James Wilson
Govt P.1 Chance Woodruff
James Wilson Bio
Contributions to US Government
James Wilson, delegate from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was, like James Madison and George Wythe of Virginia, was a scholar who came to the convention understanding how 13 States could share a government of tripartite powers: legislative, judicial, and executive. Wilson, along with the others (and Hamilton) applied such knowledge to the developing Constitution of the Convention.
During debate the question of power of the proposed federal government and in this the old concept of the Confederacy (implying also the proposed Union) was a league of States. James Wilson follow the course he had laid out long before declared that individuals, not States were the objects of government care. Continuing that logic he asked, why should annexing the name of a State give ten thousand men the rights equal to forty thousand under the name of another State? This, he said, was magic not logic.