Tag: U.S. Constitution

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Roger Sherman, Low-Key Founding Father

The committee which drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776. From left: Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Roger Sherman (1721–1793), Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), Robert R Livingston (1746–1813) and John Adams (1735–1826). Original Artwork: Printed by Currier & Ives. (MPI/Getty Images)

Among the Founding Fathers, Roger Sherman is one of the best-kept secrets. But he shouldn’t be, especially in light of the cumulative and lasting effect he has had on this nation, including the present-day debates on the meaning and legal effect of the Ninth Amendment.

Most notable is the fact that he is the only Founding Father to have signed all of these prominent founding documents: the Declaration and Resolves (1774), which contain many of the rights that are enumerated in the First Amendment; the Articles of Association (1774), which was a trade boycott with Great Britain; the Declaration of Independence (1776); the Articles of Confederation (1777); and the U.S. Constitution (1787).

Sherman’s influence on the Constitution was greater than most realize. Historian Richard Werther wrote in 2017 in the Journal of the American Revolution that, at the Constitutional Convention debates, “of 39 issues cited, Sherman prevailed on 19, Madison on 10, and 7 resulted in compromises (the other 3 were interpretational issues for which no clear-cut winner is determinable).” Werther adds, “While no one is arguing that Sherman, not Madison, assumes the mantle as ‘Father of the Constitution,’ clearly Sherman had a bigger role than may have been previously understood.”

As a boy in Connecticut, Roger Sherman was self-educated in his father’s library and later by a newly built grammar school. He managed two general stores. Although he had no formal education in law, he passed the bar exam and was admitted to the bar in 1754. He wrote and published an almanac each year from 1750 to 1761. He served as a mayor, a justice of the peace, a county judge, a Connecticut Superior Court judge, and as a delegate to both the First Continental Congress and the Second Continental Congress. After ratification of the Constitution, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1789 to 1791 and in the U.S. Senate from 1791 until his death in 1793.

Sherman’s reputation was stellar. He was described as honest, cunning, a staunch opponent of slavery, a devout Christian who was outspoken about his faith, and a protector of states’ rights. William Pierce, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention who took extensive notes, said of Sherman, “He deserves infinite praise, no man has a better heart nor a clearer head. If he cannot embellish he can furnish thoughts that are wise and useful. He is an able politician, and extremely artful in accomplishing any particular object; it is remarked that he seldom fails.”

Role in the Bill of Rights and the Ninth Amendment

Originally, Sherman was opposed to adding a bill of rights to the Constitution due to its being “unnecessary” and “dangerous.” He, like other Federalists, stated that it was unnecessary as the powers enumerated in the Constitution granted limited authority; if certain powers were not enumerated and delegated, then the federal government wouldn’t have the authority to infringe upon the rights in question. Plus, the states had their own constitutions protecting their citizens’ rights, and the Constitution is concerned only with federal guarantees, not states’ guarantees. The Federalists considered it dangerous to list certain rights as it could be construed that other rights not singled out were surrendered to the government; in other words, if they were not written down, then those rights would not be considered protected.

The original Constitution was signed by 39 delegates on September 17, 1787. It was during the First Congress on June 8, 1789, that James Madison proposed to “incorporate such amendments in the Constitution as will secure those rights, which they consider as not sufficiently guarded […] to satisfy the public that we do not disregard their wishes.” After Madison persuaded Congress to create a Bill of Rights, the proposals were referred to a House select committee, the Committee of Eleven, which took up the debates. In 1987, the National Archives discovered among Madison’s papers the only known copy of the deliberations of that House Committee, and they are in Sherman’s handwriting, most likely reflecting the thoughts of the committee as opposed to his personal views.

This discovery has created a vigorous debate among legal scholars as to the meaning and legal effect of the Ninth Amendment, the text of which reads, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”: namely, what are the rights “retained by the people” referring to, and what legal effect do they have? To give context, it is essential to go back to Madison’s original draft regarding retained rights:

The exceptions here or elsewhere in the Constitution, made in favor of particular rights, shall not be so construed as to diminish the just importance of other rights retained by the people, or as to enlarge the powers delegated by the Constitution; but either as actual limitations of such powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution.

