Location
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia was the capital of the American founding in nearly every meaningful sense because more of the decisive arguments, documents, and meetings that created the United States passed through that city than through any other place in North America. William Penn had founded it in the late seventeenth century as part of a broader Quaker experiment in religious toleration, ordered liberty, and civil peace, and by the mid-eighteenth century that vision had produced the largest and most cosmopolitan city in the colonies, a place where merchants, printers, lawyers, artisans, and legislators moved in a rich and argumentative public culture. Benjamin Franklin helped shape that culture through his printing house, the Library Company, the American Philosophical Society, and a wide network of civic improvements, making Philadelphia not only a commercial metropolis but an intellectual capital in which public reasoning mattered. When the imperial crisis deepened, the city became the natural meeting place for colonies seeking common action: the First Continental Congress assembled there in 1774, the Second Continental Congress followed in 1775, George Washington was appointed commander in chief there, and on July 4, 1776 Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in the city that had become the nerve center of resistance. The British capture of Philadelphia in 1777 showed how central it was to the revolutionary cause, while the sufferings of the army at nearby Valley Forge underscored that the political capital of the Revolution could not be separated from the military struggle to preserve it. In 1787 delegates returned to Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention, meeting in the same civic world of State House Yard and Franklin's old networks because the city offered the facilities, prestige, and political neutrality needed for a gathering that hoped to rescue the union from the failures of the Articles. After ratification, Philadelphia briefly served as the national capital under the Constitution from 1790 to 1800, confirming that the city had not merely hosted the founding but had actively sustained it. Philadelphia mattered because it was where independence was declared, union was debated, and the federal frame was written in a setting that joined religious toleration, civic leadership, and constitutional imagination.
Map
Explore the location in its modern geographic setting.
Associated People
Benjamin Franklin
Between 1754 and the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Benjamin Franklin moved from colonial printer to indispensable diplomat, l...
George Washington
From command of the Continental Army in 1775-1783 to the presidency beginning in 1789, George Washington gave the new re...
John Adams
Between the Continental Congress of 1774-1776 and the presidency beginning in 1797, John Adams united Revolutionary cons...
James Madison
From the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 through the Bill of Rights in 1789-1791, James Madison supplied the constitutio...
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, governed Virginia, and later used the State Department a...
Associated Events
Articles of Confederation ratified
On March 1, 1781, Maryland completed ratification of the Articles of Confederation in Philadelphia, giving the United States its first formal national frame of government.
1781
British capture Philadelphia
On September 26, 1777, William Howe occupied Philadelphia after Brandywine, forcing the Continental Congress to flee while George Washington kept his army intact.
1777
Congress votes for independence
On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress approved Richard Henry Lee's independence resolution, making separation from Great Britain the official American position.
1776
Constitutional Convention convenes
From May to September 1787, delegates in Philadelphia abandoned revision of the Articles of Confederation and drafted a new Constitution under George Washington's presidency.
1787
Declaration of Independence adopted
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress approved Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and ordered the document printed as the public case for separation.
1776
First Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia
From September 5 to October 26, 1774, delegates from twelve colonies met at Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia to coordinate a response to the Coercive Acts. The Congress created the first sustained continental political body of the imperial crisis.
1774
George Washington appointed commander of Continental Army
On June 15, 1775, the Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington commander in chief of the Continental Army gathering around Boston. The choice linked New England's war effort to the wider colonies and placed the army under civilian authority.
1775
Second Continental Congress convenes
On May 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia after fighting had already begun at Lexington and Concord. The delegates soon assumed the functions of a national government for the war against Britain.
1775
United States Constitution signed
On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine delegates signed the Constitution in Philadelphia and sent the proposed frame of government to the states for ratification.
1787
Winter at Valley Forge
From December 1777 to June 1778, George Washington held the Continental Army at Valley Forge, where privation, reform, and von Steuben's drilling reshaped the force.
1777-1778