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Throughout the spring, the colonies' legislatures adapted themselves to once traitorous ideas. South Carolina and Georgia considered direct assertions of independence, but held back. North Carolina broke the dam when its Provincial Congress empowered its delegates in Philadelphia "to concur with the delegates of the other colonies in declaring independency."
The proprietary colonies (Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, where the heirs of William Perm and Lord Baltimore still control vast tracts of land received from the Crown) delayed. Pennsylvania's James Wilson argued before the Congress: "Before we are prepared to build the new house, why should we pull down the old one, and expose ourselves to all the inclemencies of the season?" But on May 15, at the suggestion of John Adams, the Congress recommended that the colonies form new governments "where no government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs has been hitherto established." John Adams wrote at the end of the month: "The Middle Colonies have never tasted the bitter cup; they have never smarted, and are therefore a little cooler ... The proprietary governments are not only encumbered with a large body of Quakers, but are embarrassed by a proprietary interest; both together clog their operations a little."
Also in May, Congress received copies of the treaties by winch George had hired more than 12,000 Hessian mercenaries for his American war. The event was decisive. Redcoats were one thing, but hired Germans, professionals righting for pay, destroyed in many American minds the vestiges of loyalty to the King.
Thus the last act began. Virginia, the continent's most populous colony, precipitated it. The 112 members of its convention in Williamsburg voted unanimously on May 15 "that the delegates appointed to represent this colony in General Congress be instructed to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent states ..." With that, Virginia set about establishing an independent state government and adopting a bill of rights.
On June 7 Richard Henry Lee rose and made a motion to the Congress: "Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; and that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
Consideration was postponed until the 8th, then until the 10th, when congressional moderates succeeded in having the question postponed until July 1. But on June 11, the Congress appointed "a committee to prepare a declaration to the effect of the said resolution." Its members: Thomas Jefferson, 33, John Adams, 40, Benjamin Franklin, 70, Connecticut Lawyer and Merchant Roger Sherman, 55, and New York Lawyer Robert R. Livingston, 29.