Caesar Rodney

Caesar Rodney was born in 1728 on his family's estate near Dover, Delaware, into one of the colony's most established planter families. He entered public life early, serving as a county sheriff, justice of the peace, and eventually as speaker of the Delaware assembly, accumulating the administrative and political experience that made him one of his colony's most capable leaders in the pre-revolutionary decade. He became associated with the patriot cause as tensions with Britain mounted, serving on Delaware's committee of correspondence and helping organize colonial resistance, though he was careful to maintain the procedural propriety that his long experience in colonial government had instilled in him.

Rodney's most famous moment came on July 1 and 2, 1776, when Delaware's delegation to the Continental Congress was deadlocked. Thomas McKean and George Read disagreed on independence, and Rodney — who was in Delaware managing both political affairs and his own declining health, as a facial cancer was slowly ravaging his face — received an urgent message calling him back to Philadelphia. He rode through the night in a thunderstorm, arriving at the State House on the morning of July 2 still in his riding clothes and boots, and cast the vote that broke Delaware's internal deadlock and contributed to the unanimous delegation support that allowed Congress to present a united front. He then continued serving in Congress and as Delaware's president from 1778 to 1781, organizing the state's militia, securing supplies for the Continental Army, and maintaining Delaware's commitment to the war during years when the British threatened the Chesapeake and loyalist sentiment remained a factor in the state's politics.

Rodney died in 1784, weakened by years of illness and exhausted by the demands of wartime leadership, before he could witness the full consolidation of the independence he had helped to declare. His overnight ride has become one of the Revolution's enduring images of personal sacrifice for the public cause, and his image appears on Delaware's state quarter — the most widely circulated portrait of him in existence — depicting him on horseback in perpetual motion toward that decisive vote.