The SAR MAGAZINE is the official quarterly publication of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution published quarterly.
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30 SAR MAGAZINE By Kenneth R. Bowling harles Thomson, like his benefactor Benjamin Franklin, is historical proof of the early American success story. He was born in 1729 at Gorteade in County Derry, Ireland. After his mother died, his father, who died en route, brought him to America. Within 20 years of the 10-year-old orphan's reaching America, he had established himself as a Philadelphia merchant and intellectual leader, with strong political connections to those Pennsylvanians who opposed the Penn family. After he acted as secretary to the meeting that produced the Easton Treaty in 1758, the Lenape- Delaware named him Wegh- wu-law-mo-end, or the man who speaks the truth. By the Stamp Act Crisis in 1765, he had become deeply immersed in the opposition to parliamentary policy. Known as the "Sam Adams of Philadelphia," he was elected the First Continental Congress secretary on Sept. 5, 1774, and he held that office until his resignation in July 1789. Thomson, who always sat below and to the right of Congress' president, selected what to include in the journals he kept, saw to their printing and distribution, took the roll, and occasionally made special reports to Congress or served on its committees. He attested commissions, issued letters of marque, read official communications and documents to Congress, kept and affixed the seals of the United States to all official papers, and performed miscellaneous housekeeping duties essential to protocol and the smooth functioning of Congress. Beyond all that, he controlled the use and disposition of all secret and most public papers. Delegates knew him to be a fount of knowledge about Congress which he could make available to them when and if he chose. A majority remained satisfied that he did not abuse his immense power to forward his own personal views, those of friends, of Philadelphia, of Pennsylvania, or of the middle states. A minority adamantly felt otherwise. Most prominent among those was the Arthur Lee-John Adams interest, composed of New Englanders and southerners. As the only officeholder to serve Congress continuously from its dynamic birth to its anticlimactic demise, Thomson expected to be awarded a high office in the new government. There was even rumor of the vice presidency. Benjamin Franklin reminded him, however, of the "reproach thrown on Republics, that they are apt to be ungrateful." He lost election as secretary of the Senate to a bitter political enemy but did not know it for several days because the Senate had dispatched him to Mount Vernon to inform George Washington of his election as president. The Senate, where his adversaries were concentrated, refused to print his letter describing the trip in its journal. All three senators who sat on the joint inaugural committee were political enemies, and they managed to convince at least one representative on the committee to deny Thomson an invitation to the inauguration, despite the fact that he had been Washington's official escort to New York. The reason given—that he was no longer a government official—seemed disingenuous when in fact he had custody of the seals of the United States and the archives of Congress that he had kept since 1774. Within a week the wound had healed enough that Thomson was seeking another federal position: secretary of a not-yet- created home or domestic department. After the House of Representatives voted to create three executive departments: foreign affairs, treasury and war, Thomson explained to a supporter in the House that the complex nature of the new federal government, its diverse interests, its territories, the relationships among the states and between the states and the federal government, as well as the rights and claims of the American Indians "cannot fail to suggest ... that the care of our domestic affairs and the preserving peace and harmony at home is of as much importance and may require as much time, attention and abilities" as any of the departments already proposed. More specifically, its functions could include keeping the seals and archives of the United States; reporting plans for the improvement of manufacturing, agriculture and commerce; obtaining geographical accounts of the states; and supervising the census, patents and copyrights. The House refused to create the department, which his enemies saw as nothing more than a sinecure for the Charles Thomson A Patriot From Ireland z z z z z z z z z z C