First Continental Congress

The First Continental Congress
Thirteen Colonies
First Continental Congress 1774
Type
Type	Unicameral
History
Preceded by	Stamp Act Congress
Succeeded by	Second Continental Congress
Leadership
President of Congress	Peyton Randolph Henry Middleton
Secretary	Charles Thomson
Seats	56 from 12 colonies (excluding Georgia)
Meeting place
Carpenters' Hall, Philadelphia

The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies that met on September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. It was called in response to "The passage of the Coercive Acts" (also known as Intolerable Acts by the Colonial Americans) by the British Parliament. The Intolerable Acts had punished Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party.

The Congress was attended by 55 delegates appointed by the legislatures of twelve of the thirteen colonies. Georgia declined to send delegates because they were hoping for British assistance with Native American problems on their frontier and did not want to upset the British.

The Congress met briefly to consider options, including an economic boycott of British trade; rights and grievances; and petitioned King George III for redress of those grievances.

The Congress also called for another Continental Congress in the event that their petition was unsuccessful in halting enforcement of the Intolerable Acts. Their appeal to the Crown had no effect, and so the Second Continental Congress was convened the following year to organize the defense of the colonies at the onset of the American Revolutionary War. The delegates also urged each colony to set up and train its own militia.

Convention

Carpenters' Hall

The Congress met from September 5 to October 26, 1774. Peyton Randolph presided over the proceedings; Henry Middleton took over as President of the Congress for the last few days, from October 22 to October 26. Charles Thomson, leader of Philadelphia Committee of Correspondence, was selected to be Secretary of the Continental Congress.

The delegates who attended the Congress were not of one mind concerning why they were there. Conservatives, such as Joseph Galloway, John Dickinson, John Jay, and Edward Rutledge, believed their task to be the forging of common policies to pressure Parliament to rescind its unreasonable acts. Their ultimate goal was to develop a reasonable solution to the difficulties and bring about reconciliation between the colonies and Great Britain. Radicals, such as Patrick Henry, Roger Sherman, Samuel Adams, and John Adams, believed their task to be the development of a decisive statement of the rights and liberties of the Colonies. Their ultimate goal was to end the perceived abuses of parliamentary authority, and to retain, in the empire and under the king if possible, the constitutional rights which were claimed on the basis of the colonial charters and the English constitution.

Among the radicals, Sherman denied altogether the legislative authority of Parliament and Henry was of the opinion that the Congress needed to develop a completely new system of governance, independent from Great Britain, for the existing colonial governments were already dissolved. To counter these ideas, Galloway put forward a "Plan of Union", which suggested an American legislative body be formed, with some authority, and whose consent would be required for imperial measures.

Declaration and Resolves

In the end, the voices of reconciliation and compromise carried the day. Rather than precipitate rebellion by calling for independence, the First Continental Congress, in its Declaration and Resolves, passed and signed the Continental Association, which called for a boycott of British goods to take effect in December 1774. It requested that local Committees of Safety enforce the boycott and regulate local prices for goods. These resolutions adopted by the Congress did not acknowledge the legal power of Parliament even to regulate trade, but consented, nonetheless, to the operation of acts for that purpose. Furthermore, they did not repudiate control by the royal prerogative, which was explicitly acknowledged in the Petition to the King a few days later.

Accomplishments

The Congress had two primary accomplishments. The first was a compact among the colonies to boycott British goods beginning on December 1, 1774. The West Indies were threatened with a boycott unless the islands agreed to nonimportation of British goods. Imports from Britain dropped by 97 percent in 1775, compared with the previous year. Committees of observation and inspection were to be formed in each colony for enforcement of the Association. All of the colonial Houses of Assembly approved the proceedings of the congress with the exception of New York .

If the "Intolerable Acts" were not repealed, the colonies would also cease exports to Britain after September 10, 1775. The boycott was successfully implemented, but its potential for altering British colonial policy was cut off by the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The colonists were forced to quarter British soldiers, and feed them.

The second accomplishment of the Congress was to provide for a Second Continental Congress to meet on May 10, 1775. In addition to the colonies which had sent delegates to the First Continental Congress, the Congress resolved on October 21, 1774 to send letters of invitation to Quebec, Saint John's Island (now Prince Edward Island), Nova Scotia, Georgia, East Florida, and West Florida. However, letters appear to have been sent only to Quebec (three letters in all). None of these other colonies sent delegates to the opening of the second Congress, though a delegation from Georgia arrived the following July.

