63. The First Continental Congress

On September 5, 1774, there met at Philadelphia the most fateful and momentous assemblage ever gathered in the colonies: the Continental Congress. Brilliant and distinguished, the colonial leaders had come to decide the course of the colonies. They were, besides being eminent, young and vigorous, the average age of the delegates being only forty-five.

It soon became evident that there were two polar groups at the Congress: the radicals, determined on resistance to the British; and the conservatives, bent on more securely fastening the British yoke upon the colonies. It was sensibly determined that with the number of delegates varying greatly from each colony, the colonies would vote as separate units. Leading the radical forces were Massachusetts, headed by the brilliant father of the revolution Sam Adams and graced by his rising young distant cousin John Adams, and Virginia, whose delegation included the eminent young leaders Patrick Henry, George Washington, and Richard Henry Lee. North Carolina and the rest of New England dependably followed the radical lead, but Rhode Island’s inherent split between Hopkins and Ward served to cancel each other’s votes, and the blunder of the South Carolina radicals in selecting their delegates made matters difficult for the revolutionaries. Heading the Tory forces was the wily, shrewd Joseph Galloway of Philadelphia, seconded by the New York delegation, especially the young lawyer James Duane.

The Congress conducted its deliberations in secret. It began in committee by debating two vital questions: the philosophical groundwork of the American stand, and how far it would deny the authority of Parliament. The radicals on the committee, led by John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, insisted on grounding the American case on the ultimacy of natural law and natural rights. The conservatives, on the other hand, were most anxious to ignore natural law and its profoundly radical implications and to confine the American statement of grievances to legalistic discussions of the British constitution. Joseph Galloway, James Duane, and Edward Rutledge led this attempt, but the radicals prevailed in cleaving to natural law.

During this early formative period of the Congress, Sam Adams engineered a masterstroke that electrified the meeting. Adams had the radicals of Suffolk County (including Boston) meet to draw up county resolves such as Middlesex and other counties had done. Prevented by the British authorities from meeting in Boston, the radicals met at a village outside the metropolis on September 9 and adopted a set of resolves drawn up by Dr. Joseph Warren. Known as the Suffolk Resolves, they were sped down to Philadelphia by Paul Revere, reaching there on September 16. The Resolves bitterly opposed the recent acts of Parliament and called ringingly for mass civil disobedience. “No obedience is due from this province to either or any part” of the Coercive Acts, they asserted. Furthermore, no taxes would be paid to the constituted government until it became truly valid. In short, the Resolves implicitly called upon the people of Massachusetts to set up a dual government that would cease to obey, and indeed ignore, the British-appointed authorities. In addition, the resistance would use violence only defensively, and only if the British attempted to enforce the Coercive Acts upon the people. Besides the specific civil disobedience in Massachusetts, the Suffolk Resolves urged the Continental Congress to organize a general voluntary boycott of all trade relations with Britain.

The Suffolk Resolves struck the Congress with overwhelming force. The day after they were received, the Congress voted to endorse them enthusiastically. Adams’ brilliant strategy had thus gotten the Congress committed to civil disobedience in Massachusetts and to the principle of an absolute boycott of Great Britain. John Adams, deeply moved, wrote in his diary that “this was one of the happiest days of my life.” Now he knew that “America will support Massachusetts or perish with her.” Sam Adams supported that judgment. Five days later, on September 22, the Congress specifically endorsed the Suffolk clause for a boycott of Great Britain.

But, it soon became clear, the radicals had not yet won the day. The Congress was not ready to endorse dual courts or legislatures to be set up by the people in Massachusetts, much less to think of absolute independence. Indeed, Joseph Galloway was now ready to play his last Tory trump. The wily Galloway introduced to the Congress his “Plan of the Proposed Union Between Great Britain and the Colonies.” Galloway’s plan pursued the old Tory dream, proposed since the late seventeenth century, of a centralized government for all the colonies. Under the tempting facade of colonial unity, Great Britain was finally to unite the colonies under one imperial yoke. Each colony was to retain its present form of rule over its local affairs. The central government for the several colonies was to consist of a president-general appointed by the king, subject to the king’s veto, and holding office at the king’s pleasure, and of a grand council chosen by the assembly of each province. The grand council’s actions were to be subject to the president-general’s veto. This central organ of president and Council was, furthermore, to constitute an inferior branch of the British legislature, and measures dealing with America could originate either with this body or with the rest of Parliament, each of which would have to agree with the measure.

The similarities of Galloway’s plan to Franklin’s Albany Plan, at the Albany Congress of 1754, are obvious. Galloway, however, would have even more solidly cemented the ties between America and Britain. The central authority was to act as a transmission belt of rule between Britain and the separate colonies. And with the new central body inducted, as it were, into the British Parliament, the plea of no taxation without representation would no longer hold.

