USA > North Carolina > Memorials of North Carolina > Part 2
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MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA.
CHAP. III.
THE MECKLENBURGH DECLARATION OF INDE- PENDENCE.
" A glorious people vibrated again The lightning of the nations-liberty."
SHELLEY.
IN the first chapter of this work I celebrated the adventures of the first voyagers of Sir Walter Raleigh, and I pointed to the first spot consecrated by the flag of England. I there claimed for the territory of North Carolina the distinction of having been the mother-earth of our Anglo-American empire; and I detailed, with some enthusiasm, the blessings which had resulted to all mankind from the circumstance that England, and not Spain, France, or Portugal first occupied our shores. I now approach an event in the history of North Carolina, alike interesting in its occurrence, alike important in its consequences, as fatal to the authority of England as it was glo- rious for the sovereignty of the American people. After a revolution of nearly two hundred years, the flag which, on the 13th of July, 1584, had been planted on the coast of North Carolina, began to wane, the unfitness of the government of England for the condition of her American colonies became
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every year more obvious ; and amid the commotions and throes of an excited and an indignant nation, the people of Mecklenburgh county signalized the 20th of May, 1775, as the last day of the power of England over a portion of the original domain of Sir Walter Raleigh. On that memorable occasion American independence was first asserted; and it is curious to observe, that the annals of a single state should contribute the two great events in the history of the present age-the alpha and the omega of the dominion of England over, her old North American colonies.
When the first continental congress met in Phila- delphia, in September, 1774, the people of the colo- nies could not have been said to have been united on any other principle of opposition to the crown than the mere right of taxation without representa- tion. American independence was a treason not to be spoken of in the sunshine of open day ; and I believe I may point to the name of my countryman, William Hooper,* as the only member of that illustrious body who had openly predicted independence, and who had already cast the horoscope of his infant country. Always ahead of his contemporaries in the career of liberal principles, we find him urging independence, while others were contending for the stale right of petition, under the banner of reconciliation. He had been the favourite pupil of James Otis of Massachu- setts, and caught from him the fire of freedom.
* See Letter to James Iredell, 24th April, 1774, third part of the De- fence of North Carolina.
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In North Carolina, for at least ten years before . the meeting of the continental congress, the great struggle had been directed against the oppressions of the provincial government. The tyrannical legisla- tion of parliament had never been felt, and an annu- al protest against the right to tax was the only at- titude of hostility ever assumed by the assembly against the crown of England. Our sufferings were altogether internal. Arbitrary taxes were levied, not for the crown, but for the support of the Gover- nor and his party ; and when Mr. Burgwyn, one of the auditors of the government, made his famous re- port in 1772, stating, that although money enough had been collected from the people to have liquidated the debt of the province, still that that debt was not liquidated, the house of assembly promptly repealed the special tax-law, and when the Governor vetoed their bill, they then, in a series of resolutions, recom- mended to the people to pay no more such taxes.
If any reliance can be placed upon the political signs of that day, it is not venturing too much to as- sert, that had not the provincial congress been con- vened, the people of North Carolina, before the close of the year 1774, would have been in a state of open rebellion; and with an unanimity, too, which would have ensured the overthrow of the royal government of the province, and have commanded the admira- tion of every true American heart. But, although she was thus independent in her actions, as well as in the wrongs under which she writhed, she was not want- ing in all due sympathy with her sister colonies, and
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especially with old Massachusetts, the native land of William Hooper, who, indeed, in that day stood as the Colossus of the Whig party of the province.
As soon, however, as the proposition to convene a continental congress had been proclaimed in North Carolina, the hostility which had been for so long a time directed against the provincial government, catching additional fury from the prospect of a nation- al union, now sought a nobler object for its aim ; and with the crown of England in full view, the people lost sight of the petty Governor and his mercenary minions. The fever of a general revolt spread from Hatteras to the remote west; and so rapid and so eager was this feeling, that in less than five months after the first thought of a continental congress, the whole province was in a state of the strictest orga- nization, each county with its commitee busily en- gaged in accumulating the materials for war.
