USA > North Carolina > Sketches of North Carolina, historical and biographical : illustrative of the principles of a portion of her early settlers > Part 4
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'A copy of the proceedings of the Convention was addressed to the Moderator of the first Provincial Congress of North Carolina, which met in Hillsborough, August 20th, 1775; and was laid before the committee of business, but not particularly acted upon, as the majority of the body were still hoping for reconciliation on honorable terms.
A copy of the proceedings appeared in the Cape Fear Mercury, published in Wilmington, and meeting the eye of Governor Josiah Martin, is thus noticed by him in the Proclamation issued from on board his Majesty's ship Cruiser, August 8th, 1775, and sent to the Provincial Congress :- " And whereas, I have also seen a most infamous publication in the Cape Fear Mercury, importing to be
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FIRST DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
' Resolves' of a set of people styling themselves 'a Committee of the County of Mecklenburg,' most traitorously declaring the entire dissolution of the laws, government, and constitution of the country, and setting up a system of rule and regulation repugnant to the laws, and subversive of his Majesty's government," &c. The Governor knew the people better than his predecessor, Tryon, and had he known them better still, he would have spoken of them more respectfully.
A copy of the second declaration (that of May 30th, 1775) appeared in the public papers in New York and Massachusetts ; files of which are still preserved ; and from them was copied by Mr. Force into his State Papers.
The history of the preservation of the first declaration (that of May 20th, 1775), in the absence of printed documents, will be given, in full, in the sketch of Hopewell Congregation, and the Secretary of the Convention.
The energy of the committee was equal to the decision of their declarations. The laws were vigorously enforced ; and the vene- rable chairman, and his coadjutor Col. Polk, with the committee at large, demonstrated that, in seeking freedom from tyranny, they designed no overthrow of law, or perversion of justice. Opposers of independence were reckoned offenders ; and open offenders found no refuge in Mecklenburg. As soon as the news of the insult offered their express, Capt. Jack, in Salisbury, reached Charlotte, the committee ordered a party of some ten or twelve armed men, on horseback, to proceed to Salisbury, the seat of justice in Rowan, and bring these men prisoners to Charlotte. The party lost no time in fulfilling their mission, and met with no resistance in Rowan. The offenders, Dunn and Boote, were, after examination by the committee, sent to South Carolina as suspicious persons, to be kept in confinement. Gen. Graham says-" My brother, George Graham, and the late Col. John Car- ruth, were of the party that went to Salisbury ; and it is distinctly remembered that when in Charlotte, they came home at night in order to provide for their trip to Camden ; and they and two others of the party took Boote to that place. This was the first military expedition from Mecklenburg in the revolutionary war, and believed to be the first anywhere to the South."-But it was far from being the last, retired and frontier as the county was. It characterized, in its spirit, energy and success, the various expeditions in and from Mecklenburg during the seven years' war-more particularly in the distressing campaigns of Cornwallis, in which Graham
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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.
himself acted so conspicuous a part. Dunn and Boote were both transferred to Charleston, for safekeeping, as persons particularly inimical to the country. Their wives made a strong appeal in their favor to the Provincial Congress, which met in Hillsborough, August 20th, 1775 : on the 29th of that month it was decided by a vote of that body that they remain in confinement.
Associations were formed, very generally, throughout the differ- ent counties in the state during the summer of 1775. Articles drawn up for the purpose were signed individually as a test of patriotism. The first association of which there is a copy, was drawn up in Cumberland county, July 10th, 1775 ; the second in Tryon, now Lincoln, in August of the same year.
The first Provincial Congress of North Carolina were not pre- pared for independence of the mother country ; and on the 4th of September, 1775, after discussion and the action of a committee, it was resolved-" The present association ought to be further relied on for bringing about a reconciliation with the parent state." But on the 9th of the same month, the appointment of a Provincial Council, of thirteen persons, with executive powers, was resolved upon ; also County Committees of Safety, with executive powers, in connection with the Provincial Council, to consist of not less than twenty-one persons, to be chosen annually by the electors on the day they made choice of Congressmen. It was also deter- mined that, after the 10th day of December, no suit for debt should be entertained except by permission of this committee. These committees of safety appear to have been the same as that already in existence in Mecklenburg ; and Abraham Alexander continued to act as the chairman, as appears from the following certificate, which may be also a specimen of the spirit of the times, and the vigilance with which the committee acted :
" NORTH CAROLINA, MECKLENBURG COUNTY, " Nov. 28th, 1775.
