Caesar Rodney, Hero of Delaware

It was July 2, 1776.

Exhausted and muddied, the frail yet determined man stumbled into the doorway of the chamber where the second Continental Congress was meeting. Making his way to the desk where the delegates from Delaware sat, he slumped into his wooden chair. Soaked to the skin, he breathed with some difficulty. He had a bandage covering the cancerous sore on his face. But the 48-year-old major general of the Delaware militia, Caesar Rodney, voted with the passion of a man who would ride through any storm to let his desire for liberty lead to the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

Without his vote, the United States of America would likely not exist.

So who was Ceasar Rodney?

He was born the son of a Delaware farmer in 1728. When only seventeen, his father died and the teen was placed under the guardianship of a clerk of the peace in Kent County, Delaware. Through his guardian’s influence, Rodney became interested in politics.

At the young age of twenty-seven, Rodney was named Commissioner High Sheriff of Delaware. Other offices that he held in subsequent years were Registrar of Wills, Recorder of Deeds, Clerk of the Orphan’s Court, and Justice of the Peace. 

By the time he was thirty, he was elected to the Colonial Legislature at Newcastle, Delaware.

In 1765, Rodney was a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, the first official gathering of several colonies fighting against the higher taxes being enacted by Great Britain. The battle cry of that Congress was “No taxation without representation.”

Rodney's Signature on the Declaration of Independence

Named a delegate to the Continental Congress, Rodney retained his position as a military leader in the colonial militia…and this was what drew him back to Delaware in June of 1776. He had just finished voting on an important resolution for independence in Congress when he was notified that there was a threatened uprising among those loyal to the king living in Sussex County, Delaware.

The final vote in Philadelphia on whether or not to adopt the Declaration of Independence was approaching and delegate Thomas McKean was beginning to panic. He knew that delegate George Read would vote “Nay” to independence. If there were only two votes from Delaware, they would cancel each other out. Delaware needed Rodney’s third vote for the majority. McKean was desperate and he sent a messenger to retrieve Rodney.

Caesar Rodney Statue, Rodney Square, Wilmington, Delaware

Rodney received the message on the evening of July 1. He left immediately for Philadelphia, 80 miles away

According to Russ Picket (russpicket.com), it was an “agonizing ride” through a severe thunderstorm, terrible heat, over mud-filled roads and across swollen creeks. All the while, Rodney suffered from asthma and the pain of a cancerous tumor on his face.

He arrived in Philadelphia on the afternoon of July 2, in time for the Congressional vote.

Rodney continued to serve his new country. He held the office of Speaker to the Upper House of the Delaware Assembly until the day he died, June 26, 1784.

Rodney never received proper treatment for his cancer. He put aside his personal pain to save his country. He was truly a hero, not just of Delaware, but of the United States.

Watch this interesting depiction of the arrival of Caesar Rodney to Congress, from the musical “1776.”  Click here.

The Tender Romance of Henry and Lucy Knox

It was a typical morning at breakfast that June 29, 1776. Lucy was relaxing with her husband, American General Henry Knox, in a beautiful mansion overlooking New York Harbor. The palatial building served as the Continental Army’s base of operations.

What should have been an ordinary morning meal shared between the couple, however, took a drastic turn.

Terror seized Lucy as she looked down through the second-story window and saw the British fleet filling up the harbor. The Colonial city was under attack and gunfire from the American forces to alert the residents erupted everywhere.

In David McCullough’s 1776, he quotes a letter written by Henry Knox to his brother William about that frightening morning:

“You can scarcely conceive of the distress and anxiety which (Lucy) then had. The city in an uproar, the alarm guns firing, the troops repairing to their posts, and everything in the height of bustle. I not at liberty to attend her, as my country cries loudest.”

According to McCullough, Henry Knox had been trying to get Lucy to leave the city with their infant daughter for several weeks. Henry sensed the impending danger and now, seeing the reality of thousands of enemy troops in New York, the general despaired that she had not done so before.

“My God, may I never experience the like feelings again! They were too much, but I found a way to disguise them, for I scolded like a fury at her for not having gone before.”

Lucy and their baby did successfully escape, along with Martha Washington and Caty Greene (wife of General Nathanael Greene) and her infant. Once he knew his wife was safely in Connecticut, Henry Knox wrote to her expressing his relief, as well as declaring his great love for her. Henry also shared his concerns for their future.

“We are fighting for our country, for posterity perhaps. On the success of this campaign the happiness or misery of millions may depend.”

Two days after the British landed on Staten Island, New York, the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. It was the fourth of July, 1776.

