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Kids learn about the history of the French and Indian War of the American Colonies between 1754 and 1763 including major battles, events, ending, and results.

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Britain and France once fought over who’d dominate North America: Trade with Native Americans sparked this conflict, and a fellow called George Washington got involved!

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The Fight Begins: The British Punish Boston 

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The Fight Begins: The British Punish Boston 

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The Fight Begins_The British Punish Boston

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Learn about the Intolerable Acts of the American Revolution including how they got their name, the Boston Port Act, Quartering Act, results, and interesting facts.

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The Causes of the American Revolution: Brain Pop

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The Causes of the American Revolution: Brain Pop

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Brain Pop: The Declaration of Independence

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Brain Pop: The Declaration of Independence

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Sons of Liberty was a group established to undermine British rule in colonial America and was influential in organizing The Boston Tea Party.

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Non-Colonists in the American Revolution 

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Non-Colonists in the American Revolution 

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The NonColonist in the American Revolution

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Learn about the Sons of Liberty of the American Revolution including how they got their name, important members, protests, the Stamp Act, the Boston Tea Party, and interesting facts.

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The History Place - American Revolution: Patrick Henry Speech - Liberty or Death!

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At The History Place - Great Speeches collection

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Patrick Henry was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the first governor of Virginia. He was a gifted orator and major figure in the American Revolution. His rousing speeches-which included a 1775 speech to the Virginia legislature in which he famously declared, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"-fired up America's fight for independence. An outspoken Anti-Federalist, Henry opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, which he felt put too much power in the hands of a national government. His influence helped create the Bill of Rights, which guaranteed personal freedoms and set limits on the government's power.

Patrick Henry's Early Years

Patrick Henry was born in 1736 to John and Sarah Winston Henry on his family's farm in Hanover County, Virginia. He was educated mostly at home by his father, a Scottish-born planter who had attended college in Scotland.

Henry struggled to find a profession as a young adult. He failed in several attempts as a storeowner and a planter. He taught himself law while working as a tavern keeper at his father-in-law's inn and opened a law practice in Hanover County in 1760.

As a lawyer and politician, Patrick Henry was known for his persuasive and passionate speeches, which appealed as much to emotion as to reason. Many of Henry's contemporaries likened his rhetorical style to the evangelical preachers of the Great Awakening, a protestant religious revival that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s.

Parson's Cause

Henry's first major legal case was known as the Parson's Cause in 1763, a dispute involving Anglican clergy in colonial Virginia. The case - one of the first legal attempts to challenge the limits of England's power over the American colonies - is often viewed as an important event leading up to the American Revolution.

Ministers of the Church of England in Virginia were paid their annual salaries in tobacco. A tobacco shortage caused by drought led to price increases in the late 1750s. In response, the Virginia legislature passed the Two-Penny Act, which set the value of the Anglican ministers' annual salaries at two pennies per pound of tobacco, rather than the inflated price that was closer to six pennies per pound. The Anglican clergy appealed to Britain's King George III, who overturned the law and encouraged ministers to sue for back pay.

The Parson's Cause established Patrick Henry as a leader in the emerging movement for American independence. During the case, Henry, then a relatively unknown attorney, delivered an impassioned speech against British overreach into colonial affairs, arguing "that a King by annulling or disallowing acts of so salutary a nature, from being Father of his people degenerated into a Tyrant, and forfeits all rights to his subjects' obedience."

Stamp Act

In 1765, Great Britain passed the first of a series of taxes to help pay for the growing costs of defending the American colonies. The Stamp Act of 1765 required American colonists to pay a small tax on every piece of paper they used.

Colonists viewed the Stamp Act-an attempt by England to raise money in the colonies without approval from colonial legislatures-as a troublesome precedent.

Patrick Henry responded to the Stamp Act with a series of resolutions introduced to the Virginia legislature in a speech. The resolves, adopted by the Virginia legislature, were soon published in other colonies, and helped to articulate America's stance against taxation without representation under the British Crown. The resolves declared that Americans should be taxed only by their own representatives and that Virginians should pay no taxes except those voted on by the Virginia legislature.

