Thirty-four delegates seated in Philadelphia's Pennsylvania State House cast not a single dissenting vote. <cite index="6-1">On June 15, 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted unanimously to appoint George Washington head of the Continental Army.</cite> Washington, a Virginia planter and French-and-Indian War veteran, had shown up to the session in his old military uniform, a quiet signal that he was ready to serve. <cite index="5-2,5-3">The colonies had been pushed toward open conflict by British economic pressure, the forced conscription of American seamen into the Royal Navy, and frontier tensions stoked by British support of Native tribes.</cite> Washington accepted the commission without pay, asking only that his expenses be reimbursed. He would hold that ragged, underfunded force together through eight brutal years of war. The unanimous vote mattered as much as the man chosen: it told the world that thirteen fractious colonies could act as one. That founding principle of unified civilian control over the military remains a cornerstone of American constitutional order to this day.