HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Roger Sherman (April 19, 1721 – July 23, 1793) was an American
statesman A statesman or stateswoman typically is a politician who has had a long and respected political career at the national or international level. Statesman or Statesmen may also refer to: Newspapers United States * ''The Statesman'' (Oregon), a ...
, lawyer, and a Founding Father of the United States. He is the only person to sign four of the great state papers of the United States related to the founding: the
Continental Association The Continental Association, also known as the Articles of Association or simply the Association, was an agreement among the American colonies adopted by the First Continental Congress on October 20, 1774. It called for a trade boycott against B ...
, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and U.S. Constitution. He also signed the 1774 Petition to the King. Born in
Newton, Massachusetts Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately west of downtown Boston. Newton resembles a patchwork of thirteen villages, without a city center. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population of ...
, Sherman established a legal career in Litchfield County, Connecticut, despite a lack of formal education. After a period in the
Connecticut House of Representatives The Connecticut State House of Representatives is the lower house in the Connecticut General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The house is composed of 151 members representing an equal number of districts, with ...
, he served as a justice of the Superior Court of Connecticut from 1766 to 1789. He represented Connecticut at the Continental Congress, and he was a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Sherman served as a delegate to the 1787
Philadelphia Convention The Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787. Although the convention was intended to revise the league of states and first system of government under the Articles of Confederation, the intention f ...
, which produced the United States Constitution. After
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading int ...
, he was the second oldest delegate present at the convention. Sherman favored granting the federal government power to raise revenue and regulate commerce, but initially opposed efforts to supplant the Articles of Confederation with a new constitution. After supporting the establishment of a new constitution, Sherman became a key delegate and main opponent of
James Madison James Madison Jr. (March 16, 1751June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father. He served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for h ...
's Virginia Plan by introducing the Connecticut Compromise that won the approval of both the more and less populous states.Robertson, David B. ''The Original Compromise: What the Constitution's Framers Were Really Thinking''. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print. After the ratification of the Constitution, Sherman represented Connecticut in the
United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
from 1789 to 1791. He served in the
United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and po ...
from 1791 to his death in 1793.


Early life and family

Sherman was born into a family of farmers in
Newton, Massachusetts Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately west of downtown Boston. Newton resembles a patchwork of thirteen villages, without a city center. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population of ...
. His father was William and mother Mehetabel Sherman. The Shermans left Newton and settled in what became the town of Stoughton, Massachusetts southeast of his home in Newton, when Roger was two. Sherman's education did not extend beyond his father's library and grammar school, and his early career was spent as a shoemaker.Hall, Mark D. ''Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic''. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Print. However, he had an aptitude for learning, access to a good library owned by his father, and a Harvard-educated parish minister, Rev. Samuel Dunbar, who took him under his wing. In 1743, his father's death made Sherman move with his mother and siblings to New Milford, Connecticut, where in partnership with his brother William, he opened the town's first store. He very quickly introduced himself in civil and religious affairs, rapidly becoming one of the town's leading citizens and eventually town clerk of New Milford. He became county surveyor of
New Haven County New Haven County is a county in the south central part of the U.S. state of Connecticut. As of the 2020 census, the population was 864,835, making it the third-most populous county in Connecticut. Two of the state's top 5 largest cities, Ne ...
in 1745 and began providing astronomical calculations for almanacs in 1759. Sherman married twice, and had fifteen children, of whom thirteen reached adulthood. He married Elizabeth Hartwell (born August 31, 1726 in Stoughton, Massachusetts) on November 17, 1749. She died on October 19, 1760, and Sherman married Rebecca (also spelled Rebekah) Prescott (born on May 20, 1742, in Danvers, Massachusetts) on May 12, 1763, and they had eight children: Rebecca, Elizabeth, Roger, Mehetabel (1st), Mehetabel (2nd), Oliver, Martha and Sarah.


Political career


Early political career

Although Sherman had no BBC, he was urged to read for the bar exam by a local lawyer, and was admitted to the bar of
Litchfield, Connecticut Litchfield is a town in and former county seat of Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 8,192 at the 2020 census. The boroughs of Bantam and Litchfield are located within the town. There are also three unincorpora ...
in 1754, during which he wrote "A Caveat Against Injustice" and was chosen to represent New Milford in the
Connecticut House of Representatives The Connecticut State House of Representatives is the lower house in the Connecticut General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The house is composed of 151 members representing an equal number of districts, with ...
from 1755 to 1758 and from 1760 to 1761. Sherman was appointed justice of the peace in 1762 and judge of the court of common pleas in 1765. During 1766, Sherman was first elected to the Governor's Council of the
Connecticut General Assembly The Connecticut General Assembly (CGA) is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is a bicameral body composed of the 151-member House of Representatives and the 36-member Senate. It meets in the state capital, Hartford. ...
, where he served until 1785. Sherman served as Justice of the Superior Court of Connecticut from 1766 to 1789. Sherman was also appointed treasurer of Yale College, and awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree. He was a professor of Christian religion for many years, and engaged in lengthy correspondences with some of the theologians of the time. During February 1776, Sherman, George Wythe, and
John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...
were members of a committee responsible for establishing guidelines for U.S. Embassy officials in Canada with the committee instructions that included, "You are to declare that we hold sacred the rights of conscience, and may promise to the whole people, solemnly in our name, the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion. And ... that all civil rights and the rights to hold office were to be extended to persons of any Christian denomination." In 1784, Sherman was elected mayor of New Haven, which office he held until his death.


