Back in 1774, when the 13 original colonies were still under British rule, delegates from 12 of them met up in Philadelphia to figure out how to push back against their leaders from across the pond.
The British Parliament had just passed a set of four laws now known as “The Intolerable Acts,” which essentially punished the Massachusetts Bay colony for the 1773 Boston Tea Party by diminishing some of the rights colonists had previously been entitled to.
Some people were calling for a boycott on British goods in response to those measures, and representatives from across the colonies decided to meet to discuss how that could work. So that fall, 56 delegates from all of the colonies except Georgia came to Philadelphia for a series of gatherings now known as the First Continental Congress.
Some of the delegates were people you’d easily recognize from a history book, like George Washington, John Jay, and Patrick Henry. John Adams was there too, and he staked out the radical position that independence from the British was the only solution to the colonies’ problems.
The Congress gathered for the first time on Sept. 5, 1774 at the City Tavern, and subsequent meetings happened in Carpenters’ Hall. During a month and a half of gatherings, the delegates organized a boycott of British goods to take effect on Dec. 1 if the Intolerable Acts had yet to be repealed. They issued a Declaration of Rights that disputed Parliament’s right to tax the colonies without representation. They also agreed that if one of them were to be attacked, the others would help defend it.
The First Continental Congress disbanded on Oct. 26. A second Congress would convene again in Philly in the spring of 1775 … and the rest is history.
