First Continental Congress

5 Key excerpts on "First Continental Congress"

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  Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition

  In the West 1560-1991

  • David Parker(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5 The American Revolution 1763–91

  Colin Bonwick

  The question ‘What was the American Revolution?’ has been asked many times and been given many answers. At its simplest, it was a crisis within the British Empire: the loss of thirteen colonies when viewed from a British perspective, and the achievement of independence from the American stance. The second and more important component was the creation of an American republic. This in turn had three elements: the establishment of governments in each American state during the war, the creation of a national union, and substantial social change. Each raised important ideological questions concerning the source of legitimate authority, the protection of liberty, the necessity for government power and the nature of equality.

  Victory over France in the Seven Years War created problems for Britain’s North American policy from 1763 onwards. Thirteen mainland colonies were already mature and virtually self-governing, but acquisition of French territory persuaded successive governments to reorganise and consolidate the empire of which they formed the major part. Legislation attempting to raise revenue in the colonies, particularly the notorious Stamp Act of 1765, provoked the colonies to vehement resistance. In 1773 the Boston Tea Party encouraged both sides to turn up the heat rather than soothe angered feelings. Early the following year the British Parliament passed four Coercive Acts, which Americans significantly referred to as the Intolerable Acts. In response the colonies summoned the First Continental Congress which met in September 1774 to protest against the legislation and plan their responses. Their intention was to find a political solution to the dispute within the empire, but in April 1775, British troops and American militia clashed at Lexington, just outside Boston, Massachusetts. Fourteen months later, in July 1776, the Americans declared independence. The war dragged on for five more years. For a time it seemed that Britain would be successful in suppressing the colonial rebellion, but in 1777 General John Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga, New York. France entered the conflict in alliance with the United States early the following year, and what had been only a colonial rebellion became a world war in which Britain and France fought each other as far afield as India and the West Indies as well as in North America. In spite of considerable successes in the south after 1779 a second army, under General Earl Cornwallis, was surrounded and defeated at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781, thus effectively ending the war. Two years later, Britain formally recognised American independence. While the war continued, the states erected their own governments and began constructing a national union. They ratified the Articles of Confederation in 1781 which permitted Congress only limited delegated powers, but six years later the Philadelphia Convention drafted a new Constitution which came into operation in 1789. Much remained to be done, but its implementation during the 1790s marked completion of the Revolution.

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  A History of the American People

  • Paul Johnson(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • HarperCollins e-books

    (Publisher)

  44 So Americans now had to do what parliamentarians had to do in 1640. ‘What we did,’ said Jefferson later, ‘was with the help of Rushworth, whom we rummaged over for revolutionary precedents of those days.’ So, in a sense, the United States was the posthumous child of the Long Parliament.

  But Americans’ fears that their liberties were being taken away, and the rule of law subverted, had to be dramatized—just as those old parliamentarians had dramatized their struggle by the Grand Remonstrance against Charles I and the famous ‘Flight of the Five Members.’ Who would play John Hampden, who said he would rather die than pay Ship Money to King Charles? Up sprang Jefferson’s friend and idol, Patrick Henry. As a preliminary move towards setting up a united resistance of the mainland colonies to British parliamentary pretensions, a congress of colonial leaders met in Philadelphia, at Carpenters Hall, between September 5 and October 26, 1774. Only Georgia, dissuaded from participating by its popular governor, did not send delegates. Some fifty representatives from twelve colonies passed a series of resolutions, calling for defiance of the Coercive Acts, the arming of a militia, tax-resistance. The key vote came on October 14 when delegates passed the Declarations and Resolves, which roundly condemned British interference in America’s internal affairs and asserted the rights of colonial assemblies to enact legislation and impose taxes as they pleased. A common American political consciousness was taking shape, and delegates began to speak with a distinctive national voice. At the end of it, Patrick Henry marked this change in his customary dramatic manner: ‘The distinction between Virginians and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian but an American.’ Not everyone agreed with him, as yet, and the Continental Congress, as it called itself, voted by colonies rather than as individual Americans. But this body, essentially based on Franklin’s earlier proposals, perpetuated its existence by agreeing to meet again in May 1775. Before that could happen, on February 5, 1775, parliament in London declared Massachusetts, identified as the most unruly and contumacious of the colonies, to be in a state of rebellion, thus authorizing the lawful authorities to use what force they thought fit. The fighting had begun. Hence when the Virginia burgesses met in convention to instruct their delegates to the Second Continental Congress, Henry saw his chance to bring home to all the revolutionary drama of the moment.

