Originally posted on Tuesday, May 28th, 2013
The Roger Sherman Society website’s biography of Founder Roger Sherman opens with a recital of his impact on America’s monetary system.
This is especially piquant considering Sherman’s many other impressive achievements.
Roger Sherman courtesy biography.com
These include membership on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence.
According to the Society’s capsule biography of Sherman, Jefferson said of him. “Roger Sherman was a man who never said a foolish thing in his life.” The Society:
The Framer who perfected the design of our country’s monetary system was a man who had spent most of his life struggling with — and publicly condemning — a fluctuating medium of exchange. That man was Roger Sherman, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Connecticut and the only American to sign all four of our nation’s most significant foundational documents: the Continental Association of 1774, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. Renowned for his high intelligence and unswerving honesty, Roger Sherman was described by John Adams as “honest as an angel, and as firm in the cause of American independence as Mount Atlas.”
At the age of 31 he wrote a searing indictment of paper money, A Caveat Against Injustice: or, an Enquiry Into the Evil Consequences of a Fluctuating Medium of Exchange.
The evidence shows that Sherman indeed was profoundly influential on the monetary powers provision in the Constitutional Convention. James Madison’s transcript of the relevant debate, that of August 28, 1787:
Mr. WILSON & Mr. SHERMAN moved to insert after the words “coin money” the words “nor emit bills of credit, nor make any thing but gold & silver coin a tender in payment of debts” making these prohibitions absolute, instead of making the measures allowable (as in the XIII art:) with the consent of the Legislature of the U. S.
Mr. GHORUM thought the purpose would be as well secured by the provision of art: XIII which makes the consent of the Genl Legislature necessary, and that in that mode, no opposition would be excited; whereas an absolute prohibition of paper money would rouse the most desperate opposition from its partizans.
Mr. SHERMAN thought this a favorable crisis for crushing paper money. If the consent of the Legislature could authorise emissions of it, the friends of paper money, would make every exertion to get into the Legislature in order to licence it.
The question being divided; on the 1st. part-“nor emit bills of credit”
- H. ay. Mas. ay. Ct. ay. Pa. ay. Del. ay. Md. divd. Va. no. N. C. ay. S. C. ay. Geo. ay.
The remaining part of Mr. Wilson’s & Sherman’s motion was agreed to nem: con:
Roger Sherman was a man who never said a foolish thing in his life.
Recent Comments