John Dickinson was "the Farmer, his name spoken everywhere"1, "the most widely read pamphleteer in the colonies,"2 "a leader of the Revolutionary movement from its inception...a luminous ideologist and effective public official"3 ,who refused to sign the Declaration of Independence. So far, I like him.
But Dickinson did not reject the Dec of Ind because it was the product of paranoid schizophrenic minds; indeed Dickinson through his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania was as much cause of that disturbed thinking as any one man. Rather, Dickinson rejected the Dec of Ind to give peace a chance--but his Olive Branch Petition was rejected out of hand by George III who refused even to read it (Lindsey Graham and Tayyip Erdogan have that in common with George III), and because he didn't think the Colonies were prepared for war with Great Britain. "His refusal to take the final step until full preparations were made was courageous if unimaginative; [Dickinson] was "a prudent man, instinctively cautious and always reasonable,"4 all personal characteristics shared by George H.W. Bush. Dickinson went "wooly in the knees." He was from Pennsylvania, after all, and married into a family of Quakers. Dickinson instantiated Pennsylvania and sealed the Commonwealth's fate. The nation would experiment with a Pennsylvanian only once more, in 1856, and then never again.
1 John Adams, David McCullough 94 (2001)
2 Pamphlets of the American Revolution, Vol I 1750-1776, Bernard Bailyn 667 (1965)
3 Pamphlets, Bailyn 660
4 Pamphlets, Bailyn 666
But Dickinson did not reject the Dec of Ind because it was the product of paranoid schizophrenic minds; indeed Dickinson through his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania was as much cause of that disturbed thinking as any one man. Rather, Dickinson rejected the Dec of Ind to give peace a chance--but his Olive Branch Petition was rejected out of hand by George III who refused even to read it (Lindsey Graham and Tayyip Erdogan have that in common with George III), and because he didn't think the Colonies were prepared for war with Great Britain. "His refusal to take the final step until full preparations were made was courageous if unimaginative; [Dickinson] was "a prudent man, instinctively cautious and always reasonable,"4 all personal characteristics shared by George H.W. Bush. Dickinson went "wooly in the knees." He was from Pennsylvania, after all, and married into a family of Quakers. Dickinson instantiated Pennsylvania and sealed the Commonwealth's fate. The nation would experiment with a Pennsylvanian only once more, in 1856, and then never again.
1 John Adams, David McCullough 94 (2001)
2 Pamphlets of the American Revolution, Vol I 1750-1776, Bernard Bailyn 667 (1965)
3 Pamphlets, Bailyn 660
4 Pamphlets, Bailyn 666
