Robert Whitehill and the Bill of Rights

Robert Whitehill lived at Lowther Manor on land conveyed to him by the Penn family in seventeen seventy-one, and from this quiet estate he helped shape the American Constitution in ways that history has not fully credited.

At Pennsylvania's ratification convention in seventeen eighty-seven, Whitehill led the Anti-Federalist minority against adopting the Constitution as written. He argued it lacked protections for individual rights and presented a list of proposed amendments. Though Pennsylvania ratified, Whitehill's amendments circulated widely and may have informed James Madison when he drafted what became the Bill of Rights.

Whitehill had already helped write Pennsylvania's own constitution of seventeen seventy-six, one of the most democratic state charters of the era. He went on to serve in the United States Congress from eighteen oh five to eighteen thirteen. He died here in eighteen thirteen, a founder of American liberties whose name deserves to be better known.