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Friday, June 26, 2026
Opinion|The Founder We Need Is the One We Don’t Remember
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/opinion/declaration-independence-constitution-james-wilson.html
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The Founder We Need Is the One We Don’t Remember
June 26, 2026, 5:02 a.m. ET
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By Jesse Wegman
Mr. Wegman, a contributing Opinion writer and a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, is the author of “The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution.”
On a cool Monday morning in October 1779, three years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, an armed mob of militiamen set out in search of Philadelphia’s elite.
The war against Britain had dragged on for more than four years, and ordinary Philadelphians were suffering from the skyrocketing costs of bread, flour, salt, sugar and other necessities. Pennsylvania’s leaders had failed to impose price controls. By fall the militias were ready to act.
“We have arms in our hands and know the use of them,” one member said in a statement printed in The Pennsylvania Packet that summer. “We will no longer be trampled upon.”
By 10 a.m. on Oct. 4, a large crowd had gathered at Burns’s Tavern on 10th Street. The people were hungry, angry and out of patience. On their list of targets were some of Philadelphia’s wealthiest residents, including James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration and one of the young nation’s leading lawyers.
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Wilson and his family lived in a grand, four-story brick townhouse on the corner of Walnut and Third Streets. It would have stood out for its extravagance at any time, but especially at a moment of citywide desperation.
Wilson’s wealth wasn’t the only source of the radicals’ suspicion of him. In 1776 he had delayed voting in favor of independence, then strongly opposed passage of the state’s constitution, which was by far the most democratic of the founding era. More recently he had defended Loyalists who had been accused of treason after the British occupation of Philadelphia.
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Jesse Wegman, a contributing Opinion writer, is a former member of The New York Times editorial board, a senior fellow at the Kohlberg Center at the Brennan Center for Justice and the author of the forthcoming “The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution.”
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