The Declaration’s forgotten (non)signer: John Dickinson’s missing 1776 signature haunts his legacy

Portraits of a red-headed Thomas Jefferson, left, and John Dickinson, right, by by Charles Willson Peale are seen at the refurbished Second Bank of the United States in Philadelphia on Nov. 26, 2004. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma, File) 2026-07-02T04:02:51Z NEW YORK (AP) — For a quarter century, Jane Calvert has been on a mission shared by few scholars of the Revolutionary War era. She has championed a founder mostly remembered, when remembered at all, as the man who wouldn’t sign the Declaration of Independence — the lawyer and statesman John Dickinson. “It has been a constant struggle,” says Calvert, a former associate professor at the University of Kentucky who has written often about Dickinson and is the founder of the John Dickinson Writings Project, which aims to make his works widely available. For much of the country, the 250th anniversary of independence on Saturday is a time for celebrating and debating the country’s birth. But for Calvert and others, it’s also a moment to challenge the lingering image of a man who at times has been ignored, ridiculed or literally cast aside. He was the Revolution’s ‘penman’ Dickinson, a Maryland native who spent much of his life in Delaware and Pennsylvania, was once regarded as among the most important and inspiring founders. His “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,” a dozen missives published in the 1760s, were widely read attacks against Britain’s right to tax the colonies that helped give Americans a shared sense of identity and purpose. He even wrote the words to one of the country’s first patriotic anthems, “The Liberty Song.” Admirers would call him the “Penman of the Revolution.” But Dickinson also sought peace with Britain well after the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. In July 1775, he helped compose the Olive Branch Petition, a call for reconciliation that King George III essentially ignored. When the Continental Congress voted for independence in July 1776, Dickinson and fellow Pennsylvanian Robert Morris abstained. While Morris later signed the Declaration, Dickinson withheld his name. “He wasn’t opposed to independence per se, but he thought it should happen gradually and without bloodshed,” Calvert says. (