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  Images of America

  A Political, Industrial and Social Portrait

  • R.L. Bruckberger(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  After a multitude of motions had been made, discussed, negatived, it seemed as if we should never agree upon anything. Mr. John Rutledge of South Carolina, one of the committee, addressing himself to me, was pleased to say: “Adams, we must agree upon something; you appear to me to be as familiar with the subject as any one of us. . . . Come, take the pen and see if you can produce something that will unite us.” Some others of the committee seconding Mr. Rutledge, I took a sheet of paper and drew up an article. When it was read, I believe not one of the committee was fully satisfied with it; but they all soon acknowledged that there was no hope of hitting on anything in which we could all agree with more satisfaction. All therefore agreed to this, and upon this depended the union of the colonies.

  A close study of the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress shows that it is just as remarkable for what it does not say or only half says, as for what it says. The repeated appeal to traditional English rights clearly proves that, even after Concord, the Congress and the American people still hoped to remain within the Empire. It is always painful to create a schism in the orthodoxy to which one belongs. In the Declaration and Resolves the Congress proclaimed:

  That the inhabitants of the English colonies in North America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English Constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following RIGHTS :

  That they are entitled to life, liberty, and property; and they have never ceded to any foreign power whatever a right to dispose of either without their consent. . . .

  That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those rights, but that they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them, as their local and other circumstances enable them to exercise and enjoy.

  That the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council . . . and as the English colonists are not represented . . . in the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed.

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  Revolutionary America, 1763-1815

  A Political History

  • Francis D. Cogliano(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  14 Massachusetts provided the most thorough response on the issue of independence. On March 10, the assembly resolved:

  that the inhabitants of each Town in this Colony ought, in full meeting warned for that purpose, to advise the person or persons who shall be chosen to represent them in the next General Court, whether that, if the honourable Congress should, for the safety of the said Colony, declare them independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain, they the said inhabitants, will solemnly engage, with their lives and fortunes, to support them in the measure.

  The assembly was asking voters to make a personal pledge when they endorsed independence. Between May and July, special town meetings were convened throughout the colony to debate the issue. Although some communities were deeply divided on the question and a few opposed it, the majority of towns endorsed independence. In so doing, the voters of Massachusetts were putting the principles of republican government vaguely outlined by Thomas Paine into practice.15

  Massachusetts was not alone. A small cabal of radical congressmen would not foist independence on the American people. Rather, during the spring and early summer of 1776, individuals and groups throughout the colonies would pressure Congress to declare the colonies independent. North Carolina was the first colony to act. On April 12, 1776, the North Carolina Provincial Assembly authorized the colony’s delegation at the Congress in Philadelphia to concur if the other state delegations voted in favor of declaring independence. Between April 22 and 24, conventions in the Virginia counties of Cumberland, Charlotte, and James City endorsed independence. On May 15, 112 members of the Virginia Provincial Convention unanimously resolved that the delegates appointed to represent this colony in General Congress be instructed to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent states, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon the crown or parliament of Great Britain; and that they give the assent of this colony to such declaration, and to whatever measures may be thought proper and necessary by the Congress for forming foreign alliances and a confederation of the colonies, at such time, and in such a manner, as to them shall seem best.16

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  A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams

  • David Waldstreicher(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Whatever their weaknesses in style, the Novanglus letters are widely recognized as one of the earliest efforts to articulate the position taken by the First Continental Congress, denying Parliament’s authority over the American colonies without their consent and arguing that there were constitutional grounds for the parallel sovereignties of Parliament and American provincial governments. Not written for or appreciated by a public audience, they were – unlike those of “Massachusettensis” – not widely reprinted, although English booksellers republished parts of the letters in 1775 and 1784; Adams had the 1775 edition translated into Dutch in 1782 (Butterfield et al., 1961: 2.223–224). On April 19, 1775, events at Lexington and Concord irrevocably altered the political landscape. Adams later recalled that a few days afterward, he visited the battlefield at Lexington and inspected the army gathered in Cambridge, alarmed at its lack of organization and inadequate provisions (D&A : 3.314). On his way home he fell ill with a fever, leaving for Philadelphia in a small carriage instead of riding horseback as he planned. He caught up with the Connecticut and Massachusetts delegations, now including John Hancock, outside of New York. Upon leaving Manhattan with the congressmen from that colony, two hundred members of the militia marched with the delegations along roads crowded with onlookers. Hundreds of others, swords drawn, many riding in carriages, met them as they approached Philadelphia. Bells rang and it was, in the words of Caesar Rodney of Delaware, “verry grand” (P.H. Smith, 1976–2000: 1.343). Then, officially convening on May 10, the delegates got to work

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