The Founder the U.S. Needs Is the One We Don’t Remember

More than anyone else, Wilson would be forgiven for sharing these fears, and yet only eight years later, he led the fight to devise a constitution that gave much more direct power to regular citizens than any of his peers wanted to, a document he drafted explicitly in the name of “we the people,” and then helped ensure was ratified by special state conventions, not sitting legislatures, to emphasize the idea of popular sovereignty.

In fact, Wilson, who was born into a poor farming family in Scotland before immigrating to America as a young man, had long argued for placing more power in the hands of the people. Throughout his life, he held to that ideal. To him, America’s founding documents were inextricably linked.

The Declaration’s soaring preamble — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” — and the Constitution’s opening phrase — “We the People”— are the Genesis of our civic scripture, repeated today with such frequency and familiarity that many Americans forget which one goes with which document. But these words did not resonate in the same way with most of the country’s founders.

Excerpt: George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay — these are the most famous men associated with the American founding, yet, according to research by William Ewald, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, none appear to have uttered the Declaration’s preamble aloud in public after 1776. Not “created equal,” not “self-evident,” not “pursuit of happiness,” not “unalienable.”

But one founder did: James Wilson. He quoted from the Declaration constantly, including one day on the floor of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia. In notes Madison recorded that day, Wilson pulled out a copy of the Declaration and read aloud from it, arguing that it proved that the states had declared their independence “not individually but unitedly.”

Wilson’s insistent focus on one, united people was the natural consequence of his commitment to popular sovereignty: the idea that the people are, as he put it, “the legitimate source of all authority.” In other words, the people, not the states, are the ultimate fount of power in government.