The Declaration of Independence was read in all of Delaware's major towns, and the portrait of King George was publicly burned. But Delaware's leaders were already in motion before it arrived. John Dickinson had articulated the colonies’ grievances in Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, published during the late 1760s. The committees of correspondence had been building toward this moment since at least 1774, when they framed aid to besieged Boston as a common cause of America. The Declaration thus reached a population both energized and challenged. The Delaware Regiment, authorized by Congress in December 1775, had grown to nearly full strength of five to six hundred men by April 1776. Yet Loyalist opposition was immediate. Enoch Anderson, a young Delaware officer, encountered armed Loyalists on the roads out of Dover within days of the Declaration's reading.
Interviewees
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Charles Fithian
- Delaware Archeologist, Delaware Historical Society
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Joseph Sullivan
- Welcome Center Supervisor, Delaware Public Archives
