Congress Canvassed

The 1774 pamphlet is attributed to Arthur Lee, a Virginia-born physician, lawyer, and political writer. Lee later served the American revolutionary cause as a diplomat in Europe.

The pamphlet defended colonial rights and examined how the American colonies should respond collectively to Parliament's coercive policies. It appeared as resistance was coalescing around the First Continental Congress in 1774.

It refers to the proposed or newly assembled intercolonial congress, not the later federal United States Congress created by the Constitution. Delegates from 12 colonies met at the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774.

It belongs to Lee's broader defense of American constitutional rights before independence was declared. He also wrote polemical essays under pseudonyms and later worked with Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane as an American commissioner in France.