New Delhi, July 3 -- For a quarter century, Jane Calvert has been on a mission shared by few scholars of the Revolutionary War era. She has championed a founder mostly remembered, when remembered at all, as the man who wouldn't sign the Declaration of Independence - the lawyer and statesman John Dickinson.

"It has been a constant struggle," says Calvert, a former associate professor at the University of Kentucky who has written often about Dickinson and is the founder of the John Dickinson Writings Project, which aims to make his works widely available.

For much of the country, the 250th anniversary of independence on Saturday is a time for celebrating and debating the country's birth. But for Calvert and others, it's also a moment to c...