Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

Second: In 1774, when Mr. Adams was on his way to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, he records in his diary that he met Roger Sherman at New Haven, who, he says, "is a solid and sensible man." Mr. Sherman said to him that he thought the Massachusetts patriots, especially Mr. Otis, in his argument for the Writs of Assistance, had given up the whole case when they admitted that Parliament had the power to legislate for the Colonies under any circumstances whatever. He lived to join in the report from the committee, and to sign the Declaration of Independence, which put the case on his ground. The Declaration of Independence does not recognize Parliament at all, except indirectly, when it says the King "has combined with others" to do the wrongs which are complained of.

Third: In 1752 the whole country was overrun with paper money. Mr. Sherman published in that year a little pamphlet, entitled, "A Caveat Against Injustice, or An Inquiry Into the Evil Consequences of a Fluctuating Medium of Exchange." He stated with great clearness and force the arguments which, unhappily, we have been compelled to repeat more than once in later generations. He denounced paper money as "a cheat, vexation, and snare, a medium whereby we are continually cheating and wronging one another in our dealings and commerce." He adds, "So long as we import so much more foreign goods than are necessary, and keep so many merchants and traders employed to procure and deal them out to us: a great part of which we might as well make among ourselves; and another great part of which we had much better be without, especially the spiritous liquors, of which vast quantities are consumed in the colony every year, unnecessarily, to the great destruction of estates, morals, healths and even the lives of many of the inhabitants,— I say, so long as these things are so, we shall spend a great part of our labor and substance for that which will not profit us. Whereas, if these things were reformed, the provisions and other commodities which we might have to export yearly, and which other governments are dependent upon us for, would procure us gold and silver abundantly sufficient for a medium of trade. And we might be as independent, flourishing and happy a colony as any in the British Dominions."

He lived to move in the Convention, and to procure its insertion in the Constitution, the clause that no State should make anything but gold and silver legal tender.

Fourth: Mr. Sherman took his seat in the Federal Convention May 30, 1787. Mr. Randolph's resolution, submitted on the 29th day of May, being before the Convention the next day, included the proposition that the National Legislature ought to be empowered to enjoy the legislative rights vested in Congress by the confederation, "and moreover to legislate in all cases in which the separate States are incompetent," —the question being whether the clause authorizing Congress to legislate in all cases in which the separate States are incompetent should be retained, every State in the Convention voted Aye, except Connecticut. Connecticut was divided. Ellsworth voted Aye, and Sherman, No.

Mr. Sherman lived, not only to sign a Constitution of limited powers, but himself to support the Tenth Article of Amendment thereto, which is as follows:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The words "or to the people" were moved by Mr. Sherman after the original article was reported. So he saw clearly in the beginning, what no other member saw, the two great American principles, first that the National Government should be a Government of limited and delegated powers, and next, that there is a domain of legislation which the people have not delegated either to the National Government or to the States, and upon which no legislative power may rightfully enter.

I surely am not mistaken in thinking that even without the other services of a life devoted to the public, these four contributions to the Constitutional history of the country entitle Mr. Sherman to an honorable place in the grateful memory of his countrymen, and vindicate the tributes which I have cited from his illustrious contemporaries.

My grandmother, the daughter of Benjamin Prescott of Salem, was a woman of great intelligence and a great beauty in her time. She was once taken out to dinner by General Washington when he was President. Madam Hancock, whose husband had been President of the Continental Congress and Governor of Massachusetts, complained to General Washington's Secretary, Mr. Lear, that that honor belonged to her. The Secretary told General Washington, the next day, what she said. The General answered that it was his privilege to give his arm to the handsomest woman in the room. Whether the reply was communicated to Mrs. Hancock, or whether she was comforted by it, does not appear. General Washington had been a guest at my grandfather's house in my mother's childhood, and she had sat on his knee. She was then six years old. But she always remembered the occasion very vividly.

My grandfather was a friend of Lafayette, who mentions him in one of his letters, the original of which is in my possession. One of my mother's brothers, Lt. Colonel Isaac Sherman, led the advance at Princeton, and was himself intimate with Washington and Lafayette. He was a very brave officer and commanded a Connecticut regiment at the storming of Stony Point. He is honorably mentioned in Gen. Wayne's report of the action. Washington alludes to him in one of his letters to Lafayette, as one of his friends whom Lafayette will be glad to see if he will visit this country once more. There is, in the State Department, an amusing correspondence between Col. Sherman and Gen. Wayne, in which he complains that Mad Anthony does great injustice in his report to the soldiers from other States than Pennsylvania. Mad Anthony was mad at the letter. But after a rather significant request from Gen. Washington, he repaired the wrong.

Another of her brothers who died at the age of eighty-eight, when I was thirty years old, and at whose house I was often a visitor, spent three weeks as Washington's guest at Mount Vernon. Old Deacon Beers of New Haven, whom I knew in his old age, was one of the guard who had Andre in custody. During his captivity, Andre made a pen-and-ink likeness of himself, which he gave to Deacon Beers. It is now in the possession of Yale College.