The First Continental Congress

• Parliament has passed another set of laws

◦About to punish the colonists for the troubles in Boston
• These new laws denounced in America as the Intolerable Acts
◦Prompted widespread calls for a meeting of the colonies
• Delegates from every colony except Georgia met in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774
• Some of the ablest men of the day were…
◦Samuel Adams (Massachusetts)
◦Roger Sherman (Connecticut)
◦Stephen Hopkins (Rhode Island)
◦John Dickinson & Joseph Galloway (Pennsylvania)
◦John Jay & Philip Livingston (New York)
◦John Rutledge (South Carolina)
◦George Washington, Richard Henry Lee & Patrick Henry (Virginia)
• George Washington
◦At the time was a former colonel in the French and Indian War
◦Was serving as a Virginia legislator
◦Had voted against the British policies
◦De ed royal orders for the legislature to stop meeting
◦Helped organize a boycott of British trade in Virginia
• John Adams
◦A rising lawyer in Boston
◦Had defended the British o cers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre
◦By the time of the rst continental congress, he had become a staunch supporter of
independence as well as a brilliant political analyst
• James Wilson
◦Was one of Pennsylvania’s delegates
◦His essay, “Consider on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British
Parliament” circulated among the other delegates
◦In this Wilson proposed the idea that the British government had no authority to govern
the colonies
• The delegates urged the colonies to refuse all trade with England until the hated taxes and
trade regulations were repealed
• The meeting adjourned on October 26, 1774, with a call for a second congress to be convened
the following May

The Second Continental Congress

• Fall and Winter 1774 - 1775

◦The British government continued to refuse to compromise, let alone reverse, its colonial
policies
• The second continental congress met in Philadelphia on MAy 10, 1775
◦By that time that revolutionary war had begun
• Those who attended the rst continental congress attended he second continental congress
• Thomas Je erson
◦32 years old
◦Joined the Virginia delegation in June 1775
• First Government
◦The second continental congress became the rst national government
◦For 5 years
‣ From the signing day of the Declaration of Independence to the Articles of
Confederation went into a ect on March 1, 1781

The Declaration of Independence

• Thomas Je erson wrote the Declaration of Independence
• Impressed his fellow colleagues on how passionate he was about freedom
• Locke believed people had natural rights
• On July 2, the delegates nally reached a decision
◦They agreed to Lee’s resolution and quickly took up consideration of Je erson’s work
◦None had ever rested on the idea that every person is important as an individual,
“created equal” and endowed with “certain unalienable rights” meaning rights that the
government could not take away
• The declaration was so revolutionary because it was founded on the concept of “the consent
of the governed”
• Central to this concept was to notion that “laws of nature and of nature’s God”