Forgotten Basis: Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress
“To these grievous acts and measures Americans cannot submit.”
On October 14, 1774, the First Continental Congress drew its line in the sand.
They met that fall to confront the Coercive Acts – Parliament’s brutal retaliation for the Boston Tea Party. They had a decision: submit to tyranny, or resist.
Their answer was the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress. It is one of the most important, and most forgotten, documents of the American Revolution, providing a foundation for both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
THE HISTORY LESSON
The opening paragraph of the Declaration and Resolves is a charge sheet against Parliament, listing a decade of abuses.
The delegates traced the tyranny to a single moment: the end of the French and Indian War in 1763. They argued the escalating conflict that followed was driven by the single grievance that spawned all others: Parliament’s claim of unlimited power, formalized in the Declaratory Act of 1766.
“Whereas, since the close of the last war, the British parliament, claiming a power of right to bind the people of America by statute in all cases whatsoever…”
Next, they listed Parliament’s first attempt at direct, internal taxation: the Stamp Act of 1765.
“…hath, in some acts expressly imposed taxes on them”
Then came the Sugar and Townshend Acts. Parliament disguised them as “duties” and trade regulations, but the colonists recognized them for what they were: taxes designed to raise revenue.
“and in others, under various pretenses, but in fact for the purpose of raising a revenue, hath imposed rates and duties payable in these colonies…”
To enforce these taxes and regulations, the Townshend Acts created a new bureaucracy: the American Board of Customs Commissioners.
“…established a board of commissioners with unconstitutional powers”
These “unconstitutional powers” included writs of assistance – general open-ended search warrants that gave customs officials the authority to enter and search any ship, warehouse, or even private home they suspected might contain smuggled goods.
Aggressive enforcement sparked immediate resistance. When customs agents boarded John Hancock’s ship, the Lydia in 1768, he didn’t file a petition – he had his men throw them off. Some considered this the first act of physical resistance in the Revolution.
In retaliation, the Board’s agents seized Hancock’s sloop, the Liberty. This led to a riot of 3,000 people who pelted the agents with rocks, smashed windows of their homes, and even burned a boat of one of the customs agents.
The British responded by marching redcoats into Boston.
This military occupation created a powder keg. Two years later, it exploded into the Boston Massacre.
The delegates concluded their opening indictment by showing the attacks on liberty were not just in the streets, but also in the courts. By claiming the power to move cases to courts of admiralty, the British were dismantling the right to a trial by jury.
“…and extended the jurisdiction of courts of Admiralty not only for collecting the said duties, but for the trial of causes merely arising within the body of a county.”
THE LIST OF GRIEVANCES
In early 1774, the British Parliament passed a series of acts to punish the colonies, particularly Massachusetts, after the Boston Tea Party.
They were known as the Coercive Acts, but are more commonly called the Intolerable Acts today.
These acts included the Boston Port Act, which closed the port; the Massachusetts Government Act, which stripped virtually all authority from the colonial government; the Administration of Justice Act, which stripped authority from local courts and authorized trials to be held faraway in Great Britain; and the Quartering Act, which allowed British troops to take over private buildings.
In their Declaration and Resolves, the delegates delivered the verdict: the Coercive Acts were not just bad policy, they were fundamentally illegal.
“All which statutes are impolitic, unjust, and cruel, as well as unconstitutional, and most dangerous and destructive of American rights.”
They then condemned statutes creating a system of total control: a judiciary no longer independent, but paid by the Crown, and the bane of liberty itself, standing armies in peacetime.
“in consequence of other statutes, judges who before held only estates at will in their offices, have been made dependent on the Crown alone for their salaries, and standing armies kept in times of peace”
And when colonial assemblies tried to push back? Parliament shut them down. Dissolved them for daring to complain.
“Assemblies have been frequently dissolved, contrary to the rights of the people, when they attempted to deliberate on grievances; and their dutiful, humble, loyal, & reasonable petitions to the crown for redress, have been repeatedly treated with contempt.”
A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS
After laying out their grievances, they pivoted to a declaration of rights.
“The inhabitants of the English Colonies in North America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following Rights”
First on the list: natural rights basics.
“That they are entitled to life, liberty, and property, & they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent.”
Next, rights so important that they laid the foundation for the 6th and 7th Amendments.