" These may certify to all whom they may concern, that the bearer hereof, William Henderson, is allowed here to be a true friend of liberty, and has signed the association.
" Certified by Abraham Alexander, chairman of the committee of safety."
Though the Declaration of Independence, made and repeated in Charlotte, in May, 1775, had no immediate effect upon the Con- tinental Congress, it is not unfair to conjecture that it had an in-
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FIRST DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
fluence on the Provincial Congress of North Carolina, that met in Hillsborough in August of that year, in the appointment of the Provincial Committee and the County Committees of Safety, as four of the members of the convention were members of the Congress, viz. :- Thomas Polk, Waightstill Avery, John Pfifer, and John McKnitt Alexander. Neither is it unfair to conclude that it had some influence on the Provincial Congress that assem- bled in Halifax, April 4th, 1776 : as, on the 8th of that month a committee was appointed, consisting of Messrs. Harnett, Burke, A. Jones, T. Jones, Nash, Henekin, and Person, to take into con- sideration the usurpations and violence committed by the king and parliament of Great Britain ; and, on the 12th, Mr. Harnett sub- mitted an able report, which was concluded with the following resolution, viz. :
" Resolved, That the delegates from this colony, in Continental Congress, be empowered to concur with the delegates of the other colonies in declaring independence, and in forming foreign alli- ances ; reserving to this colony the sole and exclusive right of forming a constitution and laws for this colony, and of appointing delegates from time to time (under the direction of a general repre- sentation thereof), to meet delegates of the other colonies for such purposes as shall be hereafter pointed out."
This resolution was, on the same day it was proposed, unani- mously adopted ; and IS THE FIRST PUBLIC DECLARATION FOR IN- DEPENDENCE BY THE CONSTITUTED AUTHORITIES OF A STATE. It was presented to the Continental Congress, May 27th, 1776, nearly six weeks before the national Declaration.
The question now arises, who were these people of Meck- lenburg, and whence did they come ? What were the habits and manners by which they were characterized ? What were their religious principles ? and what their daily practice ? The county was comparatively new ; and it was not yet forty years since the first of those composing the convention had settled in the wilder- ness. Agriculturists, at a distance from market, and in a fertile country affording in its pea-patches, and canc-brakes, and prairies, plentiful sustenance for their herds, they had abundance of pro- visions, and little of the sinews of war, money. Skilful marksmen, hunters, and horsemen, capable of enduring great fatigue, in mak- ing the Declaration of Independence, they offered a heart and a hand, to give and act according to their abilities, and the emergen- cies in which they might be placed. The riches of the gold mines were then unknown : the wealth of the country was in her sons,
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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.
and she was rich. Protestants, trained in religious things in the strict doctrines of the Reformation, their settlements were made in congregations ; and their places of worship so arranged as to accommodate all the families. Their descendants now assemble where their fathers worshipped before the Revolution. Their forms and creed were the forms and creed of their ancestors, who were eminently a religious people ; and their Confession of Faith has descended as a legacy from the emigrants, to go down to the latest posterity.
Whence did these people come ? and what was their an- cestry ? Of the members of the Convention that proclaimed In- dependence, May, 1775, one was a minister of the Gospel, and nine were Elders in the Church ; and all in some way connected with the seven churches and congregations that embraced the whole county of Mecklenburg. In tracing their history, the true and legitimate workings of religious principles are as happily displayed as in the annals of any State or section in the United States. When the history of these people and their descendants shall be the history of two centuries, it may, and probably will appear, that in the advance of true religious and genuine liberty and sound literature, the South and West are not a whit behind the most favored sections of our Confederacy. It cannot well be otherwise, for the principles, the creed of Puritanism, under whose influence human society has so happily been developed in the New England States, are the principles of Presbytery, the principles of civil and religious liberty, that struck deep in the soil of Carolina, and sent out their vigorous shoots in the great valley of the Mississippi.
