Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence
Encyclopedia
The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is allegedly the first declaration of independence
made in the Thirteen Colonies
during the American Revolution
. It was supposedly signed on May 20, 1775, at Charlotte, North Carolina
, by a committee of citizens of Mecklenburg County
, who declared independence from Great Britain
after hearing of the battle of Lexington
. If the story is true, the Mecklenburg Declaration preceded the United States Declaration of Independence
by more than a year. The authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration has been disputed since it was first published in 1819, forty-four years after it was reputedly written. There is no conclusive evidence to confirm the original document's existence, and no reference to it has been found in extant newspapers from 1775.
Many professional historians have maintained that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is an inaccurate rendering of an authentic document known as the Mecklenburg Resolves
. The Mecklenburg Resolves were a set of radical resolutions passed on May 31, 1775, that fell short of an actual declaration of independence. Although published in newspapers in 1775, the text of the Mecklenburg Resolves was lost after the American Revolution and not rediscovered until 1838. Historians believe that the Mecklenburg Declaration was written in 1800 in an attempt to recreate the Mecklenburg Resolves from memory. According to this theory, the author of the Mecklenburg Declaration mistakenly believed that the Resolves had been a declaration of independence, and so he recreated the Resolves with language borrowed from the United States Declaration of Independence. Defenders of the Mecklenburg Declaration have argued that both the Mecklenburg Declaration and the Mecklenburg Resolves are authentic.
The early government of North Carolina, convinced that the Mecklenburg Declaration was genuine, maintained that North Carolinians were the first Americans to declare independence from Great Britain. As a result, both the seal and the flag of North Carolina bear the date of the declaration. A holiday commemorating the Mecklenburg Declaration, "Meck Dec Day", is celebrated on May 20 in North Carolina, although it is no longer an official holiday and does not attract the attention that it once did.
, North Carolina
. "It is not probably known to many of our readers," wrote the editor of the Raleigh Register in an introduction to the article, "that the citizens of Mecklenburg County, in this State made a Declaration of Independence more than a year before Congress made theirs."
According to Dr. Alexander, his father, John McKnitt Alexander, had been the clerk at a meeting convened in Charlotte
on May 19, 1775. Each militia
company in Mecklenburg County
had sent two delegates to the meeting, where measures were to be discussed regarding the ongoing dispute between the British Empire
and the American colonies
. Relations between the colonies and the mother country had reached a crisis in Boston, Massachusetts, following the 1774 passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament
. During the meeting in Mecklenburg County, the delegates received official news that the battle of Lexington
had been fought in Massachusetts one month earlier. Outraged by this turn of events, wrote Dr. Alexander, the delegates unanimously passed the following resolutions at about 2:00 a.m. on May 20:
A few days later, wrote Dr. Alexander, Captain James Jack of Charlotte was sent to the Continental Congress
in Philadelphia. Jack carried a copy of the resolves and a letter asking North Carolina's congressmen to have the Mecklenburg proceedings approved by Congress. The North Carolina congressional delegation—Richard Caswell
, William Hooper
, and Joseph Hewes
—told Jack that although they supported what had been done, it was premature to discuss a declaration of independence in Congress.
Dr. Alexander concluded by writing that although the original documents relating to the Mecklenburg Declaration were destroyed in a fire in 1800, the article was written from a "true copy" of the papers left to him by his father, who was now deceased.
, the two declarations had some very similar phrases, including "dissolve the political bands which have connected", "absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown", "are, and of right ought to be", and "pledge to each other, our mutual cooperation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor". This raised an obvious question: did Thomas Jefferson
, the principal author of the American Declaration of Independence, use the Mecklenburg Declaration as a source?
One person who thought so was John Adams
, who like Jefferson was elderly and in retirement when the Mecklenburg Declaration was published in 1819. When Adams read Dr. Alexander's article in a Massachusetts newspaper, he was astonished because he had never previously heard of the Mecklenburg Declaration. He immediately assumed, as he wrote a friend, that Jefferson had "copied the spirit, the sense, and the expressions of it verbatim into his Declaration of the 4th of July, 1776." Adams, who had played a major role in getting the Continental Congress
to declare independence in 1776, had become somewhat resentful that Jefferson now received most of the praise for independence just because he had written the now-revered document announcing it. Adams was therefore privately delighted with the emergence of the Mecklenburg Declaration, since it clearly undercut Jefferson's claim to originality and precedence. Adams sent a copy of the article to Jefferson to get his reaction.
Jefferson replied that, like Adams, he had never heard of the Mecklenburg Declaration before. Jefferson found it curious that historians of the American Revolution, even those from North Carolina and nearby Virginia, had never previously mentioned it. He also found it suspicious that the original was lost in a fire and that most of eyewitnesses were now dead. Jefferson wrote that while he could not claim for certain that the Mecklenburg Declaration was a fabrication, "I shall believe it such until positive and solemn proof of its authenticity shall be produced."
Jefferson's argument, Adams wrote in reply, "has entirely convinced me that
the Mecklengburg Resolutions are a fiction". Adams forwarded Jefferson's letter to the editor of the Massachusetts newspaper, who wrote an article expressing reservations about the Mecklenburg Declaration without mentioning Jefferson or Adams by name. In response to this skepticism, North Carolina senator Nathaniel Macon
and others collected eyewitness testimony to the events described in the article. The now elderly witnesses did not agree in every detail, but they generally corroborated the story that a declaration of independence had been read in public in Charlotte, although they were not all certain about the date. Perhaps most importantly, eighty-eight year-old Captain James Jack was still living, and he confirmed that he had delivered to the Continental Congress a declaration of independence that had been adopted in May 1775. For many, the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration had been firmly established.
