became a clerk in his father's trading house, but the growing rift between the colonies and Great Britain quickly thrust Gilman into the struggle for independence. New England merchants in particular resented Parliament's attempt to end its "salutary neglect" of the financial and political affairs of the colonies by instituting measures to raise and to enforce the raising of revenue-measures that many Americans considered violations of their rights as British citizens. Gilman's father, along with Nathaniel Folsom and Enoch Poor, emerged as a leader of the Patriot cause in Exeter. He represented his community in the New Hampshire Provincial Congresses, which met just after hostilities broke out at Lexington and Concord in 1775 and which later drafted the one hundred and thirty eight state constitution. During the American Revolution he served as the state's treasurer. His oldest son, John, was a sergeant in Exeter's company of militia that marched to fight the Redcoats around Boston. Nicholas remained behind, but already an ardent supporter of the Patriot cause, he likely trained with the local militia regiment.

 

He was thirty-two at the constitutional convention. The state he represented is New Hampshire. Nicholas Gilman was a strong federalist.

 

In November 1776, a committee of the state legislature appointed young Nicholas Gilman to serve as adjutant, or administrative officer, of the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment. That unit was in the process of a complete reorganization under the direction of its commander, Colonel Alexander Scammel. A superb combat officer, Scammell made good use of Gilman's administrative talents in the task of creating a potent fighting force out of the limited manpower resources at hand-a combination of raw recruits from around the state and ragged veterans of the Trenton-Princeton campaign. In time the 3rd New Hampshire would be recognized as one of the mainstays of General Washington's Continental Army. Because New Hampshire lay along the major invasion route from Canada to New York, George Washington assigned its regiments a key role in the strategic defense of the northern states. In the spring of 1777 Gilman and the rest of the officers and men of the 3d New Hampshire marched to Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain to participate in an attempt by American forces to halt the advance of a powerful army of British and German regulars and Indian auxiliaries under General John Burgoyne. Difficulties in coordinating the efforts of several different states turned Gilman's first military experience into one of defeat. The veteran British troops outflanked the fort, and only at the last minute did the garrison, including the 3d New Hampshire, escape capture by making a dangerous night withdrawal.

 

The American retreat lasted through the early summer, until a combination of British transportation difficulties and delaying tactics employed by the continentals finally slowed the enemy advance. This delay allowed time for a mass mobilization of New England militia, including a New Hampshire Regiment of volunteers led by John Langdon and Gilman's father. It also provided Major General Horatio Gates with time to establish new positions near Saratoga, New York, to block Burgoyne's further advance, and then, once Gates had a numerical advantage, to cut off the British line of withdrawal to Canada. During this campaign Gilman was busily employed in supervising the training and readiness of Scammell's men. He participated with his unit in two important battles at Freeman's Farm, where Burgoyne's units were so pummeled that "Gentleman Johnny" was eventually forced to surrender his whole army.

 

Neither Gilman nor Scammell was granted a respite after this great victory. Less than a week after the British surrender, the 3rd New Hampshire set out to reinforce Washington's main army near Philadelphia. The American capital had recently fallen to a larger British force, and the New Englanders had to spend a harsh winter in the snows of Valley Forge. That winter encampment put the units of the Continental Army to their supreme test, a time of suffering and deprivation from which they emerged as a tough, professional combat team. Gilman's administrative skills came to the fore at this time. When Washington selected Colonel Scammell to serve as the Continental Army's Adjutant General, Scammell made Gilman his assistant. Promotion to the rank of captain followed in June 1778.

 

For the remainder of the war Gilman found himself in close proximity to the military leaders of the Continental Army. His duties in carrying out the myriad tasks necessary to keep a force in the field placed him in daily contact with Washington, Steuben, Knox, Greene, and others. He personally saw action in the remaining battles fought by Washington's main army, including Monmouth and Yorktown, while continuing to hold his captain's commission in the New Hampshire Line. The death of Colonel Scammell, however, during the preliminary skirmishing before Yorktown robbed him of much of the joy of that great victory. Following the death of his father in late 1783, he retired from military service and returned to Exeter to assume control of the family's business.

 

Gilman's career as merchant proved short-lived. His career as statesman continued for decades. Gilman's service as a Continental Army officer had exposed him to many of the ideas of such prominent nationalists as Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Their influence, his family's own tradition of service, and his special skill at organization all combined to divert the young veteran into a political career. In 1786 the New Hampshire legislature appointed Gilman to the Continental Congress. He was also selected in 1786 to represent the state at the Annapolis Convention. Although he was unable to attend, his selection recognized Gilman's emergence as a nationalist spokesman, since the convention had been called specifically to address the country's serious economic problems and the inability of the separate states or Congress to solve them.

 

The outbreak of unrest and latent insurrection in western Massachusetts in late 1786 further strengthened Gilman's commitment to changing the Articles of Confederation. He was pleased to serve his state as a representative at the Constitutional Convention that met in July 1787. Although he and fellow New Hampshire delegate John Langdon, his father's former commanding officer, reached Philadelphia after the proceedings were well under way, they both immediately joined in the debates and helped hammer out the compromises needed to produce a document that might win approval in every state and region.

 

During the subsequent struggle to secure New Hampshire's ratification of the Constitution, Gilman remained in New York as a member of the Continental Congress, but he kept in close touch with his brother, John, who was one of the leaders of the states ratification forces. Working in tandem, the brothers used all of their considerable political influence to engineer a narrow 57-47 margin of victory in the final vote.

 

When the First Congress of the new United States of America convened in New York in 1789, Gilman was in attendance as a member of the House of Representatives, a seat he filled for four terms. During this period the Gilman brothers became a feature of New Hampshire politics. John Gilman became governor, a post he would hold for fourteen terms, while a younger brother embarked on a career in the state legislature. After returning to Exeter, Nicholas Gilman resumed his own political career in 1800, serving a term as state senator.

 

During this time Gilman's political loyalties began to change. Ever a staunch nationalist, he had supported the Federalists while that party led the fight for a more binding union of the states. But once that concept was firmly established, Gilman became increasingly concerned with the need to protect the common man from abuses of power by government. As a consequence, he gave his support to the Democratic-Republican party that was beginning to form around Thomas Jefferson. In 1801 he accepted appointment from Jefferson as a federal bankruptcy commissioner. Following one unsuccessful attempt, he was then elected to the United States Senate in 1804 as a Jeffersonian. Although the New Hampshire Yankee rarely spoke at length in legislative debate, his peers recognized his political prowess. He remained an influential member of the Senate until his death in 1814, which occurred while he was returning home from Washington during a recess.

 

Gilman summarized his belief in the importance of a strong national government on the day after he signed the Constitution. He called the new supreme law of the land "the best that could meet the unanimous concurrence of the States in Convention; it was done by bargain and Compromise, yet, notwithstanding its imperfections, on the adoption of it depends (in my feeble judgment) whether we shall become a respectable nation, or a people torn to pieces ... and rendered contemptible for ages." These modest words typified this eminently practical Soldier-Statesman. Yet his modesty failed to mask the justifiable pride he obviously felt in the accomplishment of the Founding Fathers. Gilman himself had played no small part.

 

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Nathaniel Gorham (May 27, 1738 – June 11, 1796) was the eighth President of the United States in Congress assembled, under the Articles of Confederation. He served from June 1786 to November 13, 1786. He was preceded in office by John Hancock and succeeded by Arthur St. Clair.

 

Gorham was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He took part in public affairs at the beginning of the American Revolution, was a member of the Massachusetts General Court (Legislature) from 1771 until 1775, a delegate to the Provincial congress from 1774 until 1775, and a member of the Board of War from 1778 until its dissolution in 1781. In 1779 he served in the State constitutional convention. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1782 until 1783, and also from 1785 until 1787. Gorham also served a term as judge of the Middlesex County, Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas.

 

For several months in 1787, Gorham served as one of the Massachusetts delegates to the United States Constitutional Convention. Gorham frequently served as Chairman of the Convention's Committee of the Whole, meaning that he (rather than the President of the Convention, George Washington) presided over convention sessions during the delegates' first deliberations on the structure of the new government in late May and June of 1787. After the convention, he worked hard to see that the Constitution was approved in his home state.

 

In connection with Oliver Phelps, he purchased from the state of Massachusetts in 1788 pre-emption rights to an immense tract of land in western New York State which straddled the Genesee River, all for the sum of $1,000,000 (the Phelps and Gorham Purchase). The land in question had been previously ceded to Massachusetts from the state of New York under the 1786 Treaty of Hartford. The pre-emption right gave them the first or preemptive right to obtain clear title to this land from the Indians. They soon extinguished the Indian title to the portion of the land east of the Genesee River, as well as a 185,000 acre (749 km²) tract west of the Genesee The Mill Yard Tract), surveyed all of it, laid out townships, and sold large parts to speculators and settlers. In 1790, after they defaulted in payment, they sold nearly all of their unsold lands east of the Genesee to Robert Morris, who eventually resold those lands to The Pulteney Association. Phelps and Gorham were unable to fulfill their contract in full to Massachusetts, so in 1790, they surrendered back to Massachusetts that portion of the lands which remained under the Indian title, namely, the land west of the Genesee. It also was eventually acquired by Robert Morris, who resold most of it to The Holland Land Company. Morris did keep 500,000 acres (2,000 km²) for himself, and that land became known as The Morris Reserve.

 

Gorham died in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1796.

 

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Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757 – July 12, 1804) was the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, a Founding Father, economist, and political philosopher. He led calls for the Philadelphia Convention, was one of America's first Constitutional lawyers, and cowrote the Federalist Papers, a primary source for Constitutional interpretation.

 

Born on the British West Indian island of Nevis, Hamilton was educated in the Thirteen Colonies. During the American Revolutionary War, he joined the New York militia and was chosen artillery captain. Hamilton became senior aide-de-camp and confidant to General George Washington, and led three battalions at the Siege of Yorktown. He was elected to the Continental Congress, but resigned to practice law and to found the Bank of New York. He served in the New York Legislature, and was the only New Yorker who signed the Constitution. As Washington's Treasury Secretary, he influenced formative government policy widely. An admirer of British political systems, Hamilton emphasized strong central government and implied powers, under which the new U.S. Congress funded the national debt, assumed state debts, created a national bank, and established an import tariff and whiskey tax.

 

By 1792, a Hamilton coalition and a Jefferson–Madison coalition had arisen (the formative Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties), which differed strongly over Hamilton's domestic fiscal goals and his foreign policy of extensive trade and friendly relations with Britain. Exposed in an affair with Maria Reynolds, Hamilton resigned from the Treasury in 1795 to return to Constitutional law and advocacy of strong federalism. In 1798, the Quasi-War with France led Hamilton to argue for, organize, and become de facto commander of a national army.

 

Hamilton's opposition to fellow Federalist John Adams contributed to the success of Democratic-Republicans Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr in the uniquely deadlocked election of 1800. With his party's defeat, Hamilton's nationalist and industrializing ideas lost their former national prominence. In 1801, Hamilton founded the New York Post as the Federalist broadsheet New York Evening Post. His intense rivalry with Vice President Burr eventually resulted in a duel, in which Hamilton was mortally wounded, dying the following day.

 

While on Washington's staff, Hamilton became frustrated with the decentralized nature of the wartime Continental Congress, particularly its dependence upon the states for financial support: it had no power to collect taxes, or to demand money from the states; this had caused serious problems in Army supplies and pay. Congress had given up printing unsupported paper money back in September 1779; it obtained what money it had from subsidies from the King of France, aid requested from the several states (which were often unable or unwilling to contribute), and loans from Europe against these uncertain revenues. After Yorktown, Hamilton resigned his commission. He was elected to the Congress of the Confederation as a New York representative beginning in November 1782; he supported such Congressmen as superintendent of finance Robert Morris, his assistant Gouverneur Morris (no relation), James Wilson, and James Madison, who had already been trying to provide the Congress with an independent source of revenue it lacked under the Articles of Confederation.

 

An amendment to the Articles had been proposed by Thomas Burke, in February 1781, to give Congress the power to collect a 5% impost or duty on all imports, but this required ratification by all states; securing its passage as law proved impossible after it was rejected by Rhode Island in November 1782. Madison joined Hamilton in convincing Congress to send a delegation to persuade Rhode Island to change its mind. Their report recommending the delegation also argued that the federal government needed not just some level of financial autonomy, but also the ability to make laws that supersede those of the individual states. Hamilton transmitted a letter arguing that Congress already had the power to tax, since it had the power to fix the sums due from the several states; but Virginia's rescission of its own ratification ended Rhode Island negotiations.

 

While Hamilton was in Congress, discontented soldiers began to pose a danger to the young United States. Most of the army was then posted at Newburgh, New York. The army was paying for much of their own supplies, and they had not been paid in eight months. Furthermore, the Continental officers had been promised, in May 1778, after Valley Forge, a pension of half their pay when they were discharged. It was at this time that a group of officers organized under the leadership of General Henry Knox sent a delegation to lobby Congress, led by Capt. Alexander MacDougall (see above). The officers had three demands: the Army's pay, their own pensions, and commutation of those pensions into a lump-sum payment.

 

Several Congressmen, including Hamilton and the Morrises, attempted to use this Newburgh conspiracy as leverage to secure independent support for funding for the federal government in Congress and from the states. They encouraged MacDougall to continue his aggressive approach, threatening unknown consequences if their demands were not granted, and defeated proposals which would have resolved the crisis without establishing general federal taxation: that the states assume the debt to the army, or that an impost be established dedicated to the sole purpose of paying that debt. Hamilton suggested using the Army's claims to prevail upon the states for the proposed national funding system. The Morrises and Hamilton contacted Knox to suggest he and the officers defy civil authority, at least by not disbanding if the army were not satisfied; Hamilton wrote Washington to suggest that he covertly "take direction" of the officers' efforts to secure redress, to secure continental funding but keep the army within the limits of moderation. Washington wrote Hamilton back, declining to introduce the army; after the crisis was over, he warned of the dangers of using the army as leverage to gain support for the national funding plan.

 

On March 15, Washington defused the Newburgh situation by giving a speech to the officers. Congress ordered the Army officially disbanded in April 1783. In the same month, Congress passed a new measure for a twenty-five-year impost, which Hamilton voted against, and which again required the consent of all the states; it also approved a commutation of the officers' pensions to five years of full pay. Rhode Island again opposed these provisions, and Hamilton's robust assertions of national prerogatives in his previous letter offended many. The Continental Congress was never able to secure full ratification for back pay, pensions, or their own independent sources of funding.

 

In June 1783, a different group of disgruntled soldiers from Lancaster, Pennsylvania sent Congress a petition demanding their back pay. When they began to march toward Philadelphia, Congress charged Hamilton and two others to intercept the mob. Hamilton requested militia from Pennsylvania's Supreme Executive Council, but was turned down. Hamilton instructed Assistant Secretary of War William Jackson to intercept the men. Jackson was unsuccessful. The mob arrived in Philadelphia, and proceeded to harangue Congress for their pay. The President of Congress, John Dickinson, feared the Pennsylvania state militia was unreliable, and refused their help. Hamilton argued that Congress ought to adjourn to Princeton, New Jersey. Congress agreed, and relocated there.

 

Frustrated with the weakness of the central government, Hamilton drafted a call to revise the Articles of Confederation while in Princeton. This resolution contained many features of the future U.S. Constitution, including a strong federal government with the ability to collect taxes and raise an army. It also included the separation of powers into the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches.

