South Carolina Provincial Congress
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The Provincial Congresses were extra-legal legislative bodies established in ten of the
Thirteen Colonies The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Founded in the 17th and 18th cent ...
early in the
American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
. Some were referred to as congresses while others used different terms for a similar type body. These bodies were generally renamed or replaced with other bodies when the provinces declared themselves states.


Overview

Colonial government in America was a system of governance modeled after the British government of the time, with the king corresponding to the governor, the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
to the
colonial assembly The governments of the Thirteen Colonies of British America developed in the 17th and 18th centuries under the influence of the British constitution. After the Thirteen Colonies had become the United States, the experience under colonial rule would ...
, and the
House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminste ...
to the
governor's council The governments of the Thirteen Colonies of British America developed in the 17th and 18th centuries under the influence of the British constitution. After the Thirteen Colonies had become the United States, the experience under colonial rule would ...
. Colonial assemblies did not believe that the
British Parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprem ...
had authority over them to impose taxes (or certain other laws), that it was the colonial assembly’s duty to decide what should be imposed on their fellow colonists (the
Massachusetts Circular Letter The Massachusetts Circular Letter was a statement written by Samuel Adams and James Otis Jr., and passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives (as constituted in the government of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, not the current constit ...
was an example of that argument). Legally, the crown governor's authority was unassailable, but assemblies began to resist efforts by some governors and royal officials to enforce acts of Parliament or to raise local taxes that governors demanded. In resisting that authority, assemblies resorted to arguments based upon natural rights and the common welfare, giving life to the notion that governments derived, or ought to derive, their authority from the
consent of the governed In political philosophy, the phrase consent of the governed refers to the idea that a government's legitimacy and moral right to use state power is justified and lawful only when consented to by the people or society over which that political pow ...
.
Committees of correspondence The committees of correspondence were, prior to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, a collection of American political organizations that sought to coordinate opposition to British Parliament and, later, support for American independe ...
were formed as shadow governments in the Thirteen colonies prior to the American Revolution. During the First Continental Congress (in 1774), committees of inspection were formed to enforce the
Continental Association The Continental Association, also known as the Articles of Association or simply the Association, was an agreement among the American colonies adopted by the First Continental Congress on October 20, 1774. It called for a trade boycott against ...
trade boycott with Britain in response to the British Parliament’s
Intolerable Acts The Intolerable Acts were a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws aimed to punish Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest of the Tea Act, a tax measur ...
. By 1775, the committees had become counter-governments that gradually replaced royal authority and took control of local governments. Known as the Committees of Safety, they regulated the economy, politics, morality, and militia of their individual communities. After the British
Proclamation of Rebellion The Proclamation of Rebellion, officially titled A Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition, was the response of George III to the news of the Battle of Bunker Hill at the outset of the American Revolution. Issued on 23 August 1775, ...
and the King’s speech before Parliament (27 October 1775) the colonies moved towards independence.
Provisional governments A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, or a transitional government, is an emergency governmental authority set up to manage a political transition generally in the cases of a newly formed state or f ...
began to create new state constitutions and governments. Committees of safety were a later outcome of the committees of correspondence. Committees of safety were executive bodies that governed during
adjournment In parliamentary procedure, an adjournment ends a meeting. It could be done using a motion to adjourn. A time for another meeting could be set using the motion to fix the time to which to adjourn. This motion establishes an adjourned meeting ...
s of, were created by, and derived their authority from provincial assemblies or congresses. In some colonies there were little or no changes to their assemblies until statehood. They had no need of a provisional legislative body since their governors did not dissolve or prevent the legislative assemblies from meeting. This was the case in the Charter colonies with more autonomy, such as
Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...
and
Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but it ...
, which elected colonial governors who were aligned with their assemblies. (Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull and Rhode Island Governor
Nicholas Cooke Nicholas Cooke (February 3, 1717September 14, 1782) was a governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations during the American Revolutionary War, and after Rhode Island became a state, he continued in this position to become the ...
served as both the last colonial governors and first state governors.) The
Delaware Colony Delaware Colony in the North American Middle Colonies consisted of land on the west bank of the Delaware River Bay. In the early 17th century the area was inhabited by Lenape and possibly the Assateague tribes of Native Americans. The first E ...
was a
proprietary colony A proprietary colony was a type of English colony mostly in North America and in the Caribbean in the 17th century. In the British Empire, all land belonged to the monarch, and it was his/her prerogative to divide. Therefore, all colonial proper ...
under Governor John Penn of the Province of Pennsylvania, which included the “Lower Counties of the Delaware", but it maintained a separate Delaware assembly. It was generally allowed more independence of action in their colonial assembly than in other colonies.


List of Provincial Congresses and Bodies

* New Hampshire Provincial Congress *
Massachusetts Provincial Congress The Massachusetts Provincial Congress (1774–1780) was a provisional government created in the Province of Massachusetts Bay early in the American Revolution. Based on the terms of the colonial charter, it exercised ''de facto'' control over the ...
*
New York Provincial Congress The New York Provincial Congress (1775–1777) was a revolutionary provisional government formed by colonists in 1775, during the American Revolution, as a pro-American alternative to the more conservative New York General Assembly, and as a repla ...
* Provincial Congress of New Jersey *
Pennsylvania Provincial Conference The Pennsylvania Provincial Conference, officially the Provincial Conference of Committees of the Province of Pennsylvania, was a Provincial Congress held June 18–25, 1776 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia. The 97 delegates in attendance (out ...
* Maryland's Assembly of Freemen (Annapolis Convention) *
Virginia Conventions The Virginia Conventions have been the assemblies of delegates elected for the purpose of establishing constitutions of fundamental law for the Commonwealth of Virginia superior to General Assembly legislation. Their constitutions and subseque ...
*
North Carolina Provincial Congress The North Carolina Provincial Congresses were extra-legal unicameral legislative bodies formed in 1774 through 1776 by the people of the Province of North Carolina, independent of the British colonial government. There were five congresses. They ...
* South Carolina Provincial Congress * Georgia Provincial Congress


See also

*
Colonial government in the Thirteen Colonies The governments of the Thirteen Colonies of British America developed in the 17th and 18th centuries under the influence of the British constitution. After the Thirteen Colonies had become the United States, the experience under colonial rule would ...
* Continental Congress


References

{{American Revolutionary War, state=collapsed American Revolution