The Congress breaks up; the colonies now have a boycott and a date to reconvene
For seven weeks, delegates from twelve colonies had argued inside Carpenters' Hall over how far to push back against Parliament's Intolerable Acts. On October 26, 1774, the First Continental Congress adjourned, having settled on a plan that went beyond simple petition without declaring independence: a boycott of British goods starting December 1, and a pledge to reconvene the following spring if London did not answer. Georgia's absence left the compact resting on twelve colonies, not thirteen. The delegates went home to sell the agreement to their own legislatures and committees.
The Congress's closing act, a mutual boycott binding colonies that had no legal authority over each other, functioned like an early version of federalism: separate governments agreeing to act as one. The vote to reconvene if grievances went unanswered turned a one-time protest meeting into a standing institution, the body that declared independence twenty-one months later.
QWhy did Georgia skip the First Continental Congress entirely?
Georgia was the only one of the thirteen colonies to send no delegates to Philadelphia in 1774. Loyalist sentiment ran stronger there than Patriot sentiment at the time. The colony depended on British troops and subsidies for protection against Creek and Cherokee nations on its frontier, and its royal governor kept tighter control over the assembly than counterparts elsewhere. Georgia stayed out of the revolutionary coalition for roughly another year before shifting course and joining the cause in 1775.
QHow were the fifty-six delegates actually chosen to sit in Carpenters' Hall?
There was no single method. Some delegates were picked directly by colonial legislatures, others by popular election, and still others by a colony's Committee of Correspondence acting on its own authority, since many assemblies had already been dissolved by royal governors for defying Parliament. That patchwork meant the men gathered at Carpenters' Hall carried different degrees of formal mandate from home, yet the Congress treated every delegation as equal regardless of how it got there. The rules of debate were written specifically to protect that equality, giving a small colony's delegation the same standing as Virginia's or Massachusetts's.
QHow did Congress open its very first working session back in September?
On September 6, delegate Thomas Cushing proposed that each day's business begin with prayer, an idea Samuel Adams backed by nominating Anglican clergyman Reverend Jacob Duché to lead it. Duché opened by reading the 35th Psalm, a passage considered strikingly appropriate to the delegates' uncertain circumstances, then followed it with an extended prayer that was, by contemporary accounts, warmly received by men still uncertain whether they were rebels or petitioners.