 

Hamilton resigned from Congress, and in July 1783 was admitted to the New York Bar after several months of self-directed education. He soon began a law practice in New York City. He specialized in defending Tories and British subjects, as in Rutgers v. Waddington, in which he defeated a claim for damages done to a brewery by the Englishmen who held it during the military occupation of New York. He pleaded that the Mayor's Court should interpret state law to be consistent with the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which had ended the Revolutionary War.

 

In 1784, he founded the Bank of New York, now the oldest ongoing banking organization in the United States. Hamilton was one of the men who restored King's College, which had been suspended since the Battle of Long Island in 1776 and severely damaged during the War, as Columbia College. His public career resumed when he attended the Annapolis Convention as a delegate in 1786. While there, he drafted its resolution for a Constitutional convention, and in doing so brought his longtime desire to have a more powerful, more financially independent federal government one step closer to reality.

 

In 1787, Hamilton served as assemblyman from New York County in the New York State Legislature and was the first delegate chosen to the Constitutional Convention. In spite of the fact that Hamilton had been a leader in calling for a new Constitutional Convention, his direct influence at the Convention itself was quite limited. Governor George Clinton's faction in the New York legislature had chosen New York's other two delegates, John Lansing and Robert Yates, and both of them opposed Hamilton's goal of a strong national government. Thus, while the other two members of the New York delegation were present, they decided New York's vote; and when they left the convention in protest, Hamilton remained with no vote (two representatives were required for any state to cast a vote).

 

Early in the Convention he made a speech proposing what many considered a very monarchical government for the United States. Though regarded as one of his most eloquent speeches, it had little effect upon the deliberations of the convention. He proposed to have an elected President and elected Senators who would serve for life contingent upon "good behavior", and subject to removal for corruption or abuse; this idea contributed later to the view of Hamilton as a monarchist sympathizer, held by Madison (secretary of the Convention) and his friends.

 

During the convention, Hamilton constructed a draft for the Constitution on the basis of the convention debates, but he never actually presented it. This draft had most of the features of the actual Constitution, including such details as the three-fifths clause. In this draft, the Senate was to be elected in proportion to population, being two-fifths the size of the House, and the President and Senators were to be elected through complex multistage elections, in which chosen electors would elect smaller bodies of electors; they would hold office for life, but were removable for misconduct. The President would have an absolute veto. The Supreme Court was to have immediate jurisdiction over all law suits involving the United States, and State governors were to be appointed by the federal government.

 

At the end of the Convention, Hamilton was still not content with the final form of the Constitution, but signed it anyway as a vast improvement over the Articles of Confederation, and urged his fellow delegates to do so also. Since the other two members of the New York delegation, Lansing and Yates, had already withdrawn, Hamilton was the only New York signer to the United States Constitution. He then took a highly active part in the successful campaign for the document's ratification in New York in 1788, which was a crucial step in its national ratification. Hamilton recruited John Jay and James Madison to write a defense of the proposed Constitution, now known as the Federalist Papers, and made the largest contribution to that effort, writing 51 of 85 essays published (Madison wrote 29, Jay only five). Hamilton's essays and arguments were influential in New York state, and elsewhere, during the debates over ratification. The Federalist Papers are more often cited than any other primary source by jurists, lawyers, historians and political scientists as the major contemporary interpretation of the Constitution.

 

In 1788, Hamilton served yet another term in what proved to be the last time the Continental Congress met under the Articles of Confederation. He remained involved in the politics of New York: the ratification of the Constitution had been a success for two of the family cliques which constituted New York State politics, against a third, that led by George Clinton; the Legislature of 1789 had a majority of those two factions, one led by Hamilton's father-in-law, the other by the Livingston family. They had agreed to each select one of New York's first Senators: Phillip Schuyler was to be one, and James Duane, whose wife was a Livingston, was to be the other. Hamilton, however, persuaded the Legislature to elect Schuyler and his friend Rufus King, instead. The Livingstons responded by breaking the alliance and supporting the Clintons instead; this new coalition was to be the basis for the Democratic-Republican Party in New York. When Phillip Schuyler's term ended in 1791, they began by electing, in his place, the attorney-general of New York, one Aaron Burr. Hamilton blamed Burr for this result, and ill characterizations of Burr appear in his correspondence thereafter, although they did work together from time to time on various projects, including Hamilton's army of 1798 and the Manhattan Water Company.

 

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Jared Ingersoll (October 24, 1749 – October 31, 1822) was an early American lawyer and statesman from Philadelphia. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress and signed the U.S. Constitution for Pennsylvania. He joined DeWitt Clinton on the Federalist Party ticket for the U.S. presidential election, 1812, but was defeated by James Madison and Elbridge Gerry. Ingersoll also served as Pennsylvania state attorney general, 1791-1800 and 1811-1816 and as the United States Attorney for Pennsylvania, 1800-1801.

 

Jared Ingersoll overcame the strong influence of his Loyalist father to become a supporter of the Revolutionary cause. His training as a lawyer convinced him that the problems of the newly independent states were caused by the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation. He became an early and ardent proponent of constitutional reform, although, like a number of his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention, he believed this reform could be achieved by a simple revision of the Articles. Only after weeks of debate did he come to see that a new document was necessary. Ironically, his major contribution to the cause of constitutional government came not during the Convention, but later during a lengthy and distinguished legal career when he helped define many of the principles enunciated at Philadelphia.

 

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Ingersoll was the son of a prominent British official, whose strong Loyalist sentiments would lead to his being tarred and feathered by radical Patriots. Ingersoll graduated from Yale College in 1766, studied law in Philadelphia, and was admitted to the bar in 1773. Although by training and inclination a Patriot sympathizer, the young Ingersoll shied away from the cause at the outset because of a strong sense of personal loyalty to his distinguished father. On his father's advice, he sought to escape the growing political controversy at home by retiring to London to continue his study of the law at the Middle Temple (1773-76) and to tour extensively through Europe. But shortly after the colonies declared their independence, Ingersoll renounced his family's views, made his personal commitment to the cause of independence, and returned home. In 1778 he arrived in Philadelphia as a confirmed Patriot. With the help of influential friends he quickly established a flourishing law practice, and shortly thereafter he entered the fray as a delegate to the Continental Congress (1780-81). Always a supporter of strong central authority in political affairs, he became a leading agitator for reforming the national government in the postwar years, preaching the need for change to his friends in Congress and to the legal community.

 

During his time in Connecticut he was a supporter and area collector for The Stamp Act. Until the resistance from New England began to spread and colonist uproar began. Angry colonists met Ingersoll on the roads outside of Hartford. It is there that the protesters demanded his resignation. They accompanied him to Hartford where he publicly renounced his title and is said to have thrown off his periwig, and cheered for liberty to the delight of the crowd.

 

At the Convention, Ingersoll was counted among those who favored revision of the existing Articles of Confederation, but in the end he joined with the majority and supported a plan for a new federal government. Despite his national reputation as an attorney, Ingersoll seldom participated in the Convention debates, although he attended all sessions.

 

Once the new national government was created, Ingersoll returned to the law. Except for a few excursions into politics—he was a member of Philadelphia's Common Council (1789) and, as a stalwart Federalist who considered the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 a "great subversion;' he ran unsuccessfully for Vice President on the Federalist ticket in 1812—his public career centered on legal affairs. He served as attorney general of Pennsylvania (1790-99 and 1811-17), as Philadelphia's city solicitor (1798-1801), and as U.S. district attorney for Pennsylvania (1800-1801). For a brief period (1821-22) he sat as presiding judge of the Philadelphia district court. His major contribution to the cause of constitutional government came not during the Convention, but later during a lengthy and distinguished legal career when he helped define many of the principles enunciated at Philadelphia.

 

Ingersoll contributed to the constitutional process through his involvement in several key Supreme Court cases that defined basic points in constitutional law during the early years of the new republic. For example, he represented Georgia in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), a landmark case in states' rights. Here the court decided against him, ruling that a state may be sued in federal court by a citizen of another state. This reversal of the notion of state sovereignty was later rescinded by the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution. In representing Hylton in Hylton v. US (1796), Ingersoll was also involved in the first legal challenge to the constitutionality of an act of Congress. In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the government's right to impose a tax on carriages. Ingersoll also served as counsel in various cases that helped clarify constitutional issues concerning the jurisdiction of federal courts and U.S. relations with other sovereign nations, including defending Senator William Blount of Tennessee against impeachment.

 

Jared Ingersoll died in Philadelphia and is interred at the First Presbyterian Church Cemetery. The cause of his death is unknown.

 

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Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer (1723 – 16 November 1790) was a politician and a Founding Father of the United States. Born long before conflicts with Great Britain emerged, he was a leader for many years in Maryland's colonial government. However, when conflict arose with Great Britain, he embraced the Patriot cause, willingly abandoning the ordered society of colonial Maryland for the uncertainty of revolution.

 

Jenifer, born at Coates Retirement (now Ellerslie), an estate west of Port Tobacco in Charles County, Maryland, was the son of a colonial planter of Swedish and English descent. As a young man, he acted as a receiver-general, the local financial agent for the last two proprietors of Maryland.

 

Jenifer served as justice of the peace for Charles County and later for the western circuit of Maryland. He sat on a commission that settled a boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland (1760) and on the Governor's Council, the upper house of the Maryland legislature that also served as the colony's court of appeals and as a board of senior advisers to the governor (1773–76).

 

Despite his close ties with the colonial government, Jenifer strongly resented what he and most of the colonial gentry saw as Parliament's arbitrary interference with the colonies' affairs, especially its laws concerning taxation and trade regulation. Years before the struggle for independence began, he had defended the proprietors of Maryland against those who sought to make Maryland a Royal colony, and when the Revolution came he lent his considerable support as a wealthy landowner to the Patriot cause, despite the fact that many leading Patriots had been his enemies in the proprietorship struggle. He became the president of Maryland's Council of Safety, the Patriot body established to organize Maryland's military forces for the Revolution (1775–77). When, in 1776, a new constitution was framed for the state of Maryland, Jenifer commented on the document's neglect of popular sovereignty: "The Senate does not appear to me to be a Child of the people at Large, and therefore will not be Supported by them longer than there Subsists the most perfect Union between the different Legislative branches." He represented his state in the Continental Congress (1778–82) while simultaneously serving as president of the state's first senate (1777–80). As manager of the state's finances between 1782 and 1785, he drew on his experiences as a landholder to help the state survive the critical postwar economic depression.

 

During these years, Jenifer became increasingly concerned with national affairs. Along with James Madison, John Dickinson, and his good friend George Washington, he began to explore ways to solve the economic and political problems that had arisen under the weak Articles of Confederation. Consequently, he attended the Mount Vernon Conference, a meeting that would lead eventually to the Constitutional Convention.

 

Like his old friend Benjamin Franklin, Jenifer enjoyed the status of elder statesman at the Philadelphia Convention. He took stands on several important issues, although his advanced age restricted his activity in the day-to-day proceedings. Business experience gained while managing a large plantation had convinced him that an active central government was needed to ensure financial and commercial stability. To that end, he favored a strong and permanent union of the states in which a Congress representing the people had the power to tax. Concerned with continuity in the new government, he favored a three-year term for the House of Representatives. Too frequent elections, he concluded, might lead to indifference and would make prominent men unwilling to seek office. Jenifer was outvoted on this point, but his reaction was to marvel at the delegates' ability to come to agreement on a plan of government: "The first month we only came to grips, and the second it seemed as though we would fly apart forever, however we came as close as friends of eighty years in but days."

 

One of the oldest delegates in Philadelphia, he used his prestige to work for a strong and permanent union of the states. Contemporaries noted his good humor and pleasant company, which won him many friends at the Convention. When Luther Martin, who refused to sign the document, said that he feared being hanged if the people of Maryland approved the Constitution, Jenifer told him, humorously, that Martin should stay in Philadelphia, so that he would not hang in his home state. Along with Benjamin Franklin, Jenifer used laughter to help reconcile the opposing views of the delegates and to formulate the compromises that made the Convention a success.

 

After the Convention, Jenifer retired to Stepney, his great plantation near Annapolis, where he died in 1790. In his will, he passed his roughly 16,000-acre (65 km2) land holdings to his nephew, Daniel Jenifer, and instructed that all his slaves be freed six years after his death. His family home was Retreat, located in Charles County, Maryland.

 

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William Samuel Johnson (1727-1819) was an early American statesman who was notable for signing the United States Constitution, for representing Connecticut in the United States Senate, and for serving as president of Columbia University.

 

Born in Stratford, Connecticut on October 27, 1727, Johnson was already a prominent figure before the American Revolution. The son of Samuel Johnson, a well-known Anglican clergyman and later president of King's (Columbia) College, Johnson received his primary education at home. He then graduated from Yale College in 1744, going on to receive a master's degree from his alma mater in 1747 (as well as an honorary degree from Harvard the same year). Although his father urged him to enter the clergy, Johnson decided instead to pursue a legal career. Self-educated in the law, he quickly developed an important clientele and established business connections extending beyond the boundaries of his native colony. He also held a commission in the Connecticut colonial militia for over 20 years, rising to the rank of colonel, and he served in the lower house of the Connecticut Legislature (1761 and 1765) and in the upper house (1766 and 1771-75). He was a member as well of the colony's Supreme Court (1772-74).

 

Johnson was first attracted to the Patriot cause by what he and his associates considered Parliament's unwarranted interference in the government of the colonies. He attended the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 and served on the committee that drafted an address to the King arguing the right of the colonies to decide tax policies for themselves. He opposed the Townshend Acts passed by Parliament in 1767 to pay for the French and Indian War and supported the non importation agreements devised by the colonies to protest taxation without representation.

 

As the Patriots became more radical in their demands for independence, Johnson found it difficult to commit himself wholeheartedly to the cause. Although he believed British policy unwise, he found it difficult to break his own connections with the mother country. A scholar of international renown, he had many friends in Britain and among the American Loyalists. As the famous English author, Samuel Johnson, said of him, "Of all those whom the various accidents of life have brought within my notice, there is scarce anyone whose acquaintance I have more desired to cultivate than yours." He was also bound to Britain by religious and professional ties. He enjoyed close associations with the Anglican Church in England and with the scholarly community at Oxford, which awarded him an honorary degree in 1766. He lived in London from 1767 to 1771, serving as Connecticut's agent in its attempt to settle the colony's title to Indian lands.

 

Fearing the consequences of independence for both the colonies and the mother country, Johnson sought to avoid extremism and to reach a compromise on the outstanding political differences between the protagonists. He rejected his election to the First Continental Congress, a move strongly criticized by the Patriots, who removed him from his militia command. He was also strongly criticized when, seeking an end to the fighting after Lexington and Concord, he personally visited the British commander, General Thomas Gage. The incident led to his arrest for communicating with the enemy, but the charges were eventually dropped.

 

Once independence was achieved, Johnson felt free to participate in the government of the new nation, serving in the Congress of the Confederation (1785-87). His influence as a delegate was recognized by his contemporaries. Jeremiah Wadsworth wrote of him to a friend, "Dr. Johnson has, I believe, much more influence than either you or myself. The Southern Delegates are vastly fond of him." In 1785, the Vermont Republic granted Johnson a town in the former King's College Tract in thanks for representing the interests of Vermont before the Continental Congress. The town, Johnson, Vermont, and a small university, Johnson State College bear his name.

 

In 1787, Johnson played a major role as one of the Philadelphia Convention's most important and respected delegates. His eloquent speeches on the subject of representation carried great weight during the debate. He looked to a strong federal government to protect the rights of Connecticut and the other small states from encroachment by their more powerful neighbors. To that end he supported the so-called New Jersey Plan, which called for equal representation of the states in the national legislature.

