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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, one thing we like is a good mystery. Sometimes about really big things, but most times, the little mysteries are the best.
Our Lost and Found is currently filled with pants. I don't know. I've never seen this happen.
Wait, this is true?
This is true. Mysteries of every size, each week, This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. As we celebrate America's 250th birthday, we'll hear a lot about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others.
But what if I told you that one of the nation's founders, one of only six who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, a critical voice at the Constitutional Convention, and arguably the man most responsible for the government we've had for two centuries, is someone you've never heard of? That's precisely the case made by our guest today, Jesse Wegman.
He's a journalist who writes about the Constitution and democracy. Wegman's new book is about James Wilson, a man regarded as one of the American colony's most brilliant lawyers in the late 18th century and one who led a colorful and impactful life. He was nearly killed during the Revolutionary War when rioters attacked his house in Philadelphia.
He later became a Supreme Court justice and died at the age of 55 in the back room of a tavern in North Carolina on the run from the law and creditors.
But Wegman argues that a careful review of records from the founding show that James Wilson was a highly influential figure in crafting the Constitution and a powerful voice for democracy, insisting that direct rule by the people should be the guiding principle of the new government. Jesse Wegman served for 12 years on the editorial board of The New York Times.
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Chapter 2: Who was James Wilson and why is he considered a 'Lost Founder'?
Jesse Wegman, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Thanks for having me.
You know, you write about James Wilson and how he was a significant lawyer in the colonies in the 1760s when tensions between the colonies in Great Britain were growing. And he wrote this essay, which was a groundbreaking legal analysis, which concluded that the British Parliament had no legitimate authority over American colonies because all lawful government existed.
is founded on the consent of those subject to that government. This essay proved very influential in the years to come. And as I was reading about this, it struck me, these ideas don't seem so novel or revolutionary. I mean, to the modern ears, it's commonplace. We have lived with This notion of government by this consent of the government for a long time.
And I wonder, was it hard for you as you got deeply into this research to get into the mindset of the 18th century when these ideas were really new?
That's a great question. And I was at first having trouble remembering how radical these ideas were at the time. They aren't particularly new to us now. They weren't even particularly new then. I think a lot of people were saying bits and pieces of these things, obviously. You know, the consent of the governed goes back to Locke and before.
And many of these ideas are floating around, but nobody took them up with the clarity and the vigor of Wilson. And I think that that came through in this essay, which he writes as a 26-year-old who's just come over from Scotland on a boat a few years before to the colonies and
And, you know, apprentices in law and quickly becomes one of the sharpest and most sort of forward-thinking lawyers in the colonies. So he writes this essay in 1768 in which he says, all men are by nature equal and free. No one has a right to any authority over another without his consent. All lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it.
So these are words and phrases that we actually know very well because ā Several years later, they end up only slightly altered in the Declaration of Independence. And so when I see these words coming, you know, eight years before the Declaration of Independence comes out, I think, who is this guy? You know, how did I miss him? Did I skip some class?
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Chapter 3: What significant contributions did Wilson make to the U.S. Constitution?
James Wilson was like a few of the framers of the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton, I think, being the one people are most aware of, he was an immigrant. And he was born into a poor farming family in the lowlands of Scotland outside of Edinburgh. And so he has this pretty standard Scottish upbringing for a young farm boy of the, you
He grows up in the Presbyterian church, which is far more democratic in its governance than, say, the Anglican church or the Catholic church. The parishioners vote for the elders. There's much more involvement by the regular people in the church than in these other churches where it's much more of a top-down hierarchy. So Wilson is ā he's imbued with this ā
democratic notion of governance early in his life. He's also educated in schools in Scotland that are explicitly there to educate all Scottish children. Everybody is expected to get an education. Everyone is expected to learn to read and write. So Wilson, you know, by the time he's a teenager, he is already sort of filled with these just very natural ideas of democracy,
democratic rule, the equality of all people, and the sense that everybody, no matter what their station in life, where they come from, has equal access to the truth and has an equal right to govern themselves. And that's what he brings over to America. And it's true, you know, few if any of the other founders that he worked with had that kind of background, had that kind of upbringing.
Right. He immigrates to the United States and settles in Pennsylvania, gets a law degree, and quickly becomes a well-recognized and prosperous lawyer. He eventually is a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776, which drafted the Declaration of Independence. What have you learned about his role in drafting that document?
So Wilson does not have a direct role in the drafting of the Declaration itself. That's obviously Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and a few of the others that we know well. But what Wilson did do was write this essay that he first drafted in 1768, arguing that the British Parliament had no authority at all over the colonies.
