Ch. 1.4. From the First Continental Congress to the Declaration of Independence, 1774-76
Adapted from Yirush, pp. 252-55, 259-60.
The First Continental Congress (1774)
In its response to the Tea Party, Parliament had intended to isolate Massachusetts, but the Coercive Acts had the opposite effect, largely due to the committees of correspondence and the intercolonial cooperation that had been built up in the decade of escalating controversy since the Stamp Act.
From Sept. to Oct., 1774, as Massachusetts descended into open rebellion, 56 delegates from all of the mainland colonies except Georgia met in a Continental Congress in Philadelphia. For such a pan-colonial body to meet was illegal, even treasonous, especially since its delegates had, in many cases, been sent by provincial conventions that were in effect revolutionary governments, the royal governors having dissolved the old colonial assemblies. The delegates were divided between moderates (led by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania) and radicals (led by the cousins Samuel and John Adams, both from Boston).
The Congress agreed to a boycott of British imports, but it also petitioned the king for reconciliation. It also constituted a committee to draft a statement of rights and justifying the need to take up arms. Both Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson wrote the resulting Declaration of Rights.
Thomas Jefferson had first made a name for himself just a few months earlier in 1774. As as a relatively unknown, 31-year-old member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, he penned “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” which was intended as a guide for the Virginia delegation to the Continental Congress. His first publication, it helped establish him as a leading spokesman for colonial rights, as well as a suitable candidate for drafting the Declaration of Independence.
Drawing on Jefferson’s “Summary View” and other sources, the 1774 declaration of rights reiterated all of the modes of argument that had characterized settler discourse in the empire for more than a century. It held 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” had rights to “life, liberty and property,” which they “have never ceded to any sovereign power.”
The Congressional Declaration also called for the repeal of all of the post-1763 parliamentary legislation, including the Coercive Acts and the Quebec Act, which, they claimed, erected a “tyranny” in a country the settlers had helped to conquer. As well, the declaration denounced the presence of a standing army in the colonies, and reiterated the colonists’ right to jury trials. The Congress did concede that Parliament had the authority to regulate colonial trade but made it clear that this was only with the settlers’ “consent,” and only when its acts were truly for the “commercial advantage” of the “whole empire.”
Despite the hopes of many in the colonies, the ministry showed no sign that it would repeal the Coercive Acts and wind the constitutional clock back to 1763. In October, after Gage had refused to call the General Court into session, the Massachusetts towns defied him and sent representatives to a provincial congress, giving the colony something approaching a revolutionary government.
All across America in the winter of 1774–1775, authority at the provincial and local level was falling into the hands of extra-legal bodies. In December, the associations authorized by Congress began to enforce the boycott on British imports, adding another layer to the proliferation of extra-constitutional committees and conventions.
Battles of Lexington and Concord, MA, April, 1775
By early 1775 the war of words was coming to an end and the real one was about to begin. About 1000 British troops left Boston to seize a cache of arms in Concord, but, warned by Paul Revere and other Sons of Liberty, the patriot militia, known as the Minutemen, fought back, driving the British troops back to Boston, and resulting in about 50 patriot and 100 British killed.
The Second Continental Congress (1775-81)
The Continental Congress re-convened in May, 1775, first in Philadelphia. Though never formally established as such, the Continental Congress was effectively the first U.S. government. It would continue to meet in various places until 1781, when it was replaced by the Confederation Congress (1781-89). In June, 1775, the Congress created a Continental Army out of the militia units around Boston, and appointed George Washington as its commanding general.
Battle of Bunker Hill, Boston, June, 1775. British forces retook two strategic hills near Boston from patriots, but suffered high casualties, including more than 200 killed.
The Olive Branch Petition (July, 1775)
At the same time, the congressional moderates, with Dickinson again in the lead, insisted on sending one last petition to the king seeking reconciliation.
The Prohibitory Act (Dec. 22, 1775)
However in August, two days after he received this Olive Branch petition, George III issued a royal proclamation declaring the colonies in open rebellion. This was followed by a forceful speech before Parliament in October in which he vowed to defeat the rebellion. And in December, the king assented to the Prohibitory Act, which ended all trade with the colonies and sanctioned the seizure of their ships on the high seas as if they were “open enemies.”
In taking these actions, George III made it impossible for the settlers’ vision of an empire of independent states under a common monarchy to be realized. By putting them out of his protection, he was unilaterally sundering the reciprocal bonds of protection and allegiance. In such circumstances, the radicals in Congress contended that they could withdraw their allegiance and invoke their natural right to resist constituted authority.
The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776)
In May, 1776, Congress passed a resolution that accused the king and Parliament of excluding “the inhabitants of these united colonies from the protection of his Crown.” It then instructed the colonies to suppress all royal authority and to “adopt such government as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents.” And on June 7, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia moved “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”
The resulting Declaration of Independence, written largely by Jefferson, traced the arc of constitutional conflict in the empire, its powerful indictment of the king capturing the essence of the settlers’ concern for their constitutional rights in an uncertain imperial polity, from the repeated dissolution of their legislative bodies, to the suspension of their laws, to the interference with judicial tenure, to the denial of the right to trial by jury, to the presence of standing armies in their midst, and, finally, to the annulling of their charters.