With Independence Day only a couple of days away, we are being besieged with quotes and misquotes from John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Ben Franklin, the most notable of the Founding Fathers of this country.
While they and others, including John Hancock and Richard Henry Lee, are the members of the Second Continental Congress who most strongly supported and eventually facilitated the signing of our Declaration of Independence, there are others we do not speak of so often because of their opposition to the signing of that document and the waging of war against Great Britain. But those men were just as patriotic and stood to lose life and property just as much as those who supported the war for independence.
Two of the most notable in their opposition to both the signing of a declaration of independence and the waging of war were John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina. Yet they are two of the most patriotic figures in American history.
Dickinson was arguably the wealthiest man to serve in the Second Continental Congress. As part of that body, he sent repeated articles of complaint to England urging the crown to repeal unfair taxes and restore the rights of Englishmen to citizens of the American Colonies. One of these was Thomas Jefferson's "A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms." However, when the Declaration of Independence was submitted to the Congress, Dickinson was one of its leading opponents, arguing the signing of that document would lead to unnecessary conflict with Great Britain. Dickinson felt strongly that before independence was declared, some type of alliance must be brokered with a country or countries to act as allies against England in the event of war.
To illustrate what he believed should be the first step toward American independence, Dickinson wrote what would become the Articles of Confederation, and submitted them to Congress as an alternative to Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. However, when the vote was taken on the Declaration, and he realized he was the only impediment to its passage, he resigned from Congress rather than cast a dissenting vote, and joined the Pennsylvania Militia.
Dickinson went on to fight the British with both the Pennsylvania and Delaware militias. He was forced to leave his home in Philadelphia after it was turned into a war hospital and later destroyed. While serving in the Delaware General Assembly, he took the unusual step of freeing all of his slaves. He was returned to the Continental Congress as a delegate from Delaware in time to sign the Articles of Confederation whose first draft he had written several years earlier.
Dickinson served as president of Pennsylvania and president of Delaware. He and his wife donated the land to create the first new university in the new United States of America, Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. Upon his death in 1808, Thomas Jefferson had this to say about Dickinson: "A more estimable man, or truer patriot, could not have left us. Among the first of the advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain, he continued to the last the orthodox advocate of the true principles of our new government and his name will be consecrated in history as one of the great worthies of the revolution."
Edward Rutledge of South Carolina was a very different kind of patriot. He was an up-and-coming young attorney and scholar when he was appointed to the Second Continental Congress at the age of 25. One of the first actions Rutledge took as a Southern delegate was to try to oust all African-Americans from the Continental Army. He was one of the strongest opponents of Richard Henry Lee's resolution that independence from Great Britain be declared, and he opposed the signing of Jefferson's Declaration until instructed by the South Carolina Legislature to support and sign the document. He was the youngest member of the Congress to sign that document, at the age of 26.
While it has always been said Rutledge was responsible for the removal from the original document of the anti-slavery clause, no documentation exists to prove this.
Following the signing of the Declaration, Rutledge returned to South Carolina to serve in the state artillery unit as well as the state Senate. In 1780, he was taken captive by British troops and held as a prisoner of war until 1781. Upon his release, he served in the state legislature before being elected governor of South Carolina in 1798. He died in 1800 at the age of 51 without completing his term of office.
These two men are not terribly well known in American history; however, each was a supporter of the rights of the American colonies and fought hard in their own ways to maintain those rights and freedoms.
History has shown us over and over again that in order to win any fight, or the effort to promote any cause, you can't just have people of one viewpoint or one political persuasion. It took discussion, compromise and a lot of tough choices to create the land of the free. And then, almost to a man, the Founding Fathers went on to serve in other capacities, many of them in battle, some trying to secure aid and support in foreign lands for this new country they were building.
Freedom is not free, to repeat a much-used phrase. And no one can excuse themselves from this ongoing struggle. On this Independence Day, as we light the grill and pull out the cooler, let's all take a moment to be grateful for those who have given their lives, their reputations, their homes, their families and everything they have ever worked for, to make and keep this country free.
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