 

In general, he favored extension of federal authority. He argued that the judicial power "ought to extend to equity as well as law" (the words "in law and equity" were adopted at his motion) or, in other words, that the inflexibility of the law had to be tempered by fairness. He denied that there could be treason against a separate state since sovereignty was "in the Union;" and he opposed prohibition of any ex post facto law, one which made an act a criminal offense retroactively, because such prohibition implied "an improper suspicion of the National Legislature."

 

Johnson was influential even in the final stages of framing the Constitution. He gave his fullest support to the Connecticut Compromise, which foreshadowed the final Great Compromise that devised a national legislature with a Senate that provided equal representation for all states and a House of Representatives based on population. He also served on and chaired the five-member Committee of Style, which framed the final form of the document. In Miracle at Philadelphia, Catherine Drinker Bowen called Johnson "the perfect man to preside over these four masters of argument and political strategy [i.e. fellow committee members Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, James Madison, and Rufus King)...His presence on the committee must have been reassuring; the doctor's quiet manner disarmed."

 

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Rufus King (March 24, 1755 - April 29, 1827) was an American lawyer, politician, and diplomat. He was a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. He represented New York in the United States Senate, served as Minister to Britain, and was the Federalist candidate for both Vice President (1804, 1808) and President of the United States (1816).

 

He was born on March 24, 1755 at Scarborough which was then a part of Massachusetts but is now in the state of Maine. He was a son of Sabilla Blagden and Richard King, a prosperous farmer-merchant, who had settled at Dunstan Landing in Scarborough, near Portland, Maine, and had made a modest fortune by 1755, the year Rufus was born.

 

His financial success aroused the jealousy of his neighbors, and when the Stamp Act 1765 was imposed, and rioting became almost respectable, a mob ransacked his house and destroyed most of the furniture. Nobody was punished, and the next year the mob burned down his barn. It was not surprising that Richard King became a loyalist, but he died just prior to the start of the war in 1775. All of his sons, however, became patriots in the American War of Independence.

 

King attended Dummer Academy (now The Governor's Academy) and Harvard College, graduating in 1777. He began to read law under Theophilus Parsons, but his studies were interrupted in 1778 when King volunteered for militia duty in the American Revolutionary War. Appointed a major, he served as an aide to General Sullivan in the Battle of Rhode Island. After the campaign, King returned to his apprenticeship under Parsons until he was admitted to the bar in 1780. He began a legal practice in Newburyport, Massachusetts. King was first elected to the Massachusetts state assembly in 1783, and returned there each year until 1785. Massachusetts sent him to the Confederation Congress from 1784 to 1787. He was the youngest at the conference.

 

In 1787, King was sent to the Federal constitutional convention at Philadelphia where he worked closely with Alexander Hamilton on the Committee of Style and Arrangement to prepare the final draft. He returned home and went to work to get the Constitution ratified and to position himself to be named to the U.S. Senate. He was only partially successful. Massachusetts ratified the Constitution, but his efforts to be elected to the Senate failed.

 

At Hamilton's urging he moved to New York City and was elected to the New York state legislature in 1788. When the U.S. Constitution took effect, the legislature disagreed on who should serve in the state's second United States Senate seat. Alexander Hamilton endorsed Rufus King as a candidate, thwarting the plans of the prominent Livingston family, who had hoped to place one of their own, Robert Livingston, into the seat. Governor George Clinton, looking to cause a rift between the Livingstons and the Hamilton clan, discreetly supported King, and as a result he was elected, representing New York in the Senate from 1789 to 1796 and again from 1813 to 1825. He was the author of the Navigation Act of 1818.

 

King played a major diplomatic role as the Minister to the Court of St. James (Britain) from 1796 to 1803 and again from 1825 to 1826. Although he was a leading Federalist, Thomas Jefferson kept him in office until King asked to be relieved. He successfully settled disputes that the Jay Treaty had opened for negotiation. His term was marked by friendship between the U.S. and Britain; it became hostile after 1805. While in Britain, he was in close personal contact with South American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda and facilitated Miranda's trip to the United States in search of support for his failed 1806 expedition to Venezuela.

 

He was the unsuccessful Federalist Party candidate for Vice President in 1804 and 1808. In April 1816 he lost the election for Governor of New York to the incumbent Daniel D. Tompkins of the Democratic-Republican Party - Tompkins 45,412 votes, King 38,647. Later that year, King was nominated by the Federalists for President in 1816, again losing. King was the last presidential candidate to be nominated by the Federalists during their period as one of the participants in the two-party system of the United States.

 

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John Langdon (June 26, 1741—September 18, 1819) was a politician from Portsmouth, New Hampshire and one of the first two United States senators from that state. Langdon was an early supporter of the Revolutionary War and later served in the Continental Congress. After being in Congress for 12 years, including serving as the first president pro tempore of the Senate, Langdon became governor of New Hampshire. He turned down a nomination for vice presidential candidate in 1812, and later retired until his death in 1819.

 

His father was a prosperous farmer and local politician, whose family had emigrated to America before 1660 from Sheviock, Caradon, Cornwall and was among the first to settle near the mouth of Piscataqua River, a settlement which became Portsmouth, one of New England's major seaports. Langdon attended the local grammar school, run by a veteran of the 1745 siege against the French at Fortress Louisbourg in Canada. After finishing his primary education, Langdon served an apprenticeship as a clerk. He and his older brother, Woodbury Langdon, rejected the opportunity to join in their father's successful agricultural pursuits, and went to sea instead, apprenticed themselves to local naval merchants.

 

By age 22, Langdon was captain of a cargo ship called the Andromache, sailing to the West Indies. Four years later he owned his first merchantman, and would continue over time to acquire a small fleet of vessels, engaged in the triangular trade between Portsmouth, the Caribbean, and London. His older brother was even more successful in international trade, and by 1770 both young men were among Portsmouth's wealthiest citizens.

 

British control of the shipping industries greatly hurt Langdon's business, motivating him to become a vigorous and prominent supporter of the revolutionary movement in the 1770s. He served on the New Hampshire Committee of Correspondence and a nonimportation committee, and also attended various patriot assemblies. In 1774, he participated in the seizure and confiscation of British munitions from Fort William and Mary.

 

Langdon served as a member of the First Continental Congress from 1775 to 1776. He resigned in June 1776 to become agent for the Continental forces against the British and superintended the construction of several warships including the Raleigh, the America, and the Ranger which was captained by John Paul Jones. In 1777, he equipped an expedition against the British, participating in the Battle of Bennington and commanding Langdon's Company of Light Horse Volunteers at Saratoga and in Rhode Island. War ended in 1783.

 

In 1784, he built at Portsmouth the mansion known as the Governor John Langdon House. He was again a member of the Continental Congress in 1787 and became a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, serving as a member of the New Hampshire delegation. Langdon was elected to the U.S. Senate and served from March 4, 1789, to March 3, 1801. He was elected the first President pro tempore of the Senate on April 6, 1789, and also served as President pro tempore during the Second Congress.

 

Langdon later served as a member of the New Hampshire Legislature (1801-05), with the last two terms as speaker; he served as governor from 1805-11, with the exception of 1809. Langdon declined the nomination to be a candidate for vice president in 1812, and later retired. He died in his hometown of Portsmouth in 1819, and was interred at the Langdon Tomb in the North Cemetery.

The town of Langdon, New Hampshire is named after him, as well as Langdon Street in Madison, Wisconsin, a town with several streets named after founding fathers.

 

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William Livingston (November 30, 1723 – July 25, 1790) served as the Governor of New Jersey (1776–1790) during the American Revolutionary War and was a signer of the United States Constitution.

 

Livingston was the son of Philip Livingston and was born in Albany. He was raised by his grandmother until the age of 14. He graduated from Yale University in 1741 and then studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1748 and began his practice in New York. He moved to Elizabethtown, today Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1772, where he built a large country home to house his growing family. The house, known as Liberty Hall, still stands today.

The home became a center of activity, in part due to its proximity to Francis Barber's academy and visits from young men. (Alexander Hamilton, a boarder at the academy, was a frequent early visitor.) Three of Livingston's daughters – Sarah, Susan, and Catherine – came to be known as 'the three graces'. The height of social activity during this era was the wedding, at Liberty Hall, in April 1774 of Sarah to a young New York lawyer, John Jay.

 

Livingston was a member of the Continental Congress from July 1774 to June 1776. In October 1775, he was commissioned a brigadier general of the New Jersey Militia and served until August 1776 when he was elected Governor of New Jersey – holding the office until his death in 1790. For much of the time between 1776 and 1779, the family was located in Parsippany for safety. Liberty Hall was frequently visited by British troops or naval forces since there was a substantial reward for Livingston's capture. The family returned in 1779 to begin restoring their looted home.

 

Livingston married Susanna French in 1742. They had 13 children. Livingston's daughter, Susannah, married John Cleves Symmes in 1780 and became the stepmother-in-law of President William Henry Harrison. Another descendant of William Livingston was Julia Kean, wife of United States Secretary of State and New York Governor Hamilton Fish.

 

Livingston was a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and one of the signers of the Constitution. Livingston died in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and was originally buried in Trinity Church, New York, but was reinterred at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn in 1846. Because he was the first Revolutionary governor, he is often cited as the first governor of New Jersey. The township of Livingston, New Jersey was given its name in his honor, as was Governor Livingston High School in Berkeley Heights NJ.

 

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James Madison (March 16, 1751 – June 28, 1836) was an American politician and political philosopher who served as the fourth President of the United States (1809–1817), and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Considered to be the "Father of the Constitution", he was the principal author of the document. In 1788, he wrote over a third of the Federalist Papers, still the most influential commentary on the Constitution. The first President to have served in the United States Congress, he was a leader in the 1st United States Congress, drafted many basic laws and was responsible for the first ten amendments to the Constitution (said to be based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights), and thus is also known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights". As a political theorist, Madison's most distinctive belief was that the new republic needed checks and balances to protect individual rights from the tyranny of the majority.

 

As leader in the House of Representatives, Madison worked closely with President George Washington to organize the new federal government. Breaking with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in 1791, Madison and Thomas Jefferson organized what they called the Republican Party (later called the Democratic-Republican Party) in opposition to key policies of the Federalists, especially the national bank and the Jay Treaty. He secretly co-authored, along with Thomas Jefferson, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798 to protest the Alien and Sedition Acts.

 

As Jefferson's Secretary of State (1801–1809), Madison supervised the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the nation's size, and sponsored the ill-fated Embargo Act of 1807. As president, he led the nation into the War of 1812 against Great Britain. During and after the war, Madison reversed many of his positions. By 1815, he supported the creation of the second National Bank, a strong military, and a high tariff to protect the new factories opened during the war.

 

James Madison was born in Port Conway, Virginia on March 16, 1751. He grew up as the oldest of seven children to live to maturity. His father, James Madison, Sr. (1723–1801) was a planter who grew up on an estate in Orange County, Virginia, which he inherited on reaching maturity. He later acquired still more property and became the largest landowner and leading citizen of Orange County. His mother, Eleanor "Nelly" Rose Conway (1731–1829), was born at Port Conway, Virginia, the daughter of a prominent planter and tobacco merchant. Madison's parents married in 1743. Both parents had a significant influence over their most famous oldest son.

 

As a young lawyer, Madison defended Baptist preachers arrested for preaching without a license from the established Anglican Church. In addition, he worked with the preacher Elijah Craig on constitutional guarantees for religious liberty in Virginia. Working on such cases helped form his ideas about religious freedom. Madison served in the Virginia state legislature (1776–79) and became known as a protégé of Thomas Jefferson. He attained prominence in Virginia politics, helping to draft the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. It disestablished the Church of England, and disclaimed any power of state compulsion in religious matters. He excluded Patrick Henry's plan to compel citizens to pay for a congregation of their own choice.

 

Madison's cousin, the Right Reverend James Madison (1749–1812), became president of the College of William & Mary in 1777. Working closely with Madison and Jefferson, Bishop Madison helped lead the College through the difficult changes involving separation from both Great Britain and the Church of England. He also led college and state actions that resulted in the formation of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia after the Revolution.

 

James Madison persuaded Virginia to give up its claims to northwestern territories - consisting of most of modern-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota - to the Continental Congress, which created the Northwest Territory in 1783. These land claims overlapped partially with other claims by Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and maybe others. All of these states ceded their westernmost lands, with the understanding that new states could be formed from the land, as they were. As a delegate to the Continental Congress (1780–83), Madison was considered a legislative workhorse and a master of parliamentary detail. He was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for a second time from 1784-1786.

 

Madison returned to the Virginia state legislature at the close of the war. He soon grew alarmed at the fragility of the Articles of Confederation, especially in relation to the divisiveness of state governments, and strongly advocated a new constitution. At the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, Madison's draft of the Virginia Plan and his revolutionary three-branch federal system became the basis for the American Constitution of today. Though Madison was a shy man, he was one of the more outspoken members of the Continental Congress. He envisioned a strong federal government that could overrule actions of the states when they were deemed mistaken; later in life he came to admire the US Supreme Court as it started filling that role.

 

To encourage ratification of the Constitution, Madison joined Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to write the Federalist Papers in 1787 and 1788. Among other contributions, Madison wrote paper #10, in which he explained how a large country with many different interests and factions could support republican values better than a small country dominated by a few special interests. His interpretation was largely ignored at the time, but in the 20th century became a central part of the pluralist interpretation of American politics.

 

In Virginia in 1788, Madison led the fight for ratification at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, oratorically dueling with Patrick Henry and others who sought revisions (such as the United States Bill of Rights) before its ratification. Madison is often referred to as the "Father of the Constitution" for his role in its drafting and ratification. However, he protested the title as being "a credit to which I have no claim... The Constitution was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands".

 

He wrote Hamilton at the New York ratifying convention, stating his opinion that "ratification was in toto and 'for ever'". The Virginia convention had considered conditional ratification worse than a rejection.

 

Initially Madison "adamantly maintained ... that a specific bill of rights remained unnecessary because the Constitution itself was a bill of rights." Madison had three main objections to a specific bill of rights: 1. it was unnecessary, since it purported to protect against powers that the federal government had not been granted; 2. it was dangerous, since enumeration of some rights might be taken to imply the absence of other rights; and 3. at the state level, bills of rights had proven to be useless paper barriers against government powers.

 

But the anti-Federalists demanded a bill of rights in exchange for their support for ratification.

 

Patrick Henry persuaded the Virginia legislature not to elect Madison as one of their first Senators; but Madison was directly elected to the new United States House of Representatives and became an important leader from the First Congress (1789) through the Fourth Congress (1797).

 

People submitted more than 200 proposals from across the new nation. Madison ignored proposals that called for structural change to the government and synthesized the remainder into a list for the protection of civil rights, such as free speech, right of the people to bear arms, and habeas corpus. Still ambiguous as late as 1788 in his support for a bill of rights, in June 1789 Madison offered a package of twelve proposed amendments to the Constitution. Madison completed his change in position and "hounded his colleagues relentlessly" to accept the proposed amendments.

 

By 1791, the last ten of Madison's proposed amendments were ratified and became the Bill of Rights. Contrary to his wishes, the Bill of Rights was not integrated into the main body of the Constitution, and it did not apply to the states until the passages of Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments restricted the powers of the states. The Second Amendment originally proposed by Madison (but not then ratified: see United States Bill of Rights) was later ratified in 1992 as the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution. The remaining proposal was intended to accommodate future increase in members of the House of Representatives.

 

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James McHenry (November 16, 1753–May 3, 1816) was an early American statesman. McHenry was a signer of the United States Constitution from Maryland and the namesake of Fort McHenry, the bombardment of which inspired the American national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner". He was also a delegate to the Continental Congress from Maryland, and the third United States Secretary of War from January 27, 1796 to May 13, 1800, under Presidents George Washington and John Adams.

