1906 - Officially Recognized

Charlotte Daily Observer 5/20/1906, Sec. 3, p. 4

OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZED
President and Declaration
 
In Ordering Cavalry, Marines and Marine Band to Participate in Next Week’s Celebration, the Chief Executive Has Given the Declaration Its First Official Recognition—History of the Notable Action in Charlotte May 20, 1775.
 
New York Press.
 
In ordering a company of cavalry from Fort Myer, a company of marines and the famous Marine Band from Washington and two companies of infantry from Atlanta sent to Charlotte, to take part in the celebration on May 20 of the anniversary of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, President Roosevelt has given to this much-discussed Declaration its first official recognition.
 
For more than a century the Mecklenburg Declaration has been in dispute.  Thomas Jefferson was vehement in denouncing its authenticity.  There was good reason why he should take this position, for the Declaration of Independence of which he was the author was the same in part as that of Mecklenburg, and as the Mecklenburg document antedated the Philadelphia one by more than a year, Jefferson would be shown to be a copyist and not the originator of some of the most stirring sentences in the Philadelphia Declaration if he admitted what was claimed by the Mecklenburg advocates.
 
The Mecklenburg Declaration takes its name from the fact that Charlotte, where the convention was held, is in Mecklenburg county.  In 1775 Mecklenburg county was inhabited almost entirely by persons of Scotch-Irish blood, who were descended from pioneers of independent  spirit who emigrated to America in the eighteenth century and drifted down through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland till they arrived in the rich Piedmont section of North Carolina.
 
Charlotte, the county seat, now a prosperous little city of 20,000 inhabitants, in 1775 was a scattered village of twenty dwellings.  It was surrounded by a community agricultural in its pursuits, simple in its tastes and plain in its living, but among its inhabitants were men of intellect and polish.
 
In the months of March and April, 1775, the county was in a generally disturbed condition.  The exactions of the British crown were becoming exasperating.  Meetings were held in which the leading men of the community voiced their opposition to the alleged right of Parliament to impose taxes and regulate the internal policy of the colonies.  At one of these meetings Colonel Thomas Polk, commander of the county militia, was instructed to send a message to each captain of militia asking that two men be elected from each company to be delegates to a general meeting to be held at Charlotte on the 19th of May.  They met upon the day appointed.  They were addressed by prominent citizens, who spoke of the purpose of the meeting and recited a list of the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the crown.  While this meeting was in session the news of the battle of Lexington, which had taken place in Massachusetts on April 19, arrived.  The impression this news created was profound.  The throng of spectators who had gathered from all over the surrounding country became wildly excited and there were loud cries of “Independence!  Let us declare our independence!”  This news of the spilling of blood at Lexington served to confirm the intention of the delegates.  There was now but one thing left to do.
 
Abraham Alexander and John McKnitt Alexander, both men of standing, were elected respectively chairman and clerk.  Dr. Ephraim Brevard, a graduate of Princeton College, had drawn up resolutions some time before.  He now presented them to the meeting with amendments as follows:
 
“I.  Resolved, That whosoever directly or indirectly abets or in any way, form or manner countenances the invasion of our rights, as attempted by the Parliament of Great Britain, is an enemy to his country, to America, and to the rights of man.
 
“II.  Resolved, That we, the citizens, hereby dissolve the political bonds which have connected us with the mother country, and absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British crown, abjuring all political connection with a nation that has wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties and inhumanly shed innocent blood of Americans at Lexington.
 
“III.  Resolved, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people; that we are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing people under the power of God and the General Congress; to the maintenance of which independence we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortune and our most sacred honor.
 
“IV.  Resolved, That we hereby ordain and adopt as rules of conduct all and each of our former laws, and that the crown of Great Britain cannot be considered hereafter as holding any rights, privileges or immunities amongst us.
 
“V.  Resolved, That all officers, both civil and military, in this county, be entitled to exercise the same powers and authorities as heretofore; that every member of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil officer and exercise the powers of a justice of the peace, issue process, hear and determine controversies according to the law, preserve peace, union and harmony in the county, and use every endeavor to spread the love of liberty and of country until a more general and better organized system of government be established.
 
“VI.  Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be transmitted by express to the President of the Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia, to be laid before that body.”
 
These resolutions were unanimously adopted and subscribed by all the delegates present at 2 a. m., May 20, 1775.  They were then read to the crowd assembled in the village, who welcomed them with hurrahs and enthusiastic shouts.
 
Captain Jack, a hotel keeper in Charlotte, a few days later was dispatched on horseback to Philadelphia, where a copy of the resolutions was placed in the hands of the President of Congress and copies were delivered to the three delegates in Congress from North Carolina.  Congress cautiously approved of the resolutions, but deemed the action a little “premature.”  Congress had not only made up its mind to break with the mother country, but Martin’s History says, was actually preparing a petition to King George the Third, which was subsequently subscribed by every member on July 8, 1775, declaring, “We have not raised arms with the ambitious design of separating from Great Britain and establishing independent States.”
 