On July 8, 1776, Henry wrote to Lucy that 10,000 Redcoats occupied the island across the harbor. That number would increase to 32,000 British troops by the middle of August. They were poised to attack the 7,000 American troops under General Washington in New York City.

Henry knew after the arrival of the enemy troops that the situation was not going to get any safer for his wife, Lucy, to rejoin him. He told her, despite the actions of other officers’ wives, that she should stay where it was safe: 

“The greatest happiness for me (is) to be with you, but to be under a continual uneasiness on account of your safety is what you would not wish.”

He informed her of how close in distance the enemy was and, were she to come, she would not have time to gather herself and her carriage to escape if the Redcoats approached. He imagined the terror for his wife and young daughter at such a risky venture. “The reality would kill me,” he wrote.

He ends his missive to Lucy with the most tender of words: 

“Write me, my love, as often as lays in your power and believe me to have no other earthly love but you. Kiss and bless your babe for me.”

These words from her husband are heartrending as the young wife must be separated from Henry for extended periods of time. After the victory at Trenton in December of 1776, Henry writes again to his wife:

“It grieves me exceedingly that I still date my letters from this place and that I am so far distant from the dearest object of my affections. This War with all its variety is not able to banish your much lov’d Idea from my heart. Whatever I am employ’d about still you are with me…as soon as the sacred calls of his Country will permit, (I) will return with the permission of heaven and enjoy all the blessings of conjugal affection.”

These touching love letters are even more soul-stirring when one realizes that Lucy Flucker Knox had separated herself from her own family for the cause of Liberty. Her parents were Loyalists and when the Tories abandoned Boston, her parents fled without so much as a goodbye.

Nancy Rubin Stuart, author of Defiant Brides, tenderly describes Lucy Knox as a woman who longed for family and hoped to fill the Knox home with numerous children. In their marriage of 32 years, Lucy gave birth to a total of thirteen children, yet only three survived to adulthood.

With their less-than-trim figures, Lucy and Henry would likely not be the couple chosen for the cover of a historical romance. But their ardor for each other would fill the pages of any novel with a depth of commitment forged through love and war—a romance of the most passionate kind.

 Visit this site for more letters of Henry and Lucy Knox

Swift Couriers On Their Appointed Rounds

Posted by Elaine Marie Cooper

On a research trip to Massachusetts a year ago, I discovered a stone marker on a roadside near Brookfield, Massachusetts. At first I thought it was a grave marker with its curved design. It was, in fact, a remnant of the post riders trail from long ago, still telling travelers along the way: “67 miles to Boston, 30 miles to Springfield.”

What a delightful find! An ancient marker—crude but effective—pointing the way for postal riders. Imagine how welcoming those words etched in granite were to weary horsemen.

The history of our postal system in the United States is older than the country itself.

The Pilgrims had only been in America for 13 years when the first official postal service was begun. The General Court of Massachusetts designated Richard Fairbanks’ tavern in Boston as the exchange point for mail between the colonies and England. This was in keeping with the British tradition of using coffee houses and taverns as the mail drops. I rather like this idea, personally…go to Starbucks, sit and read my mail…but I digress…

By 1673, a trail for a post rider was set up between New York and Boston. That trail, called the Old Boston Post Road, is today part of US Route 1.

Pennsylvania was next in setting up a post office ten years later. Then colonies in the south set up their own message system between plantations, with messages sometimes carried by slaves.

 A centralized postal system for all the colonies was not set up until 1691. The delivery system expanded and spread under the guidance of numerous Postmasters General, who were still under British rule.

 In 1737, 31-year-old Benjamin Franklin was named Postmaster of Philadelphia. The struggling publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette made numerous improvements in the mail system, including cutting the delivery time between Philadelphia and New York in half by running mail wagons both day and night. He also devised the still-used rate chart based on distance and weight of the parcel—in principle, still used today, although I think the rates have climbed somewhat since the 1700’s.

As we all know, Mr. Franklin—who by now was called the Joint Postmaster General for the Crown—began to be involved in the cause for liberty from England, which did not sit well with his British employers. He was fired in 1774.

But he was not unemployed for too long, as the Continental Congress appointed Franklin to the position of Postmaster General of the United Colonies in 1775. By the time Franklin was sent on his diplomatic assignment to France in 1776, he left behind a greatly improved colonial mail system with routes from Maine to Florida.

Today the United States Postal System has over 40,000 post offices and they deliver 212 billion pieces of mail each year, according to this link. Mr. Franklin would be proud.

 "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Herodotus, 503 BC (Inscribed on the General Post Office facility on 33rd St. and 8th Ave., New York City