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Second Continental Congress

The age of exploration, imperialism and colonialism may be said to have begun in the late 15th century, as European monarchs began to finance conquering seafarers in hopes of bringing faraway lands under their dominion. Christopher Columbus' mythical Atlantic crossing in 1492 marks the fabled beginning of this age from the North American perspective. As the very existence of the United States of America so adequately attests, the legacy of this era of imperialism and conquest ultimatelyùand perhaps not ironicallyùsubverted imperial rule and galvanized rebellion. By the time the Declaration of Independence was 100 years old, the US was experiencing the height of the Industrial Age and was fast becoming an economic powerhouse of global proportions. In reviewing the years spanning 1492 and 1876, many critical events stand out in sharp relief. The most important of these, however, surely is the Second Continental Congress, which convened on May 10, 1775. At the Second Continental Congress, the greatest modern political minds perhaps ever assembled came together and behaved as a political unit on behalf of liberty, democracy, and revolution. The effects of this meeting were lasting, and set in motion trends in political philosophy that persist to this day.

Political concepts taken for granted in the modern Western World were hotly contested philosophical issues in the pre-Revolutionary American colonies. The Second Continental Congress embodied this debate; alienated from an increasingly hostile motherland, 1775 America was desperately searching for a direction and a defense against an armed and agitated Great Britain. On May 10, the day the Second Continental Congress met in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the colonies were in turmoil. Great Britain, having declared its intention to bring the colonies into submission by military force, assembled naval and land forces along the east coast of America. Overt acts of tre...

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Second Continental Congress. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:03, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1702950.html