“That the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law.”
Then came the core of the First Amendment.
“That they have a right peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the King; and that all prosecutions, prohibitory proclamations, and commitments for the same, are illegal.”
Standing armies? They considered them so dangerous, they said it a second time.
“That the keeping a Standing army in these colonies, in times of peace, without the consent of the legislature of that colony in which such army is kept, is against law.”
They closed their declaration of rights with what would become the foundational structure of the Constitution: separation of powers.
“It is indispensably necessary to good government, and rendered essential by the English constitution, that the constituent branches of the legislature be independent of each other; that, therefore, the exercise of legislative power in several colonies, by a council appointed during pleasure, by the crown, is unconstitutional, dangerous, and destructive to the freedom of American legislation.”
The declaration also included other key rights.
- Their ancestors were entitled to all the rights of free subjects in England.
- Those rights were not forfeited by emigration and were inherited by them as descendants.
- They were entitled to the protection of English statutes applicable to the colonies that existed at the time of settlement.
- They were also entitled to immunities and privileges secured by royal charters and provincial laws.
The delegates also asserted the right to exclusive legislation in their own provincial legislatures for taxation and internal policy. This key legislative claim set the stage for a debate over Parliament’s power over external regulation.
THE DEAL BREAKER?
The delegates were unified, except on that one issue that mattered most: Parliament’s authority. John Adams’s account reveals they weren’t just divided – they were splintered into factions.
“After several days deliberation, We agreed upon all the Articles excepting one, and that was the Authority of Parliament, which was indeed the Essence of the whole Controversy. Some were for a flatt denyal of all Authority: others for denying the Power of Taxation only. Some for denying internal but admitting [ex]ternal Taxation.”
Thomas Jefferson took the radical position in his draft guidance to Virginia delegates. He rejected Parliament’s authority completely.
“The true ground on which we declare these acts void is, that the British parliament has no right to exercise authority over us.”
With the delegates deadlocked after days of bitter debate, South Carolina’s John Rutledge gave John Adams a critical task: draft a compromise to unite the colonies.
The result, as Adams wrote, was a compromise nobody loved but everyone knew they needed to survive.
“When it was read I believe not one of the Committee were fully satisfied with it, but they all soon acknowledged that there was no hope of hitting on any thing, in which We could all agree with more Satisfaction. All therefore agreed to this, and upon this depended the Union of the Colonies.”
The final version is almost totally misrepresented by the mainstream history books today, which claim the delegates conceded the power of the British to regulate external trade.
That’s just false.
Instead, the John Adams text was actually a clever trap.
They allowed the British – with their consent – to regulate external trade as long as it wasn’t for raising revenue.
“we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British parliament, as are bona fide restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in America without their consent.”
THE LIST
With their rights declared, the delegates stated the price of peace: a non-negotiable list of every law that had to be repealed.
“We … proceed to state such acts and measures as have been adopted since the last war, which demonstrate a system formed to enslave America.”
They weren’t begging for reform. It was repeal or nothing.
“The following acts of Parliament are infringements and violations of the rights of the colonists; and that the repeal of them is essentially necessary, in order to restore harmony between Great Britain and the American colonies”
The list detailed a decade of abuse, naming all the major acts already covered: Sugar, Townshend, and Coercive.
They also included the Currency Act, the Postage Act, the Revenue Act, Commissioners of Customs Act, the Colonial Trade Act, the Dockyards Act, and the Quartering Act.
Want proof they hate standing armies? They mentioned it here as well, for a THIRD time.
“Also, that the keeping a standing army in several of these colonies, in time of peace, without the consent of the legislature of that colony in which the army is kept, is against law.”
FINAL WARNING
They closed the Declaration and Resolves with a three-step plan of peaceful action – a veiled threat that more could be on the way.
“we have for the present, only resolved to pursue the following peaceable measures:
- To enter into a non-importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation agreement or association.
- To prepare an address to the people of Great-Britain, and a memorial to the inhabitants of British America: and
- To prepare a loyal address to his majesty, agreeable to resolutions already entered into.”
The petitions and boycotts? That was ultimately their final, peaceable offer.
But obedience to the acts themselves? That was never even on the table.
“To these grievous acts and measures Americans cannot submit.”
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