, who said that he had heard his father Thomas Polk read the Declaration to the public, listed the names of fifteen delegates present when the Declaration was adopted; other testimony produced other names. A pamphlet issued in 1831 by the government of North Carolina listed the names of twenty-six delegates. Eventually, supporters of the Declaration settled on a list of twenty-seven or twenty-eight men who they claimed had signed the document. In alphabetical order, they are:
Modern historians have emphasized that the story of the 1775 signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration can be dated no earlier than 1819. This is no contemporaneous evidence of a signing, nor did John McKnitt Alexander mention such an event in his notes. As far as it is known, none of the "signers" ever claimed to have signed the Mecklenburg Declaration.
Most of the alleged signers were Scots-Irish Presbyterians, as were many of the early promoters of the authenticity of the Declaration. Many of the reputed signers were kinsmen, and their descendants were among the staunchest defenders of the Declaration.
Eyewitnesses who provided testimony about the 1775 meeting disagreed about the roles played by some of the alleged signers. John McKnitt Alexander wrote that he had been the secretary at the meeting, but others recalled that Ephraim Brevard had been the secretary. Alexander wrote that his kinsman Adam Alexander had issued the order for the meeting to be convened, but William Polk and other eyewitnesses insisted that Thomas Polk had called the meeting. Abraham Alexander
is said to have chaired the meeting.
, which shared an early history) began to take pride in the previously unheralded Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Before then, Virginia and Massachusetts had been given much of the credit for leading the American Revolution. The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence clearly enhanced North Carolina's role—already notable because of the Halifax Resolves
of April 1776—in establishing American independence. The first celebration of the anniversary of the supposed adoption of the Mecklenburg Declaration took place in Charlotte on May 20, 1825.
Many North Carolinians were therefore offended when Thomas Jefferson's skeptical letter about the Mecklenburg Declaration was posthumously published in 1829. In questioning the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration, Jefferson, a Virginian, had impolitically referred to William Hooper
, one of North Carolina's signers of the American Declaration of Independence, as a "tory
". Jefferson used the term to mean that Hooper had been a conservative when it came to declaring independence, and did not imply that he had actually been a Loyalist
, but North Carolinians took it as a slight against one of their honored Patriots
.
The government of North Carolina responded to Jefferson's letter in 1831 with an official pamphlet that reprinted the previously published accounts with some additional testimony in support of the Mecklenburg Declaration. This was followed in 1834 with a book by a leading North Carolina historian, Joseph Seawell Jones, entitled A Defence of the Revolutionary History of the State of North Carolina from the Aspersions of Mr. Jefferson. Jones defended the patriotism of William Hooper and accused Jefferson of being envious that a little county in North Carolina had declared independence at a time when the "Sage of Monticello
" was still hoping for reconciliation with Great Britain. On May 20, 1835, more than five thousand people gathered in Charlotte to celebrate the Mecklenburg Declaration. In the many toasts celebrating "the first declaration of American independence", Jefferson was never mentioned.
In 1837, Jefferson's first biographer, George Tucker, came to Jefferson's defense. In The Life of Thomas Jefferson, Tucker argued that Jefferson's Declaration of Independence had been fraudulently interpolated
into the Mecklenburg Declaration. North Carolina writer Francis L. Hawks
, an Anglican clergyman who regarded Jefferson as an "infidel
", responded that Jefferson had instead plagiarized
the Mecklenburg Declaration. Hawks's position was apparently supported by the discovery of a proclamation by Josiah Martin
, the last royal governor of North Carolina, which seemed to confirm the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration. In August 1775, Governor Martin had written that he had:
Here, at last, was contemporaneous confirmation that radical resolves had been adopted in Mecklenburg County in 1775. Unfortunately, the issue of the Cape Fear Mercury that Martin referred to could not be found. Throughout the 19th century, supporters of the Mecklenburg Declaration hoped that the missing paper would be discovered, proving their case. In 1905, Collier's Magazine published what was alleged to be a clipping from the missing issue, but advocates and opponents of the Mecklenburg Declaration agreed that the document was a hoax. It was later confirmed that the "traitorous" document referred to by Governor Martin was not the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, but was instead a radical set of resolutions known as the Mecklenburg Resolves
.
discovered an abbreviated list of resolutions adopted in Mecklenburg County on May 31, 1775, that were different from the Mecklenburg Declaration of May 20. In 1847, the complete text of these Mecklenburg Resolves
was found in a South Carolina newspaper published in June 1775. Unlike the Mecklenburg Declaration that had appeared in the Raleigh Register in 1819, the Mecklenburg Resolves fell short of an outright declaration of independence, and did not contain language that was parallel to Jefferson's 1776 Declaration of Independence. The Resolves, though radical, were similar to other local resolutions that were adopted in the colonies in 1774 and 1775.
The controversy over the Mecklenburg Declaration entered a new phase with the discovery of the Mecklenburg Resolves. The focus shifted from Thomas Jefferson to the question of how to account for two very different sets of resolutions supposedly adopted in Charlotte only eleven days apart. How was it possible that citizens of Mecklenburg County declared independence on May 20, and then met again on May 31 to pass less revolutionary resolutions? For skeptics of the Mecklenburg Declaration, the answer was that the Declaration was a misdated, inaccurate recreation of the authentic Resolves. Supporters of the Declaration maintained that both documents were genuine, and were adopted to serve different purposes.
. In an influential article in the North Carolina University Magazine, Dr. Phillips concluded that John McKnitt Alexander had admitted to having reconstructed the text of the Mecklenburg Declaration from memory in 1800. In 1906, William Henry Hoyt published a scholarly work that many historians have regarded as the conclusive refutation of the Mecklenburg Declaration.
