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The 1999 Delaware Quarter and a Tie-Breaking Midnight RideThe 1999 Delaware quarter, the first of the State Quarters produced by the US Mint, links one of the smallest of the fifty United States to the nation’s two most influential documents: the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.These are memorialized by two design elements: a rider at full gallop, and an unequivocal inscription – “The First State”. Who is the rider?Meet Caesar Rodney. Like Paul Revere, he literally rode his horse into history.Whereas Revere rode to warn colonials of coming conflict, Rodney, as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, rode eighty stormy miles overnight on July 1 – 2, 1776 from his home in Delaware. He rode to cast an important vote in support of the Declaration of Independence. It was Rodney’s vote that broke a deadlock among the Delaware delegates. And “The First State”?The 1999 Delaware quarter was the first of the US Mint’s 50 State Quarters because Delaware was the first state to be admitted to the Union. The coins are being issued in the order that each State adopted the US Constitution, which Delaware did in 1787. It was the first of the original British colonies to do so, and has been known as “The First State” ever since.The Delaware quarters were met with great public enthusiasm. Not since the Bicentennial quarters of 1976 have American coin collectors paid so much attention to a modern twenty-five cent coin. The arrival of the Delaware state quarter in circulation signaled an influx of many new participants in the coin collecting hobby which has continued each year of the State Quarter program to date.
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