"ONE FOUNDING FATHER, INVISIBLE,

WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL"

AN ADDRESS ON JAMES WILSON

AS PRESENTED TO THE CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB,

AT THE CLIFFDWELLERS,

ON APRIL 28, 1997

HUGH J. SCHWARTZBERG

HUGH J. SCHWARTZBERG, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, APRIL 27, 1997.

WILSON SPEECH

The man who dreamed the United States, the man who invented the American Presidency, the essential designer of the United States Constitution, is the invisible man in American popular history. Periodically, James Wilson is rediscovered, with some sense of excitement. All too soon, History has her way with him again. He is once more forgotten, only to be exhumed again, buried again, the memory again repressed.

Wilson's story is hardly a hidden one. Hugh Brogan, in his current one‑volume Penguin History of the United States, notes that "The deepest thought lying behind the new Constitution was expressed by James Wilson."

Irving Brant wrote a six‑volume study of James Madison, and came to the conclusion that Wilson was the more intelligent of the two men. Recently, there have been some who refer to Wilson as the "Architect" of the United States Constitution.

Next year, 1998, will be the 200th anniversary of Wilson's death. It is unlikely that the government for which he was the principal designer will provide any posthumous celebrations for James Wilson.

The man who cast the deciding vote for the Declaration of Independence, the man who understood that this Country must stand as "we the people," the first Justice of the United States Supreme Court, died in disgrace. The Supreme Court gave him no eulogy, no final service. Wilson was buried

where he died, in the small town of Edenton, North Carolina.

Let us begin with the last act of this Grand Opera. In 1796 Wilson had been in and out of debtor's prison in Philadelphia. He fled from the bailiffs of Philadelphia, who would have arrested him again. He fled first to Burlington, New Jersey, but he was arrested there. He was bailed out by his son, and next fled to Edenton, where he was arrested by another of his creditors, Pierce Butler of South Carolina, a fellow‑ signer of the Constitution, who sought recovery on a note which Wilson had co‑signed for $179,000.00. Not a small sum in 1797. Butler was, after some time, talked into allowing Wilson to be released, but that was just one of his creditors. For more than a year before his death, a sitting Justice of the United States Supreme Court had been avoiding the bailiffs, living in a Tavern.

His son urged him to file bankruptcy, but Wilson pointed out that one friend who had taken that route was still being held in jail, years after his filing. The Northern schoolmaster for Wilson's young son wrote to Wilson, asking for tuition, and suggested that new clothes were also needed for that young man. That student himself later wrote to his older brother that he was "coming out" of his last pair of trousers.

Meanwhile, Wilson had written to the Supreme Court, asking to be assigned to ride the Southern Circuit, presumably because most of his creditors were to be found in the North. Wilson's wife was bewildered by all of this. What could he be thinking of, Hannah Wilson wondered; he has only one suit left, and one battered hat, and I, she wrote, have only one dress. Her husband had not told her about his arrests. What do they think of us back home, wondered Hannah. One contemporary diary reads: "Poor Wilson I pity him from my soul; he is a good man."

Wilson had never liked the South, or its climate, which he considered unhealthy. Now he caught malaria. In periods of high fever, he was raving, with intermittent periods of lucidity. And so he died, on August 21, 1798.

In most of the early histories of the United States, all mention of any of the Supreme Court Justices was left out. Later, the history of the first decade of the Supreme Court seemed to get overlooked.

He who had wanted fame, is largely forgotten. Instead, slowly, but quite surely, Wilson's notions about what the structure of the United States government should be have taken living form. Through custom, process, and amendment of the Constitution, most of his vision has become reality. We are living in James Wilson's dream, and although it was originally constructed largely out of thin air and theoretical principles, the product of his vision, his logic, his arguments, remains effective more than two centuries later.

He was an immigrant, a "foreigner," "Jamie the Scot," "Jamie the Caledonian." He was born on September 14, 1745, on a small family farm. His mother had learned enough of her letters to sort of write her maiden name, Alison Lansdale, although with no great consistency as to its spelling. She wanted her bright young son to be university educated, to become a minister in the Presbyterian Kirk.