Hoyt's argument is briefly as follows: After the original documents relating to the Mecklenburg Resolves were destroyed by fire in 1800, John McKnitt Alexander attempted to recreate them from memory. Alexander made some rough notes, which still survive, and internal evidence indicates that these notes were written after the 1800 fire. Like some of his contemporaries, Alexander mistakenly remembered the radical Mecklenburg Resolves as being an actual declaration of independence. This misconception led Alexander, or perhaps another unknown writer, to borrow language from Jefferson's well-known Declaration of Independence when the Mecklenburg Declaration was written from Alexander's rough notes. The eleven day discrepancy between the two sets of resolutions—May 20 and May 31—may result from some confusion of Old Style and New Style dates
.
According to this argument, when the elderly eyewitnesses were interviewed after 1819, they naturally could not be expected to verify the wording of a document that they had heard read nearly fifty years earlier, nor remember the exact date of the public reading. The eyewitnesses were misled into accepting the text of the Mecklenburg Declaration as authentic because it had been published in 1819 with the claim that it was a true copy of the original resolutions. Because the actual resolutions had been radical, and British authority in Mecklenburg County had effectively ended in 1775, the eyewitnesses were able to believe that the Mecklenburg Resolves had been an outright declaration of independence. While they undoubtedly told the truth about the events of May 1775 as they remembered them, their testimony was given in response to leading question
s, and their answers actually referred to the lost Mecklenburg Resolves. Unfortunately, by the time the authentic text of the Resolves had been rediscovered, all of the eyewitnesses were dead, and so no one could be asked to explain the existence of two different sets of resolutions.
of the University of North Carolina, who, beginning in 1916, wrote numerous articles on the subject. Henderson believed that the evidence showed that Mecklenburg County had adopted two sets of resolutions, that the text of the Mecklenburg Declaration was not recreated from memory, and that the events as described in Dr. Alexander's 1819 article were substantially correct. His work was supplemented in 1960 by journalist V. V. McNitt's book Chain of Error and the Mecklenburg Declarations of Independence.
One of the strongest pieces of nearly contemporaneous evidence in support of the Mecklenburg Declaration is a diary entry discovered in 1904. The entry is unsigned and undated, but internal evidence suggests that it was written in 1783 in Salem, North Carolina
, by a merchant named Traugott Bagge. The English translation of the German entry reads:
Skeptics of the Mecklenburg Declaration argued that the diary entry merely suggests that Bagge, writing eight years after the event, misinterpreted the Mecklenburg Resolves as having been an actual declaration of independence. Archibald Henderson, however, argued that the entry attested to both the Declaration ("declared itself free and independent") and the Resolves ("arrangements for the administration of the laws").
, in his standard history North Carolina through Four Centuries (1989) relegates the Mecklenburg Declaration to a skeptical footnote; Professor H.G. Jones, in his North Carolina Illustrated (Chapel Hill: University of N.C. Press, 1983), pointedly places ironic quotation marks around the name of the declaration. The Harvard Guide to American History (1954) lists the Mecklenburg Declaration under the heading of "spurious declarations." Allan Nevins
says "Legends often become a point of faith. At one time the State of North Carolina made it compulsory for the public schools to teach that Mecklenburg County had adopted a Declaration of Independence on May 20, 1775—to teach what had been clearly demonstrated an untruth."
In 1997 historian Pauline Maier
wrote:
Despite much scholarly opinion against the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration, belief in the document remains important to some North Carolinians, says historian Dan L. Morrill, who notes that the possibility that it is genuine cannot be entirely discounted. Morrill writes, "Let's make one thing clear. One cannot demonstrate conclusively that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is a fake. The dramatic events of May nineteenth and May twentieth could have happened. Ultimately, it is a matter of faith, not proof. You believe it or you don't believe it."
The early government of North Carolina, convinced that the Mecklenburg Declaration was authentic, maintained that North Carolinians were the first Americans to declare independence from Britain. As a result, both the seal and the flag of North Carolina bear the date of the declaration. Coins have been minted that celebrate the Mecklenburg Declaration, and the story was printed in elementary school textbooks. A monument to the reputed signers of the declaration was unveiled in Charlotte on May 20, 1898, and a commemorative tablet was placed in the rotunda of the North Carolina State Capitol
building on May 20, 1912. In 1881, the state legislature made May 20 a legal holiday to commemorate the Mecklenburg Declaration. Sometimes known as "Meck Dec Day", it is no longer an official holiday and does not attract the attention that it once did.
Four United States presidents visited Charlotte to participate in the Mecklenburg Day celebration: William Howard Taft
(1909), Woodrow Wilson
(1916), Dwight D. Eisenhower
(1954), and Gerald Ford
(1975). Aware of the controversy, the presidents generally praised the revolutionary patriots of Mecklenburg County without specifically endorsing the authenticity of the disputed document.
The Mecklenburg Declaration is referenced in the motto for Davidson College
, located in Davidson
in Mecklenburg
and Iredell
counties: Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas ("Let Knowledge Be Cherished Where Liberty Has Arisen").
----
Declaration of independence
A declaration of independence is an assertion of the independence of an aspiring state or states. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the territory of another nation or failed nation, or are breakaway territories from within the larger state...
made in the Thirteen Colonies
Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies were English and later British colonies established on the Atlantic coast of North America between 1607 and 1733. They declared their independence in the American Revolution and formed the United States of America...
during the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
. It was supposedly signed on May 20, 1775, at Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County. In 2010, Charlotte's population according to the US Census Bureau was 731,424, making it the 17th largest city in the United States based on population. The Charlotte metropolitan area had a 2009...
