HIS: This Day in History: 1776 – The Continental Congress officially names its union of states the United States.

 HIS: This Day in History: 1776 – The Continental Congress officially names its union of states the United States.

The Continental Congress was initially a convention of delegates from a number of British American colonies at the height of the American Revolution, who acted collectively for the people of the Thirteen Colonies that ultimately became the United States of America. After declaring the colonies independent from the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1776, it acted as the provisional governing structure for the collective United States, while most government functions remained in the individual states. The term most specifically refers to the First Continental Congress of 1774 and the Second Continental Congress of 1775–1781. More broadly, it also refers to the Congress of the Confederation of 1781–1789, thus covering the three congressional bodies of the Thirteen Colonies and the United States that met between 1774 and the inauguration of a new government in 1789 under the United States Constitution.

Convened in response to the Intolerable Acts passed by the British Parliament in 1774, the First Continental Congress sought to help repair the frayed relationship between the British government and its American colonies while also asserting the rights of colonists. The Second Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, proclaiming that the 13 colonies were now independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule. This body functioned as the provisional government for the U.S. until the nation's first Frame of Government, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, came into force on March 1, 1781, at which time it became the Congress of the Confederation. Officially styled "The United States in Congress Assembled," this unicameral governing body would convene in eight sessions (a ninth would fail to achieve a quorum) prior to being disbanded in 1789, when the 1st United States Congress under the new constitution took over the role as the nation's legislative branch of government.

Much of what is known today about the daily activities of these congresses comes from the journals kept by the secretary for all three congresses, Charles Thomson. Printed contemporaneously, the Papers of the Continental Congress contain the official congressional papers, letters, treaties, reports and records. The delegates to the Continental and Confederation congresses had extensive experience in deliberative bodies, with "a cumulative total of nearly 500 years of experience in their Colonial assemblies, and fully a dozen of them had served as speakers of the houses of their legislatures."