Signing Their Rights Away Page 3

  Though he hailed from the fourth most populous colony, Gorham expressed concern that the smaller states might get lost in the representation shuffle. He was in favor of redrawing state lines so that populations would be spread evenly among the colonies, a zany idea that didn’t gain much traction among his fellow signers.

  Perhaps Gorham’s most significant contribution came on the last day of the convention, when he proposed increasing the number of representatives in the House to 1 for every 30,000 citizens (instead of 1 for every 40,000, the figure then under consideration). Before the motion could be debated, the usually reticent George Washington voiced his support—and when George talked, people listened. This change became the very last alteration made to the Constitution before the delegates added their signatures. (If only Gorham could see America now: the average population in a congressional district has ballooned from 30,000 to 700,000.)

  After the Constitution was signed, Gorham urged his colleagues back in his home state to ratify the new document. The idea of an enlarged and empowered central government was a hard sell in Massachusetts, that hotbed of revolution. The vote passed by an extremely narrow margin, and Gorham’s hopes of becoming a representative in the new government were dashed. Instead, the state chose Declaration of Independence signer Elbridge Gerry, a delegate who attended the Constitutional Convention but ultimately refused to sign the document.

  It was the beginning of Gorham’s spectacular decline. Like many of his cosigners, Gorham saw great promise (and the possibility of great wealth) in land speculation. He and his business partner, Oliver Phelps, invested in six million acres in an area of western New York that had been ceded to Massachusetts. They bought the parcel for the bargain-basement price of roughly £300,000 (about $1 million), payable in three installments. But their estimated costs were based on the 1787 value of Massachusetts “scrip,” a certificate that was exchangeable for cash at a later date.

  Unfortunately for Gorham, the new government guidelines established by the Constitution were about to transform the economy. As Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton worked to establish a central financial system (and pay off the country’s old debts), the value of old securities rose dramatically. Gorham and his partner now owed roughly four times as much on their land contract as they’d originally estimated. The two men went bust, as did countless others in similar situations.

  Just a few short years later, in 1796, Gorham died from “apoplexy,” or most likely a stroke. You can visit his grave in Charlestown, the Boston neighborhood that is also home to the end of the Freedom Trail, Bunker Hill, and the USS Constitution.

  The Signer Who Always Ran (and Never Won)

  BORN: March 24, 1755

  DIED: April 29, 1827

  AGE AT SIGNING: 32

  PROFESSION: Lawyer

  BURIED: Grace Episcopal Churchyard, Jamaica, Queens, New York

  Rufus King was the Ralph Nader of early American politics—every few years he would run for vice president or president, and every time he would lose. But these ambitions didn’t surface until late in his life, long after he’d helped shape the United States Constitution.

  When King was born in 1755, his coastal hometown of Scarborough was part of Massachusetts (it’s now a part of Maine). He was the son of a wealthy merchant, a staunch Tory who had defended the Stamp Act. In 1766 local patriots ransacked the family’s home, and in 1774 they intimidated the elder King at his house. One historian claims that this event led to the old man’s death a year later, in 1775, and instilled in Rufus a love of order and reason.

  At the encouragement of his loving but firm stepmother, young Rufus worked hard in school and was rewarded with admission to Harvard College. Afterward, he served briefly in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. One morning, during a break in the fighting in Rhode Island, King was sitting at breakfast with his superiors. Cannon fire broke out, and King left his place to investigate. Another soldier, an officer named Henry Sherburne, wandered in for breakfast and took King’s spot at the table. At that moment, a cannonball smashed through the window, landed underneath the table, and crushed every bone in the officer’s foot. His leg had to be amputated, and poor Sherburne wore a wooden limb for the rest of his days. Lucky King later told friends, “If this had happened to me on the field, in active duty, the loss of a leg might have been [bearable], but to be condemned through all my future life to say I lost my leg under a breakfast-table, is too bad.”

  By the time he arrived in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention, the thirty-two-year-old King was a brainy Massachusetts legislator and Congressman whose gift for speechmaking, the history books would have you believe, allowed him to trade law for politics forever. (Don’t kid yourself: an inheritance from his father—and his marriage to Mary Alsop, a wealthy sixteen-year-old New York socialite—meant he could have underlings manage his business and mercantile interests for the rest of his life.) A handsome five-foot-ten man with a sweet high-toned voice, he outshone his convention colleague Nathaniel Gorham and became the de facto spokesman for the state of Massachusetts and the larger group of so-called big states, which included Pennsylvania and Virginia.

  King was a logical man, and he knew a good argument when he heard one. At first, he was adamantly opposed to tinkering with the Articles of Confederation, but fine speeches by other delegates won him over. He became an ardent supporter of a strong Constitution for the sake of the union. In one of his more famous speeches on the convention floor, he argued that the states under the Articles may have seemed appealingly sovereign, until you realized that they were also deaf and dumb: they could not effectively communicate with foreign nations upon whom they relied for trade. They were also completely vulnerable to attack, because they had only limited resources to raise troops and defend themselves. “A union of the States is a union of the men composing them, from whence a national character result to the whole,” King was quoted as saying by unofficial note taker James Madison.

