Free Republic

Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of … Caesar Rodney. While Rodney might not have a famous poem written about his nighttime journey, his ride was just as historic as Revere’s and vital to the passage of the July 1776 Declaration of Independence. On July 2, 1776, the delegates for 13 colonies at the Continental Congress voted for American independence from Great Britain. (It then took the delegates two days to agree on an edited draft for the public, hence our July 4 holiday.) But what many Americans don’t know is that, on July 1,...

Today is the 292nd birthday of Founding Father Caesar Rodney.  Rodney was a soldier, a sheriff, a justice on the Delaware Supreme Court, a delegate from Delaware to the Continental Congress, a Brigadier General in the Continental Army, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  He is an American legend. Rodney rode into American history when, despite suffering from cancer and asthma, he traveled 80 miles overnight from Dover to Philadelphia through a raging thunderstorm in time to cast Delaware’s deciding vote for independence on July 2, 1776.  His heroic act helped ensure that the Declaration of Independence would...

When reading the Declaration of Independence over the holiday weekend, it’s easy to skip over the names of the signers and focus instead on the sweeping language of the second paragraph. This overlooks the fact that the signers pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor in order to found a country upon self-evident truths rooted in the nature of man.

With the Delaware delegation deadlocked on the question of approving the Declaration of Independence in the Continental Congress, Caesar Rodney rode 70 miles in a thunderstorm the night of July 1, 1776 to arrive in Philadelphia as the vote for independence began the next morning. Rodney cast the deciding vote for Delaware in favor of independence, and would eventually sign the Declaration on August 2, 1776. Rodney's ride is depicted on the back of the Delaware quarter, issued in 1999.