The Lee Resolution

July 2, 1776 | The Second Continental Congress | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Headnote, written for Huzzah

Richard Henry Lee moved three things on 7 June 1776. Congress voted on the first of them on 2 July. It is the sentence the Declaration was written to announce: these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.

The other two were acted on in June, when Congress named committees to carry them out. They have no public life and are the reason the resolution is an agenda rather than a gesture. The second sent Congress after foreign alliances, which produced the Model Treaty that summer and the French alliance in 1778. The third asked that a plan of confederation be prepared and sent to the colonies, and this library holds the document that clause produced.

The vote on 2 July is why John Adams expected the second of July to be the day Americans remembered. Writing to Abigail the next morning, he called it "the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America", and said it would be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival, with pomp and parade, shows, games, sports, guns, bells and bonfires. The Declaration, which explained the decision this resolution made, was adopted two days later, and that is the date the country kept.

The document

Ask Poor Richard

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.

That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.

Source and provenance

Copy text from the Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774 to 1789, volume 5, edited from the original records in the Library of Congress, printed by the Government Printing Office in 1904, scanned by the University of California Libraries and read on 18 September 2026. That edition prints the three resolutions together as Congress adopted them, and records that the original of the report, in the writing of John Adams, is in the Papers of the Continental Congress, number 19, volume III, folio 169. The text reaches us through machine reading of that scan. Collated word for word against the Avalon Project's text, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, which names its own source: Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States, Government Printing Office, 1927, House Document 398, arranged by Charles C. Tansill. The two agree on every word of all three resolutions, which is what makes a machine read text safe to publish here. The National Archives page is a third thing and is not the resolution. Its transcript is of the surviving manuscript sheet, which carries only the first resolution, followed by the docket "Report of the resolution for independency agreed to July 2, 1776", a column of state abbreviations written sideways, and a tally of numbers. It also reads "free and independence states" where both printed editions read "free and independent States". A reader who compares this page with the Archives page should know they are looking at different objects: one sheet of paper, and the resolution as Congress passed it. The library dates this 2 July 1776, the day Congress adopted it, which is the date the manuscript docket carries. Lee moved it on 7 June 1776. The document is a hundred words in three resolutions and is published whole, with no parts. A part is a unit a reader can be handed on its own, and a single clause of this leaves the other two hanging.

Read next: The Preachers and the Revolution, 7 books in The Formation Library.

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