William Few, who represented Georgia at the Constitutional Convention, was a self-made man. Born into a family struggling against the poverty and hardships that were the common lot of the small yeoman farmer, Few achieved both social prominence and political power. Exhibiting those characteristics of self-reliance vital for survival on the American frontier, he became an intimate of the nation's political and military elite. The idea of a rude frontiersman providing the democratic leaven within an association of the rich and powerful has always excited the American imagination, nurtured on stories of Davy Crockett and Abe Lincoln. In the case of the self-educated Few, that image was largely accurate.
