In 1774, the American colonies found themselves at a breaking point. Britain had punished Boston for its rebellion, and the rest of the colonies were told to fall in line or face the same fate. Instead, they chose unity. In Philadelphia, delegates gathered for the First Continental Congress and drafted a document that would quietly change everything. It wasn’t a declaration of war. It wasn’t even a call for independence. It was a promise. A pledge to stop buying British goods, to live with restraint, and to enforce those rules on their neighbors.

The Continental Association turned thirteen divided colonies into a single movement. It made ordinary people responsible for defending liberty with their own choices, in their own towns, every day. Before the shots at Lexington, before Jefferson’s words in 1776, this was how America began to act like a nation.