What Event Would Cause the First Continental Congress

1774 meeting of delegates from twelve British colonies of what would become the United states

First Continental Congress
Type
Type	Unicameral
History
Established	September 5, 1774
Disbanded	October 26, 1774
Preceded by	Stamp Human activity Congress
Succeeded past	Second Continental Congress
Leadership
President	Peyton Randolph   (through Oct 22, 1774) Henry Middleton
Secretary	Charles Thomson
Seats	56 from 12 of the thirteen colonies
Meeting identify
Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia

The
Kickoff Continental Congress
was a meeting of delegates from 12 of the 13 British colonies that became the United states. It met from September 5 to Oct 26, 1774, at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after the British Navy instituted a blockade of Boston Harbor and Parliament passed the castigating Intolerable Acts in response to the Dec 1773 Boston Tea Party.^[i]
During the opening weeks of the Congress, the delegates conducted a spirited word about how the colonies could collectively respond to the British authorities’s coercive deportment, and they worked to brand a common cause.

As a prelude to its decisions, the Congress’due south first action was the adoption of the Suffolk Resolves, a measure fatigued upward by several counties in Massachusetts that included a proclamation of grievances, chosen for a trade cold-shoulder of British appurtenances, and urged each colony to set up and train its ain militia. A less radical plan was then proposed to create a Union of Uk and the Colonies, only the delegates tabled the mensurate and after struck it from the record of their proceedings. They then agreed on a Proclamation and Resolves that included the Continental Association, a proposal for an embargo on British trade. They also drew up a Petition to the Rex pleading for redress of their grievances and repeal of the Intolerable Acts. That appeal had no outcome, so the colonies convened the Second Continental Congress the post-obit May, soon after the battles of Lexington and Concord, to organize the defense of the colonies at the outset of the Revolutionary State of war.

Convention

The Congress met from September 5 to October 26, 1774, in Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia; delegates from 12 British colonies participated. They were elected by the people of the various colonies, the colonial legislature, or past the Commission of Correspondence of a colony.^[2]
Loyalist sentiments outweighed Patriot views in Georgia, and that colony did non bring together the cause until the following year.^[3]

Peyton Randolph was elected as president of the Congress on the opening day, and he served through Oct 22 when ill health forced him to retire, and Henry Middleton was elected in his place for the residual of the session. Charles Thomson, leader of the Philadelphia Committee of Correspondence, was selected as the congressional secretary.^[4]
The rules adopted past the delegates were designed to baby-sit the equality of participants and to promote complimentary-flowing debate.^[2]

Equally the deliberations progressed, information technology became clear that those in attendance were non of 1 mind apropos why they were there. Conservatives such as Joseph Galloway, John Dickinson, John Jay, and Edward Rutledge believed their task to exist forging policies to pressure level Parliament to rescind its unreasonable acts. Their ultimate goal was to develop a reasonable solution to the difficulties and bring about reconciliation betwixt the Colonies and Groovy Uk. Others such as Patrick Henry, Roger Sherman, Samuel Adams, and John Adams believed their task to be developing a decisive statement of the rights and liberties of the Colonies. Their ultimate goal was to end what they felt to be the abuses of parliamentary authority and to retain their rights, which had been guaranteed under Colonial charters and the English constitution.^[five]

Roger Sherman denied the legislative dominance of Parliament, and Patrick Henry believed that the Congress needed to develop a completely new arrangement of government, independent from Dandy Britain, for the existing Colonial governments were already dissolved.^{[half dozen]}
In contrast to these ideas, Joseph Galloway put forward a “Plan of Union” which suggested that an American legislative body should be formed with some potency, whose consent would be required for imperial measures.^{[half-dozen]
[7]}

Declaration and Resolves

In the cease, the voices of compromise carried the day. Rather than calling for independence, the First Continental Congress passed and signed the Continental Association in its Declaration and Resolves, which chosen for a boycott of British goods to take upshot in December 1774. After Congress signed on Oct 20, 1774 embracing non exportation they besides planned nonimportation of slaves starting time December 1, which would have abolished the slave trade in the U.s.a. of America 33 years earlier information technology actually ended.^[8]

