The Commons
Readers respond to our October 2020 features.
The Constitution Counted My Great-Great-Grandfather as Three-Fifths of a Free Person
In the October issue, Danielle Allen wrote about why she loves the flawed document anyway.
Danielle Allen says of James Wilson, “We have nonetheless all but forgotten him.”
It is true that Wilson was one of the most influential members of the Philadelphia Convention, where the Constitution was forged, and is now rarely mentioned in our history. But his legacy lives on in the Electoral College, a Frankensteinian institution that has caused the U.S. nothing but trouble for the past 200-some-odd years.
Wilson’s proposal that the people elect the president directly was considered impractical by many of the delegates, because suffrage
