James Wilson (250)

James Wilson (14 September 1742–21 August 1798) was a lawyer, Declaration Signer, Constitutional Framer, and Supreme Court Justice, and a member of the American Philosophical Society via his 1768 election to the American Society. Born in Scotland to a rather large farming family, Wilson’s father hoped James might enter ministry for the Church of Scotland; James studied at St. Andrews from 1757–62, with little satisfaction. When his father’s death freed him, James attempted accounting for a time but ultimately decided in late 1765 his destiny lay in British North America. In February 1766, Wilson became a tutor at the College of Philadelphia, soon began to read law with John Dickinson, and by 1767 took on cases in western counties. Settled in Reading, Pennsylvania, his practice grew, as did his holdings and his family. He drank deeply from the well of English political theory and philosophy: he read Blackstone, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, but also the French philosophes like Montesquieu. Little wonder, then, that he rose to the fore as the imperial crises heated: in 1774 he served on the Committee of Observation for Cumberland County and was elected to represent Cumberland at the Provincial Conference, and in 1775 was a Cumberland delegate to the Provincial Convention before his election to the Continental Congress in May.

He was no radical: his was a Whig philosophy that held constitutionalism and tradition in balance with popular sovereignty and democratic republicanism. He was a cautious Signer of the Declaration of Independence, a moderate voice in the construction of the Articles of Confederation, and a member of the bloc that hoped to undo the radical Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. That stance led to him losing his Congressional seat, until moderation prevailed again: he returned in 1782 and 1785. Only James Madison surpassed Wilson’s influence on the design of the new federal government at the Constitutional Convention in 1787: the wellspring of good government was in the people, who sat sovereign. Other Framers widely deferred to the primacy of his political thought; at the Pennsylvania ratifying convention Wilson overawed the antifederalist position through a combination of will and erudition. Washington appointed him a Supreme Court Justice in 1789.

But the brilliance of his legal mind did not extend to other fields. His student Bushrod Washington would succeed him on the Court, but Wilson had a poor reputation as a law teacher. Worse still, his insider access to the Bank of Pennsylvania and the Bank of North America enabled his poor land speculations, which landed him in debtor’s prison twice amid rumors of impeachment in 1797 and 1798. (In 1794 he consolidated loans totaling $71,000!) But he was less greedy than overambitious, a point amplified by Wilson’s support of benevolent and civic life throughout Philadelphia. Wilson was an active APS Member, donating $20 toward the revival of 1779–80 and played a role in the location and construction of Philosophical Hall. He supported the Fire Company, Pennsylvania Hospital, the and the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, among others, and was the President of the St. Andrew’s Society (1786–96) and an original trustee of Dickinson College (1783). Creditors and poor health sent him flying to North Carolina for a respite; there his already fading star burned out. (PI, ANB)