Joseph Galloway’s lethal but sugarcoated pill constituted the big conservative drive of the Congress. Galloway opined that every society “must” have one supreme legislature and executive as its authority, that every individual of a society “must be subordinate to [the] supreme will” of this authority, and that, in the present case, this authority was the British Parliament. Supporting the Galloway plan were Duane and the two youngest delegates to the Congress, Edward Rutledge (25) and New York’s John Jay (29). Leading the opposition were Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee. Galloway’s plan was just barely defeated by a vote of six to five (Rhode Island producing a tie between its two delegates). Although the vote was secret, it is safe to guess that Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Virginia, and North Carolina voted nay, while Pennsylvania, New York (dominated by the conservative New York City delegates), and South Carolina voted in favor. This means that one of the middle colonies—New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland—voted against the plan.

This vote was the high-water mark for conservatism at the Congress. The victorious radicals tried to eliminate all traces of the close balloting. On October 8 the Congress became still more explicit in support of Massachusetts’ resistance, specifically applauding that province’s moves and urging all America to come to the aid of Massachusetts should Britain try to impose upon it an enforcement of the Coercive Acts. Galloway and Duane tried unsuccessfully to have their opposition to this resolution recorded in the minutes of the Congress.

That the Congress should issue a declaration of grievances and petition Britain for redress was agreed upon by all, liberal and conservative alike. The philosophical groundwork of rights and the admitted scope of parliamentary authority had now to be determined. With Duane largely responsible for its writing, the Declaration of Rights, adopted on October 14, played down the inalienable, natural rights of life, liberty, and property, and stressed instead the far more restricted rights of petition, assembly, and jury trial, as well as freedom from a standing army without consent of an Assembly. The position taken on Parliament was also rather backward for the dynamic situation of the time. The old orthodox and weak American position was simply reiterated: Parliament had the right to regulate American trade but not to tax the colonies internally or externally, or to govern their domestic affairs. The Coercive Acts and the Quebec Act were condemned, and repeal was urged of thirteen invasive parliamentary acts that had been in effect since 1763. The Congress also requested the termination of British standing armies occupying American towns, of the dissolutions of colonial assemblies, and of the aggrandizement of the vice admiralty courts. The Congress’s address to the king, drawn up by the moderate John Dickinson, carefully followed the customs of rendering obeisance to the king and pinning the blame on his advisers and underlings alone.

Having endorsed Massachusetts’ resistance, urged redress of grievances, and rejected Galloway’s plan for a central government, the Congress took up its final—and vital—matter of business: deciding the general American means of waging the struggle against Britain; specifically, the question of a continental boycott. On October 18, the Congress agreed to the Continental Association, closely patterned after the Virginia Association of early August. The colonies jointly pledged an absolute boycott of trade with Great Britain: nonimportation after December 1 (including no slave trade after that date); nonconsumption of British products after March 1, 1775; and no exports to Britain after September 1, 1775. Because of the threat of the South Carolina delegation (with the exception of the redoubtable Gadsden) not to sign, the Congress reluctantly agreed to exempt South Carolina’s staple, rice, from the ban on exports to Britain. Most ardent for total boycott were Thomas Cushing of Massachusetts, young Samuel Chase of Maryland, and Eliphalet Dyer of Connecticut, who urged immediate nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation, but they were overruled by the necessity of gaining the support of Virginia’s tobacco planters.

The Continental Association was to remain in effect until all the listed grievances had been redressed. It was to be enforced by rigorous but nonviolent methods of persuasion and expression. Any trader violating the boycott would be ostracized and boycotted by every colony; as to enforcement, every town, city, and county would select a committee to oversee the boycott, publicize the names of violators, and then denounce them as “enemies of American liberty.” Furthermore, any colony violating or failing to agree to the Association would be denounced and itself be boycotted.

The Continental Congress had on the whole done its work well. Despite a lack of enthusiasm (again excepting Christopher Gadsden) for taking the offensive against British troops, for American independence, and even for denying the authority of Parliament to regulate trade, and despite the strong conservative bloc and its machinations, the Congress stood squarely behind Massachusetts and took steps to come to its aid. Civil disobedience and defensive resistance by the people of Massachusetts were endorsed, and the Continental Association was pledged to boycott British trade until the grievances of Massachusetts and other Americans should be allayed. Charles Thomson, the Philadelphia radical leader who had been chosen secretary of the Congress, expressed a common sentiment upon adjournment: “I hope [the] administration will... be convinced that it is not a little faction but the whole body of American freeholders... that now complain and apply for redress: and who, I am sure, will resist rather than submit... even yet the wound may be healed and peace and law restored. But we are at the brink of a precipice.”

Finally, before adjourning on October 26, the Continental Congress resolved to meet again the following May 10 if its grievances had not yet been relieved. Thus a permanent revolutionary assembly was here created. It should be noted, however, that since the measures of enforcement of the boycott were to be purely local and voluntary among the people, the First Continental Congress could in no proper sense be regarded as a dual governmental institution.