James himself entered nearby St. Andrews United College with the help of a scholarship, at the age of fifteen. He later became a college drop‑out, presumably because of the financial burden caused by his father's death. For a while, young Wilson found work as a tutor. He studied, or was about to study, accounting and bookkeeping with a firm in Edinburgh, but when he was 22, a group of his friends and relatives raised enough money to send him off to the new world, to make his fortune. Most of those early friends eventually came to believe that James Wilson had forgotten them.

Arriving in Philadelphia, he again became a tutor, but within a year of his arrival, Wilson was studying law with John Dickinson. The very next year, in 1767, Dickinson began to publish "Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania," thereby becoming a prominent pamphleteer on behalf of the Colonial causes. That was also the year when James Wilson began to practice law, in Reading, Pennsylvania. The next year, 1768, Wilson wrote his own pamphlet on behalf of the colonists, but did not publish it at that time. Wilson's piece was to become one of the major pamphlets of the period which preceded the Revolution. It was entitled "Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament." The thrust of Wilson's pamphlet was that the British Parliament had no authority over America and that America could continue to be loyal to the king under certain circumstances. What Wilson did, in effect, was to invent the British Commonwealth, as a form of offer‑in‑settlement to Great Britain.

Wilson married Rachel Bird of Birdsboro, the daughter of a wealthy ironmaster, in 1771. Wilson had already moved on to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In Carlisle, Wilson became Chairman of the local Committee on Correspondence. By age 32, nine years after having arrived in the United States, Wilson was, in effect, the political leader of his town.

That was in 1774, when he was lawyer of record for about half of the cases to be tried in the Cumberland County Court. He practiced law in eight counties.

That year also, he was elected to the First Provincial Convention for Pennsylvania, held in Philadelphia that July. '74 was also the year when Wilson finally published his Considerations pamphlet, although in somewhat revised form. At the next year's Provincial Convention, he would be chosen to give the principal oration.

Now it is important that we get our history straight. The Stamp Act controversy had been current when Wilson arrived in this Country in 1765. The Boston Tea Party was December 16, 1773. The British military occupation of Boston was on May 13, 1774. The First Continental Congress opened in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774. On February 9, 1775, the British Parliament will declare Massachusetts to be in rebellion. The battles of Lexington and Concord will then soon follow.

Wilson's 1774 publication of his "Considerations" is therefore on the eve of the Revolution.

Buried in that pamphlet is a single paragraph in which James Wilson sets forth the ultimate beliefs on which our nation will be founded, and on which the Declaration of Independence will be constructed, eight years after this pamphlet's initial composition, and two years after Wilson publishes it.

One aspect of Thomas Jefferson's genius was his ability to see enormous implications in the first seeds of ideas which were presented by others, and to restate those ideas in written words which echo and re‑echo in the mind. To deny Jefferson the origination of the ideas contained in the Declaration of Independence is not to join the current foolish chorus which is bent on trying to tear down Jefferson's reputation, or to deny Jefferson's greatness. Jefferson never claimed that the ideas contained in the Declaration were original with him.

In 1774, James Wilson published the words, "All men are, by nature, equal and free." And in 1776, as we all know, Jefferson wrote: "we hold these truths to be self‑evident, that all men are created equal."

What did James Wilson mean when he said "all men are, by nature, equal and free"? To ask that question, of course, is also to ask what we mean when we declare that "all men are created equal." The first professor of law to lecture on our legal structure in light of the new American Constitution will be Professor James Wilson. The audience for his initial lecture included President and Mrs. George Washington, and Vice President and Mrs. John Adams. Wilson may well have bored them, for these were real law lectures, designed in part to destroy Blackstone's then rather recent theories of monarchy. Wilson's lectures, given in 1790 and 1791, will expand on the theories implicit in his earlier statements.

When we, in 1997, proudly declare that "all men are created equal," we are declaring two different ideas. The first is a belief in the equal worth of each human soul, an implied declaration of the essential similarity and oneness of humankind. The second is a declaration of the political equality of any two voters: one person equals one vote. Sometimes we pretend that the nation means only one and not the other of those two different ideas, but that is mere pretense. To deny either is to diminish this nation's creed. Wilson clearly believed in both, with the same ambiguities we have long practiced.

For the first meaning, the egalitarian dream, he was to offer the following explanation in those law lectures:

"In civil society, previously to the institution of

civil government, all men are equal. Of one blood all

nations are made; from one source the whole human

race has sprung."

