The Americans promptly chose representatives to an intercolonial congress which was to become known as the First Continental Congress. This body, composed of leading citizens of the colonies, gathered on September 5, 1774, at the City Tavern before convening formally at Carpenters’ Hall, a new building erected by the Carpenters’ Company of Philadelphia. Reluctant to adopt a course of open defiance, the Congress sent a petition to the King asking him to restore those rights of Englishmen which Parliament seemed determined to take away. In answer to the English acts of coercion, the Congress turned to economic pressure by calling upon Americans to boycott English goods. Although the First Continental Congress protested strongly against violations of the “rights of Englishmen” claimed for the American colonists, no demand for independence was made.
Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Wilson, 1759. Upon the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British, this portrait was removed from Franklin’s house by Captain Andre and carried to England. It was returned to America in 1906 by Earl Grey and is now in the White House, Washington, D. C.
After the first Congress adjourned on October 26, 1774, relations between the colonies and the mother country grew steadily worse. On April 19, 1775, the Minute Men of Massachusetts fought the British forces at Lexington and Concord, thus challenging the armed might of the British Empire. About a month later, on May 10, the Second Continental Congress met in an atmosphere of tension in the Assembly Room of the State House. The governing body, forced by events, moved from protest to resistance. Under the Presidency of John Hancock, the Congress (in June) chose George Washington to be General and Commander in Chief of the Army. The latter, “from his usual modesty, darted into the library-room” when his name was first suggested by John Adams. But after a unanimous election, Washington accepted that commission in the Assembly Room and left shortly thereafter to assume his most difficult duties. Despite the outbreak of warfare, this session of the Continental Congress adjourned on August 1, 1775, without a demand for independence.
When the Congress reconvened on September 5, 1775, in the State House, King George III had already issued a proclamation (August 23, 1775) declaring that “open and avowed rebellion” existed in the colonies. This and other actions of the King, as well as the publication in Philadelphia of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, caused public sentiment in favor of independence to grow rapidly in 1776. It was a difficult task, however, to overcome the reluctance of the conservative delegates to make an open break.
Silver inkstand, still preserved in Independence Hall, used during the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
City Tavern, where the delegates to the First Continental Congress gathered, on the morning of September 5, 1774, prior to their formal assembly at nearby Carpenters’ Hall. Engraving after William Birch, 1799. Courtesy Philadelphia Free Library.
