The
Vol. XIX.
No. i
JAMES
Green
Bag
BOSTON
WILSON,
January, 1907
NATION-BUILDER
By.Lucien Hugh Alexander1 OF but one man in all our history can it be said that his hand was on the Declaration, his spirit in our Constitution, and his intellect in the decrees of the nation's highest court. Yet this man, James Wilson, the friend of Washington, of Franklin and of Hamilton, warrior, patriotstatesman and jurist, publicist, political scientist and orator of luminous mind and unrivalled learning, constitution-maker and nation-builder, as a result of one of those strange periodic cataclysms in the political thought of our people on great fundamental questions of national policy, was swept from popular view at his death, in 1798, by the great wave of anti-federalism which was then gathering force, and which so shortly afterwards engulfed the nation. For more than a century, except by the deepest students of our law and history, he was forgotten; but the great principles of re publican government, which he personified and which he had been so potent a power in crystallizing into concrete form in the Con stitution, stood immovable through the storm and stress, the shock and clash, of political warfare, which not only hurled popular heroes from their pedestals, but finally plunged the Republic into the greatest civil war of any nation or time; and now, from the shades of popular obli vion, after three generations of neglect, James Wilson is emerging luminous and transcendent. 1 This monograph will be biographic, and not propagandic, as was the author's article sub nomine, "James Wilson, Patriot, and the Wilson Doctrine" in the 1906 mid November issue of The North A merican Review,
No man, certainly no American citizen, more than a century after his death has received such a spontaneous tribute of respect and veneration as was paid him during the three days- of last November, commencing on November 20th, at Edenton, North Carolina, with the disinterment of his remains from their resting place at the side of his friend and colleague on the Bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice James Iredell, at whose home he died. At the peaceful IredellJohnston family grave-yard on the "Hays" plantation gathered Chief Justice Clark and other distinguished sons of North Carolina with representatives of Pennsylvania headed by Majoi -General Gobin, the highest officer of the Pennsylvania militia, which Wilson himself once commanded. After brief but impressive ceremonies, including prayer by the Reverend Dr. Drane, addresses by General Gobin and the Lieutenant-Governor of North Carolina, and the reading of Penn sylvania's request for the body, signed by Governor Pennypacker, Chief Justice Mit chell, United States Senators Knox and Penrose, the Mayor of Philadelphia, the Chancellor of the Law Association of Phila delphia, the Provost of the University of Pennsylvania and other representative citi zens, including the executors of Wilson's last surviving descendant, and of the reply thereto by Hon. John G. Wood, owner of the " Hays" plantation, the remains, cov ered by a thirteen stars flag, were trans ferred to a special train and conveyed to Norfolk, Viriginia, the nearest seaport, under escort of the Pennsylvania and North Carolina parties, the latter including the
