American Enterprise Institute

Religion and the American Revolution

“Puritan” John Adams and “Quaker” John Dickinson: A Reassessment Notes

  1. George Bancroft, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent, 10 vols. (Little, Brown, 1842–74), esp. vol. 8; and David McCullough, John Adams (Simon & Schuster, 2001). The only previous discussion of Adams and Dickinson was by Bernhard Knollenberg, who wrote that Dickinson “ranks with Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams himself as one of the truly great men of the old Continental Congress.” Bernhard Knollenberg, “John Dickinson vs. John Adams: 1774–1776,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107, no. 2 (1963): 144, https://www.jstor.org/stable/985444. For a fuller discussion of the historiography on Dickinson, see Jane E. Calvert, epilogue to Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson (Oxford University Press, 2024).
  2. What little he did say did not reflect well on her personality or intellect. He described her “cruel Reproaches” of him and her “confused, blundering Way of asking Questions.” Diary and Autobiography of John Adams., ed. L. H. Butterfield (Belknap Press, 1962), 1:64, 79.
  3. Woody Holton, Abigail Adams (Free Press, 2009), 94.
  4. R. B. Bernstein, The Education of John Adams (Oxford University Press, 2020), 2.
  5. This date is according to the New Style calendar the British Empire adopted in 1753.
  6. Calvert, Penman of the Founding.
  7. John Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity,” in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ser. 3, vol. 7 (n.p., 1838), 48, https://history.hanover.edu/texts/winthmod.html.
  8. Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Belknap Press, 1956), 48–98, 141–52.
  9. Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Atheneum, 1976); and Quentin Skinner, “Part Three: Calvinism and the Theory of Revolution,” in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2, The Age of Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 1978), 189–358.
  10. Jane E. Calvert, Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
  11. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government [. . .] (London, 1690), bk. 2, chap. 19, § 235.
  12. Locke, Two Treatises of Government. (Locke is citing the Roman poet Juvenal in offering this image.)
  13. Richard Alan Ryerson, John Adams’s Republic: The One, the Few, and the Many (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 50.
  14. Although Adams published “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law” in 1765, Ryerson concludes that it was not in response to the Stamp Act, nor was it widely known in America until 1783. Ryerson, John Adams’s Republic, 48.
  15. Bernstein, The Education of John Adams, 63.
  16. John Dickinson to Mary Cadwalader Dickinson, February 19, 1755, in The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson, ed. Jane E. Calvert, vol. 1, 1751–1758 (University of Delaware Press, 2020), 77.
  17. John Dickinson to Samuel Dickinson, June 6, 1756, in Calvert, The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson, 1:131.
  18. John Dickinson, “Friends and Countrymen,” in The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson, ed. Jane E. Calvert, vol. 3, 1764–1766 (University of Delaware Press, 2024), 373–78.
  19. A. B. [Samuel Adams?], “Letter to Messieurs Edes and Gill,” The Boston Gazette, March 14, 1768, in The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson, ed. Jane E. Calvert, vol. 4, 1767–1769 (University of Delaware Press, 2025), 148.
  20. The Pennsylvania Gazette, “A Song. To the Tune of Heart of Oak, &c.,” July 7, 1768.
  21. “Adams’ Minutes of Josiah Quincy’s Opening for the Defense,” in The Legal Papers of John Adams, ed. L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel (Belknap Press, 1965), 3:164–65.
  22. Richard Alan Ryerson, The Revolution Is Now Begun: The Radical Committees of Philadelphia, 1765–1776 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 92.
  23. Samuel Adams to John Dickinson, April 21, 1774, New York Public Library, Samuel Adams Papers, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/0fd1acf0-10ab-0134-fcb9-00505686a51c.
  24. John Dickinson, “To the Inhabitants of the British Colonies in America,” The Boston Gazette, June 20, 1774.
  25. “Copy of a Paper Drawn Up by Joseph Reed for W. Henry Drayton,” Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Maria Dickinson Logan Collection.
  26. Ryerson, The Revolution Is Now Begun, 47.
  27. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 2:133–55.
  28. Samuel Adams to Joseph Warren?, September 25, 1774, in Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789, ed. Paul H. Smith (Library of Congress, 1976), 1:100.
  29. Ryerson, John Adams’s Republic, 123–24.
  30. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 2:133, 157.
  31. A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind: Congressional State Papers, 1774–1776, ed. James H. Hutson (Library of Congress, 1975), 50–52; and Ryerson, John Adams’s Republic, 124–25.
