an act overthrowing the government of Massachusetts, along with other offensive measures, a congress assembled in September at Philadelphia, the city most centrally situated as well as the largest. If the remonstrances adopted at this congress had been heeded by the Continental British government, and peace had Congress (1774-89) followed, this congress would probably have been as temporary an affair as its predecessors; people would probably have waited until overtaken by some other emergency. But inasmuch as war followed, the congress assembled again in May, 1775, and thereafter became practically a permanent institution until it died of old age with the year 1788.

This congress was called "continental" to distinguish it from the "provincial congresses held in several of the colonies at about the same time. The thirteen colonies were indeed but a narrow strip on the edge of a vast and in large part unexplored continent, but the word " tinental" was convenient for distinguishing between the whole confederacy and its several members.

con

The Continental Congress began to exercise a certain amount of directive authority from the time of its first meeting in 1774. Such authority as it had arose simply from the fact that it represented an agreement on the part of the several governments to pursue a certain line

The several states were never at any

time sovereign states

of policy. It was a diplomatic and executive, but scarcely yet a legislative body. Nevertheless it was the visible symbol of a kind of union between the states. There never was a time when any one of the original states exercised singly the full powers of sovereignty. Not one of them was ever a small sovereign state like Denmark or Portugal. As they acted together under the common direction of the British government in 1759, the year of Quebec, so they acted together under the common direction of that revolutionary body, the Continental Congress, in 1775, the year of Bunker Hill. In "continental army that year a was organized in the name of the "United Colonies." In the following year, when independence was declared, it was done by the concerted action of all the colonies; and at the same time a committee was appointed by Congress to draw up a written constitution. This constitution, known as the "Articles of Confederation," was subof Confedera- mitted to Congress in the autumn of 1777, and was sent to the several states to be ratified. A unanimous ratification was necessary, and it was not until March, 1781, that unanimity was secured and the articles adopted.

The Articles

tion

Meanwhile the Revolutionary War had advanced into its last stages, having been carried

on from the outset under the general direction of the Continental Congress. When reading about this period of our history, the student must be careful not to be misled by the name "congress" into reasoning as if there were any resemblance whatever between that body and the congress which was created by our Federal Constitution. The Continental Congress was not the parent of our Federal Congress; the former died without offspring, and the latter had a very different origin, as we shall soon see. The former simply bequeathed to the latter a name, that was all.

Continental

The Continental Congress was an assembly of delegates from the thirteen states, which from 1774 to 1783 held its sessions at Philadelphia.1 It owned no federal property, not Nature and even the house in which it assembled, powers of the and after it had been turned out of doors by a mob of drunken soldiers in June, 1783, it flitted about from place to place, sitting now at Trenton, now at Annapolis, and finally at New York.2 Each state sent to it as many delegates as it chose, though after the adoption

Congress

1 Except for a few days in December, 1776, when it fled to Baltimore; and again from September, 1777, to June, 1778, when Philadelphia was in possession of the British ; during that interval Congress held its meetings at York in Pennsylvania.

" See my Critical Period of American History, chaps. iii., vi., vii.

of the articles no state could send less than two or more than seven. Each state had one vote, and it took nine votes, or two thirds of the whole, to carry any measure of importance. One of the delegates was chosen president or chairman of the congress, and this position was one of great dignity and considerable influence, but it was not essentially different from the position of any of the other delegates. There were no distinct executive officers. Important executive matters were at first assigned to committees, such as the Finance Committee and the Board of War, though at the most trying time the finance committee was a committee of one, in the person of Robert Morris, who was commonly called the Financier. The work of the finance committee was chiefly trying to solve the problem of paying bills without spending money, for there was seldom any money to spend. Congress could not tax the people or recruit the army. When it wanted money or troops, it could only ask the state governments for them; and generally it got from a fifth to a fourth part of the troops needed, but of money a far smaller proportion. Sometimes it borrowed money from Holland or France, but often its only resource was to issue paper promises to pay, or the so-called Continental paper money. There were no federal courts,1 nor marshals to

1 Except the Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture,"

execute federal decrees. Congress might issue orders, but it had no means of compelling obedience.

dowed with

The Continental Congress was therefore not in the full sense a sovereign body. A government is not really a government until it can impose taxes and thus command the money needful for keeping it in existence. It was not Nevertheless the Congress exercised fully some of the most indisputable func- sovereignty tions of sovereignty. "It declared the independence of the United States; it contracted an offensive and defensive alliance with France; it raised and organized a Continental army; it borrowed large sums of money, and pledged what the lenders understood to be the national credit for their repayment; it issued an inconvertible paper currency, granted letters of marque, and built a navy.' ."1 Finally it ratified a treaty of peace with Great Britain. So that the Congress was really, in many respects, and in the eyes of the world at large, a sovereign body. Time soon showed that the continued exercise of such powers was not compatible with. the absence of the power to tax the people. In truth the situation of the Continental Congress was an illogical situation. In the effort of

for an admirable account of which see Jameson's Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States, pp. 1–45. 1 Critical Period, chap. iii.