Page 75 - JM Book 9/2020

to move south from Halifax to New York City, Washington had moved his army from Boston to New York. He had ordered his troops to fortify the city against a possible attack. Another letter reported that American forces had failed to stop a British advance up the Saint Lawrence River that cuts across Canada.
Next, Hancock recognized Samuel Chase of Maryland, who read a dispatch the Maryland congressional delegates had received that morning from the Eighth Convention of Maryland. According to the news in the dispatch, the Maryland delegates had been “authorized and empowered to concur with the other United Colonies, or a Majority of them, in declaring the United Colonies free and independent states.”
“Gentlemen, we are now free to vote to approve the Virginia Resolution,” Chase happily announced.
Upon hearing this news, John Adams immediately stood and asked Hancock to declare a congressional recess.
During the recess, Adams and a small group of pro-independence congressmen huddled with Hancock.
When Hancock reconvened Congress around noon, he yielded the chair to Benjamin Harrison of Virginia to preside over the committee of the whole to consider the Virginia Resolution.
Harrison began by asking Secretary Thomson to read the Virginia Resolution that had been presented to Congress by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia.
“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.”
Debate on the Virginia Resolution started where it had left off on June 11. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, the chief spokesman for the opposition, stood
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