 

McHenry was born into a Scots-Irish family in Ballymena, County Antrim, Ireland in 1753. He enjoyed a classical education at Dublin, where he was also a writer of poetry. McHenry immigrated to Philadelphia in 1771 where he became a physician, learning under Benjamin Rush. He also ran a Baltimore import-export business with his brother.

 

As a skilled and dedicated surgeon during the Revolutionary War, he impressed George Washington, who made him an aide shortly before the Battle of Monmouth in 1778. He served bravely and loyally under Washington for two years and retired from the army in 1781.

 

McHenry was one of three physicians (with Hugh Williamson and James McClurg) involved in crafting the constitution.

 

Perhaps his most significant role as Secretary of War came under John Adams. Upon taking over office, Adams decided to keep the cabinet intact, since there was no precedent to follow. Three members of the cabinet—McHenry, Timothy Pickering (the Secretary of State) and Oliver Wolcott (the Secretary of the Treasury)—became a drag on the Adams administration as they listened to Adams's adversary Alexander Hamilton, more than Adams himself. The three publicly disagreed with Adams and, instead of resigning, stayed in office working against the official policy. It is unknown if Adams knew they were being disloyal.

 

During the election of 1800, McHenry goaded Hamilton into releasing his indictment against the President, which questioned Adams's loyalty and patriotism, sparking public quarrels over the major candidates and eventually paving the way for Thomas Jefferson to be the next President.

 

Finally in 1800, Adams replaced McHenry, though not on the grounds of incompetence, as McHenry resigned, as well as Pickering and Wolcott. Samuel Dexter became the 4th Secretary of War.

Although many liked McHenry personally, it was no secret Washington, Hamilton and Wolcott often complained of his incompetence as an administrator.

 

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Thomas Mifflin (January 10, 1744 – January 20, 1800) was an American merchant and politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, a member of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly, a Continental Congressman from Pennsylvania, fifth President of the U.S. Congress under the Articles of Confederation, and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He served as Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, President of the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council and the first Governor of Pennsylvania.

 

Mifflin was born January 10, 1744 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, son of John Mifflin and Elizabeth Bagnall. He graduated from the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) in 1760, and joined the mercantile business of William Biddle. After returning from a trip to Europe in 1765, he established a commercial business partnership with his brother, George Mifflin, and married his cousin, Sarah Morris, on March 4, 1765. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society.

 

Early in the Revolutionary War, Mifflin left the Continental Congress to serve in the Continental Army. Although his family had been Quakers for four generations, he was expelled from the Religious Society of Friends because his involvement with a military force contradicted his faith's pacifistic nature. He was commissioned as a major, then became George Washington's aide-de-camp and, on August 14, 1775, became the army's first Quartermaster General. He was good at the job, but preferred to be on the front lines. His leadership in battle gained him promotions to colonel and then brigadier general. He asked to be relieved of the job of Quartermaster General, but was persuaded to resume those duties because Congress was having difficulty finding a replacement.

 

In Congress, there was debate regarding whether a national army was more efficient or if individual states should maintain their own forces. As a result of this debate the Congressional Board of War was created, on which Mifflin served from 1777 to 1778. He then rejoined the army but took little active role, following criticism of his service as quartermaster general. He was accused of embezzlement and welcomed an inquiry; however, one never took place. He resigned his commission—by then, as a major general—but Congress continued to ask his advice even after accepting his resignation.

 

Prior to Independence, Thomas Mifflin was a member of Pennsylvania's Provincial Assembly (1772–1776). He served two terms in the Continental Congress (1774–1775, and 1782–1784). He then served in the house of Pennsylvania General Assembly (1785–1788). He was a delegate to the United States Constitutional Convention in 1787, as well as a signer of the Constitution. He was a member of the Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and on November 5, 1788 he was elected President of the Council, replacing Benjamin Franklin. He was unanimously reelected to the Presidency on November 11, 1789. He presided over the committee that wrote Pennsylvania's 1790 State Constitution. That document did away with the Executive Council, replacing it with a single Governor. On December 21, 1790 Mifflin became the last President of Pennsylvania and the first Governor of the Commonwealth. He held the latter office until December 17, 1799, when he was succeeded by Thomas McKean. He then returned to the state legislature, where he served until his death the following month. Mifflin decreed that no less than six towns in Pennsylvania bear his name.

 

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Gouverneur Morris (31 January 1752 - 6 November 1816) was an American statesman and a native of New York who represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He was also an author of large sections of the Constitution of the United States. He is widely credited as the author of the document's preamble: "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union ... ". In an era when most Americans thought of themselves as citizens of their respective states, Morris advanced the idea of being a citizen of a single union of states.

 

A gifted scholar, Morris enrolled at King's College (now Columbia University) at age twelve, in 1764. He graduated in 1768 and received a master's degree in 1771.

 

On 8 May 1775, Morris was elected to represent his family estate, in southern Westchester County (now Bronx County), in the New York Provincial Congress, an extralegal assembly. As a member of the congress, he, along with most of his fellow delegates, concentrated on turning the colony into an independent state. However, his advocacy of independence brought him into conflict with his family, as well as with his mentor, William Smith, who had abandoned the patriot cause when it pressed toward independence. Twenty-five-year-old Morris was largely responsible for the 1777 constitution of the newborn state of New York.

 

After the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, the British seized New York City and his family's estate across the Harlem River from Manhattan. His mother, a loyalist, gave the estate to the British for military use. Because his home was now in the possession of the enemy, he was no longer eligible for election to the New York state legislature; instead, he was appointed to be a delegate to the Continental Congress.

 

He took his seat in Congress on 28 January 1778, and he was immediately selected to a committee in charge of coordinating with General Washington reforms of the military. After witnessing the army encamped at Valley Forge, he was so appalled by the conditions of the troops that he became the spokesman for the Continental Army in Congress, and he saved the army by pushing for substantial reforms in its training, methods, and financing. He also signed the Articles of Confederation in 1778.

 

In 1779, he was defeated for re-election to Congress, largely because his advocacy of a strong central government was at odds with the decentralist views prevalent in New York. Defeated in his home state, he moved to Philadelphia to work as a lawyer and merchant.

 

In 1780, at age twenty-eight, Morris's left leg was shattered and replaced with a wooden pegleg. Reportedly, he liked to dance, and he managed to dance well on his wooden leg. Morris's public account for the loss of his leg was that it happened in a carriage accident, but there is evidence that this was a false story concocted to cover for a dalliance with a woman, during which he jumped from a window to escape a jealous husband. Morris was well-known throughout much of his life for having many affairs, with both married and unmarried women, and he recorded many of these adventures and misadventures in his diary. Despite an automatic exemption from military duty because of his handicap and his service in the legislature, he joined a special "briefs" club for the protection of New York City, a forerunner of the modern New York Guard.

 

In Philadelphia, he was appointed assistant superintendent of finance (1781-1785), and he was a Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He resumed his residence in New York in 1788.

 

Before the Constitutional Convention, Morris lived in Philadelphia where he worked as a merchant for some time. After that, he began to become interested in financial affairs, so he started to work with Robert Morris (no relation). Robert Morris and George Washington then recommended him for the convention because of what he did.

 

During the Philadelphia convention, he was a friend and ally of George Washington and others who favored a strong central government. Morris was elected to serve on a committee of five (chaired by William Samuel Johnson) who drafted the final language of the proposed constitution. Catherine Drinker Bowen, in Miracle at Philadelphia, called Morris the committee's "amanuensis," meaning that it was his pen that was responsible for most of the draft, as well as its final polished form.

 

"An aristocrat to the core," Morris believed that "there never was, nor ever will be a civilized Society without an Aristocracy". He also thought that common people were incapable of self-government because he feared that the poor would sell their votes to the rich. Consequently, he thought that voting should be restricted to property owners. Morris also opposed admitting new western states on an equal basis with the existing eastern states, fearing that the interior wilderness could not furnish "enlightened" statesmen to the country.

 

At the convention he gave more speeches than any other delegate, a total of 173. Morris has been categorized as a "theistic rationalist" because he believed strongly in a guiding god and in morality as taught through religion. Nonetheless, he did not have much patience for any established religion. As a matter of principle, he often vigorously defended the right of anyone to practice his chosen religion without interference, and he argued to include such language in the Constitution.

 

He went to Europe on business in 1789 and served as Minister Plenipotentiary to France from 1792 to 1794. His diaries during that time have become an invaluable chronicle of the French Revolution, capturing much of the turbulence and violence of that era, as well as documenting his affairs with women there.

 

He returned to the United States in 1798, and he was elected in 1800, as a Federalist, to the United States Senate, filling the vacancy caused by the resignation of James Watson. He served from 3 April 1800 until 3 March 1803, but he was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election in 1802.

 

After leaving the Senate, he served as chairman of the Erie Canal Commission from 1810 to 1813. The Erie Canal helped to transform New York City into a financial capital, the possibilities of which were apparent to Morris when he said "the proudest empire in Europe is but a bubble compared to what America will be, must be, in the course of two centuries, perhaps of one."

 

At the age of 57, he married Anne Cary ("Nancy") Randolph, who was the sister of Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., husband of Thomas Jefferson's daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph.

 

He died at the family estate, Morrisania, and he is buried at St. Ann's Episcopal Church in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. Morris and his wife had a son, Gouverneur Jr., who eventually became a railroad executive.

 

Morris also established himself as an important landowner in northern New York, where the Town of Gouverneur and Village of Gouverneur in St. Lawrence County are named for him.

 

Morris's half-brother, Lewis Morris (1726-1798), was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Another half-brother, Staats Long Morris, was a loyalist and major-general in the British army during the American Revolution. His nephew, Lewis Richard Morris, served in the Vermont legislature and in the United States Congress. His grandnephew was William M. Meredith, United States Secretary of the Treasury under Zachary Taylor. Morris's great-grandson, also named Gouverneur (1876-1953), was an author of pulp novels and short stories during the early-twentieth century. (Several of his works were adapted into films, including the famous Lon Chaney, Sr. film, The Penalty.)

 

In 1943, a United States liberty ship named the SS Gouverneur Morris was launched. She was scrapped in 1974.

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

Robert Morris, Jr. (January 31, 1734 – May 8, 1806) was an American merchant, and a signer to the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. He was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly and became the Chairman of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, and a member of the Second Continental Congress where he served as the Chairman of the Secret Committee, and as a member of the Committee of Correspondence. Later Morris was known as the "Financier of the Revolution", because of his role in financing the American side in the Revolutionary War. From 1781 to 1784, he served as Superintendent of Finance, managing the economy of the fledgling United States. At the same time he was Agent of Marine, a position he took without pay, and from which he controlled the Continental Navy. He was one of Pennsylvania's original pair of U.S. senators, serving from 1789 to 1795.

 

Morris was born to Robert Morris, Sr. and Elizebeth Murphet in Liverpool, England on January 20, 1734. At the age of 13 Morris moved to the United States, and to Oxford, Maryland where he lived with his father, tobacco factor, Robert Morris. The younger Morris was provided a tutor, but he quickly learned everything that teacher had to impart. His father arranged for Robert Jr. to go to Philadelphia, where he stayed with Mr. Charles Greenway, a family friend. Mr. Greenway arranged for young Robert to become an apprentice at Charles Willing's shipping firm. A year later Robert's father died as the result of being wounded by the wadding of a ship's gun that was fired in his honor.

 

At age 16 Morris was already apprenticed to the shipping and banking firm of Philadelphia merchant (later mayor) Charles Willing. After Willing's death two years later, the 18-year-old Morris became the partner of Charles's son, Thomas Willing. They established the prominent shipping-banking firm of Willing & Morris on May 1, 1757. The partnership of Willing, Morris & Company lasted until 1779, and they often collaborated thereafter. Eventually they sent ships to India, China, and the Levant. The firm's business of import, export and general agency made it one of the most prosperous in Pennsylvania. As a result Morris became both wealthy and influential in Philadelphia. Even so, Morris's wealth was mostly in his stock in trade, and the value of his holdings was small when compared to the southern plantation holders who owned thousands of acres of land and controlled the lives of thousands of slaves, or even when compared to the average middle class Englishman living in London.

 

On March 2, 1769, at 35 years old, Morris married 20-year-old Mary White. White came from a prominent family in Maryland; her brother was the well-known Bishop William White. Together they had five sons and two daughters.

 

Morris worshiped in Philadelphia at St Peter's Church on Pine Street and Christ Church on 2nd Street, both of which were run by his brother-in-law, Rev. William White. Morris remained a constant worshiper at this Anglican Church for his entire life. Because of location and reputation of St. Peter’s Church in Philadelphia, it served as a place of worship for a number of the members of the Continental Congress, sometimes including George Washington.

 

Morris was elected to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He managed to get Gouverneur Morris onto the Pennsylvania delegation. Although Robert Morris said little at the Convention, his former assistant, Gouverneur, and his lawyer, James Wilson, were two of the three most talkative men there. Both opposed slavery during the Convention. Gouverneur Morris actually wrote the polished draft of the Constitution. While it was widely known at the time that Morris was active behind the scenes, his only significant role of record during the Convention was to nominate his friend George Washington as its president.

 

Washington wanted to appoint Morris Secretary of the Treasury in 1789, but Morris declined (suggesting instead Alexander Hamilton who was a supporter of his policies). He served as a United States Senator from 1789 to 1795. Morris was on 41 Senatorial committees and reported for many of them. He focused on using his position in the Legislature to support the Federalist economic program, which included internal improvements like canals and lighthouses to aid commerce. As Senator he generally supported the Federalist party and backed Hamilton's economic proposals. Hamilton's proposals were, in actuality, a rework of Morris's report "On Public Credit", submitted some 10 years earlier.

 

As a Senator from Pennsylvania, Morris is credited with helping to bring the Federal Government to Philadelphia for 10 years as the Federal District was under construction. During this period he moved from his home, and allowed it to be used by Washington as his residence. Later that house was used by Adams while he was President.

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

William Paterson (December 24, 1745 – September 9, 1806) was a New Jersey statesman, a signer of the U.S. Constitution, and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, who served as the 2nd governor of New Jersey, from 1790 to 1793.

 

William Paterson was born on December 24, 1745, in County Antrim, now in Northern Ireland, moved to what is now the United States at age 2, and entered the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) at age 14. After graduating, he studied law with the prominent lawyer Richard Stockton and was admitted to the bar in 1768.

 

Paterson became an outspoken supporter of American independence. He was selected as Somerset County, New Jersey delegate for the first three provincial congresses of New Jersey, where, as secretary, he recorded the 1776 New Jersey State Constitution.

 

After Independence, Paterson was appointed as the first Attorney General of New Jersey, serving from 1776-1783, maintaining law and order and establishing himself as one of the state's most prominent lawyers. He was sent to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he proposed the New Jersey Plan for a unicameral legislative body with equal representation from each state. After the Great Compromise (for two legislative bodies: a Senate with equal representation for each state, and a House of Representatives with representation based on population), the Constitution was signed.

 

Paterson went on to become one of New Jersey's first US. senators (1789-90). He was a strong nationalist who supported the Federalist party. As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he played an important role in drafting the Judiciary Act of 1789 that established the federal court system. The first nine sections of this very important law are in his handwriting.

 

He resigned from the U.S. Senate in 1790 in order to succeed fellow signer William Livingston as governor of New Jersey. As governor, he pursued his interest in legal matters by codifying the English statutes that had been in force in New Jersey before the Revolution in Laws of the State of New Jersey. He also published a revision of the rules of the chancery and common law courts in Paterson's Practice Laws, later adopted by the New Jersey Legislature.

