Caesar Rodney, a Founding Father

Hail Caesar—a patriot’s statue returns

President Trump restores the honor to a man toppled by the George Floyd hysteria

Listen my readers, I know you did hear of the famous ride of Paul Revere.

Today you will become aware then of the famous ride of a Delawarean.

Caesar Rodney is a Founding Father, a title that is as alive today as it was on July 2, 1776, when he cast the vote in the Continental Congress to have all 13 colonies declare independence from the Crown.

He rode 70 miles through the backwoods from Wilmington to Philadelphia during a thunderstorm at night to cast the vote that broke the deadlock in the Delaware delegation. He did not see the ride as the big deal it was. Eventually he was elected Mayor in his home county and then Governor in 1778.

His patriotism went back to participation in the French and Indian War followed by opposition to the Stamp Act, which placed a tax on paper. Benjamin Franklin objected that it hit printers hardest. John Adams Adams, viewed it as an effort to “strip us in a great measure of the means of knowledge, by loading the Press, the colleges, and even an Almanack and a News-Paper, with restraints and duties.”

But Delaware honored Rodney with the statue for 97 years, until Saint George Floyd died in Minneapolis. On June 12, 2020, Democrat Mayor Mike Purzycki of Wilmington, Delaware, reacted by ordering the removal of the Caesar Rodney equestrian statue. Purzycki also removed a statue of Columbus.

The mayor put them in storage.

In 1923, Civil War General James Harrison Wilson headed an effort to raise money to fund a statue to Caesar Rodney.

Wilson was 23 and an 1860 graduate of West Point when the Civil War began. He helped end the war as a general four years later, defeating Nathan Bedford Forrest in the Battle of Selma. Later, Wilson also helped capture Jefferson Davis, but Delaware has not honored Wilson.

When Obama went Selma with black leaders to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a civil rights march, he failed to note that it was the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Selma, which actually helped free the slaves.

Read this interesting article by Don Surber

Rodney was 55 when he died of facial cancer.