Before adjourning yesterday’s session of the Convention, a Committee on Postponed Parts was approved, charged with examining “such parts of the Constitution as have been postponed, and such parts of Reports as have not been acted on” and making recommendations to the full Convention. “Postponed parts” include the power of Congress to make war, impose taxes, authorize patents and copyrights, and other undefined powers. Plans for the national “seat of government,” or at least the conditions underlying such plans, had been postponed and no provisions have been made for managing relations with Native American tribes.
However, nothing is more important than defining the executive branch of the government. Even the mode of electing the President remains uncertain. Moreover, the delegates are getting restless. They have been in Philadelphia for more than three months. Letters home predict the business is nearly at an end, but they cannot leave until the plan is complete.
Although the Committee was not elected until late in the afternoon yesterday, it held its first meeting last night. This morning, its chairman, New Jersey’s David Brearley, made his first “partial report” as soon as the Convention was called to order. The report made several recommendations which the Convention “received,” but on which it did not act. Instead, the Convention adjourned until 10:00 Monday morning to give the Committee time to accomplish its assignment.
Unlike George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and other luminaries of the Revolution and founding of the United States, David Brearley is unlikely to fill many pages of American history books. But that is true of the vast numbers of men and women who made America a reality. However, this week and the months to follow, Brearley will play a vital role as chairman of the Committee on Postponed Parts and chair of the New Jersey convention committee which will draft the ratification instrument of his State.
New Jersey is one of the smallest States, in both size and population. The New Jersey Plan, proposed in June by William Paterson as an alternative to the Virginia Plan, was designed to protect the interests of the small States. Brearley had a hand in drafting the plan and, concerned that the large States would dominate the Convention, prodded Washington to write to the small State New Hampshire delegates, urging them to hurry to Philadelphia. Brearley was also a member of the committee which engineered the great compromise over representation. In short, he has been an active contributor to the entire business yet is not a frequent speaker in debates on the floor. As Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, he is described in Pierce Butler’s “sketches” as “a man of good, rather than brilliant parts…in very much esteem of the people. As an orator he has little to boast of, but as a man has every virtue to recommend him.”
Brearley is descended from emigrants who left Yorkshire, England, for the colony of New Jersey in about 1680. Born in 1745 at Spring Grove near Trenton, he attended but did not graduate from the College of New Jersey. After reading the law with an attorney in Princeton, Brearley became a lawyer and set up a practice in Allentown. An early supporter of the Patriot cause before hostilities broke out between the Americans and the British, Brearley was arrested by the British for high treason, only to be freed by a mob of Patriots.
Brearley and his brother, Joseph, served in both the militia and the Continental Army where David rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and saw action at Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth, and endured the dark winter months at Valley Forge. New Jersey was a pivotal State throughout the War. In early May 1776, the Continental Congress had passed a resolution advising the thirteen colonies to begin forming new governments. Rhode Island declared its independence from Britain on May 4 and began to draft its own constitution. New Jersey followed soon after, declaring its independence on July 2, the same day Congress voted for independence on behalf of all of the colonies.
New Jersey’s new constitution allowed “all inhabitants of this colony, of full age, who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money” to vote, including non-whites and widows. New Jersey’s colonial governor, William Franklin, appointed by the British Prime Minister in 1763, remained loyal to the King and Great Britain. The acknowledged illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, William was an able governor but continued to pass along secret information of Patriot activities to London. In January 1776, colonial militiamen placed him under house arrest. Following the Declaration of Independence, he was incarcerated in Connecticut for two years. Released through a prisoner exchange, he moved to New York, still occupied by the British, and was a leader in the Loyalist cause. At war’s end, he emigrated to England, never to return to America and never to fully reconcile with his father.
During the War, the small State of New Jersey, approximately only 7,354 miles square, was subjected to two hundred ninety-six military engagements, more than any other State. The critical ten days beginning with Washington’s crossing of the Delaware on December 25, 1776 and the Battle of Trenton, were only the beginning. The Battle of Princeton in January 1777, the Battles of Millstone, Short Hills, Monmouth, Paulus Hook, Springfield, and dozens of others followed, even beyond Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. The June 28, 1778 Battle of Monmouth is considered to be a draw between the Americans and the British but a long-term victory for the Americans. It is also known for the heroic actions of Mary Ludwig Hayes whose husband, an artilleryman in the Continental Army, fell wounded. Serving as a watercarrier, Mary took her husband’s place, swabbing, loading, and firing the cannon. Memorialized in history as “Molly Pitcher,” General Washington commended her actions.
New Jersey was the scene of the final clash between American and British forces in the Revolutionary War. Known as the Affair at Cedar Bridge in Barnegat Township in December 1782, casualties were noticeably light, five Patriots to four Loyalists, but the War was over, and New Jersey had done her part. Now her delegate, David Brearley, will do his part at this critical turning point at the Constitutional Convention.