According to the same history, the assembly at Charlotte did not leave off with declaring independence, but immediately set about preparing a provisionary method of government.  “The delegates at Charlotte being empowered to adopt such measures as in their opinion would best promote the common cause, established a variety of regulations for managing the concerns of the country.  Courts of Justice were held under direction of the delegates.  For some months these courts were held at Charlotte; at that time Cabarrus formed part of Mecklenburg—two other places were selected, and the courts were held at each in rotation.  The delegates appointed a committee of their body, who were called a ‘committee of safety,’ and they were empowered to examine all persons brought before them charged with being inimical to the common cause, and to send the military into the neighboring counties to arrest suspected persons.”
 
In the early days of the nineteenth century, notwithstanding the fact that there were men living who attended as delegates, it was denied that any such meeting as that at Charlotte had been held, and there were many persons who scoffed at the mention of the Mecklenburg Declaration.  Those who testified to being at the meeting then found themselves in a rather awkward position, because there was no documentary evidence to support them.  This was because all the records pertaining to the meeting and the original copy of the declaration were burned with the home of the secretary, John McKnitt Alexander, in April, 1800.
 
The opposition to the belief in the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration was led by Jefferson.  In 1819 a duplicate of what is known as “the Davie copy” of the resolutions was printed in The Raleigh (N. C.) Register.  It was widely copied and commented upon by the newspapers of the land, who expressed surprise that it had not been more widely heralded.  Among the papers that copied it was The Excess (Mass.) Register, an issue of which fell into the hands of John Adams.  He immediately mailed it to Jefferson, with the following remarks:
 
“You know that if I had possessed it I would have made the halls of Congress to echo and re-echo with it fifteen months before your Declaration of Independence.  What a poor, ignorant, malicious, crapulous mass is Tom Paine’s “Common Sense” in comparison with this paper.  Had I known it, I would have commented upon it from the day you entered Congress until the Fourth of July, 1776.”
 
Jefferson’s reply was:  “You seem to think it genuine.  I believe it spurious.  I deem it to be a very unjustifiable quiz.”
 
Jefferson is said to have been not a little nettled at the comments throughout the country regarding the remarkable similarity in phraseology between the Mecklenburg Declaration and the Fourth of July Declaration a year later, of which he was the author.  In fact, some went so far as to accuse Jefferson of plagiarism.
 
In the absence of actual documents historians have given scant attention to the assertions of the Mecklenburg people, but some evidence which has recently been discovered, particularly the record in the Moravian Church at Salem, N. C., makes it appear that to Mecklenburg must go all the credit its people claim.
 
For the last five years Professor Alexander Graham, Dr. George Graham and R. O. Alexander, three Charlotte citizens, have been collecting evidence to prove that the convention was held at Charlotte and that a Declaration of Independence was signed.  The evidence they discovered is as follows:
 
A poem or piece of doggerel written in 1777, which refers to “Mecklenburg’s fantastic rabble in Charlotte in giddy council.”
 
The deeds still in the Mecklenburg stance:  “This indenture made the county of the Mecklenburg Declaration.”
 
Major Garden’s “Anecdotes of the American Revolution,” whose author personally knew Colonel Polk and other Mecklenburg soldiers.
 
The schoolboy’s examination, deliv-[sic] County Court House, dated from the Mecklenburg Declaration.  “For in 13th day of February, 1779, and in the fourth year of our independence.”
 
Martin’s History of North Carolina, written 1791 to 1809, in which the author cites contemporary documents and records as authorities for his ac- [sic] -ered in 1809 at Sugar Creek church, three miles from Charlotte.  It begins:  “On the 19th of May, 1775, a day sacredly exalting to every Mecklenburg bosom, two delegates duly authorized from every militia company in the county met in Charlotte.”
 
“The Davie copy” of the Declaration, written out from memory by John McKnitt Alexander after the burning of the original manuscript in his home.
 
The Bethania records of the Moravian Church, preserved at Salem, N. C.  These records, written in German script, have been carefully kept every year from 1775 to 1906.  A page covering the events of the year 1775 begins as follows:
 
“At the end of 1775 I cannot omit to mention that already in the summer of the same year—that is to say, in May, June or July—the county of Mecklenburg, in North Carolina, did declare itself free and independent from England, and did make such disposition for the administration of law as later on the Continental Congress established for the whole.  But this proceeding Congress looked upon as too premature.”
 
An account of a Fourth of July celebration in Charlotte in 1808 printed in The Raleigh Register of July 28, 1808.  A toast at a banquet was as follows:  “By Joseph Pearson—“The patriots of Mecklenburg, the first to declare independence.  May their sons be the last to acknowledge themselves slaves.”
 
A toast, offered by LaFayette, when entertained at a public dinner in the Governor’s mansion at Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, on March 2, 1825:  “The State of North Carolina, its metropolis, and the 20th of May, 1775, when a generous people called for independence and freedom, of which may they more and more forever cherish the principles and enjoy the blessings.”
 
Every year the people of Charlotte and Mecklenburg county get together at Charlotte on May 20 to celebrate the anniversary of the first American Declaration of Independence.  By reason of President Roosevelt’s action in sending United States troops to take part in the services this year the celebration will have peculiar interest.
 
In a speech delivered at Raleigh on October 19 last, the President said:
 
“It was in North Carolina that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence foreshadowed the course taken in a few short months by the representatives of the thirteen colonies assembled in Philadelphia.  North Carolina can rightfully say that she pointed us the way which led us to the formation of the new nation.”
 
All of which goes to show that the Mecklenburg Declaration is likely to receive more recognition by historians and others from this time forward than Jefferson was willing to give.