James Wilson Dbq

740 Words2 Pages

Annie Tunstall AP US History Mr. Layman 10/6/17 James Wilson     James Wilson was born in Scotland in 1741. He lived there throughout his childhood and was educated at the universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. In 1765, he immigrated to America. At this point in time, there was tension between the colonies and Britain due to the Stamp Act. When he first immigrated he became a latin tutor but he quickly switched professions and began studying law instead. He set up a successful practice in Reading, Pennsylvania. He soon became involved in politics when he took over chairmanship of the Carlisle committee of correspondence, attended the first provincial assembly, and completed preparation of Considerations on the Nature and Extent …show more content…

He rarely missed a session and spoke often, only behind Gouverneur Morris. He spoke of a strong centralized government the also conformed to the majoritary principals. He served on the Committee of Detail which was the committee to draft the first constitution, which would included all the arguments discussed at the convention to that point. He thought and spoke on behalf of two major points in the constitution as well, which were his belief that senators should be elected by popular vote and he also thought of the three fifths compromise. The three fifths compromise said that only three-fifths of slaves would be counted for in a state's …show more content…

He firmly believed and fought Luther Martin on the idea that the states should be represented by their population. This means that states would have representatives based on the amount of people living in that states, while Luther believed each state should have only one representative in government. There was a dispute in this belief however, and that was should slaves be counted in the population. For this, Wilson came up with the three-fifths compromise which said that only three-fifths of the slave population in each state would be counted for when deciding the numbers of representation for each state. He also believed that representation in the executive and legislative branch should be based on popular vote for both, not just one. Wilson was one of the greatest contributors to ideas regarding representation in the

Open Document