This was a groundbreaking argument at the time because everyone else was trying to argue that, well, Parliament has some power over us, Parliament is sovereign over us, but You know, they can't impose taxes. You know, all of the things that we know the colonists were arguing over are against this backdrop of parliament being sovereign, parliament having ultimate authority over the colonies.
James Wilson is the first to argue, no, they have zero. They have no authority over us at all. Now, this is such a groundbreaking argument that one of his mentors reads it and says, James, you're a young man. You have a big career ahead of you, don't put this out there yet. It's too bold.
So he kept it secret for what, six, eight years?
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Chapter 4: How did Wilson's early life in Scotland shape his views on democracy?
It gives Congress massive power to legislate for the nation and over the states. And, you know, there's a huge amount of resistance to it from the opponents of the Constitution who come to be known as the anti-federalists. But Wilson pushes strongly for the inclusion of this clause because he believes Congress cannot legislate. It can't do its job.
The federal government can't do its job without an enormous amount of power, without enormous latitude and authority to pass laws and do the things that a federal government needs to do, such as raise an army, collect taxes, all of these things. Congress has used that clause throughout American history to justify its power to pass laws that have transformed America.
So I think Wilson himself is really at the heart of giving the federal government the power that it has today.
Another big, big issue that they had to resolve at the Constitutional Convention was the nature of the executive branch of the government. And today we're used to the idea of a single chief executive, the president, chosen in a national election. But this was not assumed at all, right?
I mean some people saw ā maybe thought the executive branch should be a council controlled directly by congress. Wilson felt that it's critical that you have a strong executive and that it be vested in a single person. What were the objections and alternatives? How did that debate go?
Well, this is how I came to Wilson in the first place. I was writing my book on the Electoral College and I was looking through the notes of the Constitutional Convention, James Madison's notes. to find when was the moment that the electoral colleges adopted.
And here's this guy, this long-winded Scott, who keeps saying things that sound more like they come from our era than his own, and saying, you know, the president should be a single person, which was not at the time fully agreed upon, and that he should be elected directly by the people. When Wilson says this about the president being a single personā
James Madison records what he calls a considerable pause in the room. You know, the other delegates are sitting there basically shifting in their seats. Nobody's very comfortable at this prospect. You know, they don't want to have another tyrant like King George there.
And they're also sitting right there in front of another George, George Washington, who is widely understood to be the frontrunner for any sort of executive office that might be created. So everyone's feeling awkward at that moment. Wilson is not at all. He says this is obvious. Of course, we need a single executive who has the power to carry out his duties.
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Chapter 5: What was Wilson's role in drafting the Declaration of Independence?
So the most popular proposal out there is 18-year terms. So on a nine-member Supreme Court, that would mean that every two years, a new vacancy would open up and every president would, by definition, get two appointments to the Supreme Court per term.
The justices who finish their 18-year term would be allowed to stay on as senior justices, which is the system we have now in the lower federal courts of appeals. But I think it would make a really big difference in giving people the sense that there wouldn't be this unpredictability, this sort of unfairness where one president gets four picks to the court and the next one gets zero.
We want a Supreme Court that basically reflects the country as it is today, not as it was decades ago.
You know, you write regularly on constitutional questions. You have a substack, right? Major questions, I think, is what it's called. And, you know, as we talk about this stuff, I mean, these are interesting but very tough questions and require a lot of knowledge and thought. And, you know, you want to bring experience to bear.
And when I think about the fact that, you know, nobody reads a newspaper anymore and, like, internet memes capture our attention so quickly with all the algorithms of the ā Do we have a shot at actually doing ā thinking rationally about government anymore?
I mean it's ā I think the founders faced this same question. There was a real concern that most people would not understand politics, were not educated enough. At that time, they were largely right. And I'm not going to stand here and say I think social media is an unalloyed good.
But I do think we also live in this moment of incredible explosion of good writing and thoughtful commentary on the constitution, on democracy, on the way that we can live together as a people, an incredibly large and diverse country. When the founders built this country, they were trying to do something that had never been done before, which was to design a republic that
you know, over an expanse that was larger than any that had been tried in the past. And I think we're still in some way trying to do that. We're trying to keep a government running that is far larger and more diverse than anyone could have imagined.
And I mean, I'm actually, when I read other writers and other thinkers, not just legal scholars, but regular people talking about what they want and what they imagine for the country, I'm actually quite invigorated by it. I think most people want
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