The Olive Branch Petition appealed to King George III in 1775 during the growing conflict between Britain and the American colonies.
The Second Continental Congress adopted the petition on July 5, 1775, and sent it to London after the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill. John Dickinson drafted much of the text, while Thomas Jefferson prepared an earlier draft that Congress rejected as too confrontational.
The petition declared the colonists’ loyalty to the king and asked him to help resolve the dispute with Parliament. It sought a return to peace without abandoning the colonial argument that taxation and other policies required the colonies’ consent.
George III refused to receive the petition and issued the Proclamation of Rebellion on August 23, 1775. News of that proclamation reached the colonies after Congress had sent the petition. The episode shows that independence was not yet the official objective of every colonial leader in mid-1775, even though the conflict was already becoming a war.