Congress sends King George a loyalty oath and a list of grievances; the delegates call it their olive branch
By July 1775, colonial militia had already fought the British at Lexington and Concord, but Congress still hoped to avoid a full war. Meeting in Philadelphia, delegates approved the Olive Branch Petition on July 5, a direct appeal to King George III affirming loyalty while asking him to repeal the Intolerable Acts. John Hancock and the other delegates signed it on July 8, and envoys Richard Penn and Arthur Lee carried it to London. The king refused even to read it.
The Petition was the last formal attempt by American colonists to stay British subjects. Its rejection, followed by George III's Proclamation of Rebellion, handed John Adams the argument he needed: reconciliation was dead, and independence was the only option left. That pivot, argued in Philadelphia in the summer of 1775, set the colonies on the road to July 4, 1776.
QWhy is Georgia missing from a petition meant to represent all thirteen colonies?
Georgia had not sent delegates to the Second Continental Congress when the petition was drafted, so the document names only twelve colonies. The youngest and most exposed of the British colonies, Georgia relied on royal troops for protection against Creek and Cherokee raids along its frontier and was slower than its neighbors to embrace a break with the crown that might leave it undefended. Georgia would eventually join the Continental cause, but its absence from the Olive Branch Petition is a small reminder that the thirteen colonies did not move toward revolution in lockstep. Some had far more to lose than others.
QWhat happened to the private letter John Adams wrote dismissing the petition he had just signed?
Adams wrote to a friend that the petition was pointless, that war was already inevitable, and that Congress should be raising a navy and taking British officials prisoner rather than pleading with the King. British officials intercepted the letter before it reached its destination and had it published, using Adams's own words to paint the entire American delegation as insincere negotiators. It was an early lesson in how private correspondence could become public ammunition, and it did nothing for Adams's popularity among the petition's genuine supporters in Congress.
QWhat exact procedural excuse did the British government give for never answering the petition?
Lord Dartmouth, the Colonial Secretary who accepted the document from Richard Penn and Arthur Lee, gave an answer that was really a non-answer: no reply would be given because the King had not received the petition while seated on his throne. It was a technicality dressed up as protocol, a way of declining to engage without the political cost of an outright public refusal. The petition itself now sits in London's National Archives, filed away as a diplomatic dead end rather than the reconciliation it was written to secure.
