Revolutionary Delaware: Independence in the First State

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INTRODUCTION

Eighteenth-century Delaware was a prosperous place. Skiffs, sloops and schooners carrying grain, flour, passengers, merchandise and messages sailed daily up and down the Delaware River. Delaware-based trading vessels sailed freely back and forth to Philadelphia, the British Isles, Europe, Madeira and the West Indies. Local people sent raw materials to England for manufacture, traded with non-British entities and spent their profits on British-made goods. The Cape Henlopen lighthouse, paid for by a series of Philadelphia-based lotteries, was built of Brandywine granite shipped down from Wilmington. It was a fine investment.

Delaware’s history and economy were part of a larger matrix. In the eighteenth century, New Castle, Kent and Sussex Counties were officially known as the Lower Three Counties of Pennsylvania, and many residents had homes on both sides of today’s borders. The Penman of the American Revolution, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, was Delaware’s John Dickinson. When war broke out, Dickinson held the rank of brigadier general in the Pennsylvania Militia. Temporarily ostracized for refusing to sign the Declaration of Independence, he returned home to Delaware and served with the Delaware Militia during the Battle of Brandywine. Dickinson would later serve both as governor of Delaware and as governor of Pennsylvania. Similarly, Thomas McKean served in Delaware’s first House of Assembly, as president of Delaware, as president of the Continental Congress and later as governor of Pennsylvania.

Bear Swamp, Bombay Hook. Karen Sinar Dever.

Originally settled by the Dutch and Swedes, and later controlled by William Penn’s family, Delaware, in the eighteenth century, had a large percentage of inhabitants who were Quakers and Anglicans and had no significant objections to the way they had been ruled by the British government. As a proprietary colony stretching 110 miles south from Philadelphia along the west bank of the Delaware River and Bay, what happened in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Massachusetts, as well as the other colonies, was important to Delaware.

From 1682 to 1776, Delaware was officially known as Three Lower Counties of Pennsylvania. In 1776, these three counties declared independence both from England and from Pennsylvania, shrugging off the long-term control of the Penn family. When Britain reversed its longstanding policy of benign neglect, fear and anger caused by uncertainty, by the lurking presence of British warships and naval battles in the Delaware River and Bay and by the competing needs of civilians and soldiers for food, clothing, shelter and supplies made the American Revolution a traumatic time. Many Delawareans clung to the past and wished that the war would go away. The Revolutionary era was long, and it would take years for the small state to regain its sense of balance.

Children born in the year of the Stamp Act were twelve years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Many of these children—as well as their big brothers, fathers, grandfathers, cousins and uncles—enlisted in the Continental army or joined local militias, celebrating their twentieth birthdays by marching home from war.¹ Some grew up as refugees fleeing with their families to Canada or England. Others lived in families quietly waiting out the war, moving or taking cover as needed in Delaware’s swamps and marshes.

John Adams famously said, I should say that full one third was averse to the revolution; An opposite third gave themselves up to an enthusiastic gratitude to France. The middle third, always averse to war, were rather lukewarm both to England and France. This was apparently written about the French Revolution, not our own,² but Adams’s rule of thirds was equally applicable to Delawareans’ attitudes toward the American Revolution.

Chapter 1

REINING IN THE COLONIES

The Stamp Act and Other Measures

In 1764, in Britain’s attempt to pay off debts incurred during the French and Indian War, more than 150 years of benign neglect came abruptly to an end as the cash-strapped British Parliament unexpectedly began taxing the American colonies. The British point of view is not difficult to grasp—the taxes being levied were lower than those asked of mainland English citizens, and the revenue raised from taxing the colonies would be used to pay for America’s defense and would barely cover one-third the cost of maintaining British troops stationed in the colonies. The colonists, however, questioned the need for these troops. The French and Indian War was over, and they wondered why they should pay Britain’s debts for a war most had not asked for or wanted. Parliament’s attempts at revenue generation caused ripples of doubt and concern.³ Residents of the Lower Three Counties of Pennsylvania were among the first to complain.

George Read of New Castle, Delaware, was a member of what became known as the Court Party. This largely Anglican sector worked well with the colonial proprietary government and favored reconciliation with the British government. In 1764, Read wrote to a colleague in London:

The stamp-act you made on your side of the water hath raised such a ferment among us—that is, among one and all of the Colonies on the continent—that I know not when it will subside. Before you will receive this I doubt not but you will see in our public papers the opposition generally made to the distribution of the stamp-papers, and to these publications I shall refer to you for particulars.… This will naturally lead them into measures to live as independently as possible, [and] they will, gradually, go into the making of woolens and ironmongery, your two great branches of manufactory.… The spirit has seized them already and prevails surprisingly. Homespun cloth is worn as well by the beaux as the men of gravity of all ranks, and though only fashion with the first, it will soon grow into habit, which, once fixed, will not be readily changed. From this consideration alone every friend to the mother country and the Colonies ought to wish and to afford a helping hand to obtain an alteration in the late system of politics in England.⁴

British political cartoon, 1777. Poor old England endeavoring to reclaim his wicked American children. British Cartoon Prints Collection, Library of Congress.