 

He resigned the governorship to become an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1793-1806). There he presided over the trials of individuals indicted for treason in the Whiskey Rebellion, a revolt by farmers in western Pennsylvania over the federal excise tax on whiskey, the principal product of their cash crop. Militia sent out by President George Washington successfully quelled the uprising, and for the first time the courts had to interpret the provisions of the Constitution in regard to the use of troops in civil disturbances. Here, and in fact throughout his long career, Paterson extolled the primacy of law over governments, a principle embodied in the Constitution he helped write.

 

Paterson served on the Supreme Court until his death (from the lingering effects of a coach accident suffered in 1803 while on circuit court duty in New Jersey) on September 9, 1806, aged 60. He was "on his way to Ballston Springs, New York to "take the waters" when he died at the Albany, New York home of his daughter and Van Renssalaer son-in-law. He was laid to rest in the Van Renssalaer family vault in 1806, and remained until the property was acquired by the city. His remains were relocated to Albany Rural Cemetery Menands, Albany County, New York, USA. He shares this cemetery with Associate Justice Rufus W. Peckham and President Chester A. Arthur.

 

Paterson, New Jersey, and William Paterson University are named after him.

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

Charles Cotesworth (C.C.) Pinckney (February 25, 1746 – August 16, 1825), was an early American statesman of South Carolina, Revolutionary War veteran, and delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He was twice nominated by the Federalist Party as their presidential candidate, but he did not win either election.

 

Charles C. Pinckney was born into the Pinckney family of aristocratic planters in Charleston, South Carolina on February 25, 1746. He was the son of Charles Pinckney, who would later serve as the chief justice of the Province of South Carolina, and the celebrated planter and agriculturalist, Eliza Lucas. He was the elder brother of Thomas Pinckney, who served as Governor of South Carolina, as a U.S. Representative, and as a George Washington administration dipmomat. His first cousin once removed, Charles Pinckney, served as Governor of South Carolina, as a U.S. Senator, and as a Thomas Jefferson administration diplomat.

 

In 1753, Pinckney's father moved the family to London, England to serve as the colony's agent (essentially as a lobbyist to protect South Carolina's commercial and political interests). Both Charles and his brother Thomas were enrolled in the Westminster School, where they remained after the rest of the family returned to South Carolina in 1758. Both brothers also studied at Oxford University. Pinckney graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford with degrees in science and law, and proceeded to further study law with the prestigious Middle Temple society. Pinckney was called to the bar in 1769, but he continued his education in France for another year, studying botany and chemistry. He also had a brief stint at the Royal Military College at Caen.

 

In 1773, Pinckney married Sarah Middleton, whose father Henry Middleton served as the second President of the Continental Congress and whose brother Arthur Middleton signed the Declaration of Independence. Sarah died in 1784. In 1786, he remarried to Mary Stead, who came from a wealthy family of planters in Georgia. Pinckney had three daughters.

 

After returning to South Carolina from Europe, Charles C. Pinckney began to practice law in Charleston. He was first elected to a seat in the colonial legislature in 1770. In 1773 he served as a regional attorney general. When war erupted between the thirteen American colonies and Great Britain in 1775, Pinckney stood with the American Patriots; in that year he was a member of the first South Carolina provincial congress in 1775, which helped South Carolina transition from being a British colony to being an independent state. During the American Revolutionary War he would serve in the lower house of the state legislature and as a member of the South Carolina Senate in addition to his military service.

 

In 1775, after the American Revolutionary War had broken out, Pinckney volunteered for military service as a full-time regular officer in George Washington's Continental Army. As a senior company commander with the rank of captain, Pinckney raised and led the elite Grenadiers of the 1st South Carolina Regiment. He participated in the successful defense of Charleston in the Battle of Sullivan's Island in June 1776, when British forces under General Sir Henry Clinton staged an amphibious attack on the state capital. Later in 1776 Pinckney took command of the regiment, with the rank of colonel, a position he retained to the end of the war.

 

After this, the British Army shifted its focus to the Northern and Mid-Atlantic states. Pinckney led his regiment north to join General Washington's troops near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pinckney and his regiment then participated in the Battle of Brandywine and the Battle of Germantown. Around this time he first met fellow officers and future Federalist statesmen Alexander Hamilton and James McHenry.

 

In 1778, Pinckney and his regiment, returning to the South, took part in a failed American expedition attempting to seize British East Florida. The expedition ended due to severe logistical difficulties and a British victory in the Battle of Alligator Bridge. Later that year, the British Army shifted its focus to the Southern theater, capturing Savannah, Georgia, that December. In October 1779, the Southern army of Major General Benjamin Lincoln, with Pinckney leading one of its brigades, attempted to re-take Savannah in the Siege of Savannah. This attack was disastrous for the Americans, who suffered numerous casualties.

 

Pinckney then participated in 1780 defense of Charleston against British siege. Major General Lincoln surrounded his 5,000 men to the British on May 12, 1780, whereupon Pinckney became a prisoner of war. As a prisoner of war, he played a major role in maintaining the troops' loyalty to the Patriots' cause. During this time, he famously said, "If I had a vein that did not beat with the love of my Country, I myself would open it. If I had a drop of blood that could flow dishonourable, I myself would let it out." He was kept in close confinement until his release in 1782. In November 1783, he was commissioned a brevet Brigadier General in the Continental Army shortly before the southern regiments were disbanded.

 

Pinckney, who had returned to the lower house of the state legislature, represented South Carolina at the constitutional convention of 1787, where he was an influential member. Pinckney advocated the idea that slaves be counted as a basis of representation and opposing abolition of the slave trade. He also advocated a strong national government (albeit one with a system of checks and balances) to replace the weak one of the time. He opposed as impracticable the election of representatives by popular vote. He also opposed paying senators, who, he thought, should be men of independent wealth. Pinckney played a key role in requiring treaties to be ratified by the Senate and in the compromise that resulted in the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. He also opposed placing a limitation on the size of a federal standing army.

 

Pinckney played a prominent role in securing the ratification of the Federal constitution in the South Carolina convention of 1788, and in framing the South Carolina Constitution in the convention of 1790. After this he announced his retirement from politics.

 

During the 1790s, President George Washington offered Pinckney several offices in his administration. Pinckney declined them all until 1796, when he accepted an appointment as U.S. Minister to France. France was in turmoil due to the French Revolution, and the French revolutionaries had been seizing American trading ships bound for Great Britain. The French republican government rejected Pinckney's credentials upon his arrival. Three French agents then demanded a large bribe in exchange for allowing Pinckney and fellow diplomats Elbridge Gerry and John Marshall to see French foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Pinckney famously replied, "No! No! Not a sixpence!" After this incident, which later came to be known as the XYZ Affair, Pinckney broke off all discussion and returned home, resigning from his position. President John Adams, a Federalist, appointed Pinckney to one of the highest posts in the new Provisional Army which Congress had voted to raise in response to the diplomatic rupture with France. However, a peaceful solution to the Quasi-War with France was negotiated by 1800 and Pinckney's active military service ended.

 

In the 1800 presidential election, Pinckney was the Federalist candidate for vice-president, running with the incumbent president, John Adams. They were defeated by the Democratic-Republicans Thomas Jefferson (whom became president) and Aaron Burr (who became vice president). In 1804, the Federalist Party nominated Pinckney to run for the presidency against Jefferson. Jefferson, who was very popular due to the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase and booming trade. Pinckney was defeated in a landslide, winning only 27.2% of the popular vote and carrying only two states. In 1808 he was again the Federalist nominee for president, running against Jefferson's Secretary of State, James Madison. Pinckney did not fare much better against Madison, carrying only five states and winning 32.4% of the popular vote.

 

From 1805 until his death, Pinckney was president-general of the Society of the Cincinnati. Pinckney died on August 16, 1825 and was buried in St. Michael's Churchyard in Charleston, South Carolina. His tombstone reads, "One of the founders of the American Republic. In war he was a companion in arms and friend of Washington. In peace he enjoyed his unchanging confidence."

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

Charles Pinckney (October 26, 1757–October 12, 1824) was an American politician who was a signer of the United States Constitution, Governor of South Carolina, a Senator and a member of the House of Representatives. He was first cousin (once removed) of fellow-signer Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.

 

Charles was an ancestor of seven future South Carolina governors, a few of which have very prominent South Carolinian names, including the Maybank and Rhett families.

 

Pinckney was born at Charleston, South Carolina. His father, Colonel Charles Pinckney, was a rich lawyer and planter, who on his death in 1782 was to bequeath Snee Farm, a country estate outside the city, to his son Charles. The latter apparently received all his education in the city of his birth, and he started to practice law there in 1779.

 

"About that time, well after the War for Independence had begun, young Pinckney enlisted in the militia, ["though his father demonstrated ambivalence about the Revolution"]. He became a lieutenant, and served at the siege of Savannah (September-October 1779). When Charleston fell to the British the next year, the youth was captured and remained a prisoner until June 1781.

 

"Pinckney had also begun a political career, serving in the Continental Congress (1777-78 and 1784-87) and in the state legislature (1779-80, 1786-89, and 1792-96). A nationalist, he worked hard in Congress to ensure that the United States would receive navigation rights to the Mississippi and to strengthen congressional power.

 

"Pinckney's role in the Constitutional Convention is controversial. Although one of the youngest delegates, he later claimed to have been the most influential one and contended he had submitted a draft[, known as the Pinckney Plan,] that was the basis of the final Constitution. He did submit a plan that was a more elaborate form of the Virginia Plan, after Edmund Randolph had submitted the Virginia Plan, but it was disregarded by the other delegates. Historians recognize that he ranked as an important contributing delegate. [Pinckney's vanity led him to boast that he was only 24, allowing him to claim distinction as the youngest delegate. He was in fact 30 years old.] He attended full time, spoke often and effectively, and contributed immensely to the final draft and to the resolution of problems that arose during the debates. He also worked for ratification in South Carolina (1788). That same year, he married Mary Eleanor Laurens, daughter of a wealthy and politically powerful South Carolina merchant [ Henry Laurens ]; she was to bear at least three children. [One son was Congressman/Mayor of Charleston SC Henry Laurens Pinckney. Two of his brothers-in-law were Colonel John Laurens and South Carolina Congressman David Ramsay; another brother-in-law married the daughter of South Carolina Governor John Rutledge. A son-in-law was South Carolina Congressman/Governor/Mayor of Charleston SCRobert Young Hayne].

 

"Subsequently, Pinckney's career blossomed. From 1789 to 1792 he held the governorship of South Carolina, and in 1790 chaired the State constitutional convention. During this period, he became associated with the Federalist Party, in which he and his cousin Charles Cotesworth Pinckney were leaders. But, with the passage of time, the former's views began to change. In 1795 he attacked the Federalist backed Jay's Treaty and increasingly began to cast his lot with Carolina back-country Democratic-Republicans against his own eastern aristocracy. In 1796 he became governor once again, and in 1798 his Democratic-Republican supporters helped him win a seat in the U.S. Senate. There, he bitterly opposed his former party, and in the Presidential election of 1800 served as Thomas Jefferson's campaign manager in South Carolina.

 

"The victorious Jefferson appointed Pinckney as Minister to Spain (1801-5), in which capacity he struggled valiantly but unsuccessfully to win cession of the Floridas to the United States and facilitated Spanish acquiescence in the transfer of Louisiana from France to the United States in 1803.

 

Pinckney's grave at St. Philip's in Charleston

 

"Upon completion of his diplomatic mission, his ideas moving ever closer to democracy, Pinckney headed back to Charleston and to leadership of the state Democratic-Republican Party. He sat in the legislature in 1805-6 and then was again elected as Governor (1806-8). In this position, he favored legislative reapportionment, giving better representation to back-country districts, and advocated universal white manhood suffrage. He served again in the legislature from 1810 to 1814 and then temporarily withdrew from politics. In 1818 he won election to the United States House of Representatives, where he fought against the Missouri Compromise.

 

"In 1821, Pinckney's health beginning to fail, he retired for the last time from politics. He died in 1824, just 3 days after his 67th birthday. He was laid to rest. . . at St. Philip's Episcopal Churchyard ["in Charleston"]." ("Signers", 1976)

 

Pinckney's Snee Farm plantation is maintained as Charles Pinckney National Historic Site.

 

His son, Henry L. Pinckney (September 24, 1794 - February 3, 1863) was a U.S. Representative from South Carolina.

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

George Read (September 18, 1733 – September 21, 1798) was an American lawyer and politician from New Castle, in New Castle County, Delaware. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Continental Congressman from Delaware, a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, President of Delaware, and a member of the Federalist Party, who served as U.S. Senator from Delaware and Chief Justice of Delaware.

 

Read was born in Cecil County, Maryland, near North East, the son of John and Mary Howell Read. John Read was a wealthy English resident of Dublin, Ireland who came to Maryland as a young man and was one of the founders of Charlestown, Maryland in Cecil County. When George Read was an infant the family moved to New Castle County, Delaware, settling near the village of Christiana. As he grew up, Read joined Thomas McKean at the Rev. Francis Allison's Academy at New London, Pennsylvania and then studied law in Philadelphia with John Moland. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1753 and a year later he returned home to establish a practice at New Castle, Delaware.

 

In 1763 Read married Gertrude Ross Till, daughter of the Rev. George Ross, the Anglican rector of Immanuel Church in New Castle and widowed sister of George Ross, also a future signer of the Declaration of Independence. They had five children, John, George Jr., William, John, and Mary, who married Gunning Bedford, Sr., a future Governor of Delaware. They lived on The Strand in New Castle and their house was in what is now the garden of the present Read House and Gardens, owned by the Delaware Historical Society. They were members of Immanuel Episcopal Church.

 

In 1763 John Penn, the Proprietary Governor, appointed Read Crown Attorney General for the three Delaware counties and he served in that position until leaving for the Continental Congress in 1774. He also served in the Colonial Assembly of the Lower Counties for twelve sessions, from 1764/65 through 1775/76.

 

Eighteenth century Delaware was politically divided into loose factions known as the "Court Party" and the "Country Party." The majority Court Party was generally Anglican, strongest in Kent County and Sussex County, worked well with the colonial Proprietary government, and was in favor of reconciliation with the British government. The minority Country Party was largely Ulster-Scot, centered in New Castle County, and quickly advocated independence from the British. Read was often the leader of the Court party faction, and as such he generally worked in opposition to Caesar Rodney and his friend and neighbor, Thomas McKean.

 

Read, therefore, like most people in Delaware, was very much in favor of trying to reconcile differences with Great Britain. He opposed the Stamp Act and similar measures of Parliament, and supported anti-importation measures and dignified protests, but was quite reluctant to pursue the option of outright independence. Nevertheless, from 1764 he led the Delaware Committee of Correspondence and was elected to serve along with the more radical Thomas McKean and Caesar Rodney in the First and Second Continental Congress from 1774 through 1777. He was frequently absent though, and when the Congress voted on American Independence on July 2, 1776, Read surprised many by voting against it. This meant Caesar Rodney had to ride overnight to Philadelphia to break the deadlock in Delaware's delegation in favor of independence. However, when the Declaration of Independence was finally adopted, Read signed it, joining the cause in spite of his natural caution.

 

Anticipating the Declaration of Independence, the General Assembly of the Lower Counties declared its separation from the British government on June 15, 1776. Once the Declaration of Independence was actually adopted, the General Assembly called for elections to a Delaware constitutional convention to draft a constitution for the new state. Read was elected to this convention, became its President, and guided the passage of the Thomas McKean-drafted document, which became the Delaware Constitution of 1776.

