Authors: Denise Kiernan

Signing Their Rights Away (33 page)

XII. Georgia

The Signer Who Lived the American Dream

BORN
: June 8, 1748

DIED
: July 16, 1828

AGE AT SIGNING
: 39

PROFESSION
: Farmer, lawyer

BURIED
: St Paul’s Episcopal Church, Augusta, Georgia

An undereducated frontier farm boy who went on to become a lawyer and a signer of the Constitution, William Few—perhaps more than any of the other signers—best exemplified the American Dream, and that at a time when America was just getting started.

Born on a family farm in Baltimore County, Maryland, Few came from humble beginnings. His father was a Quaker farmer, his mother a Catholic; later, Few would align himself with the Methodist faith. He received little proper schooling and certainly no money to send him off to be educated, as other prosperous planters often did for their children. He once described an early experience at a country school as being fraught with “terror and anxiety,” primarily because of a teacher he abhorred.

When Few was about ten years old, the family moved to North Carolina in hopes of finding better weather and, with it, more productive crops. The life of a frontier farmer was a difficult one, and Few, like many young men, soon found himself learning to work the land. His second year of schooling was his last and, by his own account, very enjoyable. He was just twelve years old, but the schoolmaster-for-hire with whom he studied was to his liking. This relationship gave Few a love of reading and learning that would shape the rest of his life.

At age sixteen, Few and his family moved again, this time to the small town of Hillsborough. By then, Few was teaching himself, reading every book he could get his hands on and visiting the courthouse to listen to arguments. When he was nineteen years old, his father gave him his own plot of land to work. Even then, he took a book with him when it was time to plow, occasionally taking a break to read during the long days in the fields.

The North Carolina frontier became a hotbed of revolution that preceded the war against the British. The Regulator movement was taking hold, pitting farmers against landed gentry or other gentlemen of the seaboard who were viewed as privileged folk in control of all the state’s money and power. Their appointees were corrupt officials and sheriffs who took advantage of the working man at every turn. Few’s family was caught up in the class struggle. The height of the rebellion was the battle of Alamance, where Governor William Tryon, leading the colonial militia, crushed the uprising. Few’s brother was captured and hanged for his part in the fighting. The family farm was destroyed and Few’s father, besieged by creditors, eventually fled to Georgia; Few stayed behind to clean up his family’s affairs, providing the young man with even more experience—some of it less than pleasant—with courts and lawyers.

As the Revolutionary War approached, farmers and gentry alike were beginning to unify against the British. Few jumped on the militia bandwagon in Hillsborough and helped form a volunteer company. He attended meetings to understand the nature of the conflict. “I felt the
spirit of an American,” he wrote, “and without much investigation of the justice of her cause, I resolved to defend it.”

He joined his family near Augusta, Georgia, and quickly became known in both business and the patriotic movement. He continued fighting with the militia forces there, eventually earning the rank of lieutenant colonel. His political life began in 1777, when he was elected to the convention in Savannah that created the Georgia constitution. He was appointed to the state’s first legislature, served on the governor’s advisory council, and eventually worked as surveyor general of the state, commissioner of confiscated estates, and senior justice for Richmond County.

Few also saw fighting in the American Revolution. In 1778, he and his militia brothers fended off British forces on the state’s southeast border as well as in Florida, a trip that proved disastrous for the troops, many of whom fell sick in the swamps. On December 28, 1778, the British took Savannah, then the colony’s capital. In 1780, he was elected to attend Congress (at that time still based in Philadelphia); when he returned to Georgia, he served in the state legislature and focused on his law practice. All his reading and careful attention to court cases paid off; the self-taught lawyer built a successful practice in Augusta. He later wrote that he had “never spent one hour in the office of an attorney to prepare for the business, nor did I know anything of the practice.”

In 1786, Few returned to Congress, which by that time had relocated to New York City. The next year he was sent to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and so shuttled back and forth between the two cities. Given the circumstances, his attendance was surprisingly steady. He was one of the rare signers who hailed from the farming class—small, subsistence, plow-your-own-fields farming. Of him fellow Georgia delegate William Pierce wrote: “Mr. Few possesses a strong natural Genius, and from application has acquired some knowledge of legal matters; —he practices at the bar of Georgia, and speaks tolerably well in the Legislature. He has been twice a
Member of Congress, and served in that capacity with fidelity to his State, and honor to himself.”

He signed, he ratified, and he served as one of his state’s first senators. His travels to Congress in New York City brought him more than political clout, it brought him personal satisfaction, too: in 1788, he married Catherine Nicholson, a New Yorker. During his term as senator, Few witnessed George Washington being sworn in as president. But over time, he found himself increasingly drawn to the views of Thomas Jefferson and opposed to Alexander Hamilton’s fiscal policies.

Upon leaving the Senate in 1793, Few moved with his wife to Columbia County, Georgia. He ran for the Senate again in 1796, but lost. He served as a judge for three years before deciding to shake things up and move back to New York City. The relocation may have been because of his wife’s homesickness, but Few did write about the “scorching climate of Georgia” and “accumulating evils of fevers and Negro slavery,” which he regarded as “enemies to humane felicity.” He and Catherine were Big Apple–bound.

Few’s resume carried weight in that city as well, and the end of his life was peppered with a variety of appointments and official posts. In 1801, he was elected to the New York legislature, where he served three years. He served as inspector of the state prisons for a decade, a state commissioner of loans, director of Manhattan Bank, president of City Bank, and a city alderman to boot.

When Few finally retired to his country home in Dutchess County at the age of sixty-eight, he estimated his wealth to be worth more than $100,000—not bad for a frontier farm boy born into poverty and deprived of a formal education. He died at the respectable age of eighty at the home of his daughter, in what was then Fishkill-on-Hudson (now Beacon), New York. He was originally buried at the Reformed Dutch Church, but his body was later moved—everybody loves to dig up the signers—to St. Paul’s Church in Augusta, Georgia.