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First Continental Congress Convention[edit source] The Congress met from September 5 to October 26, 1774 in Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia; delegates from 12 British colonies participated. They were elected by the people of the various colonies, the colonial legislature, or by the Committee of Correspondence of a colony.[1] '''Only three counties had elected their own delegates, and these of the three were unable prove unification in the county’s decision of the selected. The counties brought diverse intellectual differences during the election, rather than a focus of the reputable characters of the selected delegates.''' Loyalist sentiments outweighed Patriot views in Georgia, and that colony did not join the cause until the following year.[2] Peyton Randolph was elected as president of the Congress on the opening day, and he served through October 22 when ill health forced him to retire, and Henry Middleton was elected in his place for the balance of the session. Charles Thomson, leader of the Philadelphia Committee of Correspondence, was selected as the congressional secretary.[3] The rules adopted by the delegates were designed to guard the equality of participants and to promote free-flowing debate.[1] As the deliberations progressed, it became clear that those in attendance were not of one mind concerning why they were there. Conservatives such as Joseph Galloway, John Dickinson, John Jay, and Edward Rutledge believed their task to be forging policies to pressure Parliament to rescind its unreasonable acts. Their ultimate goal was to develop a reasonable solution to the difficulties and bring about reconciliation between the Colonies and Great Britain. Others such as Patrick Henry, Roger Sherman, Samuel Adams, and John Adams believed their task to be developing a decisive statement of the rights and liberties of the Colonies. Their ultimate goal was to end what they felt to be the abuses of parliamentary authority and to retain their rights, which had been guaranteed under Colonial charters and the English constitution.[4] Roger Sherman denied the legislative authority of Parliament, and Patrick Henry believed that the Congress needed to develop a completely new system of government, independent from Great Britain, for the existing Colonial governments were already dissolved.[5] In contrast to these ideas, Joseph Galloway put forward a "Plan of Union" which suggested that an American legislative body should be formed with some authority, whose consent would be required for imperial measures.[5][6]

Declaration and Resolves[edit source] In the end, the voices of compromise carried the day. Rather than calling for independence, the First Continental Congress passed and signed the Continental Association in its Declaration and Resolves, which called for a boycott of British goods to take effect in December 1774. It requested that local Committees of Safety enforce the boycott and regulate local prices for goods. These resolutions adopted by the Congress did not endorse any legal power of Parliament to regulate trade, but consented, nonetheless, to the operation of acts for that purpose. '''Although the opposing parties came to this conclusion, the conciliators longed for a middle ground and ultimately settled for less than what they had wanted. The conciliators, or radicals, brought upon various attitudes and expression towards the outcome of this compromise.''' Furthermore, they did not repudiate control by the royal prerogative, which was explicitly acknowledged in the Petition to the King a few days later.

Quote 1: "Three counties only sent delegates of their own- Kings, Orange, and Suffolk- and in none of them can it be said certainly that the election was a representative expression of the county's wishes." (Becker, Carl. “The Nomination and Election of Delegates From New York to the First Continental Congress, 1774.” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 1, 1903, p. 44.)

Quote 2: "The so-called "radicals" could see themselves as concilators, men who settled for less than what they wanted... their dream of that ever-elusive middle ground where they could have both liberty and empire persisted." (York, Neil L. “The First Continental Congress and the Problem of American Rights.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 122, no. 4, 1998, pp. 382.)