July 2, 1776

The Second Continental Congress

Background

Acting under the instruction of the Virginia Convention in the Second Continental Congress on June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution proposing independence from England for the American colonies.

Because many members of the Continental Congress believed what Lee proposed to be premature or wanted instructions from their colonies before voting, approval was deferred until July 2. On that date, Congress adopted the declaration of independence (the first of three parts of the full resolution).

This document shows the affirmative votes of 12 colonies listed at the right. New York cast no vote until the newly elected New York Convention upheld the Declaration of Independence on July 9, 1776.

Background Courtesy: “Adoption of the Lee Resolution” from the National Archives, Original License CC 4.0 BY NC SA

 

The Com. of the Whole Congress to whom was referred the resolution and [illegible] the Declaration respecting independence.

17
Resolved       That these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independence states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved.
July 2, 1776

No. 5 } Report of the resolution for independency agreed to July 2, 1776

[to the right of the just above section, written sideways from the right side of the paper are the following, fin this order, followed by a black line:]
A                          N
NHS ________
Mas. ________
Ro Isl. ________
Connect. ________
NJersey ________
Pennsy. ________
Delaware ________
Virginia ________
N Caro ________
S Carol ________
Georgia ________
Maryland ________

[At the bottom right corner of page, written sideways from top to bottom is:]
90
81
96
96
——-
383

64[1]

See Facsimile


License

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Open Anthology of The American Revolution Copyright © 2021 by Laura Lyons McLemore and Sarah Mazur is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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