2G - The hardening of colonial opposition: the First Continental Congress
Learn how the colonies turned a dispute over British authority into organised resistance and then began to replace royal government. The First Continental Congress and the new state constitutions reveal both growing cooperation and continuing disagreement about who should hold power.
Continental cooperation in 1774
The punishment of Massachusetts after the Boston Tea Party raised a question for the other colonies: if Parliament could alter one colony's government, could it do the same to theirs? Sending food to Boston expressed sympathy, but coordinated pressure required agreement on what the colonies would do together. Delegates therefore met at the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia from 5 September to 26 October 1774. Twelve colonies were represented; Georgia was absent. It was a meeting of colonial representatives, not an elected national parliament with established authority over every inhabitant. Congress chronology.
Delegates brought different interests. Massachusetts radicals wanted firm resistance; merchants elsewhere feared damage to trade; plantation colonies had different economic priorities from northern ports. Joseph Galloway proposed a colonial union within the empire, involving a crown-appointed president-general and a representative grand council. Its rejection showed that a constitutional compromise was losing ground. It did not mean Congress had agreed to independence.
Congress endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, which urged Massachusetts to resist the coercive measures and prepare for defence. Its Declaration of Rights and Grievances defended colonial consent to taxation, representative government and rights associated with the English constitution. It also accepted parliamentary regulation of external trade when directed to the empire's commercial interests rather than raising colonial revenue. This qualification matters: Congress disputed the extent of Parliament's power while still seeking a workable imperial connection. Rights and Grievances context.
The change lay in the scale and organisation of resistance. A grievance centred on Massachusetts became a continental political problem. Yet the delegates still petitioned George III for redress. Cooperation and allegiance could coexist in 1774.
The Association and local power
The Continental Association, adopted on 20 October 1774, made economic resistance more systematic. It provided for stopping imports from Britain from December, refusing consumption of specified British goods and ending exports to Britain and its dependent markets in September 1775 if the grievances remained unresolved. The delayed export ban reflected the need to secure agreement from colonies dependent on agricultural exports. Resistance was a negotiated programme, not the automatic expression of identical colonial interests. Articles of Association.
Local committees inspected compliance and publicised breaches. Their authority came from revolutionary agreement rather than royal appointment. A trader who ignored the boycott risked public condemnation and the loss of customers. The programme therefore connected elite decisions in Philadelphia to everyday buying, selling and manufacturing. Participation by ordinary colonists helped make resistance effective, while organised pressure could also intimidate those who disagreed.
This had a constitutional consequence. Committees increasingly decided who acted in the community's interest. Provincial conventions and congresses began to coordinate affairs when royal assemblies were dissolved or obstructed. People acquired experience of obeying institutions that the imperial government did not authorise. A boycott intended to force concessions consequently helped build machinery capable of governing outside the empire.
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