As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’ve started a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. This week, Jonathan looks at the dramatic vote for independence in the Continental Congress. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here. —The Editors
As we celebrate America’s birthday this week, count on hearing no shortage of quotations from Massachusetts delegate John Adams, who delivered the closing argument in favor of independence at the Continental Congress 250 years ago today. Almost sure to go unquoted will be the man who delivered the closing argument for the other side. Yet there’s no better way to appreciate the enormous risks that our Founders took in declaring independence than to read the words of the motion’s most eloquent opponent: John Dickinson of Pennsylvania.
Among delegates to the Continental Congress, few could match the 43-year-old Dickinson in fame in 1776. Described as “tall but slender as a reed,” he had risen to the pinnacle of Philadelphia society as a lawyer and made a name for himself across the colonies as the author of the celebrated Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania in protest of British abuses. The arguments in these essays might have put some on the path to breaking with Britain but not the author himself. Though a staunch advocate for American liberty, Dickinson held out hope for reconciliation.
Talk of peace with Britain annoyed no one more than Adams, who chalked up the delusion to, among other things, the pacifism of Quakers (Dickinson’s wife was a member of the Society of Friends). “A certain great fortune and piddling genius whose fame has been trumpeted so loudly has given a silly cast to our whole doings,” Adams wrote in 1775 of Dickinson in a private letter that unfortunately for both men ended up in the hands of the British and then in the columns of newspapers.
