DICKINSON, ANNA ELIZABETH (1842–), American author and lecturer, was born, of Quaker parentage, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 28th of October 1842. She was educated at the Friends’ Free School in Philadelphia, and was for a time a teacher. In 1861 she obtained a clerkship in the United States mint, but was removed for criticizing General McClellan at a public meeting. She had gradually become widely known as an eloquent and persuasive public speaker, one of the first of her sex to mount the platform to discuss the burning questions of the hour. Before the Civil War she lectured on anti-slavery topics, during the war she toured the country on behalf of the Sanitary Commission, and also lectured on reconstruction, temperance and woman’s rights. She wrote several plays, including The Crown of Thorns (1876); Mary Tudor (1878), in which she appeared in the title rôle; Aurelian (1878); and An American Girl (1880), successfully acted by Fanny Davenport. She also published a novel, Which Answer? (1868); A Paying Investment, a Plea for Education (1876); and A Ragged Register of People, Places and Opinions (1879).
DICKINSON, JOHN (1732–1808), American statesman and pamphleteer, was born in Talbot county, Maryland, on the 8th of November 1732. He removed with his father to Kent county, Delaware, in 1740, studied under private tutors, read law, and in 1753 entered the Middle Temple, London. Returning to America in 1757, he began the practice of law in Philadelphia, was speaker of the Delaware assembly in 1760, and was a member of the Pennsylvania assembly in 1762–1765 and again in 1770–1776.[1] He represented Pennsylvania in the Stamp Act Congress (1765) and in the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1776, when he was defeated owing to his opposition to the Declaration of Independence. He then retired to Delaware, served for a time as private and later as brigadier-general in the state militia, and was again a member of the Continental Congress (from Delaware) in 1779–1780. He was president of the executive council, or chief executive officer, of Delaware in 1781–1782, and of Pennsylvania in 1782–1785, and was a delegate from Delaware to the Annapolis convention of 1786 and the Federal Constitutional convention of 1787. Dickinson has aptly been called the “Penman of the Revolution.” No other writer of the day presented arguments so numerous, so timely and so popular. He drafted the “Declaration of Rights” of the Stamp Act Congress, the “Petition to the King” and the “Address to the Inhabitants of Quebec” of the Congress of 1774, and the second “Petition to the King”[2] and the “Articles of Confederation” of the second Congress. Most influential of all, however, were The Letters of a Farmer in Pennsylvania, written in 1767–1768 in condemnation of the Townshend Acts of 1767, in which he rejected speculative natural rights theories and appealed to the common sense of the people through simple legal arguments. By opposing the Declaration of Independence, he lost his popularity and was never able entirely to regain it. As the representative of a small state, he championed the principle of state equality in the constitutional convention, but was one of the first to advocate the compromise, which was finally adopted, providing for equal representation, in one house and proportional representation in the other. He was probably influenced by Delaware prejudice against Pennsylvania when he drafted the clause which forbids the creation of a new state by the junction of two or more states or parts of states without the consent of the states concerned as well as of congress. After the adjournment of the convention he defended its work in a series of letters signed “Fabius,” which will bear comparison with the best of the Federalist productions. It was largely through his influence that Delaware and Pennsylvania were the first two states to ratify the Constitution. Dickinson’s interests were not exclusively political. He helped to found Dickinson College (named in his honour) at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1783, was the first president of its board of trustees, and was for many years its chief benefactor. He died on the 14th of February 1808 and was buried in the Friends’ burial ground in Wilmington, Del.
See C. J. Stillé, Life and Times of John Dickinson, and P. L. Ford (editor), The Writings of John Dickinson, in vols. xiii. and xiv. respectively of the Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1891 and 1895).
DICKSON, SIR ALEXANDER (1777–1840), British artillerist, entered the Royal Military Academy in 1793, passing out as second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery in the following year. As a subaltern he saw service in Minorca in 1798 and at Malta in 1800. As a captain he took part in the unfortunate Montevideo Expedition of 1806–07, and in 1809 he accompanied Howorth to the Peninsular War as brigade-major of the artillery. He soon obtained a command in the Portuguese artillery, and as a lieutenant-colonel of the Portuguese service took part in the various battles of 1810–11. At the two sieges of Budazoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, the Salamanca forts and Burgos, he was entrusted by Wellington (who had the highest opinion of him) with most of the detailed artillery work, and at Salamanca battle he commanded the reserve artillery. In the end he became commander of the whole of the artillery of the allied army, and though still only a substantive captain in the British service he had under his orders some 8000 men. At Vitoria, the Pyrenees battles and Toulouse he directed the movements of the artillery engaged, and at the end of the war received handsome presents from the officers who had served under him, many of whom were his seniors in the army list. He was at the disastrous affair of New Orleans, but returned to Europe in time for the Waterloo campaign. He was present at Quatre Bras and Waterloo on the artillery staff of Wellington’s army, and subsequently commanded the British battering train at the sieges of the French fortresses left behind the advancing allies. For the rest of his life he was on home service, principally as a staff officer of artillery. He died, a major-general and G.C.B., in 1840. A memorial was erected at Woolwich in 1847. Dickson was one of the earliest fellows of the Royal Geographical Society.
His diaries kept in the Peninsula were the main source of information used in Duncan’s History of the Royal Artillery.
DICKSON, SIR JAMES ROBERT (1832–1901), Australian statesman, was born in Plymouth on the 30th of November 1832. He was brought up in Glasgow, receiving his education at the high school, and became a clerk in the City of Glasgow Bank. In 1854 he emigrated to Victoria, but after some years spent in that colony and in New South Wales, he settled in 1862 in Queensland, where he was connected with many important business enterprises, among them the Royal Bank of Queensland. He entered the Queensland House of Assembly in 1872, and became minister of works (1876), treasurer (1876–1879, and 1883–1887), acting premier (1884), but resigned in 1887 on the question of taxing land. In 1889 he retired from business, and spent three years in Europe before resuming political life. He fought for the introduction of Polynesian labour on the Queensland sugar plantations at the general election of 1892, and was elected to the House of Assembly in that year and again at the elections of 1893 and 1896. He became secretary for railways in 1897, minister for home affairs in 1898, represented Queensland in the federal council of Australia in 1896 and at the postal conference at Hobart in 1898, and in 1898 became premier. His energies were now devoted to the formation of an Australian commonwealth. He secured the reference of the question to a plebiscite, the result of which justified his anticipations. He resigned the premiership in November 1899, but in the ministry of Robert Philp, formed in the next month, he was reappointed to the offices of chief secretary and vice-president of the executive council which he had combined with the office of premier. He represented Queensland in 1900 at the conference held in London to consider the question of Australian unity, and on his return was appointed minister of defence in the first government of the Australian Commonwealth. He did not long survive the accomplishment of his political aims, dying at Sydney on the 10th of January 1901, in the midst of the festivities attending the inauguration of the new state.
- ↑ Being under the same proprietor and the same governor, Pennsylvania and Delaware were so closely connected before the Revolution that there was an interchange of public men.
- ↑ The “Declaration of the United Colonies of North America ... setting forth the Causes and the Necessity of their Taking up Arms” (often erroneously attributed to Thomas Jefferson).