For the second meaning, he offered the following, without making any distinction between these two meanings:

"When we say, that all men are equal; we mean not to

apply this equality to their virtues, their talents, their dispositions,

or their acquirements.

* * * * *

"But however great the variety and inequality of men

may be with regard to virtue, talents, taste, and

acquirements; there is still one aspect, in which all men in

society, previous to civil government, are equal. With

regard to all, there is an equality in rights and in

obligations. . . . The natural rights and duties of man

belong equally to all......"

Wilson moved ineluctably from the equality of humankind to majoritarian voting based on universal suffrage.

When Jefferson wrote the Declaration, he went on to say that:

"they are endowed by their creator with certain

inalienable rights and that among those rights

are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Jefferson is again paraphrasing the James Wilson of the 1774 pamphlet, at least to the extent that the "happiness of the governed" is a Wilsonian concept. The pursuit of life, liberty and property had been the formula for John Locke, and it was Locke's formula which John Adams moved and was formally adopted by the first Continental Congress in 1774, as the very first resolution of that first Congress.

Wilson never did subscribe to Locke's formulation. To Wilson, consent to government:

"is given with a view to insure and increase the

happiness of the governed, above what they could enjoy

in an independent and unconnected state of nature. The

consequence is, that the happiness of the society is the

first law of every government."

So we get as our national purpose not "the greatest good of the greatest number," and not the protection of property, but the right to pursue on an individual basis what makes us happy, perhaps the farthest reach of the individualist portion of our national creed.

Wilson rejected the glorification of "property" for several reasons. Obviously it rang the wrong bells when one thought of slavery, which both Wilson and Jefferson hated, even though both held slaves at that time. But that was not all. Much later, at our national Constitutional Convention in 1787, James Wilson rose to discuss "wealth" and "property." A number of voices had been raised at that Constitutional Convention on behalf of property requirements as a pre‑condition of voting, or serving as a United States Senator. Others feared that new settlers in the West would outvote the East. Here is the complete text of the speech Wilson gave in response, based on Madison's notes, but without Wilson’s Scottish burr::

"If a general declaration would satisfy any

gentleman I have no indisposition to declare my

sentiments. Conceiving that all men wherever placed

have equal rights and are equally entitled to confidence,

I view without apprehension the period when a few

States should contain the superior number of people.

The majority of people wherever found ought in all

questions to govern the minority. If the interior Country

should acquire this majority, it will not only have the

right, but will avail themselves of it whether we will or

not. This jealousy misled the policy of Britain with

regard to America. The fatal maxims espoused by her

were the Colonies were growing too fast, and that their

growth must be stinted in time. What were the

consequences? First, enmity on our part; then, actual

separation. Like consequences will result on the part of

the interior settlements, if like jealousy and policy be

pursued on ours. Further, if numbers be not a proper

rule, why is not some better rule pointed out. No one

has yet ventured to attempt it. Congress has never been

able to discover a better. No State as far as I have

heard, has suggested any other. In 1783, after elaborate

discussion of a measure of wealth, all were satisfied then

as they are now, that the rule of numbers does not differ

much from the combined rule of numbers and wealth.

Again, I cannot agree that property was the sole or the

primary object of Government and society. The

cultivation & improvement of the human mind is the most

noble object. With respect to this object, as well as to

other personal rights, numbers are surely the natural &

precise measure of Representation. And with respect to

property, they cannot vary much from the precise

measure. In no point of view, however, could the

establishment of numbers as the rule of representation in

the first branch vary my opinion as to the impropriety of

letting a vicious principle into the second branch."

Another basic American and Wilsonian idea is to be found in that 1774 pamphlet:

"All lawful government is founded on the consent of

those who are subject to it."

As we shall see, for James Wilson that consent had to be real. That meant that he wanted the people themselves to ratify the United States Constitution directly. It meant that he wanted the President, and the House of Representatives, and the Senate, each of them, to be subject to direct, frequent and repeated elections by the people. He emphasized that a one‑time election was insufficient.

I have assumed, of course, that Jefferson was well aware of Wilson's pamphlet, and had either absorbed Wilson's basic formulations fully, or had Wilson's actual pamphlet before him when he drafted the Declaration. Jefferson, decades later, denied that any pamphlets were before him (perhaps suggesting that the question of such a source had already been raised) but Jefferson also asserted that he had never claimed that the ideas which he was presenting were original with him. One of Jefferson's more recent biographers, Alf J. Mapp, Jr., in his fine two‑volume study, concludes that if Jefferson "copied most from himself, he seems to have drawn next most heavily from James Wilson in his pamphlet, 'Considerations' . . ."

