James Wilson

Cameron Madden
MSMU Class of 2028

(7/25) As we all go on to celebrate the 249th birthday of the United States of America, we would like to look at one of the lesser-known individuals that signed the Declaration of Independence who you might not have heard of. I decided to cover Mr. James Wilson, who was born on September 14, 1742, in Carskerdo, a small village in Scotland.

He was the son of a modest farming family, and although his upbringing was humble, he received an exceptional education at the universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, studying under the likes of philosophers such as Francis Hutcheson. He didn’t graduate, but the structure of his education shaped the legal and philosophical mind that would later allow him to sign the Declaration of Independence, and work with the US Constitution.

In 1765, Wilson immigrated to America during the years leading up to the American Revolution; he arrived in Philadelphia with a little more than some letters of introduction and a sharp intellect. He began by teaching Greek and rhetoric at the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) and was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree in 1766. That same year, he began studying law under John Dickinson, one of the colony’s most respected legal minds, and was admitted to the bar in the next year. Wilson quickly built a successful legal practice in Reading, Pennsylvania, and started to invest in western frontier lands, eventually accumulating considerable wealth and influence.

By the early 1770s, Wilson was deeply involved in the growing conflict between the colonies and Great Britain. In 1774, he had published a pamphlet titled, Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament. In it, Wilson made the bold argument that the British Parliament had no authority over the colonies; a position more radical than most of his contemporaries. He conceded that the colonies owed allegiance to the King, but not to Parliament, so they had no authority administering them.

Wilson was elected to the Continental Congress as a delegate of Pennsylvania in 1775 and quickly earned a reputation as a thoughtful and persuasive speaker. During the critical summer of 1776, when the revolution was in full swing, he hesitated on the vote for independence, believing his constituents were not yet fully committed. That caution temporarily placed him at odds with more fervent revolutionaries, but Wilson ultimately voted in favor of independence after consulting his district. Alongside Benjamin Franklin and John Morton, Wilson cast Pennsylvania’s decisive votes, joining in the formal signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776.

Though a staunch supporter of the American cause, Wilson often held views that alienated both radicals and conservatives around him. He opposed Pennsylvania’s 1776 State Constitution, which created a powerful unicameral legislature at the expense of the Executive and Judiciary, and he believed in a system of checks and balances, which the original Articles of Confederation had little of. His stance, seen as elitist by some, led to his temporary removal from Congress in 1777. That same year, during a period of economic unrest, Wilson was nearly killed during the Fort Wilson Riot, when a mob, angry over both food shortages and Wilson’s defense of Loyalist property rights, surrounded his Philadelphia home. He was rescued only when the local militia intervened.

Despite this, Wilson remained an influential figure; he served as the Advocate-General for France, a legal position overseeing foreign interests in the young republic and worked closely with Robert Morris on the creation of the Bank of North America, AKA America’s first National Bank. He returned to Congress intermittently and became an outspoken critic of the weak Articles of Confederation, advocating for a strong centralized government.

In 1787, Wilson took part in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where he emerged as one of its most important, though often unsung, figures. He delivered more speeches than all but one other delegate, and served on the Committee of Detail, which drafted much of the Constitution’s initial language. Wilson was a vocal advocate for a single executive (the presidency) as opposed to a committee, arguing that one accountable leader would be more effective and less prone to corruption. He also helped draft the controversial Three-Fifths Compromise, which gave southern states more representation from their slave populations, while still keeping them from citizenship. He also supported the idea that sovereignty resided with the people rather than the states, a foundational concept in American constitutional theory.

After the Convention, Wilson spent much of his own time securing Pennsylvania’s ratification of the Constitution. He delivered a speech in October 1787, which was one of the first and most comprehensive public defenses of the new framework, laying out arguments that helped shape the Federalist Papers, and wider public understanding of the document. He also helped in writing Pennsylvania’s new State Constitution in 1790, and in the same year, George Washington appointed him as one of the first Associate Justices of the United States Supreme Court! Wilson authored opinions in some of the earliest and most formative cases in America, including Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), which held that states could be sued in federal court; an interpretation that led directly to the Eleventh Amendment.

At the same time, he began teaching law at the College of Philadelphia, making him one of the first formal law professors in the United States, and making his lectures some of the groundwork for American legal education.

Wilson’s later years were marred by personal and financial collapse. A series of disastrous land speculation ventures left him deeply in debt. At one point, he was even briefly imprisoned for failing to repay his creditors, a humiliating fall for a sitting Supreme Court Justice. He fled from state to state to avoid debt collection and eventually ended up in Edenton, North Carolina, where he died in 1798, far from the centers of power he once helped shape.

As we remember the people who secured our freedom this Fourth of July, it’s worth rediscovering James Wilson, not just for his contributions to our government, but for the interesting life he lived; I personally enjoyed the idea of a Supreme Court Judge being a serial debtor on the run!