On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress received and read a “letter from General Washington, and three letters from the commissioners in Canada”. John Adams wrote to James Warren that the letters reported “the Dismals from Canada. Defeated most ignominiously.” And the reports from Canada were to become even more dismal.

Source: https://americanfounding.org/entries/second-continental-congress-may-18-1776/

Also on that day in Philadelphia, the Committee of Inspection and Observation of the City of Philadelphia met and voted to issue “a general call” for a meeting of “the inhabitants of the City and Liberties . . . in order to take the sense of the people.” There were only five dissenting votes in the meeting.

Source: “The Adoption of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776”, Paul Leicester Ford, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Sep. 1895) pp. 426-459 accessed at https://doi.org/10.2307/2139954;

On this day 250 years ago at the Cedars (Les Cedres) on the St. Lawrence River west of Montreal in Quebec province, an American outpost manned by 400 Continental soldiers and militiamen was attacked by a British force consisting of 40 British regulars from Fort Oswegatchie, 100 Loyalists and about 500 Iroquois. The Americans had 5 or 6 men wounded and the next day the entire force at the Cedars would surrender.

Sources: https://revolutionarywar.us/year-1776/battle-cedars-les-cedres/; https://revolutionary-war.org/campaigns/canadian-campaign/battle-of-the-cedars

On this day 250 years ago in Williamsburg, Virginia, George Mason arrived from Fairfax County and took his seat in the Fifth Virginia Convention. Mason was appointed that day to the committee to draft a Declaration of Rights and he immediately went to work drafting. He would end up as the principal writer of the Virginia Declaration of Rights.

Source: Broadwater, Jeff, George Mason, Forgotten Founder, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press (2006) at p. 80.