After the House committee’s debates and revisions, Sherman’s notes read:

The people have certain natural rights which are retained by them when they enter into society, such as the rights of conscience in matters of religion; of acquiring property; and of pursuing happiness and safety; of speaking, writing and publishing their sentiments with decency and freedom; of peaceably assembling to consult their common good, and of applying to government by petition or remonstrance for redress of grievances. Of these rights therefore they shall not be deprived by the government of the United States.

According to the Bill of Rights Institute, once the Bill of Rights was drafted, Sherman supported it, just as the people of Connecticut supported it.

Deborah Hommer is a history and philosophy enthusiast who gravitates toward natural law and natural rights. She founded the nonprofit ConstitutionalReflections (website under construction) with the purpose of educating others in the rich history of Western civilization.

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Founding Fathers History

Founding Father George Clymer: A Founder Twice Over

American politician George Clymer (1739-1813), circa 1780. Signed Declaration of Independence in 1776, Constitutional Convention member in 1787. Engraved by J.B. Longacre from a miniature by Trott. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

By the time George Clymer was 1 year old, both his mother and his father were dead. Orphaned, George was placed in the care of his Philadelphia uncle, William Coleman. Coleman was an extraordinary man—a lawyer and merchant of Quaker stock, a friend of Benjamin Franklin (and member of the latter’s Junto), a founder with Franklin of the American Philosophical Society and the University of Pennsylvania, and a leading philanthropist. In his “Autobiography,” Franklin described Coleman as possessed of the “coolest, clearest head, the best heart, and the exactest morals of almost any man I ever met.” And fortunately for young Clymer, uncle William loved him like a son.

Clymer was educated primarily in the extensive personal library of his new benefactor, where Coleman often found the lad poring over some tome or another. Clymer’s favorite author was Jonathan Swift. He thus developed a predilection for learning at a young age, and before long, he had adopted “republicanism” as a political philosophy. He thus cherished liberty as defined by Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard who, writing anonymously as “Cato” in the 1720s, characterized it as:

“The power which every man has over his own actions, and his right to enjoy the fruit of his labour, art, industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society, or any members of it, by taking from any member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.”

George’s education continued in his uncle’s counting-house, where he was trained in numbers—and the ins and outs of running a mercantile enterprise.

An Influential Merchant in Tempestuous Times

Clymer inherited some wealth from his grandfather in 175o. Then, with the death of William Coleman in 1769, he inherited the lion’s share of his uncle’s sizable estate as well. This was a great material blessing, of course, but these were tempestuous times. The French and Indian War had effectively removed the French from North America—but British authorities decided to leave ten thousand troops on the continent. To raise revenue in support of these troops, the various Navigation Acts—heretofore somewhat ignored—would finally be enforced, including a new set of regulations: the Sugar Act (1764). Colonists from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania had protested loudly at this, questioning Parliament’s very right to levy such a tax in the first place. Many colonials boycotted British goods.

The real uproar, however, came with Parliament’s passage of the Stamp Act (1765), which applied an internal tax on the colonies for the first time. In response, the Sons of Liberty rioted in the streets, colonial legislatures passed anti-Stamp Act resolutions, and an inter-colonial Stamp Act Congress issued a joint protest to Parliament and to the king. Clymer, now 26 years old and recently married, was among the protesting colonials. Indeed, among the Philadelphia elite, he was one of the most militant advocates of resistance to Britain.

Even though the Stamp Act was eventually repealed, Parliament immediately passed the Declaratory Act, reminding the colonists that Parliament hadn’t given up the principle that it could legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” The subsequent Townshend Acts demonstrated this, and once again the non-importation movement roared to life, crippling British exports. Clymer himself led boycott efforts in Philadelphia, at the same time authoring political pamphlets and broadsides in support of separation from Britain—a very radical view at the time. Despite the barrage of colonial opposition, Charles Townshend, the British politician who proposed the Townshend Acts, stringently enforced the acts. When the Massachusetts assembly issued an anti-Townshend circular letter, the governor dissolved the assembly, sparking mob violence, in turn precipitating the arrival of four regiments of British troops to Boston.