But the question arises with increased force, who were these people, and whence did they come ? In what school of poli- tics and religion had they been disciplined ? At what foun- tains had they been drinking such inspirations, that here in the wilderness, common people, in their thoughts of freedom and equality, far outstripped the most ardent leaders in the Conti- nental Congress ? Whence came these men, that spoke out their thoughts, and thought as they spoke ; and both thought and spoke unextinguishable principles of freedom of conscience and civil liberty ? That they were poor and obscure but adds to their interest, when it is known that their deeds in the Revolution were equal to their principles. Many a "life" was given in Mecklenburg in consequence of that declaration, and much of "fortune " was sacrificed ; but their "honor " came out safe, even
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FIRST DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
their great enemy Tarleton being witness. They did not get their ideas of liberty and law from Vattel, or Puffendorf, or the tomes of English law. From what book then did they get their know- ledge, their principles of life ? Ahead of their own State in their political notions, as a body, they never wavered through the whole Revolutionary struggle ; and their descendants possess now just what these people asserted then, both in religion and politics, in conscience and in the state.
To North Carolina belongs the unperishable honor of being the first in declaring that Independence, which is the pride and glory of every American. Honor to whom honor is due !
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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.
CHAPTER II.
BLOOD SHED ON THE ALAMANCE- THE FIRST BLOOD SHED IN THE REVOLUTION, MAY 16TH, 1771.
IN the year 1759 a town was established by the legislature of the province of North Carolina, on the Eno, a branch of the Neuse, near its head waters, in the county of Orange, which might have received its name, Hillsborough, from the beautiful eminences by which it is surrounded, as well as from the Earl of Hillsborough, Secretary of State for American affairs, from whom it is called. Its first name was Childsborough, in honor of the Attorney-General ; but the change speedily took place on account of the odium attached to the attorney for his exorbitant fees.
This little village, the county seat of Orange, has claims upon our attention, for events enacted within its precincts and its neighborhood, in times gone by. It was the seat of the first provincial congress in North Carolina, 1775 ;- the head-quarters of Gates after his sad defeat at Camden ;- and of his adversary, Lord Cornwallis, on his invasion of Carolina in his pursuit of Greene (the residence of his Lordship, then one of the most sightly buildings in the village, is now kept as a tavern of no splendid appearance) ;- but more particularly noted as the place of the first outbreaking of those discontents, which had shown themselves in complaints and remonstrances, but here assumed form and consistence, first heard of in Orange and Granville, and ultimately spreading over all that section of the State west of a line drawn from the point of entrance of the Roanoke, from Virginia, to the point of egress of the Yadkin to South Carolina ; -discontents, and complaints, and outbreakings, that eventuated in the first blood shed in Carolina, in the contest of freedom of opinion and property with the tyranny and misrule of the British government : and the first contest that had any appearance of a regular predetermined battle, in the provinces in North America.
This spirit of discontent was at first confined to that part of the province granted and set off to Lord Granville, which was bounded by the Virginia line on the north, by the line of latitude
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FIRST BLOOD SHED IN THE REVOLUTION.
of 35° 34' on the south, and extending from the Atlantic Ocean indefinitely west; but more particularly, that part of his Lord- ship's domain lying west of the line from the Roanoke to the Catawba, at the points specified above. It might have been quieted, had the governor been as ready to require the agents of Granville and his own officers to do justice, as he was to issue his proclamations, filled with promises, and vain orders, to a people irritated by oppression, but not desirous of rebellion.
