Roger Sherman

Biography

Roger was the second of seven children born to William and Mehetabel Sherman. Soon after his birth, his parents moved the family from Newton, Massachusetts to Stoughton. His father was a small town farmer, who worked in off seasons as a cordwainer or shoemaker, a trade Roger learned from him. Although there was food on the table and a roof over his head, Rober Sherman grew up with few material comforts and little memories of games and play. Working on the farm, he learned to plow a field and cut wood, activities that helped develop traits such as constant industry and an iron constitution. Because his parents were observant Christians, Sabbath was a somber day spent at the meetinghouse.

Sherman acquired the skills of reading, writing and basic arithmetic in a local school that ran sessions only in the winter. Any advanced mathematical skills he was to display later in life were self-taught.

In 1740, 19-year-old Roger Sherman moved to New Milford Connecticut to join his older brother. In March of the following year, his father died without leaving a will and the courts granted Roger 109-acres of farmland from the estate. But he was also required to pay his mother and siblings for the shares they were entitled to and this meant he began adult life in debt.

Moving to New Milford, Sherman slowly shifted from shoemaking to surveying. By 1745, he had been appointed Surveyor of Lands for New Haven county. In 1749, he believed he was financially able to marry and took as his bride Elizabeth Hartwell of Stoughton. He also took up a new role as the author of Almanacs, publishing the first in 1750 and a new occupation as half-owner of a general store. When he had accumulated enough funds from his surveying duties and his mercantile profits, he began to buy land. He also took up the study of the law and by 1754, he was admitted to the Connecticut bar and set up a successful legal practice.

As Roger Sherman prospered, the path to political office opened. He was a selectman by 1754, a justice of the peace by the following year and was elected to the General Assembly each year afterward until 1761.

When Elizabeth Sherman died in 1760, Roger pulled up stakes and moved to New Haven and in 1763, he remarried, this time to Rebecca Prescott, daughter of a prosperous merchant of Salem, Massachusetts. His reputation in New Haven grew and by 1766, he was appointed a judge of the Superior Court of Connecticut. In 1772, he turned over his successful store to his son in order to devote himself entirely to public life.

Sherman’s response to the early signs of discontent toward and resistance to Britain’s new policies was conservative. The rise of the Sons of Liberty across New England and their agitation against the Stamp Tax troubled him. “I have no doubt of the upright intentions of those gentlemen who have promoted the late meetings in several parts of the Colony which I suppose were principally intended to prevent introduction of the Stamp papers, and not in the least to oppose the laws or authority of the government,” but, he added, “is there no danger of proceeding too far in such measures?”

But by 1774, Sherman had agreed to serve as a delegate to the First Continental Congress. Here he signed the agreement to abstain from any form of trade with England or the West Indies until the oppressive laws of 1774 were repealed. He was also chosen to represent Connecticut in the Second Continental Congress to gather the following May.

By May of 1775, events carrying serious consequences deepened the rift between Mother Country and colonies. Only a month before the new Congress met, shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. The Congress quickly established a Continental Army and appointed Virginia’s George Washington to its command. On November 1, 1775, Congress learned that King George had rejected their Olive Branch Petition and proclaimed the colonies in rebellion. By June of 1776, Sherman had joined in voting for Richard Henry Lee’s resolution and soon afterward he joined four fellow congressmen, including Thomas Jefferson, on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence.

When the Congress decided to create the country’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, Sherman represented Connecticut on the drafting committee. He continued to serve in congress until 1781. When Cornwallis surrendered to Washington, Sherman and his fellow Connecticut delegate, Richard Law, sent the news to the Governor of Connecticut. “This great event,” they wrote, “we hope, will prove a happy presage to a complete reduction of the British forces in these States, and prepare the way for the establishment of an honorable peace.”

Although the war hurt Sherman financially, his focus remained on public service. He served on the Governor’s council, on the Connecticut Superior Court, in the Continental Congress, and as mayor of New Haven. Then, in 1787, he went to Philadelphia as a delegate to what would come to be called the constitutional convention. In the beginning, he hesitated to commit to abandoning the Articles of Confederation. Sherman did not oppose strengthening the government by giving it taxing power and the authority to regulate commerce, but he believed this could be done without abandoning the Articles. As he saw it, “the problem with the old government was simply that it lacked the power to enforce its decrees.” Sherman’s reluctance to replace the Articles angered fellow Connecticut political leader Jeremiah Wadsworth, who complained to New York’s Rufus King that Sherman “is disposed to patch up the old scheme of government.” He warned King that Sherman was “cunning as the Devil, and if you attack him, you ought to know him well; he is not easily managed, but if he suspects you are trying to take him in, you may as well catch an Eel by the tail.”

Despite any reservations, Sherman diligently participated in the design of the new constitution. It was Sherman who proposed what came to be called the Connecticut or the Great Compromise regarding representation in the two houses of Congress, although his argument that each state should have only one vote in the Senate was rejected.

Sherman’s final contribution to the convention came as it was closing. On September 12, Virginia delegate George Mason took the floor to call for the addition of a bill of rights to the new Constitution. His proposal took the majority of the delegates by surprise. Only the members of the Committee on Detail might have seen this proposal coming for they had heard a similar suggestion from one of its members—and they had rejected it. Now, the weary delegates, eager to return to their homes after four months of debate and argument, wanted to reject it as well. In the heated debate that followed, Gouverneur Morris, who had drafted the final version of the Constitution, insisted that there should be no “tampering” with his handiwork. Other delegates expressed a jaundiced view of Mason’s assurances that a bill of rights could be quickly written and voted upon. Experience had taught them that nothing could be done at this convention without long and tedious debate over its content or its written presentation. As tempers flared, Roger Sherman rose to speak. His stern demeanor and his reputation for sensible solutions had earned him the respect of the men around him. Most would agree with Thomas Jefferson’s assessment that Roger Sherman was “a man who never said a foolish thing in his life.” At that moment, Sherman gave voice to the general feelings of the convention: there was no need to guarantee the people’s rights since those rights remained under the protection of the states. The constitution had given the proposed federal government no jurisdiction in the matter. With that, the debate ended. Yet, during the ratification process, Sherman and his colleagues would learn that in refusing to add a bill of rights, they had handed the opponents of the constitution a powerful weapon in the ratification battle. And when Madison proposed the 10 amendments that constituted the Bill of Rights, Roger Sherman raised no objection to their inclusion in the Constitution.

When Connecticut ratified the Constitution it chose Roger Sherman to be one of its representatives to the First Federal Congress. Then in 1791, his home state sent him to the Senate. In 1793, however, he suffered an attack of typhoid fever that lasted two months. On July 23, he died. Roger Sherman was the only person to sign all three of the most important documents of the Revolutionary era: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Small wonder that Yale President Ezra Stiles praised Sherman as an “extraordinary man, a venerable uncorrupted Patriot.”