Such, then, was the state of public feeling in North Carolina for some months previous to the 20th of May, 1775; and the reader will here re- member, that at that time Boston was in the pos- session of British troops. Our North Carolina go- vernor had been routed from the palace at New- Berne, and was daily threatening our shores with the long-expected armament of Sir Peter Parker, which was to spread havock and desolation over the whole province. He had stirred up the Scotch population to oppose the Whig cause-he had spread dissentions among the people along the southern borders-he had excited the slaves to a midnight massacre of the
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wives and daughters of the land-and the news which flew into the interior from the sea-board, was, that the ocean itself was covered with the canvass of En- gland, bearing on to our shores her victorious arms. Dark, however, as was the hour, our countrymen did not falter. The county committees were regularly in session, deliberating on the state of the province ; and it was just at this excited crisis of affairs when Colonel Thomas Polk, of Mecklenburgh, at the in- stance of many gentlemen of that county, ordered the election of two delegates from each of the districts of old Mecklenburgh, then including Cabarrus, to meet in convention at Charlotte, on the 19th day of May, to consult for the public safety.
But before the time appointed for the meeting of this convention had arrived, the clamour of war was heard from the far north, and the people of Mecklen- burgh were started up, as it were from a dream, by the clank of arms and the shouts of victory, which now reached them from the battle-field of Lexing- ton. On the morning of the 19th of May, the whole county was up in arms ; and along the winding paths of the hills and the valleys, were everywhere to be seen squadrons of armed men on their reeking steeds, dashing on to Charlotte. The whole population of the county was there concentrated, each man busi- ly engaged in gathering the details of the battle- such as the number and the names of those who had fallen, and if they had fallen with a glory worthy of their cause. The matrons of Mecklenburgh, too, were that day at Charlotte, counselling with the
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patriarchs of the land, and urging on their beardless boys to a preparation for the tented field of war. A cloud of darkness seemed to hang over the des- tinies of our country, as if the smoke of that battle- field had been swept onward by the gale, and now enveloped the wild forests of freedom's land. In the midst of all this excitement, the convention met. It was just such an hour as that which precedes a vol- canic burst, when the mountain now reels and groans, and then endures silently its tremendous agony ; and as that immense concourse of people stood under the silence of an excitement too intense for words, watching the every action and syllable of the assem- bled patriarchs, a motion was made to declare inde- pendence, and the mountain goddess of American liberty flashed into existence, amid the shouts of the multitude, ready and equipped for battle, like Pallas, from the head of Jove.
A committee was then appointed to prepare reso- lutions expressive of the sense of the convention, and then they adjourned to meet the next day. On the 20th of May, 1775, immediately after the organiza- tion of the convention, Ephraim Brevard, the chair- man of the committee, rose, and read the famous Mecklenburgh declaration of independence. It was then unanimously adopted, and proclaimed to the world as the future political creed of the people of Mecklenburgh. This state paper, although wanting in many of the requisites of a finished composition, surpasses, in the boldness of its principles and in the energy of its language, any document of the age in
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which it was produced. Its tone is the emphasis of freedom-its great principle was as the first ray of light from heaven-and it sprung from the excited and troubled mind of it author as irradiant as light- ning from a cloud. The late John Adams, when first he saw the Mecklenburgh declaration, pronounc- ed upon it his judgment, that the feelings of America at that period were never so well expressed ; and he tortured the vanity of Mr. Jefferson, by saying to him, in the same letter, " besides, too, it was actually fifteen months before your declaration." Previous to it, reconciliation was the ultimatum-compromises were spoken of-we were to be represented in par- liament-we were to have a race of nobles, created from among our own people ; but all these schemes the patriots of Mecklenburgh dashed aside as a poi- soned chalice, and, claiming the right to think for themselves, they pointed to national independence as the great end of the struggle with the mother country. The electricity of heaven never gleamed more brilliantly over her mountains of gold than did that fire of independence as it spread over her * hills and her valleys, all glowing from Concord to the banks of the beautiful Catawba.
