by Tammy Ditmore | Jun 12, 2026 | Countdown to Semiquincentennial
Having appointed the Declaration drafting committee, Congress turned to pending business. Under war conditions, there was no “business as usual,” and with the still forming relationships among the colonies/states, there was much unsettled and in need of formation....
by Tammy Ditmore | Jun 11, 2026 | Countdown to Semiquincentennial
As we saw, after two sessions in a committee of the whole, the Second Continental Congress came to a stalemate on the Lee resolution for independence. It would be tabled for three weeks, until July 1. But, as both Thomson’s journal entry and Jefferson’s notes agree,...
by Tammy Ditmore | Jun 10, 2026 | Countdown to Semiquincentennial
Delegates must have been primed to resume discussion of the proposed resolution for independence on Monday morning, although by this point the positions – but not the outcome — must have been well established and well known. I haven’t read through Letters of the...
by Tammy Ditmore | Jun 9, 2026 | Countdown to Semiquincentennial
My own focus on the Declaration of Independence has been almost exclusively textual and documentary. I’m humbled every time I return to the Revolutionary period by entire mountain ranges of scholarship and study I have not even imagined. One I have not well imagined...
by Tammy Ditmore | Jun 8, 2026 | Countdown to Semiquincentennial
Charles Thomson, the secretary for the Second Continental Congress, might be described as a minimalist with the journals – as John Adams later complained. (But to be fair, Adams’s complaint came a quarter-century later, and in large part because he expected the...
by Tammy Ditmore | Jun 7, 2026 | Countdown to Semiquincentennial
On June 7, 1776, (a Friday), Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee, on instructions from the Fifth Virginia Convention, formally proposed independence to the Second Continental Congress; John Adams seconded. Lee’s was the first formal independence proposal and can be...
