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. 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. Outraged by this turn of events, wrote Alexander, the delegates unanimously passed the following resolutions at about 2:00 a.m. During the meeting in Mecklenburg County, the delegates received official news that the battle of Lexington had been fought in Massachusetts one month earlier. Relations between the colonies and British leaders had reached a crisis in Boston, Massachusetts following the 1774 passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament. 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. "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." Īccording to Alexander, his father, John McKnitt Alexander, had been the clerk at a meeting convened in Charlotte on May 19, 1775. The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was published on April 30, 1819, in an article written by Joseph McKnitt Alexander in the Raleigh Register and North Carolina Gazette, of Raleigh, North Carolina. 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. The official seal and the flag of North Carolina display the dates of both the declaration and the Halifax vote. North Carolinians, convinced that the Mecklenburg Declaration was genuine, and also because of the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress on April 12, 1776, maintained that they were the first Americans to declare independence from Great Britain. Defenders of the Mecklenburg Declaration have argued that both the Mecklenburg Declaration and the Mecklenburg Resolves are authentic. Although published in newspapers in 1775, the text of the Mecklenburg Resolves was lost after the American Revolution and not rediscovered until 1838. The Resolves, a set of radical resolutions passed on May 31, 1775, fell short of an actual declaration of independence.
#Who was the main author of the declaration of independence professional
Professional historians have maintained that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is an inaccurate rendering of an authentic document known as the Mecklenburg Resolves, an argument first made by Peter Force. If true, the Mecklenburg Declaration preceded the United States Declaration of Independence by more than a year. It was supposedly signed on May 20, 1775, in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a committee of citizens of Mecklenburg County, who declared independence from Great Britain after hearing of the battle of Lexington.
The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is a text published in 1819 with the now disputed claim that it was the first declaration of independence made in the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolution. The flag of North Carolina bears the date of the Mecklenburg Declaration: May 20, 1775.
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