USA > North Carolina > Sketches of North Carolina, historical and biographical : illustrative of the principles of a portion of her early settlers > Part 7
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"5th. You are instructed to vote that all and every person or persons, seized or possessed of any estate, real or personal, agree- able to the late establishment, be confirmed in their seizure and possession, to all intents and purposes in law, who have not for- feited their right to the protection of the State, by their inimical practices towards the same. If this should not be confirmed,- protest.
"6th. You are instructed to vote that deputies, to represent this State in a Continental Congress, be appointed in and by the su- preme legislative body of the State ; the form of the nomination to be submitted to, if free. And also, that all officers, the influ- ence of whose office is equally to extend to every part of the State, be appointed in the same manner and form. Likewise, give your consent to the establishing the old political divisions, if it should be voted in Convention, or to new ones if similar. On such estab- lishment taking place, you are instructed to vote, in general, that all officers, who are to exercise this authority in any of the said districts, be recommended to the trust only by the freemen of said division-to be subject, however, to the general laws and regula- tions of the State. If this should not be substantially confirmed, -protest.
" 7th. You are instructed to move and insist that the people you immediately represent, be acknowledged to be a distinct county of this State, as formerly of the late province, with the additional privilege of electing in their own officers, both civil and military, together with election of clerks and sheriffs, by the freemen of the same : the choice to be confirmed by the sovereign authority of the State, and the officers so invested to be under the jurisdiction of the State, and liable to its cognizance and inflictions in case of malpractice. If this should not be confirmed,-protest and remonstrate.
"8th. You are instructed to vote that no chief justice, no sec- retary of State, no auditor-general, no surveyor-general, no prac- tising lawyer, no clerk of any court of record, no sheriff, and no person holding a military office in this State, shall be a repre- sentative of the people in Congress or Convention. If this should not be confirmed,-contend for it.
" 9th. You are instructed to vote that all claims against the pub-
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lic, except such as accrue upon attendance on Congress or Con- vention, be first submitted to the inspection of a committee of nine or more men, inhabitants of the county where said claimant is resi- dent, and without the approbation of said committee it shall not be accepted by the public ; for which purpose you are to move and insist that a law be enacted to empower the freemen of each county to choose a committee of not less than nine men, of whom none are to be military officers. If this should not be confirmed, -protest and remonstrate.
" 10th. You are instructed to refuse to enter into any combination of secresy, as members of Congress and Convention, and also to refuse to subscribe to any ensnaring tests binding you to unlimited subjection to the determination of Congress or Convention.
"11th. You are instructed to move and insist that the public accounts, fairly stated, shall be regularly kept in proper books, open to the inspection of all whom it may concern. If this should not be confirmed,-contend for it.
" 12th. You are instructed to move and insist that the power of county courts be much more extensive than under the former constitution, both with respect to matters of property and breaches of the peace. If not confirmed,-contend for it.
" 13th. You are instructed to assent and consent to the establish- ment of the Christian religion, as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and more briefly comprised in the thirty- nine Articles of the Church of England, excluding the thirty-seventh article, together with all the articles excepted and not to be im- posed on dissenters by the Act of Toleration; and clearly held forth in the Confession of Faith, compiled by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster ; to be the religion of the State, to the utter exclu- sion, for ever, of all and every other (falsely so called) religion, whether pagan or papal ;- and that full, and free, and peaceable en- joyment thereof be secured to all and every constituent member of the State, as their unalienable right as freemen, without the im- position of rites and ceremonies, whether claiming civil or eccle- siastical power for their source ;- and that a confession and pro- fession of the religion so established shall be necessary in qualify- ing any person for public trust in the State. If this should not be confirmed,-protest and remonstrate.