Word quickly spread among ordinary folks that trouble was brewing. In Lewes, Delaware, protestors calling themselves the Sons of Liberty met in March 1766. Demanding the keys to the Sussex County Courthouse, they took possession of the county’s magazine, its drum and its colors. They fired cannons, raised huzzahs and drank toasts to King George. They asserted their loyalty to the king in resolutions but insisted that the British government did not have the right to tax the colonies without their consent. Like their counterparts in New England, Sussex Countians claimed that the Stamp Act was unconstitutional, destructive of our natural rights and liberties, and introductive of base servitude to the latest posterity.⁵

Largely in reaction to earlier protests by British businessmen, the Stamp Act was repealed on March 18, 1766. Thomas McKean, George Read and Caesar Rodney wrote to King George III, expressing Delaware’s gratitude for this event and assuring him of the Lower Three Counties’ loyalty to the Crown. Jubilation, however, was premature.

Britain rescinded the Stamp Act but enacted a substitute measure. The new Declaratory Act was tailored specifically to make it clear that parliamentary law took precedence over colonial charters and would serve as a reminder to the colonies that they had no say in the matter: That all resolutions, votes, orders, and proceedings, in any of the said Colonies or plantations, whereby the power and authority of the parliament of Great Britain, to make laws and statutes as aforesaid, is denied, or drawn into question, are, and are hereby declared to be, utterly null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever.⁶

American colonists were now forbidden to produce their own iron or use a ship, boat, carriage or packhorse to carry wool, or any product of which wool formed a part, across the line of one province to another or bring wool across a river. Anger grew and spread throughout Delaware as the inherent unfairness of Britain’s new policies and the impact this would have on the local economy became more and more apparent. Thomas McKean, George Read and Caesar Rodney wrote again to King George III, protesting the Declaratory Act.

Political cartoon, circa 1766, showing a funeral procession on the banks of the Thames, with warehouses in the background. George Grenville carries a coffin inscribed, Miss Ame-stamp. Born 1765 died 1766. British Cartoon Prints Collection, Library of Congress.

Chapter 2

THE LIBERTY SONG

In 1767–68, John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies began to appear in Philadelphia’s newspaper, the Pennsylvania Chronicle. The first significant call for colonial unity in the face of British oppression, Dickinson’s series of fourteen letters pointed out the economic folly of revenue laws that ignored the rights of Englishmen living in the colonies. He noted that these acts ignored the British constitution, and he predicted future conflict between the colonies and the mother country. These letters were sold in pamphlet form in Philadelphia, Boston, New York and even in London, with a brief preface written by Benjamin Franklin. Other printings followed in Paris and Dublin.

Dickinson also wrote a rousing, catchy drinking/protest song to the tune of the popular British naval anthem, Heart of Oak:

THE LIBERTY SONG

John Dickinson, 1768

Come join hand in hand brave Americans all

and rouse your bold hearts at fair Liberty’s call;

No tyrannous acts shall suppress your just claim,

Or stain with dishonour America’s name.

In Freedom we’re born and in Freedom we’ll live,

Our purses are ready,

Steady, Friends, Steady.

John Dickinson (1732–1808). Special thanks to John Dickinson Plantation, Dover, Delaware.

Not as slaves, but as Freemen our money we’ll give.

Our worthy Forefathers—Let’s give them a cheer

To climates unknown did courageously steer;

Thro’ Oceans, to deserts, for freedom they came,

And dying bequeath’d us their freedom and Fame.

Their generous bosoms all dangers despis’d,

So highly, so wisely, their Birthrights they priz’d;

We’ll keep what they gave, we will piously keep,

Nor frustrate their toils on the land and the deep.

The Tree their own hands had to Liberty rear’d;

They liv’d to behold growing strong and rever’d;

With transport they cry’d; "Now our wishes we gain

For our children shall gather the fruits of our pain."

This bumper I crown for our Sovereign’s health

And this for Britannia’s glory and wealth;

That wealth and that glory immortal may be,

If she is but just—and if we are but free.

Come join hand in hand brave Americans all,

And rouse your bold hearts at fair Liberty’s call;

No tyrannous acts shall suppress your just claim,

Or stain with dishonour America’s name.

In Freedom we’re born and in Freedom we’ll live,

Steady, Friends, Steady.

Our purses are ready,

Steady, Friends, Steady.⁷

On August 17, 1769, New Castle County residents met at Christiana Bridge, where they signed an agreement stating they would not sell English goods or trade with any who did. The document was signed by Order, and in Behalf of the Grand Jury for the County, in August Sessions, 1769, by SAMUEL PATTERSON, Foreman. Perhaps the most chilling part of their decision was the following clause: That any one of us, who shall willfully break this Compact, shall have his name published in the public News Papers, as a Betrayer of the civil and religious Rights of Americans, and be forever after deemed infamous, and an Enemy to his Country.⁸

Being an enemy to this country was a new concept. England had been our country for many years, but the country being spoken of was not England. This broadside was referring to thirteen separate colonies that had never thought of themselves as a country, and the enemies referred to were friends, neighbors and relatives who believed that they were doing the right thing by remaining loyal to the king. The ominous phrase would be repeated throughout the war.

The killing of five Bostonians by British regulars on