Jesse Wegman
speaker
281 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 6 Jul
Jesse Wegman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
We know that Thomas Jefferson, who was
the writer of the Declaration of Independence, had whole sections of Wilson's essay, this essay on the authority of parliament, pasted into his commonplace book where he kept quotes that were important to him.
We know that the essay as a whole
And historians going back now about 100 years have theorized that Wilson's essay was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, influence on Jefferson as he sat down to draft those famous words of the Declaration.
That's right.
Yeah, so this is in some ways the most shocking riot of the revolutionary period because it is Americans targeting other Americans.
You know, they're in the middle of a war against Great Britain at the time for their independence.
And this really shakes a lot of the people down to their core.
Wilson is one of the elites of Philadelphia at this time.
He is a leading lawyer.
He's become very wealthy.
He has a young and growing family with his wife, Rachel.
And he's enjoying the high life.
For all his commitment to popular rule and to the power of common people to govern themselves, he really is happy being an elite.
And he's an awkward guy too.
This is part of what I think made him fall out of the founding narrative, our national narrative of the American founding.
is that he's a difficult guy to get to know and to like.
And so he doesn't have a lot of, let's say, social capital at the time.
And in 1779, it's a pretty tough time.
And so people like Wilson stand out.
Showing 61–80 of 281 · page 4 of 15
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