The Lee Resolution, also known as the resolution of
independence, was an act of the Second Continental Congress
declaring the United Colonies to be independent of the British
Empire. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia first proposed it on June
7, 1776, after receiving instructions from the Virginia
Convention and its President, Edmund Pendleton (in fact Lee
used, almost verbatim, the language from the instructions in his
resolution). Voting on the resolution was delayed for several
weeks while support for independence was consolidated. On June
11, a Committee of Five was appointed to prepare a document to
explain the reasons for independence. The resolution was finally
approved on July 2, 1776, and news of its adoption was published
that evening in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and the next day
in the Pennsylvania Gazette. The text of the document formally
announcing this action, the United States Declaration of
Independence, was approved on July 4. It was the 4th, and not
the 2nd, that would come to be celebrated