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III Independence and Internal Revolution 1774-1776 THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS T HE IDEA of a continental congress was not a new one, for the Albany and the Stamp Act congresses had been convened to consider problems common to all the colonies. And ever since the Stamp Act Congress the radical parties had grown steadily in the realization that an intercolonial union was necessary to the achievement of their various aims.1 Ironically enough, the actual call for the first Continental Congress grew out of the dilemma with which the New York conservatives were faced when the Boston committee of correspondence proposed absolute nonintercourse until the repeal of the Port Bill. If they accepted the proposal they would identify themselves with the program of the New York radicals and thus lose all the gains they had made in a long struggle; if they rejected it and advocated their own policy of modified nonimportation, they would lose whatever influence they had with the radicals. Only by seeming to do that which they had no intention of doing could they remain in control. Hence they suggested to the Boston radicals the very thing the latter had long desired, a congress of all the colonies.2 They justified this means of escape from their dilemma on the ground that the cause was general and affected the whole continent. A congress of deputies should be called without delay to pass "some unanimous resolutions formed in this fatal emergency, not only respecting your deplorable circumstances , but for the security of our common rights." In the light of these sentiments, wrote the committee, it would be "premature 1 Richard Frothingham, The Rise of the Republic of the United States (10th ed., Boston, 1910), 189-192,207-208, 241-244, 262-264; Harlow, Adams, 191-202;. Samu~l. Adams to Arthur Lee, Boston, September 27, 1771, ;md April 9,1773, m Wrltmgs, 2:234; 3:18-19. • Becker, Political Parties in New York, 1I7-rr8. Independence and Internal Revolution 55 to pronounce any judgment" on the question of nonintercourse.3 In taking this course the New York leaders undoubtedly felt that the congress would be controlled by the conservatives. Certainly they would not have suggested it had they foreseen what was to happen. With the calling of the congress the question of what policy should be adopted toward Great Britain was transferred from thirteen separate political entities to a central body delegated to handle it.4 Fundamentally there was no ground for compromise between Great Britain and the radical party in the colonies. By word and deed the radicals had denied that Parliament had power to legislate for them. The British position, as stated by Lord Dartmouth in a letter to Joseph Reed, was that "the Supreme Legislature of the whole British Empire has laid a duty (no matter for the present whether it has or has not the right so to do, it is sufficient that we conceive it has). . . . The question then is whether these laws are to be submitted to? If the people of America say no, they say in effect that they will no longer be a part of the British Empire." 5 With the radicals denying that Great Britain had any authority whatever, and Great Britain claiming unlimited authority, there was little hope for the conservative home-rule party in the colonies, should the proponents of the two extreme views be in power at the same time. That conjunction came with the meeting of the first Continental Congress. The delegates who converged on Philadelphia in the autumn of 1774 were the product of twelve rigorous schools of practical and theoretical politics. The internal affairs of their respective colonies and the external relations of those colonies with Great • Letter to the Boston Committee of Correspondence, May 23, 1774, in The Correspondence and Public Papers of Jolm Jay, edited by Henry P. Johnston (4 vols., New York, 1890), 1:13-15. The committee which drafted the letter was composed of Isaac Low, James Duane, John Jay, and Alexander McDougall , three conservatives and one radical. •Becker, Political Parties in New York, 142. "In sending delegates to a general congress, the two factions in New York virtually agreed to throw the burden of formulating a policy of resistance upon a power outside the colony; consciously or unconsciously they thereby greatly increased the difficulty of ever again having a policy of their own." What was true of New York was true of all the colonies. • July 1I...

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