The Man With Half a Face | The 56 #3
And His Midnight Ride That Saved America
The Ride
On the night of July 1, 1776, a man with half a face rode through a thunderstorm to save the American Revolution.
Caesar Rodney was eighty miles from Philadelphia when the messenger found him.
The news was urgent: the Continental Congress was about to vote on independence, and Delaware was deadlocked.
Thomas McKean, Rodney’s ally, had voted yes.
George Read had voted no.
Without a third vote, Delaware would abstain, and without Delaware, the fragile coalition for independence might collapse.
Rodney had to get to Philadelphia.
Now!
He was forty-seven years old.
He suffered from asthma so severe that some days he could barely breathe.
And he had already lost half his face to skin cancer, leaving him so disfigured that he wore a green scarf to cover the wound.
None of that mattered.
At some point that night—the exact hour is lost to history—Caesar Rodney climbed onto his horse and began riding north through the Delaware countryside.
The storm was brutal.
Rodney rode through the night, switching horses when his mounts tired, pushing through exhaustion and pain.
He arrived in Philadelphia on the afternoon of July 2, just as the final vote was being called.
His clothes were soaked and he was exhausted.
But he was there.
“As I believe the voice of my constituents and of all sensible and honest men is in favor of independence,” Rodney declared, “my own judgment concurs with them. I vote for independence.”
Delaware voted yes and two days later, the Declaration was adopted.
And then Caesar Rodney went back to Delaware to fight a war, knowing he might not live to see it end.
The Planter’s Son
Caesar Rodney was born on October 7, 1728, on his family’s farm near Dover, Delaware. The Rodneys were prosperous, not wealthy by Virginia standards, but comfortable by Delaware’s. His father owned land and slaves, and held a seat in the colonial assembly.
Caesar was the eldest son. When his father died in 1745, seventeen-year-old Caesar inherited the farm and the responsibility of raising his younger siblings.
He never married.
He never had children.
For years, the farm and his siblings were his whole world.
Then politics found him.
Delaware in the mid-1700s was a strange place.
Technically, it was part of Pennsylvania, the “Lower Counties on the Delaware,” governed by the same proprietor but with its own assembly.
The whole colony was easy to overlook: fewer than 40,000 people.
Philadelphia, under a hundred miles away, was the largest city in British America.
Rodney entered politics young.
At twenty-two, he was appointed High Sheriff of Kent County.
At twenty-seven, he was elected to the colonial assembly.
By thirty, he was Speaker.
Year after year, Rodney served.
By 1765, when Parliament passed the Stamp Act, Rodney was one of Delaware’s most experienced politicians.
He was also, increasingly, a radical.
The Cancer
Sometime in the 1760s, Caesar Rodney developed a growth on his face.
At first, it was probably small: a lesion, a discoloration, something easy to ignore.
But it didn’t go away and year by year, it grew.
By the 1770s, the cancer had consumed much of the left side of his face.
The medical term is likely basal cell carcinoma or possibly squamous cell carcinoma, slow-growing skin cancers that, in an era before surgery or radiation, simply kept spreading.
Rodney’s tumor eventually destroyed his nose, his cheek, and possibly his eye socket.
Contemporary accounts describe him as “disfigured” and note that he covered his face with a green scarf or bandage.
There was no treatment.
Doctors could cut away tissue, but the cancer always returned.
Rodney lived with constant pain and the knowledge that his disease was terminal.
And yet he kept working.
In 1774, he was elected to the First Continental Congress.
In 1775, he returned for the Second.
He served on military committees and helped to organize Delaware’s defenses.
He argued for independence while his face slowly fell apart.
You might recognize this kind of determination.
We’ve seen politicians campaign through cancer, athletes compete through injury, activists march through illness.
But there’s something particularly brutal about Rodney’s case.
He didn’t have chemotherapy or pain management.
He didn’t have reconstructive surgery.
He just had a scarf, a horse, and a very important vote to cast for the future of America
The Deadlock
By June 1776, the momentum for independence was building, but it wasn’t unanimous.
The Continental Congress operated by colony, with each delegation casting a single vote. To declare independence, they needed something approaching consensus.
A close vote would suggest division.
A unanimous vote would show the world that Americans were united.
Delaware’s three-man delegation was split.
Thomas McKean was a fierce patriot. Born in Pennsylvania, he had become one of Delaware’s leading lawyers and politicians. He wanted independence immediately.
George Read was more cautious. He wasn’t a Loyalist—he would eventually sign the Declaration—but he thought the timing was wrong. He planned to vote no.
That left Caesar Rodney as the tiebreaker.
But Rodney wasn’t in Philadelphia. He was back in Delaware, dealing with a Loyalist uprising in Sussex County.
The coastal region had a significant Tory population, and Rodney, as a militia commander, had gone south to restore order.
On July 1, 1776, the Congress conducted a preliminary vote on Richard Henry Lee’s resolution “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”
The result was messy.
Nine colonies voted yes.
Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted no.
New York abstained (their delegates lacked authorization).
And Delaware was deadlocked: McKean for, Read against, Rodney absent.
McKean was desperate.
He sent a rider to find Rodney with a simple message:
“Get to Philadelphia. Now!”
