Second Continental Congress convenes

On May 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after the fighting at Lexington and Concord had already begun. Delegates included John Hancock, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and many of the men who would later sign the Declaration of Independence. Congress met first in the Pennsylvania State House and immediately confronted military, financial, and diplomatic questions that the First Continental Congress had not yet faced.

The delegates had to decide whether they spoke merely as petitioners asking George III for redress or as a continental body exercising real powers of government. In June 1775 Congress adopted the army around Boston, appointed George Washington commander in chief, and still sent the Olive Branch Petition in a final appeal for reconciliation. That combination revealed the central tension of 1775: Congress was improvising a national authority while many Americans still hoped the imperial constitution could be repaired.

The Second Continental Congress went on to issue paper money, seek foreign aid, create committees for war and diplomacy, and approve the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It thus became the practical national government of the Revolution before the Articles of Confederation supplied a formal constitutional frame.