Jesse Wegman

And this is one of the ironies of Wilson's life and of his role in our founding.

And it's a complicated one.

And I take him to task for it in the book, which is he really, I think, did not go after slavery with the energy and the commitment of some of the other founders, including slaveholders themselves, who were quite open about the evil, the moral evil of the practice.

Wilson actually introduces the three-fifths clause, which counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a free person for purposes of representation in Congress and for taxation.

Now, Wilson didn't come up with the three-fifths number himself.

It was already there floating around from earlier debates under the Articles of Confederation.

But the fact that he was willing to countenance that, the fact that he –

It's more important for us to have a union here, even if it means the perpetuation of slavery, I think really undercuts a lot of his fundamental commitments to equality, to popular self-rule, to the basic dignity of humans.

And in the book, I quote a number of his contemporaries being very open about the fact that this is an evil.

This is a moral profanity.

And Wilson is really quite muted on this point.

And it's something that there's no good resolution to.

He wanted the union more than he wanted an end to slavery.

And he accepted – although he was opposed to slavery, he accepted this compromise.

And I think he doesn't get a pass for that.

Absolutely.

And Wilson was the strongest advocate for popular self-rule.

You know, he says at one point, can we forget for whom we are forming a government?

Is it for men or for the imaginary beings called states?

It is all a mere illusion of names.