" 14th. You are instructed to oppose to the utmost, any particular church or set of clergymen being invested with power to decree rites and ceremonies, and to decide in controversies of faith, to be submit- ted to under the influence of penal laws. You are also to oppose the
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establishment of any mode of worship to be supported to the oppres- sion of the rights of conscience, together with the destruction of private property. You are to understand that under the modes of worship are comprehended the different forms of swearing by law required. You are, moreover, to oppose the establishing an eccle- siastical supremacy in the sovereign authority of the State. You are to oppose the toleration of popish idolatrous worship. If this should not be confirmed,-protest and remonstrate.
" 15th. You are instructed to move and insist that not less than four-fifths of the body of which you are members, shall, in voting, be deemed a majority. If this should not be confirmed,-contend for it.
" 16th. You are instructed to give your voices to and for every motion, or bill, made or brought into Congress or Convention, when they appear to be for public utility, and in no ways repug- nant to the above instructions.
" 17th. Gentlemen, the foregoing instructions you are not only to look upon as instructions, but as charges, to which you are de- sired to take special heed, as the ground of your conduct as our Representatives ; and we expect you will exert yourselves to the utmost of your ability to obtain the purposes given you in charge ; and wherein you fail, either in obtaining or opposing, you are hereby ordered to enter your protest against the vote of Congress or Convention, as is pointed out to you in the above instructions."
This paper will not suffer in comparison with any political pa- per of the age. In some respects it surpassed all with which Mr. Brevard and his compeers had any acquaintance. In the first and seventh resolutions there is a reference made to preceding events in North Carolina, to which nothing corresponds but the doings of the Mecklenburg convention. The Congress of North Carolina in session at the time this paper was drawn up, was not prepared for such a step as is referred to-the entire independence of the State.
In the second and third resolutions, the democratic republican principles are announced in their full extent,-complete protection, and extended suffrage. In the fourth and fifth, aristocratic honors are done away; and the right of property confirmed. In the seventh, the election of all officers, civil and military, is confirmed to the people at large. In the eighth, the jealous watchfulness of an abused community is seen in shutting out all public officers, from whom any oppression had been suffered under His Majesty, from the office of law-maker for the community. In the ninth,
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tenth, and eleventh, the expenditure of the public money is guarded from all such impositions as had been complained of in times past. The object and amount of all expenditures to be fairly stated, that no impositions like those suffered in Orange, and from which the Regulators sprung, might be repeated. By the twelfth, the execution of the laws is brought more within the power of the people, or at least more carefully within their view.
But the thirteenth and fourteenth resolutions are especially worthy of notice, as asserting religious liberty. He does not take the false ground that all religions are to be contemplated, in the constitution of a free people, as alike open for the adoption of the community at large ; and that any religion, or no religion, may become the public sentiment without detriment to liberty :- but having secured to all persons undisturbed enjoyment of life, land, and estate, he takes the broad ground that there is one true religion, and that religion is acknowledged as true by the State. He believed the Bible, and from it had drawn his princi- ples of morals, and religion, and politics :- from it, the people of Mecklenburg had drawn theirs,-and multitudes in Carolina had drawn theirs. To abjure religion would be to abjure freedom and the hope of immortality. The phrases confession and pro- fession in the thirteenth resolution, are not taken in a restricted sense or made denominational, but used in their enlarged mean- ing, embracing all Protestants, asserting the Bible to be true, and as a revelation containing the complete system of the only true religion.
To put beyond all doubt, however, what he understood by the Christian religion, he marks out the two well known and ac- credited systems of Articles with which he and his constituents had been familiar, and under which he arraigned all Protestants, both asserting the main principles of the Reformation, and one conjoining a system of efficient government on which he had mo- delled his political creed,-a creed the inhabitants of a large part of North Carolina were prepared to defend. He would have the community disown Infidelity and all Paganism, and avow the religion of the Bible.