Later in the speech, Henry flirted with treason when he hinted that the King risked suffering the same fate as Julius Caesar if he maintained his oppressive policies.

Give me liberty, or give me death!

In March of 1775, the Second Virginia Convention met at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, to discuss the state's strategy against the British. It was here that Patrick Henry delivered his most famous speech, ending with the quote, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"

"Gentlemen may cry, 'Peace, Peace,' but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? ... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and five of the six other Virginians who would later sign the Declaration of Independence were in attendance that day. Historians say that Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech helped convince those in attendance to begin preparing Virginia troops for war against Great Britain. Royal Governor Lord Dunmore responded to the speech by removing gunpowder from the magazine. That November, he would issue Dunmore's Proclamation declaring martial law in Virginia and promising freedom to slaves of revolutionaries who joined the King's cause.

Henry spoke without notes. No transcripts exist from his famous address. The only known version of the speech was reconstructed in an 1817 biography of Henry by author William Wirt, leading some historians to speculate that the famous Patrick Henry quote may have been fabricated by Wirt to sell copies of his book.

Patrick Henry: Wives and Children

Patrick Henry married his first wife, Sarah Shelton, in 1754, and the two went on to have six children together. Sarah died in 1775, the year of Henry's famous "Liberty or Death" speech. He married Dorothea Dandridge of Tidewater, Virginia, two years later and their union produced eleven children.

Anti-Federalism and the Bill of Rights

Patrick Henry served as Virginia's first governor (1776-1779) and sixth governor (1784-1786).

In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, Henry became an outspoken Anti-Federalist. Henry and other Anti-Federalists opposed the ratification of the 1787 United States Constitution, which created a strong federal government.

Patrick Henry worried that a federal government that was too powerful and too centralized could evolve into a monarchy. He was the author of several Anti- Federalist Papers -written arguments by Founding Father's who opposed the U.S. Constitution.

While the Anti-Federalists were unable to stop the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the Anti-Federalist Papers were influential in helping to shape the Bill of Rights. The first 10 Amendments to the United States Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, protected individual liberties and placed limits on the powers of the federal government.

Besides a brief stint as a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress -the United States government during the American Revolution-Patrick Henry never held national public office.

He died on June 6, 1799 at the age of 63 from stomach cancer. His Southern Virginia plantation is now the Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial.

Sources

Henry's Full Biography; Red Hill Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation.

Patrick Henry Arguing the Parson's Cause; Virginia Museum of History and Culture.

A Summary of the 1765 Stamp Act; Colonial Williamsburg.

Patrick Henry, Orator of Liberty; U.S. Library of Congress.

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Patrick Henry was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the first governor of Virginia. He was a gifted orator and major figure in the American Revolution. His rousing speeches-which included a 1775 speech to the Virginia legislature in which he famously declared, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"-fired up America's fight for independence.

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Paul Revere Video - Paul Revere - HISTORY.com

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Paul Revere was a Patriot leader and symbol of the American Revolution. Find out more about the man who infamously warned the minutemen of a British invasion in 1775 in this video.

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History Channel: The American Revolution 

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History Channel: The American Revolution 

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Britain and the Imperial Crises

Throughout most of colonial history, the British Crown was the only political institution that united the American colonies. The Imperial Crises of the 1760s and 1770s, found England saddled with crippling debt, incurred in large part by wars such as the French and Indian War.

The British government responded by increasing taxes on the American colonists, which drove the colonies toward greater unity. Americans throughout the 13 colonies united in opposition to the new system of imperial taxation initiated by the British government in 1765.

The Stamp Act of that year-the first direct, internal tax imposed on the colonists by the British Parliament-inspired concerted resistance within the colonies. Nine colonial assemblies sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress, an extralegal convention that met to coordinate the colonies' response to the new tax. Although the Stamp Act Congress was short-lived, it hinted at the enhanced unity among the colonies that would soon follow.