, by a committee of citizens of Mecklenburg County
Mecklenburg County, North Carolina
-Air:The county's primary commercial aviation airport is Charlotte Douglas International Airport in Charlotte.- Intercity rail :With twenty-five freight trains a day, Mecklenburg is a freight railroad transportation center, largely due to its place on the NS main line between Washington and Atlanta...
, who declared independence from Great Britain
Kingdom of Great Britain
The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...
after hearing of the battle of Lexington
Battles of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. They were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy , and Cambridge, near Boston...
. If the story is true, the Mecklenburg Declaration preceded the United States Declaration of Independence
United States Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...
by more than a year. The authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration has been disputed since it was first published in 1819, forty-four years after it was reputedly written. There is no conclusive evidence to confirm the original document's existence, and no reference to it has been found in extant newspapers from 1775.
Mecklenburg Resolves
The Mecklenburg Resolves, or Charlottetown Resolves, and sometimes referred to as the "Mecklenburg Declaration", was a list of statements reputed to have been introduced in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina to the Mecklenburg Committee of Safety on or after March 20, 1775 and adopted by the...
. The Mecklenburg Resolves were a set of radical resolutions passed on May 31, 1775, that fell short of an actual declaration of independence. Although published in newspapers in 1775, the text of the Mecklenburg Resolves was lost after the American Revolution and not rediscovered until 1838. Historians believe that the Mecklenburg Declaration was written in 1800 in an attempt to recreate the Mecklenburg Resolves from memory. According to this theory, the author of the Mecklenburg Declaration mistakenly believed that the Resolves had been a declaration of independence, and so he recreated the Resolves with language borrowed from the United States Declaration of Independence. Defenders of the Mecklenburg Declaration have argued that both the Mecklenburg Declaration and the Mecklenburg Resolves are authentic.
The early government of North Carolina, convinced that the Mecklenburg Declaration was genuine, maintained that North Carolinians were the first Americans to declare independence from Great Britain. As a result, both the seal and the flag of North Carolina bear the date of the declaration. A holiday commemorating the Mecklenburg Declaration, "Meck Dec Day", is celebrated on May 20 in North Carolina, although it is no longer an official holiday and does not attract the attention that it once did.
Initial publication
The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was first published on April 30, 1819, in an article written by Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander in the Raleigh Register and North Carolina Gazette, a newspaper based in RaleighRaleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh is the capital and the second largest city in the state of North Carolina as well as the seat of Wake County. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's 2010 population was 403,892, over an area of , making Raleigh...
, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
. "It is not probably known to many of our readers," wrote the editor of the Raleigh Register in an introduction to the article, "that the citizens of Mecklenburg County, in this State made a Declaration of Independence more than a year before Congress made theirs."
According to Dr. Alexander, his father, John McKnitt Alexander, had been the clerk at a meeting convened in Charlotte
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County. In 2010, Charlotte's population according to the US Census Bureau was 731,424, making it the 17th largest city in the United States based on population. The Charlotte metropolitan area had a 2009...
on May 19, 1775. Each militia
Militia (United States)
The role of militia, also known as military service and duty, in the United States is complex and has transformed over time.Spitzer, Robert J.: The Politics of Gun Control, Page 36. Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1995. " The term militia can be used to describe any number of groups within the...
company in Mecklenburg County
Mecklenburg County, North Carolina
-Air:The county's primary commercial aviation airport is Charlotte Douglas International Airport in Charlotte.- Intercity rail :With twenty-five freight trains a day, Mecklenburg is a freight railroad transportation center, largely due to its place on the NS main line between Washington and Atlanta...
had sent two delegates to the meeting, where measures were to be discussed regarding the ongoing dispute between the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
and the American colonies
Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies were English and later British colonies established on the Atlantic coast of North America between 1607 and 1733. They declared their independence in the American Revolution and formed the United States of America...
. Relations between the colonies and the mother country had reached a crisis in Boston, Massachusetts, following the 1774 passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament
Parliament of Great Britain
The Parliament of Great Britain was formed in 1707 following the ratification of the Acts of Union by both the Parliament of England and Parliament of Scotland...
. During the meeting in Mecklenburg County, the delegates received official news that the battle of Lexington
Battles of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. They were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy , and Cambridge, near Boston...
had been fought in Massachusetts one month earlier. Outraged by this turn of events, wrote Dr. Alexander, the delegates unanimously passed the following resolutions at about 2:00 a.m. on May 20:
- 1. Resolved, That whosoever directly or indirectly abetted, or in any way, form, or manner, countenanced the uncharted and dangerous invasion of our rights, as claimed by Great Britain, is an enemy to this County, to America, and to the inherent and inalienable rights of man.
- 2. Resolved, That we the citizens of Mecklenburg County, do hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother Country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract, or association, with that Nation, who have wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties and inhumanly shed the innocent blood of American patriots at Lexington.
- 3. Resolved, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people, are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing Association, under the control of no power other than that of our God and the General Government of the Congress; to the maintenance of which independence, we solemnly pledge to each other, our mutual cooperation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor.
- 4. Resolved, That as we now acknowledge the existence and control of no law or legal officer, civil or military, within this County, we do hereby ordain and adopt, as a rule of life, all, each and every of our former laws - where, nevertheless, the Crown of Great Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authority therein.
- 5. Resolved, That it is also further decreed, that all, each and every military officer in this County, is hereby reinstated to his former command and authority, he acting conformably to these regulations, and that every member present of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil officer, viz. a Justice of the Peace, in the character of a 'Committee-man,' to issue process, hear and determine all matters of controversy, according to said adopted laws, and to preserve peace, and union, and harmony, in said County, and to use every exertion to spread the love of country and fire of freedom throughout America, until a more general and organized government be established in this province.