On the 24th of April, 1771, Governor Tryon marched from Newbern with a small force, on his way, according to the recom- mendation of the council, to check a rebellion in the upper country, which had received the name of the Regulators, or the Regulation ; the militia of the several counties, in answer to the governor's demand upon the constituted authorities, joined him on his march; and on the 4th of May he encamped at Hunter's lodge in Wake county. Here being joined by a detachment of militia under Col. John Hinton, he found himself at the head of an armed force sufficient to alarm, if not subdue, the undisci- plined country in which the dissatisfaction prevailed. He left the palace in Newbern accompanied by about three hundred men, a small train of artillery, and a number of baggage wagons; on the way he had been joined by the detachment of militia from New Hanover county, under Col. John Ashe ; of the county of Craven, under Col. Joseph Leech; of the county of Dobbs (now called Lenoir), under Col. Richard Caswell ; of the county of Onslow, under Col. Craig; of the county of Cartaret, under Col. William Thompson ; of the county of Johnson, under Col. Needham Bryan ; of the county of Beaufort, a company of ar- tillery, under Capt. Moore, and a company of Rangers under Capt. Neale ; and a company of light horsemen from Duplin, under Capt. Bullock.
From this place he sent out some detachments to assist the sheriffs in collecting their taxes and various fees due to the go- vernment and its officers, with the hope of overawing the com- munity by his military parade ; and on the 9th instant marched to the Eno, and encamped within a few miles of Hillsborough, the centre of the infected district, and the residence of the most hated and oppressive officer of the crown, Col. Edmund Fan- ning, who joined his camp at this place with a detachment of the militia of Orange, whom by various means he had prevailed upon to unite with the governor in putting down their distressed and rebellious neighbors.
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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.
This was the second visit paid by the governor to the county of Orange on account of the agitation of the public mind, and the disturbances in the community, and the difficulty attending the collection of taxes and the fees of the public officers. In the early part of July, 1768, he came as governor, unattended with any armed force, and used the authority of the chief magistrate, and the address of a practised politician, to restore order, under promises of redress. The apparent quiet gave place to redoubled confusion after his departure, as the promises of protection from illegal exactions all proved vain. He now came with an armed detachment of the colonial militia, to quell by power what he would not control by justice.
The whole inhabited region of Carolina, west of the line men- tioned above, inhabited, as Martin says,-"by several thousand families, removed from the mother country, settled in the frontier counties of the province, exposed to the dangers of savage Indi- ans, and subject to all the hardships and difficulties of cultivating a desolate wilderness, under the expectation of enjoying to their fullest extent the exercise of their religious privileges as a peo- ple,"-and with their religious were joined inseparably the civil and domestic rights of an enterprising race accustomed to endure hardship and resist oppression ;- all this region of country was agitated, and in some parts in open rebellion ; without a single military leader of experience ; with few men of much wealth or political eminence, or polished education ; with a population of scattered neighborhoods, and not a single fortified place, or any preparations of the munitions of war beyond the rifle and powder and ball of the hunter.
Mr. Wirt, in his Life of Patrick Henry, says, " the spirit of revolution in Virginia began in the highest circles in the commu- nity, and worked its way down to the lower, the bone and sinew of the country." Wherever it may have begun in the eastern part of Carolina, it is certain that in the western division, the people, feeling that their interests were neglected by the governor, and misunderstood or overlooked by the seaboard counties, and not protected, or even consulted, by the parliament or court of England, or any of their executive officers, were moved as one great, excited, undisciplined mass of shrewd, hardy, enterprising men, that acknowledged the dominion of law, and held " opposi- tion to tyrants " to be " obedience to God."
The men on the seaboard of Carolina, with Colonels Ashe and Waddel at their head, had nobly opposed the Stamp Act, and pre-
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FIRST BLOOD SHED IN THE REVOLUTION.
vented its execution in North Carolina ; and in their patriotic movements the people of Orange sustained them ; and called them " The Sons of Liberty." Col. Ashe, in Wilmington, had ven tured to lead the excited populace against the wishes and even the hospitality of the governor, and in 1766 his party had thrown the governor's roasted ox, provided for a barbecue feast, into the river. Now they were marching with this very governor, to sub- due the disciples of Liberty in the west ; perhaps, through a mis- understanding of the true nature of the case, they were willing to convince the governor that they were all supporters of the laws and of the authority of the British crown, by uniting with him and subduing those who were reported to the council and provincial legislature as an ignorant and restless multitude, to be reclaimed, by severity, to the government of the laws. The eastern men looked for evils from across the waters ; and were prepared to resist oppression on their shores before it should step upon the soil of their State. The western men were seeking re- dress from evils that pressed them at home, under the misrule of the officers of the province, evils unknown by experience in the eastern counties, and misunderstood when reported there. Had Ashe, and Waddel, and Caswell, understood their case, they would have acted like Thomas Person, of Granville, and favored the distressed, even though they might have felt under obligations to maintain the peace of the province, and the due subordination to the laws. While the rest of this province, and the other pro- vinces, were resisting by resolutions and remonstrances, and mak- ing preparations for distant and coming evils ; these western men, in defence of their rights, boldly made resistance to the consti- tuted authorities, unto blood. While the eastern men stopped the stamped paper on the shore, these contended with an enemy in their own bosom, and sought deliverance at home in the wil- derness.
