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This article traces the chronological development of the First Continental Congress, the September-October 1774 assembly of delegates from twelve British North American colonies convened in Philadelphia in response to British legislation following the Boston Tea Party. For the underlying disputes over imperial taxation that preceded the Congress, see first-continental-congress-consensus. For the Congress's successor body, see Second Continental Congress - History.

The events leading to the First Continental Congress began with the Tea Act of 1773, which prompted the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, in which Boston colonists destroyed a shipment of East India Company tea rather than pay the associated duty. Parliament responded in the spring of 1774 with a series of measures colonists called the Coercive Acts and the British government called the Punitive Acts (later known collectively as the Intolerable Acts). These included the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston to commerce until the destroyed tea was paid for; the Massachusetts Government Act, which altered the colony's charter to increase royal control over local governance; the Administration of Justice Act, which allowed royal officials accused of crimes in the colonies to be tried in Britain or another colony; and the Quartering Act, which expanded the colonial governors' authority to house British troops in occupied buildings.

In response, colonial committees of correspondence began circulating calls for a joint colonial response. Massachusetts formally proposed a general congress in June 1774. Twelve of the thirteen colonies elected or appointed delegates over the following months; Georgia, occupied with a separate conflict with the Creek Nation and dependent on British military support, did not send delegates.

The Congress convened at Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774. Fifty-six delegates attended, representing Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia. Peyton Randolph of Virginia was elected president, and Charles Thomson of Pennsylvania was elected secretary.

Delegates included figures who would later diverge sharply in their political paths, among them Patrick Henry and George Washington of Virginia, John Adams and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, and Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania. The proceedings were conducted with a degree of secrecy; delegates agreed not to publish accounts of debates, and no official record of floor speeches survives. Galloway, John Jay, and others advocated a plan for an American legislative council subordinate to and balancing Parliament; this Galloway Plan was debated on September 28 and rejected by a vote of six colonies to five, with one colony's delegation split.

On September 17, 1774, the Congress endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, a set of resolutions adopted earlier that month by the inhabitants of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, which declared the Coercive Acts unconstitutional, called for their repeal, urged Massachusetts residents to form militias, and recommended a boycott of British goods.

On October 14, 1774, the Congress adopted the Declaration and Resolves, which asserted that the colonies possessed rights to “life, liberty, and property” and that they had never ceded to Parliament the power to legislate on their internal affairs without their own consent, while also professing continued allegiance to the Crown.

On October 20, 1774, the Congress adopted the Continental Association, an agreement among the colonies to cease importing British goods beginning December 1, 1774, and to cease exporting goods to Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies beginning September 10, 1775, unless the Coercive Acts were repealed. The Association called on local committees to be elected in every county, city, and town to monitor and enforce compliance.

The Congress also approved a series of petitions and addresses, including a petition to King George III, an address to the people of Great Britain, and an address to the inhabitants of the colonies, before adjourning on October 26, 1774. Delegates agreed to reconvene the following May if their grievances remained unaddressed.

Local and colonial committees of inspection formed throughout the winter of 1774-1775 to enforce the Continental Association, in many cases publishing the names of merchants and individuals who violated the boycott. British officials, including Massachusetts governor Thomas Gage, reported the Association's enforcement mechanisms to London as evidence of organized colonial resistance. Parliament debated but did not adopt conciliatory measures proposed by figures such as Edmund Burke and William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, in early 1775. Armed conflict broke out at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, before the scheduled reconvening of Congress, which assembled as the Second Continental Congress on May 10, 1775.

• Some historians argue that the rejection of the Galloway Plan represented a decisive turn toward independence rather than reconciliation. See first-continental-congress-galloway-plan-controversy.
• Some historians argue that the Continental Association functioned primarily as an instrument of social and political coercion against dissenters rather than as a voluntary economic boycott. See first-continental-congress-association-enforcement-controversy.
• Some historians argue that the Suffolk Resolves' endorsement, rather than any later vote, marked the Congress's effective shift from petitioning to resistance. See first-continental-congress-suffolk-resolves-controversy.

1. David Ammerman, *In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774* (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974).
2. Robert Middlekauff, *The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789*, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
3. Pauline Maier, *American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence* (New York: Knopf, 1997).
4. Worthington C. Ford, ed., *Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789*, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904).
5. Benjamin L. Carp, *Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America* (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).
6. T.H. Breen, *American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People* (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010).