Constitution Signer

John Dickinson

            John Dickinson was born November 8, 1732 in Talbot City, Maryland to Samuel Dickinson, a prosperous farmer, and his second wife, Mary. 

In 1750 he began to study law with John Moland in Philadelphia.  In 1760 he served in the Delaware assembly, was the Philadelphia member of the Pennsylvania assembly (1762-1764), and was appointed to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 whose resolutions he drafted.  He was also a representative of the first Continental Congress where he voted against the Declaration of Independence and refused to sign it as he still felt reconciliation with Great Britain was still a real possibility.  He was a member of the 1779-1780 Continental Congress where he signed the Articles of Confederation.

During the Revolutionary War he was commissioned as a Brigadier General although he resigned soon after.  He then became president of the states of Pennsylvania and Delaware, successively.  At the Constitutional Convention he served on the committee of Postponed Matters and made other worthwhile contributions.  Because of illness, Dickinson missed many sessions and had to leave early but he wrote many public letters supporting ratification of the Constitution.  Again, because of his ill health, he did not actually sign the Constitution, but instead, authorized his friend and fellow-delegate George Read to sign for him.

            John Dickinson then withdrew from public life to Wilmington, Delaware where he died on February 14, 1808.  Dickinson's patriotism would not permit him to back popular ideas, but only those which were in the country's best interest.