The old hall in Philadelphia, where the city fathers met, was filled with a notable gathering, representing eleven colonies.
Those men constituted the Second Continental Congress.
The first had been held in October, 1765, and a resolution was adopted declaring that the American colonists, as Englishmen, would not and could not consent to be taxed but by their own representatives. This resolution was called forth through the passage of the "Stamp Act."
The Second Congress assembled in Philadelphia in September, 1774, and pledged the colonies to support Massachusetts in her conflict with the English ministry, and after petitioning the king and the English people, adjourned to meet, as it happened, on the very day that Ethan Allen captured Ticonderoga.
The members of that Congress were all loyal to England. The time for independence had not come.
But what a galaxy of men!
There were such giants among men as Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Samuel and John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
But among all those men there was not one whose ambition led him to place self above country.
John Adams told the Congress that the time had come when the English people must learn that it would be better to die fighting for liberty than to live in perpetual slavery.
Not a man wanted war.