Five-minute digest
The Olive Branch Petition
Summary
The Olive Branch Petition is the name later given to the petition to the king that the Continental Congress ordered engrossed, compared, and signed on 8 July 1775. The hosted text follows the Journals of the Continental Congress as presented by the Avalon Project. John Dickinson was its principal author. The same week, Congress also adopted the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. The two documents should be read together: one explains why the colonies have taken up arms; the other still addresses George III as “Most Gracious Sovereign” and entreats his attention to a humble petition from “your Majesty’s faithful subjects.” The petition speaks in the name of twelve colonies, from New Hampshire to South Carolina. Georgia had not yet sent delegates, and the text should not be described as already the voice of thirteen states. The subscribers named in this transcription include John Dickinson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and many of their colleagues. George Washington, already gone to command the army, does not appear among them. The argument recalls a beneficial union between the mother country and the colonies, and it attributes later injuries to a new system of statutes and measures that, the petitioners say, failed even to promote the welfare of Great Britain. The close is a prayer that the king may enjoy a long and prosperous reign, and that his descendants may govern with honor and with happiness to their subjects. The petition is therefore not a hidden declaration of independence. It is a last formal appeal, written after blood had already been shed, by a Congress that had also just justified armed resistance. Historically the king would not receive the petition as the colonists hoped, and the following year brought formal independence. That later outcome should not be read back into the wording of 8 July. For students, the value of the text is precisely its restraint and its pairing with the Declaration of Causes. It also belongs beside Dickinson’s earlier Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania and beside the 1776 Declaration in the library’s Founding Documents collection. One typographic correction is noted in the editorial remarks: Avalon’s HTML read “Edwd Diddle” among the Pennsylvania names; the signer was Edward Biddle.
Top Lessons
A petition, not a hidden declaration
The text still speaks as faithful subjects and prays for the king’s long reign. Later independence should not be read back into these sentences.
Twelve colonies, not yet thirteen
Georgia had not yet sent delegates. Accurate reading begins with the list of colonies actually named in the text.
The same week as the Declaration of Causes
Congress justified taking up arms on 6 July and signed this petition on 8 July. The pairing is the context in which each document should be taught.
Verified Quotes
“entreat your Majesty's gracious attention to this our humble petition.”
“The union between our Mother country and these colonies, and the energy of mild and just government, produced benefits so remarkably important, and afforded such an assurance of their permanency and increase, that the wonder and envy of other Nations were excited, while they beheld Great Britain riseing to a power the most extraordinary the world had ever known.”
“Nor were their anxieties alleviated by any tendency in this system to promote the welfare of the Mother country.”
Frequently cited
“That your Majesty may enjoy a long and prosperous reign, and that your descendants may govern your dominions with honor to themselves and happiness to their subjects, is our sincere and fervent prayer.”
“We, your Majesty's faithful subjects of the colonies new Hampshire, Massachusetts bay, Rhode island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina”