James Wilson

• Born: September 14, 1742
• Birthplace: Carskerdo, Fife, Scotland
• Died: August 21, 1798
• Place of death: Edenton, North Carolina

Scottish-born American politician, legal scholar, and jurist

Wilson was a leader in the movement for American independence and a framer of the U.S. Constitution. Renowned for his learning in law and political theory, he developed the idea of an independent national judiciary—a supreme court—with the power to resolve questions of constitutional meaning, and was thus appointed to the first U.S. Supreme Court by President George Washington.

Areas of achievement Law, government and politics

Early Life

James Wilson was born on the small farm of his parents, William and Alison Wilson, north of Edinburgh, near St. Andrews, Scotland. The Wilsons were not indigent, but as more children arrived they were obliged to practice rigorously the thrift for which their countrymen are known. They were intensely religious people, deeply imbued with the stern theology of John Calvin. They were a literate people who believed that all should have direct access to the word of God by reading the Scriptures.

The young James Wilson showed an aptitude for learning, and it was decided that he should become a clergyman. There was always much reading aloud, mostly of religious books, at home, followed by discussions and debate. By the time he was fifteen, Wilson had studied Latin, Greek, mathematics, and science, and he was eager to continue his education. He walked the six miles to St. Andrews, where he entered a competitive examination for a university scholarship and won.

He completed four years of study at St. Andrews University, which had become part of the Scottish Enlightenment with its acceptance of the new ideas of Sir Isaac Newton, John Locke, Frances Hutcheson, David Hume, and other great thinkers of the time. While this put him in touch with currents of learning that were shaping the Western world, it also shook some of the more severe dogmas of his early Calvinistic thought. He had undertaken a fifth year of study, of divinity, when the death of his father required that he instantly return home to help support his mother and his three younger brothers.

At this point, Wilson abandoned the idea of becoming a clergyman and instead served as a tutor in a nearby family. Bored and restless, he soon went to Edinburgh and there became an accountant. This, too, soon bored him, and he began to plan to go to America, where some of his relatives and family friends had already settled. His mother hated the idea but finally gave her consent. Relatives and friends contributed what they could for the considerable expense of the move, and, with their support and blessing, in the fall of 1765, he sailed to a new world of opportunity, as so many of his countrymen already had done.

Life’s Work

James Wilson arrived in America with two precious assets, his St. Andrews University education and the driving ambition that made him leave Scotland. He also had a letter of introduction to Richard Peters, an Anglican cleric who was also a trustee of the College of Philadelphia. Thus equipped, he secured an appointment as a tutor at that institution. By that time, Philadelphia had become the foremost American city. It already possessed many of the best features of urban life. It was cosmopolitan and prosperous, and it offered cultural, intellectual, and even political opportunities.

Wilson was quite alert to all of this, and to the truly successful young lawyers who profited well from a litigious people. He was appreciated at the college, where he was even granted an honorary master’s degree in May, 1766, as an acknowledgment of his impressive learning, but he was restless, as always, and ambitious to get on with more momentous work and better remuneration. He decided to study law. He managed to enter the office of John Dickinson as an apprentice by borrowing money for the fee. Dickinson was already a legal luminary and destined to be among the most famous of Philadelphia lawyers; he was also deeply involved in the momentous political events of the next twenty-five years.

Wilson was able to add to his excellent general education and his prolonged pondering of theological and philosophical problems a searching study of the nature and meaning of law. His concern ran far beyond the procedures, forms, and practices of litigation. He immersed himself in the history and development of government in Pennsylvania and in England. He read the great classics on law and on constitutions, including the Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769) of Sir William Blackstone. His natural intellectual curiosity and zest for scholarship made him thorough and accurate; his striving ambition led him to arrange and retain this learning, ready for practical application.

In less than a year, he began his own practice, starting in the small community of Reading, the seat of Berks County, fifty miles from Philadelphia. For a time he had little business, but he expanded his efforts by getting admitted to practice in the neighboring counties of Lancaster, Chester, and Cumberland. Within another year or two, he had a good number of clients, a modest but growing income, and an enviable reputation as a young man of great promise. He moved to Carlisle in the fall of 1770, but he was somewhat distracted from his law practice by falling in love with Rachel Bird, a local heiress who, she said, had decided never to marry. Wilson persisted, and at last she consented; they were married in November, 1771.

By the early 1770’s, Wilson was a tall, strong young man with a somewhat awkward manner. His ruddy face usually bore an alert expression of genuine interest in what others might be saying to him. He was, though, quite nearsighted, and his peering through thick glasses struck some people as a mannerism of aristocratic arrogance. He had only a hint of the Scottish burr of his youth, and his speaking was clear, accurate, and persuasive. He was widely praised for the excellence of his court presentations, and in time he had a considerable reputation as a public speaker. The leading elements of Carlisle society accepted Wilson as one of their own quickly and easily. Many of them were Scottish, most were prosperous, and nearly all were deeply disturbed by the recent changes in England’s policies regarding the American colonies.

At the close of the French and Indian War in 1763, Parliament had begun to antagonize Americans through a new set of imperial policies. Wilson had arrived in America just as one of the most inflammatory measures, the Stamp Act (1763), had been enacted. It was denounced in America as taxation without representation, and there had even been intercolonial cooperation in the mounting resistance. It was repealed in 1766, but Parliament also issued a sweeping assertion of its total authority over the colonies. John Dickinson, Wilson’s legal mentor at that time, was greatly interested in the constitutional attack on Parliament’s pretensions to power, and when new taxes came in 1767, Dickinson became famous as the foremost expositor of the American resistance, writing under the name “the Pennsylvania Farmer.” Wilson then decided that he, too, should write an essay explaining his own ideas as to why the British parliament had no rightful authority over the American colonies. He was advised by trusted friends that it was too extreme, that it would anger many powerful men; while he was considering what to do, the hated taxes (except for that on tea) were repealed, political tensions were eased, and Anglo-American relations, most people believed, would again be harmonious. The essay was put away for a time.

New provocations came, however, and by 1773 it was Boston in the center of things, with the destruction of cargoes of tea (the Boston Tea Party) followed by severe punishment in the form of Parliament’s 1774 enactments, which closed the Boston port and instituted military government there. Parliament’s actions caused an uproar throughout the colonies. Mass meetings were held in many places, including Philadelphia and Carlisle. It was decided not only to express outrage against Parliament but also to hold a provincial convention in Philadelphia, consisting of delegates from all the counties of Pennsylvania, to take further action. Wilson became deeply involved; he was a delegate to the convention, and soon afterward, he revised his earlier essay and had it published.

The article received much attention, especially from the delegates who were now arriving in Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress. It was remarkable for its coherence, its unassailable argumentation, and, above all, its advanced notion of the nature of the British Empire. Wilson asserted that Parliament had no proper right to legislate for America, yet the colonies were bound by loyalty to the Crown as part of an imperial union of virtually autonomous units—a description of the very much later British Commonwealth of Nations. From this time onward, Wilson was widely regarded as a great thinker and leader in the American Revolution.

Wilson’s services in that cause were many. He was a member of the Second Continental Congress, where he served on a number of important committees. When the question of American independence became unavoidable, Wilson, who really doubted the idea, nevertheless finally supported it and signed the Declaration of Independence. In Congress, he was especially concerned about the difficulty of financing the war, and he worked closely with his friend, Robert Morris, in creating the Bank of the United States. He also was a strong advocate for the creation of a national domain out of the unsettled Western lands beyond the Appalachians, with a view to organizing new states there. By the end of the war, he was an ardent advocate of strengthening the central government, and he had become involved in a multiplicity of business affairs, many of them visionary schemes of land speculation.

Meanwhile, Wilson had been profoundly distressed at the course of the revolution in Pennsylvania. He thought that the new state constitution, widely regarded as a radical one, was a dreadful calamity, with its unicameral legislature, plural executive, loyalty oath for voters, subservient judiciary, and other novelties. His prominence in the bitter, persistent opposition to the constitution made him extremely unpopular with those in control of state affairs. In time they saw to it that he was no longer one of the state’s delegates to Congress. His ever closer association with Morris and others of the wealthy merchant-lawyer class in Philadelphia made him the target of many rumors of profiteering and corruption—so much so that, at one point, his house was besieged by a large, armed, angry mob. Several men were killed before relief arrived to lift the “siege of Ft. Wilson.”