  King detested slavery and lobbied hard before the convention to prevent the spread of “that peculiar institution” in the largely unsettled lands north of Ohio. He argued that slavery distorted national politics; it gave the South an unfair advantage over the North, both in the production of goods and in population. This stance made him unpopular with some southern delegates, but he didn’t care. The nation was divided not so much into big and small states, he insisted, as it was into North and South. Prescient words.

  After signing the Constitution, King promoted the document as the nation’s last best hope for a strong union. This message was a hard sell in fiercely independent Massachusetts, but the state finally became the sixth to ratify. King hoped to become one of the first Massachusetts senators under the new Constitution, but his personal life was undermining his political aspirations. Since marrying a New York socialite in 1786, he was spending more and more time away, and his political cronies viewed him as an outsider. In 1788, at the urging of Alexander Hamilton, King extinguished the last relic of his Massachusetts life—his law practice—and moved to New York for good. He immersed himself in politics there and was elected to the Senate a year later (beating out Declaration of Independence signer Lewis Morris, among others).

  King was reelected to a second term in 1795 but resigned to accept an invitation by President Washington to be U.S. minister, or ambassador, to Great Britain. He served in this post under the country’s first three presidents, returning in 1803 to launch a series of runs at the executive office. He twice ran for vice president under his old convention colleague, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. The duo lost in 1804 to Thomas Jefferson and George Clinton and, in 1808, to James Madison and George Clinton. In 1816 King launched a third campaign, running for president against James Monroe, but lost that bid as well. (“Lost” is something of an understatement. King and his running mate, John Eager Howard of Maryland, were obliterated, 34 electoral votes to 183.)

  But his political career was far from over. King enjoyed two mo
re terms as a senator and offered some stirring remarks on slavery when Missouri was being considered for statehood. The nation was already divided between “slave states” and “free states,” and King waged a valiant battle to make Missouri one of the latter. In a famous 1820 speech (attended by whites and free blacks), he spoke of how he could not comprehend slavery. “I have yet to learn that one man can make a slave of another,” he said. “If one man cannot do so, no number of individuals can have any better right to do it.” These were stirring words, but he lost the fight. Much of the northern land that was part of the Louisiana Purchase, then dubbed the Missouri Territory, would be slave-free, but Missouri ended up a slave state, all courtesy of the political agreement known as the Missouri Compromise.

  King bid farewell to the Senate forever when President John Quincy Adams asked him to serve yet again as ambassador to Great Britain. Now seventy years old and slowing down, King happily sailed for London, where he had a merry old time, until he fell ill and asked to be relieved of his duties. Two years later, he died at his estate—King Manor in Queens, New York—at the age of seventy-two. Today that estate is open to visitors.

  III. Connecticut

  The Signer Who Lived the Longest

  BORN: October 7, 1727

  DIED: November 14, 1819

  AGE AT SIGNING: 55

  PROFESSION: Lawyer

  BURIED: Christ Episcopal Church Cemetery, Stratford, Connecticut

  When William Samuel Johnson arrived in Philadelphia in June 1787, people expected big things. At age fifty-nine, this eminent lawyer with dark, smoldering eyes was one of the elder statesmen of the convention; he had earned two diplomas from Yale as well as honorary degrees from Harvard and Oxford. His reputation as an intellectual heavyweight preceded him, and everyone addressed him deferentially as “Dr. Johnson.” And yet, he remained surprisingly quiet while the framers hammered out the Constitution, contributing not as much as his fellow Connecticut delegates. Why was he so silent? As his story shows, Johnson was nothing if not cautious.

  He was the son of a prosperous, educated clergyman from Stratford, Connecticut, who instilled a deep love of learning in his “Sammy.” Despite his father wanting him to become a preacher, the boy pursued law instead. He ended up becoming a prosperous attorney in Connecticut, at a time when many lawyers found it hard to earn a living. He married a wealthy young woman named Ann Beach, whose dowry enlarged his fortune considerably. (He would later tell one of his sons that “marrying well” was “the most easy and agreeable method” of getting ahead.)

  Johnson was drawn into politics in 1765 during the Stamp Act controversy, when Americans objected to the levying of an unpopular new tax on all paper products. Everyone seemed to be losing their heads except Johnson, who wisely covered his bases. He spoke out against the tax … and then applied to be one of the tax collectors! He was a clearheaded, moderate thinker: just because he considered the taxes unwise didn’t mean they wouldn’t have to be collected. Johnson’s neighbors must have respected his judgment. Rather than string him up, in October 1765 they sent him to the Stamp Act Congress in New York, where he and men from nine colonies tried to develop a coherent response to Parliament’s action.

  Johnson was rewarded for his middle-of-the-road stance with an invitation to represent Connecticut in London in 1766. This position was a lofty one; every colony had an “agent” in the great city of the Empire. (Ben Franklin was Pennsylvania’s agent at the same time.) These agents did not vote, but they were responsible for presenting the views of the colonists to lawmakers. Over time, Johnson came to respect British politics and the stability offered by their system. He returned home in 1774 with big career plans, but the American Revolution dashed them all to pieces.