Having asserted the paramount authority of the Christian Re- ligion as the sole acknowledged religion of the community,- he then puts all denominations on a level, in political matters. North Carolina had suffered as little as any community had, or perhaps could, from a religious establishment, that is, certain forms and doctrines supported at public expense, and defended
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by law ;- but the evils resulting had been so many and so great, that these resolutions require that no denomination, not even that of a majority of the citizens, should have any peculiar privileges guaranteed by law. The people of Mecklenburg were almost universally of the same faith as himself ; but he asked no favor by the power of law. But one other State in the Union had, at that time, acknowledged this grand principle, and with this State the author of this paper had no communication. The idea was to him, and his constituents, a peculiar idea,-like the idea of independence under the supremacy of law, it was consistent and complete.
Of all the forms in which religion, professedly drawn from the Bible, is presented in any part of the world, one only is excepted in the resolution,-that is the Popish. The ancestors of these people in Mecklenburg had brought with them, from the mother - country, no kind remembrance of the spirit of the Popish clergy and their adherents. Turn to what period of the history of their fathers they might, and the Romish priests appeared the enemies of that religious liberty and civil freedom for which they panted. Every page of the history was stained with blood. They fully believed the spirit of popery unchanged ; and to tolerate it, was to cherish in their bosom an enemy to the very privileges and enjoyments for which they had labored, and for which they were prepared to lay down their lives. The principles of religious liberty, asserted by their ancestors the other side of the ocean, took deep root in the wilderness of Carolina, and grew as indi- genous plants. The people felt they were born to be free -were free ; and having made declaration of their freedom, would maintain it against all enemies unto death.
Now that the subject of religious liberty has been discussed about three-quarters of a century, in the freest country on earth, the only exception that can be taken against these resolutions on religious liberty, is on this single point-the exclusion of popish rites and ceremonies. In other colonies the contention had been against foreign interference with the established religion of the province ; here, as in Rhode Island, the ground is taken against all State establishments whatever. It is instructive to observe how this principle, avowed by Roger Williams in exile and suf- fering, and proclaimed by the emigrants in North Carolina, has at length become the received opinion of the whole United States. And while, on principle, the free exercise of religious rites is guaranteed to all that claim to be Christians, of whatever sect or
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denomination, there is a growing fear, manifesting itself in every section of country, lest the extension of popish rites and ceremonies shall be found at last injurious to civil liberty.
The resolutions of the Mecklenburg Convention establish a go- vernment, and at the same time they set aside the authority of the king of Great Britain. In this paper the great principles on which to frame a constitution of the most entire freedom, fullest protection, and most complete dominion of law, are laid down. The one is a beautiful expression of enthusiastic devotion to liberty and law ; and the other is a calm expression of the idea of that liberty for which these patriots panted. Neither were mere theories or paper declarations ; both were realities. The people felt themselves in- dependent,-and that they had a natural right to the freedom they enjoyed in their log cabins in the wilderness, and on the plains of the Catawba, far removed from the wealth and refinement of the seaboard. Their flocks and their plains, with the skilful hands of their wives and daughters, and the brawny arms of their sons, and the mines beneath their feet, supplied the wants, and even the luxu- ries of men who could sleep upon straw, be contented in home- spun coats, and find domestic peace in a log cabin. The liberty for which their fathers had sighed, these men had found. They knew the value of the pearl, and rejoiced in that liberty in which God, in his grace and wonderful providence, had made them free.
This paper is the expression of the'feelings of thousands in Carolina in 1775, and the feelings of multitudes at this day. The merit of Ephraim Brevard is, not that he alone originated these principles, or was singular in adhering to them, but that he em- bodied them in so condensed a form, and expressed them so well. He thought clearly,-felt deeply,-wrote well,-resisted bravely,- and died a martyr to that liberty none loved better, and few under- stood so well.
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CHAPTER IV.
COMMENCEMENT OF PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENTS IN NORTH CAROLINA.
ABOUT the year 1735, a race of people diverse in habits, man- ners, forms of religious worship and doctrinal creed from those who had previously taken their abode in Virginia and the Carolinas, and destined to exert a grand and controlling influence on the enterprise, wealth, and prosperity of those States, began to erect their habitations along the western frontiers, and form a line of de- fence against the savages of the mountains and the great west, by their strong neighborhoods of hardy, enterprising men, in that re- gion of country extending from the Potomac river to the Savannah, which now forms the heart of these States, and is most abundant in resources of men and things.