 

Read was then elected to the first Legislative Council of the Delaware General Assembly and was selected as the Speaker in both the 1776/77 and 1777/78 sessions. At the time of the capture of President John McKinly, Read was in Philadelphia attending Congress, and after narrowly escaping capture himself while returning home, he became President on October 20, 1777, serving until March 31, 1778. During these months the British occupied Philadelphia and were in control of the Delaware River. Read tried, mostly in vain, to recruit additional soldiers and protect the state from raiders from Philadelphia and off ships in the Delaware River. The Delaware General Assembly session of 1777/78 had to be moved to Dover, Delaware for safety and the Sussex County General Assembly delegation was never seated because disruptions at the polls had negated the election results.

 

After Caesar Rodney was elected to replace him as President, Read continued to serve in the Legislative Council through the 1778-79 session. After a one-year rest nursing ill health, he was elected to the House of Assembly for the 1780/81 and 1781/82 sessions. He returned to the Legislative Council in the 1782/83 session and served two terms, through the 1787/88 session. In 1782 he was appointed Judge of the Court of Appeals in admiralty cases.

 

Read was again called to national service in 1786 when he represented Delaware at the Annapolis Convention. Because so few states were represented, this meeting produced only a report calling for a broader convention to be held in Philadelphia the next year.

 

At what became the Constitutional Convention, Read again represented Delaware. Quoting from Wright & Morris in their Soldier-Statesmen of the Constitution,

 

"Read immediately argued for a new national government under a new Constitution, saying 'to amend the Articles was simply putting old cloth on a new garment.' He was a leader in the fight for a strong central government, advocating, at one time, the abolition of the states altogether and the consolidation of the country under one powerful national government. 'Let no one fear the states, the people are with us;' he declared to a Convention shocked by this radical proposal. With no one to support his motion, he settled for protecting the rights of the small states against the infringements of their larger, more populous neighbors who, he feared, would 'probably combine to swallow up the smaller ones by addition, division or impoverishment.' He warned that Delaware 'would become at once a cipher in the union' if the principle of equal representation embodied in the New Jersey (small-state) Plan was not adopted and if the method of amendment in the Articles was not retained. He favored giving Congress the right to vote state laws, making the federal legislature immune to popular whims by having senators hold office for nine years or during good behavior, and granting the U.S. President broad appointive powers. Outspoken, he threatened to lead the Delaware delegation out of the Convention if the rights of the small states were not specifically guaranteed in the new Constitution."

 

Once those rights were assured, he led the ratification movement in Delaware which, partly as a result of his efforts, became the first state to ratify.

 

Following the adoption of the Federal Constitution of 1787, the Delaware General Assembly elected Read as one of its two U.S. Senators. His term began March 4, 1789, he was reelected in 1791, and resigned September 18, 1793. Read served with the pro-administration majority in the 1st and 2nd Congress, during the administration of U.S. President George Washington. As Senator he supported the assumption of state debts, establishment of a national bank, and the imposition of excise taxes. He resigned as Senator to accept an appointment as Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court and served in that capacity until his death.

 

Read's resignation from the U.S. Senate was before the first session of the 3rd Congress assembled, but it was not until February 7, 1795, 4 weeks before it adjourned, that Henry Latimer was elected to replace him. One of Delaware's U.S. Senate seats was, therefore, vacant from September 18, 1793 until February 7, 1795.

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

John Rutledge (September 17, 1739 – July 23, 1800) was an American statesman and judge. He was the first Governor of South Carolina following the signing of the Declaration of Independence. For a time, he held dictatorial powers in that state. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and he signed the United States Constitution. He served as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and was the second Chief Justice of the Court from July to December 1795. He was the elder brother of Edward Rutledge, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence.

 

Rutledge was born into a large family in Charleston. His father was Scots-Irish immigrant John Rutledge (Sr.) (1713-1750), a physician. His mother, South Carolina-born Sarah (nee Hext) (born 18 September 1724), was of English descent. John had 6 younger siblings; Andrew (1740-1772), Thomas (1741-1783), Sarah (1742-1819), Hugh (1745-1811), Mary (1747-1832) and Edward (1749-1800). John’s early education was provided by his father until the latter's death. The rest of Rutledge's primary education was provided by an Anglican priest.

 

John took an early interest in law and often "played lawyer" with his brothers and sisters. When he was 17 years old, Rutledge began studying law under a man named James Parsons. Two years later, he sailed to England to further his studies at London's Middle Temple. In the course of his studies, he won several cases in English courts.

 

After finishing his studies, Rutledge sailed back to Charleston to begin a fruitful legal career. At the time, many lawyers came out of law school and barely scraped together enough business to earn a living. Most new lawyers could only hope that they would win a well-known case to ensure their success. Rutledge, however, emerged almost immediately as one of the most prominent lawyers in Charleston, and his services were in high demand.

 

With his successful legal career, he was able to build on his mother's fortune. On 1 May 1763, Rutledge married Elizabeth Grimke (born 1742). Rutledge was very devoted to his wife, and Elizabeth's death on 6 July 1792 was a major cause of the illness that affected Rutledge in his later years.

 

John and Elizabeth had 10 children; Martha Henrietta (1764-1816), Sarah (born and died 1765), John (1766-1819), Edward James (1767-1811), Frederick Wilkes (1769-1821), William Spencer (1771-1821), Charles Wilson (1773-1821), Thomas (born 1774 and died young), Elizabeth (1776-1842), and States Whitcomb (1783-1829).

 

A few weeks after leaving the governorship, Rutledge was again elected to the Continental Congress, where he served until 1783. In 1784, he was appointed to the South Carolina Court of Chancery.

 

Rutledge continued to serve on the Court of Chancery until 1791. During this time, he was selected to represent South Carolina in the Constitutional Convention. Rutledge maintained a moderate nationalist stance and chaired the Committee of Detail. He attended all the sessions and served on five committees.

 

Rutledge recommended that the executive power consist of a single person, rather than a plurality, because he felt that one person would feel the responsibility of the office more acutely. Because the president would not be able to defer a decision to another "co-president", Rutledge concluded that a single person would be more likely to make a good choice.

 

Rutledge was largely responsible for denying the Supreme Court the right to give advisory opinions. Being a judge himself, he strongly believed that a judge’s sole purpose was to resolve legal conflicts; he held that a judge should only hand down an opinion when ruling on an actual case.

 

Rutledge also argued that if either house of the legislature was to have the sole authority to introduce appropriation bills, it should be the Senate. He noted that the Senate, by nature of its lengthier terms of office, would tend to be more leisurely in its actions. Because of this, Rutledge felt that the Senate would be better able to clearly think about what the consequences of a bill would be. And since the bills could not become law without the consent of the House of Representatives, he concluded that there would be no danger of the Senate ruling the country.

 

When the proposal was made that only landowners should have the right to vote, Rutledge opposed it perhaps more strongly than any other motion in the entire convention. He stated that making a rule like this would divide the people into "haves" and "have nots". It would create an undying resentment against the landowners and could do nothing but cause discord. Benjamin Franklin agreed with Rutledge, saying that such a law would suppress the ambitions of the common people. Franklin also observed that if only people who actually owned land could vote, the sons of a substantial farmer, not having land in their own names, would be denied the right to vote.

 

In the debate of whether or not to allow slavery in the new country, Rutledge took the side of the slave-owners; he was a Southerner and he owned several slaves. Rutledge said that if the Constitution forbade slavery, the Southern states would never agree to the Constitution.

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

Roger Sherman (April 19, 1721 (J.C), April 30, 1721 (G.C.) – July 23, 1793) was an early American lawyer and politician. He served as the first mayor of New Haven, Connecticut, and served on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and was also a representative and senator in the new republic.

 

He and Robert Morris were the only people to sign all four great state papers of the U.S.: the Articles of Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson said of him: "That is Mr. Sherman, of Connecticut, a man who never said a foolish thing in his life."

 

Sherman is also the patriarch of one of America's oldest, most powerful and prolific U.S. political families, the Baldwin, Hoar & Sherman family as ranked by Political Graveyard.

 

His family moved to Stoughton, Massachusetts, a town located seventeen miles (27 km) south of Boston. The part of Stoughton, Massachusetts where Sherman grew up was later incorporated in 1797 to Canton, Massachusetts. Sherman's education did not extend beyond his father's library and grammar school and his early career was spent as a shoe designer. However, he was gifted with an aptitude for learning, and access to a good library owned by his father, as well as a Harvard educated parish minister, Rev. Samuel Dunbar, who took him under his wing.

 

In 1743, after his father's death, he moved (on foot) with his mother and siblings to New Milford, Connecticut, where in partnership with his brother, he opened the town's first store. He very quickly introduced himself in civil and religious affairs, rapidly becoming one of the town's leading citizens and eventually town clerk of New Milford. Due to his mathematical skill he became county surveyor of New Haven County in 1745, and began providing astronomical calculations for almanacs in 1748.

 

Despite the fact that he had no formal legal training, Sherman was urged to read for the bar exam by a local lawyer and was admitted to the Bar of Litchfield, Connecticut in 1754, and chosen to represent New Milford in the Connecticut General Assembly from 1755 to 1758 and from 1760 to 1761. In 1766 he was elected to the Upper House of the Connecticut General Assembly, where he served until 1785.

 

He was appointed justice of the peace in 1762,, judge of the court of common pleas in 1765, and justice of the Superior Court of Connecticut from 1766 to 1789, when he left to become a member of the United States Congress. He was also appointed treasurer of Yale College, and awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree. He was a professor of religion for many years, and engaged in lengthy correspondences with some of the greatest theologians of the time.

 

In 1783 he and Richard Law were appointed to massively revise the confused and archaic Connecticut statutes, which they accomplished with great success. In 1784 he was elected Mayor of New Haven, which office he held until his death. He is especially notable for being the only person to sign all four great state papers of the United States: the United States Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Association, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. Only one other person, Robert Morris, signed 3 of these documents (not the Articles of Association).

 

At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775 Sherman was appointed to the Connecticut Governor's Council of Safety and also commissary to the Connecticut Troops. He was elected to the Continental Congress in 1774 and served very actively throughout the War, earning high esteem in the eyes of his fellow delegates and serving on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence.

 

During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, summoned into existence to amend the Articles of Confederation, Sherman offered what came to be called the Great Compromise or Connecticut Compromise. In this plan, the people would be represented in the house by proportional representation in one branch of the legislature, called the House of Representatives (the Lower House). The states would be represented in another house called the Senate (the Upper House). In the lower house, each state had a representative for every 30,000 people. On the other hand, in the upper house each state was guaranteed two senators, no matter their size.

 

Sherman is also memorable for his stance against paper money and his authoring of Article I Section 10 of the United States Constitution.

 

Mr. Wilson & Mr. Sherman moved to insert after the words "coin money" the words "nor emit bills of credit, nor make any thing but gold & silver coin a tender in payment of debts" making these prohibitions absolute, instead of making the measures allowable (as in the XIII art:) with the consent of the Legislature of the U.S. ... Mr. Sherman thought this a favorable crisis for crushing paper money. If the consent of the Legislature could authorize emissions of it, the friends of paper money would make every exertion to get into the Legislature in order to license it."

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

Richard Dobbs Spaight (March 25, 1758 – September 6, 1802) was the Federalist governor of the American State of North Carolina from 1792 to 1795.

 

Spaight was born in New Bern, North Carolina, the son of the Secretary of the Crown in the colony. Orphaned at the age of eight, Spaight was sent to school in Ireland and graduated from the University of Glasgow.

 

In 1778, Spaight returned to North Carolina and served as an aide to General Richard Caswell during the American Revolutionary War until 1781. Although he was elected to the North Carolina General Assembly in 1779, he was denied his seat after the election was challenged. Spaight was again elected in 1781 and served until 1783.

 

The General Assembly elected Spaight a delegate to the Continental Congress between 1782 and 1785; he then served in the North Carolina House of Commons from 1785 to 1787, and was named Speaker of the House. In 1787, Spaight was a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention that drafted the U.S. Constitution, and he signed the document when he was only 29 years old.

 

On 24 March 1788, Spaight married Mary Leach; their son Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr., later became Governor of North Carolina in 1835. Mary had the distinction of being the first lady to dance with George Washington at a ball in Washington’s honor at Tryon Palace in New Bern in 1791.

 

Under the North Carolina Constitution of 1776, Spaight was nominated for Governor in 1787, but was defeated by a majority in the General Assembly; he was nominated for the United States Senate in 1789 and was again defeated. In 1788, he was a member of the state convention which voted not to ratify the United States Constitution, although Spaight himself supported ratification.

 

Spaight retired from politics for several years due to ill health; he returned to the state House of Representatives in 1792, was elected governor that same year, and re-elected by the General Assembly for two further one-year terms.

 

During Spaight's term as governor, sites were chosen for the new state capital of Raleigh and the newly-chartered University of North Carolina. Spaight served as chair of the university's Board of Trustees during his term as governor. Spaight stepped down as governor in 1795, having served the constitutional limit of three one-year terms.

 

Spaight was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1798, filling the unexpired term of Nathan Bryan; he was elected to a two-year term in 1799, serving until 1801, and though elected as a Federalist, his views on states rights lead him to become associated with the Democratic-Republican party of Thomas Jefferson. He lost his bid for re-election to Congress, but returned to state government, serving in the North Carolina Senate beginning in 1801. Spaight died on 6 September 1802, following injuries sustained in a duel with John Stanly, the Federalist Congressman who had defeated him in the election of 1800 for the House of Representatives. Spaight is buried in his home town New Bern. Spaight Street in central Madison, Wisconsin is named in honor of Richard Spaight. Most of the main streets in downtown Madison are named after signers of the United States Constitution.

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

George Washington (February 22, 1732 [O.S. February 11, 1731] – December 14, 1799) was the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and served as the first President of the United States of America (1789–1797). For his central role in the formation of the United States, he is often referred to as the father of his country.

 

The Continental Congress appointed Washington commander-in-chief of the American revolutionary forces in 1775. The following year, he forced the British out of Boston, lost New York City, and crossed the Delaware River in New Jersey, defeating the surprised enemy units later that year. As a result of his strategy, Revolutionary forces captured the two main British combat armies at Saratoga and Yorktown. Negotiating with Congress, the colonial states, and French allies, he held together a tenuous army and a fragile nation amid the threats of disintegration and failure. Following the end of the war in 1783, Washington returned to private life and retired to his plantation at Mount Vernon, prompting an incredulous King George III to state, "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

 

He presided over the Philadelphia Convention that drafted the United States Constitution in 1787 because of general dissatisfaction with the Articles of Confederation. Washington became President of the United States in 1789 and established many of the customs and usages of the new government's executive department. He sought to create a nation capable of surviving in a world torn asunder by war between Britain and France. His unilateral Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793 provided a basis for avoiding any involvement in foreign conflicts. He supported plans to build a strong central government by funding the national debt, implementing an effective tax system, and creating a national bank. Washington avoided the temptation of war and began a decade of peace with Britain via the Jay Treaty in 1795; he used his prestige to get it ratified over intense opposition from the Jeffersonians. Although never officially joining the Federalist Party, he supported its programs and was its inspirational leader. Washington's farewell address was a primer on republican virtue and a stern warning against partisanship, sectionalism, and involvement in foreign wars.

 

Washington was awarded the very first Congressional Gold Medal with the Thanks of Congress.

 

Washington died in 1799, and the funeral oration delivered by Henry Lee stated that of all Americans, he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Washington has been consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.

