The Lee Resolution

It was June 7, 1776, a heavy summer day in Philadelphia. The streets simmered with tension, and inside the State House, the Second Continental Congress sat on the edge of history. The men in that room had argued, pleaded, and petitioned for peace, but now the moment had come to talk about war. Not just war with muskets, but a war of ideas, a war of separation. That morning, a tall Virginian named Richard Henry Lee rose to speak. What he offered wasn’t diplomacy. It was a clean and final break from Britain.