Continental Congress
The Continental Congress was a series of legislative bodies, with some executive function, for the Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain in North America, and the newly declared United States before, during, and after the American Revolutionary War.
After the king issued the Proclamation of Rebellion in August 1775 in response to the Battle of Bunker Hill, some members of the Second Congress concluded that peace with Britain would not be forthcoming, and began working towards unifying the colonies into a new nation.
Printed contemporaneously, the Journals of the Continental Congress contain the official congressional papers, letters, treaties, reports and records.
At the beginning of the American Revolution, committees of correspondence began building the foundation for interaction between the thirteen colonial states.
To present a united front in their opposition, delegates from several provinces met in the Stamp Act Congress, which convened in New York City from October 7 through 25, 1765.
Under pressure from British companies hurt by the embargo, the government of Prime Minister Lord Rockingham and King George III relented, and the Stamp Act was repealed in March 1766.
Only Georgia, where Loyalist feelings still outweighed Patriotic emotion, and which relied upon Great Britain for military supplies to defend settlers against possible Indian attacks, did not, nor did East and West Florida, which at the time were also British colonies.
During the congress, delegates organized an economic boycott of Great Britain in protest and petitioned the King for a redress of grievances.
The colonies were united in their effort to demonstrate to the mother country their authority by virtue of their common causes and their unity, but their ultimate objectives were inconsistent.
In London, Parliament debated the merits of meeting the demands made by the colonies; however, it took no official notice of Congress's petitions and addresses.
On November 30, 1774, King George III opened Parliament with a speech condemning Massachusetts and the Suffolk Resolves, prompting the Continental Congress to convene again.
Initially, it functioned as a de facto common government by raising armies, directing strategy, appointing diplomats, and making formal treaties.
The weak central government established by the Articles received only those powers which the former colonies had recognized as belonging to king and parliament.
[9] It helped guide the United States through the final stages of the Revolutionary War, but steeply declined in authority afterward.
These French warships were decisive at the Battle of Yorktown along the coast of Virginia by preventing Lord Cornwallis's British troops from receiving supplies, reinforcements, or evacuation via the James River and Hampton Roads.
Delegates were responsible to and reported directly to their home state assemblies; an organizational structure that Neil Olsen has described as "an extreme form of matrix management".
After the colonies declared their independence in 1776 and united as a quasi-federation to fight for their freedom, the president functioned as head of state (not of the country, but of its central government).
In addition to their slowness, the lack of coercive power in the Continental Congress was harshly criticized by James Madison when arguing for the need of a Federal Constitution.
His comment in Vices of the Political System of April 1787 set the conventional wisdom on the historical legacy of the institution for centuries to come: A sanction is essential to the idea of law, as coercion is to that of Government.
From a mistaken confidence that the justice, the good faith, the honor, the sound policy, of the several legislative assemblies would render superfluous any appeal to the ordinary motives by which the laws secure the obedience of individuals: a confidence which does honor to the enthusiastic virtue of the compilers, as much as the inexperience of the crisis apologizes for their errors.Political scientists Calvin Jillson and Rick Wilson in the 1980s accepted the conventional interpretation on the weakness of the Congress due to the lack of coercive power.
"[25] But he noted that after the war's end, "Rather than passively adopting the Congress's creations, the American people embraced, rejected, reworked, ridiculed, or simply ignored them as they saw fit.
"[27] Looking at their mission as defined by state resolutions and petitions entered into the Congressional Journal on its first day,[28] it found that on the common issues of the relief of Boston, securing Colonial rights, eventually restoring harmonious relations with Great Britain, and repealing taxes, they overachieved their mission goals, defeated the largest army and navy in the world, and created two new types of republic.
