FALLEN FOUNDING FATHER

JAMES WILSON

He quickly rose to prominence after being elected to represent Cumberland County in the Provincial Conventions of 1774 and 1775.

A member of the elite club of six Founding Fathers who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution

He wrote the legal argument for Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris’s proposed Bank of North America and presented it to the Continental Congress.

Elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1786 He was appointed by President George Washington as

an associate justice of the first United States Supreme Court in 1789.

The first professor of law at the College of Philadelphia (later known as the University of Pennsylvania) in 1790

JAMES WILSON

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

CONSTITUTION

One cool day in October of 1906 during a speech dedicating the new state capital building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, President Theodore Roosevelt roared the name of James Wilson. Over 100 years earlier, in 1798 Wilson had died near a farm in Edenton, North Carolina, where he had gone to escape a land speculation scandal that had erupted in Philadelphia.

James Wilson’s Downfall

In fact, that plan came to fruition when the substantial marble memorial tablet was set in place over the new gravesite of James Wilson at Christ Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the ceremonial proceedings of November 22, 1906. Since then, millions of visitors to Christ Church have passed his gravesite each year and read the inscription set there for all posterity.

Even to this day, James Wilson, despite the help and hype of one of the United States’ greatest presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, is still virtually unknown. Maybe it was the land speculation scandal at the end of his life that marred his legacy. But why, in particular, did it affect him? Many of the Founding Fathers were involved in land speculation, including Washington, Hamilton, and Franklin.

The difference was that James Wilson, like fellow Founding Father and financier Robert Morris, took it to the extreme. Wilson was unable to control his addiction and went beyond reason when land ownership became an obsession with him, and he made poor judgments in investments. Land ownership became a game to him, and the contest was who was going to die with the most land. Greed overwhelmed him, and it took everything he possessed. Both James Wilson and Robert Morris ended up in debtors prison, nearly penniless. They both paid the price for excessive land speculation: it damaged their reputations, which lost them the respect of the nation both during their lifetimes and in the years that followed, transforming them into the forgotten Founding Fathers.

Land Speculation

The circumstances surrounding Wilson’s death also raise questions. Did he run to far away North Carolina to escape the scandal, or did he have a more permanent solution to his financial complications in mind? His second wife was still in her 20s when he was almost 56. Not a soul in Edenton except a handful of acquaintances could identify him. Why did his family in Philadelphia not ask to have his body returned for a funeral in Pennsylvania or try to retrieve it in later years? Why did his young widow show up in Philadelphia with an unknown stranger as her new husband just a few months after Wilson’s “death” and announce that they would be moving to Great Britain?

What Really Happened?

“In the United States, there is an immense Quantity of Land, rich, well-situated, and in a salubrious Climate. This Land lies useless and unimproved from the Want of Labour and Capital and Stock. In Europe there is an Abundance of Labour and Capital and Stock; but rich and well-situated land cannot be obtained, unless at a very high Price. A Plan by which the surplus Labor and Stock and Capital of Europe would be employed on the unimproved Lands of the United States, must be eminently advantageous to both.” James Wilson

The problem developed when large purchases of land were made by Americans on credit and the steady stream of land-purchasing immigrants suddenly decreased because of the demand for men to fight the European wars. The European men were now being conscripted to serve in the armies of Europe, making them unable to travel to and buy land in America. This created a cash flow problem for the speculators because the downturn in prospective land purchasers was not conducive to their growth plan.

The recession of 1796-97 only added to the problem of the land speculators’ access to credit despite their mounting debt.

Land Speculation

Continental Congress had experienced a financial crisis from the very beginning, which resulted in a lack of funds available to pay for the Revolutionary War. However, the Continental Congress did come up with creative ideas to pay the Continental Army, to entice enlistment, and to prevent desertions and resignations.

Congress authorized bounty-land warrants for military service in the Revolutionary War under the Acts of 1788, 1803, and 1806.

The government had plenty of land and very little cash from the beginning of the Revolutionary War to the end of the century. The colonies, through Great Brittan, had acquired western land from the defeated French in the Seven Years War; the United States, through the Treaty of Paris 1783, had acquired the land east of the Mississippi River to the Appalachians or the previous western boundary of the original colonies north to Canada.

The Treaty of Paris more that doubled the size of the original territory of the colonies. Most of the land acquired in the Seven Years War was still state land, and most of the states ceded their western lands to the federal government after the ratification of the Constitution in 1788.

Land Speculation

The Great Yazoo Land Fraud

Georgia attempted to sell some of their western land to the United States for $172,428, but Congress responded with the condition of “all or nothing.”

Out-of-state land speculators formed three separate companies: The South Carolina Yazoo Land Company, Tennessee Land Company, and Virginia Yazoo Land Company, in order to buy and sell this land for a quick profit.

In response, the Georgia Yazoo Company was formed to keep the land within the state.

Land Speculation

From here it was all downhill for Wilson. Creditors and allegations followed him everywhere, and there was talk of his impeachment from the Supreme Court. Wilson fled to New Jersey, but in 1797 the authorities caught up with him and had him imprisoned in Burlington, New Jersey. His son Bird Wilson somehow found enough money to clear Wilson for bail, and Wilson fled south. He still owed Pierce Butler $197,000, and Butler’s agents caught up with him and had him jailed once more in 1798. Again, Wilson’s son bailed him out; but in July 1798, Wilson caught malaria in Edenton. After his young wife joined him, he was declared dead on August 21, 1798.

Land Speculation

NAME ON DEED John BrownCharles BiddleHugh BrachinridgeAlexander AddisonSamuel BiardJacob BarrPeter BayntonMark BiddleDaniel BradfordRob ClarkSamuel ClarkJohn ClarkDaniel ClaypooleJohn CoxeDaniel CookAnthony CrothersDaniel DelanyJohn DunlopJohn EddieAnthony HarthmanGeorge HughesMichael HillegasHenry HillegasJohn HeatonSam HockleyPeter MuhlenbergHenry HockleyGeorge HughsCharles Jolly

John Jolly Isaac JenkinsonFrancis JohnstonPeter KiddIsaac Leit, Jr.Jonathan LeitJohn LawrenceWilliam LawrenceWilliam LawrenceWilliam MarshallWilliam MacPhersonWilliam MeetkirkWilliam MayberryHugh MeansWilliam Nichols, Jr.

LISTED PENSION     

S34100S1752S39322      R3137           W9276      W5309W5309   S41807 R7649

LAND WARRANT  W9015, W9074        W8212W12958  BLW26708-160-55     W3230    BLWT1495-850     BLWT1148-500    BLWT338-60-55BLWT6-100-55BLWT2336-100   BLWT2032-150

NAMES ON THE CHEW DEEDS

NAME ON DEED William NicholsFrancis NicholsJohn PurvianceJoseph PottsDavid PottsThomas PottsWilliam PottsRobert PurvianceHenry PurvianceHenry PollardSamuel RutterThomas RyersonHugh RofsJohn RedickAndrew SwearinginJoseph SwearinginSamuel ShannonFrancis SwaineJohn TaylorJames WilsonHugh WilsonGeorge WoodsHenry WoodsHenry WoodsJoseph CowperthwaitDaniel Kerr

LISTED PENSION    S32459S7326S40275

S3709

 S6043 R8642  W16722 S22547W3140  S22604             

LAND WARRANT    BLWT612-300                     BLWT660-100

NAMES ON THE CHEW DEEDS

SAMPLE OF DEED

SAMPLE OF PENSION DOCUMENT

SAMPLES OF LAND WARRANT

SAMPLES OF FILE DOCUMENTS

SAMPLES OF FILE DOCUMENTS