Roger Sherman: “Letters of a Countryman” (November 22, 1787)

Glossary

• An Old Whig the pseudonym of an Antifederalist who has not been identified
• apostolic term evoking the high seriousness associated with the twelve apostles of Christian scriptures
• Brutus the pseudonym of the author of sixteen Antifederalist articles, generally believed to be Robert Yates
• Brutus junior the pseudonym of an unidentified Antifederalist writer
• Cato pseudonym of the Antifederalist George Clinton, governor of New York
• Franklin Benjamin Franklin, author, statesman, diplomat, inventor, scientist, and one of the nation’s founders; delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Pennsylvania
• George Bryan author of the Pennsylvania Constitution
• Magna Charta usually Magna Carta; literally the “Great Charter,” a document presented by the English barons to King John in 1215, asserting their legal rights and privileges
• Officer in the Continental Army more accurately, Officer in the Late Continental Army, the name used by the Antifederalist writer William Findley, a Pennsylvania politician and farmer
• Son of Liberty a name taken by numerous opponents of the new Constitution
• Timoleon the pseudonym of an unknown Antifederalist writer
• viz. abbreviation of Latin videlicet, or “that is to say”
• Washington George Washington, who would serve as first U.S. president under the new Constitution
• Wilson James Wilson, delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Pennsylvania and later a justice of the first U.S. Supreme Court