History of the United States I / Unit 5 USH1 0632 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The First Continental Congress
The idea
Twelve of the thirteen colonies sent representatives to Philadelphia from September fifth to October twenty-sixth, seventeen seventy-four. Georgia did not, because its royal governor blocked representation, which the anchor reads as showing the continued strength of royal government despite the crisis. Paul Revere carried the Suffolk Resolves from Massachusetts, and they became the basis of the Declaration and Resolves adopted on October fourteenth. Joseph Galloway proposed a conciliatory American Grand Council paired with a royally appointed President General.
In practice
A Petition to the King on October twenty-fourth, proposing that colonies raise and regulate their own militias.
Where people slip
They addressed the king as Most Gracious Sovereign and called themselves inhabitants of the English colonies in North America. In seventeen seventy-four the Congress was still petitioning the Crown and still identified as British. Reading this body as an independence movement gets the following two years backwards, because what changed between here and Unit 06 was not the grievance but the conclusion drawn from it.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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