TWENTY-THREE YEARS LATER ...

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

May 10, 1775

Philadelphia feels alive.

For the past few days, the most prominent leaders in the colonies have been arriving in the city. Coaches and carriages are pulling in, almost by the hour, often met by cheering crowds and marching bands. Onlookers fill the streets and watch from porches and windows. The inns are full to capacity; the taverns are bustling.

The mood is mostly festive. But the air is also charged with something else: that unique mix of anticipation and fear that comes with the feeling that the world is about to change, though no one knows quite how.

The occasion is momentous: a meeting of the Second Continental Congress. Delegates chosen from every colony are meeting here for one purpose — to debate the possibility of war with England.

Just a year earlier such a notion was unthinkable except to the most radical. But in recent months, longstanding disputes have grown and multiplied between the Crown and its colonial subjects across the ocean. Arguments over trade, taxes, and tariffs have turned into deep, irreconcilable grievances. On the colonists' side, rallies and protests against the Crown's repressive policies have grown louder, larger, and angrier. England has responded by sending soldiers to clamp down on protests and reassert the mother country's absolute power. In the New England colonies, local rebel militias have been preparing to stand up to the royal authorities. Earlier in the year, King George III declared the colony of Massachusetts to be in a state of "rebellion" against England.

And recently, outside Boston, blood has been spilled.

On the night of April 19, a regiment of British soldiers stationed in the city marched from Boston toward the neighboring towns of Lexington and Concord, to arrest two rebel leaders and seize a cache of munitions that the colonial militias were stockpiling. The colonists learned of the plan in advance, and as the British arrived in Lexington a band of armed locals was there to meet them. In the melee that followed, the British forces killed eight townspeople and lost only a horse. When the British troops advanced towards Concord, however, they encountered a much larger colonial militia. No one knows which side began shooting first, but whoever pulled the first trigger fired the "shot heard 'round the world." Both the British and the colonists suffered heavy casualties in sustained fighting.

Within forty-eight hours, the British soldiers were driven back into Boston and royal authorities put the city under lockdown. An uneasy truce was reached, but tensions in the city were now at an all-time high.

The bloodshed sent shockwaves throughout the colonies, especially in New England. Dr. Matthew Thornton, the president of the New Hampshire Provincial Congress, captured the prevailing mood in a public address:

Painful beyond expression have been those scenes of blood and devastation which the barbarous cruelty of British troops have placed before our eyes. Duty to God, to ourselves, to posterity, enforced by the cries of slaughtered innocents, have urged us to take up arms in our defense. Such a day as this was never before known, either to us or to our fathers.

The future is uncertain. Was this violence a local Boston skirmish or the start of a larger war? Is peaceful reconciliation still possible — or is it time for the colonies to mobilize and raise arms?

These are the urgent questions the Second Continental Congress is now convened to face.

But from England's perspective, the very meeting of this so-called Congress is itself an act of rebellion. England doesn't recognize the Congress as legitimate. England never authorized any such gathering of delegates from around the colonies, and in fact forbade it. From the point of view of the British Parliament and the Crown, this Congress has no authority, wields no power, and represents nothing.

And yet, here they are.

They have come from Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, and the far-off northern lands of New Hampshire. They've come from Delaware, Maryland, even from the southern swamps of South Carolina. There are sixty-five delegates in all, representing twelve of the thirteen colonies. Only one colony, Georgia, has declined to participate; though soon, it too will send a representative.

Just the logistical effort of organizing all these delegates to meet at one time and place is a major accomplishment. With the transportation technology of the day — namely, horses — the trip for some delegates from their home cities may take as long as two weeks, not including delays for weather or getting lost. This means eight hours of travel per day, on coach seats or saddles over bumpy roads, with bathroom breaks often taking place in the swamps or brush by the side of the road.

The invitations themselves were all handwritten letters, also delivered on horseback with long delays. The delegates had to commit to leaving behind businesses, families, and local affairs for what they knew might be a period of many months.

Adding high drama to the proceedings, two of the delegates from Massachusetts — Samuel Adams and John Hancock — had to hide out in fields and farmhouses during the first part of their journey, for fear of British soldiers who had been sent to detain them for their roles in organizing the Boston revolt. They secretly met up en route with the other Massachusetts delegates — including Samuel Adams's cousin John Adams — then escaped across the colony line to merge with the Connecticut delegation for the trip to Pennsylvania. Word quickly spread of this dramatic journey, and by the time the group arrived in Philadelphia, they were greeted as heroes — escorted by a band of militiamen and cheered on by crowds as they pass.

"All ranks and degrees of men are in Arms," observes Joseph Hewes, the delegate from North Carolina, upon arriving in the city. Even here in normally peace-loving Philadelphia, known for its university and its large population of Quakers, the drums of war are beating.

Yet some of the delegates sense a consequence even larger than the immediate fate of the colonies. A new idea has slowly been forming, borrowed from philosophers in Europe and filtered through the specific experience of the American colonists. At the heart of it lies a fundamental question: Is it natural and just for people to be ruled by the absolute power of a monarch who claims divine authority? Or, in fact, do people have a right — an inherent right — to choose their own government and therefore rule themselves?

Such a simple idea today. But back then, this was a radical concept — and a dangerous one. In pamphlets, a new word is being...