Caesar Rodney, Delaware

1728-1784

Representing Delaware at the Continental Congress

Caesar Rodney was born on his father's farm near Dover, Delaware, in October of 1728. He was tutored by his parents and may have attended a local Parson's school, but received no formal education. His father died when Caesar was 17. He was placed in the guardianship of Nicholas Ridgely who was a clerk of the peace in Kent county, and this seems to be the root of Rodney's life in politics. In 1755, under the royal government, Rodney was commissioned High Sheriff of Kent County Delaware. This was quite a distinction for a man twenty-two years of age and he apparently honored the distinction, for in succeeding years his official capacities grew to include registrar of wills, recorder of deeds, clerk of the orphan's court, and justice of the peace. At age thirty he attained his first elected office as a representative in the colonial legislature at Newcastle. He served in that position, reelected each year except 1771, until the legislature was dissolved in 1776-and then resumed the seat as a representative to the Upper House of the State of Delaware until 1784.

Rodney was a leading patriot in his colony, a member of the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, a formative member of the Delaware Committee of Correspondence, a military leader in the colonial militia, and a delegate to the Continental Congress from formation until 1777. The following year he was elected President of the State of Delaware for a three year term, a duty that he assumed even as he served as Major-General of the Delaware Militia. In this office he played a crucial part not only in the defense of his own colony but in support of Washington's Continental Army, for Delaware had a record of meeting or exceeding its quotas for troops and provisions throughout the revolutionary conflict. Rodney's health and strength flagged for a time. He suffered from asthma and from a cancerous growth on his face, for which he never attained proper treatment. He saw his colony through the war at the cost of personal neglect.

In 1782 he was again elected to the national Congress, but was forced to decline the office due to failing health. He nonetheless continued to serve as Speaker to the Upper House of the Delaware Assembly. He died in that office, in June of 1784.

From: US History.org

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Self-educated Caesar Rodney climbed to high State and National offices, but his military-political duties in Delaware spared him little time for the affairs of Congress. He is noted mainly for his emergency ride to Philadelphia that broke his State's deadlock in the vote for independence, but he was also one of two bachelor signers and the only native of the three from Delaware.

Rodney was born in 1728 on his father's 800-acre plantation, Byfield, near Dover in Kent County. In 1745, as the eldest child, he inherited the plantation. Despite a lack of formal and legal education, a decade later he accepted the first of a series of county offices: high sheriff, register of wills, recorder of deeds, clerk of the orphans' court, justice of the peace, militia captain, and cotrustee of the loan office.

On the provincial level, for most of the period 1758-76 Rodney functioned as a justice of the Superior Court for the Three Lower Counties (present Delaware) and as a legislator in the lower house, including many tours as speaker. Between 1765 and 1774, he owned and occupied a townhouse that he used while in Dover. He and Thomas McKean compiled the colony's laws, and they both attended the Stamp Act Congress (1765). Three years later, the two of them and George Read, all three later to sign the Declaration, drafted a protest to the King concerning the Townshend Acts. In 1774, after Parliament closed Boston Harbor, Rodney usurped the prerogative of the proprietary Governor by calling a special meeting of the legislature at New Castle, the first Revolutionary convention in the State. Rodney, McKean, and Read were sent to the First Continental Congress.

Although a congressional Member for 2 years, Rodney was often absent in Delaware, sometimes presiding over the legislature and sometimes meeting military responsibilities. In May 1775 he was elected a colonel in the militia, and in September moved up to brigadier general. Late the next June, while the independence resolution was pending in Congress, he was investigating Loyalist agitations in Sussex County. On the evening of July 1, after his return to Byfield, he received McKean's dispatch pointing out that Read had voted against independence that day and pleading with Rodney to hurry to Philadelphia to break the tie. Riding all night through a thunderstorm and stopping only to change horses, he completed the 80-mile trip just in time to make possible an affirmative vote for Delaware.

This brought down the wrath of the Kent County conservatives on Rodney, who was not reelected to Congress nor to the legislature and not appointed to the State constitutional convention. Out of office, that fall and the next year he turned to military affairs, recruiting troops and taking part in minor actions in Delaware and New Jersey. In September 1777 acting State president McKean commissioned him as a major general.

That spring, the legislature had designated Rodney as an admiralty judge. In December it reelected him to the Continental Congress. The next year, it nominated him as State president (1778-81), in which capacity he stimulated the Delaware war effort. When he left office, he belatedly sought medical treatment in Philadelphia for a cancerous growth on his face, which had been bothering him for a decade and which he had covered with a green silk veil. In 1783, though a dying man, he entered the State senate and accepted the speakership, but passed away the next year at the age of 55. Interred originally at Byfield Plantation, his remains are now buried in the yard of Christ Episcopal Church in Dover.

From: National Park Service