Olive Branch Petition

The Second Continental Congress, in a lastditch effort to avert war with Great Britain, signed the so-called Olive Branch Petition on June 5, 1775, and dispatched it to England on June 8. Leading the effort was John Dickinson, a delegate from Pennsylvania; he was joined by Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, John Rutledge, and Thomas Johnson in drafting the petition. The purpose of the petition was to induce Britain’s king, George III, to establish more equitable trade and taxation policies with regard to the American colonies. The situation was tense. On April 19, 1775, the opening salvos of what would become the Revolutionary War had been fought at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. Further, the First and Second Continental Congresses had authorized the invasion of “Canada,” as the province of Quebec was called at the time, with a view to enlisting the Canadians on the side of the American colonists. Escalation of war seemed inevitable, but many colonists wanted cooler heads to prevail on both sides of the Atlantic and were willing to remain loyal subjects of the Crown. They believed that by extending a “humble petition” to the king, they could persuade him to override what the colonists saw as the heavy-handedness of the British Parliament.