A few days later, wrote Dr. Alexander, Captain James Jack of Charlotte was sent to the Continental Congress
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting on May 10, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun. It succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met briefly during 1774,...
in Philadelphia. Jack carried a copy of the resolves and a letter asking North Carolina's congressmen to have the Mecklenburg proceedings approved by Congress. The North Carolina congressional delegation—Richard Caswell
Richard Caswell
Richard Caswell was the first and fifth governor of the U.S. State of North Carolina, serving from 1776 to 1780 and from 1784 to 1787....
, William Hooper
William Hooper
William Hooper was an American lawyer, politician, and a member of the Continental Congress representing North Carolina from 1774 through 1777...
, and Joseph Hewes
Joseph Hewes
Joseph Hewes was a native of Princeton, New Jersey, where he was born in 1730. Hewes’s parents were part of the Quaker Society of Friends. Immediately after their marriage they moved to New Jersey, which became Joseph Hewes’s home state. Hewes was formally educated at Princeton and after...
—told Jack that although they supported what had been done, it was premature to discuss a declaration of independence in Congress.
Dr. Alexander concluded by writing that although the original documents relating to the Mecklenburg Declaration were destroyed in a fire in 1800, the article was written from a "true copy" of the papers left to him by his father, who was now deceased.
Jefferson skeptical
The 1819 article about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was republished in many newspapers across the United States. People immediately noticed that, even though the Mecklenburg Declaration was supposedly written more than a year before the 1776 United States Declaration of IndependenceUnited States Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...
, the two declarations had some very similar phrases, including "dissolve the political bands which have connected", "absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown", "are, and of right ought to be", and "pledge to each other, our mutual cooperation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor". This raised an obvious question: did Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
, the principal author of the American Declaration of Independence, use the Mecklenburg Declaration as a source?
One person who thought so was John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
, who like Jefferson was elderly and in retirement when the Mecklenburg Declaration was published in 1819. When Adams read Dr. Alexander's article in a Massachusetts newspaper, he was astonished because he had never previously heard of the Mecklenburg Declaration. He immediately assumed, as he wrote a friend, that Jefferson had "copied the spirit, the sense, and the expressions of it verbatim into his Declaration of the 4th of July, 1776." Adams, who had played a major role in getting the Continental Congress
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting on May 10, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun. It succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met briefly during 1774,...
to declare independence in 1776, had become somewhat resentful that Jefferson now received most of the praise for independence just because he had written the now-revered document announcing it. Adams was therefore privately delighted with the emergence of the Mecklenburg Declaration, since it clearly undercut Jefferson's claim to originality and precedence. Adams sent a copy of the article to Jefferson to get his reaction.
Jefferson replied that, like Adams, he had never heard of the Mecklenburg Declaration before. Jefferson found it curious that historians of the American Revolution, even those from North Carolina and nearby Virginia, had never previously mentioned it. He also found it suspicious that the original was lost in a fire and that most of eyewitnesses were now dead. Jefferson wrote that while he could not claim for certain that the Mecklenburg Declaration was a fabrication, "I shall believe it such until positive and solemn proof of its authenticity shall be produced."
Jefferson's argument, Adams wrote in reply, "has entirely convinced me that
the Mecklengburg Resolutions are a fiction". Adams forwarded Jefferson's letter to the editor of the Massachusetts newspaper, who wrote an article expressing reservations about the Mecklenburg Declaration without mentioning Jefferson or Adams by name. In response to this skepticism, North Carolina senator Nathaniel Macon
Nathaniel Macon
Nathaniel Macon was a spokesman for the Old Republican faction of the Democratic-Republican Party that wanted to strictly limit the United States federal government. Macon was born near Warrenton, North Carolina, and attended the College of New Jersey and served briefly in the American...
and others collected eyewitness testimony to the events described in the article. The now elderly witnesses did not agree in every detail, but they generally corroborated the story that a declaration of independence had been read in public in Charlotte, although they were not all certain about the date. Perhaps most importantly, eighty-eight year-old Captain James Jack was still living, and he confirmed that he had delivered to the Continental Congress a declaration of independence that had been adopted in May 1775. For many, the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration had been firmly established.
Alleged signers
After the Mecklenburg Declaration was first published in 1819, supporters compiled a list of men who they believed had signed the document. William PolkWilliam Polk (colonel)
Colonel William Polk was a North Carolina, banker, educational administrator, political leader, renowned Continental officer in the War for American Independence, and survivor of the 1777/1778 encampment at Valley Forge....
, who said that he had heard his father Thomas Polk read the Declaration to the public, listed the names of fifteen delegates present when the Declaration was adopted; other testimony produced other names. A pamphlet issued in 1831 by the government of North Carolina listed the names of twenty-six delegates. Eventually, supporters of the Declaration settled on a list of twenty-seven or twenty-eight men who they claimed had signed the document. In alphabetical order, they are:
- 1. Abraham AlexanderAbraham AlexanderAbraham Alexander was a public figure in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, during the American Revolution. He chaired the meetings that produced the radical Mecklenburg Resolves and, allegedly, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.-Early life:Alexander was probably born in Cecil County,...
- 2. Adam Alexander
- 3. Charles Alexander
- 4. Ezra Alexander
- 5. Hezekiah Alexander
- 6. John McKnitt Alexander
- 7. Waightstill AveryWaightstill AveryWaightstill Avery was an early American lawyer and soldier. He is noted for fighting a duel with future U.S...