This remarkable event in the history of North Carolina, although noticed at the time by a procla- mation from the royal Governor, was thrown into the dark by the hard fighting which immediately suc- ceeded it. The battle of Bunker's Hill-the military organization of the province-the establishment of the Whig government-the battle of the Great Bridge,
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and the conflagration of Norfolk-in both of which our North Carolina troops were engaged-the battle of Moore's Creek-and, finally, the unanimous adop- tion of a resolution in favour of independence by the assembled congress of the province, were but a few of the important events which occurred before the first anniversary of the Mecklenburgh declaration. Nor should I here fail to record, that this unanimous vote in favour of independence was on the 13th day of April, 1776, more than a month previous to the famous resolutions of that neighbouring state which, until a few years past, arrogated to herself the ho- nour of having first moved the ball of independence. When Mr. Adams first sent to Mr. Jefferson the Meck- lenburgh declaration, and the latter gentleman saw therein all the opinions and much of the language of the national declaration, he rebelled and writhed as if the great secret sin of his whole life had been exposed to the full glare of day. He seized his pen -denounced not only the document, but all the names appended to it, as a mere hoax ; and in the im- petuosity of his malignant wrath, declared that Wil- liam Hooper was the rankest Tory in congress; and that this Mecklenburgh declaration was like " the North Carolina volcano," of which he remembered once to have heard.
The Mecklenburgh declaration had, in faith, been buried by the North Carolina volcano of war and bloodshed which succeeded it; but the excavations have been made, and the precious jewel has been brought to light, and it will stand as the great era
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in the future histories of our republic. An eminent Neapolitan, some years ago, wrote a book to prove that the ancients were unacquainted with the use of glass as applied to the windows of dwellings, and only a few weeks after its publication the excavations at Pompeii disclosed an edifice adorned with just such glass windows as a modern villa ; and so it has been with the researches which have been made into the buried history of North Carolina-the Mecklen- burgh declaration and the independence resolutions have been disclosed, and the history of the state of Virginia is like the Neapolitan's book.
But it is not our revolutionary annals only which have been misrepresented. The name of Sir Walter Raleigh, so intimately associated with the early his- tory of North Carolina, is familiarly claimed as one of the stars of Virginia ; and so very generally has this impression been stamped upon the literature of the age, that a distinguished foreigner, Mr. Tyrone Power, in his notices of the town of Petersburgh, en- thusiastically exclaims, " this is the Eldorado of Sir Walter Raleigh." He might as well have pronounced the river Appamattox the river Euphrates, and the country around him the site of the garden of Eden. Still Mr. Power is not to be censured. The illite- rate scribblers and orators of Virginia have boasted as much of the name of Sir Walter as if he had ac- tually kept the old Raleigh tavern at Williamsburgh. The famous John Randolph, of Roanoke, condescend- ed to purloin from the annals of a state which he sometimes affected to despise, the only dignity of his
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name; and I saw last winter, in the columns of the Richmond Enquirer, (from the pen, as I have since understood, of a Charlottesville professor,) a some- what personal attack upon me for having asserted, in a volume of history, the notorious fact, that the name of Virginia was originally applied to the islands of the coast of North Carolina. Very well, Mr. Pro- fessor Tucker, your swaggering at Saratoga, not- withstanding. " Catalina gladios contempsi non tuos pertimescam."
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CHAP. IV.
" Let's quarrel about these matters. It will make us better friends. Seeing that we shall know each others' thoughts and rights."
BLACKWOOD. To the Editor of the N. Y. American :
The two articles which I herewith enclose, ap- peared-the one in the American, the other in the Evening Star-some three weeks since. I beg that you will re-publish them, and that you will allow me the use of your columns to vindicate " my as- sumptions for North Carolina."
[From the New- York American.]
The last Mirror contains an article on the Meck- lenburgh Declaration of Independence, from the " Memorials of North Carolina, by Jo. Seawell Jones"-from which I extract the following sentence, to reply to which I beg the use of your columns :
" But it is not our revolutionary annals only which have been misrepresented. The name of Sir Walter Raleigh, so intimately connected with the early history of North Carolina, is familiarly claim- ed as one of the stars of Virginia; and so very gene- rally has this impression been stamped upon the lite- rature of the age, that a distinguished foreigner-Mr.
