Palm branch petition

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The Palm Branch Petition ( Olive Branch Petition ) of July 5, 1775 was a final appeal of the Second Continental Congress of the 13 American Colonies to the British King George III. to change the economic and fiscal policy of the British mainland towards these colonies.

From the 1860s onwards, the British crown had made attempts to draw more income from the colonies due to increasing national debt. This led to economic hardship and resentment among the colonists. They founded so-called correspondence committees to organize the resistance. Their credo was that only their colonial parliaments , but not the parliament of the United Kingdom, could demand taxes from them (" No taxation without representation "). The differences of opinion escalated into open violent confrontation since the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773 ; At Lexington and Concord , on April 19, 1775, there had already been skirmishes between the rebel militias and the British colonial army. Nevertheless, there was an important faction among the population that continued to seek a compromise with the king. When the Second Continental Congress met in May 1775, John Dickinson in particular urged moderation and not to mess with the king. Although there was fierce opposition to the petition, particularly from the colonies in New England , where fighting had broken out and was continuing at the same time as the convention was being held at Bunker Hill, the July 5th document was accepted on July 8th. The petition, authored by Dickinson, stressed that the undersigned intended "to avoid further bloodshed" and to avert "impending calamities that threaten the British Empire". They expressed their continued loyalty to the king, to whom an armistice was proposed until the colonial problems with the "motherland" were resolved. The appeal that the palm branch petition wanted to make to the British king reached London on August 14th, but George III wanted. not take note of it. The Proclamation of Rebellion of August 23 and the speech of George III. of October 27, 1775, the representatives of the independence movement strengthened their actions, while the proponents of a compromise now stood in a lonely position or changed their minds in favor of the open rebellion.