Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania, founded by William Penn as a “holy experiment” in religious tolerance, was home to Philadelphia, the largest city in colonial America and the natural stage for the Revolution. The First Continental Congress met there. Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which shaped how all thirteen colonies understood the independence cause, was published there. And John Dunlap printed the first authoritative broadside of the Declaration in the city in July 1776. The colony's delegates to the Continental Congress were divided on the Declaration. Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson voted yes, while the cautious John Dickinson abstained. Pennsylvania's radical 1776 constitution became the most democratic in America. Pennsylvania also led the way against slavery with the first abolition society and the first gradual emancipation law in 1780, even as Congress's broken promises to Chief White Eyes and the Lenape exposed the Revolution's limits.