Congress declares Parliament's acts void; delegates demand the king repeal them
By mid-October 1774, delegates from twelve colonies had spent weeks in Philadelphia debating whether to seek reconciliation with Parliament or deny its authority outright. On October 14, the First Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Rights and Resolves, formally condemning the Intolerable Acts and asserting that colonists retained the rights of English subjects, including a right to legislate for themselves in their own assemblies. The declaration named the Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, and the Quartering Act as violations of those rights. Six days later, Congress approved the boycott that followed.
The Declaration of Rights and Resolves was the first time colonies acting together, not as individual assemblies, told Parliament which of its laws they considered void. That collective claim to legislative authority became a model Jefferson later drew on in 1776, and the document's insistence on rights "as Englishmen" later gave way to rights claimed as Americans.
QWhich colony sat out the First Continental Congress entirely, and why?
Georgia sent no delegates to Philadelphia in 1774. The colony's royal governor, James Wright, held unusually firm control there, and Georgia depended heavily on British military protection against Creek and Cherokee raids along its frontier, which made many of its leading colonists reluctant to join a movement openly defying the Crown. Georgia would not send delegates to a Continental Congress until the Second Congress convened in 1775, making it the last of the thirteen colonies to formally join the resistance movement.
QWhat specific trade did the Continental Association target besides British manufactured goods?
The Continental Association, approved six days after the Declaration of Rights, did not stop at British imports. It also called for an end to the transatlantic slave trade, planning nonimportation of slaves beginning December 1, 1774. The provision sat inside the same document that boycotted tea, cloth, and other British goods, making the Association as much an economic weapon against Parliament as a limited statement against the slave trade itself.
QHow sharply did the boycott actually cut trade once local committees began enforcing it?
Once committees in towns across the colonies started enforcing the Continental Association's terms, British imports into the colonies fell by roughly 97 percent in 1775 compared with the year before. That collapse came from thousands of local committeemen inspecting shipments, publishing the names of merchants who violated the boycott, and seizing goods, turning a congressional resolution into a nearly total economic blockade enforced from the ground up rather than by any central authority.