- 8. Rev. Hezekiah J. Balch
- 9. Richard Barry
- 10. Dr. Ephraim Brevard
- 11. Maj. John Davidson
- 12. Henry Downs
- 13. John Flenneken
- 14. John Foard
- 15. William Graham
- 16. James Harris
- 17. Richard (or Robert) Harris
- 18. Robert Irwin
- 19. William Kennon
- 20. Matthew McClure
- 21. Neil Morrison
- 22. Duncan Ochiltree
- 23. Benjamin Patton
- 24. John Phifer
- 25. Col. Thomas Polk
- 26. John Queary
- 27. David Reese
- 28. Zacheus Wilson, Sr.
Modern historians have emphasized that the story of the 1775 signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration can be dated no earlier than 1819. This is no contemporaneous evidence of a signing, nor did John McKnitt Alexander mention such an event in his notes. As far as it is known, none of the "signers" ever claimed to have signed the Mecklenburg Declaration.
Most of the alleged signers were Scots-Irish Presbyterians, as were many of the early promoters of the authenticity of the Declaration. Many of the reputed signers were kinsmen, and their descendants were among the staunchest defenders of the Declaration.
Eyewitnesses who provided testimony about the 1775 meeting disagreed about the roles played by some of the alleged signers. John McKnitt Alexander wrote that he had been the secretary at the meeting, but others recalled that Ephraim Brevard had been the secretary. Alexander wrote that his kinsman Adam Alexander had issued the order for the meeting to be convened, but William Polk and other eyewitnesses insisted that Thomas Polk had called the meeting. Abraham Alexander
Abraham Alexander
Abraham Alexander was a public figure in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, during the American Revolution. He chaired the meetings that produced the radical Mecklenburg Resolves and, allegedly, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.-Early life:Alexander was probably born in Cecil County,...
is said to have chaired the meeting.
Celebration and controversy
After 1819, people in North Carolina (and TennesseeTennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
, which shared an early history) began to take pride in the previously unheralded Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Before then, Virginia and Massachusetts had been given much of the credit for leading the American Revolution. The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence clearly enhanced North Carolina's role—already notable because of the Halifax Resolves
Halifax Resolves
The Halifax Resolves is the name later given to a resolution adopted by the Fourth Provincial Congress of the Province of North Carolina on April 12, 1776, during the American Revolution...
of April 1776—in establishing American independence. The first celebration of the anniversary of the supposed adoption of the Mecklenburg Declaration took place in Charlotte on May 20, 1825.
Many North Carolinians were therefore offended when Thomas Jefferson's skeptical letter about the Mecklenburg Declaration was posthumously published in 1829. In questioning the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration, Jefferson, a Virginian, had impolitically referred to William Hooper
William Hooper
William Hooper was an American lawyer, politician, and a member of the Continental Congress representing North Carolina from 1774 through 1777...
, one of North Carolina's signers of the American Declaration of Independence, as a "tory
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
". Jefferson used the term to mean that Hooper had been a conservative when it came to declaring independence, and did not imply that he had actually been a Loyalist
Loyalist (American Revolution)
Loyalists were American colonists who remained loyal to the Kingdom of Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War. At the time they were often called Tories, Royalists, or King's Men. They were opposed by the Patriots, those who supported the revolution...
, but North Carolinians took it as a slight against one of their honored Patriots
Patriot (American Revolution)
Patriots is a name often used to describe the colonists of the British Thirteen United Colonies who rebelled against British control during the American Revolution. It was their leading figures who, in July 1776, declared the United States of America an independent nation...
.
The government of North Carolina responded to Jefferson's letter in 1831 with an official pamphlet that reprinted the previously published accounts with some additional testimony in support of the Mecklenburg Declaration. This was followed in 1834 with a book by a leading North Carolina historian, Joseph Seawell Jones, entitled A Defence of the Revolutionary History of the State of North Carolina from the Aspersions of Mr. Jefferson. Jones defended the patriotism of William Hooper and accused Jefferson of being envious that a little county in North Carolina had declared independence at a time when the "Sage of Monticello
Monticello
Monticello is a National Historic Landmark just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was the estate of Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia; it is...
" was still hoping for reconciliation with Great Britain. On May 20, 1835, more than five thousand people gathered in Charlotte to celebrate the Mecklenburg Declaration. In the many toasts celebrating "the first declaration of American independence", Jefferson was never mentioned.
In 1837, Jefferson's first biographer, George Tucker, came to Jefferson's defense. In The Life of Thomas Jefferson, Tucker argued that Jefferson's Declaration of Independence had been fraudulently interpolated
Interpolation (manuscripts)
An interpolation, in relation to literature and especially ancient manuscripts, is an entry or passage in a text that was not written by the original author...
into the Mecklenburg Declaration. North Carolina writer Francis L. Hawks
Francis L. Hawks
Dr. Francis Lister Hawks was an American priest of the Episcopal Church, and a politician in North Carolina....
, an Anglican clergyman who regarded Jefferson as an "infidel
Infidel
An infidel is one who has no religious beliefs, or who doubts or rejects the central tenets of a particular religion – especially in reference to Christianity or Islam....
", responded that Jefferson had instead plagiarized
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
the Mecklenburg Declaration. Hawks's position was apparently supported by the discovery of a proclamation by Josiah Martin
Josiah Martin
Lieutenant-Colonel Josiah Martin was the last colonial governor of the Province of North Carolina .-Family and connections:...
, the last royal governor of North Carolina, which seemed to confirm the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration. In August 1775, Governor Martin had written that he had:
seen a most infamous publication in the Cape Fear Mercury importing to be resolves of a set of people styling themselves a committee for the county of Mecklenburg, most traitorously declaring the entire dissolution of the laws, government, and constitution of this country, and setting up a system of rule and regulation repugnant to the laws and subversive of his majesty's government....