The disturbances Governor Tryon came to quell were no sud- den outbreaks of a discontented and excitable people. As early as the year 1759, the attention of the legislature of the province was called to the illegal fees exacted by the officers of government, producing great and alarming discontents ; and a law proposed for redress failed in meeting the approbation of the legislature, though · the discontent of persons living on Lord Granville's land had been manifested by the seizure of his lordship's agent, in Edenton, Francis Corbin, and his purchase of liberty by his bond, for future better behavior, in £8,000, with eight securities. This exhibition
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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.
of popular frenzy was not noticed by the governor, because one of his favorite counsellors, M'Culloch, was engaged in it. In 1760, the people of Orange, finding themselves "defrauded by the clerks of the several courts, by the recorders of deeds, by entry takers, by surveyors, and by the lawyers, every man demanding twice or three times his legal fees," violently prevented the sheriff from holding an election according to proclamation of the governor, in expectation of some new oppression by the office-holders, in the form of taxes and fees. In June, 1765, a paper entitled, " A seri- ous address to the people of Granville county, containing a brief narrative of our situation, and the wrongs we suffer, with some necessary hints with respect to a reformation," was circulated in that county, with great effect, being written with much clearness and force. The wrongs complained of in Orange, and Granville, and Anson, and the other counties, were essentially, and for the most part, individually the same.
The people complained that illegal and exorbitant fees were ex- torted by officers of government ; that oppressive taxes were exacted by the sheriffs, where they had a right to exact some ; and that the manner of their collection at all times was oppressive, especially when the right to exact any was denied. As early as the years 1752 or 1753, Childs and Corbin, the agents for Lord Granville, and successors of Mosely and Holton, began to oppress the people who had been induced, by fair promises, to settle on his lordship's reservation, by declaring the patents issued by their predecessors null and void, because the words, " Right Ho- norable Earl," had been left out from the signature, which had been simply, " Granville, by his Attorneys." They next demand- ed a larger fee for the patents they issued, than had been given to their predecessors ;- next, a fee for a device which they had in- vented to be affixed to the papers ;- also, by granting over and over again, knowingly, the same lands to different persons, and in no case returning the illegal fees ;- and in various ways rendering titles to land uncertain and insecure in a large part of Orange. In all these extortions the people complained that the high officers of the province were so interested, there was little prospect of justice but by some strong appeals and exhibitions of powerful dislike, that could not be frowned down.
The governor's proclamation, issued from time to time, requiring that copies of the legal fees should be exhibited to the people, and no others demanded, were disregarded by his officers ; and it was more than hinted that the judges were, indirectly at least, in many
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FIRST BLOOD SHED IN THE REVOLUTION.
cases, partakers of the crime, by sharing the fees of office with the inferior officers. This gave weight and impunity to the op- pressive exactions. The people were poor ; living on productive land as most of them did, they were far from market, and had scarcely surmounted the labors and exposures of a new settlement. One of them, who was engaged in the opposition, declared that when he had gone with his father to Fayetteville to market, with a load of wheat, he could get a bushel of salt for a bushel of wheat ; or if money was demanded, they could get five shillings a bushel for wheat, of which one only was in money, and the rest in trade. And if they could go home with forty shillings, or five dol- lars, from a load of forty bushels, they thought they had done well. In these circumstances double fees and double taxes were exceed- ingly oppressive,-and to men of their principles these exactions were sufficient cause of open and persevering resistance.
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