John Dickinson (November 13, [O.S. November 2, 1732 – February 14, 1808) was an American Founding Father, attorney and politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Wilmington, Delaware. Dickinson was known as the "Penman of the Revolution" for his 12 Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, published individually in 1767 and 1768, and he also wrote "The Liberty Song" in 1768.
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. Both of these attempts to negotiate with King George III of Great Britain failed. Dickinson also reworked Thomas Jefferson's language to write the final draft of the 1775 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms.
As a delegate to Congress, Dickinson served on the committee that wrote the Model Treaty, a template for seeking alliances with foreign countries, but he opposed independence from Great Britain. He either abstained or was absent from the vote on the Declaration of Independence and refused to sign the document after its passage. Nevertheless, Dickinson wrote the first draft of the 1776–1777 Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union and served as a militia officer during the Revolution. He was later elected president of the 1786 Annapolis Convention, which called for the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and as a delegate from Delaware, he signed the United States Constitution.
One of the wealthiest men in the British American colonies, Dickinson served as president of Delaware (1781–1783) and president of Pennsylvania (1782–1785). Upon Dickinson's death, President Thomas Jefferson referred to Dickinson as "(a)mong the first of the advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain" and called him "one of the great worthies of the revolution."
Together with his wife Mary Norris Dickinson, he is the namesake of Dickinson College, Penn State Dickinson Law, and the Dickinson Complex at the University of Delaware. John Dickinson High School in Wilmington, Delaware, was dedicated in his honor in 1959.
Early life and education
Dickinson was born at Crosiadore Plantation, his family's tobacco plantation near the village of present-day Trappe, Maryland, in the Province of Maryland in British America. He was the great-grandson of Walter Dickinson who came from England as an indentured servant to the Colony of Virginia in 1654 and, having joined the Society of Friends, came with several co-religionists to Talbot County on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in 1659. There, with on the banks of the Choptank River, Walter began a plantation, , meaning "cross of gold." Walter also bought on St. Jones Neck in what became Kent County, Delaware.The Duke of York Record 1646–1679, Printed by order of the General Assembly of the State of Delaware, 1899
Croisadore passed through Walter's son, William, to his grandson, Samuel, the father of John Dickinson. Each generation increased the landholdings so that Samuel inherited on five farms in three Maryland counties; over his lifetime, he increased that to . He also bought the Kent County property from his cousin and expanded it to about , stretching along the St. Jones River from Dover to the Delaware Bay. There he began another plantation and called it Poplar Hall. These plantations were large, profitable agricultural enterprises worked by slave labor, until 1777 when John Dickinson freed the enslaved of Poplar Hall.
Samuel Dickinson married Judith Troth (1689–1729) on April 11, 1710. They had nine children: William, Walter, Samuel, Elizabeth, Henry, Elizabeth "Betsy", Rebecca, and Rachel. The three eldest sons died of smallpox while in London seeking their education. Widowed with two young children, Henry and Betsy, Samuel married Mary Cadwalader in 1731. She was the daughter of Martha Jones, the granddaughter of Dr. Thomas Wynne, and the prominent Quaker John Cadwalader, who was the grandfather of General John Cadwalader of Philadelphia. Their sons, John, Thomas, and Philemon were born in the next few years.
For three generations, the Dickinson family had been members of the Third Haven Friends Meeting in Talbot County, and the Cadwaladers were members of the Meeting in Philadelphia. But in 1739, John Dickinson's half-sister, Betsy, was married in an Anglican church to Charles Goldsborough in what the Meeting called a "disorderly marriage." The couple would be the grandparents of Maryland governor Charles Goldsborough.
Leaving Croisadore to elder son Henry Dickinson, Samuel moved to Poplar Hall, where he had already taken a leading role in the community as judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Kent County. The move also placed Mary nearer her Philadelphia relations. Poplar Hall was situated on an artificially straightened section of the St. Jones River. There was plenty of activity delivering necessities and shipping the agricultural products produced. Much of this product was wheat that, along with other wheat from the region, was milled into a "superfine" flour. Most people at this plantation were servants and slaves of the Dickinsons.
Dickinson was educated at home by his parents and by recent immigrants employed for that purpose. Among them was the Presbyterian minister Francis Alison, who later established New London Academy in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Most important was his tutor, William Killen, who became a lifelong friend and who later became Delaware's first chief justice and chancellor. While Dickinson was precocious and energetic and adored Poplar Hall, his family's heart was set on Philadelphia.
At age 18, Dickinson began studying law under John Moland in Philadelphia. While there, he became friends with fellow students George Read, Samuel Wharton, and others. In 1753, he went to London to study for three years at the Middle Temple. He spent those years studying the works of Edward Coke and Francis Bacon at the Inns of Court, following in the footsteps of his lifelong friend, Pennsylvania Attorney General Benjamin Chew.
