Atlas."

But perhaps the most remarkable testimony to his character,
one almost unexampled in the history of public men, is that
paid to him by Oliver Ellsworth, himself one of the greatest
men of his time,--Chief Justice of the United States, Envoy
to France, leader in the Senate for the first twelve years
of the Constitution, and author of the Judiciary Act. He
had been on the Bench of the Superior Court of Connecticut,
with Mr. Sherman, for many years. They served together in
the Continental Congress, and in the Senate of the United
States. They were together members of the Convention that
framed the Constitution, and of the State Convention in Connecticut
that adopted it. Chief Justice Ellsworth told John Adams
that he had made Mr. Sherman his model in his youth. Mr.
Adams adds: "Indeed I never knew two men more alike, except
that the Chief Justice had the advantage of a liberal education,
and somewhat more extensive reading. Mr. Sherman was born
in the State of Massachusetts, and was one of the strongest
and soundest pillars of the Revolution." It would be hard
to find another case of life-long and intimate companionship
between two public men where such a declaration by either
of the other would not seem ludicrous.

He was the only person who signed all four of the great State
Papers, to which the signatures of the delegates of the different
Colonies were attached:

The Association of 1774;
The Articles of Confederation;
The Declaration of Independence, and
The Constitution of the United States.

Robert Morris signed three of them.

His tenacity, the independence of his judgment, and his influence
over the great men with whom he was associated, is shown by
four striking instances among many others where he succeeded
in impressing his opinion on his associates.

_First:_ It is well known that the dispute between the large
States, who desired to have their votes in the National Legislature
counted in proportion to numbers, and the small States, who
desired to vote by States as equals, a dispute which nearly
wrecked the attempt to frame a Constitution of the United
States, arose in the Continental Congress, and gave rise to
great controversy there when the Articles of Confederation
were framed. Mr. Sherman was one of the Committee that framed
those Articles, as he was afterward one of the Committee who
reported the Declaration of Independence.

John Adams writes in his diary, that Mr.