Philadelphiensis vs The New Roof - Benjamin Workman's Sensationalism
Benjamin Workman was a Mathematics Professor at the University of Pennsylvania who ruthlessly attacked aristocrats during the Constitutional Ratification Debates.
Benjamin Workman
Benjamin Workman was an Irish Mathematician who immigrated to the United States to take a job as a Professor at the College of Philadelphia.
Though he had not been in the country long when the debates on the Constitution arose, Workman took a strong Anti-Federalist position.
Benjamin sent a series of twelve essays to the Independent Gazetteer which were published under the pseudonym Philadelphiensis.
The Anti-Federalist Attacks
The works of Philadelphiensis are aggressive attacks on the Constitution as well as the general personal character of the Federalists.
While most Papers (both Federal and Anti-Federal) have at least a semblance of political theory and well-considered logic, Workman’s essays outright ridiculed the aristocrats who hoped to unite the States.
In a move that is surprisingly in line with modern sensationalized news, Philadelphiensis put out articles that were geared more toward a reader’s passions than facts.
Hopkinson’s Rebuttal
The most important thing to know about the writing of Philadelphiensis was how it backfired.
His work was soon criticized in a piece titled The New Roof by an author going by the pen name of A.B.
A.B. was extremely quickly found out to be Declaration Signer Francis Hopkinson (who was called out by his friends at a dinner party a few days later).
To paraphrase in brief, The New Roof was an allegory that compared the Articles of Confederation to a decade old house which was found out to have many, many structural issues. The people who wrote the Constitution, in this story, were the contractors brought in to rebuild the house.
Hopkinson’s work was a broad oversimplification of the situation but it worked. Many common people read his essay and were swayed to support the Constitution, nullifying Benjamin Workman’s original goal.
This was just one article in my series on the Anti-Federalist Papers.
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