Key figures: Richard Henry Lee, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Dickinson
Summary
The Lee Resolution was the formal motion by which the Second Continental Congress declared the thirteen American colonies independent of Great Britain. Acting on instructions from the Virginia Convention, delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced the resolution on June 7, 1776, and it was seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts. The motion had three parts: that the United Colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States” absolved of allegiance to the British Crown; that Congress take measures to form foreign alliances; and that a plan of confederation be prepared and sent to the colonies for approval.
Because delegates from several colonies — including Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland — were not yet authorized by their governments to vote for separation, Congress postponed a decision on the first clause for roughly three weeks to allow support to build. In the interim, on June 11–12, Congress appointed three committees to prepare for independence: a Committee of Five to draft a declaration, a committee to draft a model treaty for foreign alliances, and a committee to draft articles of confederation. After renewed debate on July 1 and the morning of July 2, Congress adopted the independence clause of the Lee Resolution on July 2, 1776, with twelve colonies in favor and New York abstaining until its convention gave consent on July 9.
John Adams believed the July 2 vote would be the more memorable date, writing to his wife Abigail that it “will be the most memorable Epocha in the History of America” and would be celebrated with “Pomp and Parade.” In the event, public memory attached itself to July 4, the day Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence — the document drafted to explain and justify the act of separation that the Lee Resolution had already accomplished.
Significance
The Lee Resolution was the operative legal act of American independence: it was the vote of July 2, 1776, not the Declaration two days later, that severed the colonies’ ties to Britain. By splitting the question into independence, diplomacy, and union, the resolution also set the agenda for the new nation’s first institutions — its foreign policy, embodied in the 1776 Model Treaty and the subsequent French alliance, and its first frame of government, the Articles of Confederation, completed in 1777. The resolution thus marks the moment the Revolution shifted from resistance within the British Empire to the founding of an independent United States.