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'Tyrone Power-in his notices of the town of Peters- burg, enthusiastically exclaims-' this is the Eldo- rado of Sir Walter Raleigh.' He might as well have pronounced the river Appomatax the river Eu- phrates, and the country around him the site of the garden of Eden. Still Mr. Power is not to blame. The illiterate scribblers and orators of Virginia have boasted as much of the name of Sir Walter, as if he had kept the old 'Raleigh Tavern' at Williams- burgh." 1192445
Now, Mr. Editor, that Jamestown was settled under the immediate auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh, and that the country was called by him Virginia, in honor of the virginity of Queen Elizabeth, I never heard denied before. Mr. Jones, whose character I sincerely respect, is entirely at fault in this matter ; and he will find himself-in his assumptions for North Carolina-at war with Irving, Paulding, and all the learning of the country.
A SUBSCRIBER.
[From the Evening Star.]
MR. JONES OF NORTH CAROLINA AND VIRGINIA.
Mr. Editor .- Your proverbial affection for the character and principles of Mr. Jefferson has attach- ed to your name the best feelings of the South, and I therefore send you this for the columns of the Evening Star, having no doubt but that it will meet your ap- probation. The name of Jefferson has been of late years the subject of so much vituperation, that many
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reasonable people, who never examine for themselves, conclude, from the number of his assailants, that some great sin in his life has been but recently brought to light. The last N. C. Mirror contains an extract from the Memorials of North Carolina by Mr. Jones of that State; and we there see that that gentle- man continues his abuse of Mr. Jefferson under the guise of defending his own State. He hates Mr. Jefferson for his principles, and hates Virginia be- cause she is proud of her native sage of freedom. According to him, Mr. Jefferson stole "all the opi- nions and much of the language" of the Declaration of Independence from the Mecklenburgh Declaration. According to him, Sir Walter Raleigh was not the Lord of the sacred shore at Jamestown; and accord- ing to him the name of Raleigh is connected with no other territory of the Union but that of North Caro- lina. All these are new and startling points, and contradicted by every historian of any note; and this historical Revolutionist cannot expect Virginia to sit quietly and witness the degradation and insult of her proudest feelings.
Mr. Jones sneers, too, at Mr. Randolph's title of " Roanoke," and says he purloined it from the annals of North Carolina. But how this is, he does not tell us. The river Roanoke is in the State of Virginia, and sweeps over a much wider extent of that State than it does of North Carolina. The estate of Mr. Randolph was directly upon its banks, and there he was born, and from there he had as much right to take a name, as Mr. Jones had to take the name of
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Shocco from the spot of his birth. The spirit with which Mr. Jones assails Virginia, and every thing con- nected with her history, convinces me he must have some latent, concealed reason for his bitter hatred ; and so long as he does not misrepresent the facts of our history, he may justify himself in the eyes of many ; but I could not permit his claim to Sir Walter Raleigh as the founder of North Carolina to pass uncontradicted, nor let even the occasion pass with- out saying a word of defence for the lamented Jeffer- son and Randolph. A VIRGINIAN.
When I first saw these two articles, it did not ap- pear to me as at all necessary that I should reply to any thing they contained. In the first place they were anonymous communications, and I did not con- sider the editors of either paper in any wise respon- sible for their contents. Besides, too, I had supposed, that if there was any point of American history set- tled and altogether beyond controversy, it was the fact that the coast of North Carolina had been colo- nized under the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh; and that Roanoke, and the contiguous islands of that State, were known under the name of Virginia for more than twenty years before the settlement of Jamestown. But it seems I am not to be permitted to repose upon this conviction. I am denounced as an "Historical Revolutionist," because I record the undoubted events of the history of our country, and because the mere record of those events assails the originality of the history of Virginia. With an en-
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lightened public, denunciations of this kind can have no effect. If I have assumed too much for the his- tory of North Carolina, convict me by an appeal to the authorities of history ; and if " A Virginian" wishes to illustrate his own ignorance more fully than he has already done, he cannot do better than to devote himself to such a task ; and as his primal effort in such a cause, I challenge him to reply to this communication.
