At a Bold Meeting 250 Years Ago, the Continental Congress Set America in Motion

Illustration by Dominic Bodden “I feel myself unequal to this business” confessed John Adams, of the “grand scene open before me—a Congress.” In the fall of 1774, Adams and 55 other delegates journeyed all manner of distances by foot, horseback and carriage to Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress. Before now, few of “the wisest men upon the continent,” as Adams described the delegates in his diary, had…