Here, at last, was contemporaneous confirmation that radical resolves had been adopted in Mecklenburg County in 1775. Unfortunately, the issue of the Cape Fear Mercury that Martin referred to could not be found. Throughout the 19th century, supporters of the Mecklenburg Declaration hoped that the missing paper would be discovered, proving their case. In 1905, Collier's Magazine published what was alleged to be a clipping from the missing issue, but advocates and opponents of the Mecklenburg Declaration agreed that the document was a hoax. It was later confirmed that the "traitorous" document referred to by Governor Martin was not the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, but was instead a radical set of resolutions known as the Mecklenburg Resolves
Mecklenburg Resolves
The Mecklenburg Resolves, or Charlottetown Resolves, and sometimes referred to as the "Mecklenburg Declaration", was a list of statements reputed to have been introduced in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina to the Mecklenburg Committee of Safety on or after March 20, 1775 and adopted by the...
.
Discovery alters the debate
In 1838, the case for the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence suffered a setback from which it has not recovered. That year, while examining newspapers published in 1775, archivist Peter ForcePeter Force
Peter Force was a 19th-century politician, newspaper editor, archivist, and historian.Born near the Passaic Falls in New Jersey, to William, a soldier in the Civil War and descendant of French Huguenots who arrived on America's shores in the 17th century, and Sarah Force , Force grew up New Paltz,...
discovered an abbreviated list of resolutions adopted in Mecklenburg County on May 31, 1775, that were different from the Mecklenburg Declaration of May 20. In 1847, the complete text of these Mecklenburg Resolves
Mecklenburg Resolves
The Mecklenburg Resolves, or Charlottetown Resolves, and sometimes referred to as the "Mecklenburg Declaration", was a list of statements reputed to have been introduced in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina to the Mecklenburg Committee of Safety on or after March 20, 1775 and adopted by the...
was found in a South Carolina newspaper published in June 1775. Unlike the Mecklenburg Declaration that had appeared in the Raleigh Register in 1819, the Mecklenburg Resolves fell short of an outright declaration of independence, and did not contain language that was parallel to Jefferson's 1776 Declaration of Independence. The Resolves, though radical, were similar to other local resolutions that were adopted in the colonies in 1774 and 1775.
The controversy over the Mecklenburg Declaration entered a new phase with the discovery of the Mecklenburg Resolves. The focus shifted from Thomas Jefferson to the question of how to account for two very different sets of resolutions supposedly adopted in Charlotte only eleven days apart. How was it possible that citizens of Mecklenburg County declared independence on May 20, and then met again on May 31 to pass less revolutionary resolutions? For skeptics of the Mecklenburg Declaration, the answer was that the Declaration was a misdated, inaccurate recreation of the authentic Resolves. Supporters of the Declaration maintained that both documents were genuine, and were adopted to serve different purposes.
Argument against
The argument that the Mecklenburg Declaration is a flawed version of the Mecklenburg Resolves was first made in 1853 by Charles Phillips, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel HillUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
. In an influential article in the North Carolina University Magazine, Dr. Phillips concluded that John McKnitt Alexander had admitted to having reconstructed the text of the Mecklenburg Declaration from memory in 1800. In 1906, William Henry Hoyt published a scholarly work that many historians have regarded as the conclusive refutation of the Mecklenburg Declaration.
Hoyt's argument is briefly as follows: After the original documents relating to the Mecklenburg Resolves were destroyed by fire in 1800, John McKnitt Alexander attempted to recreate them from memory. Alexander made some rough notes, which still survive, and internal evidence indicates that these notes were written after the 1800 fire. Like some of his contemporaries, Alexander mistakenly remembered the radical Mecklenburg Resolves as being an actual declaration of independence. This misconception led Alexander, or perhaps another unknown writer, to borrow language from Jefferson's well-known Declaration of Independence when the Mecklenburg Declaration was written from Alexander's rough notes. The eleven day discrepancy between the two sets of resolutions—May 20 and May 31—may result from some confusion of Old Style and New Style dates
Old Style and New Style dates
Old Style and New Style are used in English language historical studies either to indicate that the start of the Julian year has been adjusted to start on 1 January even though documents written at the time use a different start of year ; or to indicate that a date conforms to the Julian...
.
According to this argument, when the elderly eyewitnesses were interviewed after 1819, they naturally could not be expected to verify the wording of a document that they had heard read nearly fifty years earlier, nor remember the exact date of the public reading. The eyewitnesses were misled into accepting the text of the Mecklenburg Declaration as authentic because it had been published in 1819 with the claim that it was a true copy of the original resolutions. Because the actual resolutions had been radical, and British authority in Mecklenburg County had effectively ended in 1775, the eyewitnesses were able to believe that the Mecklenburg Resolves had been an outright declaration of independence. While they undoubtedly told the truth about the events of May 1775 as they remembered them, their testimony was given in response to leading question
Leading question
In common law systems that rely on testimony by witnesses, a leading question or suggestive interrogation is a question that suggests the answer or contains the information the examiner is looking for. For example, this question is leading:...
s, and their answers actually referred to the lost Mecklenburg Resolves. Unfortunately, by the time the authentic text of the Resolves had been rediscovered, all of the eyewitnesses were dead, and so no one could be asked to explain the existence of two different sets of resolutions.
Argument for
Advocates of the Mecklenburg Declaration have argued that both the Declaration and the Resolves are authentic. This argument was developed in the 20th century by Professor Archibald HendersonArchibald Henderson (professor)
Archibald Henderson was an American professor of mathematics who wrote on a variety of subjects, including drama and history. He was born at Salisbury, N. C., was educated at the University of North Carolina , and studied more at Chicago, Cambridge, and Berlin universities, and at the Sorbonne...
of the University of North Carolina, who, beginning in 1916, wrote numerous articles on the subject. Henderson believed that the evidence showed that Mecklenburg County had adopted two sets of resolutions, that the text of the Mecklenburg Declaration was not recreated from memory, and that the events as described in Dr. Alexander's 1819 article were substantially correct. His work was supplemented in 1960 by journalist V. V. McNitt's book Chain of Error and the Mecklenburg Declarations of Independence.
