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William Jackson | |
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 Jackson depicted in a portrait,c. 1795 | |
| Born | March 9, 1759 Cumberland, England |
| Died | December 17, 1828(1828-12-17) (aged 69) |
| Occupations | Military officer,merchant,lawyer,secretary,civil servant,editor |
| Spouse | Elizabeth Willing |
William Jackson (March 9, 1759 – December 17, 1828) was a figure in theAmerican Revolution and one of theFounding Fathers of the United States. He served assecretary to the 1787 United StatesConstitutional Convention, and as part of his duties added his signature to theUnited States Constitution. He also served with distinction in theContinental Army during theRevolutionary War. After the war, he served as one of PresidentGeorge Washington's personal secretaries.
Jackson was born inCumberland, England, on March 9, 1759. He was sent toCharleston, South Carolina, after his parents died, and was raised by a family friend and prominent merchant, Owen Roberts, who was the commander of a militia battalion. After theAmerican Revolutionary War began in 1775, Roberts joined thePatriot side, and Jackson, then a teenager, followed. Roberts likely helped Jackson to obtain a position as acadet in the1st South Carolina Regiment. In May 1776 Jackson wascommissioned as asecond lieutenant.[1]
Jackson first saw action nearCharleston, South Carolina, in June 1776, when his regiment fought off GeneralHenry Clinton's attempted attack on Fort Sullivan. The unit then spent a long period garrisoning Charleston, during whichCharles Cotesworth Pinckney assumed command of the 1st South Carolina. In late 1777, Jackson was part of the detachment that made an ill-conceived and poorly conducted expedition againstSt. Augustine in BritishEast Florida under Major GeneralRobert Howe. The expedition was a colossal failure, and the American force was struck down by disease. Jackson, however, survived, and returned to South Carolina in 1778.
After returning from Florida, the Southern regiments were placed under the command of Major GeneralBenjamin Lincoln fromMassachusetts Bay Colony. Pinckney convinced Lincoln that as a Northerner, he needed an aide to assist him in relating to his Southern troops. Jackson was chosen for this position and was temporarily promoted to the rank of major. As Lincoln's aide he saw action in theBattle of Stono Ferry and theSiege of Savannah in 1779. In 1780, General Lincoln surrendered his troops after the lengthysiege of Charleston. As a captured officer, Jackson was shipped toPhiladelphia, then held by the British. After a few months he was returned to theContinental Army in an exchange of prisoners.
A skilled staff officer, Jackson was then assigned to the staff ofContinental Army generalGeorge Washington, serving as secretary to the general's aideJohn Laurens, son ofHenry Laurens of South Carolina. When Laurens was sent to France in 1781 armed with a memorial written by Washington outlining why a sizable loan (25 million livres) was needed, he tookThomas Paine and Jackson, who was fluent inFrench. For six weeks, they dealt unsuccessfully at Versaille with Foreign Affairs MinisterVergennes, a longtime diplomat who wanted England tied up in an American war but knew the precarious situation of France's own finances.
Against the advice ofBenjamin Franklin, direct contact was made with the king, and Washington's memorial was handed to him. The following day, the king directed Finance MinisterJacques Necker to meet with them. The loan was made, the bulk of it for military supplies, including three million in gold specie, with the promise that France would underwrite with Dutch agents a later loan for 10 million should it be needed. Purchases began, and by early May Laurens sailed with 3 ships and Jackson went to Holland whereJohn Adams had contracted with a captain for a fourth ship. That ship vanished, either because Adams had been deceived about the honesty of the captain or because the British Navy, with orders to hunt down all four ships, had sunk it. The three ships, however, arrived in Boston in early September.
Jackson returned to the United States in February 1782, and served as assistant secretary of war underBenjamin Lincoln. After helping settle thePennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, he resigned his office and his commission in October 1783 to becomeRobert Morris's agent in England.
When Jackson returned the following year, he studied law withPhiladelphia lawyerWilliam Lewis. As an impoverished law student, Jackson wrote to Washington in 1787, applying for the post of secretary to the Philadelphia Convention. On the Convention's first day of business, May 25, 1787,Alexander Hamilton nominated Jackson to the post, and the delegates chose him overWilliam Temple Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's grandson, despite the latter's experience serving as his grandfather's secretary during theTreaty of Paris negotiations.
As the Convention secretary, Jackson was responsible for maintaining the secrecy of the Convention's proceedings, keeping official minutes, and destroying many of the proceedings' other records. He signed the document "Attest William Jackson Secretary" to attest to four corrections which had been made to the document.[2]
Jackson was sent to theCongress of the Confederation, assembled inNew York City, with a copy of the Constitution, and was honored to read it out to the Congress just days after the signing, on September 20, 1787.
Jackson was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1788, but was required to wait two years to practice before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the most lucrative branch of the law; besides this, he was an unpaid volunteer in the Second Philadelphia Light Horse. He applied to besecretary of the United States Senate, butSamuel Allyne Otis was appointed. He then applied to bepersonal secretary toGeorge Washington after Washington was elected the nation's firstpresident of the United States in the1788–89 United States presidential election, writing that he had unpaid expenses as a Continental officer and that business was "not congenial to [his] temper."
He served as Washington's personal secretary until 1791, when he left to restart his law practice and work as agent forWilliam Bingham andSecretary of WarHenry Knox, who were selling off a large land grant in Maine first acquired byWilliam Duer, firstUndersecretary of the Treasury and now bankrupt. Jackson's job was selling land on commission in England and France; among his potential customers was theCommittee of Public Safety. They declined to invest their scant funds in Maine land; but Jackson wrote a very favorable report on them back to the United States.
He returned to the United States in the summer of 1795, and married Elizabeth Willing,Mrs. Bingham's sister, in November; they were the oldest daughters ofThomas Willing, a rich Philadelphia merchant, related to the Shippens.[3] In January 1796, during his last months in office, Washington, who attended Jackson's wedding, appointed Jackson Surveyor for thePort of Philadelphia.[4]Thomas Jefferson, another wedding guest, dismissed him in 1801 for politicizing his office.
Jackson then started aFederalist newspaper, thePolitical and Commercial Register, in Philadelphia. and edited it until 1815.
Jackson succeeded Henry Knox in 1799 as secretary general[5] of theSociety of the Cincinnati, a group of former Continental Army officers. On behalf of the remaining officers of the war, he headed an unsuccessful effort to lobby Congress to grant all veteran Revolutionary officers half-pay for life in 1818. Congress was to pass such a bill in 1826, fifty years after independence, but Jackson was not associated with it; his last public appearance was welcoming theMarquis de Lafayette to Philadelphia in 1824. He remained secretary general of the society until his death.
On December 18, 1828, at age 69, Jackson died inPhiladelphia, and was interred along with his wife inChrist Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia, whereBenjamin Franklin was earlier interred in 1790.
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