Mapp expressly notes that same paragraph of Wilson's which I first quoted above, and he concludes that Jefferson's and Wilson's words, "though not cut from the same die, would seem to issue from the same mint." But Mapp also concluded that if Jefferson is like Wilson, Wilson is also like Locke, Hutcheson, Lord Kames and Burlamaqui. Mapp's words are a handsome tribute to Wilson, although the differences between Wilson and the other named sources are, I believe, important.

There is still another possible explanation for the transfer of ideas from Wilson to Jefferson. Between 1774 and 1776, Wilson's exact words appear to have sparked more than one torch. His words seem to have reverberated in the national ear in a most remarkable way. Wilson's 1774 formulation, you will recall, was that "all men are, by nature, equal and free." In 1776, on May 15th, Virginia adopted its Bill of Rights, a document clearly and recently known to Mr. Jefferson, when he sat down to draw the Declaration. Virginia declared that "all men are by nature equally free and independent," which is pretty close to Wilson's "all men are by nature equal and free." "All men are by nature equally free and independent," said Virginia, and declared that Government best which produced the "the greatest degree of happiness and safety." The draftsman, George Mason, added: and which also protected against "maladministration." Mason also included a provision that "all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people."

Even after the Declaration of Independence had become a guideline for our public faith, Wilson's ideas were not necessarily clear to all of the nation, or even to much of it. It has taken the combined work of Wilson and Jefferson and Lincoln and countless others to make our democratic faith a reality. But as far as I am able to determine, much of that faith flows through James Wilson. The difficulties which Wilson later had in making that faith understood during our Constitutional Convention are themselves a tribute to his own historical importance.

The 1774 pamphlet was a remarkable success.

We can get some idea of the power of Wilson's pamphlet, and the reception which it received, from a letter of Francis Lightfoot Lee of December 1774. Francis Lightfoot Lee in '74 was a delegate to Virginia's House of Burgesses and will be a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in '75, along with his brother, R. H. Lee. Frances sends this letter to London, to one of his two brothers there, both of them active in London politics on behalf of American causes.

"R. H. Lee will send you the political letter you

desire by the next opportunity. In the meantime, he

recommends it to you to put it into the hands of ... Chatham

and Temple a pamphlet written by Mr. Wilson of Philadelphia. The title is "Considerations n the Nature and the Extent of

the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament" . . . .

This pamphlet is no doubt to be had in London. I have read

it & I think it a compleat refutation of their Lordships' position.”

In January, 1775, at the Pennsylvania Provincial Convention, Wilson supported the right of Massachusetts to fight the proposed changes to its Charter, and affirmed the right to resist. Wilson argued that however difficult it is to establish an original contract for the first institution of a state in other circumstances,

"it is the easiest thing imaginable to prove it in our

constitution . . . . .

And he also said that the ultimate end of the King's laws is

"the interest and happiness of his subjects."

The Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775. This time, James Wilson is present as a delegate. The war that began in Massachusetts is now three months old. Among the delegates from the three largest states are James Wilson and Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania, John Adams and Samuel Adams and John Hancock from Massachusetts, and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Richard Henry Lee from Virginia.

Jefferson's forte was not the give‑and‑take of public debate, and he participates very little in such, but impresses many as a thinker and a draftsman. Jefferson did take notes, and thereby preserved certain speeches by others. Here is Jefferson's version of one of Wilson's speeches, slightly edited. [I have done so in an attempt to more fully and clearly reflect the obvious wording of the original:]:

"Taxation should be in proportion to wealth, but

representation should accord with the number of

freemen. Government is a collection or result of the wills

of all. If any government could speak the will of all, it

would be perfect; and so far as it departs from this it

becomes imperfect. It has been said that Congress is a

representation of states; not of individuals. I say the

objects of its care are all the individuals of the states.

It is strange that annexing the name of "State" to ten

thousand men, should give them an equal right with forty

thousand. This must be the effect of magic, not of

reason. As to those matters which are referred to

Congress, we are not so many states, we are one large

state. We lay aside our individuality, whenever we come

here."