Previously to that date, the emigrants to Virginia, whose descend- ants had spread out over the lower counties, and were progressing towards the mountains, were chiefly from England, with a few Scotch and Irish families intermingled, with one colony of Ger- mans in Madison county, and one of Huguenots a few miles above Richmond, each having its own peculiar forms of religious wor- ship, and ministers proclaiming the gospel in their native tongue.
In North Carolina the first permanent settlements had been formed by fugitives from Virginia, who sought refuge in the mild climate and extended forests of this unoccupied region,-some from the rigid, intolerant laws of that colony, which bore so heavily on all that could not conform to the ceremonies of the established church,-and some from a desire to escape from the jurisdiction of all law, delighted with the license enjoyed in the plains and swamps of a country which, previous to the 18th century, scarce knew the exercise of civil authority. When the Puritans were driven from Virginia, some eminently pious people settled along the seaboard, safe from foreign invasion, and free from the domestic oppression of intolerant laws and bigoted magistrates. Next to these were the emigrants from the West Indies and from England, who preferred the advantages offered by this uninhabited country to those of a more populous state. About the year 1707, a colony of Huguenots was located on the Trent river ; and one of Palatines at Newbern,
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in 1709 ; each maintaining the peculiar habits, customs, and religious services of the fatherland. The Quakers, at an early date, cast in their lot with the colony of Virginia ; and many were compelled to fly from the execution of the severe laws passed against their sect, and found refuge in Carolina. They were of English descent, and at that time, too few, in either State, to exert a preponderating influence on the community at large.
The Presbyterian race, from the north of Ireland, is not found in Virginia and North Carolina, till after the year 1730, except in scattered families, or some small neighborhoods on the Chesapeake. Soon after this period it is found at the base of the Blue Ridge in Albemarle, Nelson, and Amherst, in Virginia; and then in the great valley. About the year 1736 a colony of Presbyterians, from the province of Ulster, Ireland, commenced their residence on the head springs of the Opecquon in Frederick county, near the pre- sent town of Winchester; and their descendants are found in the con- gregation that bears the name of the creek in that county, and also in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana. About the same time, or perhaps a little earlier, John Caldwell, from the north of Ireland, commenced a settlement on Cub-creek, in Charlotte county, Virginia, then a pro- vince ; and persuaded a colony of his countrymen to unite with him. Their descendants are found in the Cub-creek congregation, and those congregations that have grown out of it : and also in Kentucky and South Carolina-the eminent political character, John Cald- well Calhoun, being one of them. About the year 1736, Henry McCulloch persuaded a colony from Ulster, Ireland, to occupy his expected grant in Duplin county, North Carolina. Their descendants are widely scattered over the lower part of the State, and the south- western States, with an influence that cannot be easily estimated.
About the same period, the Presbyterian settlements were commenced in Augusta and Rockbridge counties, Virginia ; and speedily increasing, they formed numerous large congregations, which are still flourishing, having given rise to many other con- gregations in the counties further west, and also in the western States. From all these have arisen hosts of men that have acted conspicuous parts east and west of the Alleghanies, during the century that has passed since the emigrants built their cabins on the frontiers of Virginia and Carolina.
The loss of the early records of Orange presbytery has left us without the means of ascertaining the precise year the Presbyterian colonies in Granville, Orange, Rowan, Mecklenburg, and, in fact,
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in all that beautiful section extending from the Dan to the Catawba, began to occupy the wild and fertile prairies. But it is well known, that, previously to the year 1750, settlements of some strength were scattered along from the Virginia line to Georgia. On ac- count of the inviting nature of the climate and soil, and the com- parative quietness of the Catawba Indians, and the severity of the Virginia laws in comparison with those of Carolina, on the subject of religion, many colonies were induced to pass through the vacant lands in Virginia, in the neighborhood of their countrymen, and seek a home in the Carolinas. As early as 1740, there were scat- tered families on the Hico, and Eno, and Haw-and cabins were built along the Catawba.