After the War for Independence, Wilson’s business affairs became even more complex and uncertain; he seemed always to be plagued with cash shortages and debt. Luckily, the political climate gradually became more congenial for him. Opposition to Pennsylvania’s 1776 constitution grew, and the move to overcome the defects of the Articles of Confederation and build an effective national government got under way. This provided Wilson with the occasion of his greatest contribution to the new nation.

By 1787, Wilson had long since moved to Philadelphia; he was no longer a frontier lawyer, for he had gained entrance into the upper reaches of East Coast society, an eager participant in its great economic and political plans as well as social life. As a member of the Philadelphia Convention that drew up the U.S. Constitution, he was second in importance only to James Madison. He was perhaps the clearest expositor of the notion of dual sovereignty—the idea that the national government must be supreme in some matters, while states remained in control of others. He consistently urged that government must be based on popular participation, and he, along with Madison and a few others, managed at least to get one house of Congress elected directly by the voters. He tried in vain to ensure popular election of the president; he finally proposed the complex electoral college formula, which he thought better than having Congress choose the president, as so many wished. He thought it imperative to have strong executive power; he also argued that an independent judiciary was indispensable. He was extremely influential in the discussions of many of the most crucial features of the new U.S. Constitution.

Wilson was also a central figure in Pennsylvania’s quick action to ratify the Constitution. The Federalists, as the Constitution’s supporters were being called, now controlled the state government there, and they quickly managed to arrange a ratifying convention, to be held in November, 1787. At the convention, Wilson was their principal resource person and main speaker. Within three weeks, the convention voted to ratify (December 12, 1787). Only Delaware had acted faster, ratifying five days before.

Pennsylvania Federalists, continuing in firm control, had one more major item on their agenda: replacing the 1776 constitution. Soon the assembly agreed to a new constitutional convention, and Wilson was again hard at work. Few had despised the old constitution as Wilson had, and few had suffered as much abuse as a result. Now he had the great satisfaction of leading a congenial convention, dominated by those who thought as he did, in drafting a document that provided for a bicameral legislature, strong executive power, and an independent judiciary. He was the principal architect of Pennsylvania’s constitution of 1790.

Wilson wanted very much to be appointed the first chief justice of the United States; he even wrote an unfortunate letter to President George Washington suggesting this, and it received a stiff, noncommittal reply. He was appointed as an associate justice, a substantial consolation prize. His next triumph was of a different sort. He gave a series of lectures on law at the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania), in which he advocated the establishment of a distinctly American system of jurisprudence—a supreme court. The opening lecture (December, 1790) was attended by President Washington, some members of Congress, and many other dignitaries. Wilson stressed the close connection between law and liberty. All citizens of a free society, he said, must know something of the nature and elements of law, to preserve their freedom. Wilson had become the premier theorist of American law.

The last years of Wilson’s life were ones of disappointment and calamity. Of the modest number of cases that reached the Supreme Court in the 1790’s, only a few offered an opportunity for the enunciation of significant constitutional ideas. In the most important one, Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), Wilson was an important participant in the decision to permit citizens to sue states, but that bold exercise in constitutional interpretation was extremely unpopular, and it was soon overturned by the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution. Along with his colleagues on the Court, however, he managed to maintain the idea of an independent judiciary, and they also assumed the right to review the constitutionality of state and federal laws.

Wilson’s private business affairs occupied increasing amounts of his energy and his time. He had long been eager to acquire Western land, and now he became involved in one grand speculative project after another. None succeeded. Wilson’s financial losses were ever larger, and he was unable to repay loans and other debts when due. He was jailed twice by creditors, released at last on bail provided by borrowed money. Finally he fled to the home of his friend and colleague, Justice James Iredell of North Carolina, suffering severe mental stress and occasional derangement. After further illness, he died in Edenton, North Carolina, on August 21, 1798.

Significance

James Wilson was an important figure among those who launched the American Revolution. Trained in the law and seriously concerned about ideas of constitutional liberty, he rapidly came to the fore as a powerful advocate of American rights. This gained for him a place in various revolutionary committees, conventions, and other bodies where he brought energy, time, and talent to the cause of American independence. More than independence was needed, however, and Wilson knew it: The new country had to be governed, governed better than any other. It was in devising new arrangements of governing power that his greatest work was done.

