Roger Sherman, The Founder We Missed

He signed all four major American revolutionary documents, helped craft the constitutional structure we still argue about, and yet most people can’t tell you a single detail about him. We’re talking about Roger Sherman, the “forgotten founder that shouldn’t be forgotten,” and we’re making a serious case for bumping him into the Founders’ top tier based on impact, not celebrity. 

We walk through Sherman’s improbable rise from shoemaker to self-taught lawyer to one of Connecticut’s most important judges, then trace why he keeps landing at the center of the founding era: the Continental Congress, the Declaration’s drafting committee, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitutional Convention. Along the way, we unpack why he’s so easy to miss in modern history telling: he’s not a clean writer, not a magnetic speaker, deeply pious, and he dies in 1793 before later political battles make other founders famous. 

The heart of the conversation is constitutional design. Sherman fights to preserve limited and enumerated powers, helps drive the Connecticut Compromise, and wins key federalism battles against broader national “plenary” power. We also dig into his skepticism of executive power, his concern about war-making authority, and his surprising role in the Bill of Rights debate, including why he insists amendments go at the end and how he helps shape the 10th Amendment. If you care about federalism, states’ rights, checks and balances, and what the Constitution actually means, this one will sharpen your view. 

Subscribe for more deep dives, share this episode with a fellow civics nerd, and leave a review telling us whether Roger Sherman belongs on the Founders’ A team.

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Transcript

Meet The Founder You Forgot

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome back to Civics in a Year. I'm very interested in today's topic because, to be very frank, do not know a whole lot about this person. So I have Professor Byenberg with me. Professor Bienberg. I do not know anything about Roger Sherman. And I am very interested in the fact that he is in a lineup with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Hamilton, and George Washington. Who is this guy and why is he in this kind of lineup?

SPEAKER_01 0:34

So yeah, so obviously this sort of podcast we're doing here is like kind of a revisiting of the for of the founders and things that are forgotten about them. And we're going to do a Forgotten Founders series later sometime when we come back to it. And as Liz knows, but the listeners don't, I was very adamant that we promote Roger Sherman from the forgotten founders to like the best list, the A team. Pick whatever you the varsity team, whatever you want to do. And I will say, while I was like looking over my notes and poking around how he's covered in other stuff, the most common thing that I can find, people would always say is he's the forgotten founder that shouldn't be forgotten. So this isn't just me as a crazy, crazy person. So uh I'll come back to why he's forgotten, but the short sort of biographical version, he is one of probably the most important founders from Connecticut. He is starts out as a shoemaker and basically teaches himself law and becomes so good at it, he ends up basically as one of the leading judges in Connecticut, along with Oliver Ellsworth, is a name that you may know. He's one of the other folks at the in the Constitutional Convention. He ends up on the Supreme Court.

From Shoemaker To Top Judge

SPEAKER_01 1:45

So now, so what why why is he on the list here? The short version, and I'll walk through like his ideas in a second. But arguably he is at the centerpiece of almost every major piece of American politics from at the founding. So he's part of the first Continental Congress. So he's one of the people who works on and drafts the declaration and resolves of the first Continental Congress, which you've heard me say again and again is one of the really foundational underappreciated documents. So he is obviously then part of the second continental Congress, where he's part of the committee of five that does the drafting. Unfortunately, he and Robert Livingston get double duty, but they also get assigned to the Articles of Confederation drafting team. So that's why they sort of end up as the like, all right, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, like you folks take point on that one. Like, we'll sign off on it. But they're off writing the Articles of Confederation. So obviously he's involved in the Articles of Confederation. And then he is a member at the US Constitutional Convention. And depending on how you squint at it, perhaps certainly on the way that the federal state division is set up, arguably the most influential member, at least in the sort of federalism piece. So that seems like a pretty important guy to me. So I think he's he's pretty important. Now, why is he forgotten? I don't like well, he doesn't write too terribly much. He does write some sort of federalist paper kind of stuff. So we have those. But he is not a very clean writer. He's very smart. Everybody will always say he's really smart and very persuasive, but he's not a very sort of clean and punchy writer. He's not a great speaker either. He's a friend of John Adams. So he he's persuasive, but not an eloquent speaker, I guess. Like his content is good. So there's this great quote of his a quote about him from John Adams, who's kind of a friend of his. Now, John Adams, as we've talked about, is kind of a stuffy fellow. So just have that in mind. John Adams describes Sherman quote: He says, His air is the reverse of grace. There cannot be a more striking contrast to beautiful action than the motions of his hands. He has a clear head and sound judgment, but when he moves a hand, there is nothing more opposite to grace. It is stiffness and awkwardness itself. Rigid as starch linen, awkward as a junior bachelor. Again, John Adams says this. Wow. So Sherman is also very much. We've, you know, we've talked a few times about there's discussion about which of the founders are particularly pious or deists or along those lines. Sherman is clearly one of the ones that would code today as like an evangelical Christian. So and scholars don't tend to be that keen on that. So I think that's another reason he's forgotten. And then there's another basic one is he dies pretty young. I'm gonna say dies young because he's old. He's like up there with Franklin. So he's those two are the two old people at the convention. And so he dies early. So he's not basically around in like the 1790s very much to get involved in those politics. So though I think some combination thereof is why he sort of falls into the second tier uh in our memory, even though I think he's clearly first tier in terms of importance.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

