Roger Sherman: Founding Father and “An Old Puritan”

Thomas Jefferson once described Roger Sherman as “a man who never said a foolish thing in his life.” John Adams said he was “an old Puritan, as honest as an angel and as firm in the cause of American Independence as Mount Atlas.” Such lofty praise from two of the most prominent men of the Founding generation would seem to indicate that Roger Sherman would be a recognized name in American history, but he isn’t. His stature has been unjustly eclipsed by other members of the generation, but the United States Constitution, for example, was as much Sherman’s document as James Madison’s, if not more. He was the only member of the Founding generation to affix his signature to the 1774 Articles of Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. Sherman was the Patrick Henry of Connecticut, the most dominant political figure of his state and, aside from John Hancock, his region. He was also a “mild Federalist,” a man who favored a stronger central government but recognized the importance of state power. In an era that champions federal action, big government spending, and aggressive centralized “leadership,” Sherman seems archaic. But that is precisely why he should be studied.

Roger Sherman was born in 1721 in Newton, Massachusetts. The first Sherman to settle in the British North American colonies, John Sherman, arrived in 1636, just a decade after the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Roger Sherman, then, could count his family as one of the oldest in the region. His father, William Sherman, was a cobbler and farmer in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Sherman learned his father’s trade and was largely self-educated, spending much of his free time in the study of theology, history, mathematics, law, and politics. After his father died, Sherman moved to New Milford, Connecticut, in 1743—according to legend he walked the entire distance with his tools on his back—and quickly became a leading man in the town.

He was appointed New Haven County surveyor in 1745, a position that led to considerable wealth and substantial land holdings. Sherman served in a variety of political and civic positions in New Milford, including juryman, town clerk, clerk of the church, deacon, school committeeman, and as town agent to the Connecticut Assembly. He owned the town’s first store and published a series of almanacs between 1750 and 1761 that illustrated his depth of knowledge in mathematics and his propensity for wit and wisdom. He was admitted to the bar in 1754 and was elected to the General Assembly in 1755. Sherman was appointed justice of the peace and justice of the county court and was returned to the legislature every year except two between 1755 and 1761.

He moved to New Haven in 1761 and became involved with Yale College, first as a merchant selling supplies to the students, then as a contributor to the construction of the college chapel, and finally as the treasurer of the school. Yale awarded him an honorary Master of Arts degree in 1768. New Haven sent him to the upper house of the legislature in 1766, where he served until 1785, and he was made a judge of the superior court of Connecticut in 1766, a position he held until 1789. Sherman wrote in his almanac, “Every free-man shou’d promote the public good.” The people of New Haven County deemed him an able steward of the public good for most of his life, and his service to his state was exemplary, but the Revolution would mark his career and make him a well-known public figure in all the states.

The Atlas

Roger Sherman was an early supporter of the Sons of Liberty, founded to resist unjust and unconstitutional Parliamentary acts such as the Stamp Act of 1765. When the organization turned to violence, however, Sherman turned against the group and charged that it tended to “weaken the authority of the government.” Sherman supported boycotting British goods and chaired the New Haven Committee of Correspondence, because both were peaceful protests against unconstitutional British activity. He wanted to ensure order while still pressing the rights of Englishmen and the supremacy of Connecticut law over Parliamentary acts.

This placed him at the vanguard of public opinion in 1774. He was a conservative, but he recognized the British as a threat to the colonial order of Connecticut. The tipping point for Sherman was the Coercive Acts of 1774 and Lexington and Concord in 1775. By pushing violence on the colonies, King George III, in Sherman’s mind, abdicated his authority and violated the Connecticut charter. On the eve of his election to the First Continental Congress in 1774, he informed the Massachusetts delegation to that body that he believed they should have “rescinded that part of their Circular Letter where they allow Parliament to be the supreme Legislature over the Colonies in any case.” He was particularly concerned with the role of the Anglican Church in Connecticut and feared that British authority might include the further strengthening of the church in the Northern colonies, a region that had always expressed hostility to the orthodox Anglican religion. Sherman was a Congregationalist, not an Anglican, and the Congregationalist or Puritan Church was the officially established church in Massachusetts and Connecticut even after the war.

He signed the Articles of Association in 1774 and agreed with some of the more “radical” members of the Congress in regard to colonial rights, but he also signed the Olive Branch Petition of 1775 and sought to avoid war if possible.Roger Sherman pursued the best interests of Connecticut, and was first and foremost a Connecticuter. Because of his known opposition to Parliament and his conservatism, he was appointed along with Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Robert Livingston to serve on the committee charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence. Sherman viewed the Declaration as the best way to preserve the traditional government and society of Connecticut, not as a formalization of abstract human rights. Secession from the empire protected the sovereignty and culture of Connecticut.

He showed his Northern partisanship during the selection of a general to lead the Continental Army. He favored a Northern candidate and did not like the thought of a Virginian leading an all New England army at the outset of the war, though he ultimately voted for Washington. He particularly reveled in the successes of Northern generals throughout the conflict.Roger Sherman eventually considered Washington to be an able general, and Sherman’s son, Isaac, rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel under Washington’s command and served with distinction in several important battles.

Sherman was an active and energetic member of the Congress and served on several important committees, including ways and means, the war and ordinance committee, and the committee on Indian affairs. He was also asked to help draft a plan of union and served on the committee that proposed the Articles of Confederation. When several delegates to the Congress argued that representation in the new union should be based on the population of the states, Sherman rose and said, “We are representatives of states, not individuals. States of Holland. The consent of everyone is necessary. Three colonies would govern the whole, but would not have a majority of strength to carry the votes into execution. The vote should be taken in two ways; Call the colonies and call the individuals, and have a majority of both.” The states were sovereign, and Sherman was determined to protect their rights and integrity and not reduce the government to a “national” collection of individuals. He dedicated much of his energy in the Congress to the public credit.