Continental and Confederation Congress

As a member of the First Continental Congress, Sherman signed the Continental Association to impose an economic boycott on British trade. In the Second Continental Congress, Sherman was appointed to the Committee of Five, which was charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence. Sherman was also a member of the committee of 13 that was responsible for preparing a draft constitution for the new nation. During debate, Sherman proposed a bicameral national legislature where states would be represented equally. The committee of 13 rejected Sherman's proposal, adopting a unicameral legislature and what would become the Articles of Confederation. As a member of the Confederation Congress, Sherman was a signatory of the Treaty of Paris which ended the Revolutionary War.


Constitutional Convention

Sherman came into the Convention without the intention of creating a new constitution. He saw the convention as a means to modify the already existing government. Part of his stance was concerned with the public appeal. He defended amending the articles declaring that it was in the best interest of the people and the most probable way the people would accept changes to a constitution. "The problem with the old government was not that it had acted foolishly or threatened anybody's liberties, but that it had simply been unable to enforce its decrees."Collier, Christopher, and James Lincoln Collier. ''Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787''. New York: Random House, 1986. Print. Sherman advanced the idea that the national government simply needed a way to raise revenue and regulate commerce. Sherman's views were heavily shaped by Connecticut's position as a particularly isolationist state. Connecticut operated almost without much need from other states, using its own ports to trade with the West Indies instead of utilizing ports in
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,Boyd, Julian P. "Roger Sherman: Portrait of a Cordwainer Statesman." ''The New England Quarterly'' 5.2 (1932): 221–236. JSTOR. Web. February 12, 2015. and feared that "...the mass of people lacked sufficient wisdom to govern themselves and thus wished no branch of the federal government to be elected directly by the people". His views were also influenced by his personal beliefs and
Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...
views. Sherman opposed
slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
and used the issue as a tool for negotiation and alliance. He believed that slavery was already gradually being abolished and the trend was moving southward. Sherman saw that the issue of slavery could be one that threatened the success of the Constitutional Convention. Therefore, Sherman helped shape compromises that benefited the slave states in order to obtain unlikely allies from the Carolinas due to the economies of their home states. Sherman is also known for his stance against paper money with his authoring of Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution and his later opposition to James Madison over the Bill of Rights. Bordewich, Fergus M. ''The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017. Print. He believed that these amendments would diminish the role and power of the states over the people.
Mr. Wilson & Mr. Sherman moved to insert after the words "coin money" the words "nor emit bills of credit, nor make any thing but gold & silver coin a tender in payment of debts" making these prohibitions absolute, instead of making the measures allowable (as in the XIII art) with the consent of the Legislature of the U.S. ... Mr. Sherman thought this a favorable crisis for crushing paper money. If the consent of the Legislature could authorize emissions of it, the friends of paper money would make every exertion to get into the Legislature in order to license it."
Sherman also had very little interest in creating an executive branch with much authority. He suggested that no constitutional provision needed be made for the executive because it was "nothing more than an institution for carrying the will of the Legislature into effect".


Representation

Two proposed options for the formation of the legislative branch emerged in the deliberations. One was to form a bicameral legislature in which both chambers had representation proportional to the population of the states, which was supported by the Virginia Plan. The second was to modify the unicameral legislature that had equal representation from all of the states, which was supported by the New Jersey Plan introduced by William Paterson that Sherman helped author. Sherman saw no reason for a bicameralism. He defended the unicameral legislature of the Articles of Confederation by stating that the more populous states had not "suffered at the hands of less populous states on account of the rule of equal voting". Sherman, Elbridge Gerry and others were of the shared opinion that the elected composition of the national government should be reserved for the vote of state officials and not for election by the will of the people. Sherman was wary of allowing ordinary citizen participation in national government and stated that the people "should have as little to do as may be about the Government. They want information and are constantly liable to be misled".Rakove, Jack N. ''Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution''. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1996. Print. While Sherman was a devout supporter of a unicameral legislature, he recognized that this goal was unattainable because it would not receive the support of the more populous states. With the aide of Oliver Ellsworth, Sherman repeatedly proposed a bicameral compromise where one house had representation proportional to the population, and the other had equal representation for the states. Some scholars have identified Sherman as a pivotal delegate at the Convention because of his role in settling the debate over representation. At important moments in the deliberations, Sherman consistently pushed the interests of the less populous states. When delegates were unable to reconcile the differences between his plan and Madison's Virginia Plan, Sherman helped to get the issue of representation in Congress delegated to a Grand Committee of which he was not only a member but whose membership was sympathetic to the views of the less populous states. The plan that emerged from the Grand Committee, originally introduced by Sherman, and which known as became the Connecticut Compromise, was designed to be acceptable to both the more and less populous states: the people would be represented proportionally in one branch of the legislature, called the House of Representatives (the lower legislative house). The states would be represented in another house called the Senate (the upper house). In the lower house, each state had a representative for every one delegate. In the upper house, each state was guaranteed two senators, regardless of its size. In terms of modes of election, Sherman supported allowing each state legislature to elect its own senators. In the House, Sherman originally proposed that the suffrage of the House should be figured according to the "numbers of free inhabitants" in each state.


