We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…
Today, we know these as the immortal words atop the Declaration of Independence, invoked again and again as America celebrated the document’s 250th anniversary yesterday.
But did Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers recognize, at the time, the importance of those words?
According to research by the legal scholar William Ewald, in all of Jefferson’s letters, speeches, diaries, and essays in the 50 years he lived after July 4, 1776, he never used the phrase “created equal” a single other time. Neither did George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, or James Madison.
The words “self-evident,” “inalienable,” or “pursuit of happiness” don’t appear in any of their writings either. These are the phrases and ideas around which our July 4th celebrations always revolve — and yet, even the man who wrote them, and his contemporaries, don’t seem to have recognized them as the essential, founding ideals of the country, worthy of reverence or even repetition.
There’s one exception.
Only one major Founding Father was found to have invoked the Declaration of Independence’s preamble in the years following its adoption, framing it as the mission statement of the country and of his own political project. You probably haven’t heard of him.
In this week’s paid-subscribers newsletter — coming a few days late in honor of the holiday weekend — I sit down with Jesse Wegman, author of the new book “The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution.”
Wilson was one of six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and one of the few to see the essential link between both documents. He spent the Constitutional Convention urging his fellow delegates, as they tried to structure the new American government, not to forget the “created equal” promise and to infuse it into the Constitution.
He was a lone voice at the convention calling for a popular vote to elect the president and both chambers of Congress. He also is the one who wrote the words “We the People” in the Constitution (as well as possibly influencing Jefferson to include the “created equal” phrasing in the Declaration in the first place). Wilson was also a member of the first Supreme Court, and considered perhaps the leading American legal mind at the time of the founding.
Wegman’s book is a necessary rediscovery of Wilson and his unique (at the time) vision for a fully democratic America — as well as a page-turning account of why he is so ill remembered today, as Wegman traces the business dealings that led to Wilson being sent to debtors’ prison (as a sitting Supreme Court justice!) and dying in disgrace. None of our Founders were perfect, and certainly not Wilson: in his case, at least, the same hubris that helped a Scottish immigrant become one of the key drafters of the U.S. Constitution helped lead to his demise. You can find my my interview with Wegman above.
The book is also a perfect 250th-anniversary read, because it is a reminder of the lost art that produced both our essential founding documents: compromise. Although Wilson was the Constitutional Convention’s key champion of a popular vote, he ended up being the one to propose the Electoral College, as a way to broker a compromise between his side and those who wanted the people to have no role in electing a president.
The Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention were both deliberative bodies where no one fully got their way, but all agreed to put the interests of the country ahead of their specific interests. As the Convention was about to close, Wilson was called on by his friend Benjamin Franklin to deliver Franklin’s final assessment of the document, which Franklin was too frail to share.
He read:
I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present, but Sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For having lived long, I have experienced many Instances of being oblig’d, by better Information or fuller Consideration, to change Opinions even on important Subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own Judgment and to pay more Respect to the Judgment of others. Most Men indeed as well as most Sects in Religion, think themselves in Possession of all Truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far Error.
[Sir Richard] Steele, a Protestant, in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only Difference between our two Churches in their Opinions of the Certainty of their Doctrine, is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England is never in the Wrong. But tho’ many private Persons think almost as highly of their own Infallibility, as that of their Sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who in a little Dispute with her Sister, said, I don’t know how it happens, Sister, but I meet with no body but myself that’s always in the right.
In these Sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well administred; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administred for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution: For when you assemble a Number of Men to have the Advantage of their joint Wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those Men all their Prejudices, their Passions, their Errors of Opinion, their local Interests, and their selfish Views. From such an Assembly can a perfect Production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this System approaching so near to Perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our Enemies, who are waiting with Confidence to hear that our Councils are confounded, like those of the Builders of Babel, and that our States are on the Point of Separation, only to meet hereafter for the Purpose of cutting one another’s Throats.
Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best. The Opinions I have had of its Errors, I sacrifice to the Public Good.
As our country marks its 250th anniversary, we could do worse than to remember these words, written by Franklin and delivered by Wilson. We all think we are in the right; as the American experiment continues, may we have the humility to realize we are sometimes in the wrong — and recognize when the public interest calls on us to meet somewhere in the middle.
Happy birthday, America. I hope you had a great holiday weekend; I’ll see you back in your inbox tomorrow.
