Testifying to the proposition that Dickinson should get more credit was Forrest McDonald, the eminent 20th-century constitutional historian whom I mentioned in the previous essay. McDonald ranked Dickinson as the most underrated of all the Founders. McDonald made that assessment in 1985, and when Dickinson’s convention notes came to light in 1987, they supported it.
Personal Life
Born on Nov. 8, 1732, Dickinson was nine months younger than George Washington. His first home was in Maryland, but the family soon moved to Kent County, Delaware, near Dover. You can visit the family homestead today.When Dickinson returned to America in 1757, he entered law practice in Philadelphia. In the ensuing years, he split his public life between Delaware and Pennsylvania.
Dickinson came from Quaker stock and, although he was not formally observant, in accordance with Quaker views he liberated all of his slaves. At the Constitutional Convention, he said it was “inadmissible on every principle of honor & safety that the importation of slaves should be authorized to the States by the Constitution.”
Public Career Before the Constitutional Convention
At age 26, Dickinson won a seat in the lower house of the Delaware legislature. In his second term, his colleagues chose him as speaker. But Philadelphia was where he was practicing law, and in 1762, he ran for the Pennsylvania legislature and was elected. While serving there, he carried on a celebrated battle over Pennsylvania’s colonial charter—courageously opposing Franklin’s dominant state political faction. Dickinson lost the battle, but later events showed that he had been correct on the issue, while Franklin and his allies had been wrong.Dickinson’s principal speech from the colonial charter controversy still survives. It’s a remarkable performance. “A good man,” the youthful lawmaker contended, “ought to serve his country, even though she resents his services.”
In 1765, he prepared the primary draft of the Pennsylvania Assembly’s resolutions against the Stamp Act and served in the convention of colonies known as the “Stamp Act Congress.” In 1767–1768, he supported the colonial cause with a series of newspaper essays written under the title “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.” The “Farmer letters” were celebrated both throughout America and in Europe. When the author’s identity became public, Dickinson became the second-most famous American in the world, after Franklin.
From 1774 until adoption of the Declaration of Independence, he served in the First and Second Continental Congresses, and was the principal author of official congressional pronouncements. Dickinson also chaired the congressional committee that wrote the Articles of Confederation. The first draft of the Articles is in his handwriting.
After opposing the Declaration of Independence as premature, he, along with fellow Pennsylvania delegate Robert Morris, withdrew from the final congressional vote so that the tally for Independence would be unanimous. Once Independence was declared, he enlisted in the American armed forces.
The Constitutional Convention
By 1786, Dickinson, like most Americans, recognized the need for a stronger government. Delaware sent him to the Annapolis Convention, where he was (of course!) elected chairman. The Annapolis gathering recommended calling another interstate convention with wider powers. In response to this recommendation, the Virginia legislature called the Constitutional Convention.Delaware chose Dickinson as one of its commissioners (delegates) to the Constitutional Convention. Although he was absent for several weeks due to illness, he remained in Philadelphia during this time, apparently supplying ideas and recommendations to his colleagues.
Only three weeks into the convention, Dickinson prepared an outline for a proposed Constitution. The outline built on Edmund Randolph’s Virginia Plan, but included many additional features that the delegates eventually adopted: enumerated powers, selection of senators by the state legislatures, a minimum age of 30 for senators, rotating elections, restrictions on the states issuing money, guarantees of trial by jury and habeas corpus, and the embryo of what became the Necessary and Proper Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 18).
Naturally, the plan also included some ideas not ultimately adopted, such as an executive branch headed by three persons instead of one.
A good illustration is Dickinson’s Aug. 13, 1787, convention floor speech. In the Anglo American tradition, only a legislature’s lower house could initiate bills imposing taxes. Some of the convention’s participants argued for abandoning that tradition. The following is Dickinson’s response as reported by Madison. (I have cleaned up some of the punctuation and shorthand.)
“Experience must be our only guide. Reason may mislead us. It was not reason that discovered the singular and admirable mechanism of the English Constitution. It was not reason that discovered or ever could have discovered the odd and (in the eye of those who are governed by reason) the absurd mode of trial by jury. Accidents probably produced these discoveries, and experience has given a sanction to them. ...
“And has not experience verified the utility of restraining money bills to the immediate representatives of the people? ... Shall we oppose to this long experience, the short experience of 11 years [i.e., 1776 to 1787] which we had ourselves, on this subject? All the prejudices of the people would be offended by refusing this exclusive privilege to the House of Representatives, and these prejudices should never be disregarded by us when no essential purpose [is] to be served.
“When this [Constitution] goes forth, it will be attacked by the popular leaders. ‘Aristocracy’ will be the watchword; the Shibboleth among its adversaries. Eight states have inserted in their constitutions the exclusive right of originating money bills in favor of the popular branch of the legislature. Most of them, however, allow the other branch to amend. This ... would be proper for us to do.”
The Ratification Fight
Still contending with ill health, Dickinson left the convention shortly before the Constitution was signed. He deputized his Delaware colleague, George Read, to sign for him.Dickinson’s two home states, Delaware and Pennsylvania, became the first and second to ratify. When the pace of ratification slowed, Dickinson once more took up his famous pen and composed a series of essays supporting the Constitution. The pseudonym he chose was “Fabius,” the famous Roman general whose guerilla tactics kept Hannibal at bay.