The Reluctant Rebels, by Lynn Montross (1950)

Of the 340 members of the Continental Congresses from 1774-1780, only one man was a constant. Charles Thomson. Read the published Journals of the Continental Congress which Thomson was responsible for keeping through all those years and you'll see, as this book title says, they were reluctant rebels. They didn't want to be independent. They were:

• Forced to resist a London government who had withdrawn the liberties they’d had since 1689.

• Forced to declare independence in 1776 from a London government and King who refused to restore those liberties to them. 

• Forced into a war to ensure that independence.

• Then, forced to resist the new American élite, to secure those liberties, in a new Bill of Rights in 1789, a century after the original.

• And despite all that, forced to accept new taxes when George Washington himself led an American army to crush their resistance in 1794.