A Last Plea for Peace
WMQ Forum Highlights Newly Discovered Proof of John Dickinson’s Attempts to Avert War
Williamsburg, VA, June 30, 2026 –
Two hundred and fifty years later, it’s not just the American Revolution that is being reexamined but, thanks to the William and Mary Quarterly, also a long-buried attempt by one of America’s founders to avert it.
As noted in the June 30 issue of the New York Times, the July 2026 issue of the Quarterly includes a forum on recently discovered documents sent by John Dickinson to David Barclay Jr. in 1775. The forum, which looks at these documents in the context of the founding era, is introduced by legal historian Jonathan Gienapp (Stanford University) and Dickinson scholar Jane Calvert (John Dickinson Writings Project).
Gienapp, quoted in the Times, says, “It’s hard to overstate the significance of this…. This is a very serious attempt by arguably the leading politician in America at the time to broker a peace and prevent the American Revolution from happening that we’ve never known about before.”
Catherine E. Kelly, executive director of the Omohundro Institute (OI), publisher since 1943 of the William and Mary Quarterly and an award-winning series of books on a wide array of topics related to early American history, says, “Scholarship on the American Revolution has changed enormously since the OI’s founding, and the OI has always been at the forefront of that evolution. It is an honor to see that tradition of pivotal, field-changing scholarship recognized through the WMQ on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.”
Julia Gaffield, outgoing interim editor of the WMQ, says, “The July 2026 issue of the Quarterly is packed with exceptionally strong scholarship on the American Revolution and it’s wonderful that this work is getting the kind of visibility that only the New York Times can provide.”
The Omohundro Institute is a scholarly research institution co-sponsored by William & Mary, home of the nation’s top-ranked graduate program in early American history and culture, and Colonial Williamsburg, the largest outdoor living museum in the United States.
Together, the three partners have hosted a five-year series of conferences dedicated to exploring the origins of American independence. “For 2026” began in October 2022 and will end with a final meeting in October 2026. Scholars, museum professionals, teachers, and members of the public gather to explore cutting-edge scholarship and pedagogical approaches on the campuses of William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg.
Past keynote speakers at the “For 2026” meetings have included Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alan Taylor, National Book Award winner Ned Blackhawk, MacArthur Award-winner Annette Gordon-Reed, and OI author Robert Parkinson, whose books Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence (2021) and The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution (2016) have won multiple awards and whose op-ed piece “Did a Fear of Slave Revolts Drive American Independence?” appeared in the July 4, 2016, edition of the New York Times.