and is currently director and chief editor of the John Dickinson Writings Project. Her work, which has been supported by leading research institutions as well as federal agencies, focuses on the intersection of theology and political theory in the Colonial and Founding Eras. Her first book, Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson (2009), describes the origins of civil disobedience in Quakerism and provides the first explanation of Dickinson's thought and action during the Revolution.
Calvert applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson, and reported the following:
On page 99 of Penman of the Founding, 26-year-old John Dickinson, a newly minted barrister, is nearing the end of his representation of William Smith, an Anglican minister, in his trial for libel against the Pennsylvania Assembly by the Pennsylvania Assembly. It’s a sham trial with a foreordained guilty verdict, but Dickinson persisted through interruptions, misrepresentations, censures, and threats against him by the assemblymen to speak truth to power and argue for liberty of the press. Here is a key quote:Visit Jane E. Calvert's website and The John Dickinson Writings Project.“The Freedom of the Press is truly inestimable,” he effused. “It is the Preserver of every other Freedom & the Antidote to every kind of Slavery. By the Assistance of the Press, the Language of Liberty flies like Lightning thro the Land, and when the least attack is made upon her Rights, spreads the Alarm to all her Sons & raises and rouses a Whole people in her Cause.” His conclusion was this: “Freedom of the Press is so opposite & dreadful to the Usurpers of unjust Power & the Enemies of Mankind, that Liberty however maimd & wounded still breathes & struggles, while that prevails.”The page ends with the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania stepping in to defend Dickinson against the Speaker of the Assembly (who, years later, would become his father-in-law).
Page 99 is a surprisingly good test for giving readers a sense of the book. It shows Dickinson putting into practice what he vowed to do when he was studying in London to become a barrister and what he tried to do his entire life as a lawyer, a statesman, and a private citizen—to “defend the innocent and the injured” and, if necessary, to become a martyr for the cause of justice. Dickinson went on to defend the lowliest of criminals who might not otherwise have had a champion, such as the mixed-race servant woman accused of killing her infant and concealing the body. He taught Americans how to defend their own rights against an oppressive British government, both with peaceful means and with military force. He served in more public offices than any other American Founder and wrote more documents to codify and protect rights. Liberty of the press was just the beginning. He wrote legislation to protect free Black people in what is now Delaware, and he was the only major leader to free all of the Black people he enslaved and write abolition legislation. He tried to protect Americans’ religious liberty, including women’s rights to worship freely and speak publicly. He founded schools for poor children to protect them from ignorance. He proposed the solution for representation in the US Constitutional Convention to protect small states from the large ones and the American union from disunion. He founded the first prison reform society to protect prisoners from inhumane conditions. And he did all of these things and more at sometimes great personal cost to himself, his health, and his family. Thus, page 99 shows the reader exactly the kind of selfless leader Dickinson always was.
--Marshal Zeringue
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