Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities Volume 22 | Issue 2 Article 3 January 2010 The Lost Founder: James Wilson in American Memory Nicholas Pederson Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjlh Part of the History Commons, and the Law Commons Recommended Citation Nicholas Pederson, The Lost Founder: James Wilson in American Memory, 22 Yale J.L. & Human. (2010). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjlh/vol22/iss2/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities by an authorized editor of Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Pederson: The Lost Founder Note The Lost Founder: James Wilson in American Memory Nicholas Pedersen* INTRODUCTION: THE LOST FOUNDER "How is it that I, poor ignorant I," John Adams asked late in his life, "must stand before Posterity as differing from all the other great men of the age?"' This concern-over securing one's distinct spot in history-was widely and deeply felt among the key Founders of the Republic. "To have honor across space and time," Gordon Wood has written, "was to have fame, and fame, 'the ruling passion of the noblest minds,' was what most of the founding fathers were after."2 The fame they sought, unlike the fame we think of when * J.D. Candidate, Yale Law School, Class of 2010; A.B., Amherst College, 2004. I wish to thank Akhil Amar for his invaluable guidance, and Gordon Wood for his encouragement.