Editing Carpenters Hall (section)

== First Continental Congress ==

In September 1774, delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies gathered in Philadelphia to coordinate their response to the Intolerable Acts, a series of punitive measures Parliament had imposed on Massachusetts following the Boston Tea Party. The delegates needed a meeting place, and two options emerged: the Pennsylvania State House (later [[Independence Hall]]), offered by the conservative colonial assembly, and Carpenters' Hall, offered by the more radical Carpenters' Company. The choice of venue carried political implications; selecting the State House would suggest cooperation with Pennsylvania's cautious establishment, while choosing Carpenters' Hall aligned the Congress with more assertive resistance to British policies.<ref name="ammerman">{{cite book |last=Ammerman |first=David |title=In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774 |year=1974 |publisher=University Press of Virginia |location=Charlottesville}}</ref>

The Congress chose Carpenters' Hall, meeting there from September 5 to October 26, 1774. The fifty-six delegates included many future leaders of the Revolution: George Washington, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay, and others. They debated colonial rights, organized an economic boycott of British goods, drafted a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, and agreed to reconvene the following year if their concerns were not addressed. The Congress stopped short of calling for independence—that would come two years later—but it established the framework for unified colonial action and demonstrated that the colonies could work together against British imperial policies. The building where these deliberations occurred thus holds a special place in the history of American self-governance.<ref name="rakove">{{cite book |last=Rakove |first=Jack N. |title=The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress |year=1979 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York}}</ref>