to oppose the Coercive Acts which had been passed by the British government.

In order to express their displeasure with the Coercive Acts, the First Continental Congress created a Declaration of Rights. Their goal with the Declaration of Rights was to establish that they still remained loyal to the British Crown, but also to question the power of the British government to levy taxes against the colonists.

The First Continental Congress also passed the Articles of Association, which attempted to convince the colonies to stop buying goods from Britain unless Britain repealed the Coercive Acts. This was an attempt to protest the Coercive Acts by denying the British the benefits of selling to the American colonies and reaping the financial benefit. If the British did not repeal the Coercive Acts within one year, the colonists also planned to stop exporting goods to Britain.

In addition to these actions, the First Continental Congress also planned to reconvene the next spring if the Coercive Acts still had not been repealed. They would then decide what the next proper action would be to achieve their goals.

In September 1774, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. They agreed to do several things. As a result of the Boston Tea Party, the British passed a series of harsh laws on the colonists, especially the colonists in Massachusetts, called the Intolerable Acts. These laws were designed to punish the colonists for the Boston Tea Party. One thing the First Continental Congress did was to ask that these laws be removed. They also stated that the colonists would disobey these laws.

A second action suggested that the colonists were preparing for an eventual war. They endorsed the Suffolk Resolves. This basically told the people to form their own armies or militias. This suggested the leaders believed a war or battle would eventually occur.

The third thing the First Continental Congress did was to agree to have the colonies stop trading with Britain. They knew the British depended on our trade, and they believed this action might lead to a removal of the Intolerable Acts.

If the situation did improve, they agreed to meet nine months later. In May 1775, the Second Continental Congress met since conditions didn’t improve.

The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in response to the passage of the Intolerable Acts in 1774. Its main achievement was to issue what became known as the "Association," a nonimportation agreement designed to put pressure on the British to lift the Boston Port Act and to backtrack from other coercive policies. As historian T.H. Breen has recently argued, what was significant about the Association was that local committees were formed to enforce it. These committees ensured, by tactics that sometimes included violence, that local merchants did not engage in trade with the British and that individuals did not purchase or consume imported goods. As Breen points out, these local committees, organized at various levels, "acquired legitmacy from [the First Continental Congress.]" The Association thus marked a major step toward expanding the revolution throughout the colonies and creating a single revolutionary consciousness. For these reasons, the proclamation of the Association by the First Continental Congress was a very significant event.