Personal life On July 19, 1770, Dickinson married Mary Norris, known as Polly, a prominent and well educated 30-year-old woman in Philadelphia with a substantial holding of real estate and personal property, including a 1,500-volume library, one of the largest in the colonies at the time, who had been operating her family's estate, Fair Hill, for several years by herself with some support from her sister. She was the daughter of wealthy Philadelphia Quaker and Speaker of the Pennsylvania General Assembly Isaac Norris and Sarah Logan, the daughter of James Logan. She was also cousin to the Quaker poet Hannah Griffitts. Dickinson and Norris had five children, but only two survived to adulthood: Sarah Norris "Sally" Dickinson and Maria Mary Dickinson. Dickinson never formally joined the Quaker Meeting because, as he explained, he believed in the "lawfulness of defensive war". He and Norris were married in a civil ceremony.
In Philadelphia, they lived at Fair Hill near the present-day Germantown neighborhood, which they modernized through their combined wealth. Meanwhile, Dickinson built an elegant mansion on Chestnut Street, but never lived there as it was confiscated and turned into a hospital during his 1776–1777 absence in Delaware. It then became the residence of the French ambassador and then the residence of Dickinson's brother, Philemon Dickinson. On November 22, 1777, Fair Hill was one of a number of houses burned by the British. While in Philadelphia as state president, Dickinson lived at the confiscated mansion of Joseph Galloway at Sixth and Market Streets, which is now the State Presidential Mansion.
Dickinson lived at Poplar Hall for extended periods from 1776 to 1777 and from 1781 to 1782. In August 1781, Poplar Hall was sacked by Loyalists and was badly burned in 1804. It is now owned by the state of Delaware and is open to the public. In 1785, following his service as president of Pennsylvania, Dickinson lived in Wilmington, Delaware, and built a mansion at the northwest corner of 8th and Market Streets in Center City Philadelphia.
Career In 1767 and 1768, in protest to the Townshend Acts, Dickinson published Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,Dickenson,1769 which were first published in the Pennsylvania Chronicle. Dickinson's letters were reprinted by numerous other newspapers and emerged as among the most influential American political documents prior to the American Revolution. Dickinson argued that the British Parliament had the right to regulate commerce but lacked the right to levy duties for revenue. Dickinson further warned that if the colonies acquiesced to the Townshend Acts, Parliament would lay further taxes on the colonies in the future. After publishing these letters, he was elected in 1768 to the American Philosophical Society as a member.
Continental Congress Dickinson was one of the delegates from the Province of Pennsylvania to the First Continental Congress in 1774 and the Second Continental Congress in 1775 and 1776. In support of the cause, he continued to contribute declarations in the name of the Congress. Dickinson wrote the Olive Branch Petition as the Second Continental Congress's last attempt for peace with King George III, who did not read the petition. But through it all, agreeing with George Read and many others in Philadelphia and the lower counties, Dickinson's objective at first was reconciliation, not independence and revolution. Dickinson prepared the first draft of the Articles of Confederation in 1776, after others had ratified the Declaration of Independence despite his concerns that the Declaration would escalate the Revolutionary War, which began in 1775 at the Battle of Lexington and Concord. At the time, he chaired the committee charged with drafting the Articles of Confederation, while serving in the Continental Congress as a delegate from the province of Pennsylvania.
When the Second Continental Congress began the debate on the Declaration of Independence on July 1, 1776, Dickinson reiterated his opposition to declaring independence at that time. Dickinson believed that Congress should complete the Articles of Confederation and secure a foreign alliance before issuing a declaration. Dickinson also objected to violence as a means for resolving the Thirteen Colonies' dispute with Britain. He abstained or absented himself from the votes on July 2 that declared independence and absented himself again from voting on the wording of the formal declaration on July 4. Dickinson understood the implications of his refusal to vote, saying, "My conduct this day, I expect will give the finishing blow to my once too great and, my integrity considered, now too diminished popularity." Dickinson refused to sign the declaration, and since a proposal had been brought forth and carried that stated "for our mutual security and protection", no man could remain in the Continental Congress without signing it, so Dickinson voluntarily departed and joined the Pennsylvania patriot militia. John Adams, a fierce advocate for independence and Dickinson's adversary on the floor of Congress, remarked, "Mr. Dickinson's alacrity and spirit certainly become his character and sets a fine example."
In the Pennsylvania militia, known as the Associators, Dickinson was given the rank of brigadier general and led 10,000 soldiers to Elizabeth, New Jersey, to protect the area against a British attack from Staten Island. But because of his unpopular opinion of abstaining from supporting independence, two junior officers were promoted above him.
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