Our Lives, Our Fortunes And Our Sacred Honor By Richard Beeman

The Continental Congress was formed for the purposes of drawing an agreement within the colonies for action against the increasing threat of British occupation with war approaching.

As the name proposes, the Intolerable Acts were not getting well among the settlements. Prior to the shots were discharged at Lexington and Concord, the provinces made an endeavor to settle the worries and dissatisfactions raised with the Intolerable Acts through open deliberation and discourse. In this manner, the First Continental Congress was called to arrange on September fifth, 1774. 55 provincial delegates, including acclaimed Patriots like John Adams, Samuel Adams, George Washington, and Patrick Henry, from twelve settlements, met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to define an arrangement of activity. Georgia was the main settlement that did not send delegates. Virginia's

With the establishment of the first successful English colony of Jamestown by the Virginia Company in the New World and the creation of the other thirteen original colonies during the seventeenth-century, the colonists of America were originally immigrants from Europe who sought to escape hardships whether it be religious persecution or material gain. This created regional differences between the New England colonies of the north and the Chesapeake colonies of the south. The diverse population of these colonies continued to grow and prosper while under the rule of Britain. While the colonists were European in origin, they developed a uniquely American identity that was different from the mother country due to the abundance of land and the absence of Parliamentary authority. Although the colonists failed to

The Second Continental Congress’s first meeting was on May 10, 1775 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but it lasted till 1781. This is because the delegates would meet during the revolution. These delegates represented all thirteen colonies. In the beginning of the war the colonies were not fighting for independence, they strongly wanted a redress of grievances. This meant that they solely wanted to continue to be under England’s rule but with their terms. This idea can be seen when the Congress wrote the Olive Branch Petition in July of 1775. This petition pledged American loyalty to Great Britain, to avert possible hostilities in the future. However, at the same time, the Second Continental Congress began raising money for an army and began creating

This book tells the story of the Philadelphia convention, in the summer of 1787. Throughout, Stewart uses descriptive language to portray the delegates, both remembered —such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton— and forgotten —such as James Wilson and George Mason— in the turmoil of creating the United States constitution. It illustrates both the great conflicts and high-stake compromises that those delegates faced, all ultimately dominated by one inelegantly polarizing issue: slavery. With calculated endorsement by influential delegates such as Franklin and Washington, who

Through anecdotes in his book, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, Joseph J. Ellis gives a new take on this crucial period of this country’s history. Ellis crafts this work of nonfiction in such a way so the reader may understand the revolutionary generation the way Americans currently do: the present looking back to the past, and as the Founding Fathers did: the past (their present) looking forward to the future. This allows one to understand the intentions behind some of these historical figures’ actions and whether those actions led to desirable outcomes. Considering these different perspectives in which he writes, Joseph Ellis comes to prove that in order to understand the true significance of the revolutionary generation, it is necessary to take into account the values and relationships between the individual leaders. The author emphasizes social history throughout the narratives by highlighting the major issues that the public faced at that time. Judging the content of Ellis’ writing, it is evident that he is biased toward certain people for he does not highlight many of their flaws, nor does he explain the impact of these flaws on the revolution. Joseph Ellis composed this piece in

The colonists wanted to stop these acts so the Committee of Correspondence organized a meeting to discuss what to do next. That meeting was known as the First Continental Congress. It took place in September and October of 1774 in Philadelphia. 12 of the 13 colonies sent delegates to the meeting, Georgia was the only one to not send a delegate. The delegates demanded a repeal of the Intolerable Acts, and that the colonies had a right to tax and govern themselves.

The First Continental Congress made its mark in history on September 5,1774 in Philadelphia’s Carpenters Hall. According to the u-s-history.com website, “The idea of such a meeting was advanced a year earlier by Benjamin Franklin, but

The First Continental Congress was called into session in 1774. The Congress did not encourage independence. Instead, they wanted to show England how to fix the wrongs that had been imposed on the colonists. They hoped that this would unify the colonies and grant them a voice in parliament. The congress wrote the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, which consisted of American complaints that they addressed to the King. The delegates stayed loyal to King George III and made it clear that they were anymore for Parliament.

The Revolutionary War effectively ended on October 17th, 1781. Having successfully won independence, that task shifted to maintaining independence. The newly independent ‘United’ States, faced an array of issues, and proved to be anything but united under the existing Articles of Confederation. In hindsight, analyzing the arguments against the articles, as well as the

It is easy to interpret the American Revolution simply as a struggle for freedom. The magnanimous phrases of the Declaration of Independence have embedded in our hearts and minds glorious images of the Founding Fathers fighting for the natural rights of man. The American Revolution, however, also had a darker side to it, the side of self-interest and profit. The signers of the Declaration represented various classes – the working class, the wealthy land owners and merchants, the intellectuals, and the social elite. Each of these strata had its own set of expectations and fears, which lent a new dimension to the cause of the Revolution. The pressure of these internal, and often overlapping groups, combined with the oppressive external

The Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. The men who attended were, for the most part, the same men who had appeared in the first Continental Congress. “The Adamses and the Livingstons, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, Peyton Randolph, Jay Henry, Washington, and Lee were there, as also Franklin” (Fiske 132). The objectives of Congress were better understood in the Second Continental Congress, so more was accomplished (Burnett 65). The main goal of the Second Continental Congress was to restore harmony between Great Britain and the Colonies. Ideas that sprang from this were the establishment of rights and liberties, the repeal of the acts that Britain placed on the colonies, and the establishment of peace, welfare, and security in the colonies.

The first chapters introduce the life of the American people and the failed of the Articles of Confederation which is in chronological time, yet the division later in issues makes the reader confuse about the time line. The authors based their work mostly on Madison “notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787” and also in Georgia delegate William Pirce Farrand’s records; the “notes” of Pierce and Madison, focuses on the conflicts and compromises giving the book a sense of a time line, yet the biographies of some of the other delegates cause confusion on the historical time of the overall book.

1776, a non-fiction historical book, is written by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough. The book revolves around the American Revolution, hence the title 1776, and it accurately shows the course of actions that have taken place in that year. 1776 is displays how America became an independent nation and what the individuals during that time had to go through to gain access to freedom and liberty. The Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s most cherished symbol of independence, that same year on July 4. With education systems not going in depth of the year 1776, this paper is to show how this book has revealed so much of our country’s history in one year.