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John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence depicts the five-man drafting committee presenting the first draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress. ^[1]

The Second Continental Congress was a body of representatives appointed by the legislatures of thirteen British North American colonies which met from May 10, 1775, to March 1, 1781. It was the body which adopted the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. During the American Revolution, it acted as the de facto national government of the United States by raising armies, directing strategy, appointing diplomats, and making formal treaties^[2].

Its predecessor the First Continental Congress had sent entreaties to the British King George III to stop the Intolerable Acts and had created the Articles of Association to establish a coordinated protest of the Intolerable Acts; in particular, a boycott had been placed on British goods. That First Congress provided that the Second Continental Congress would meet on May 10, 1775, to plan further responses if the British government had not repealed or modified the Intolerable Acts.

By the time the Second Continental Congress met, the American Revolutionary War had already started with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April and a siege of British-held Boston by thousands of militia. The most urgent task facing the Congress was to take charge of the war effort. For the first few months of the struggle, the rebels had carried on their struggle in an ad-hoc and uncoordinated manner. They had seized arsenals, driven out royal officials, and besieged the British army in the city of Boston. On June 14, 1775, Congress voted to create the Continental Army out of the militia units around Boston and quickly appointed Congressman George Washington of Virginia as commanding general of the Continental Army.^[3] On July 6, 1775 Congress approved "A Declaration by the Representatives of the United Colonies of NORTH-AMERICA, now met in Congress at PHILADELPHIA, setting forth the causes and necessity of their taking up Arms."[1] On July 8, Congress extended the Olive Branch Petition to the Crown as a final attempt at reconciliation. King George III refused to receive it. Silas Deane was sent to France as a minister (ambassador) of the Congress. American ports were reopened in defiance of the Navigation Acts.

It assumed all the functions of a national government, such as appointing ambassadors, signing treaties, raising armies, appointing generals, obtaining loans from Europe, issuing paper money (called "Continentals"), and disbursing funds. The Congress had no authority to levy taxes, and was required to request money, supplies, and troops from the states to support the war effort. Individual states frequently ignored these requests. According to one historian, commenting on the source of the Congress' power:

"The appointment of the delegates to both these congresses was generally by popular conventions, though in some instances by state assemblies. But in neither case can the appointing body be considered the original depositary of the power by which the delegates acted; for the conventions were either self-appointed "committees of safety" or hastily assembled popular gatherings, including but a small fraction of the population to be represented, and the state assemblies had no right to surrender to another body one atom of the power which had been granted to them, or to create a new power which should govern the people without their will. The source of the powers of congress is to be sought solely in the acquiescence of the people, without which every congressional resolution, with or without the benediction of popular conventions or state legislatures, would have been a mere brutum fulmen; and, as the congress unquestionably exercised national powers, operating over the whole country, the conclusion is inevitable that the will of the whole people is the source of national government in the United States, even from its first imperfect appearance in the second continental congress." ^[4]

Congress on May 10, 1776 passed a resolution recommending that any colony lacking a proper government should form such. On May 15 Congress adopted a preamble in which it advised throwing off oaths of allegiance and suppressing the authority of the Crown, while resting colonial governments on the authority of the people. That same day the Virginia Convention instructed its delegation in Philadelphia to propose a declaration of independence and formation of foreign alliances and a confederation. Without dissenting vote (although New York did abstain) the Congress accepted the Declaration of Independence on July 2. ^[5] On July 4 Congress ordered the document authenticated and printed.

$2 paper money issued in name of United Colonies, 1775; these bills were called "continentals"

Most importantly, in July 1776, they declared independence. The actual ordinance of independence, known as the Lee Resolution, passed on July 2, and the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4 and formally signed on August 2.

The Continental Congress was forced to flee Philadelphia at the end of September 1777, as British troops occupied the city. The Congress moved to York, Pennsylvania, and continued their work.

