Today is Constitution Day! The day we celebrate the Founding Fathers signing the Constitution in 1787. Started in 2004, law mandates all publicly funded educational institutions and federal agencies provide lessons on the history of the American Constitution today.
History mostly remembers the famous founding fathers at the Constitutional Convention as a polished and highly pedigreed bunch with a vision for the country and the will to execute it. Yet these men had their eccentricities too. George Washington had false teeth possibly taken from slaves. Thomas Jefferson ::cough::cough:: enjoyed his time with Sally Hemmings and Samuel Adams was a high-profile wanted smuggler by the Crown.
Viewed another way, the more well known ones could be thought of as the Managing Directors of the American experiment- adding guidance and oversight but leaving the details to a team of less well known but equally rambunctious Founding Fathers.
So let’s look a some of the highlights and lowlights of the less well known VPs, Associates and Analysts of the Constitutional Convention who propped up the famous Managing Director patriots we all know!
Gouverneur Morris
Gouverneur Morris , whose first name means “Governor”, was a Senior VP in this PowerPoint deck of a document called the Constitution. Both now and in his time, Morris was respected as the chief draftsman of the final document, including the epic preamble starting “We The People….”
Speaking of his pen(is), after marrying his housekeeper Nancy, who was rumored to have killed her previous lover and their illegitimate child, Morris died on November 6, 1816 after he caused himself internal injuries and an infection while using a piece of whale baleen as a catheter trying to clear a blockage in his urinary tract. Yep- he died sticking a whale tooth in his own peep trying to clean it.
James Wilson
Wilson was the aggressive, capitalist VP from Europe who came to the U.S. looking for riches.
As one of only six people to sign both the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, Wilson built his reputation and legal theories on the Scottish Enlightenment writings of David Hume and Adam Smith. Scholars refer to him as the "principal architect of the executive branch” for laying out Article 2 of the Constitution which defines the powers of the President.
Later in life, he handled Native American treaties on land and gained wealth as the President of a land speculation venture in the Illinois territory.
Later falling into debt after an economic panic, Wilson was imprisoned in a debtors' prison in New Jersey. His son paid the debt, but Wilson went to North Carolina to escape other creditors. He was again briefly imprisoned in North Carolina and in 1798, he suffered a bout of malaria and died of a stroke at age 55.
William Paterson
William Paterson was a senior associate who sought debate, reason and compromise to get things done over his own ambition and pursuit of wealth. He was sent to the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, where he proposed the New Jersey Plan as an alternative option to the Virginia Plan for the structure of Congress.
Ultimately, the Connecticut Compromise setup the New Jersey Plan’s Senate chamber and the Virginia Plan’s House of Representatives as the full makeup of the U.S. Congress.
Today both the city of Paterson, NJ and the college, William Paterson University, are named after him. While maybe not a lowlight, for all the good he did, you’d think he’d at least get a statue.
Jacob Shallus
Jacob Shallus was literally the Constitutional Convention Intern. Shallus' name does not appear on the document but an investigation into the penman for the 150th anniversary of the Constitution revealed his identity as the transcriber of the signers’ ideas and design decisions.
In other words, its his handwriting you see whenever you see a picture of the original document. PowerPoint slide deck work before PowerPoint. Shallus was paid $30 (equivalent to US $726 in 2023) for his engrossing and transcribing work to make 4 copies of the document.
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