Did you know? Almost every significant political figure of the American Revolution served in the Continental Congress, including Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Patrick Henry and George Washington.

Colonial opposition effectively killed the Stamp Act and brought about its repeal in 1766. The British government did not abandon its claim to the authority to pass laws for the colonies, however, and would make repeated attempts to exert its power over them in the years to follow.

Taxation Without Representation

In response to the violence of the Boston Massacre of 1770 and new taxes like the Tea Act of 1773, a group of frustrated colonists protested taxation without representation by dumping 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor on the night of December 16, 1773 - an event known to history as Boston Tea Party.

Colonists continued to coordinate their resistance to new imperial measures, but between 1766 until 1774, they did so primarily through committees of correspondence, which exchanged ideas and information, rather than through a united political body.

The First Continental Congress

On September 5, 1774, delegates from each of the 13 colonies-except Georgia, which was fighting a Native American uprising and was dependent on the British for military supplies-met at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia as the First Continental Congress to organize colonial resistance to the Intolerable Acts (or Coercive Acts) recently passed by the British Parliament.

The delegates included a number of future luminaries, such as future presidents John Adams of Massachusetts and George Washington of Virginia, and future U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and diplomat John Jay of New York. The Congress was structured with emphasis on the equality of participants, and to promote free debate.

After much discussion, the Congress issued a Declaration of Rights, affirming its loyalty to the British Crown but disputing the British Parliament's right to tax it without representation in the parliament. The Congress also passed the Articles of Association, which called on the colonies to stop importing goods from the British Isles beginning on December 1, 1774, if the Intolerable Acts were not repealed.

Should Britain fail to redress the colonists' grievances in a timely manner, the Congress declared, then it would reconvene on May 10, 1775, and the colonies would cease to export goods to Britain on September 10, 1775. After proclaiming these measures, the First Continental Congress disbanded on October 26, 1774.

Second Continental Congress

As promised, Congress reconvened at Independence Hall in Philadelphia as the Second Continental Congress on May 10, 1775-and by then the American Revolution had already begun.

The British army in Boston had met with armed resistance on the morning of April 19, 1775, when it marched out to the towns of Lexington and Concord to seize a cache of weapons held by colonial Patriots who had ceased to recognize the authority of the royal government of Massachusetts.

The colonists drove the British expedition back to Boston and laid siege to the town. The Revolutionary War had begun.

Fighting for Reconciliation

Although the Congress professed its abiding loyalty to the British Crown, it also took steps to preserve its rights by dint of arms. On June 14, 1775, a month after it reconvened, it created a united colonial fighting force, the Continental Army. The next day, it named George Washington as the new army's commander in chief.

The following month, the Continental Congress issued its "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms," penned by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, a veteran of the First Congress whose "Letters from a Farmer of Pennsylvania" (1767) had helped arouse opposition to earlier imperial measures, and by a newcomer from Virginia, Thomas Jefferson.

In an effort to avoid a full-scale war, Congress coupled this declaration with the Olive Branch Petition, a personal appeal to Britain's King George III, asking him to help the colonists resolve their differences with Britain. The king dismissed the petition out of hand.

Common Sense, Divided Loyalties

For over a year, the Continental Congress supervised a war against a country to which it proclaimed its loyalty. In fact, both the Congress and the people it represented were divided on the question of independence even after a year of open warfare against Great Britain.

Early in 1776, a number of factors began to strengthen the call for separation. In his stirring pamphlet " Common Sense," published in January of that year, the British immigrant Thomas Paine laid out a convincing argument in favor of independence.

At the same time, many Americans came to realize that their military might not be capable of defeating the British Empire on its own. Independence would allow it to form alliances with Britain's powerful rivals-and France was at the forefront of everyone's mind. Meanwhile, the war itself evoked hostility toward Britain among the citizenry, paving the way for independence.

Declaration of Independence

In the spring of 1776, the provisional colonial governments began to send new instructions to their congressional delegates, obliquely or directly allowing them to vote for independence. The provisional government of Virginia went further: It instructed its delegation to submit a proposal for independence before Congress.

