Nathan Gorman the fifth president of the Continental Congress.

\

He was born in Boston, Mass and was a descendent of John Howland.

He started working at 15 when he served as an apprentice for a merchant house in New London, Connecticut in 1759. He took part in public affairs at the beginning of the American Revolution. He was a member of the Massachusetts General Court from 1771-1775. He was also a delegate to the provincial congress from 1774-1775. He was also a member of the Board of War from 1778 until it dissolution in 1781

In 1779 he served in the state constitutional convention. He was also a delegate to the continental congress from from 1782-1783 and then from 1785-1787. He served as it's president for five months from June 6 to November 5^th of 1786 after John Hancock resigned. He also served a term as a judge at the Middlesex County Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas.

For several months in 1787, he served as one of the Massachusetts delegates to the United States Constitutional Convention where he frequently served as chairman of the convention. He presided over the sessions during the delegates first deliberations on the structure of the new government in late May and June of that year. After the convention he worked hard to see that the constitution was approved in his home state.       

Richard Henry Lee.

He was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He left Virginia at sixteen to study in Yorkshire, England to complete his formal eduction.

In 1757 he was appointed as justice of the peace in Westmoreland County. In 1758 he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgess where he met Patrick Henry. He was an early advocate of of independence and was the one of the first ones to create the the Committee of Correspondence.

In 1766, almost ten years before the American Revolutionary War, he was was credited with having authorized the Westmoreland County Revolution.

In August of 1774 he was chosen as a delegate to the first Continental Congress. He put forth the motion to declare independence from Great Britain. It read in part:

Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free, and independent states. That they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved.

He had returned to Virginia by the time congress voted on and adapted the Declaration of Independence, but he signed it when he returned to congress.