by Tammy Ditmore | Jun 16, 2026 | Countdown to Semiquincentennial
June 16, 1776 was another Sunday hiatus for Congress. John Adams sat down and wrote a long letter of reply to two letters from his wife Abigail, from May 27 and June 3. If you’ve never read any of the correspondence between Abigail and John, you really should. Much of...
by Tammy Ditmore | Jun 15, 2026 | Countdown to Semiquincentennial
More correspondence and reports; appointments for commanders of frigates, and a memorial from four privateer owners in Philadelphia; compensations reported by the claims committee; what to do with officers without soldiers (their enlistments having ended); the...
by Tammy Ditmore | Jun 14, 2026 | Countdown to Semiquincentennial
Focusing attention solely on Congress’s journals, of course, can result in sanitized tunnel vision – yet reading them in order also affords us an opportunity to consider events as they unfolded in something like real time, and perhaps even give some idea of what...
by Tammy Ditmore | Jun 13, 2026 | Countdown to Semiquincentennial
Thursday, June 13, 1776, was a crowded but not especially dramatic day in the Second Continental Congress. In the previous post, we established that Jefferson had been appointed – either by Adams or by the committee – to draft the Declaration. When and how did he...
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...