Later career

Sherman was elected as a United States Representative in the First Congress, and then to the Senate in the Second and Third Congress until his death in 1793. In 1790 both Sherman and Richard Law were appointed to revise the confused and archaic Connecticut statutes, which they accomplished. Throughout his life, Sherman was a major benefactor of Yale College, acting as the university's treasurer for many years and promoting construction of a college chapel. Sherman opposed appointment of fellow signer Gouverneur Morris as minister to France because he considered that high-living Patriot to be of an "irreligious nature".


Death and burial site

Sherman died in his sleep on July 23, 1793, after a two-month illness diagnosed as
typhoid fever Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over severa ...
. The '' Gazette of the United States'' (
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
), August 17, 1793, p. 508, reported an alternate diagnosis, "He was taken ill about the middle of May last, and from that time declined till his death. His physician supposed his disorder to be seated in his liver." He was buried in New Haven Green. In 1821, when that cemetery was relocated, his remains were moved to the Grove Street Cemetery. Jonathan Edwards Jr. gave a funeral sermon at the ceremony for Sherman on July 25, 1793. He praised his contributions to his friends, family, town, and country, noting Sherman's piety and excellence in study.


Legacy

Sherman is especially notable in United States history for being the only person to sign all four great state papers of the United States, the Articles of Association, the United States Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. Robert Morris, who did not sign the Articles of Association, signed the other three.
John Dickinson John Dickinson (November 13 Julian_calendar">/nowiki>Julian_calendar_November_2.html" ;"title="Julian_calendar.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Julian calendar">/nowiki>Julian calendar November 2">Julian_calendar.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Julian calendar" ...
also signed three, the Continental Association, the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. He was involved with the Declaration of Independence but abstained, hoping for a reconciliation with Britain. Sherman is one of the most influential members of the Constitutional Convention. He is not well known for his actions at the Convention because he was a "terse, ineloquent speaker" who never kept a personal record of his experience, unlike other prominent figures. At 66 years of age, Sherman was the second eldest member at the convention following Benjamin Franklin (who was 81 years old at the time). Yet he was a critical opponent of James Madison and the more populous states. Sherman was also one of the most active members of the Convention, making motions or seconds 160 times (compared with Madison's 177 times). The town of Sherman, Connecticut was named for Roger Sherman. Sherman, as a member of the Committee of Five, is portrayed on the pediment of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C..


See also

* List of United States Congress members who died in office (1790–1899) *
Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence The Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence is a memorial depicting the signatures of the 56 signatories to the United States Declaration of Independence. It is located in the Constitution Gardens on the National Mall in W ...


References


Further reading

* ''Dictionary of American Biography'' * Boardman, Roger Sherman, ''Roger Sherman, Signer and Statesman,'' 1938. Reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971. * Boutell, Lewis Henry, ''The Life of Roger Sherman,'' Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1896. * Gerber, Scott D., "Roger Sherman and the Bill of Rights." Polity 28 (Summer 1996): 521–540. * Hoar, George Frisbie, ''The Connecticut Compromise. Roger Sherman, the Author of the Plan of Equal Representation of the States in the Senate, and Representation of the People in Proportion to Numbers in the House,'' Worcester, MA: Press of C. Hamilton, 1903. *


External links


From Rev. Charles A. Goodrich, ''Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence'', 1856
* *

at Political Graveyard
Sherman-Hoar family
at Political Graveyard
Roger Sherman Papers
Yale University
Roger Sherman, Revolutionary and Dedicated Public Servant
Connecticut History
History of Sherman's boyhood home of Stoughton, Massachusetts
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sherman, Roger 1721 births 1793 deaths People from Canton, Massachusetts People of colonial Massachusetts People of colonial Connecticut Sherman family (U.S.) American people of English descent American Congregationalists Continental Congressmen from Connecticut Signers of the Articles of Confederation Signers of the Continental Association Signers of the United States Declaration of Independence Signers of the United States Constitution Members of the Connecticut General Assembly Council of Assistants (1662–1818) Members of the Connecticut House of Representatives Mayors of New Haven, Connecticut Connecticut state court judges Shoemakers People from New Milford, Connecticut Lawyers from New Haven, Connecticut People of Connecticut in the American Revolution Deaths from typhoid fever Burials at Grove Street Cemetery Members of the United States House of Representatives from Connecticut