250 and Counting

Tag: Second Continental Congress

  • June 30, 1775: Army Regulations Take Shape

    Cover art for June 30, 1775: Recruiting poster for the new Continental Army.

    With the army being literally only a few weeks old, it was necessary to put together some regulations for this group, to ensure consistency throughout the Colonies.

    Interestingly enough, as the rules were revised over the next several years, a pattern of using another army’s regulations as a template began to emerge. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: take what works and build on it, yes?

    A quick note about the cover art: it’s a recruitment poster from about that time, because a true Army Manual did not emerge until the third version was published in 1779.

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  • June 28, 1775: A Day of Paperwork

    Cover art for June 28, 1775: Portrait of Jonathan Trumbull by Harry Ives Thompson. Painted in 1880, long after Trumbull's death but it appears that Thompson was trying to re-create Trumbull's appearance at the time of the Revolution.

    It feels like we’re selling the day a little short, but not every day has to be Bunker Hill. Also, we’re discovering (and we hope you are, too) that sometimes it’s the smaller moments between the bigger ones that give us better insight into the hearts and minds of the people who lived during that time.

    Cover art for April 28, 1775: portrait of Governor Jonathan Trumbull, artist unknown.

    Today’s artwork is a portrait of Jonathan Trumbull (brother of John Trumbull, the guy who painted so many of the Founding Fathers), but this painting—which was created in 1880, long after he died—appears to show him as he was around the time of the Revolution. Compare that to the image we used for him back in April (right), which showed him in his later years as Governor of Connecticut.

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  • June 24, 1775: The Committee of Seven

    Cover art for June 24, 1775: Portrait of Roger Sherman by Roger Earl, 1768.

    With the war in full swing and a Commander-in-Chief on his way to Boston, the Continental Congress took the next step of finding a way to organize the troops.

    So naturally they formed a committee. The Committee of Seven (maybe all the good names were taken?) worked diligently for about three weeks to put together a plan that would indicate just who could fight and how they would be organized. There were still some details to iron out, but in the meantime the disaggregated militias were getting the job done. All that remained was to aggregate them into a single fighting force.

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  • June 16, 1775: Washington Officially Accepts Command

    Cover art for June 16, 1775: George Washington accepting command of the Continental Army (detail). From a print by Currier and Ives, c. 1876.

    Yesterday, George Washington was unanimously elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army.

    Today he officially accepted the position.

    He won’t take actually begin until early July (we’ll get to that episode in a few weeks), but take a look at this image here. He’s already in the blue coat, and his hair is whiter than it was in yesterday’s art.

    The truth about his hair color is likely somewhere in between these two images, but of course he wasn’t wearing a coat like that just yet. This art is from a hundred years later, by Currier and Ives.

    What I found interesting is that some of the people in the background look a little put out by Washington, even though they’re the ones who elected him. I think Currier and Ives were trying to convey that it was a serious event, but everyone just looks angry. John Adams (in the dark blue to the right) appears especially annoyed, and he’s the one who nominated him in the first place.

    And check out the guy to Adams’ right, staring straight at us. There’s always one guy who can’t help but look at the camera.

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  • June 15, 1775: The Original G-Man

    Cover art for June 15, 1775: Portrait of George Washington in 1775 by Samuel King

    Jeez, I gotta stop writing these titles late at night.

    Sometimes the history books make it sound like some people just appeared out of nowhere, but they did have pasts. George Washington would be a good example.

    Washington has been nearly invisible since this show started on January 1, but that doesn’t mean that the Congress hollered “Anyone wanna be a general?” and he stepped up first. In fact, he was a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774, and for some time he’d been a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, often simultaneously with the Congress thing. And he did have a commendable military background dating back to the French and Indian War, so appointing him the Commander of Colonial forces wasn’t part of someone’s crazy scheme: they thought he could really do it.

    And do it, he did.

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  • June 12, 1775: Press One for English

    Cover art for June 12, 1775: The cover of the first of the letters directed at citizens of Canada, ca. 1774.

    The folks in America wanted to ensure that the folks in Canada knew just how bad the conditions were, but the problem was that most of the regular inhabitants of Canada spoke French, so when the Continental Congress created documents meant to sway the Canadians to our side of the loyalty fence, they were written in French.

    But the problem was, they couldn’t use these documents as evidence for folks here in the Colonies, because not enough people understood French. What to do, what to do?

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  • June 7, 1775: Just Another Day In Congress

    Cover art for June 7, 1775: a printed version of the proclamation written by the committee assigned on this day.

    The Second Continental Congress was in full swing by now. The first committees are beginning to report out to the Congress. New committees are being created for various purposes. The Congress is meeting as a group to determine the state of America. And one committee is recruited to draft a proclamation that, to modern ears, might sound a little peculiar. But the fact is, even a hundred years later a proclamation like this was quite common.

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  • June 3, 1775: Committees Everywhere

    Cover art for June 3, 1775: Portrait of Silas Deane by William Johnston, 1766

    Silas Deane was a delegate to the Continental Congress from Connecticut, and by most accounts he did a decent job of it, although he did lose his position after a dispute with Roger Sherman. He stuck around Congress anyway, helping however he could.

    The following year he went to France as a secret delegate to drum up support for the Colonies. Unfortunately when he returned he was accused of financial impropriety; it took some time to clear his name and when the dust settled, he was nearly broke.

    The following year he returned to France and, while there, letters he’d written suggesting that the Colonies would not win the war were released to the press by British spies, and he again faced accusations, this time of treason.

    Eventually Deane moved to Ghent and in 1789 he made plans to return to the newly-minted United States of America so he could clear his name. But he fell ill and died shortly after boarding a ship to take him back home. He was 51 years old.

    P.S. you only think this has nothing to do with today’s episode.

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  • June 2, 1775: Joseph Warren Has A Good Idea

    Cover Art for June 2, 1775: Joseph Warren portrait by John Singleton Copley, 1765

    Joseph Warren is definitely one of the unsung heroes of the American Revolution. We last heard from him on March 5, when he did his You Are There routine describing the events of the Boston Massacre at a memorial event (in fact, we used the same cover art).

    Today he’s more of the guy with the common sense solution: “Hey, instead of having a whole bunch of little militias fighting this thing…what if we put ’em all together into one big army?”

    And the Continental Congress, moving with its usual speed…took no action for about two weeks. It’s possible that there were still delegates not feeling the urgency just yet, though.

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  • May 31, 1775: The Second Letter to Canada

    Cover art for May 31, 1775: Portrait of John Jay by Gilbert Stuart, 1794.

    With all the talk of our good relationships with Canada possibly going awry in the light of tariffs being levied [or not] against that country, it’s interesting to recognize that there was, in fact, a genuine relationship established before the Colonies broke away from England.

    It started in 1774, and continues on this day in 1775, and there’s one more attempt in the works. But for the time being let’s live for today.

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