PROVINCIAL CONGRESSES. Between 1775 and 1776, the term "provincial congress" (in some colonies "provincial convention") was used to describe the primary revolutionary body managing the transition of power from traditional colonial legislative assemblies to independent state legislatures. Inasmuch as the traditional assemblies had been perceived as the "people's house," from the early seventeenth century on, it was natural that the popularly elected provincial congresses saw themselves as transitory representatives meeting in lieu of legally considered lower houses of the colonial legislatures. In sum, the Americans were inventing government as they went along. In most emerging states the provincial congresses were curious blends of revolutionary agencies and traditional conservators of representative self-government characteristic of colonial America. The provincial congresses took legitimacy from the recognition accorded them by the First and Second Continental Congresses, themselves the embodiment of revolutionary transitional government based on American understanding of traditional English liberties.
