On June 14, 1775, Congress passed a resolution creating the Continental Army

One of the facts about the Continental Army is that on June 14, 1775, Congress passed a resolution creating the Continental Army. The Continental Army was made up of soldiers from all 13 colonies and, later, all 13 states. When the American Revolutionary War began (on April 19, 1775, with the Battles of Lexington and Concord), the colonial revolutionaries lacked a standing army. Previously, each colony relied on the militia (part-time citizen-soldiers) for local defense or the mobilization of temporary provincial forces during emergencies such as the French and Indian War of 1754-63. As tensions with the United Kingdom grew in the years preceding the war, colonists sought to rebuild their militias in preparation for the looming fight. Militia training grew following the enactment of the Intolerable Acts in 1774. The formation of a national militia force was proposed by colonists such as Richard Henry Lee, but the First Continental Congress rejected the proposal.

The Massachusetts Provincial Congress authorized the formation of a colonial army of 26 company regiments on April 23, 1775. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut quickly responded with comparable but smaller forces. On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress agreed to proceed with the formation of a Continental Army for the common defense, utilizing the forces already in situ outside of Boston (22,000 troops) and New York (5,000).