* * * * *

"The probability is much greater that the larger

states will disagree than that they will combine. I defy

the wit of man to invent a possible case or to suggest

any one thing on earth which shall be for the interests of

Virginia, Pennsylvania & Massachusetts, and which will

not also be for the interest of the other states."

That debate on the Articles of Confederation was concluded on July 12, 1776, just after passage of

the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson left Congress that September.

Wilson and Adams continued to serve on an enormous number of committees of the Congress, and were both very active in floor debate, often serving on many committees at the same time.

Let's backtrack a moment.

The Continental Congress held a deep belief in civilian control of the military, and it placed oversight of the Revolutionary War in the hands of a three‑man committee, the War Board, consisting of Wilson, Adams and George Blythe, with Adams as Chairman. It was, Adams noted, the most exhausting task he ever undertook. Our general ignorance of that civilian control of the military may be partially excused by a fire which later destroyed most of the records of the War Board.

On June 15, 1775, George Washington was placed in charge of the Continental Army by the Continental Congress.

By the end of 1775, the military assault on Canada had failed, and Washington was pleading for aid. Could he not at least get the uniforms which had been used by our defeated soldiers? And why hadn't his Christmas letter been answered? That original dispatch is marked to be assigned to Adams and Wilson and Blythe.

Meanwhile, back in Carlisle, a militia had been formed. Wilson, in absentia, is elected a Colonel.

In February of 1776, the Continental Congress designated James Wilson to prepare an address to the colonists to strengthen the national resolve. Note that the Congress does not assign a committee to do so; it assigns one man, James Wilson. Wilson's draft of February 18, 1776, included the following:

"If common Rights, common Interests, common Dangers and

common Sufferings are Principles of Union, what could be

more natural than the Union of the colonies."

Voting on the actual Declaration of Independence was delayed until Wilson could get the Pennsylvania legislature to change the instructions which had forbidden its delegates (including Wilson) to vote for Independence. When this is done, Wilson has to convince two of the other Pennsylvania delegates to abstain rather than voting "nay." The Convention then allows James Wilson to cast the symbolic, deciding vote for independence. Jefferson, Adams and others sign a pamphlet in which they explain that as soon as Wilson was able to do so, he had supported the Declaration, and signed it when everyone else did.

On July 4, 1776, instead of spending the entire day celebrating, we know that Colonel Wilson sat down and named the officers for the German regiment of Pennsylvania. The letter itself, written and dated in his own hand, lies in the archives of the Chicago Historical Society, where it appears to have been overlooked.

The debate on independence helps trigger a new constitution for the Province of Philadelphia. This 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution, like that in most of the colonies of that time, gave lip‑service to separation of powers, but Judges were re‑elected by the Legislature, and the executive was weak, almost powerless, and itself dependent on securing agreement within an executive council of twelve. In reality, this was Government by legislature, and Wilson hated it. Others loved their new

Constitution, if only because it had introduced almost universal suffrage.

1777 saw the end of Wilson's first legislative career. Those who had passed the '76 Pennsylvania Constitution did not like the idea of continuing to send their severest critic back to represent them.

By the time that Wilson returned from Congress to his home in Carlisle, his national reputation among the country's leadership, as one of the major figures of the country, was secure.

Let me cite one odd proof. In '78, Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote a letter to Patrick Henry of Virginia arguing that the Continental Congress no longer had any great legislators:

"America looks up to her councils and arms for

protection, but alas! what are they? Her representation in

Congress dwindled to only 21 members. Her Adams, her

Wilson, her Henry, are no more among them."

Including Henry as a great man may just have been flattery, but, in this context, this mention of Adams and Wilson can only be interpreted as indicating that in Rush's eyes, at least, these were already the great figures in American legislative annals.

Whether the people at large already understood his role may, of course, be a different matter.

The British vacate Philadelphia in June of '78, because the French have come into the war. Wilson moves to Philadelphia, and becomes a great lawyer.

The redcoats had looted the city. All the rebel resentment against the occupiers now breaks loose against Tories and Presumed Tories and Quakers of all sorts. The cries of "treason" and "death to traitors" are heard in the land.

