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 CONTINENTAL CONGRESS

 Continental Congress, also known as the Philadelphia Congress, was a convention of delegates called together from the Thirteen Colonies. It became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution. The Congress met from 1774 to 1789 in three incarnations.

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First Continental Congress :

was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies who met from September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania early in the American Revolution

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The Congress met from 1774 to 1789 in three incarnations. The first call for a convention was made over issues of the blockade and the Intolerable Acts penalizing the Province of Massachusetts, which in 1774 enabled Benjamin Franklin to convince the colonies to form a representative body.

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The First Continental Congress met briefly in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from September 5 to October 26, 1774. It consisted of fifty-six delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies that were to become the United States of America. The delegates, who included George Washington (then a colonel of the Virginia Colony's volunteers), Patrick Henry, and John Adams, were elected by their respective colonial assemblies. Other notable delegates included Samuel Adams from Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Joseph Galloway and John Dickinson from the Province of Pennsylvania.[1] Peyton Randolph of Virginia was its president.

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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. At that point it became clear that the Continental Congress would have to convene once again.[2]

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The Second Continental Congress convened on May 10, 1775, at Philadelphia's State House, passing the resolution for independence the following year on July 2, 1776, and publicly asserting the decision two days later with the Declaration of IndependenceThomas Jefferson of Virginia drafted the declaration, and John Adams was a leader in the debates in favor of its adoption. John Hancock of Massachusetts was the president during those debates. To govern during the American Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress continued, meeting at various locations, until it became the Congress of the Confederation when the Articles of Confederation were ratified on March 1, 1781.

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The delegates to the Continental Congress had extensive experience in deliberative bodies before coming to Congress, with "a cumulative total of nearly 500 years of experience in their colonial legislatures, and fully a dozen of them had served as Speakers of the houses of their legislatures."[6] Both the Parliament of Great Britain and many of their own Colonial assemblies had powerful Speakers of the House and standing committees with strong chairmen, with executive power held by the British Monarch or the colonial Governor. However, the organization of the Continental Congress was based less on the British Parliament or on local state assemblies than on the nine-colony Stamp Act Congress. Nine of the 56 delegates who attended the First Congress in 1774 had previously attended the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. These were some of the most respected of the delegates, and they influenced the direction of the organization from its opening day, when decisions were made on organization and procedures that lasted over fourteen years until the Congress was adjourned on March 2, 1788.

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PLATO

There is a long running debate on how effective the Congress was as an organization.[18] The first critic may have been General George Washington. In an address to his officers, at Newburgh, New York, on March 15, 1783, responding to complaints that Congress had not funded their pay and pensions, he stated that he believed that Congress will do the army "complete justice" and eventually pay the soldiers. "But, like all other large Bodies, where there is a variety of different Interests to reconcile, their deliberations are slow."

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. The federal system being destitute of both, wants the great vital principles of a Political Cons[ti]tution. Under the form of such a Constitution, it is in fact nothing more than a treaty of amity of commerce and of alliance, between so many independent and Sovereign States. From what cause could so fatal an omission have happened in the Articles of Confederation? 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.

— James Madison, Vices of the Political System

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