Pearl Street's Fraunces Tavern today (in lower Manhattan) site of a big banquet in June 1776 that Washington attended. So where were the patriots as of mid-summer 1776? Let's find out. The Second Continental Congress Two-hundred and fifty (250) years ago in late June 1776, state delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia debated Jefferson's draft of The Declaration of Independence (DOI). Jefferson was the key person in the Committee of Five (Adams, Franklin, Living