Alright, this is finally starting. There will just be a couple of real figures to get independence off the ground. The names of the figures, I am getting off of census records. This will most likely be an update per year (in the timeline)
At the beginning of 1776, the American independence movement was frustrated. The war had been going on for nearly a year and King George had not responded to any overtures. They needed a restart. Elias Corson was a New Jerseyan who had been excluded from the Second Continental Congress. In January of that year, Corson, a Yale-educated businessman, wrote a letter to Peyton Randolph, the president of the Congress, attempting to convince him to either fold the Congress and let Corson start a new one or officially declare independence. By March, Randolph had been persuaded to let Corson write The Official Notice of Severance of These United States of America From The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, known to history as the Severance. Corson wrote the Severance by May and it was submitted for approval by the Second Continental Congress. On June 1, 1776, the Severance was approved, and it was signed on June 3. In July, while fighting was still going on, Randolph decided to step down and allow Corson to be President of the Congress, as he had written the Severance and he was seen by both the members of the Congress and by the populace as the leader of the Revolution. The first order of business was for the fledgling military to be reformed. For this job, Corson and the Congress members decided that the military would be divided into three wings. the Southern Wing, the Middle Wing, and the Northern Wing, with a Chief Commander taking reports from all three Wing Commanders. The hierarchy within the three Wings was largely left to the judgement of the Wing Commanders, with input from the Chief Commander. Cooper Bennett of South Carolina was contracted to be the Southern Wing commander. Bennett's knowledge of the landscape was seen as an asset, while his oftentimes hotheaded demeanor and his propensity to take risks was seen as something that could either win the war for the United States or backfire horribly. The Congress knew that the United States was at a major disadvantage, so there was nothing to lose with Bennett and a lot to gain. Jacob Stremback of Pennsylvania was chosen to be the Middle Wing commander. Stremback was a more conservative, European Style commander. The Northern commander was Isaac Coleman of Massachusetts. Coleman was more like Stremback and was more of a European-style commander. Overseeing the entire operation was Francis Fielder of Virginia. By September of 1776, Stremback was pushing out of Philadelphia. He defeated a numerically superior British force at Chester in October. He linked up with General John Mills at Wilmington soon after. Meanwhile, Coleman was struggling in Massachusetts. He had been beaten out of Boston and all attempts to reenter America were proving unsuccessful. In December, Francis Fielder had a bold plan for Coleman that he hoped would turn the tide in the north. Coleman received the letter with the order on December 12, 1776. What happened next could change American history forever.