A Busy Day In Congress–June 25, 1776

Cover art for June 25, 1776: "Signing of the Declaration of Independence", an 1873 portrait by Charles Édouard Armand-Dumaresq, reportedly on display in the White House.

The big story today is about the Pennsylvania Delegation finally getting new orders, but I admit that I buried the lede on this one, largely because the Board of War and Ordnance had a lot going on, and the Pennsylvania story was a relatively simple one to tell.

But as you can tell in today’s episode, the note we gave you the other day about the sheer volume of material they had to deal with is evident in the minutes of the Continental Congress for today; what’s more, a bunch of it was items that needed to be addressed immediately, so the business of the Congress was halted for several hours until the Board could report back.

But the fact that the Pennsylvanian government had finally gotten past whatever they needed to get past, made it possible for the Pennsylvania Delegation to be able to vote in the affirmative on the question of Independence, which left exactly one colony unable to vote “Yes.” And that’s something we’ll talk about in just a few days.

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