Founders History: June 2024 Edition
Who is the patriot who Founding Father John Adams referred to as the most sensible men in the world?
Born in Massachusetts and moved to Connecticut after his father died. In 1766, he was elected to the Governor’s Council of the Connecticut General Assembly. Before the start of the American Revolutionary War, he taught at Yale. In 1775, he was appointed to the Council of Safety by the Connecticut Governor as well as the commissary for the Connecticut troops. He was elected as a delegate to the First Continental Congress and signed the Articles of Association. He returned to the Second Continental Congress, where he was chosen to serve on two of the most important congressional committees in the history of the United States — the Committee of Five, which was responsible for drafting the Declaration of Independence, and the Committee of Thirteen, which was responsible for drafting a new constitution for the United States. The document produced by the committee was the Articles of Confederation, which Sherman also signed.
After the war ended, he served in the Confederation Congress and signed the Treaty of Paris. In 1787, he played an important role in the Constitutional Convention, where he represented the interests of the smaller states and was the architect of the Great Compromise, which created the Senate and House of Representatives. He returned to Connecticut and participated in the state’s ratification of the Constitution. Later, he was elected to the House of Representatives in the First Congress and then to the Senate in the Second Congress and Third Congress. Sherman died on July 23, 1793, and was highly respected by his peers and fellow Founding Fathers.
Roger Sherman is important to the history of the United States because he was an influential Founding Father and signed the four most important historical documents — the Articles of Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. He helped design one of the most important compromises of the Constitutional Convention — the Great Compromise — which set up the two houses of Congress. He was considered to be a man of very high character by his peers, and Thomas Jefferson said he was “a man who never said a foolish thing in his life.” John Adams referred to him as “one of the most sensible men in the world.”
Further Reading
Many figures from our country’s founding are well known, such as John Adams, James Madison, John Hamilton, Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. But there are many very talented people who are not readily listed in the pantheon of great thinkers who helped forge the ideas that enshrined our liberty. The stories of people like Roger Sherman are also of importance, and you read about them in the books below. The links will take you to Amazon is you are interested in purchasing.
In his book "Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic," Mark David Hall explores Sherman's political theory and how it shaped his contributions to America's founding. Hall shows that Sherman, while supporting a stronger national government, was also a firm believer in local and limited government. His political philosophy guided his efforts at the Constitutional Convention and in Congress to strike a balance between federal and state authority.