Committees of correspondence
The committees of correspondence were a collection of American political organizations that sought to coordinate opposition to British Parliament and, later, support for American independence during the American Revolution. The brainchild of Samuel Adams, a Patriot from Boston, the committees sought to establish, through the writing of letters, an underground network of communication among Patriot leaders in the Thirteen Colonies. The committees were instrumental in setting up the First Continental Congress, which convened in Philadelphia in September and October 1774.
The Boston Committee of Correspondence, which usually gathered at the Liberty Tree in Boston Common
Fraunces Tavern in Lower Manhattan, the meeting place of the Committee of Fifty on May 16, 1774
The American Revolution was a rebellion and political movement in the Thirteen Colonies which peaked when colonists initiated an ultimately successful war for independence against the Kingdom of Great Britain. Leaders of the American Revolution were colonial separatist leaders who originally sought more autonomy within the British political system as British subjects, but later assembled to support the Revolutionary War, which successfully ended British colonial rule over the colonies, establishing their independence, and leading to the creation of the United States of America.
The Committee of Five presenting its draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia on June 28, 1776, depicted in John Trumbull's 1818 portrait, Declaration of Independence
Notice of the Stamp Act 1765 in a colonial newspaper
Letter III of John Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, published in the Pennsylvania Chronicle, December 1767
On June 9, 1772, the Sons of Liberty burned HMS Gaspee, a British customs schooner in Narragansett Bay.