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Liberty without Tumult: Understanding the Politics of John Dickinson1
| Of the founding fathers, none has confounded scholars more than John Dickinson. Because of his simultaneous call for colonial rights and opposition to the Declaration of Independence, historians have labeled his political stance a "perplexing conservatism," and him "a conservative sort of rebel" and a "negative-minded agrarian."2 It is likely that this confusion is the reason Dickinson has received relatively little attention when compared to the volumes of work on the other founders. Edwin Wolf 2nd rightly called him the "forgotten patriot," "doomed to limbo in the popular mind."3 Most ironically, however, many historians have also labeled him "the Penman of the Revolution"4—he who opposed the Revolution. Dickinson's contemporaries, says Milton E. Flower, "were unable to comprehend the direction and rationale of the straight course Dickinson pursued, as he fearlessly continued to protest against every action of Britain that infringed on the liberties of the colonists and joined with military preparedness in case of armed struggle, yet remained loath to face the question of independence."5 It would seem that this lack of understanding has been as much on our part as on that of Dickinson's contemporaries. |
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Considering his achievements, Dickinson's absence from the historiography is striking. Throughout the creation of the republic, he was among the most active and prolific leaders from the onset of the tensions to the solidification of the union. Before and during the Revolution, he was an important figure in the Stamp Act Congress; member of the First and Second Continental Congresses, as well as many of the committees within those bodies; author of, in addition to many other public and official documents, the Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress (1765), Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767–68), the First Petition to the King (1774), the Olive Branch Petition (1775), the Declaration for Taking Up Arms (1775), and the first draft of the Articles of Confederation (1776).6 He was also a colonel in the Pennsylvania militia and first a private soldier and then a brigadier general in the Delaware militia. In the constitutional period, he was the president of both Delaware and Pennsylvania; unanimously chosen president of the Annapolis Convention; an important contributor to the Constitutional Convention; and author of the Fabius Letters. In short, he was the "man of preeminence" who E. Digby Baltzell denies Pennsylvania ever produced.7 |
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The confusion over Dickinson's politics hinges on two seminal and apparently contradictory moments—the publication of the Farmer's Letters and his refusal to support the Declaration of Independence. It is clear that the Letters had the result scholars have claimed—they certainly helped prepare the colonists for revolt. But after painting him as the "Penman of the Revolution," scholars then find themselves at a loss to explain Dickinson's stance on the Declaration. If one takes their interpretation of the Farmer's Letters as accurate, Dickinson's behavior does indeed seem erratic and contradictory. David L. Jacobson, the author of the only scholarly monograph on Dickinson's politics, writes that in 1776 his opinions were "a hodgepodge of contradictory ideas."8 For centuries historians have been trying to make sense of his seemingly inscrutable opposition to the Declaration, but they have given only vague, speculative, and unsatisfactory explanations for it, most of which paint him in an unfavorable light. |
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