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George Read

George Read was born at his family's home in Cecil County, Maryland, on September 18, 1733. His father, John Read, a native of Dublin, Ireland, was descended from Sir Thomas Read of Berkshire, England. His mother, Mary Howell Read, was the daughter of a Welsh planter. With six associates, John Read founded the city of Charlestown at the head of Chesapeake Bay as a north Maryland rival to Baltimore.

When George was very young, the Reads moved to New Castle, in New Castle County, Delaware. George was given a classical education at Chester, Pennsylvania, and at the Reverend Francis Alison's Academy in New London, in the same colony. After studying law, Read was admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1753, and started to practice in that city.

In 1754, Read moved back to New Castle. The county of this name, along with Kent and Sussex counties, comprised the colony of Delaware. In April, 1763, he was appointed attorney general for this colony and served until October, 1774. Read had married Gertrude Ross Till, the widowed daughter of the Reverend George Ross, in January, 1763. They had a family of four sons and a daughter.

The "Three Lower Counties" on the Delaware River, settled in 1638 by Swedes, were captured by Peter Stuyvesant for New Netherland in 1655. On the English conquest of New Nether]and in 1664, this territory became part of the Duke of York's grant.

In 1682, the Duke conveyed the three counties to William Penn, who added the land to his vast domain. From 1691 to 1693, Penn appointed a special deputy governor for the Lower Counties. Separated from Pennsylvania in 1702, the Lower Counties were designated the colony of Delaware and granted their own legislature. Delaware, however, remained a part of the proprietary territory of the Penn family and was under the authority of the governors of Pennsylvania until 1776.

George Read was opposed to the Stamp Act. In July, 1765, he asserted that if this act or any other such law were enforced, taxing the colonists without giving them direct representation in Parliament, they would "entertain an opinion that they are to become the slaves" of Great Britain and would try "to live as independent of Great Britain as possible." He prophesied in a letter to Sir Richard Neave that year that the British policy would lead not only to independence for the colonies but also to their surpassing England in staple manufactures.

At that time, Read was elected to the Delaware Assembly from New Castle County and he served in that body for twelve years. He aided in the adoption of a nonimportation agreement in 1769, and in gaining help for Boston in 1774. George Read was elected to the First Continental Congress on August 2, 1774.

In Congress, as the delegates of Delaware, Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean, and George Read, signed the American Association on October 24, 1774, on behalf of the inhabitants of their colony. Still styled as "his majesty's most loyal subjects," they agreed to join in nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation until the "ruinous system of colony administration" adopted by the British Ministry was rescinded.

To his wife, Read described a typical day. After breakfast and a session with the barber on his wig, he hurried to Congress and was occupied there until almost three o'clock. Then he hastened to dine "on invitation, waiting an hour before dinner appears, and walking quickly home to avoid the night air. Not a moment to spare is disagreeable, yet there is very little in all this bustle. We are wide of our business."

Read was chosen for the Second Continental Congress in March, 1775, and continued in that assembly to mid-September, 1777. His attendance was sometimes irregular. The Delaware Assembly instructions of March 29, 1775, advised the delegates to "studiously avoid . . . everything disrespectful or offensive" to the King or "in any way invasive of his just rights and prerogative."

On May 18, just one month after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which had horrified the colonies, Read wrote to his wife, telling of the press of business at Congress. He was away from his lodgings twelve hours a day. He dined daily at the City Tavern at a regular table of eight, which included Randolph, Lee, Washington, and Harrison of Virginia, and Caesar Rodney, also of Delaware.

In October, Read was appointed to the Council of Safety by the Assembly of the Three Lower Counties. At the council, in January, 1776, Read presented extracts from the Minutes of Congress relative to raising a battalion in Delaware. As the struggle for independence intensified within Congress in early 1776, Read was a moderate, who favored reconciliation. On February 4, Edward Tilghman wrote that the majority of Congress were "abhorrent from independency." Five colonies, however, were called "violent," and suspected of independence. Of these, Rhode Island sometimes was divided. All the others "breathe reconciliation," except that the Lower Counties were sometimes divided, owing to the absence of Rodney or Read.

Colonel McKean of Delaware, the third member of that colony's delegation, joined the "violents." He apparently bore the "brunt" of the struggle for independence in Delaware. On June 13, in a letter written at 2 A.M., in New Castle, he warned Congress that the Delaware Assembly had just had word by express that 1,000 Tories were under arms in Sussex County. He continued with the confident statement, "we expect soon to give a good Account of these misguided people." By 7 P.M., he wrote again to Congress, saying the insurgents had dispersed. Before the Kent County and probably other militia companies reached the area, a conference between Tory leaders and the Committee of Safety had averted the threatened uprising.

The following day, McKean handed a copy of the May 15 Resolution of Congress to the Delaware House of Representatives, which had convened on June 10. This act declared separation from the King. On June 17, John Adams wrote another delegate that McKean had returned from the Lower Counties "with Full Powers" and instructions set down in the same words as those used in Pennsylvania's new orders. Both released restrictions on any measure that might result in independence.

