Continental Congress
The Continental Congress took place September 5, 1774 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This meeting featured delegates from all colonies, except Georgia. Peyton Randolph of Virginia was named as president. This important body provided leadership during the American Revolution and drafted both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.
Primary Sources
- Continental Congress: National GeographicThe Continental Congress provided leadership during the American Revolution and drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.
- Journals of the Continental CongressThe First Continental Congress met from September 5 to October 26, 1774. The Second Continental Congress ran from May 10, 1775, to March 2, 1789. The Journals of the Continental Congress are the records of the daily proceedings of the Congress as kept by the office of its secretary, Charles Thomson. The Journals were printed contemporaneously in different editions and in several subsequent reprint editions. None of these editions, however, includes the "Secret Journals," confidential sections of the records, which were not published until 1821.
Perspectives
Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty
In 1776, when the Continental Congress declared independence, formally severing relations with Great Britain, it immediately began to fashion new objects and ceremonies of state with which to proclaim the sovereignty of the infant republic.In this marvelous social and cultural history of the Continental Congress, Benjamin H. Irvin describes this struggle to create a national identity during the American Revolution. The book examines the material artifacts, rituals, and festivities by which Congress endeavored not only to assert its political legitimacy and to bolster the war effort, but ultimately to exalt the United States and to win the allegiance of its inhabitants. Congress, for example, crafted an emblematic great seal, celebrated anniversaries of U.S. independence, and implemented august diplomatic protocols for the reception of foreign ministers. Yet as Irvin demonstrates, Congress could not impose its creations upon a passive American public. To the contrary, "the people out of doors"-broadly defined to include not only the working poor who rallied in the streets of Philadelphia, but all persons unrepresented in the Continental Congress, including women, loyalists, and Native Americans-vigorously contested Congress's trappings of nationhood.Vividly narrating the progress of the Revolution in Philadelphia and the lived experiences of its inhabitants during the tumultuous war, Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty sharpens our understanding of the relationship between political elites and crowds of workaday protestors as it illuminates the ways in which ideologies of gender, class, and race shaped the civic identity of the Revolutionary United States.
Lion of Liberty
In this action-packed history, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger unfolds the epic story of Patrick Henry, who roused Americans to fight government tyranny--both British and American. Remembered largely for his cry for "liberty or death," Henry was actually the first (and most colorful) of America's Founding Fathers--first to call Americans to arms against Britain, first to demand a bill of rights, and first to fight the growth of big government after the Revolution. As quick with a rifle as he was with his tongue, Henry was America's greatest orator and courtroom lawyer, who mixed histrionics and hilarity to provoke tears or laughter from judges and jurors alike. Henry's passion for liberty (as well as his very large family), suggested to many Americans that he, not Washington, was the real father of his country. This biography is history at its best, telling a story both human and philosophical. As Unger points out, Henry's words continue to echo across America and inspire millions to fight government intrusion in their daily lives.
Independence: the Tangled Roots of the American Revolution
An important new interpretation of the American colonists' 150-year struggle to achieve independence "What do we mean by the Revolution?" John Adams asked Thomas Jefferson in 1815. "The war? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an effect and consequence of it." As the distinguished historian Thomas P. Slaughter shows in this landmark book, the long process of revolution reached back more than a century before 1776, and it touched on virtually every aspect of the colonies' laws, commerce, social structures, religious sentiments, family ties, and political interests. And Slaughter's comprehensive work makes clear that the British who chose to go to North America chafed under imperial rule from the start, vigorously disputing many of the colonies' founding charters. When the British said the Americans were typically "independent," they meant to disparage them as lawless and disloyal. But the Americans insisted on their moral courage and political principles, and regarded their independence as a great virtue, as they regarded their love of freedom and their loyalty to local institutions. Over the years, their struggles to define this independence took many forms, and Slaughter's compelling narrative takes us from New England and Nova Scotia to New York and Pennsylvania, and south to the Carolinas, as colonists resisted unsympathetic royal governors, smuggled to evade British duties on imported goods (tea was only one of many), and, eventually, began to organize for armed uprisings. Britain, especially after its victories over France in the 1750s, was eager to crush these rebellions, but the Americans' opposition only intensified, as did dark conspiracy theories about their enemies--whether British, Native American, or French. InIndependence, Slaughter resets and clarifies the terms in which we may understand this remarkable evolution, showing how and why a critical mass of colonists determined that they could not be both independent and subject to the British Crown. By 1775-76, they had become revolutionaries--going to war only reluctantly, as a last-ditch means to preserve the independence that they cherished as a birthright.
Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laur
Dual biography of two important figures of the American Revolution
John Adams and the Second Continental Congress
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
John Adams nominates George Washington to lead the continental army in May 1775. Distributed by PBS Distribution.
Continental Congress Art
Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/continental-congress/
Internet Resources
- Continental and Confederation CongressesFrom 1774 to 1781, Delegates from the 13 colonies located along the eastern seaboard of British North America met in the First Continental Congress (1774) and the Second Continental Congress (1775–1781) to declare their independence from England, manage the Revolutionary War, and set the groundwork for what would become a new nation.
- Continental CongressFrom 1774 to 1789, the Continental Congress served as the government of the 13 American colonies and later the United States. The First Continental Congress, which was comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Coercive Acts, a series of measures imposed by the British government on the colonies in response to their resistance to new taxes.
- The Continental CongressThe First Continental Congress formed in response to the British Parliament's passage of the Intolerable Acts (called the Coercive Acts in England), which aimed to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party. In 1773 rebels unconvincingly disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three docked ships in Boston Harbor and dumped 90,000 pounds of tea overboard. England moved swiftly to punish this act of blatant disrespect. The Intolerable Acts closed the busy port until the colonists repaid the damage caused by the Tea Party, installed a British general as governor of the colony, unilaterally changed the colony's charter, and even revoked certain liberties, including the right to hold meetings.
- Continental Congress, 1774–1781The Continental Congress was the governing body by which the American colonial governments coordinated their resistance to British rule during the first two years of the American Revolution. The Congress balanced the interests of the different colonies and also established itself as the official colonial liaison to Great Britain. As the war progressed, the Congress became the effective national government of the country, and, as such, conducted diplomacy on behalf of the new United States.
- First Continental CongressThe First Continental Congress convened in Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between September 5 and October 26, 1774.
First Continental Congress
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowFirst Continental Congress consisted of fifty-six delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies. They convened in response to the Coercive Acts passed by the British Parliament in 1774. Distributed by PBS Distribution.