Early one evening in August 1798, a sitting justice of the Supreme Court named James Wilson died in a sparsely furnished boarding room on the second floor of a North Carolina tavern. He had been holed up there for nearly a year to avoid creditors, to whom he owed unspeakable debts from land speculation. Delirious and destitute, he died from malarial fever, which burned through the Carolinas every summer. There was no public announcement of Wilson's death. It was an ignominious end to a man who was not only a Supreme Court justice but also arguably the most influential, prescient, and democratic drafter of the Constitution, one of only six men to sign both that document and the Declaration of Independence. The other Founders had acolytes who promoted their legacy and preserved their records, but Wilson died a pariah, which kept him out of history books as the conventional narrative of the founding took shape. Even today, his headstone in Philadelphia lists the wrong date for his...
learn more
