Second Continental Congress: Key Events & Figures

Posted on Feb 22, 2025 in History

The Second Continental Congress

The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun. It succeeded the First Continental Congress.

Key Figures and Events

  • George Washington: Selected to head the hastily improvised army in Boston.
  • The Battle of Bunker Hill: A battle fought on June 17, 1775, during the Siege of Boston in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War.
  • The Olive Branch Petition: Adopted by the Second Continental Congress in 1775, in a final attempt to avoid a full-on war between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain.
  • Benedict Arnold: A general during the American Revolutionary War who originally fought for the American Continental Army but defected to the British Army.
  • Thomas Paine: An English-American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, inspiring the rebels in 1776 to declare independence from Britain.
  • Radical Leveling: A kind of republicanism.
  • Richard Henry Lee: An American statesman from Virginia best known for the motion in the Second Continental Congress calling for the colonies’ independence from Great Britain.
  • The Declaration of Independence: The statement adopted by the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer a part of the British Empire.
  • Thomas Jefferson: An American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third President of the United States.
  • Natural and Legal Rights: Legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system.
  • Loyalists: American colonists who remained loyal to the British Empire and the British monarchy during the American Revolutionary War.
  • William Franklin: An American soldier, attorney, and colonial administrator, the acknowledged illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin. He was the last colonial Governor of New Jersey and a steadfast Loyalist throughout the American Revolutionary War.
  • Patrick Henry: An American attorney, planter, and politician who became known as an orator during the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s.
  • General John Burgoyne: A British army officer, politician, and dramatist. He first saw action during the Seven Years’ War.
  • St. Leger: A British army officer active in the Saratoga Campaign, commanding an invasion force that unsuccessfully besieged Fort Stanwix.

Key Treaties and Battles

  • The Model Treaty (Plan of 1776): Created during the American Revolution as an idealistic guide for foreign relations and future treaties between the new American government and other nations.
  • The Siege of Yorktown: Also known as the Battle of Yorktown, ending on October 19, 1781, in Yorktown, Virginia. A decisive victory by a combined force of American Continental Army troops led by General George Washington and French Army troops led by the Comte de Rochambeau over a British Army commanded by British Lord and Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis.
  • Armed Neutrality: In international politics, the posture of a state or group of states which makes no alliance with either side in a war but asserts that it will defend itself against resulting incursions from all parties.
  • The Battle of Monmouth: An American Revolutionary War battle fought on June 28, 1778, in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The Continental Army under General George Washington attacked the rear of the British Army column commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton as they left Monmouth Court House.
  • 1777: Known as the bloody year.
  • The Treaty of Fort Stanwix: A treaty between North American Indians and Great Britain, signed in 1768 at Fort Stanwix, in present-day Rome, New York.