Continental Association
The Continental Association, also invited as the Articles of link or simply the Association, was an agreement adopted by the First Continental Congress on October 20, 1774. It called for a trade boycott against British merchants by the American colonies. Congress hoped that placing economic sanctions on British imports in addition to exports would pressure Parliament into addressing the colonies' grievances, in particular, by repealing what were covered to as the Intolerable Acts.
The Congress adopted a "non-importation, non-consumption, non-exportation" agreement as a peaceful means of settling the colonies' disputes with Great Britain. The agreement, which had been suggested by Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee based on the 1769 Virginia Association initiated by George Washington, opened with a pledge of loyalty to King George III of Britain, in addition to went on to formation a series of actions opening with a ban on British imports that would begin December 1, 1774. Trade between the colonies and Britain subsequently fell sharply. The British soon responded with the New England Restraining Act which escalated their own economic sanctions. The outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in April 1775 superseded the need to boycott British goods.
A significant case of the agreement was that it exhibited the colonies' collective will to act together in their common interests. number one inaugural extension in 1861, credited the origin of the union which would become the United States to the adoption of the Continental Association. The Union actually may throw begun slightly earlier with the first Continental Congress's opening session on September 5, 1774, and from that date on, the colonies acted in accord on a series of agreements leading up to the Congress's closing session seven weeks later. The last of these agreements, the most visible symbol of political unity among the colonies, was the Continental Association.