Not Your Father's Founders (24 page)

Newton, Massachusetts
April 19, 1721–July 23, 1793
A Self-Made Man

There were not many opportunities for Roger Sherman to acquire a formal education in his hometown of Stoughton, Massachusetts. Fortunately, his father, a farmer of modest means, possessed a well-stocked library, and a local Harvard-trained minister, Reverend Samuel Dunbar, tutored him in mathematics, science, literature, and philosophy. Sherman's educational training was helpful, but he was not a “learned man” according to the standards of the time.

The town of Stoughton opened a public school when Roger was thirteen years old, which he attended for a while. He spent a good part of his youth apprenticed to a shoemaker. He was less than dedicated to the trade. He kept an open book in front of him most of the time. Reading became more of an occupation for him than making footwear.

After Sherman's father died in 1741, Roger moved to the rural, reading material–deprived town of New Milford, Connecticut, where his brother lived.

That didn't stop Sherman. The ever-resourceful young man wrote and published an almanac every year from 1750 to 1761 to alleviate the shortage of reading material in New Milford.

It did not take long before the people in the area recognized that he was a math and astronomy whiz and a budding political powerhouse.

New Haven County, Connecticut, needed a surveyor. The local government appointed Sherman to the post. From there it was a simple step to earn entry to the state bar when one of Sherman's neighbors asked him to assist a local lawyer working with a surveying-related petition at the county court. The lawyer reviewed Sherman's notes, which he found so precise that he encouraged the young surveyor to start his own law practice.

Next, Roger and his brother opened a store. That was the perfect place for Roger to act as town clerk. And, the local folks said, if he was town clerk he might as well represent the town at the Connecticut Provincial Assembly.

The members of the Assembly were duly impressed with Sherman. They appointed him as the colony's commissary for its troops.

As he took on more assignments, it was a safe prediction that his peers would look to him to serve as a representative at the Continental Congress, where he served from 1774–81 and 1783–84. His hard work and willingness to take on new tasks were legendary at the meetings, as was his religious fervor, which caught his peers by surprise on occasion.

Sherman objected at times to meeting on the Sabbath, particularly when he thought the occasion did not require it. This is where he deviated slightly from the Founding Fathers. Sherman was willing to let the revolution wait while he prayed. His comrades wanted to declare independence first and thank God later. Fortunately, the delegates to Congress signed the Declaration of Independence on a Friday, so he was front and center to affix his name to the document.

Sherman worked tirelessly in Congress during the Revolutionary War. He served on numerous committees, but devoted much of his attention to local matters in New Haven, Connecticut, where he had moved in 1761. He served as the mayor of the city from 1784 to 1793, the year he died, and as a judge on the Connecticut Superior Court. While serving on the court he helped rewrite the entire state legal code.

Naturally, when Connecticut was looking for someone to represent it at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Sherman's name came up.

A large number of the delegates to the convention were not happy with all the provisions the proposed document contained. They saw the need for a constitution, however.

Roger Sherman went to the convention with an open mind. He was among the delegates who held their noses and voted to ratify the Constitution, despite its shortcomings—many of which were rectified with the passage of the Bill of Rights. In fact, it was his proposal, known as the Connecticut Compromise, that was responsible for the creation of the current two-body federal legislature that is in place today.

Sherman's hardest job was convincing his fellow delegates from Connecticut that the document should be ratified. He used his persuasive powers to make sure they supported it. The state delegates did, by a majority of eighty-eight votes (128–40). Sherman's name was in the “yea” column.

There was one more office to come for Roger Sherman. He was named as a U.S. Senator in 1791. He was seventy years old at the time, and the constant wear and tear on his body was beginning to tell. He died of typhoid in 1793. The fever stilled one of the fledgling republic's most supportive voices.

Hanover, Virginia
August 14, 1734–June 1, 1832
Woe Betide Anyone Who Burns Sumter's House

Sumter did not receive a formal education as a youth but his sense of adventure got him a long way. He began his military career in 1755, when he participated in the ill-fated Braddock Expedition.

In 1755, during the French and Indian War, the British initiated a campaign led by General Edward Braddock to capture a French stronghold, Fort Duquesne (modern Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). It was a disaster. Braddock was killed, the British retreated in disgrace—and Sumter got his first taste of war.