Roger Sherman opposed fiat currency—inflated paper money—argued for higher taxes, and was against unnecessary loans. He was frugal and sober, and the champion of limited spending. If the Continental Army became too expensive, Sherman suggested using more militia. If diplomatic costs piled up, he insisted on reining in their expense accounts. When commissions to supply agents spiraled out of control, he recommended placing them on salary. Sherman was the antithesis of the modern bureaucrat.

He was a meticulous accountant and guardian of public money. He served in the Congress unabated from 1774 to 1781 and was returned from 1783 to 1784. By the time he left the Congress, he was considered the “Father” of the group and one of the most skilled legislators, with one contemporary describing him as “cunning as the Devil” in crafting legislation.

Retirement from Congress did not mean retirement from politics. Sherman continued to serve his state and community. He was elected mayor of New Haven in 1784, a position he held until his death, and was charged with revising Connecticut law, a task that led to the publication of Acts and Laws of the State of Connecticut. He held his position on the state superior court and practiced law in New Haven while attending to a large family—he had fifteen children between two wives, the first, Elizabeth Hartwell, who died in 1760, and the second, Rebecca Prescott, who survived him. He was already an old man when the Annapolis Convention of 1786 asked for a convention of all the states to meet in Philadelphia the following year. Connecticut reluctantly sent a delegation, and when the staunch Anti-Federalist Erastus Wolcott declined his selection, the legislature chose Sherman, the wise, conservative, and erstwhile defender of state power, in his place.

The Connecticut Compromise

Roger Sherman took his seat in the Convention on 30 May 1787, two days after Edmund Randolph presented the “Virginia Plan.” He immediately showed support for a revision of the powers of the central government, but he was “not to be disposed to make too great inroads on the existing system” because he feared the states would not allow it. Sherman spoke frequently and attended most of the sessions. He was against democratic elections because the people were “constantly liable to be misled” and would not choose “fit” candidates, and he argued for an executive chosen by the legislature. This would prevent “the very essence of tyranny.” He also believed the legislature should have the power to “remove the executive at pleasure” and warned against absolute executive power, for “no one man could be found so far above all the rest in wisdom.” When the Convention appeared at an impasse after several weeks, Sherman seconded Benjamin Franklin’s motion for prayer at daily sessions of the Convention.

Roger Sherman represented Connecticut on the committee charged with finding a compromise between competing plans for representation in the new government. The “Connecticut” or “Great Compromise” followed the same course he advocated in the Continental Congress. The states were to have equal representation in the upper house while the lower house would have representation based on population. This is often described as a protection for the “small states,” but Sherman made it clear on many occasions that equal representation protected all the states from arbitrary federal power. Madison reported in his journal of the proceedings that Sherman “urged the quality of the votes, not so much as a security for the small states, as for the state governments, which could not be preserved unless they were represented, and had a negative in the general government.”

He also successfully lobbied against a federal veto of state laws in order to protect the sovereignty of the states. With the compromise, Sherman ensured that the Constitution would be the best document the states would approve. He did not believe that the states would willingly surrender much of their authority to a stronger central government. He was right. Ratification would be a difficult process in the most powerful states of Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York. In Connecticut, he used his considerable influence to win approval for the Constitution, which was ratified by a crushing majority. His September 1787 letter to the legislature, transmitting the Constitution for its review, specifically denied that the new government would infringe upon state sovereignty.

“The equal representation of the states in the Senate, and the voice of that branch in the appointment of offices, will secure the rights of the lesser, as well as the greater states.” And though “some additional powers are vested in Congress . . . those powers extend only to matters respecting the common interests of the Union, and are specially defined, so that the particular states retain their sovereignty in all other matters.” He wanted Connecticut to support the Constitution without fear because Connecticut would remain sovereign, not the central government.

Roger Sherman’s states’ rights convictions led him to oppose the inclusion of a bill of rights with the Constitution. He believed that by insisting on “federal” guarantees of individual liberty, the new central government could exclude all other rights not listed and thus greatly reduce liberty. He argued that the states already had specific guarantees of rights, and because the new central government would not have the delegated authority to infringe upon those rights, the states could easily protect individual liberty from federal usurpation. His objections were sophisticated and duly noted and ultimately led to the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution.

Roger Sherman was immediately elected as an at-large member of the United States House of Representatives in 1788, where he served one term from 1789 to 1791. He supported a Bank of the United States and the retirement of the federal debt and helped hammer out the compromise that led to the assumption of state debts in return for planting the federal capital along the Potomac, otherwise known as the “assumption scheme.” He was chosen to serve in the United States Senate in 1791 and served there until his death in 1793 at the age of 72.

Roger Sherman can be seen as an Anti-Federalist Federalist. Sherman believed the Constitution granted the federal government limited, delegated authority; he believed it maintained states’ rights; and he would not have signed it and supported it otherwise. He was a Connecticuter to the end, the representative and defender of his state, and one who believed that the executive power should be limited because “no one man could be found so far above all the rest in wisdom.” Sherman knew that an unchecked executive is “the very essence of tyranny,” and that the best check on the power of the executive branch of the federal government was the authority of the sovereign states—an observation that seems very distant from where we are now.