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)
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.