It was in this atmosphere that Clymer inherited his uncle’s significant mercantile business. He now had much more to lose, even as the military occupation up north produced ever-worsening relations between British authorities and the people of Massachusetts—and, by extension, those of other colonies as well. The killing of a twelve-year-old named Christopher Snider by a customs informer in Boston was the last straw, leading within a couple of weeks to the “Boston Massacre.” Troops were subsequently pulled out of Boston proper.

The Tea Act and Tea Parties

Though things seemed to quiet down after 1770, the Gaspee Affair of 1772—when a British customs schooner was attacked off the coast of Rhode Island—sparked both British and colonial outrage once more. The next year, the Tea Act was passed, favoring the British East India Company at the expense of countless American smugglers.

At 34 years of age, Clymer took charge of local resistance to the Tea Act. When the Boston rebels established a committee of correspondence with fellow rebels in Philadelphia, they particularly sought out Clymer. Clymer also played a leading role in Philadelphia’s Oct. 16, 1773 “tea meeting,” when, according to an early biographer, citizens of the city were impressed by Clymer’s “reasoning, sincerity, zeal, and enthusiastic patriotism.” The gathering produced a series of resolutions, one of which declared that:

“The resolution lately entered into by the East India Company, to send out their tea to America subject to the payment of duties on its being landed here, is an open attempt to enforce the ministerial plan, and a violent attack upon the liberties of America.”

The resolutions of the Philadelphia “tea meeting” inspired Bostonians to similar resolves. Indeed, Massachusetts man John Adams would later write that:

“The flame kindled on that day [Oct. 16, 1773] soon extended to Boston and gradually spread throughout the whole continent. It was the first throe of that convulsion which delivered Great Britain of the United States.”

That December, just days after Boston’s more famous “Tea Party,” Philadelphia held one of her own, intercepting a British tea ship. Clymer himself convinced the captain to turn around and return to Britain.

George Clymer thus helped set in motion the chain of events that would ultimately explode into armed revolution.

Signing the Founding Documents

After the “shot heard round the world” was fired at Lexington, initiating the American Revolutionary War, Clymer answered the call for “Patriot” volunteers, engaging the British in company with other Pennsylvanians in support of George Washington and the Continental Army. He also established a militia and helped fortify Philadelphia. Around the same time, and in a show of support for “the cause,” he poured much of his gold and silver into the Congress’s paper money, or “continentals,” eventually losing a fortune when the “continentals” were inflated into worthlessness. But when part of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Second Continental Congress rejected the proposed joint Declaration of Independence and abandoned that body, Clymer was elected to help fill their vacant positions.

This he did—and as such, he was present to inscribe his signature onto the new confederation’s founding document, along with 55 other men. “For the support of this Declaration,” Clymer and his fellows thereby announced, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Clymer went on to act as a liaison between George Washington and the Continental Congress, a risky business, since it often involved covert travel across enemy territory to the front; served in the Congress for most of the war years; helped formulate Pennsylvania’s constitution; secured an alliance with the Shawnee and the Delaware; and raised vital funds for the Continental Army. After the war, he continued to work as a merchant while serving in the Pennsylvania legislature, then represented that state in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. It was there that the Constitution was written. Clymer was a signatory.

Thus it was that Clymer became one of only half a dozen men to have signed both the Declaration of Independence and, 11 years later, the federal Constitution. In his honor, a borough and a township in Pennsylvania and a town in New York are all named after him.

Dr. W. Kesler Jackson is a university professor of history. Known on YouTube as “The Nomadic Professor,” he offers online history courses featuring his signature on-location videos, filmed the world over, at NomadicProfessor.com