But that's interesting that you say that because he died in 1793. So he wasn't. I mean, you know, when we think of like founders, we think of founders who lived, you know, past Washington and Adams and maybe Madison's administration, but because he was older, he just did not have that kind of ability. Why again? And I think maybe because I am not an East Coast person, and I'm sure people in Connecticut know Roger Sherman. I'm sure his name is everywhere. Why then isn't he as kind of high up as like Benjamin Franklin? If they're both kind of the older fellows, why is Franklin more popular?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Franklin is fun and Sherman is boring. But I mean, like Sherman is basically like the serious, dutiful guy that has really like you trust to get things done to be sort of your voice of prudence and wisdom. But his lines aren't, he doesn't have funny quips. He doesn't, you know, he's not gonna be like Tom Wilkinson

Why Franklin Gets The Spotlight

SPEAKER_01 6:05

in the John Adams series where he's like, yeah, he's kind of annoying, but he's also kind of fun and you're grinning at like you're shaking your head half the time and you're grinning half the time. Like, no, Sherman plays straight, he's serious, he's boring, he wants to make sure that you know the debts are paid, he wants to make sure that people aren't spinning off into crazy immorality or anything like that. So and he also, and I think another reason he's forgotten too, is that for quite a while the historiography has tended to be sort of more, more pro-Hamilton, more the sort of central government faction. And Sherman is very much not that. I mean, Sherman is arguably, he's not one of the most hardline, but he's probably the most effective of them of the states' rights people at the Constitutional Convention, which probably is worth saying a little bit about a little bit about that. But actually before that, since you were mentioning Connecticut, so he's involved in state government there before like many of these folks, they sort of practice in state government before they move up. So again, he he redrafts basically almost the entire legal code of the state of Connecticut. And when he does that, he basically writes out the slavery provision. So like it's very anti-slavery, never owned slaves, very anti-slavery. At the Constitutional Convention, he tends to compromise with the slave states because he thinks it's doomed and he's terrified that the union will die if they don't have everybody on board. But he's very explicit, like, I'm only making this deal because slavery is doomed. And he he rants quite uh quite a bit about it. He also sort of, again, he's allied with in some ways with Adams. So when he's modifying the Massachusetts government, he does very much like what Adams wants to do, where he wants to disestablish having one single Christian church as the church and wants to basically say, like, you have to support a religion. You can sort of pick which one you want to do. So he's very much on that idea that people that the state should be encouraging religious practice, but he doesn't he doesn't like the idea of there only being sort of one that's picked, which will come back in the Constitutional Convention too. But he is basically someone who recognizes that the articles of confederation has problems and needs to be patched. So he very much is in the all right, let's just make it execute its laws better, basically, is what he wants. He wants a tax power, and he also is tired of the New England trade wars, and so he wants an interstate commerce power, and he but otherwise doesn't really need that much. He is the one who is credited with the Connecticut plan, hence Connecticut. But he some historians think he also actually was the ghostwriter, basically, of the New Jersey plan as well, which is for you again, for your listeners, is the like the real estates or IT one and the versus the you know very centralist Virginia plan and then the Connecticut one is sort of split the difference. So, for example, Sherman is the one who, when they're debating, we should just give the federal government sort of plenary power, police powers pretty much to do whatever. Uh, Sherman is the one who most successfully fights that off. It says, nope, the basic

