Olive Branch Petition

The Second Continental Congress, in a last-ditch effort to avert war with Great Britain, signed the so-called Olive Branch Petition on June 5, 1775, and dispatched it to England on June 8. Leading the effort was John Dickinson, a delegate from Pennsylvania; he was joined by Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, John Rutledge, and Thomas Johnson in drafting the petition. The purpose of the petition was to induce Britain’s king, George III, to establish more equitable trade and taxation policies with regard to the American colonies. The situation was tense. On April 19, 1775, the opening salvos of what would become the Revolutionary War had been fought at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. Further, the First and Second Continental Congresses had authorized the invasion of “Canada,” as the province of Quebec was called at the time, with a view to enlisting the Canadians on the side of the American colonists. Escalation of war seemed inevitable, but many colonists wanted cooler heads to prevail on both sides of the Atlantic and were willing to remain loyal subjects of the Crown. They believed that by extending a “humble petition” to the king, they could persuade him to override what the colonists saw as the heavy-handedness of the British Parliament.

The petition, however, was doomed to failure. On June 17, 1775, the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought outside of Boston, a consequence of the Siege of Boston in the wake of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. On July 6, Congress issued the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. It is unclear whether the declaration was written by Dickinson or Thomas Jefferson; it is generally believed that Jefferson wrote a draft that Dickinson modified and softened in its tone. This document outlined the principal grievances of the colonies, including “taxation without representation” (the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, among others) and the Coercive Acts, passed to punish the colonies for the Boston Tea Party. In response to the Olive Branch Petition, which the king reputedly refused even to receive from his colonial secretary, he issued the Proclamation by the King for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition on August 23. The proclamation stated that the American colonies were in “open and avowed rebellion” and ordered officials of the British Empire to “use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion.” The result of the king’s proclamation, and the failure of the Olive Branch Petition to persuade the king to act as a conciliator between the colonies and Parliament, was to weaken remaining loyalty to the Crown. On July 4, 1776, the colonies declared their independence.