THE SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS

The purpose of the Second Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia in May of 1775, was clear: to get the American colonics ready for war. It authorized the printing of paper money to buy supplies for the war, established a committee to supervise foreign relations with other countries, and created a Continental Army. George Washington was appointed commander in chief of this new army. Washington was chosen because of his temperament, because of his experiences in the French and Indian Wars, and because he was not from Massachusetts, considered by George III the place where the '‘rabble” were.

The Congress made one final gesture for peace when moderates drafted, and the Congress approved, the sending of the “Olive Branch Petition” to George III. This document, approved on July 5, 1775, asked the king to formulate a “happy and permanent reconciliation.” The fact that the king refused to even receive the document strengthened the hand of political radicals throughout the colonics.

The Impact of Common Sense

The impact of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense on colonial thought was immense. Paine was a printer and had only been in the colonies for two years when his pamphlet was published in January of 1776. Virtually every educated person in the colonies read this document (within three months 120,000 copies were sold). Paine proclaimed that “monarchy and hereditary succession have laid the world in blood and ashes” and called George Ilf a “royal brute.” Paine attacked the entire system of monarchy and empire, expressing confidence that the colonics would flourish once they were removed from British control. Many saw in Paine’s document very sensible reasons why the Americas should break from Britain. When discussing the document, one New York loyalist bitterly complained that “the unthinking multitude are mad for it...”