[SeekAndFind]

The two Delaware delegates who were in Philadelphia at the time, McKean and Read, did not agree on whether to vote for the colonies’ independence. Read did not at the moment favor the vote for independence (although he would end up signing the Declaration), while McKean was in favor of it. Caesar Rodney was needed to break the Delaware delegates’ tie. Rodney was passionately devoted to the cause of American independence and, despite his habitual bad health, he determined to be in Philadelphia the next day to vote for that independence.

[1776 History] Rodney got on his horse and rode for eighteen straight hours and over eighty miles through thunder and rain to get to Philadelphia before the vote, a ride that usually took two days.  He stopped only to change horses.  As if straight out of a Hollywood movie, it is said that the other Congressional delegates heard the hoofbeats on the cobblestones outside the convention hall, and in came Caesar Rodney, near exhaustion, covered in mud, with spurs still attached, to break his state’s tie to vote in favor of independence.

Rodney might not have looked the part of a hero. Among his various physical ailments were a skin cancer that disfigured his face, and which he tried to hide with a green silk veil. But that day, at the Continental Congress, the asthmatic Delaware delegate was the crucial man, the hinge, the hero, the necessary vote deciding if America would be independent or no.  Rodney arrived in time, Delaware voted for independence, and the rest, as they say, is history.

[Afterguard]

Fascinating. I’m 75 and have never known this important part of our Republic’s history. Thank you!

[Verginius Rufus]

The Delaware quarter honors Caesar Rodney’s ride.

[Paal Gulli]

If you haven't seen the movie 1776, you really should give it a look. It's Hollyweird, and it a musical, but it really brings the humanity of what happened during those days in the summer heat of Philadelphia to light.

[cowboyusa]

And some doubt that our Nation was created by GOD.