Articles of Confederation

About the Author

John Dickinson, known as the “Penman of the Revolution,” was born on the Croisadore, his family's estate near the village of Trappe in Talbot County, Maryland, on November 8, 1732. His father, Samuel Dickinson, was a prosperous farmer. His mother, Mary (Cadwalader) Dickinson, was his father's second wife. In 1740 the family moved to Kent County, Delaware. John was educated there by private tutors until 1750, when he went to Philadelphia to study law with John Moland.

In 1753 Dickinson went to London to study law at Middle Temple. After returning to Philadelphia, Dickinson became a prominent lawyer from 1757 to 1760. Dickinson then entered public life, serving in the Assembly of the Lower Counties (as Delaware was known at the time) as a speaker. In 1762 Dickinson won a seat in the Pennsylvania Assembly, and he was reelected in 1764. He quickly became the assembly's leader of the conservatives and gained notoriety for his defense of the proprietary governor against the faction led by Benjamin Franklin.

Dickinson's influential pamphlet The Late Regulations Respecting the British Colonies advocated pressuring British merchants to have the Stamp Act repealed. As a result, the Pennsylvania Assembly sent Dickinson as a representative to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, and he drafted its resolutions. In 1767 and 1768 Dickinson wrote a series of newspaper articles called Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies, which circulated throughout the colonies; the articles attacked British taxation and advocated resistance to all unjust laws. Dickinson always remained optimistic, however, that a peaceful resolution could be found. Because of his Letters, Dickinson was given an honorary LLD from the College of New Jersey, which was later known as Princeton University.

Dickinson continued to criticize British policy. In 1768 he attacked the Townshend Revenue Act, which the British established to collect duties to pay the salaries of royal officials in the colonies. Dickinson advocated resistance through nonimportation and nonexportation agreements on British goods.

In 1770 Dickinson married the daughter of wealthy merchant Isaac Norris, Mary Norris, with whom he had two daughters: Sally and Maria. In 1771 Dickinson was reelected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, where he drafted a petition to the king that was approved. Dickinson's belief in nonviolence, however, led to the decline in his popularity. In 1774 Dickinson chaired the Philadelphia Committee of Correspondence and briefly served in the First Continental Congress as a Pennsylvania representative.

Throughout 1775 Dickinson continued to write to the British government for a redress of colonial grievances, but he was slowly drawn into the Revolutionary fray. While Dickinson served in the Second Continental Congress from 1775 to 1776, he drew up the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. He voted against the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and refused to sign it. Dickinson nonetheless entered the army to fight the British. He declined to serve in the Congress and resigned from the Pennsylvania Assembly.

Dickinson headed the congressional committee to draft the Articles of Confederation from 1776 to 1777. He authored the draft of the Articles that was debated in the Congress. Delaware sent Dickinson to the Continental Congress from 1779 to 1780 as a delegate. In 1781 Dickinson served as the president of Delaware's Supreme Executive Council. Dickinson moved back to Philadelphia and served as the president of Pennsylvania from 1782 to 1785. He represented Delaware at the Annapolis Convention in 1786.

Although he was in poor health, Dickinson was sent by Delaware to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, where he argued against the U.S. Constitution. He nonetheless authorized his friend and fellow delegate George Read to sign his name to the Constitution and advocated its ratification by writing a series of letters under the pen name “Fabius.” Dickinson soon withdrew from public life and wrote on politics. In 1801 his works were published in two volumes. He died on February 14, 1808, in Wilmington, Delaware, and was buried in the Friends Burial Ground. Dickinson College, chartered in 1783, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was named in his honor.