On June 7, Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee complied with his instructions. Congress postponed a final vote on the proposal until July 1, but appointed a committee to draft a provisional declaration of independence for use should the proposal pass.

The committee consisted of five men, including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania. But the declaration was primarily the work of one man, Thomas Jefferson, who penned an eloquent defense of the natural rights of all people, of which, he charged, Parliament and the king had tried to deprive the American nation.

The Continental Congress made several revisions to Jefferson's draft, removing, among other things, an attack on the institution of slavery; but on July 4, 1776, the Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence.

Waging the War

The Declaration of Independence allowed Congress to seek alliances with foreign countries, and the fledgling U.S. formed its most important alliance early in 1778 with France, without the support of which America might well have lost the Revolutionary War.

If the Franco-American alliance was one of Congress's greatest successes, funding and supplying the war were among its worst failures. Lacking a pre-existing infrastructure, Congress struggled throughout the war to provide the Continental Army with adequate supplies and provisions.

Exacerbating the problem, Congress had no mechanism to collect taxes to pay for the war; instead, it relied on contributions from the states, which generally directed whatever revenue they raised toward their own needs. As a result, the paper money issued by Congress quickly came to be regarded as worthless.

The Articles of Confederation

Congress's inability to raise revenue would bedevil it for its entire existence, even after it created a constitution, known as the Articles of Confederation, to define its powers. Drafted and adopted by the Congress in 1777 but not ratified until 1781, it effectively established the United States as a collection of 13 sovereign states, each of which had an equal voice in Congress (which became officially known as the Congress of the Confederation) regardless of population.

Under the Articles, congressional decisions were made based on a state-by-state vote, and the Congress had little ability to enforce its decisions. The Articles of Confederation would prove incapable of governing the new nation in a time of peace, but they did not seriously undermine the war effort, both because the war was effectively winding down before the Articles took effect, and because Congress ceded many executive war powers to General Washington.

Treaty of Paris

Congress's final triumph came in 1783 when it negotiated the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the Revolutionary War. The Congressional delegates Franklin, Jay and Adams secured a favorable peace for the U.S. that included not only the recognition of independence, but also claim to almost all of the territory south of Canada and east of the Mississippi River.

On November 25, 1783, the last British troops evacuated New York City. The Revolutionary War was over and Congress had helped to see the country through.

However, the Articles of Confederation proved an imperfect instrument for a nation at peace with the world. The years immediately following the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783 presented the young American nation with a series of difficulties that Congress could not adequately remedy: dire financial straits, interstate rivalries and domestic insurrection.

Legacy of the Continental Congress

A movement developed for constitutional reform, culminating in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. The delegates at the convention decided to scrap the Articles of Confederation completely and create a new system of government.

In 1789, the new U.S. Constitution went into effect and the Continental Congress adjourned forever and was replaced by the U.S. Congress. Although the Continental Congress did not function well in a time of peace, it had steered the nation through one of its worst crises, declared its independence and helped to win a war to secure that independence.
READ MORE: What Did the Three Continental Congresses Do?
Sources

Continental Congress, 1774-1781. U.S. Department of State. Office of the Historian.
First Continental Congress. George Washington's Mount Vernon.
The Continental Congress. PBS: American Experience.
Continental and Confederation Congresses. U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives.
The Second Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence. National Park Service.

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Continental Congress: First, Second & Definition - HISTORY

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Throughout most of colonial history, the British Crown was the only political institution that united the American colonies. The Imperial Crises of the 1760s and 1770s, found England saddled with crippling debt, incurred in large part by wars such as the French and Indian War.

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Kids learn about The Continental Congress meetings; major events in the American Revolutionary War.

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Learn about Patriots and Loyalists during the Revolutionary War. One side wanted independence while the other wanted to remain part of Britain.

