Build a movie plot around this: Who led the New Jersey delegation? Reverend John Witherspoon
A:
On May 8, 1776, in Philadelphia, as the Second Continental Congress proceeds with its business. John Adams, the widely disliked delegate from Massachusetts, is frustrated, because none of his proposals on independence have been debated on by congress. The other delegates, implore him to ('Sit Down, John')Adams' response is that Congress has done nothing for the last year ('Piddle, Twiddle, and Resolve'). He reads the latest missive from his loving wife Abigail, who, their home in Braintree, Massachusetts, appears in his imagination. He asks if she and the other women are making saltpeter for the war effort but she ignores that and states the women have a more urgent problem: no straight pins. They pledge their love to each other in song ('Till Then').Later that day, Adams finds delegate Benjamin Franklin outside. Adams bemoans the failure of his arguments for independence. Franklin suggests that, a resolution for independence would have more success if proposed by someone else. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia enters, having been summoned by Franklin. The cocky Lee crows that he is the best man to propose the resolution. Adams has reservations, but Lee is convinced he cannot fail, as a member of the oldest and most glorious family in America ('The Lees of Old Virginia') He is prepared to ask the Virginia House of Burgesses to authorize him to offer a pro-independence resolution.June 7, 1776. Franklin and Adams enter, and the delegates, along with the President of Congress, John Hancock, and the Secretary, Charles Thomson, take their places. Hancock gavels the 380th meeting of the Congress to order.The entire New Jersey delegation is absent. Thomas Jefferson, a young delegate from Virginia, announces that he is leaving for Virginia that night to visit his wife. Soon after Hancock opens the floor to new resolutions, Richard Henry Lee canters into the chamber, having finally returned from Virginia. Lee reads his resolution, but John Dickinson of Pennsylvania moves to indefinitely postpone the question of...