Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress

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Like the Stamp Act Congress that had preceded it, the First Continental Congress was convened to articulate the colonists' grievances against Parliament. The Massachusetts House of Representatives issued the call on June 17, 1774, for a meeting in Philadelphia for which two states had already made preparations. In time, fifty-five delegates, from all colonies except Georgia, sent representatives to meet in Carpenter's Hall, near the Pennsylvania State House, or Independence Hall.

As with the Stamp Act Congress, each colony had a single vote. Congress chose Virginia's Peyton Randolph, chairman of that colony's House of Burgesses, as its president, and Charles Thomson of Pennsylvania as its secretary. Other notable delegates included John and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts; Roger Sherman and Silas Deane of Connecticut; John Jay of New York; William Livingston of New Jersey; John Dickinson of Pennsylvania; Caesar Rodney of Delaware; Samuel Chase of Maryland; Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Harrison, and Edmund Pendleton of Virginia; and John Rutledge of South Carolina. The delegates created two committees. One committee, composed of two delegates from each colony, was commissioned to prepare a statement of colonial rights, their infringements, and the means of redressing them. The second committee, consisting of one representative from each colony, was commissioned to report on laws affecting colonial trade and manufacturing. Meanwhile, John Sullivan of New Hampshire prepared the first draft of the Declaration and Resolves.

Historians often divide members of the convention into moderate (conservative) delegates like John Jay of New York and Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania, who were desperately trying to maintain ties to the mother country, and radicals like John and Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, who already seemed determined to seek independence. Radicals gained the upper hand in authoring the Declaration and Resolves of the First Congress, yet the document called for peaceful resistance rather than armed force.