The only two points involved in this controversy important for me to notice, are,
1st. The claim of the late Mr. Randolph to the ti- tle of Roanoke ; and,
2d. " Was Jamestown settled under the imme- diate auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh; and was the country adjacent thereto called by him Virginia, in honour of the virginity of Queen Elizabeth ?"
On the subject of Mr. Randolph's claim to the title of Roanoke, it is necessary to state that the river which now bears that name, was known in Indian history under the name of Moratuck; and that it did not receive its present appellation until at least a century after the first settlement of the island. The meaning of the word Roanoke is Pearl; and such was its renown in Indian tradition, that the main river which fed the Occam, or Albemarle Sound, by degrees received the compliment of its name. All the glorious associations of the word, however, belong exclusively to the island. It was there where the good Indian woman, the wife of Granganameo, en- tertained the first voyagers of Sir Walter. In its wa-
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ters the generous Manteo was baptized a Christian ; and it was on its soil where he was invested, by the command of Raleigh, with the title of nobility, and created Lord of Roanoke. It was in the deep recess- es of its vine-clad groves that the first Anglo-Ameri- can saw the light of heaven. There the foundation of the ancient " citie of Raleigh" was laid; and it was there where an English people lived, suffered, and died.
Mr. Randolph had caught some vague idea of the fame of the word in Indian tradition, and ignorantly supposing that the small stream at his feet, or at least that portion of the main river which lies in the state of Virginia, might be the heir to all its glorious associations, he did not scruple to adopt it as a part of his own name-leaving the world to infer that there was some probable connection between his an- cestry and the Pearl Island of the savage lord of Roanoke. Besides, too, he claimed to be descended from an Indian princess; and in his crazy ambition for the empty sound of a title, he embraced the op- portunity to complete his aboriginal pedigree by purloining from the peerage list of North Carolina the almost forgotten nobility of one of her native sa- vages.
But what does the correspondent of the Evening Star mean by asserting that " the river Roanoke is in the State of Virginia, and that it sweeps over a much wider extent of that State than it does of North Carolina ?" Has he ever even so much as looked at a map of North Carolina ? Has he ever studied one
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of the state of Virginia-or was he ever at school at all ? A more " illiterate scribbler " than he is can no where be found; and I doubt very much whether even Professor Tucker himself, in his forthcoming Memoirs of Jefferson, will be able to exhibit any thing more striking in the way of blundering arrogance and igno- rance. The river Roanoke in the state of Virginia ! I wonder the gentleman did not claim the Mississippi because the Kenawha happened to be in Virginia. The truth is-and if the reader will refer to the map of Virginia he will find it is so-the Roanoke, as it starts from the junction of the Dan and Stanton, does not continue in the State of Virginia for more than forty miles; and then, entering North Carolina in the county of Warren, it sweeps over a fertile section of that State of more than one hundred and fifty miles in extent. So much for the geographical knowledge of " A Virginian." Let us now try him upon ano- ther point of the local history of his own State.
" Mr. Randolph's plantation then was directly upon the banks of this river Roanoke, which is in the State of Virginia, and which sweeps over a much wider extent of that State than it does of North Carolina." Now, with all due deference, I think this too is a mistake, though not one of so much importance as " A Virginian" usually makes. Mr. Randolph lived in the county of Charlotte, which, I am sure, is some fifty miles from the junction of the Dan and Stanton, away up towards the mountains ; and I am very sure the Roanoke does not turn about and run up the Stanton Hills all the way to Mr. Randolph's estate ;
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and then retracing its course, turn, as it were, reluc- tantly towards North Carolina. If that noble stream had ever achieved such a triumph over the laws of nature, " A Virginian" would have been at least in the neighborhood of truth in asserting "that it sweeps over a much wider extent of Virginia than of North Carolina."
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