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A History | Birthplace of a Nation - Independence Hall
Birthplace of a Nation - Independence Hall
When the First Continental Congress met to decide ways of
recovering certain colonial rights and liberties violated by various acts of the British government,
Philadelphia was the logical choice for the meeting. The principal city of the Colonies, it offered
not only all the amenities the delegates needed, but also a central location between North and South,
a major consideration in an era of slow, tedious, and sometimes dangerous travel.
The Congress convened at
Carpenters'
Hall in September 1774 and addressed a declaration of rights and grievances to
King George III. The delegates also agreed to boycott English goods and resolved that, unless their
grievances were redressed, a second Congress should assemble the following spring. England did nothing
to satisfy American complaints, and by the time the Second Continental
Congress gathered at the Pennsylvania State House on May 10, 1775, the situation had worsened. Armed
conflict had broken out at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts,
and Congressional delegates were now called upon to direct a war which few desired. Reluctantly they moved
from protest to resistance, assuming authority over provincial troops at Boston and appointing
George Washington Commander-in-chief "of all continental forces,
raised or to be raised, for the defence of American liberty.
For nearly a year, while fighting continued, Congress sought unsuccessfully for ways to resolve the dispute
between England and the Colonies. No demand for independence was made until June 1776, when Virginia delegate
Richard Henry Lee offered a resolution declaring "That these United Colonies
are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States," and calling for the establishment of foreign
alliances and a plan of confederation. In response, Congress appointed a committee to draft a declaration
"setting forth the causes which impelled us to this mighty resolution." Most of the work of the
committee fell to young Thomas Jefferson who, basing his draft on the broad foundation of universal human
rights, crafted a document which transcended the politics of the moment. Congress passed Lee's resolution on
July 2, and two days later adopted the Declaration. The 1778 alliance with France legitimized American
independence.
A committee organized to cope with the matter of confederation quickly provided a draft report,
"Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union," which
Congress debated intermittently for nearly a year before adopting it as the first Constitution of the United
States on November 15, 1777. Ratified on March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation were more a "league
of friendship" among independent States than a true act of Union, but they governed the United States
from the final years of the war, through the peace negotiations, and into the early years of nationhood.
Their failure to provide for a strong central government, however, led to the calling of a Grand
Convention" in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the document. Revision proved impossible and convention
delegates set about to create and entirely new charter that would supplant the Articles as the law of the
land. The result was the Constitution of the United States,
formally adopted on September 17, 1787, and ratified the next year. By this time Philadelphia was no longer
the home of the national government. Mutinous Pennsylvania soldiers, demanding back pay from their State
government, had surrounded the State House in 1783, and a nervous Congress decamped to Princeton. It
subsequently moved to Annapolis and Trenton before finally ending up in New York City. One of the first
orders of business for the Pennsylvania representatives to the new government under the Constitution was to
try to bring the capital back to Philadelphia, where the Nation had been born and nurtured, and where it
had taken it first tenuous steps toward an uncertain future.
Philadelphia: The Capital City
The U.S. Government under the Constitution began in New York City on March 4, 1789. In 1790 it came to
Philadelphia, the result of a compromise whereby Southern congressmen agreed to support Secretary of the
Treasury Alexander Hamilton's financial proposals in return for locating
a permanent capital somewhere on the banks of the Potomac River. Philadelphia was named temporary capital
while the new Federal city was being prepared.
Many Philadelphians hoped that, once here, the government could be persuaded to stay, and they spared no
effort to make it comfortable. The new County Courthouse, on the west side of the State House, was prepared
for the use of Congress, while the new City Hall, on the east side, was readied for sessions of the Supreme
Court. Robert Morris made his elegant mansion available for President
Washington and his family.
The decade during which Philadelphia served as the capital was a time of "firsts" and precedent-setting
decisions, including the inauguration of Washington for his second term, the formal addition of the Bill of
Rights to the Constitution, the establishment of the Mint and the First Bank of the United States, and the
admission of the first new States (Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee) to the Union. It was here too that the
Federal Government weathered the first internal threat to its authority (the
Whiskey Rebellion of 1794) and the first external threats from foreign powers. In 1793, French minister
Edmund Genet's disregard of America's proclaimed neutrality in the war then raging between England and France
drew a stern rebuke from the Washington Administration. This was the first of a series of diplomatic disputes
which, 5 years later, ended the Franco-American alliance of 1778 and brought the two nations to undeclared
war. The United States and England were also on the brink of hostilities over problems arising out of the
1783 peace treaty and the seizure of American ships. Jay's Treaty, debated and
ratified in
Congress Hall, resolved the difficulties and averted war.
When Philadelphia ceased to be in capital in 1800, it never regained its supremacy as the country's principal
city. But the events which took place here made Philadelphia an enduring symbol of the ideas and ideals of this
Nation's beginnings.
View of Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 1780s. Courtesy of National Archives
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