Accomplishments

The primary accomplishment of the First Continental Congress was a compact among the colonies to boycott British goods starting time on December 1, 1774, unless parliament should rescind the Intolerable Acts.^[9]
While delegates convened in the Offset Continental Congress, fifty-one women in Edenton, North Carolina formed their own association (now referred to as the Edenton Tea Party) in response to the Intolerable Acts that focused on producing appurtenances for the colonies.^[10]
Additionally, Great United kingdom’s colonies in the West Indies were threatened with a boycott unless they agreed to non-importation of British goods.^[eleven]
Imports from Britain dropped by 97 percentage in 1775, compared with the previous year.^[9]
Committees of observation and inspection were to be formed in each Colony to ensure compliance with the boycott. It was further agreed that if the Intolerable Acts were not repealed, the colonies would also terminate exports to Britain afterwards September x, 1775.^[9]

The Houses of Associates of each participating colony approved the proceedings of the Congress, with the exception of New York.^[12]
The boycott was successfully implemented, merely its potential for altering British colonial policy was cut off by the outbreak of hostilities in Apr 1775.

Congress besides voted to meet once more the following year if their grievances were not addressed satisfactorily. Anticipating that there would exist cause to convene a 2d congress, delegates resolved to transport letters of invitation to those colonies that had not joined them in Philadelphia, including: Quebec, Saint John’s Island, Nova Scotia, Georgia, East Florida, and West Florida.^[13]
Of these, only Georgia would ultimately transport delegates to the next Congress.

List of delegates

Colony	Name
New Hampshire	Nathaniel Folsom; John Sullivan
Massachusetts Bay	John Adams;[A] Samuel Adams; Thomas Cushing; Robert Treat Paine
Rhode Island	Stephen Hopkins; Samuel Ward
Connecticut	Silas Deane; Eliphalet Dyer; Roger Sherman
New York	John Alsop;[B] Simon Boerum; James Duane;[B] William Floyd;[C] John Haring;[D] John Jay;[B] [E] Philip Livingston;[B] Isaac Low;[B] [F] Henry Wisner[D]
New Jersey	Stephen Crane; John De Hart; James Kinsey; William Livingston; Richard Smith
Pennsylvania	Edward Biddle; John Dickinson; Joseph Galloway;[F] Charles Humphreys; Thomas Mifflin; John Morton; Samuel Rhoads; George Ross
Delaware	Thomas McKean; George Read; Caesar Rodney
Maryland	Samuel Chase; Robert Goldsborough; Thomas Johnson; William Paca; Matthew Tilghman
Virginia	Richard Bland; Benjamin Harrison; Patrick Henry; Richard Henry Lee; Edmund Pendleton; Peyton Randolph;[Thousand] George Washington[A]
North Carolina	Richard Caswell; Joseph Hewes; William Hooper
Southward Carolina	Christopher Gadsden; Thomas Lynch Jr.; Henry Middleton;[Yard] Edward Rutledge; John Rutledge[E]
Source:[2]

Gallery

See too

• American Revolutionary War#Prelude to revolution
• Founding Fathers of the United States
• List of delegates to the Continental Congress
• Journals of the Continental Congress

Notes

References

Sources

• Bancroft, George.
  History of the U.s. of America, from the discovery of the American continent.
  (1854–78), vol 4–ten online edition
• Burnett, Edmund C. (1975) [1941].
  The Continental Congress. Greenwood Publishing. ISBN0-8371-8386-3.
  
• Henderson, H. James (2002) [1974].
  Party Politics in the Continental Congress. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN0-8191-6525-5.
  
• Launitz-Schurer,
  Loyal Whigs and Revolutionaries, The making of the revolution in New York, 1765-1776, 1980, ISBN 0-8147-4994-i
• Ketchum, Richard,
  Divided Loyalties, How the American Revolution came to New York, 2002, ISBN 0-8050-6120-seven
• Miller, John C.
  Origins of the American Revolution
  (1943) online edition
• Puls, Marking,
  Samuel Adams, male parent of the American Revolution, 2006, ISBN 1-4039-7582-5
• Montross, Lynn (1970) [1950].
  
  The Reluctant Rebels; the Story of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789
  . Barnes & Noble. ISBN0-389-03973-X.
  
• Peter Force, ed.
  American Archives,
  9 vol 1837–1853, major compilation of documents 1774–1776. online edition

External links