After more than a year of debate, on November 17, 1777, Congress passed and sent to the states for ratification the Articles of Confederation, the country's first written constitution. The issue was large states wanting a larger say, nullified by small states who feared tyranny. Jefferson's proposal for a Senate to represent the states and a House to represent the people was rejected. The small states won and each state had one vote.^[6] Congress urged the individual states to pass the Articles as quickly as possible, but it took three and a half years for all the states to ratify the Articles. In the meantime, the Second Continental Congress tried to lead the new country through the war with borrowed money and no taxing power. Finally, on March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation were ratified. The Second Continental Congress adjourned and the same delegates met the next day as the new Congress of the Confederation. It would be the Confederation Congress that would oversee the conclusion of the American Revolution.

John Hancock was the president of the Second Continental Congress and of the Congress of Confederation.

The colonies convening at the Second Continental Congress were:

• Province of New Hampshire
• Province of Massachusetts
• Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
• Connecticut Colony
• Province of New York
• Province of New Jersey
• Province of Pennsylvania
• Lower Colonies on Delaware*
• Province of Maryland
• Colony and Dominion of Virginia
• Province of North Carolina
• Province of South Carolina
• Province of Georgia

* renamed "Delaware Colony" in 1776

Georgia had not participated in the First Continental Congress and did not send delegates to the Second Continental Congress on May 10, 1775. On May 13, 1775, Lyman Hall was admitted as a delegate from the Parish of St. John's in the Colony of Georgia, not as a delegate from the colony itself.^[7] On July 4, 1775, Georgia began a provincial congress to decide how to respond to the American Revolution, and that congress decided on July 8 to send delegates to the Continental Congress. They arrived on July 20.^[8]

• May 10, 1775 – December 12, 1776, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• December 20, 1776 – March 4, 1777, Baltimore, Maryland
• March 5, 1777 – September 18, 1777, Philadelphia
• September 27, 1777 (one day only), Lancaster, Pennsylvania
• September 30, 1777 – June 27, 1778, York, Pennsylvania
• July 2, 1778 – March 1, 1781, Philadelphia

• History of the United States (1776-1789)
• List of Continental Congress Delegates
• President of the Continental Congress
• Articles of Confederation

1. ^ The Declaration of Independence. Retrieved on 2006-08-09.
2. ^ Cogliano, Revolutionary America, 1763-1815 p. 113.
3. ^ Cogliano, Revolutionary America, 1763-1815 p. 59.
4. ^ CONGRESS. Cyclopædia of Political Science. New York: Maynard, Merrill, and Co., 1899.
5. ^ New York did not vote on July 2 but did approve the action on July 9. Solberg p. lxx
6. ^ Miller (1948) ch 22
7. ^ (1904–1937) in Worthington C. Ford, et al. (ed.): Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, 2:44–48. 
8. ^ ibid., 2:192–193. 

• Adams, Willi Paul. The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era. U. of North Carolina Press, 1980. 351 pp.
• Bancroft, George. History of the United States of America, from the discovery of the American continent. (1854-78), vol 4-10 online edition
• Burnett, Edmund C. [1941] (1975). The Continental Congress. Greenwood Publishing. ISBN 0-8371-8386-3. 
• Francis D. Cogliano, Revolutionary America, 1763-1815: A Political History. London: 2000.
• Worthington C. Ford, et al. ed. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789. (34 vol., 1904–1937) online edition
• Henderson, H. James [1974] (2002). Party Politics in the Continental Congress. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-8191-6525-5. 
• Peter Force, ed. American Archives 9 vol 1837-1853, major compilation of documents 1774-1776. online edition
• James J. Kirschke. Gouverneur Morris: Author, Statesman, and Man of the World (2005)
• Kruman, Marc W. Between Authority and Liberty: State Constitution Making in Revolutionary America. U. of North Carolina Pr., 1997. 223 pp.
• Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1998)
• Miller, John C. Triumph of Freedom, 1775-1783 (1948)
• Montross, Lynn [1950] (1970). The Reluctant Rebels; the Story of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789. Barnes & Noble. ISBN 0-389-03973-X. 
• Rakove, Jack N. The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress. Knopf, 1979. 484 pp.
• Winton U. Solberg. The Federal Convention and the Formation of the Union of the American States. (Liberal Arts Press. 1958.)

• “The Continental Congress - History, Declaration and Resolves, Resolutions and Recommendations” from Americans.net
• Full text of Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789
• Interactive Flash Version of John Trumbull's "Declaration of Independence"