Continental Congress's Grievances

Marjohn Shaker
From 1774 to 1789, the Continental Congress served as the government of the 13 American colonies and later the United States. The First Continental Congress, which was comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Coercive Acts, a series of measures imposed by the British government on the colonies in response to their to new taxes. In 1775, the Second Continental Congress came together after the American Revolutionary War had already begun. In 1776, it took declaring America’s independence from Britain. Five years later, the Congress ratified the first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation, under which the country would be governed until when it was replaced by the current U.S. Constitution.
After much discussion, the Congress issued a Declaration of Rights, affirming its loyalty to the British Crown but disputing the British Parliament’s right to tax it. The Congress also passed the Articles of Association, which called on the colonies to stop importing goods from the British Isles beginning on December 1, 1774, if the Coercive Acts were not repealed. Should Britain fail to redress the colonists’ grievances in a timely manner, the Congress declared, then it would reconvene on May 10, 1775, and the colonies would cease to export goods to Britain on September 10, 1775. After proclaiming these measures, the First Continental Congress disbanded on October 26, 1774.
The Declaration of Independence allowed Congress to seek alliances with foreign countries, and the fledgling U.S. formed its most important alliance early in 1778 with France, without the support of which America might well have lost the Revolutionary
The colonists were infuriated when Britain had decided to tax the colonists on tea, sugar and stamps and demanded that if they were to be taxed they must have their own representative in Parliament. It was the Stamp Act that stirred up these emotions in the colonists and made them fight for their own representative. The Stamp Act of 1765 was passed by Parliament to raise revenue in America. When Britain did not comply with Americas needs the colonists fought to repeal the Stamp Act with what they called the Nonimportation movement, where they refused to by British exports. The battle for ending these heinous taxes were long fought and contributed greatly to eventually the independence of the colonies. The colonists rebelling only made Britain more angry and less lenient on the colonies, showing no mercy and even stating that they had the authority to legislate whatever they wanted in all cases what so ever in the Declaratory Act of 1776. However, the colonists still fought and rebelled which, again only infuriated and exacerbated their conflict with Britain. The Boston Tea Party was the colonist’s last act of rebellion where they threw thousands of worth of tea into the Boston Harbor. That proved to be the last straw for Britain and after that Britain created the Coercive Acts, otherwise known as the Intolerable Acts by the