Thomas McKean: The Man Who Pushed Caesar Rodney

Thomas McKean was born on this farm on March nineteenth, seventeen thirty-four, and he would live long enough to see the young country he helped create outlast its early crises. He signed the Declaration of Independence, served as Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, and later as Governor from seventeen ninety-nine to eighteen oh eight.

But the story that defines him happened in July of seventeen seventy-six. The Delaware delegation was deadlocked: one delegate for independence, one against. McKean, himself a Delaware delegate, sent word to Caesar Rodney and urged him to ride through a stormy night from Dover to Philadelphia to cast the deciding vote. Rodney made that famous midnight ride, Delaware voted yes, and twelve colonies voted for independence, with New York abstaining. Without McKean's quiet pressure, the vote might have fractured before it ever held.