James Wilson

James Wilson was born in 1742 in Carskerdo, Scotland, studied at St Andrews and other Scottish universities, and emigrated to Pennsylvania, where he read law. In 1774 he published a pamphlet arguing that Parliament had no authority over the colonies. He sat in the Continental Congress, at first hoping for reconciliation, then voted for independence and signed the Declaration. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787 he was one of the most important legal minds in the room, defending a strong national government and popular election, and he signed the Constitution and helped win its ratification in Pennsylvania. President Washington named him to the first Supreme Court. In the 1790s Wilson speculated disastrously in land, was briefly imprisoned for debt, and fled from creditors. He died in 1798 at a friend's house in Edenton, North Carolina, his great public gifts shadowed by private ruin. Students can learn from both halves of that story.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · Benjamin Franklin · Robert Morris · Benjamin Rush · George Clymer · John Marshall