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Bet You Didn't Know: American Revolution 

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Bet You Didn't Know: American Revolution 

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From 1774 to 1789, the Continental Congress served as the government of the 13 American colonies and later the United States. The First Continental Congress, which was comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Coercive Acts, a series of measures imposed by the British government on the colonies in response to their resistance to new taxes. In 1775, the Second Continental Congress convened after the American Revolutionary War (1775-83) had already begun. In 1776, it took the momentous step of declaring America's independence from Britain. Five years later, the Congress ratified the first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation, under which the country would be governed until 1789, when it was replaced by the current U.S. Constitution.

The Imperial Crisis

Throughout most of colonial history, the British Crown was the only political institution that united the American colonies. The Imperial Crisis of the 1760s and 1770s, however, drove the colonies toward increasingly greater unity. Americans throughout the 13 colonies united in opposition to the new system of imperial taxation initiated by the British government in 1765. The Stamp Act of that year-the first direct, internal tax imposed on the colonists by the British Parliament-inspired concerted resistance within the colonies. Nine colonial assemblies sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress, an extralegal convention that met to coordinate the colonies' response to the new tax. Although the Stamp Act Congress was short-lived, it hinted at the enhanced unity among the colonies that would soon follow.

Did you know? Almost every significant political figure of the American Revolution served in the Continental Congress, including Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Patrick Henry and George Washington.

Colonial opposition made a dead letter of the Stamp Act and brought about its repeal in 1766. The British government did not abandon its claim to the authority to pass laws for the colonies, however, and would make repeated attempts to exert its power over the colonies in the years to follow. Colonists continued to coordinate their resistance to new imperial measures, but, from 1766 until 1774, did so primarily through committees of correspondence, which exchanged ideas and information, rather than through a united political body.

The First Continental Congress

On September 5, 1774, delegates from each of the 13 colonies except for Georgia (which was fighting a Native-American uprising and was dependent on the British for military supplies) met in Philadelphia as the First Continental Congress to organize colonial resistance to Parliament's Coercive Acts. The delegates included a number of future luminaries, such as future presidents John Adams (1735-1826) of Massachusetts and George Washington (1732-99) of Virginia, and future U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and diplomat John Jay (1745-1829) of New York. The Congress was structured with emphasis on the equality of participants, and to promote free debate. After much discussion, the Congress issued a Declaration of Rights, affirming its loyalty to the British Crown but disputing the British Parliament's right to tax it. The Congress also passed the Articles of Association, which called on the colonies to stop importing goods from the British Isles beginning on December 1, 1774, if the Coercive Acts were not repealed. Should Britain fail to redress the colonists' grievances in a timely manner, the Congress declared, then it would reconvene on May 10, 1775, and the colonies would cease to export goods to Britain on September 10, 1775. After proclaiming these measures, the First Continental Congress disbanded on October 26, 1774.

The Revolutionary War

As promised, Congress reconvened in Philadelphia as the Second Continental Congress on May 10, 1775-and by then the American Revolution had already begun. The British army in Boston had met with armed resistance on the morning of April 19, 1775, when it marched out to the towns of Lexington and Concord to seize a cache of weapons held by colonial Patriots who had ceased to recognize the authority of the royal government of Massachusetts. The Patriots drove the British expedition back to Boston and laid siege to the town. The Revolutionary War had begun.

Fighting for Reconcilliation

Although the Congress professed its abiding loyalty to the British Crown, it also took steps to preserve its rights by dint of arms. On June 14, 1775, a month after it reconvened, it created a united colonial fighting force, the Continental Army. The next day, it named George Washington as the new army's commander in chief. The following month, it issued its Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, penned by John Dickinson (1732-1808) of Pennsylvania, a veteran of the First Congress whose "Letters from a Farmer of Pennsylvania" (1767) had helped arouse opposition to earlier imperial measures, and by a newcomer from Virginia, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). In an effort to avoid a full-scale war, Congress coupled this declaration with the Olive Branch Petition, a personal appeal to Britain's King George III (1738-1820) asking him to help the colonists resolve their differences with Britain. The king dismissed the petition out of hand.

