Caesar Rodney was an American lawyer, politician and statesman from St. Jones Neck in Dover Hundred, Kent County, Delaware, east of Dover. He was an officer during the French and Indian War and the American Revolution/ He also was a Continental Congressman from Delaware, and President of Delaware as well
Background
Caesar Rodney was the son of William Rodeney who emigrated to America about 1681, and of Elizabeth (Crawford) Rodeney, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Crawford, the first missionary sent to Dover, Delaware, United States and its environs by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
Education
Born on his father's farm near Dover, Caesar Rodney was reared in a cultured home and probably secured most of his education from his parents. When his father died in 1745, he was placed under the guardianship of Nicholas Ridgely, prothonotary and clerk of the peace of Kent County.
Career
He entered public life in 1755 when he was commissioned as high sheriff of Kent County. Reappointed to this office the two following years, he subsequently served his county as register of wills, recorder of deeds, clerk of the orphans' court, clerk of the peace, and justice of the peace. In 1769, he was appointed co-trustee with John Vining of the Kent County Loan Office and sole trustee from 1775 until his death. Appointed third justice of the supreme court for the Three Lower Counties in 1769, he was commissioned second justice of the same court in 1773. In 1758 Rodney was elected for the first time as delegate from Kent County to the colonial legislature at New Castle. From 1761 to 1776, with the exception of the assembly of 1771, he served continuously as a member of the legislature and was elected speaker in 1769, 1773, 1774, and 1775, holding that post until the end of the colonial regime in 1776. In 1765 he was elected by the House of Assembly as the representative of Kent County in the Stamp Act Congress and together with Thomas McKean took an active part in the work of that body. When the Assembly adopted several resolutions condemning the Townshend Act in October 1768, Rodney, McKean, and George Read were designated a committee of correspondence and instructed to draw up an address to the king. Following the passage by Parliament of the Boston Port Bill in the spring of 1774, Rodney, as speaker of the Assembly and upon express requests from mass meetings held in the three counties in June and July, took the extra-legal step of calling the Assembly for a special session (the prerogative of the proprietary governor) to meet in New Castle on August 1, 1774. This body appointed Rodney, McKean, and Read to attend the First Continental Congress.
The colonial assembly, at a regular session held in March 1775, approved the acts of the irregular meeting of the previous August and the report prepared by the three delegates to the First Continental Congress, and reflected them to the Second Continental Congress scheduled to meet in May. Meanwhile, Rodney was elected colonel of the so-called "Upper'" regiment of Kent County militia and in the following September, was elected brigadier-general of the militia of Kent County and of the western battalion of Sussex County. He presided as speaker over the regular session of the assembly in October 1775 and together with McKean and Read was again returned to Congress. In June 1776 he presided over the session of the colonial assembly at New Castle which passed a resolution supplanting the authority of the crown in the government of the Three Lower Counties and which issued new instructions to Rodney and his two colleagues from Delaware, authorizing them to cooperate with the other colonies. On June 22 Rodney hurried to Sussex County to investigate a threatened Loyalist uprising there and had just returned to his home in Kent County when he received an "express" from his colleague, McKean, urging his immediate return to Philadelphia to vote on Richard Henry Lee's resolution for independence. He rode eighty miles on horseback, arriving in the late afternoon of July 2, 1776, in time to cast Delaware's vote for independence-his vote and McKean's overriding the negative vote of Read, the more conservative member of the delegation. He likewise voted with McKean for the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. On July 22 he was back in New Castle presiding over the last session of the colonial assembly which he had summoned for the purpose of fixing a date for the assembling of a state constitutional convention and of arranging for the election of delegates. The conservatives of Kent County defeated him as delegate to the convention and, when the new state constitution went into effect, he also failed of election to the first state legislature and was not returned by that body in the autumn as a delegate to the Congress. This demonstration of ingratitude on the part of his contemporaries did not affect Rodney's patriotic fervor for he now turned to military affairs again, and in November 1776 was made chairman of the Kent County branch of the council of safety.
When the American cause seemed at its lowest ebb in December, Rodney was busily engaged in recruiting men in his county and sending them forward to join the main army. In January 1777, after Washington had taken up his winter-quarters at Morristown, he was placed in command of the post at Trenton for a few weeks of active service. He was in command of the Delaware militia with the rank of brigadier-general when the British invaded the state in September, but only succeeded in harassing the enemy's outposts. A few days later the acting president of the state, Thomas McKean, commissioned Rodney as major-general of the Delaware militia. Rodney's political star rose again in 1777. In the spring the legislature elected him as judge of the admiralty and in December as member to the Continental Congress. In the spring of 1778 it also elected him president of the state for a term of three years to succeed John McKinly who had been captured by the British when they temporarily occupied Wilmington. He served as Delaware's war executive seven months beyond the full term until November 1781. It fell to his lot during this critical period to furnish Delaware's quota of Continental troops, and to arm and clothe them as well as to raise Delaware's quota of provisions and money. For about ten years Rodney had suffered from a serious cancerous growth on his face and when he relinquished the duties of president, he immediately went to Philadelphia to obtain medical and surgical relief. The malady, however, had made too great an inroad upon his physical constitution and although he returned to Dover in a hopeful mood after several months of treatment, he constantly lost strength until his death. In the fall of 1783, he was elected once more to office, this time as member of the upper house of the legislature. This body honored him with the speakership, but before the legislative year had expired Rodney was dead. His main interests, aside from political affairs, had been those of a land owner.
Achievements
Personality
Caesar Rodney was a man of clear perception and understanding, of high courage, and of effective application.
Quotes from others about the person
After meeting Rodney for the first time at the Congress, John Adams wrote in his diary for September 3, "Caesar Rodney is the oddest looking man in the world; he is tall, thin and slender as a reed, pale; his face is not bigger than a large apple, yet there is sense and fire, spirit, wit, and humor in his countenance" (The Works of John Adams, vol. II, 1850, p. 364).
Connections
He died a comparatively wealthy man, and, since he never married, most of his real estate was bequeathed to his nephew, Caesar Augustus, son of his brother, Thomas Rodney. His remains lay buried on his farm, "Poplar Grove, " for over a century when, in 1888, they were removed to the Christ Episcopal Churchyard in Dover.