The American War of Independence was neither a declared war of rebellion nor a battle for independence at the point when the Second Continental Congress met in May 1775 to determine a strategy of colonial unity and military opposition to the British occupation of Massachusetts. Among the Virginia delegates to the congress was Colonel George Washington, the most seasoned soldier in the colonies as a member of the British army that had fought and won the French and Indian War (1754–63; part of a larger conflict known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War) fifteen years earlier. Washington’s career as a soldier and his disarmingly modest disposition commanded respect from the delegates.