The time of setting off the frontier counties is known, but is no guide to the precise time of the first settlements. Granville county was set off from Edgecomb in 1743, and extended west to the charter limits ; Bladen was taken from New Hanover in 1733, its western boundary being the charter limits ; and in 1749 Anson was set off from Bladen with the same western boundary. The two counties, Anson and Granville, embraced all the western part of the State in 1749. Orange was set off from Bladen in 1751, and Rowan from Anson in 1753, and Mecklenburg from Anson in 1762. These dates show the progress of emigration and increase of population, but do not fix the time when the cabins of the whites began to sup- plant the wigwams of the Indians. The dates of the land patents do not mark the time of emigration, as in some cases the lands were occupied a long period before grants were made, and the lands surveyed ; and in others, patents were granted before emigration. Some of the early settlements of Presbyterians were made before the lands were surveyed, particularly in the upper country.
Emigration was encouraged and directed very much in its earliest periods, by the vast prairies, with pea-vine grass and cane- brakes, which stretched across the States of Virginia and Carolina. There are large forests now in these two States, where, a hundred years ago, not a tree, and scarce a shrub could be seen. These prairies abounded with game, and supplied abundant pasturage, both winter and summer, for the various kinds of stock that ac- companied the emigrants, and formed for years no small part of their wealth. In 1744, Lord Granville's share of North Carolina was set off by metes and bounds, having Virginia on the north ; a line drawn from the sea-shore westward on the parallel of 38ยบ 34' north latitude, on the south ; the Atlantic Ocean on the east ; and the unexplored ocean on the west. The great inducements
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offered by his lordship and his agents, the beauty and healthiness of the country, the fertility of the soil, and the low rate at which tracts of land were set to sale, attracted attention, and brought purchasers for residence and for speculation. Every additional colony increased the value of the remaining possessions of his lordship.
The remaining part of the upper country was held by grants made from the crown, from time to time, and by the grantees sold out in smaller sections. There is nothing, however, in the peculiar circumstances of making the land purchases, or in the country itself, or the time in which the settlements were made, that can account for the spirit, principles, and habits of the people. These they brought with them, and left as a legacy to their children ; they had wrought wonders in the fatherland, turning the scale of revolution in 1688, putting the crown on the head of William, Prince of Orange, and working out purity of morals, inspiring a deep sense of religious liberty and personal independence, under all the withering influences of prelacy, aristocracy, and royalty.
While the tide of emigration was setting fast and strong into the fertile regions between the Yadkin and Catawba, from the north of Ireland, through Pennsylvania and Virginia, another tide was flowing from the Highlands of Scotland, and landing colonies of Presbyterian people along the Cape Fear River. Authentic records declare that the Scotch had found the sandy plains of Carolina, many years previous to the exile and emigration that succeeded the crushing of the hopes of the house of Stuart, in the fatal bat- tle of Culloden, in 1746. But in the year following that event, large companies of Highlanders seated themselves in Cumberland county ; and in a few years the Gaelic language was heard fami- liarly in Moore, Anson, Richmond, Robeson, Bladen, and Samp- son. Among these people and their children, the warm-hearted preacher and patriot, James Campbell, labored more than a quar- ter of a century ; and with them, that romantic character, Flora McDonald, passed a portion of her days. As many congre- gations were formed among these Highlanders, who were all Presbyterians, as that devoted, but solitary man of God, Mr. Campbell, could visit in the performance of the duties of his sacred offices.
In the upper part of the State, between the Virginia and Caro- lina line, along the track traversed by the army of Cornwallis in the war of the Revolution, there were above twenty organized churches, with large congregations, and a great many preaching-
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