The Journey
We don’t know exactly when Rodney received the message, or what route he took.
The historical record is frustratingly thin.
What we know is this: he rode approximately eighty miles, through a thunderstorm, overnight, and arrived in time.
Some accounts say he left at midnight and arrived by early afternoon. Others suggest he left earlier. The Delaware State Archives notes that “the exact details of his ride remain uncertain.”
What isn’t uncertain is the physical toll.
Eighty miles on horseback, in an era of unpaved roads and no rest stops, is brutal even for a healthy man.
For a forty-seven-year-old with asthma and facial cancer, it was an act of will bordering on madness.
Later generations would compare Rodney’s ride to Paul Revere’s, another overnight dash that changed history.
But Revere’s ride was about fifteen miles, on familiar roads, in good weather.
Rodney rode five times as far, through a storm, while dying.
When he arrived at the State House in Philadelphia, Rodney was, by all accounts, a wreck.
But…he walked into the chamber and cast his vote.
The Vote
July 2, 1776, was the day America actually declared independence.
The vote on July 4 was about the Declaration, the document explaining why independence was necessary.
But the legal act of separation happened two days earlier, when Congress voted on Lee’s resolution.
On July 2, the dynamics had shifted.
South Carolina, not wanting to be isolated, switched to yes.
Pennsylvania’s delegation changed too; two opponents conveniently absented themselves, allowing the remaining members to vote yes.
New York still abstained, but would come around within weeks.
And Delaware?
Caesar Rodney walked in, took his seat beside McKean and Read, and broke the tie.
His exact words are recorded in multiple sources, though the phrasing varies slightly.
The essence: he believed his constituents wanted independence, his own judgment agreed, and therefore he voted yes.
Delaware voted for independence.
The resolution passed twelve to zero, with New York abstaining.
Two days later, on July 4, Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.
Over the following weeks and months, fifty-six men would sign it.
Caesar Rodney was among them.
John Adams, writing to Abigail that night, predicted that July 2 would be celebrated “as the great anniversary festival” with “pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations.”
He was off by two days.
We celebrate July 4, the day of the document, not July 2, the day of the decision.
But Adams was right about the importance of the moment, and Caesar Rodney was there to make it happen.
The War
After independence, Rodney went back to Delaware and back to war.
He served as a brigadier general in the state militia, organizing defenses against British raids. When the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777, Delaware was suddenly on the front lines. Rodney supervised troop movements, dealt with supply shortages, and struggled to maintain order in a state that was deeply divided between patriots and Loyalists.
In 1778, he was elected President of Delaware, the equivalent of governor. He served for three years, managing a war economy while suppressing Tory uprisings.
His health continued to deteriorate with cancer spreading throughout his body.
By the early 1780s, Rodney was often too sick to work.
He died on June 26, 1784, at the age of fifty-five.
He never saw the Constitution, that wouldn’t happen until 1787.
He never saw the nation he helped create become a functioning government.
He died knowing only that independence had been won and that he had played his part.
The Afterlife
Caesar Rodney is Delaware’s most famous son, and almost nobody outside Delaware has heard of him.
He had a statue in Rodney Square in Wilmington, showing him on horseback, mid-gallop.
The same image appears on the Delaware state quarter, minted in 1999 and he is the only signer of the Declaration to appear on a state quarter.
The strangest part of Rodney’s legacy?
We don’t really know what he looked like.
No verified portrait from his lifetime survives.
The images we have (the statue, the quarter, various paintings) are all based on guesswork and family resemblance.
His brother Thomas was also painted, and artists have extrapolated from there.
The man who gave everything to the cause of independence left behind almost no image of himself.
The cancer that consumed his face may have made him reluctant to sit for portraits.
Or perhaps he was simply too busy, too modest, or too practical to bother.
What Rodney Teaches Us
It takes a lot for a man to ride eighty miles through a thunderstorm, with cancer eating his face, all to cast a single vote.
That’s what Rodney did.
Not because he knew it would matter.
Because he knew it might.
Without Rodney, the vote would have been eleven to zero with one abstention, still a majority, but not unanimous.
The symbolism of a divided Congress might have weakened American credibility. Foreign powers might have hesitated to offer support leading to a very different outcome of the revolutionary war.
But Rodney didn’t know that.
He knew only that the vote was close and his voice could tip the balance.
So he rode.
One vote. One moment when it counted.
Sometimes that’s all history needs.
Next: Francis Lewis
If Caesar Rodney’s story is about what one man will endure for a cause, Francis Lewis’s story is about what a cause can cost a family.
Lewis was a Welsh immigrant who had built a fortune as a New York merchant. When he signed the Declaration of Independence, he knew he was risking everything. What he didn’t know was how personal the British retaliation would become.
Within months of signing, the British had captured his wife Elizabeth. They held her prisoner without charges, without trial, without basic necessities. By the time she was released, her health was destroyed. She died two years later, never having recovered from the trauma.
Francis Lewis signed his name and lost his wife.
Next time, we’ll tell that story.
This is Essay #3 of 56 in the “The 56” series, profiling every signer of the Declaration of Independence. New essays every Friday and Sunday, culminating on July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of American independence.
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