<P> The Congress met from September 5 to October 26, 1774 . Peyton Randolph presided over the proceedings; Henry Middleton took over as President of the Congress from October 22 to 26 . Charles Thomson, leader of Philadelphia Committee of Correspondence, was selected to be Secretary of the Continental Congress . </P> <P> The delegates who attended were not of one mind concerning why they were there . Conservatives such as Joseph Galloway, John Dickinson, John Jay, and Edward Rutledge believed their task to be forging policies to pressure Parliament to rescind its unreasonable acts . Their ultimate goal was to develop a reasonable solution to the difficulties and bring about reconciliation between the Colonies and Great Britain . Others such as Patrick Henry, Roger Sherman, Samuel Adams, and John Adams believed their task to be developing a decisive statement of the rights and liberties of the Colonies . Their ultimate goal was to end what they felt to be the abuses of parliamentary authority, and to retain their rights which had been guaranteed under both Colonial charters and the English constitution . </P> <P> Roger Sherman denied the legislative authority of Parliament, and Patrick Henry believed that the Congress needed to develop a completely new system of government, independent from Great Britain, for the existing Colonial governments were already dissolved . In contrast to these ideas, Joseph Galloway put forward a "Plan of Union" which suggested that an American legislative body be formed with some authority, whose consent would be required for imperial measures . </P> <P> In the end, the voices of compromise carried the day . Rather than calling for independence, the First Continental Congress passed and signed the Continental Association in its Declaration and Resolves, which called for a boycott of British goods to take effect in December 1774 . It requested that local Committees of Safety enforce the boycott and regulate local prices for goods . These resolutions adopted by the Congress did not endorse any legal power of Parliament to regulate trade, but consented, nonetheless, to the operation of acts for that purpose . Furthermore, they did not repudiate control by the royal prerogative, which was explicitly acknowledged in the Petition to the King a few days later . </P>

What were the actions taken by the first continental congress