  32. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 3:260; and John Adams to François Adriaan Van der Kemp, April 8, 1815, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6451.
  33. Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past: From the Leaves of Old Journals (n.p., 1888), 80.
  34. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 3:316.
  35. Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley (Oxford University Press, 1988), 78.
  36. Calvert, Penman of the Founding.
  37. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 2:152.
  38. Ryerson, John Adams’s Republic, 137–54.
  39. See, for example, John Dickinson to Samuel Dickinson, June 6, 1756, in Calvert, The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson, 1:131.
  40. Silas Deane’s Diary, May 16, 1775, in Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1:352.
  41. John Dickinson, notes, May 23–25, 1775, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Simon Gratz Autograph Collection.
  42. Silas Deane’s Diary, May 24, 1775, in Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1:401–2.
  43. John Adams to James Warren, May 21, 1775, in Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1:364. He repeated the same sentiments to Abigail. John Adams to Abigail Adams, May 29, 1775, in Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Belknap Press, 1963), 1:207.
  44. Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, vol. 2, 1775: May 10–September 20 (Government Printing Office, 1905), 64–66.
  45. John Adams to Moses Gill, June 10, 1775, in Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor (Belknap Press, 1979), 3:20–21.
  46. John Adams to Abigail Adams, June 11, 1775, in Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:216.
  47. Samuel Adams to James Warren, June 10, 1775, in Warren–Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Between John Adams, Samuel Adams, and John Warren (Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917), 1:55.
  48. John Dickinson to Arthur Lee, July 7, 1775, Harvard College, Houghton Library.
  49. John Dickinson to David Barclay, August 7, 1775, Bernard Quaritch, Dickinson–Barclay Papers.
  50. Charles Thomson, “Early Days of the Revolution in Philadelphia,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1878, 423, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20084364.
  51. John Adams to James Warren, July 6, 1775, in Taylor, Papers of John Adams, 3:61–62.
  52. John Adams to Joseph Palmer, July 6, 1775, in Taylor, Papers of John Adams, 3:54.
  53. Julian P. Boyd, “The Disputed Authorship of the Declaration on the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, 1775,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, January 1950, 51–73, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20088111.
  54. John Adams to William Tudor, July 6, 1775, in Taylor, Papers of John Adams, 3:54.
  55. See John Adams to James Warren, July 23, 1775, in Taylor, Papers of John Adams, 3:86–88.
  56. John Adams to James Warren, July 23, 1775, in Taylor, Papers of John Adams, 3:87.
  57. John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 23, 1775, in Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:253.
  58. John Adams to James Warren, July 24, 1775, in Taylor, Papers of John Adams, 3:89. He wrote a letter to Abigail saying essentially the same thing.
  59. Charles Lee to John Dickinson, January 18, 1776, Library Company of Philadelphia, John Dickinson Papers.
  60. Bernstein, The Education of John Adams, 78.
  61. See Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 3:318.
  62. Taylor, Papers of John Adams, 3:7. See, for example, Jack N. Rakove’s account of this same period, based on Adams’s writings, in which he says, “If his autobiographical accounts of congressional debates can be trusted.” Jack N. Rakove, “The Decision for American Independence: A Reconstruction,” in Perspectives in American History, ed. Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (Harvard University Press, 1976), 10:244.
  63. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 3:318.
  64. Calvert, The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson, vol. 4.
  65. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 3:317–19, 321.
  66. Ryerson, John Adams’s Republic, 166.
  67. For the radicals’ expression of fealty to the royal family, see Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives of the Province of Pennsylvania (n.p., 1777), 538. For the instructions, see page 647. The draft of the instructions in Dickinson’s hand is in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s Simon Gratz Autograph Collection.
  68. John Dickinson, “To My Opponents,” The Pennsylvania Gazette, December 24, 1782.
  69. John Dickinson, “2 Points Recommended & Enjoined by Our Constituents,” January 1776, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Simon Gratz Autograph Collection.
  70. Ryerson, John Adams’s Republic, 179.
  71. Ryerson, John Adams’s Republic, 180.
  72. Dickinson was not opposed to Adams’s motion but approved of it, believing that it might hasten reconciliation. He hoped Britain would realize that the longer those governments existed, the harder it would be to offer terms agreeable to Americans. Thomas Rodney to Cæsar Rodney, May 29, 1776, Delaware Historical Society, Rodney Correspondence.
