A Gentleman as Well as a
Whig:
Caesar Rodney and the American Revolution
By Jane Harrington Scott
“I arrived in Congress (tho detained by Thunder and Rain) in
time
enough to give my voice to the matter of Independence.” So
wrote
Caesar Rodney about his famous midnight journey to cast
Delaware’s historic vote. How this gentle and conservative
man, who
had always thought of himself as an Englishman loyal to the
Crown,
evolved into one of Delaware’s most determined supporters of
the
Revolution is a fascinating story.
Caesar Rodney grew up near the town of Dover, Delaware. He
began his public career as a loyal member of the colonial
government, serving, among other offices, as Kent County sheriff,
judge, and member of the colonial state Assembly. However, while
still in his thirties, he became a delegate to the Stamp Act
Congress
in New York, and, with his compatriots George Read and Thomas
McKean, was assigned the task of explaining to the king why this
tax
was so hated in Delaware. He went on to become a leading Whig in
Delaware’s fractured Assembly, a brigadier in a militia
reluctant to
fight and, finally, the president of Delaware, a state plagued by
Tory
sympathizers.
Caesar Rodney’s letters and those of his contemporaries are
woven into the narrative in a way that
allows readers to experience these events firsthand. Through his
relations with his friend, Thomas
McKean, and his hotheaded brother, Thomas Rodney, we begin to
understand the tangled politics of
the time. We also take part in the bitter controversies over the
Boston Port Bill and the Tea Act, and
travel to Philadelphia to participate in the debate leading up to
independence.
The debate and the vote that followed took place against a
backdrop of a seemingly hopeless war of
green troops against the formidable British regulars. Through
Rodney’s close friendship with Colonel
John Haslet, we experience the battles of Long Island and White
Plains and follow Washing- ton as he
desperately retreats across New Jersey into Pennsylvania. With
Rodney’s brother, Thomas, we cross
the frozen Delaware on that fateful Christmas night when
Washington pulled off his surprise victory
against the British.
In the fall of 1777, Brigadier Rodney was near Middletown,
Delaware, with the Kent County Militia.
General Howe’s army dis-embarked at the head of the
Chesapeake Bay on its way to invade
Philadelphia and Wilmington, and Rodney was asked by General
Washington to spy on and harass
the British. However, the New Castle Militia failed to arrive
and, plagued by his own deserting troops,
he was unable to carry out this mission. After a series of bloody
battles, the British captured both
Philadelphia and Wilmington. Congress fled to York, Pennsylvania
and Delaware’s first president John
McKinly became a prisoner of war.
As Delaware’s second elected chief executive, Caesar Rodney
was the first to cope effectively with the
bands of “refugee” loyalists who patrolled the coast
and interrupted normal avenues of trade. While in
office, he also coaxed a reluctant Assembly to ratify the
Articles of Federation, raised a second
Delaware regiment to fight in the South, and did his best to cope
with runaway inflation. In the end,
however, the ill health that had plagued him for years forced him
to give up public service and return to
his home in Dover to live out his few remaining days.
About the Author
Jane Harrington Scott was born in New York City and grew up in
Connecticut and on the Eastern
Shore of Maryland, receiving a B.A. in English from Wheaton
College in Norton, Massachusetts. This is
her first book of history, although coming from a family that has
lived in Delaware since before the
Revolution, she was brought up on stories of early Delaware,
including Caesar Rodney's famous ride.
She is the author of several books on natural history, including
Between the Ocean and Bay: A
Natural History of the Delmarva Peninsula, and Field and Forest:
A Guide to Native Plant
Communities for the Gardener and Naturalist, and is a contributor
to the Nature Company's Guide to
Natural Gardening. She has also written two books for children,
Cross Fox and To Keep an Island.
The original idea for a book on Caesar Rodney came from The
National Society of The Colonial
Dames of America in the State of Delaware who have
enthusiastically sponsored the project. Mrs.
Scott and her husband lived near Wilmington for many years before
returning to the Eastern Shore.
They have three grown children and four grandchildren.
ISBN 0-87413-700-4
Private Property : Charles Brockden Brown's Gendered Economics of Virtue
Elizabeth Jane Hinds
From The Publisher
Private Property explores Charles Brockden Brown's novels
Wieland, Ormond, Arthur Mervyn, and Edgar Huntly; his dialogue on
women's
rights, Alcuin; and a few less well-known works such as "The
Man at Home" series of essays and "Carwin, the
Biloquist," with attention to
Brown's differentiation of gender in economic matters. Author
Elizabeth Jane Wall Hinds takes on the terms of economic
positioning in these
works, suggesting that Brown's fictional women look nothing at
all like his men within the republicanism that was growing to
embrace an
emerging capitalism during the American 1780s and 1790s. The new
economic realities of this era contained the seeds of a changing
definition of
virtue, a definition suited to an economically defined and
specifically capitalist male citizen operating in an increasingly
large public space of
activity. At the same time, an emerging "cult of
domesticity" came to define the virtue of women within the
growing U.S. capitalist economy.
Hardcover, 192pp.
ISBN: 0874136032
January 1997
May 3, 2000