Connecticut Compromise And Limited Powers

SPEAKER_01 9:05

structure of limited and enumerated powers from the Articles of Confederation will continue. We want to add to those powers, but the basic structure of a limited federal government will continue. And there's lots of places where they fight about federal and state power. And Sherman wins almost all of those. In fact, if you line up overall, Sherman versus Madison at the convention, whenever they have a fight, Sherman's twice as likely as Madison to win. So again, most of the federalism stuff looks much more like Sherman. He does want, he does lose one major vote on that, which is he's the one that pushes for the fact that the Senate, again, has equal representation and that that section can't be taken out. Sherman also wants to have one other non-amendable provision, which is that any interference with the state's police powers or any transfer of police power to the feds also will have to be unanimous. And they strike that. They say, like, that's that's two states' rightsy. That's too much like the articles. So he loses on that. But otherwise, he he wins most of the federalism debates. Uh, where he loses a lot is on executive power because he is terrified of executive power. In fact, everybody else's we've talked about, or not everybody else, but many of them are like, hey, we want a strong executive to check the legislature. We we're concerned that we want sort of monescue checks and balances. Uh Sherman is so scared of executive power, he doesn't want that. He is he wants the executive to be a tool of the legislature because he thinks divided power, divided people is a better check. So he doesn't want a standalone executive that's been picked by like an electoral college. So he is against the pre the absolute presidential veto. So he doesn't want the executive to be able to stop the legislature. But then they say we should have an override. So he's the one that actually ends up basically pushing for the two-thirds thing. They were toying with three-quarters at one point. He's so squeamish about pres executive war making. He doesn't, not only does he want to make sure the president can't declare war. So that had been a change from Britain that the executive can't declare war. He actually debates whether they should have the legislature make war. Uh, make war, not declare war. That the president should only basically be involved in like immediately repelling invasions, and then the legislature should be basically the primary figure. Because he's so terrified of executives basically abusing offensive power. So interesting take there. He loses on most of those votes. The complicated mechanism of the states picking the president if there's no majority, right? Where the House votes by state bloc. That's Sherman's handiwork. So lots and lots of places stuff in the Constitution is basically Sherman's. So it's not surprising he's pretty passionate about defending it. Like Madison is I a crack in my book that Madison basically has to sell Sherman's constitution, which isn't quite quite true, but it's exaggerated a little bit. But he goes and he defends it at the ratifying conventions. He's the leader in defending it, yet emphasizing the limited expansions of federal power. Most stuff stays with the states, basically like making 10th Amendment kind of language. And then interestingly enough, and you know, one of the things that keeps coming up when we do our teacher trainings. So again, for if any teachers are listening to it, contact uh our center and we do teacher trainings in Arizona and and some other places too. But Sherman is very pro-states' rights, but he joins the Federalist Party because he views it as the team of the Constitution before it has become basically sort of a Hamilton thing. Once the first Congress begins, interestingly, unlike many of the other states' rights people, he actually is against the Bill of Rights. And he's against the Bill of Rights on the argument that Wilson and Hamilton have made, which is this federal government only

