First Continental Congress Date

The date of the First Continental Congress was September 5th, 1774. Actually, the Congress sited from that particular date but wended till the 26th of October month, 1774. This means the meeting lasted for 52 consecutive days.

But now again, you may have a question in your mind why was it organized from that particular date?

Its primary reason was the imposition of Coercive Acts or Intolerable Acts by the Parliament of Great Britain. From March month of 1774 to June, the Parliament passed 5 bad laws to punish American colonists for the Boston Tea Party.

Although the British Parliament named them ‘Coercive Acts’; but among colonists, it was infamously known as ‘Intolerable Acts’.

Those were:

• Boston Port Act (March 31, 1774)
• Massachusetts Government Act (May 20, 1774)
• Administration of Justice Act (May 20, 1774)
• Quebec Act
• Quartering Act (22 June 1774)

Colonists’ leaders already warned the British authority that they were playing with fire and that would cost them severely.

But even after their warnings and requests, when they got no results till the end, they decided to become rebellious against the government’s decisions and form their own authority.

After two months, they met in a meeting in Philadelphia, Pennislveniya, which was of course none other but the First Continental Congress.

We can simply say, the meeting and actions through it was the response from the American colonists’ side after the English authority did the implementation of those 5 vengeful laws.

Did You Know?

1. The First Continental Congress was a meeting of 12 of the 13 British North American colonies. In this meeting, only the colony of Georgia didn’t participate.

While the meeting was organized, Georgia was busy fighting battles against some Native American tribes.

Their leaders were afraid that their participation in the meeting would encourage the English authority to provide assistance to the Native Americans. However, they participated in the Second Continental Congress, in 1775.

2. The First Continental Congress was the very first meeting when the North American colonies came together to fulfill a common purpose.

Though Georgia didn’t participate in it, but they had full moral support for this meeting.

3. Many historians throughout the world want to claim the First Continental Congress as the first federal government of the United States of America, though the 13 colonies were still under British rule and earlier Congress had no intention to secede them from Great Britain.

4. In the First Continental Congress, colonies decided to boycott British goods’ import from December 1st, 1774.

This boycott remained quite successful that it dropped imports from Great Britain by 97 percent till the end of 1775.