  During the war, Johnson tried to do the impossible: he wanted to remain completely neutral. He had friends who were patriots, he had friends in Parliament—so why should he have to pick sides? Some historians estimate that 15 to 20 percent of the white male colonists were loyalists; 40 to 45 percent were patriots. That means the remainder of colonists—a figure as high as 35 to 45 percent—were neutral, seriously conflicted, or in need of convincing. Johnson may have been on the fence, but he sure wasn’t lonely up there.

  Johnson’s experiences during the war shed light on the difficult position of Loyalists and neutrals during the eight-year conflict. He declined invitations to attend the Continental Congress and refused to lead men in his colony’s militia, even though he held the rank of colonel. Instead, he worked for peace, and he was twice arrested by patriots after trying to negotiate between the two sides. He finally quit the Connecticut Legislature, because he felt they had embarked on a treasonous course of action. Barred from practicing law, he and his family were forced to live off savings. But once the war was over, Johnson returned to favor among his neighbors. Towns still needed lawyers and thinkers, after all, and he was one of the best.

  Johnson was reticent about attending the Constitutional Convention, but his delegation was active and he never missed a meeting. He lent his support to the Great Compromise and addressed the convention about the wisdom of this decision. He also chaired the Committee of Style and Arrangement, which finalized the language of the document.

  When it came time to ratify the Constitution in Connecticut, Johnson was a persuasive salesperson. He insisted that the United States as everyone knew it would cease to be without this powerful new Constitution. “Our commerce is annihilated,” he told one group of Connecticut residents. “Our national honor, once in so high esteem is no more. We have got to the very brink of ruin; we must turn back and adopt a new system.” He admitted that the document was far from perfect, but he added, at last, “If we reject a plan of government, which with such favorable circumstances is offered for acceptance, I fear our national existence must come to a final end.”

  It was rare for this cautious old lawyer to utter such a strong opinion, and perhaps legislators in Connecticut knew that Johnson meant business. Regardless, his state became the fifth to ratify the Constitution, and afterward Johnson served as one of Connecticut’s first two senators. He was, at age sixty-one, the oldest man in Congress. He stayed only a few years and then resigned to throw himself into his lifelong passion, nurturing the small college in New York that would one day become Columbia University.

  It was a long, lustrous life, and he even remarried at age seventy-four, a few years after the death of his first wife. When he finally died, in 1819, Johnson was ninety-two years old, the oldest of any signer of the Constitution.

  The Signer Who Knew How to Compromise

  BORN: April 30, 1721

  DIED: July 23, 1793

  AGE AT SIGNING: 66

  PROFESSION: Cobbler, Lawyer

  BURIED: Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut

  Hardworking, experienced, and a fashioner of fine footwear, Roger Sherman was a man who knew how to compromise—a skill that not only saved the Constitutional Convention but also gave the United States one of the key elements of its government, then and now.

  Sherman is the only founder to sign the four most important documents in the early history of the United States: the Articles of Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. But he was no pampered planter’s son sent off to England to study law and buy fancy wigs. No, Sherman was the son of a working farmer and cobbler—one of a handful of signers, including Hamilton and Franklin, who hailed from humble beginnings. He spent most of his youth in what is now Stoughton, Massachusetts. Money was scarce, but the house had plenty of books, and Sherman was a voracious reader. One popular tale—the truth of which pales in comparison to its charm—says that Sherman slaved away making shoes with a book propped open on his work bench.

  After his father’s death, Sherman headed to New Milford to join one of his brothers, and legend has it that he traveled the more than 150 miles by foot while toting all the tools of his trade. (One can only assume he was wearing comfor
table shoes!) Upon arriving in Connecticut, Sherman found work surveying property boundaries. He also opened a store with his brother and found time to publish his very own almanac. In 1749, his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth Hartwell, moved to Connecticut to marry him.

  When one of his neighbors needed help with a legal dispute, Sherman lent a hand, and a local lawyer encouraged him to enter the profession. So the shoemaker passed the bar, and yet another skill was added to his growing resume. Over the years, Sherman worked as a town selectman, justice of the peace, county judge, and state senator. He held some form of public office his entire adult life and was often dependent upon the jobs for his income.

  In 1760, Elizabeth died, leaving Sherman with seven children to look after. He moved to Chapel Street in New Haven and opened a bookstore near Yale, an institution he would serve in various roles over the years (the university would later grant him an honorary degree). He also remarried, to Rebecca Prescott, and added another eight children to the Sherman clan.

  A moderate patriot who favored nonviolence, Sherman attended both the first and second Continental Congresses, from 1774 to 1781, as well as the Congress of the Confederation, from 1783 to 1784—all while making time to serve as a judge back home. He even held the post of mayor in New Haven. In Congress, Sherman was well respected from the get-go, garnering praise from even the most hard-to-please delegates. Notoriously prickly John Adams considered Sherman a friend and described him as “honest as an angel and as firm in the Cause of American Independence as Mount Atlas.” Thomas Jefferson described him as someone who “never said a foolish thing in his life.”