https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2025/10/13/forgotten-foundation-declaration-and-resolves-of-the-first-continental-congress/

Forgotten Foundation: Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress

By: Michael Boldin

“To these grievous acts and measures Americans cannot submit.”

On October 14, 1774, the First Continental Congress drew its line in the sand.

They met that fall to confront the Coercive Acts – Parliament’s brutal retaliation for the Boston Tea Party. They had a decision: submit to tyranny, or resist.

Their answer was the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress. It is one of the most important, and most forgotten, documents of the American Revolution, providing a foundation for both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

THE HISTORY LESSON

The opening paragraph of the Declaration and Resolves is a charge sheet against Parliament, listing a decade of abuses.

The delegates traced the tyranny to a single moment: the end of the French and Indian War in 1763. They argued the escalating conflict that followed was driven by the single grievance that spawned all others: Parliament’s claim of unlimited power, formalized in the Declaratory Act of 1766.

“Whereas, since the close of the last war, the British parliament, claiming a power of right to bind the people of America by statute in all cases whatsoever…” ......