 

George Washington was born on February 22, 1732 [O.S. February 11, 1731] the first son of Augustine Washington and his second wife, Mary Ball Washington, on the family's Pope's Creek Estate near present-day Colonial Beach in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Moving to Ferry Farm in Stafford County at age six, George was educated in the home by his father and older brother. The growth of tobacco as a commodity in Virginia could be measured by the number of slaves imported to cultivate it. When Washington was born, the population of the colony was 50 percent black, mostly enslaved Africans and African Americans.

 

In his youth, Washington worked as a surveyor, and acquired what would become invaluable knowledge of the terrain around his native Colony of Virginia.

 

Washington embarked upon a career as a planter, which historians defined as those who held 20 or more slaves. In 1748 he was invited to help survey Lord Fairfax's lands west of the Blue Ridge. In 1749, he was appointed to his first public office, surveyor of newly created Culpeper County. Through his half-brother, Lawrence Washington, he became interested in the Ohio Company, which aimed to exploit Western lands. In 1751, George and his half-brother traveled to Barbados, staying at Bush Hill House, hoping for an improvement in Lawrence's tuberculosis. This was the only time George Washington traveled outside what is now the United States. After Lawrence's death in 1752, George inherited part of his estate and took over some of Lawrence's duties as adjutant of the colony.

 

Washington was appointed a district adjutant general in the Virginia militia in 1752, which appointed him Major Washington at the age of 20. He was charged with training the militia in the quarter assigned to him. At age 21, in Fredericksburg, Washington became a Master Mason in the organization of Freemasons, a fraternal organization that was a lifelong influence.

 

In December 1753, Washington was asked by Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia to carry a British ultimatum to the French on the Ohio frontier. Washington assessed French military strength and intentions, and delivered the message to the French at Fort Le Boeuf in present day Waterford, Pennsylvania. The message, which went unheeded, called for the French to abandon their development of the Ohio country. The two colonial powers were heading toward worldwide conflict. Washington's report on the affair was widely read on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

In 1754, Dinwiddie commissioned Washington a lieutenant colonel and ordered him to lead an expedition to Fort Duquesne to drive out the French. With his American Indian allies led by Tanacharison, Washington and his troops ambushed a French scouting party of some 30 men, led by Joseph Coulon de Jumonville. Washington and his troops were overwhelmed at Fort Necessity by a larger and better positioned French and Indian force. The terms of surrender included a statement that Washington had assassinated Jumonville after the ambush. Washington could not read French, and, unaware of what it said, signed his name. Released by the French, Washington returned to Virginia, where he was cleared of blame for the defeat, but resigned because he did not like the new arrangement of the Virginia Militia.

 

In 1755, Washington was an aide to British General Edward Braddock on the ill-fated Monongahela expedition. This was a major effort to retake the Ohio Country. While Braddock was killed and the expedition ended in disaster, Washington distinguished himself as the Hero of the Monongahela. While Washington's role during the battle has been debated, biographer Joseph Ellis asserts that Washington rode back and forth across the battlefield, rallying the remnant of the British and Virginian forces to a retreat. Subsequent to this action, Washington was given a difficult frontier command in the Virginia mountains, and was rewarded by being promoted to colonel and named commander of all Virginia forces.

 

In 1758, Washington participated as a brigadier general in the Forbes expedition that prompted French evacuation of Fort Duquesne, and British establishment of Pittsburgh.[10] Later that year, Washington resigned from active military service and spent the next sixteen years as a Virginia planter and politician.

 

On January 6, 1759, Washington married the widow Martha Dandridge Custis. Surviving letters suggest that he may have been in love at the time with Sally Fairfax, the wife of a friend. Some historians believe George and Martha were distantly related.

 

Nevertheless, George and Martha made a good marriage, and together raised her two children from her previous marriage, John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis, affectionately called "Jackie" and "Patsy" by the family. Later the Washingtons raised two of Mrs. Washington's grandchildren, Eleanor Parke Custis and George Washington Parke Custis. George and Martha never had any children together—his earlier bout with smallpox followed, possibly, by tuberculosis may have made him sterile. The newlywed couple moved to Mount Vernon, where he took up the life of a planter and political figure.

 

Washington's marriage to Martha, a wealthy widow, greatly increased his property holdings and social standing. He acquired one-third of the 18,000 acre (73 km²) Custis estate upon his marriage, and managed the remainder on behalf of Martha's children. He frequently purchased additional land in his own name. In addition, he was granted land in what is now West Virginia as a bounty for his service in the French and Indian War. By 1775, Washington had doubled the size of Mount Vernon to 6,500 acres (26 km2), and had increased the slave population there to more than 100 persons. As a respected military hero and large landowner, he held local office and was elected to the Virginia provincial legislature, the House of Burgesses, beginning in 1758.

 

Washington lived an aristocratic lifestyle—fox hunting was a favorite leisure activity. Like most Virginia planters, he imported luxuries and other goods from England and paid for them by exporting his tobacco crop. Extravagant spending and the unpredictability of the tobacco market meant that many Virginia planters of Washington's day were losing money. (Thomas Jefferson, for example, would die deeply in debt.)

 

Washington began to pull himself out of debt by diversification. By 1766, he had switched Mount Vernon's primary cash crop from tobacco to wheat, a crop which could be sold in America, and diversified operations to include flour milling, fishing, horse breeding, spinning, and weaving. Patsy Custis's death in 1773 from epilepsy enabled Washington to pay off his British creditors, since half of her inheritance passed to him.

 

During these years, Washington concentrated on his business activities and remained somewhat aloof from politics. Although he expressed opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act, the first direct tax on the colonies, he did not take a leading role in the growing colonial resistance until after protests of the Townshend Acts (enacted in 1767) had become widespread. In May 1769, Washington introduced a proposal drafted by his friend George Mason, which called for Virginia to boycott English goods until the Acts were repealed. Parliament repealed the Townshend Acts in 1770, and, for Washington at least, the crisis had passed. However, Washington regarded the passage of the Intolerable Acts in 1774 as "an Invasion of our Rights and Privileges". In July 1774, he chaired the meeting at which the "Fairfax Resolves" were adopted, which called for, among other things, the convening of a Continental Congress. In August, Washington attended the First Virginia Convention, where he was selected as a delegate to the First Continental Congress.

 

After fighting broke out in April 1775, Washington appeared at the Second Continental Congress in military uniform, signaling that he was prepared for war. Washington had the prestige, the military experience, the charisma and military bearing, the reputation of being a strong patriot, and he was supported by the South, especially Virginia. Although he did not explicitly seek the office of commander and even claimed that he was not equal to it, there was no serious competition. Congress created the Continental Army on June 14, 1775; the next day, on the nomination of John Adams of Massachusetts, Washington was appointed Major General and elected by Congress to be Commander-in-chief.

 

Washington assumed command of the Continental Army in the field at Cambridge, Massachusetts in July 1775, during the ongoing siege of Boston. Realizing his army's desperate shortage of gunpowder, Washington asked for new sources. British arsenals were raided (including some in the Caribbean) and some manufacturing was attempted; a barely adequate supply (about 2.5 million pounds) was obtained by the end of 1776, mostly from France. Washington reorganized the army during the long standoff, and forced the British to withdraw by putting artillery on Dorchester Heights overlooking the city. The British evacuated Boston and Washington moved his army to New York City.

 

Although negative toward the patriots in the Continental Congress, British newspapers routinely praised Washington's personal character and qualities as a military commander. Moreover, both sides of the aisle in Parliament found the American general's courage, endurance, and attentiveness to the welfare of his troops worthy of approbation and examples of the virtues they and most other Britons found wanting in their own commanders. Washington's refusal to become involved in politics buttressed his reputation as a man fully committed to the military mission at hand and above the factional fray.

 

In August 1776, British General William Howe launched a massive naval and land campaign designed to seize New York and offer a negotiated settlement. The Continental Army under Washington engaged the enemy for the first time as an army of the newly declared independent United States at the Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the entire war. This and several other British victories sent Washington scrambling out of New York and across New Jersey, leaving the future of the Continental Army in doubt. On the night of December 25, 1776, Washington staged a counterattack, leading the American forces across the Delaware River to capture nearly 1,000 Hessians in Trenton, New Jersey. Washington followed up his victory at Trenton with another one at Princeton in early January. These winter victories quickly raised the morale of the army, secured Washington's position as Commander, and inspired young men to join the army.

 

British forces defeated Washington's troops in the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. Howe outmaneuvered Washington and marched into Philadelphia unopposed on September 26. Washington's army unsuccessfully attacked the British garrison at Germantown in early October. Meanwhile, Burgoyne, out of reach from help from Howe, was trapped and forced to surrender his entire army at Saratoga, New York. France responded to Burgoyne's defeat by entering the war, openly allying with America and turning the Revolutionary War into a major worldwide war. Washington's loss of Philadelphia prompted some members of Congress to discuss removing Washington from command. This attempt failed after Washington's supporters rallied behind him.

 

Washington's army camped at Valley Forge in December 1777, staying there for the next six months. Over the winter, 2,500 men of the 10,000-strong force died from disease and exposure. The next spring, however, the army emerged from Valley Forge in good order, thanks in part to a full-scale training program supervised by Baron von Steuben, a veteran of the Prussian general staff. The British evacuated Philadelphia to New York in 1778 but Washington attacked them at Monmouth and drove them from the battlefield. Afterwards, the British continued to head towards New York. Washington moved his army outside of New York.

 

In the summer of 1779 at Washington's direction, General John Sullivan carried out a decisive scorched earth campaign that destroyed at least forty Iroquois villages throughout present-day central and upstate New York in retaliation for Iroquois and Tory attacks against American settlements earlier in the war. Washington delivered the final blow to the British in 1781, after a French naval victory allowed American and French forces to trap a British army in Virginia. The surrender at Yorktown on October 17, 1781 marked the end of most fighting. Though known for his successes in the war and of his life that followed, Washington suffered many defeats before achieving victory.

Depiction by John Trumbull of Washington resigning his commission as commander-in-chief.

In March 1783, Washington used his influence to disperse a group of Army officers who had threatened to confront Congress regarding their back pay. By the Treaty of Paris (signed that September), Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States. Washington disbanded his army and, on November 2, gave an eloquent farewell address to his soldiers.

 

On November 25, the British evacuated New York City, and Washington and the governor took possession. At Fraunces Tavern on December 4, Washington formally bade his officers farewell and on December 23, 1783, he resigned his commission as commander-in-chief, emulating the Roman general Cincinnatus. He was an exemplar of the republican ideal of citizen leadership who rejected power. During this period, there was no position of President of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, the forerunner to the Constitution.

 

Washington's retirement to Mount Vernon was short-lived. He made an exploratory trip to the western frontier in 1784, was persuaded to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, and was unanimously elected president of the Convention. He participated little in the debates involved (though he did vote for or against the various articles), but his high prestige maintained collegiality and kept the delegates at their labors. The delegates designed the presidency with Washington in mind, and allowed him to define the office once elected. After the Convention, his support convinced many, including the Virginia legislature, to vote for ratification; the new Constitution was ratified by all 13 states.

 

The Electoral College elected Washington unanimously in 1789, and again in the 1792 election; he remains the only president to receive 100% of the electoral votes. At his inauguration, he insisted on having Barbados Rum served. John Adams was elected vice president. Washington took the oath of office as the first President under the Constitution for the United States of America on April 30, 1789 at Federal Hall in New York City although, at first, he had not wanted the position.

 

The 1st United States Congress voted to pay Washington a salary of $25,000 a year—a large sum in 1789. Washington, already wealthy, declined the salary, since he valued his image as a selfless public servant. At the urging of Congress, however, he ultimately accepted the payment, to avoid setting a precedent whereby the presidency would be perceived as limited only to independently wealthy individuals who could serve without any salary. Washington attended carefully to the pomp and ceremony of office, making sure that the titles and trappings were suitably republican and never emulated European royal courts. To that end, he preferred the title "Mr. President" to the more majestic names suggested.

 

Washington proved an able administrator. An excellent delegator and judge of talent and character, he held regular cabinet meetings to debate issues before making a final decision. In handling routine tasks, he was "systematic, orderly, energetic, solicitous of the opinion of others but decisive, intent upon general goals and the consistency of particular actions with them."

 

Washington reluctantly served a second term as president. He refused to run for a third, establishing the customary policy of a maximum of two terms for a president which later became law by the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.

 

After retiring from the presidency in March 1797, Washington returned to Mount Vernon with a profound sense of relief. He devoted much time to farming.

 

On July 4, 1798, Washington was commissioned by President John Adams to be Lieutenant General and Commander-in-chief of the armies raised or to be raised for service in a prospective war with France. He served as the senior officer of the United States Army between July 13, 1798 and December 14, 1799. He participated in the planning for a Provisional Army to meet any emergency that might arise, but did not take the field.

 

On December 12, 1799, Washington spent several hours inspecting his farms on horseback, in snow and later hail and freezing rain. He sat down to dine that evening without changing his wet clothes. The next morning, he awoke with a bad cold, fever, and a throat infection called quinsy that turned into acute laryngitis and pneumonia. Washington died on the evening of December 14, 1799, at his home aged 67, while attended by Dr. James Craik, one of his closest friends, Dr. Gustavus Richard Brown, Dr. Elisha C. Dick, and Tobias Lear V, Washington's personal secretary. Lear would record the account in his journal, writing that Washington's last words were "'Tis well."

 

Modern doctors believe that Washington died largely because of his treatment, which included calomel and bloodletting, resulting in a combination of shock from the loss of five pints of blood, as well as asphyxia and dehydration. Washington's remains were buried at Mount Vernon. Originally, he was interred in the old tomb on the estate. In 1831, for the cenntenial of his birth, his remains were moved to the current tomb. To protect their privacy, Martha Washington burned the correspondence between her husband and herself following his death. Only three letters between the couple have survived.

 

Throughout the world men and women were saddened by Washington's death. Napoleon ordered ten days of mourning throughout France and in the United States thousands wore mourning clothes for months. On December 18, 1799, a funeral was held at Mount Vernon.

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

Hugh Williamson (December 5, 1735–May 22, 1819) was an American politician. He is best known for representing North Carolina at the Constitutional Convention.

 

Williamson was a scholar of international renown. His erudition had brought him into contact with some of the leading intellectuals of the Patriot cause and, in turn, with the ferment of political ideas that eventually found expression in the Constitution. During the American Revolution, Will as physician and natural scientist to the American war effort. His experiences in that preeminent event of his generation transformed the genial scholar into an adroit politician and a determined leader in the campaign for effective national government. This leadership was evident not only at the Convention in Philadelphia but also, with telling effect, during the ratification debates in North Carolina.

 

Williamson's career demonstrates the rootlessness that characterized the lives of many Americans even in the eighteenth century. Born on the frontier, he lived for significant periods of his long life in three different regions of the country. This mobility undoubtedly contributed to the development of his nationalistic outlook, an outlook strengthened by wartime service with interstate military forces and reinforced by the interests of the planters and merchants that formed his North Carolina constituency. These experiences convinced him that only a strong central government could adequately protect and foster the political, economic, and intellectual future of the new nation.

 

Williamson was born in Chester County in what was then the frontier region of Pennsylvania. His fragile health as a youth weighed against his beginning a career in the family's clothier business. His parents instead sent him to a private academy and then to the College of Philadelphia (today's University of Pennsylvania). A member of the college's first graduating class, Williamson obtained a license to preach in Connecticut, but factional disputes among the local clergy and a resurgence of ill health led him to abandon a career in the ministry. Further study and a master's degree led to employment in 1760 as a professor of mathematics at his alma mater.

 

In another career shift four years later, Williamson turned to the study of medicine. Armed with a degree from the prestigious University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, he returned to Philadelphia to open a private practice. At the same time, he pursued a number of independent scientific and educational projects, and his work in these areas eventually led to membership in the American Philosophical Society as well as acclaim in Europe's intellectual circles.

