Political Career
When the Revolutionary War broke out, Wharton was in London working to secure the crown's approval for the land grant. When some of his letters to rebels were made public, he was forced to flee to France. He was finally able to return to America in 1780, and took an oath of allegiance to the American cause on February 9, 1781.
In 1782 and 1783 Wharton was a delegate to the Continental Congress. Many of his efforts there seem to have been quiet negotiations aimed at gaining recognition for his western land holdings. These did not avail, and he returned to Delaware. The entire claim came to naught when the Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance in 1787. Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware ceded all western claims, and his tract was confirmed as part of Virginia.
Wharton served two years as a state court judge in Delaware before retiring to a country estate just outside Philadelphia, where he died in March 1800.
Read more about this topic: Samuel Wharton
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or career:
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)