Declaring Independence

For over a year, the Continental Congress supervised a war against a country to which it proclaimed its loyalty. In fact, both the Congress and the people it represented were divided on the question of independence even after a year of open warfare against Great Britain. Early in 1776, a number of factors began to strengthen the call for separation. In his stirring pamphlet "Common Sense," published in January of that year, the British immigrant Thomas Paine (1737-1809) laid out a convincing argument in favor of independence. At the same time, many Americans came to realize that their military might not be capable of defeating the British Empire on its own. Independence would allow it to form alliances with Britain's powerful rivals-France was at the forefront of everyone's mind. Meanwhile, the war itself evoked hostility toward Britain among the citizenry, paving the way for independence.

In the spring of 1776, the provisional colonial governments began to send new instructions to their congressional delegates, obliquely or directly allowing them to vote for independence. The provisional government of Virginia went further: It instructed its delegation to submit a proposal for independence before Congress. On June 7, Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee (1732-94) complied with his instructions. Congress postponed a final vote on the proposal until July 1, but appointed a committee to draft a provisional declaration of independence for use should the proposal pass.

The committee consisted of five men, including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) of Pennsylvania. But the declaration was primarily the work of one man, Thomas Jefferson, who penned an eloquent defense of the natural rights of all people, of which, he charged, Parliament and the king had tried to deprive the American nation. The Continental Congress made several revisions to Jefferson's draft, removing, among other things, an attack on the institution of slavery; but on July 4, 1776, Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence.

Waging the War

The Declaration of Independence allowed Congress to seek alliances with foreign countries, and the fledgling U.S. formed its most important alliance early in 1778 with France, without the support of which America might well have lost the Revolutionary War. If the Franco-American alliance was one of Congress's greatest successes, funding and supplying the war were among its worst failures. Lacking a pre-existing infrastructure, Congress struggled throughout the war to provide the Continental Army with adequate supplies and provisions. Exacerbating the problem, Congress had no mechanism to collect taxes to pay for the war; instead, it relied on contributions from the states, which generally directed whatever revenue they raised toward their own needs. As a result, the paper money issued by Congress quickly came to be regarded as worthless.

The Articles of Confederation

Congress's inability to raise revenue would bedevil it for its entire existence, even after it created a constitution-the Articles of Confederation-to define its powers. Drafted and adopted by the Congress in 1777 but not ratified until 1781, it effectively established the U.S. as a collection of 13 sovereign states, each of which had an equal voice in Congress (which became officially known as the Congress of the Confederation) regardless of population. Under the Articles, congressional decisions were made based on a state-by-state vote, and the Congress had little ability to enforce its decisions. The Articles of Confederation would prove incapable of governing the new nation in a time of peace, but they did not seriously undermine the war effort, both because the war was effectively winding down before the Articles took effect, and because Congress ceded many executive war powers to General Washington.

Congress's final triumph came in 1783 when it negotiated the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the Revolutionary War. The Congressional delegates Franklin, Jay and Adams secured a favorable peace for the U.S. that included not only the recognition of independence but also claim to almost all of the territory south of Canada and east of the Mississippi River. On November 25, 1783, the last British troops evacuated New York City. The Revolutionary War was over and Congress had helped to see the country through.

However, the Articles of Confederation proved an imperfect instrument for a nation at peace with the world. The years immediately following the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783 presented the young American nation with a series of difficulties that Congress could not adequately remedy: dire financial straits, interstate rivalries and domestic insurrection. A movement developed for constitutional reform, culminating in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. The delegates at the convention decided to scrap the Articles of Confederation completely and create a new system of government. In 1789, the new U.S. Constitution went into effect and the Continental Congress adjourned forever and was replaced by the U.S. Congress. Although the Continental Congress did not function well in a time of peace, it had helped steer the nation through one of its worst crises, declared its independence and helped to win a war to secure that independence.

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From 1774 to 1789, the Continental Congress served as the government of the 13 American colonies and later the United States. The First Continental Congress, which was comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Coercive Acts, a series of measures imposed by the British government on the colonies in response to their resistance to new taxes.