 

Interest in science and education indirectly led Williamson to politics and the Patriot cause. Sailing for England in 1773 to raise funds for a local educational project, Williamson stopped en route at Boston. There he witnessed the famous Boston Tea Party, in which Patriots dressed as American Indians destroyed a cargo of tea in protest over a newly enforced Parliamentary tax on imported commodities. On reaching London he was summoned before the Privy Council to testify on this act of rebellion and on colonial affairs in general.

 

Williamson came of age politically during this encounter. In response to questions by Council members, who were in the process of formulating punitive measures against Massachusetts, he bluntly warned that repression would provoke rebellion. He then went on to express the argument that was becoming the core of the Patriot position: Americans were entitled to the full rights of Englishmen, including representation in the decisions of the English government. This testimony brought him to the attention of other Americans in London. A mutual interest in scientific matters cemented a solid working relationship with Benjamin Franklin, and Williamson soon found himself joined with the famous American scientist and others in appealing for support among those Englishmen who, in opposition to their own government, sympathized with American claims.

 

Williamson continued on to the Netherlands where, taking advantage of the cover afforded by his attendance at meetings on scientific and educational subjects, he organized the publication of pamphlets and other papers that supported the Patriot cause. While there he learned that the colonies had declared their independence. Narrowly avoiding capture at sea, he rushed back to Philadelphia in early 1777 and volunteered for service in the Medical Department of the Continental Army. The Department had no opening at that time, so Williamson decided to form a partnership with a younger brother to import medicines and other scarce items from the West Indies through the British blockade. Believing that he could best contribute to the war effort by using his contacts and reputation in this manner, Williamson made Edenton, North Carolina, his base of operations. Settlement in North Carolina soon led to his establishing a medical practice to serve the planters and merchants of the region.

 

These various activities brought Williamson to the attention of North Carolina's political leaders. Facing the threat of a British invasion of the region from the sea and bases in Florida, the state legislature voted to raise a force of 4,000 men to assist South Carolina. When Governor Richard Caswell, with the rank of major general, took to the field at the head of these citizen-soldiers, he named Williamson to serve as the state's Physician and Surgeon General, a post Williamson held until the end of the war.

 

The capture of Charleston, South Carolina in 1780 not only marked a stunning defeat for American forces, but also signaled the end of the first phase in a new British war strategy. Under this strategy British forces would continue to tie down Washington's main army in the north while a Royal army under General Charles Cornwallis would advance northward. Using Savannah, Georgia and Charleston as their bases of operations, the British expected their regular units to push through North Carolina and Virginia while a militia composed of local Loyalists secured areas captured by the regular forces. If successful, this strategy would have led to the conquest of the colonies from the south. To counter Cornwallis' efforts, the Continental Congress sent Horatio Gates to command a small force composed of a division of continentals, Caswell's units from North Carolina, and a group of hastily assembled Virginia militia units.

 

Gates attempted to attack the British advance base near Camden, South Carolina, but his tired militia units, which were still forming when the battle began, were routed, and the Americans suffered another defeat. Williamson, who witnessed the disaster, volunteered to pass behind enemy lines to care for the American wounded. He spent two months on this mercy mission. When smallpox threatened the prison camp, he argued strenuously with Cornwallis and other British officers over the proper method to combat the disease. His perseverance and scientific reputation paid off. The British followed his advice, and an epidemic was averted.

 

In the fall of 1780 Williamson returned to the field. Major General Nathanael Greene, Gates' replacement, had begun his brilliant campaign to recover the south through the joint efforts of continentals and militia. While his main force engaged the British in a series of battles, the militiamen concentrated on picking off small outposts and isolated enemy parties. Francis Marion], nicknamed "Swamp Fox", and others who operated mainly in South Carolina are most remembered for this type of guerrilla warfare, but North Carolina units also adopted these tactics. Williamson was attached to a force under Brigadier General Isaac Gregory whose mission was to limit British activity in eastern North Carolina. Gregory established his base in the vast reaches of the Dismal Swamp where he could pin the British down in Wilmington without jeopardizing his small force. Williamson's bold innovations in preventive medicine, especially his strenuous efforts to indoctrinate raw troops in the importance of sanitation and diet, kept the command virtually free of disease during the six months that it inhabited the swamp-—a rare feat in eighteenth-century warfare.

 

In 1782 Williamson's neighbors elected him to the lower house of the North Carolina legislature, where he served for several terms. He sat on numerous committees, including those formed to regulate veterans' rights, and he authored the state's copyright law. His fellow legislators also chose Williamson to serve in the Continental Congress in 1782. Appointment to this national body represented a natural political progression for Williamson, who was evolving into a champion of federalism. His experiences during the Revolution, especially his exposure to the pressing need for interstate cooperation during the 1780 and 1781 campaigns in the Carolinas, had convinced him of the military importance of strong national government. This interest increased when he came to realize the economic benefits that might accrue from binding interstate association. In 1786 North Carolina chose Williamson to attend the Annapolis Convention, a meeting called to settle economic questions affecting the middle Atlantic states. Although he arrived too late to play a role in the Maryland proceedings, he was prepared to discuss interstate issues the following year when his state appointed him as a representative at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

 

Williamson, a faithful attendee at Convention sessions, lodged with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, two of the country's best-known nationalist leaders. His intellectual stature and international background also propelled him into a leadership role in the North Carolina delegation. A capacity for hard work and his innate good humor made him invaluable to the Federalists as they worked out the many political compromises necessary for consensus on the new instrument of government.

 

Shortly before the Convention adjourned, Williamson wrote a series of public letters in defense of a strong federal system. These "Letters of Sylvius" addressed many of the practical concerns of his state, where the rural and frequently debt-ridden farmers favored minimal government regulations, while the mercantile-planter group from the seaboard region wanted an economy strictly regulated by a central government. Using simple examples, Williamson explained to both groups the dual dangers of inflationary finances and of taxes that would stunt the growth of domestic manufacture. He exhorted North Carolinians to support the Constitution as the basis for their future prosperity. The ratification process, he explained, would decide whether the United States would remain a "system of patchwork and a series of expedients" or become "the most flourishing, independent, and happy nation on the face of the earth."

 

Following adjournment in Philadelphia, Williamson returned to New York to participate in the closing sessions of the Continental Congress and to serve as one of the agents settling North Carolina's accounts with that body. These duties caused him to miss the Hillsboro Convention, where North Carolina first considered and rejected the Constitution, but he played a major role at a second convention that met in Fayetteville in 1789. Here he participated in a successful effort to rally support for the Constitution.

 

Williamson's neighbors elected him to represent them in the first federal Congress. He served two terms before retiring and settling in New York City, where he continued to pursue a wide range of scholarly interests. He wrote extensively about his research, joined numerous learned societies, and contributed to many charities. He also served as one of the original trustees of the University of North Carolina.

 

Thomas Jefferson described Williamson's role at the Philadelphia Convention in the following terms: "he was a useful member, of an acute mind, attentive to business, and of an high degree of erudition."

 

The source of this article is Wikipedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

 

 

James Wilson (September 14, 1742 – August 21, 1798), was a Scottish lawyer, most notable as a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. He was twice elected to the Continental Congress, a major force in the drafting of the United States Constitution, a leading legal theoretician and one of the six original justices appointed by George Washington to the Supreme Court of the United States.

 

James Wilson was born in Scotland in 1742. He attended a number of universities without attaining a degree. He emigrated to British America in 1766, carrying a number of valuable letters of introduction with him. Through these connections he began tutoring and then teaching at the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania. He petitioned there for a degree and was awarded an honorary Master of Arts several months later.

 

The most popular prestigious career field in those days was the law. Wilson managed to secure studies at the office of John Dickinson a short time later. After two years of study he attained the bar in Philadelphia, and the following year (1767) set up his own practice in Reading. His office was very successful and he managed to earn a small fortune in a few short years. At that point he had bought a small farm near Carlisle, was handling cases in eight local Counties, and lecturing on English Literature at the College of Philadelphia. It was also during this period that he began a life-long fascination with land speculation.

 

Taking up the proto-revolutionary cause in 1774, Wilson published "Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament," a pamphlet denying all authority of Parliament over the Colonies. Though considered by scholars on par with the seminal works of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams of the same year, it was actually penned in 1768, perhaps the first cogent argument to be formulated against British dominance.

 

In 1775 he was a Colonel in the 4th Battalion of Associators and rose to the rank of Brigadier General of State Militia.

 

As a member of the Continental Congress in 1776, Wilson was a firm advocate for independence and became an imposing figure that was looked upon favorably by his fellow Congressmen. But with Pennsylvania divided on the issue of separation, Wilson, not wanting to go against the wishes of his constituents, refused to vote. Only when he received more feedback did he vote for independence.

 

While serving in the Congress Wilson was clearly among the leaders in the formation of Native American policy. "If the positions he held and the frequency with which he appeared on committees concerned with Indian affairs are an index, he was until his departure from Congress in 1777 the most active and influential single delegate in laying down the general outline that governed the relations of Congress with the border tribes.” (James Wilson: Founding Father, Charles Smith Page, 1956, p. 72.)

 

Wilson also served from June 1776 on the Committee on Spies, along with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Rutledge, and Robert Livingston. They together defined treason. (Page, p. 119.)

 

On October 4, 1779, the Fort Wilson Riot began. In response to inflation, poverty, and food shortages that had been on the rise in the last 3 years, a militia supporting price regulations and opposing Philadelphia's conservative leadership marched to James Wilson's house on Third and Walnut Streets. Wilson and thirty five of his colleagues who feared the crowd barricaded themselves in his home, which was later nicknamed Fort Wilson. In the short battle that ensued, 5 soldiers died, and 17-19 people were wounded. The city's soldiers, the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry and Baylor's 3rd Continental Light Dragoons, led by Joseph Reed eventually intervened and rescued James Wilson and his colleagues.

 

In 1779 Wilson accepted the role of Advocate General for France in America. He held this post until 1783.

 

Known as one of the most prominent lawyers of his time, Wilson is credited for being the most learned of the Framers of the Constitution. A fellow delegate in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia made the following assessment of James Wilson: "Government seems to have been his peculiar study, all the political institutions of the world he knows in detail, and can trace the causes and effects of every revolution from the earliest stages of the Grecian commonwealth down to the present time."

 

Wilson's most lasting impact on the country came as member of the Committee of Detail, which produced the first draft of the United States Constitution in 1787 (a year after the death of his wife). He wanted senators and the president to be popularly elected. He also proposed the Three-Fifths Compromise at the convention, which made slaves count as three-fifths of a person for representation in the House and Electoral College. Along with James Madison, he was perhaps the best versed of the framers in the study of political economy. He understood clearly the central problem of dual sovereignty (nation and state) and held a vision of an almost limitless future for the United States. Wilson addressed the Convention one hundred-sixty-eight times. (World Book Encyclopedia, 2003, James Wilson article.) A witness to Wilson’s performance during the convention, Dr. Benjamin Rush, called Wilson’s mind “one blaze of light.” (“James Wilson: A Forgotten Father,” St. John, Gerald J., in The Philadelphia Lawyer, www.philadelphiabar.org.)

 

Though not in agreement with all parts of the final, necessarily compromised Constitution, Wilson stumped hard for its adoption, leading Pennsylvania, at its ratifying convention, to become the second state (behind Delaware) to accept the document. His October 6, 1787 speech in the State House Yard has been seen as particularly important in setting the terms of the ratification debate, both locally and nationally. In particular, it focused on the fact there would be a popularly elected national government for the first time. Wilson was later instrumental in the redrafting of the 1776 Pennsylvania State constitution, leading the group in favour of a new constitution, and entering into an agreement with William Findley (leader of the Constitutionalist Party) that limited the partisan feeling that had previously characterised Pennsylvanian politics.

 

He began a series of law lectures at the College of Philadelphia in 1790—only the second at any academic institution in the United States—in which he mostly ignored the practical matters of legal training. Like many of his educated contemporaries, he viewed the academic study of law as a branch of a general cultured education, rather than solely as a prelude to a profession.

 

Wilson broke off his first course of law-lectures in April 1791 to attend to his duties as Supreme Court justice on circuit. He appears to have begun a second-year course in late 1791 or in early 1792 (by which time the College of Philadelphia had been merged into the University of Pennsylvania), but at some unrecorded point the lectures stopped again and were never resumed. They were not published (except for the first) until after his death, in an edition produced by his son, Bird Wilson, in 1804. The University of Pennsylvania Law School in Philadelphia officially traces its foundation to Wilson's lectures.

 

Wilson's final years were marked by failure. He assumed heavy debts investing in land that became real liabilities with the onset of the Panic of 1796-1797. Of note was the failure in Pennsylvania with Theophilus Cazenove. Wilson was briefly imprisoned for a small debt in Burlington, New Jersey. His son paid the debt, but Wilson went to North Carolina to escape other creditors. He was again briefly imprisoned, but nevertheless became a circuit judge there. In 1798, he suffered a bout of malaria, then died of a stroke while visiting a friend in Edenton, North Carolina. He was buried in the Johnston burial ground on a plantation near Edenton, but was reinterred in 1906 at Christ Churchyard, which is located in Philadelphia.

 

“Tracing over the events of Wilson’s life, we are impressed by the lucid quality of his mind. With this went a restless energy and insatiable ambition, an almost frightening vitality that turned with undiminished energy and enthusiasm to new tasks and new ventures. Yet, when all has been said, the inner man remains, despite our probings, an enigma.” – Charles Page Smith, James Wilson: Founding Father, 1956, p. 393

 

In the lectures mentioned above, Wilson, among the first of American legal philosophers, worked through in more detail some of the thinking suggested in the opinions issuing at that time from the Supreme Court. He felt, in fact, compelled to begin by spending some time in arguing out the justification of the appropriateness of his undertaking a course of lecture. But he assures his students that: "When I deliver my sentiments from this chair, they shall be my honest sentiments: when I deliver them from the bench, they shall be nothing more. In both places I shall make ? because I mean to support ? the claim to integrity: in neither shall I make ? because, in neither, can I support ? the claim to infallibility." (First lecture, 1804 Philadelphia ed.)

 

With this, he raises the most important question of the era: having acted upon revolutionary principles in setting up the new country, "Why should we not teach our children those principles, upon which we ourselves have thought and acted? Ought we to instil into their tender minds a theory, especially if unfounded, which is contradictory to our own practice, built on the most solid foundation? Why should we reduce them to the cruel dilemma of condemning, either those principles which they have been taught to believe, or those persons whom they have been taught to revere?" (First lecture.)

 

That this is no mere academic question is revealed with a cursory review of any number of early Supreme Court opinions. Perhaps it is best here to quote the opening of Justice Wilson's opinion in Chisholm v. State of Georgia, 2 U.S. 419 (1793), one of the most momentous decisions in American history: "This is a case of uncommon magnitude. One of the parties to it is a State; certainly respectable, claiming to be sovereign. The question to be determined is, whether this State, so respectable, and whose claim soars so high, is amenable to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States? This question, important in itself, will depend on others, more important still; and, may, perhaps, be ultimately resolved into one, no less radical than this 'do the people of the United States form a Nation?'"

 

In order to arrive at an answer to this question, one that would provide the foundation for the United States of America, Wilson knew that legal thinkers had to resolve in their minds clearly the question of the difference between "the principles of the constitutions and governments and laws of the United States, and the republicks, of which they are formed" and the "constitution and government and laws of England." He made it quite clear that he thought the American items to be "materially better." (First lecture.)