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For nine years, from 1754–1763, Britain spent a large amount of money fighting

the French and Indian War, a war with France that began over control of the land

in the Ohio River valley and soon spread over much of the globe.

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The Stamp Act Congress passed a Declaration of Rights. Which claimed that American colonists were equal to all other British citizens, protested taxation without representation, without colonial representation in Parliament, Parliament could not tax colonists.

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The British had a large army in North America as a consequence. On 22 March 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which sought to raise money to pay for this army through a tax on all legal and official papers and publications circulating in the colonies.

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On March 5, 1770, British soldiers shot into a crowd of rowdy colonists in front of the Custom House on King Street, killing five and wounding six.

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March 18, 1766

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Was passed on June 29, 1767

To help pay the expenses involved in governing the American colonies, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which initiated taxes on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea.

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On the night of December 16, 1773, dozens of disguised men, some as Indigenous Americans, boarded the three East India Company ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor

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In March 1770, most of the taxes from the Townshend Acts were repealed by Parliament under Frederick, Lord North. However, the import duty on tea was retained in order to demonstrate to the colonists that Parliament held the sovereign authority to tax its colonies

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Townshend Acts - Definition, Facts & Purpose | HISTORY

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The Townshend Acts were a series of unpopular measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. The laws heightened the tensions between Great Britain and the American colonists and were a precursor to the Revolutionary War.

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The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party.

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Intolerable Acts, (1774), in U.S. colonial history, four punitive measures enacted by the British Parliament in retaliation for acts of colonial defiance, together with the Quebec Act establishing a new administration for the territory ceded to Britain after the French and Indian War (1754-63).

The cumulative effect of the reports of colonial resistance to British rule during the winter of 1773-74 was to make Parliament more determined than ever to assert its authority in America. The main force of its actions fell on Boston, which seemed to be the centre of colonial hostility. First, the British government, angered by the Boston Tea Party (1773), passed the Boston Port Bill, closing that city's harbour until restitution was made for the destroyed tea. Second, the Massachusetts Government Act abrogated the colony's charter of 1691, reducing it to the level of a crown colony, replacing the elective local council with an appointive one, enhancing the powers of the military governor, Gen. Thomas Gage, and forbidding town meetings without approval. Third, the Administration of Justice Act was aimed at protecting British officials charged with capital offenses during law enforcement by allowing them to go to England or another colony for trial. The fourth Intolerable Act included new arrangements for housing British troops in occupied American dwellings, thus reviving the indignation that surrounded the earlier Quartering Act, which had been allowed to expire in 1770. Passed on June 2, 1774, the new Quartering Act applied to all of British America and gave colonial governors the right to requisition unoccupied buildings to house British troops. However, in Massachusetts the British troops were forced to remain camped on the Boston Common until the following November because the Boston patriots refused to allow workmen to repair the vacant buildings General Gage had obtained for quarters.

The Quebec Act, under consideration since 1773, removed all the territory and fur trade between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from possible colonial jurisdiction and awarded it to the province of Quebec. By establishing French civil law and the Roman Catholic religion in the coveted area, Britain acted liberally toward Quebec's settlers but raised the spectre of popery before the mainly Protestant colonies to Canada's south.

The Intolerable Acts represented an attempt to reimpose strict British control over the American colonies, but, after 10 years of vacillation, the decision to be firm had come too late. Rather than cowing Massachusetts and separating it from the other colonies, the oppressive measures became the justification for convening the First Continental Congress later in 1774.

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Intolerable Acts | 1774, Definition, Summary, Significance, & Facts

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Intolerable Acts, four punitive measures enacted by Britain in 1774 against the American colonies. They included the Boston Port Bill, which closed Boston Harbor, and the Massachusetts Government Act, which abrogated the colony's charter of 1691. Learn more about these and the other Intolerable Acts.

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empowered delegates to attend a Continental Congress which would set terms for a boycott. The colony of Connecticut was the first to respond. The Congress first met in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774, with delegates from each of the 13 colonies except Georgia.

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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 and 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.

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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The Continental Congress was the first governing body of America. It led the Revolutionary War effort and ratified the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

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The Second Continental Congress was the late 18th-century meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that united in support of the American Revolution and the Revolutionary War, which established American independence from the British Empire

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The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It was engrossed on parchment and on August 2, 1776, delegates began signing it.

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Signing of the United States Declaration of Independence - Wikipedia

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The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence occurred primarily on August 2, 1776 at the Pennsylvania State House, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress represented the 13 former colonies which had declared themselves the "United States of America," and they endorsed the Declaration of Independence which the Congress had approved on July 4, 1776.

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The Stamp Act became one of the most controversial laws ever passed by Parliament, and after several months of protests and boycotts which damaged British trade, it was repealed on 18 March 1766.

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he Catalyst of the Boston Tea Party. The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, granted the British East India Company Tea a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonies.

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The first shots of the Revolutionary War are fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. The news of the bloodshed rockets along the eastern seaboard, and thousands of volunteers converge—called "Minute Men" April 19, 1775