When, on July 1, the Resolution for Independence was approved by nine colonies in the committee of the whole house at Congress, Delaware was divided - McKean for and Read against. McKean sent an express to Dover at his own expense to summon Caesar Rodney, who arrived at Congress on the morning of July 2, in time to turn the vote of Delaware for independence. By his vote, Rodney, who was suffering from a serious illness, gave up all chance of a cure in England. Read signed the Declaration with McKean and Rodney. His brother-in-law, George Ross, was a Pennsylvania signer.

A letter dated July 30, 1776, from Thomas Rodney at Dover, to Caesar Rodney, told that the Committee of Safety halted an election for military officers while the president of the committee read the Declaration of Independence at the courthouse. This received the "highest approbation" of the people present in "three Huzas." A march around the square followed and a portrait of George III was thrown upon a fire with the words, "Compelled by Strong necessity Thus we destroy even the Shadow of that King who refused to reign over a free people."

George Read was president of the Delaware Constitutional Convention of August 27-September 21, held at New Castle. A political opponent asserted that his influence in that assembly was "paramount." Under the new state constitution, Read was elected to the legislative council in 1776. He was chosen speaker and thus ranked as vice president of Delaware.

John McKinly, the president of the state, was captured by the British in Wilmington in September, 1777. In the face of the enemy advance, Congress adjourned to Lancaster. Read left Philadelphia just before that city was taken. He was nearly captured while crossing the Delaware River. On his return to Delaware, he became acting president.

On January 9, 1778, Read reported to General Washington that his situation was "rather an unlucky one, in a government very deficient in its laws, and those greatly relaxed in their execution, and a Legislature as yet incomplete, and not disposed to unite and give aid to the executive authority."

On April 2, 1778, George Read gave up the presidential post to Caesar Rodney, the newly elected president. He remained in the state privy council. He was a member of the Assembly House of Representatives in 1779 and 1780, when he resigned, owing to illness. In the former year he drafted the measure authorizing Delaware's acceptance of the Articles of Confederation.

On December 5, 1782, Read was elected by Congress to serve as a judge of the court of appeals for admiralty cases. From that year until 1788 he again served on the state legislative council. In 1785, he opposed an act redeeming bills of credit at a ratio of one to seventy-five, as he felt the measure would injure Delaware's credit.

George Read, John Dickinson, Richard Bassett, Jacob Broom, and Gunning Bedford, Jr., were the Delaware delegates appointed to the Annapolis convention of September, 1786. The first three only went to the meeting. Following the lead of Virginia, the General Assembly of Delaware selected deputies to attend the convention of commissioners in Philadelphia.

In mid-January, 1787, George Read wrote to John Dickinson, pressing the need to insert a prohibition in the act of appointment naming Delaware's delegates to the Federal Convention against any change in the "each state, one vote" provisions of the Confederation-and in future alterations as well. The existence of Delaware, he declared, would depend on preserving such rights. He felt the acts of Congress "as to the ungranted lands in most of the larger states" sacrificed the claims of the smaller and bounded states for a proportional share therein, "for the purpose of discharging the national debt incurred during the war."

Such was his jealousy of most of the larger states that he would trust nothing to "their candor, generosity, or ideas of public justice in behalf of" Delaware from what had previously taken place, which he presumed had not escaped Dickinson's notice.

Since he lacked confidence in his own judgment, "particularly in public matters of consequence," he asked Dickinson's opinion of adopting such a restriction. He felt the latter would be one of the delegates named to attend the Federal Convention. A guard against any change in the one vote to a state provision would prevent disagreeable argument in the Convention as well as the "downfall of the State," which would, he warned, "at once become a cypher in the union."

On May 21, when already at the convention, Read, in a letter, urged Dickinson's speedy attendance. He cautioned that the deputies from the small states should keep watch upon the actions of the larger states, which "would probably combine to swallow up the smaller ones by addition, division, or impoverishment."

After the convention opened, Delaware voted for the establishment of a national government on May 30. Read's motion for a more effective government to accomplish the objects of the confederation was lost. Later that same day, on the motion for an equitable ratio of representation in the legislature, Read asked for a postponement. If such a change should be "fixed on, it might become their duty to retire from the Convention," he warned. Postponement was approved.

George Read, while fearing the large states' power, was against "patching up the old federal System," because that would be "putting new cloth on an old garment." If a good government "on new principles" were not established, "we must either go to ruin, or have the work to do over again," he asserted. On June 11, Delaware joined New Jersey and New York in voting against proportional representation in the lower house and, also, with New Jersey, opposed the ratio planned, including the three-fifths rule.

George Read favored the motion of August 16 to prohibit Congress from issuing paper money. He thought if the words, "and emit bills on the credit of the U. States," were not struck out, they "would be as alarming as the mark of the Beast in Revelations."

Read was one of Delaware's first two United States senators under the Constitution. Allocated to the two-year term, he was re-elected for a six-year term, starting March, 1791. On resigning his senate seat in mid-September, 1793, Read became chief justice of Delaware and served in this capacity until his death on September 21, 1798.

Of moderate means, Read lived in a house overlooking the Delaware River at New Castle. He was a member of the Immanuel Church in that city. Pierce described Read as a lawyer and judge whose "legal abilities are said to be very great, but his powers of Oratory are fatiguing and tiresome to the last degree. . . . He is a very good Man, and bears an amiable character with those who know him.

Dorothy Horton McGee. Framers of the Constitution. . Dodd Mead & Co., NY. 1968.

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