Continental Congress on the Run: Fite's Tavern and Maryland's Holdout

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The Second Continental Congress opened at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, weeks after Lexington and Concord, with no legal authority, no treasury and no army. Peyton Randolph left within two weeks for the Virginia House of Burgesses, John Hancock took the chair, and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin joined. Congress created the Continental Army on June 14 and named George Washington its commander the next day. Georgia was represented at first only by Lyman Hall, sent by St. John's Parish, who could debate but not vote. Congress printed continentals backed by future state taxes that the states rarely collected, setting off the inflation behind the phrase not worth a continental.

In July 1775 Congress approved the Declaration of Causes and, two days later, the Olive Branch Petition, which King George III refused to read after proclaiming the colonies in rebellion. Richard Henry Lee's resolution of June 7, 1776 tied independence to foreign alliances and a plan of confederation, producing three committees: the Declaration, John Adams's Model Treaty, and the Articles of Confederation. British advances drove the delegates to Henry Fite's tavern in Baltimore, then to Lancaster and York. The Articles passed in November 1777, but Maryland held out over western land claims until Virginia ceded its land north of the Ohio River, and they took effect on March 1, 1781.

• Delegates were bound by instructions from their home legislatures, so they had to lobby their own colonies before voting for independence.
• John Adams wrote a preamble in May 1776 urging that governments deriving authority from the Crown be suppressed.
• Fite's tavern was chosen partly because Royal Navy ships on the Patapsco River could not easily shell it.
• Congress funded the war through requisitions to the states, which often ignored them while Washington wrote of starving, unclothed troops.
• Jefferson's plan for one house representing the people and a senate representing the states was rejected in favor of one state, one vote.