Here is just another unknown founding father, Nicholas Gilman one of the delegates from New Hampshire. Gilman was born on August 3, 1755 in Exeter, New Hampshire and he died on May 2, 1814 in Philadelphia. Nicholas Gilman started out as a merchant, but that career was soon replaced with many others. He served as adjutant of the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment, a regiment General Washington could always rely upon. He then served on the staff of General Washington starting from the Continental Army's time in Valley Forge all the way up to the victory at Yorktown. Gilman was a Federalist who later changed more for the "common man" to become a Jeffersonian Republican.
As a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Nicholas Gilman was a key persuader of his state into ratification of the Constitution. Gilman as well as John Langdon got New Hampshire to become the ninth state to ratify the Constitution with a 57-47 vote. As a delegate at the convention, Gilman did a great job in helping form our new countries government. He said this about the Constitution:
[I]t was done by bargain and Compromise, yet, notwithstanding its imperfections, on the adoption of it depends (in my feeble judgment) whether we shall become a respectable nation, or a people torn to pieces . . . and rendered contemptible for ages."
1 comment:
It make you realize how uncertain these men were of success. If they had failed they'd have been punished as traitors. Yet they did it. And people want to compare their revolution to the Taliban or terrorists. Don't they get the difference?
It's the difference between creating and destroying. Couldn't be more opposite.
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