Legal scholar Jesse Wegman's new book, "The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People's Constitution," examines one of only six people to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Wilson recognized that "the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable authority remains with the people," as he stated in 1787. The book arrives as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, reminding readers that America's story is fundamentally a struggle to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence, with voting rights at its center from the beginning.
In 1776, only white men who owned property could vote. Pennsylvania's radical new charter, authored principally by Benjamin Franklin, extended voting rights to all men, including those without property and many Black men. Franklin famously explained that a man owning a jackass worth fifty dollars could vote, but if the animal died before the next election, the man became more experienced yet lost his voting right. John Adams, writing Massachusetts' constitution, warned that expanding suffrage would lead to demands from women, young people, and those without money. Property requirements ended during Andrew Jackson's presidency, Black men gained voting rights partly through military service during the Civil War, women won the 19th Amendment during the Progressive Era, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 created a multiracial democracy in the United States for the first time.