John Dickinson

John Dickinson (November 13, 1732 – February 14, 1808) stands as one of the most consequential figures in Delaware history and in the broader story of the American Revolution. He was the most famous of the founders to come from Delaware. At various times he was a Continental Congressman from Pennsylvania and Delaware, a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, and, on occasionally overlapping terms, both President of Delaware and President of Pennsylvania. Best known by the epithet "Penman of the Revolution," his nickname was well earned by the fact that most of the major petitions and state papers before the Revolution were authored by Dickinson. His life — spanning Maryland's Eastern Shore, the plantation fields of Kent County, and the political chambers of Philadelphia — illuminates the contradictions and commitments of the founding generation.

Early Life and Delaware Roots

Early one November morning in 1732, a child was born at Crosiadore, a large plantation in Talbot County, Maryland. His father, Samuel Dickinson, was a wealthy landowner, businessman, and lawyer, and the third generation in a family of tobacco planters who continued to build on an already prosperous business with the help of slave labor. In 1740, Samuel moved his second wife, Mary, and their two sons to Kent County, Delaware, leaving the Maryland plantation lands to the surviving children from his first marriage.

Samuel Dickinson had come to Kent County, Delaware to accept a judgeship and to allow his wife, Mary Cadwalader Dickinson, to be closer to her native Philadelphia. At the new plantation, then called Poplar Hall, John was schooled by a series of tutors. Among those tutors was a significant figure in Delaware legal history: William Killen, who became a lifelong friend and who later became Delaware's first chief justice and chancellor.

In 1750, aged 18, John began reading law in Philadelphia and later studied in England at Middle Temple, Inns of Court and Westminster, before returning home in 1757 to begin his law practice in Philadelphia. His family's deep roots in Delaware and his father's landholdings on Jones Neck — stretching some about 3,000 acres along the St. Jones River from Dover to the Delaware Bay — gave Dickinson the social standing, property, and political credibility to operate simultaneously in both Delaware and Pennsylvania public life.

Political Career

With close ties to both Delaware and Pennsylvania, where geographic boundaries were less significant than they are today and a person could hold public office in both places, he became a member of the Delaware Assembly in 1760 and was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly two years later representing Philadelphia.

He represented Pennsylvania in the Stamp Act Congress (1765) and drafted its declaration of rights and grievances. He won fame in 1767–68 as the author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, which appeared in many colonial newspapers and helped turn opinion against the Townshend Acts (1767), under which new duties were collected to pay the salaries of royal officials in the colonies. These essays were published in London in 1768 by Benjamin Franklin, and later translated to French and published in Paris.

As a member of the First Continental Congress, where he signed the Continental Association, Dickinson drafted most of the 1774 Petition to the King, and then, as a member of the Second Continental Congress, wrote the Olive Branch Petition in 1775. He also drafted the Declaration of Rights of the Stamp Act Congress, the Address to the Inhabitants of Quebec of the Congress of 1774, and, along with Jefferson, the Declaration of the United Colonies of North America setting forth the Causes and the Necessity of their Taking up Arms (1775).

Despite this prolific record of patriotic writing, Dickinson was opposed to a separation from Great Britain and worked very hard to temper the language and action of the Congress, in an effort to maintain the possibility of reconciliation — and it was for this reason that he abstained from voting on and signing the Declaration of Independence. A man of immense intellect, literary skill, and contradictory beliefs, he embodied a principled stand for the respect of the rights of American colonists, while stepping back from declaring independence or fighting the British Empire.

Following the Declaration's passage, Dickinson did not abandon the patriot cause. When war broke out, he joined the cause of independence and commanded Philadelphia battalions fighting in New York, rising to the rank of Brigadier-General in the Pennsylvania Militia; he was also a private soldier in the Delaware Militia that took part in the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777, and in January 1779 he was sent to Congress from Delaware, signing the Articles of Confederation.

In 1781 he served as president of the state of Delaware and then from 1782 to 1785 as the president of Pennsylvania before returning to Delaware. In 1792, he assisted in forming a new constitution for Delaware.

The Constitutional Convention and Delaware's Ratification

As a delegate from Delaware to the Federal Constitutional Convention (1787), Dickinson signed the U.S. Constitution and worked for its adoption. He is credited with securing equal representation for each state in the Senate and proportional representation in the House of Representatives.

In September 1787, five delegates from Delaware attended the Constitutional Convention and signed the U.S. Constitution — Richard Bassett, Gunning Bedford Jr., Jacob Broom, John Dickinson, and George Read. On December 7, 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution, and Delawareans now celebrate "Delaware Day" on December 7 to mark the occasion that earned Delaware its "First State" moniker. It was largely through Dickinson's influence that Delaware and Pennsylvania were the first two states to ratify the Constitution.

After the adjournment of the Convention, he promoted the new document in a series of nine essays using the pen name of Fabius. These letters, along with his earlier revolutionary writings, confirmed his standing as the era's most prolific political author.

Slavery, Emancipation, and the Contradictions of the Founding

Dickinson kept enslaved labor on his plantation, and it is through this contradiction that we can gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of the American Revolution. In 1777, Dickinson, by then Delaware's wealthiest farmer and largest slaveholder, decided to free his slaves; while the number of slaves in Kent County was not as large as the southern colonies and Dickinson had only 37 slaves, this action has been described as requiring considerable personal courage on Dickinson's part.

The strongly abolitionist Quaker influences around him were likely influential in his decision, and his action was facilitated by the fact that his farm had moved away from farming tobacco to less labor-intensive crops, including wheat and barley. Dickinson was the only Founding Father to free his slaves prior to 1786 when others also began doing so, except for Benjamin Franklin, who had freed his slaves by 1770.

In his later years Dickinson revised the manumission of his enslaved workers, so that all were freed shortly before his death in 1808; during this time he also wrote openly in support of the abolition movement, and like many of the Founders, saw the gradual end of slavery as an institution in the United States as inevitable. The Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs has since created a new website featuring 131 names that shares the stories of the enslaved, indentured, freedom-seeking and free Black people who lived, worked and died at and near the John Dickinson Plantation.

The John Dickinson Plantation and Delaware Legacy

Dickinson's boyhood home in Kent County has become one of the most important historical sites in the state. The John Dickinson Plantation was Dickinson's boyhood home at 310 Kitts Hummock Road, five miles south of Dover; the house, an example of Early Georgian architecture, was built on a 13,000-acre plantation in 1739–40 by Judge Samuel Dickinson, with wings added in 1752 and 1754. The original house suffered major damage during a British raid in August 1781 and was nearly destroyed by fire in 1804. Purchased by the National Society of Colonial Dames of America in 1952, it was given to the State of Delaware and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.

Dickinson's influence on Delaware's civic and educational landscape has proven enduring. John Dickinson High School in Milltown, Delaware, Dickinson Hall at the University of Delaware, and Dickinson Street in Dewey Beach, Delaware are all named in his honor. John Dickinson High School in Wilmington, Delaware, was dedicated in his honor in 1959. He helped to found Dickinson College (named in his honor) at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1783, was the first president of its board of trustees, and was for many years its chief benefactor.

Dickinson retired from public life to his home at Wilmington, where he died on the 14th of February 1808. He was buried in the Friends Burial Ground in Wilmington, Delaware. Upon hearing of his death, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that Dickinson was "a more estimable man or truer patriot" who had been "among the first of the advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain" and whose "name will be consecrated in history as one of the great worthies of the Revolution."