1. Portions of this essay appeared in Benjamin Justice, “The Great Contest: The American Philosophical Society and the Education Prize of 1797.” American Journal of Education. 114:2 (February 2008), 191–213, and are reprinted here with permission.
2. Thomas Jefferson, “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” reprinted in Merrill D. Peterson (ed.), Jefferson Writings (New York: Library of America, 184), 365–373; John Adams was the primary author of the Massachusetts State Constitution of 1780.
3. Max Farrand (ed.), Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 321–322.
4. Merle Odgers, “Education and the American Philosophical Society,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 87:1 (July 14, 1943): 20–23. The website of the APS also contains useful information on its founding and prominent members. See www.amphilsoc.org;
5. John L. Brooke, “Ancient Lodges and Self-Created Societies: Voluntary Association and the Public Sphere in the Early Republic,” in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (eds.), Launching the “Extended Republic,” The Federalist Era (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 273–359;