One of the strongest pieces of nearly contemporaneous evidence in support of the Mecklenburg Declaration is a diary entry discovered in 1904. The entry is unsigned and undated, but internal evidence suggests that it was written in 1783 in Salem, North Carolina
Old Salem
Old Salem is a historic district of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It features a living history museum that interprets the restored Moravian community. The non-profit organization began its work in 1950, although some private residents had restored buildings earlier...
, by a merchant named Traugott Bagge. The English translation of the German entry reads:
I cannot leave unmentioned at the end of the 1775th year that already in the summer of this year, that is in May, June, or July, the County of Mecklenburg in North Carolina declared itself free and independent of England, and made such arrangements for the administration of the laws among themselves, as later the Continental Congress made for all. This Congress, however, considered these proceedings premature.
Skeptics of the Mecklenburg Declaration argued that the diary entry merely suggests that Bagge, writing eight years after the event, misinterpreted the Mecklenburg Resolves as having been an actual declaration of independence. Archibald Henderson, however, argued that the entry attested to both the Declaration ("declared itself free and independent") and the Resolves ("arrangements for the administration of the laws").
Current status of the debate
The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence no longer attracts much attention from professional historians, who generally regard the document as spurious. If the declaration is mentioned in scholarly works, it is usually to discount it. Professor William S. PowellWilliam S. Powell
William S. Powell is an American historian, writer and academic. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, having retired in 1986.He received the North Carolina Award for literature in 2000...
, in his standard history North Carolina through Four Centuries (1989) relegates the Mecklenburg Declaration to a skeptical footnote; Professor H.G. Jones, in his North Carolina Illustrated (Chapel Hill: University of N.C. Press, 1983), pointedly places ironic quotation marks around the name of the declaration. The Harvard Guide to American History (1954) lists the Mecklenburg Declaration under the heading of "spurious declarations." Allan Nevins
Allan Nevins
Allan Nevins was an American historian and journalist, renowned for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as President Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller.-Life:Born in Camp Point, Illinois, Nevins was educated at...
says "Legends often become a point of faith. At one time the State of North Carolina made it compulsory for the public schools to teach that Mecklenburg County had adopted a Declaration of Independence on May 20, 1775—to teach what had been clearly demonstrated an untruth."
In 1997 historian Pauline Maier
Pauline Maier
Pauline Maier is a popular scholar of the American Revolution, the preceding era and post-revolutionary United States. She is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ....
wrote:
When compared to other documents of the time, the "Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence" supposedly adopted on May 20, 1775, is simply incredible. It makes the reaction of North Carolinians to Lexington and Concord more extreme than that of the Massachusetts people who received the blow. The resolutions of May 31, 1775, of which there is contemporary evidence, were also radical, but remain believable.
Despite much scholarly opinion against the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration, belief in the document remains important to some North Carolinians, says historian Dan L. Morrill, who notes that the possibility that it is genuine cannot be entirely discounted. Morrill writes, "Let's make one thing clear. One cannot demonstrate conclusively that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is a fake. The dramatic events of May nineteenth and May twentieth could have happened. Ultimately, it is a matter of faith, not proof. You believe it or you don't believe it."
Commemoration
North Carolina State Capitol
The North Carolina State Capitol is the main house of government of the U.S. state of North Carolina. Housing the offices of the Governor of North Carolina, it is located in the state capital of Raleigh on Union Square at One East Edenton Street. The cornerstone of the Greek Revival building was...
building on May 20, 1912. In 1881, the state legislature made May 20 a legal holiday to commemorate the Mecklenburg Declaration. Sometimes known as "Meck Dec Day", it is no longer an official holiday and does not attract the attention that it once did.
Four United States presidents visited Charlotte to participate in the Mecklenburg Day celebration: William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States...
(1909), Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
(1916), Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
(1954), and Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...
(1975). Aware of the controversy, the presidents generally praised the revolutionary patriots of Mecklenburg County without specifically endorsing the authenticity of the disputed document.
The Mecklenburg Declaration is referenced in the motto for Davidson College
Davidson College
Davidson College is a private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina. The college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine, although it has recently dropped to 11th in U.S. News...
, located in Davidson
Davidson
Davidson is the name of:* Davidson * Davidson Media Group* Davidson Seamount, undersea mountain southwest of Monterey, California, USA* Tyler Davidson Fountain, monument in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA...
in Mecklenburg
Mecklenburg County, North Carolina
-Air:The county's primary commercial aviation airport is Charlotte Douglas International Airport in Charlotte.- Intercity rail :With twenty-five freight trains a day, Mecklenburg is a freight railroad transportation center, largely due to its place on the NS main line between Washington and Atlanta...
and Iredell
Iredell County, North Carolina
Iredell County, along with Moore County in the eastern Piedmont, are among a very few counties in the United States sharing borders with nine adjacent counties.-Demographics:...
counties: Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas ("Let Knowledge Be Cherished Where Liberty Has Arisen").
External links
Note that websites about the Mecklenburg Declaration often repeat traditions not supported by modern academic historians.- "Celebrating the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence", from the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg CountyPublic Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg CountyThe Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County , is the public library system of the city of Charlotte and County of Mecklenburg in North Carolina- About :...
: documents, background, history of the May 20 celebrations, etc. Encourages readers to come to their own conclusion about the controversy - May 20th Society, a non-profit organization promoting commemoration of the Mecklenburg Declaration
- Mecklenburg Historical Association
----