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...
