=The Second Continental Congress.=—­Though blood had been shed and war was actually at hand, the second Continental Congress, which met at Philadelphia in May, 1775, was not yet convinced that conciliation was beyond human power.  It petitioned the king to interpose on behalf of the colonists in order that the empire might avoid the calamities of civil war.  On the last day of July, it made a temperate but firm answer to Lord North’s offer of conciliation, stating that the proposal was unsatisfactory because it did not renounce the right to tax or repeal the offensive acts of Parliament.

=Force, the British Answer.=—­Just as the representatives of America were about to present the last petition of Congress to the king on August 23, 1775, George III issued a proclamation of rebellion.  This announcement declared that the colonists, “misled by dangerous and ill-designing men,” were in a state of insurrection; it called on the civil and military powers to bring “the traitors to justice”; and it threatened with “condign punishment the authors, perpetrators, and abettors of such traitorous designs.”  It closed with the usual prayer:  “God, save the king.”  Later in the year, Parliament passed a sweeping act destroying all trade and intercourse with America.  Congress was silent at last.  Force was also America’s answer.

AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

=Drifting into War.=—­Although the Congress had not given up all hope of reconciliation in the spring and summer of 1775, it had firmly resolved to defend American rights by arms if necessary.  It transformed the militiamen who had assembled near Boston, after the battle of Lexington, into a Continental army and selected Washington as commander-in-chief.  It assumed the powers of a government and prepared to raise money, wage war, and carry on diplomatic relations with foreign countries.

[Illustration:  From an old print

SPIRIT OF 1776]

Events followed thick and fast.  On June 17, the American militia, by the stubborn defense of Bunker Hill, showed that it could make British regulars pay dearly for all they got.  On July 3, Washington took command of the army at Cambridge.  In January, 1776, after bitter disappointments in drumming up recruits for its army in England, Scotland, and Ireland, the British government concluded a treaty with the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel in Germany contracting, at a handsome figure, for thousands of soldiers and many pieces of cannon.  This was the crowning insult to America.  Such was the view of all friends of the colonies on both sides of the water.  Such was, long afterward, the judgment of the conservative historian Lecky:  “The conduct of England in hiring German mercenaries to subdue the essentially English population beyond the Atlantic made reconciliation hopeless and independence inevitable.”  The news of this wretched transaction in German soldiers had hardly reached America before there ran all down the coast the thrilling story that Washington had taken Boston, on March 17, 1776, compelling Lord Howe to sail with his entire army for Halifax.