Six years later, then-sergeant Sumter was involved in another expedition that gave him a chance to travel. He accompanied Henry Timberlake on a foray to the Virginia backcountry (in present-day Tennessee) to make sure the Cherokees had stopped fighting the settlers.

Sumter borrowed the money to buy a canoe and supplies for what was expected to be a short trip. Their timing was off. They left on November 28, 1761, to explore an area that was prone to wintry weather. Rivers ran low and froze, their unattended canoe slipped away while Sumter and Timberlake explored an icy cave, supplies ran out, Timberlake's luggage was looted—pretty much everything that could go wrong went wrong—but the men survived. A Cherokee chief, Ostenaco, expressed a desire to visit London and meet the king. Sumter and Timberlake accompanied him to England in May 1762. They met King George III and socialized with poets (Oliver Goldsmith), painters (Joshua Reynolds), and princes. Sumter, who was broke, asked the South Carolina government for a loan to repay the money he had laid out for his travel expenses. Officials denied it. Later, he entered debtors' prison in Virginia for nonpayment of an old debt. Going to jail gave Sumter a chance to exhibit his honesty. Joseph Martin, a friend of his, visited Sumter in the prison and gave him ten guineas and a tomahawk. With that money, Sumter bought his way out of jail in 1766. He repaid Martin—thirty years later.

In 1767 Sumter married a widow, Mary Jameson. The two worked hard and amassed a small fortune. He became a Provincial congressman and used some of the money to form his own militia, which proved to be a wise investment when the Revolutionary War began.

Once the fighting began, Sumter was front and center. He preferred military activity to politics. The young warrior was elected lieutenant colonel of the Second Regiment of the South Carolina Line in February 1776. He worked his way up to colonel and then brigadier general of the South Carolina militia, which was folded eventually into the Continental Army. Whatever his rank was, he engaged in numerous battles early in the war.

Sumter spread himself out across South Carolina. One of the first actions in which he participated was near Charleston, South Carolina, at the Battle of Sullivan's Island on June 28, 1776. There, the Americans defeated the British and sent them back to New York.

The peripatetic Sumter fought against Cherokees in the fall of 1776, against the British as they attempted to conquer Georgia via St. Augustine, Florida, and at Rocky Mount, South Carolina.

One of the last battles in which Sumter fought was at Hanging Rock, South Carolina, on August 6, 1780. His troops attacked the Prince of Wales's American Regiment, composed of American Tories and supporting British units. Sumter's troops decimated the regiment, although the outcome of the battle was a draw. The patriots gained a sense of satisfaction because of the damage they inflicted on the Tory troops. For Sumter, it was a fitting farewell from the war.

Sumter then took a leave of absence from the Continental Army due to illness. The British burned and looted his home in 1780. After that, he rejoined the militia and set off on a vendetta against the British. He raised troops by promising each new recruit a slave, a horse, and the right to keep what he liberated (a.k.a. stole). That was too much for the governor, who vetoed Sumter's promise.

Things did not always go the way Sumter planned them after his return to the battlefield. He suffered an embarrassing defeat at Fishing Creek on August 18, 1780, when British General Banastre Tarleton caught Sumter's forces by surprise and routed them, even though the British were outnumbered almost four to one.

It was a humiliating setback for Sumter. He got revenge later that year at Blackstock's, on November 20, a battle in which the British suffered ten casualties to each one incurred by the patriots. Sumter was wounded in the back and chest that day. By this time, Sumter was operating more or less on his own, using guerilla-style tactics successfully. His hit-and-run attacks wore the British down.

The war in the South was wearing down, though, and Sumter's military career was over once General Cornwallis pulled up stakes and moved north in 1781.

The people of South Carolina were kind to Sumter after the war. He would have preferred to stay on his plantation in Statesburg raising horses, which was a passion of his. But he accepted positions in the U.S. House of Representatives (1789–93, 1797–1801) and U.S. Senate (1801–10). That ended his public career.

Sumter lived for the next twenty-two years in well-earned privacy. He and his fellow South Carolina military leaders had shown that aggressiveness and innovative tactics could win battles—and ultimately a war. Sumter, like the country, had suffered a few setbacks along the way, but that was to be expected in a fight for independence.