Caesar Rodney's Ride: Delaware's Midnight Gallop for Independence

The equestrian statue that once stood in Rodney Square, at the heart of downtown Wilmington, commemorates one of the more dramatic single rides in American history. On the night of July first, seventeen seventy-six, a Delaware delegate named Caesar Rodney climbed onto a horse in Dover and rode about seventy miles through a driving thunderstorm to reach Philadelphia by dawn.

He was not in good health. Rodney suffered from both asthma and cancer, and a growth on his face had forced him to cover it with a green silk scarf. But the Continental Congress was about to vote on independence from Britain, and Delaware's delegation was deadlocked. Thomas McKean was for independence. George Read was against it. The deciding vote belonged to Rodney, and Rodney was about seventy miles away dealing with a Loyalist uprising in Sussex County.

When McKean's urgent message reached him, Rodney did not deliberate. He rode through the night and arrived at the Pennsylvania State House early on July second, still in his mud-spattered riding clothes, and cast the vote that broke Delaware's tie. The full Continental Congress voted for independence that same day. When the formal Declaration was signed on August second, Rodney's name was on it.

It is worth noting what he rode toward. Independence meant war, and Rodney knew it. It also meant, for Delaware and many other states, a long internal argument over slavery that would not be resolved for nearly ninety more years. Rodney himself was an enslaver, a fact the statue's admirers have long debated. The bronze figure was removed from Rodney Square during the protests of twenty twenty, and in twenty twenty-six it was relocated to Freedom Plaza in Washington, District of Columbia, where the conversation about his legacy continues.