Thomas Jefferson, after many months in Philadelphia, finally got to return home today.

One of the things that puzzled me early on in this podcasting project was the relative fluidity of the membership of the Continental Congress. People came in, people went out, and nobody seemed to have a problem with it. There didn’t appear to be a set schedule to it, and there were often periods in which a colony had nine delegates and other times when it had none. (Or that time when Georgia had only one delegate, and he wouldn’t vote because his views didn’t necessarily reflect those of his constituents. Or that other time when New York’s delegates abstained from anything involving Independence because they’d been directed not to vote in favor.)

But as time went on it began to dawn on me that these weren’t elected officials in the sense that we think of them; they were appointed by their governments to serve, and at heart they were citizens who were performing a duty, and then returned to whatever they ordinarily did. In fact, this is one of the reasons why many states today impose term limits: politics wasn’t a career for these people; they’d go in, do their thing and then go home and do something else, and let another person take their place.

And yes, many of the members of Congress, such as Thomas Jefferson, moved on to other political positions but many others returned to their previous profession (e.g., law) but perhaps at a higher level because they’d been in Congress.

In retrospect, it wasn’t a terrible system, nor was it a bad philosophy.

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