  73. Ryerson, The Revolution Is Now Begun, 212.
  74. Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 4, 1776: January 1–June 4 (Government Printing Office, 1906), 342, 357–58.
  75. For a detailed account of this moment, see Ryerson, The Revolution Is Now Begun, 211–16.
  76. Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 5, 1776: June 5–October 8 (Government Printing Office, 1906), 433.
  77. See Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (Vintage Books, 1998), 110, 184.
  78. For Dickinson’s draft, see the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s R. R. Logan Collection of John Dickinson Papers. For the Adams draft with analysis, see Taylor, Papers of John Adams, 4:260–78.
  79. Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776, in Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:370; and John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 14, 1776, in Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:382.
  80. Dickinson’s full draft of the Articles of Confederation and notes are in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s R. R. Logan Collection of John Dickinson Papers.
  81. John Dickinson, “Arguments Against the Independance of These Colonies,” July 1, 1776, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Simon Gratz Autograph Collection.
  82. John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, in Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, vol. 2, June 1776–March 1778 (Belknap Press, 1963), 30.
  83. Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 8, 1777: May 22–October 2 (Government Printing Office, 1907), 688–89.
  84. John Adams to Abigail Adams, September 8, 1777, in Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence, 2:337–38.
  85. See also Jane E. Calvert, “Thomas Paine, Quakerism, and the Limits of Religious Liberty in the American Revolution,” in Selected Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Ian Shapiro and Jane E. Calvert (Yale University Press, 2014), 602–29.
  86. Peter C. Messer, “‘A Species of Treason & Not the Least Dangerous Kind’: The Treason Trials of Abraham Carlisle and John Roberts,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 123, no. 4 (1999): 303–32, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20093317.
  87. Ford, Journals of the Continental Congress, 5:434; Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 2:252; Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 7, 1777: January 1–May 21 (Government Printing Office, 1907), 85; and Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 9, 1777: October 3–December 31 (Government Printing Office, 1907), 880.
  88. Taylor, Papers of John Adams, 4:252–53.
  89. Quoted in Bernstein, The Education of John Adams, 119–20.
  90. Bernstein, The Education of John Adams, 118, 138.
  91. Richard Alan Ryerson, “An Education in American Aristocracy, 1775–1783,” in John Adams’s Republic, 232–69.
  92. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 3:316.
  93. “From John Adams to Boston Patriot, 1809,” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5491.
  94. When Adams was in France two years later, he requested that Abigail send him a copy. John Adams to Abigail Adams, June 16, 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield and Marc Friedlaender, vol. 3, April 1778–September 1780 (Belknap Press, 1973), 44.
  95. John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 10, 1776, in Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence, 2:42.
  96. Samuel Chase to John Dickinson, September 29, 1776, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, R. R. Logan Collection of John Dickinson Papers; and Thomas Stone to John Dickinson, September 1776, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, R. R. Logan Collection of John Dickinson Papers.
  97. Samuel Chase to John Dickinson, October 12, 1776, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, R. R. Logan Collection of John Dickinson Papers; and Samuel Chase to John Dickinson, October 19, 1776, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, R. R. Logan Collection of John Dickinson Papers. Research has not yet been undertaken to determine Dickinson’s influence.
  98. John Dickinson to the Council of Safety, January 21, 1777, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, R. R. Logan Collection of John Dickinson Papers.
  99. John Dickinson, manumission deed, May 12, 1777, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, R. R. Logan Collection of John Dickinson Papers. See Calvert, Penman of the Founding, 282–86, 303–4, 346–47.
  100. Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (Yale University Press, 1911), 1:87, 153; and Jane E. Calvert, “An Expansive Conception of Rights: The Abolitionism of John Dickinson,” in When in the Course of Human Events: 1776 at Home, Abroad, and in American Memory, ed. Will R. Jordan (Mercer University Press, 2018), 43n79.
  101. John Dickinson to George Logan, January 16, 1802, Library Company of Philadelphia, John Dickinson Papers.
  102. A Farmer [George Logan], Letters Addressed to the Yeomanry of the United States [. . .] (Philadelphia, 1791).
  103. John Dickinson, A Caution; Or, Reflections on the Present Contest Between France and Britain (Philadelphia, 1798).
  104. See Calvert, Penman of the Founding, esp. chaps. 13–15.
  105. John Dickinson to Thomas Jefferson, June 27, 1801, Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Papers.
  106. John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 12, 1813, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, ed. J. Jefferson Looney (Princeton University Press, 2009), 6:612.
  107. The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 25, 1899.