Dave Davies

I mean is it going to be proportional to their population?

Is it going to be equal numbers of electors for the states?

How does that work out?

Trevor Burrus But in the end, they come up with a document that will bring a far more unified country because there's a strong central government.

There is popular election of the members of the house and some participation by voters in the election of the senate and the president.

So it's a lot of what Wilson wanted.

Trevor Burrus

There is of course this glaring hypocrisy here in that it tolerates a half million humans being held in bondage and women are denied the right to vote as well as other basic rights.

What if anything did Wilson have to say about those so disenfranchised and exploited?

Need to take another break here.

Let me reintroduce you.

We are speaking with Jesse Wegman.

His new book is The Lost Founder, James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People's Constitution.

We'll talk more after this break.

This is Fresh Air.

So this government that was drafted by these 50 men in Philadelphia has endured.

I mean not without some problems.

I mean we needed a civil war to settle the question of slavery and another century to recognize basic civil and voting rights.

And of course women couldn't vote until the 1920s.

But this basic structure of an elected congress and a president, an independent judiciary, the three branches checking one another's power has kind of held together.