Declaring Freedom

The Second Continental Congress convened just one month after fighting had broken out at Lexington and Concord, and only days before the Battle of Bunker Hill. One of the delegates’ first acts was to recognize the various local militias that had instinctively surrounded the British at Boston as a Continental Army and appoint George Washington of Virginia as its commander. The Continental Congress sent to the king one last attempt at reconciliation, called the Olive Branch Petition. To make sure there was no confusion about its seriousness, though, the Congress also issued a “Declaration of the Causes and Necessities for Taking Up Arms,” avowing that, if necessary, the colonists were “resolved to die Free men rather than live slaves.”