The first continental congress meet for the first time in Philadelphia in the fall of 1774 to protest the coercive acts.
Parliaments rejected their protest, and after the battle of lexington and concord the continental congress met in Philadelphia in May 1775. It was a very important meeting because the delegates took it upon themselves to decide if they got independence from Great Britain.
On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee (delegate from Virginia) offered a vote of resolution that said "That these United Colonies are, and of right to be, free independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."