George Read

(18 September 1733 – 21 September 1790)

Read’s career paralleled Hamilton’s: a (second-generation) immigrant, he opposed British policy in the 1760s, was a reluctant revolutionary (Hamilton, however, was not), was a moderate during the Revolution itself, and thereafter in favor of generous treatment of the former loyalist enemies. He believed in a strong national government, and eventually became a Federalist. Unlike Hamilton, he spoke in favor of “small state” interests, but willingly accepted the Connecticut Compromise (giving the large states what they wanted in the House and the small states what they wanted in the Senate).

Read was born of Anglo-Irish parents in Cecil County, Maryland, educated as well as a gentleman could be in America, and read for the law. At 20, he entered the Philadelphia bar and began a life-long friendship with John Dickinson (Dickinson would lead the failed effort to delay independence; Read supported him, but unlike Dickinson, signed the Declaration of Independence. After the war, Read helped Dickinson rehabilitate his political career and both again served together in the Philadelphia Convention).

Read became the attorney general of colonial Delaware in 1763, and thereafter followed a career of almost continuous service. He served in the colonial assembly and the Continental Congress, headed the convention that drafted a constitution for the new state of Delaware in 1776, and was the most important moderate leader in the state during the war. He attended both the Annapolis Convention of 1786 and the Philadelphia Convention, and after the ratification of the Constitution served in the US Senate and as chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court.