The Continental Congress'S To Do List: Fill & Download for Free

When the 13 American colonies were starting to rebel against their British rulers, they each set delegates to a "Continental Congress" to meet and coordinate their efforts. The first time they met, organized a boycott of British imports and sent a petition to King George reporting the terrible things parliament was doing. King George instead declared them to be in a state of rebellion against the crown, destroying the colonists' hope of a peaceful reconciliation. The second time they met, they appointed George Washington the head of the Continental Army and declared independence.They met frequently for years, eventually establishing the Articles of Confederation, which was the organizing document of their alliance for about a decade until the Constitution was ratified. After the Articles of Confederation were adopted by the states, they were called the Confederation Congress.The modern US Congress is sort of a descendant of the Continental Congress, but the US Constitution changed it a lot.

The 1st Continental Congress was held in Philadelphia, PA.

Good question. But the simple answer is that at the beginning of that decade (1770) there was no such entity as “the United States of America.” That name had yet to be invented… which it basically was in the Declaration of Independence (1776) and then repeated in 1797 in the Constitution.The Congress and the Army were “continental” in that they represented nearly all the colonies that were English-speaking at that time and were located in the continent of North America. Rather than use the longer name, “North American Continental Congress” and “North American Continental Army,” they just adopted the shorter name, “Continental”… but it really referred to North America.(And as we now know, there was a vast, unexplored continent that they were only sitting on the edge of. But the 13 colonies occupied most of that territory that was English speaking. Perhaps the concept of a “Continental” government ultimately encouraged the colonists to eventually gobble up most of North America south of the Canadian border! Even though there were already natives there!)There was a scattering of other English-speaking colonies, but they were small… a few of the Caribbean islands (what became the British Virgin Islands), the Bahamas, and a few places north that later formed into Canada, after the revolution.(Offhand, I don’t know if these places were even invited to send delegates to Congress. In any case, they did not send delegates, and they represented very small populations at that time, anyway.)