In the Fall of '78, Wilson defends several of those who are accused of being traitors. At least two of these are put to death, despite Wilson's pleas for mercy, after an unsuccessful defense. Wilson had attempted to limit treason to situations in which there were two witnesses to the same overt act, but had been overruled by the trial judge. So now you know why the U.S. Constitution defines treason as it does, although Wilson's proposal will puzzle Madison during the Convention.

In '78, as a lawyer, Wilson argues a prize ship case before the Continental Congress' Committee on Appeals. Wilson won the appeal, but the State Court refused to recognize the national ruling, on the ground that the Appeals Committee had dealt with both the law and the facts. So now you know why the U.S. Constitution says that federal courts have jurisdiction on appeal over both the law and the facts.

Wilson was the lawyer for members of the Penn family. He was a lawyer for Tories; he was a lawyer for rich merchants. He was the lawyer for Haym Salomon (who thought Wilson charged too much), and for Robert Morris (financier of the Revolution to some, but war profiteer to others.) None of this endeared Wilson to the populace‑at‑large.

In '79, the fight against the Pennsylvania Constitution of '76 was heated up by Wilson once again. The Constitutionalist Party were the defenders of the '76 Constitution. They gained support from those who wanted price controls and from militia men who were being paid in Continentals, which rapidly depreciated in value to almost nothing. The Secretary of the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council, Timothy Matlack, implied that Wilson's Republican Party, which is to say the Anti‑Contitutionalist Party, were being financed by "British Gold."

Charles Wilson Peale, the famous artist, served as chairman of the Contitutionalists. Peale attacked the "defaulters," "the forestallers," "the monopolizers," "the enemies of the cause." Now from the militia there arose a mob that would rid the country of its "un‑American elements." At first, their intent was to force the women and children of these "Tories" out of the city. Later, the words to be heard from the mob were: "Get Wilson." The mob/militia tried to convince Peale himself to take charge of their march on Wilson, but Peale begged off on political grounds: it might hurt him in the next election. Peale leaves, and, seriously afraid of the whirlwind he had reaped, Peale runs off to get the Governor. The mob moves to arm itself and to advance on Wilson's house. It is October 4, 1779.

Some twenty of Wilson's friends now arm themselves, and begin to drill in front of Wilson's house. As the mob approaches they move inside.

By this time, the mob has arrested some citizens, and they were dragging them along. When they reach Wilson's house, Captain Campbell, an invalid officer from the regulars of the Continental Army, appears at Wilson's second‑story window, with his pistols. Campbell orders the mob to move on. Captain Campbell is shot dead. In the ensuing gunfire on both sides, four of the mob are killed.

The militia brings up a mortar. They break down Wilson’s doors. One of the militia bayonets one of the defenders. Another defender is shot through both hands, before the militia are forced out. The door is barricaded with desks and chairs. Now, more mortars are being brought forward.

The Governor, his boots unlaced, arrives with troops, in time to drive off the mob.

Peale himself later testified that if the Governor had been much later, every single person inside the Wilson home would have been killed. The Governor's arrival caused most of the mob to flee. After rounding up some of the remainder, the Governor rushed off to try to stop the Germantown militia from adding their firepower to this battle, leaving Peale to help see to the prisoners. The Governor returned to find that Peale (the Constitutionalist Party Chief) had talked the man‑in‑charge, Timothy Matlack (the Constitutionalist Secretary of the Executive Council), into releasing the mobsters on bail, on their own recognizance.

Wilson's friends now convince Wilson to flee for his life. He hides out in an attic on Robert Morris' farm, outside the city. Morris had been one of those inside the Wilson house, and Morris sends word that Wilson must not return until things have quieted down, and that the farm is not safe. Morris has great difficulty in convincing Wilson not to come back immediately in order to try to organize Philadelphia, house‑to‑house.

Five months later, in March of 1780, everybody is pardoned. The Wilson family home has become known as "Fort Wilson." The external enemy is now faced by all once again, as that other war, the Revolutionary War for Independence, continues.

A nation founded on "no taxation without representation" sometimes acted as if its real creed was "no taxation at all."

In March of 1780, James Wilson, apparently as an act of patriotism, gathered some fellow Philadelphians to form a Bank of Philadelphia for the purpose of buying supplies for the Continental Army.

The money was raised, but Wilson's plea to the Pennsylvania Legislature to take over the bank and to use it as part of a general pattern of fiscal reform, failed. By September, the new bank's funds were exhausted.