The Lee Resolution declared the American colonies independent before the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced the resolution in the Second Continental Congress on June 7, 1776. It proposed that the United Colonies should be free and independent states, that their political connection with Great Britain should end, and that a plan for confederation should be prepared.
Congress passed the independence portion on July 2, two days before approving the Declaration’s wording. The Declaration therefore served as a formal explanation and public statement of a decision that Congress had already made through the Lee Resolution.
The resolution is named for Richard Henry Lee, not Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was the principal drafter of the later Declaration, while Lee’s motion supplied the immediate political decision for independence. This distinction is central to understanding the sequence commemorated by America250.