Fear Of Executive Power And War

SPEAKER_01 12:55

has limited and enumerated powers. We don't want to start writing in rights exceptions, because it will basically hollow that out. Seemingly he switches when George Washington endorses a Bill of Rights. But then so he becomes sort of on Madison's team of all right, like let's do this. But then he and Madison start fighting because Madison, if you remember, wants the amendments tucked in there, like the way the state constitutions are. And Sherman says, no, put them at the end. And that like that's his that that's his like bright line on this. Like, I will play ball with your amendments, but they have to go at the end, which Madison's pissed about, but Sherman has the votes to do it. And so Sherman then helps actually draft the final language of the 10th Amendment. And then interestingly, he joins with Madison in rejecting putting the word expressly in the 10th Amendment, which you know is a big deal that people say, like, oh, it's gonna that will too, that will compl constrain the Fed too much. So again, Sherman very much wants a constrained federal government, but he doesn't want it to be basically impotent, which is what some of them want to do. And so in Congress, he's uh strikingly on the side of a Bank of the United States with Hamilton. He thinks the federal powers over finance are quite sweeping, but he's against having a national university in Washington, D.C., which he thinks violates. Madison says, look, Congress can regulate whatever they want basically in D.C. And he says, yeah, but this is fundamentally education and fundamentally a university for the country's elites. So it's trying to backdoor in basically a federal education policy, which we'll talk more about when we look at Jefferson and Madison uh in one of these future podcasts on their work on the university. So, like Madison, he's against having the general welfare clause as a direct subsidy or treating it as standalone. So he's got this sort of very interesting and I think nuanced and I think actually pretty good view of federal power where again he wanted a stronger one than the Articles, but not so strong. But he definitely recognizes that the articles needed needed

Bill Of Rights Fight And Tenth

SPEAKER_01 14:55

patching. So I think he's great. I think he's really fascinating. I think he gets some things wrong. He gets a lot of things right. It is to me very clear that the Constitution would never have been ratified if he didn't beat Madison on a lot of the votes in there.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

It's so fascinating to me because I have the Connecticut Judicial Branch website up, and it says that he Roger Sherman is the only person to sign all four of the important American revolutionary documents. So the Articles of Association, the Declaration, Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

And then all of the things that we're talking about, I'd swap out the declaration resolves for association, but it's the same Continental Congress. So but yeah, big four.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

But and I'm like listening to you again, and I'm like, how is he not elevated more? Because I mean, I knew about the Connecticut compromise. I obviously talked to my students, but I never to me it was never Roger Sherman's Connecticut compromise, it was just the Connecticut compromise. And so again, now I have another deep dive to go down because I this person is not in a lot of the like bigger things we see for education. Maybe it is on the East Coast. I'm speaking as a West Coaster, an Arizonan, but he is incredibly fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

He's boring, he's not fun, he's super Christian, and he's super states right. So, and he doesn't lead and he dies pretty early. So you can pick whatever your thing is, why sort of academia doesn't tend to promote him. He's all the paintings of him, he looks kind of scowling and kind of gaunt and kind of scary looking, honestly. So he doesn't look like somebody you're gonna want to put on, you know, a picture or you know, versus like Franklin's kind of twinkly eye kind of thing. So yeah, and then since you always like the sort of personal parts, um the

Bank, University, And Federal Power Lines

SPEAKER_01 16:55

the the while he's fighting with Madison over the constitution, over the Bill of Rights and the amendments, he has two of his sons basically spiraling out. One of them is a broke alcoholic who was basically begging him for money to get off the streets at the time. Uh and the other one is has now been accused of stealing from his revolutionary army regiments, which is a big scandal. While like this guy's like literally hitters, and he actually dies the same year that they're they're kind of trying to work on on that stuff. So the accounts are like Sherman's pretty stoic in like keeping that quiet, but you know, he's basically squabbling with Madison while his his uh family is falling apart. Good golly. Yeah, he's also you know, he's also trying to, he has to quit his judicial position around that point to serve in Congress. And he he'd always worked with Yale. He's from New He ends up settling in New Haven. Uh so he's pretty closely aligned because Yale is at that point the much more orthodox, orthodox Christian than Harvard is. Uh so he's pro, he's uh he's aligned with a lot of the the Yale sort of evangelical movement as well. But yeah, I I I definitely I don't think it's just me that is gonna say he he really should be in the the first tier with the other, you know. He's to me much closer to you know, he's I think more if I think he's clearly more influential constitutionally and legally than like Franklin, clearly. If I were gonna pick one, I would actually knock Franklin down a peg and put Sherman in there as the the top six, but but he's a boring legal guy. So instead of a fun purveyor of clips

Why Sherman Stays Off The Posters

SPEAKER_01 18:35

and commentary. So Roger Sherman shouldn't be for busts.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

So here is our then official Civics in a year petition to have Roger Sherman join the A team of the founding fathers. Dr. Byenberg, thank you so much.