List of delegates

#	Name	Colony	Notes
1	Nathaniel Folsom	New Hampshire
2	John Sullivan	New Hampshire	3rd and 5th Governor of New Hampshire, general in the Continental Army
3	John Adams	Massachusetts	Lawyer, first vice-president of the United States, and second President
4	Samuel Adams	Massachusetts	"Father of the American Revolution," cousin of John Adams
5	Thomas Cushing	Massachusetts
6	Robert Treat Paine	Massachusetts
7	Stephen Hopkins	Rhode Island	Authored pamphlet: 'The Rights of the Colonies"
8	Samuel Ward	Rhode Island
9	Silas Deane	Connecticut
10	Eliphalet Dyer	Connecticut
11	Roger Sherman	Connecticut	Created the Great Compromise and Three-Fifths Compromise at the Constitutional Convention, Congressman, and a member of the Committee of Five who presented the Declaration of Independence
12	James Duane	New York
13	John Jay	New York	Lawyer; First Chief Justice of the United States, co-wrote The Federalist Papers
14	Philip Livingston	New York
15	Isaac Low	New York
16	Simon Boerum	New York
17	John Haring	New York
18	Henry Wisner	New York
19	William Floyd	New York
20	John Alsop	New York
21	Stephen Crane	New Jersey
22	John De Hart	New Jersey
23	James Kinsey	New Jersey
24	William Livingston	New Jersey
25	Richard Smith	New Jersey
26	Edward Biddle	Pennsylvania
27	John Dickinson	Pennsylvania	author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania
28	Joseph Galloway	Pennsylvania	Originator of the Galloway Plan of Union
29	Charles Humphreys	Pennsylvania
30	Thomas Mifflin	Pennsylvania	Later served as the first governor of Pennsylvania; Quartermaster general of the U.S. Army
31	John Morton	Pennsylvania
32	Samuel Rhoads	Pennsylvania
33	George Ross	Pennsylvania
34	Thomas McKean	Delaware
35	George Read	Delaware
36	Caesar Rodney	Delaware
37	Samuel Chase	Maryland	Future Associate Justice on the Supreme Court
38	Robert Goldsborough	Maryland
39	Thomas Johnson	Maryland
40	William Paca	Maryland
41	Matthew Tilghman	Maryland
42	Richard Bland	Virginia
43	Benjamin Harrison	Virginia	Later served as the fifth governor of Virginia; father of President William Henry Harrison and great-grandfather of President Benjamin Harrison
44	Patrick Henry	Virginia	Prominent Virginian lawyer, creator of the 'Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions'.
45	Richard Henry Lee	Virginia	Would later submit movement for independence from Britain at the Second Continental Congress.
46	Edmund Pendleton	Virginia
47	Peyton Randolph	Virginia	Presided over this first gathering of a Congress.
48	George Washington	Virginia	Future commander of the Continental Army, and first president of the United States
49	Richard Caswell	North Carolina
50	Joseph Hewes	North Carolina	Secretary of Naval Affairs Committee in 1776
51	William Hooper	North Carolina
52	Christopher Gadsden	South Carolina
53	Thomas Lynch, Jr.	South Carolina
54	Henry Middleton	South Carolina
55	Edward Rutledge	South Carolina
56	John Rutledge	South Carolina	2nd Chief Justice, Associate Justice; 31st Governor of South Carolina

See also

• List of delegates to the Continental and Confederation congresses
• Papers of the Continental Congress
• Timeline of United States revolutionary history (1760–1789)

References

• Bancroft, George. History of the United States of America, from the discovery of the American continent. (1854–78), vol 4-10 online edition
• Launitz-Schurer, Loyal Whigs and Revolutionaries, The making of the revolution in New York, 1765-1776, 1980, ISBN 0-8147-4994-1
• Ketchum, Richard, Divided Loyalties, How the American Revolution came to New York, 2002, ISBN 0-8050-6120-7
• Miller, John C. Origins of the American Revolution (1943) online edition
• Puls, Mark, Samuel Adams, father of the American Revolution, 2006, ISBN 1-4039-7582-5

Primary sources

• Peter Force, ed. American Archives, 9 vol 1837-1853, major compilation of documents 1774-1776. online edition

External links

• Full text of Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789
• Papers of the Continental Congress (Digitized Original Documents)

Preceded by Stamp Act Congress

Legislature of the United States September 5, 1774 to October 26, 1774

Succeeded by the Second Continental Congress