Second Continental Congress Essay

As the Revolutionary War came to an end with the signing of The Treaty of Paris a new country was born, not ideologically, that had been settled by generations of geographically aided independence. The signing of the Treaty saw the structural birth of an American Democracy fueled by economics. The signing of the Treaty meant the United States would be recognized on the world stage as a country and not a band of rebels crying about new taxes. It is important to make this distinction because The Second Continental Congress had little authority to construct a federal government from the ground up. The Second Congress had formed in Philadelphia after battles broke out between colonists and the British Army. While the Second Congress initially met to discuss how to resist British rule, it quickly became the de-facto government of the new United States (Continental Congress, n. d, para. 7).

While the Second Congress had passed the Articles of Confederation, there was little federal infrastructure to do much else beyond wage war. When things really got serious, the Delegates formed the Continental Army and put General George Washington in charge (para. 8). Eventually the

There was approximately $12 million in foreign debt, $44 million owed to the various Colonies by the Second Congress, and roughly $25 million in state debts (Economic state, 2015, para. 3). There was no mechanism in place to help the individual states pay off their debts. Other aftermaths included losing protection of British ships as the Americans attempted to resume world trade, and an unwillingness on the part of the British to let Americans trade anywhere in their still formidable trade empire. All of this coupled with a rapid decline in demand of wartime products led to widespread inflation and unemployment in the early years of the