His ideas for the new government of Pennsylvania were not popular for some years, though ultimately they did prevail when he assumed a leading role in drafting that state’s second constitution in 1790. His greatest service was in the Philadelphia Convention (1787), where he found sympathetic colleagues in the great work of drawing up a national constitution. He was a powerful advocate of strong executive power, but he believed that the executive should be chosen as directly as possible by the people. His idea of an independent national judiciary, possessed of the power to resolve questions of constitutional meaning, was one of his boldest ones. His notion of a federal union easily embraced the concurrent exercise of power by both the state and the national government, but his insistence on national supremacy in most major matters, such as foreign policy, war and peace, and regulation of trade, marked him as one of the most farsighted and prophetic of the nation’s founders.

The quality of his thinking continues to impress scholars and analysts of political theory and jurisprudence. His intellectual resources were extensive, and the logic of his discourses made them persuasive in his day. However, it was not his style to be succinct, and the scope of his thought was broad; these elements of his writings limited his influence with later generations, as did the severe decline in his prestige during his later years.

Certain of his personal qualities were the undoing of his reputation. He became importunate in his eagerness for fame and wealth, taking chances in one imprudent venture after another. He did not have that expansive personal charm that would create close friends who would be concerned that he received his due as a great patriot and a masterly architect of government in America. Nevertheless, his work endures, and the existing nation is, in many important respects, the one he sought.

Further Reading

Brunhouse, Robert L. Counterrevolution in Pennsylvania: 1776-1790. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museums Commission, 1942. A scholarly, reliable, and standard account of a movement of great importance in Wilson’s life. He was especially outspoken and perhaps tactless in denouncing the constitution of 1776, and the story of its being replaced is one in which he was a central figure.

Hall, Mark David. The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 1742-1798. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997. Analyzes Wilson’s political and legal philosophy, describing how these ideas influenced his contributions to the creation of an American republic. Explains his views of democracy, morality, and human nature.

Read, James H. Power Versus Liberty: Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, and Jefferson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000. Read examines the political ideas of some of the Founding Fathers, focusing on how they reconciled tensions between a powerful government and individual liberty. Wilson’s thought is examined in the chapter “James Wilson and the Idea of Popular Sovereignty.”

Rossiter, Clinton L. 1787: The Grand Convention. New York: Macmillan, 1966. A well-balanced portrayal of the convention. Rossiter’s organization of ideas, along with his readable prose, make this interesting as well as reliable. Includes a brief account of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and its first few years.

Seed, Geoffrey. James Wilson. Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus International, 1978. A very perceptive study of Wilson’s political ideas. The author’s intent is to secure Wilson’s place among the first rank of the Founding Fathers, and he argues the case well. Especially detailed analysis of Wilson’s contributions to the U.S. Constitution.

Selsam, John Paul. The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936. A basic story of the “radical” constitution produced by the revolution in Pennsylvania. The closest approach to democracy during the American Revolution occurred in Pennsylvania, where the new charter broadened the right to vote and rendered government especially responsible to the people. The book explains the central paradox of Wilson’s thought: his insistence on popular participation in government, but his loathing of this constitution.

Smith, Charles Page. James Wilson: Founding Father, 1742-1798. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956. Though in places needed sources of information do not exist, the author provides plausible probabilities. Readable, with sensitivity and well-balanced judgments of Wilson.

Tinkom, Harry M. The Republicans and Federalists in Pennsylvania: 1790-1801. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museums Commission, 1950. Examines the partisan controversies that became strident, turbulent, and even violent in the 1790’s, making Wilson’s life difficult. Scholarly and reliable on the sharply divided political scene.

Wilson, James. The Works of James Wilson. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Lorenzo Press, 1804. Reprint. Edited by Robert G. McCloskey. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967. A reprint of material published by Wilson’s son, with valuable additions. The editor’s extensive, learned introductory essay is especially good, and the “bibliographical glossary” is most useful in identifying Wilson’s vast scholarly resources. Mostly lectures on law, though nine miscellaneous writings include four important speeches.