The James Wilson chair on exhibit at the Cumberland County Historical Society is a large, classical Chippendale chair, perhaps too big for all of us, Wilson's cultural descendants, to sit in. For not only was James Wilson a big man physically, he was a big man politically. Indeed, during his time, it may surely be said that he was an oversized American in every significant respect. He was a man of great vision. His were always big thoughts, big ideas, big dreams, for himself and for his countrymen. As Marc Antony said of Julius Caesar, so it may be said of James Wilson that he, too, was an ambitious man for his family, his native state of Pennsylvania, and for his adopted homeland.
Many know, of course, that James Wilson helped to frame the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. But among most Americans, he is less well-known than the heroine of Carlisle at the Battle of Monmouth, Molly Pitcher. There is no question James Wilson has earned his place in American history, though not yet in popular folklore. It is no exaggeration to say that James Wilson was one of the more fascinating of the remarkable fathers of our country. He embodied so much of the extraordinary and the ordinary of colonial life, the dramatic differences and diversity in which these United States were created, the Herculean achievements which still set us apart as the greatest nation of world history.
James Wilson, himself, was a study in ironies: He was a successful Carlisle attorney for a rural community who became a cosmopolitan advocate for the Philadelphia elite. He was a university failure, turned constitutional architect, who had the self confidence to call his handiwork at the constitutional convention "the best form of government which has ever been offered to the world."
Born poor, become rich, James Wilson died poor, but he spent much of his life pursuing wealth and status. Intellectually a dedicated democrat, he was regarded by many of his fellow Pennsylvanians as an arrogant aristocrat. A Cumberland County pioneer, he went off to Philadelphia and the life of the big city grandee, but he never lost his fascination with the frontier. The son of Scots Presbyterians, himself a proud Scotsman, he was well prepared for the plain Scots-Irish settlers in Cumberland County when he came to Carlisle to practice law in 1771.
While he was born of modest Fifeshire farming stock, his aloof carriage, and his patrician bearing earned him the disdain of ordinary Pennsylvanians who thought him a snob. Apologizing for him, one of his good friends declared there was nothing haughty about James Wilson, for his "lordly carriage" stemmed merely from the barrister's attempt to keep his spectacles from tumbling from his nose.
In a major move into public life Wilson took up pen and politics in 1774, just before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War with England. He began his political career as a member of the Cumberland County Committee of Correspondence. He became a great advocate, and an eloquent correspondent, for his country.
“Every man in Cumberland County is a rioter at heart,” lamented Governor John Penn the year he ordered his family’s land in Lower Manor subdivided and sold. The concurrence of his remark and his order to sell may have been mere chance, but young Penn in this instance established himself as seer and prophet. When he used the word “rioter” he spoke of the seething Scotch-Irish, who were virtually the only group then living in the County.
The provincial town of Carlisle was fortunate to have among its mist for a short period a political theorist and talented lawyer, James Wilson. Born in 1742 at Carskerdo near St. Andrews, Scotland, Wilson studied at St. Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Emigrating to America in1765, he first took a tutoring job at the College of Philadelphia. Next Wilson studied law under John Dickinson...