a hastily as- sembled league of colony/states against the world's most powerful nation." Soon after the British attacked a colonial arms cache at Con- cord, Massachusetts, in April 1775, delegates from the 13 colonies assembled in Philadel- phia. "In short order," Young writes, "they or- ganized themselves as a body, adopted rules of secrecy, digested reports of the battle and of British military activities elsewhere, and ad- journed into a 'committee of the whole on the state...