In the aftermath of the battles at Lexington and Concord the previous spring—during which Massachusetts militias had defeated the British—there was an urgent need to move quickly. “[T]he once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood, or Inhabited by Slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous Man hesitate in his choice?” Washington had written from Mount Vernon, and in London, the British were asking the same thing.8 Votes were taken. In Philadelphia, miraculously, the delegates reached a unanimous decision on June 15, 1775: They would raise an army, and George
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