Friday, July 4, 2014

The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence

For several weeks I have been working a piece about the Tryon Resolves, initially because several of my uncles and cousins signed that "Association" on August 14, 1775. I have had to study the controversy over the Mecklenburg Declaration, since starting in 1818 and going all through the 19th and far into the 20th century it took almost all attention away from the resolves at Liberty Point, Tryon County, and Halifax. I have been using for-pay newspaper archives to compile dozens of pdfs in different folders.

I don't like to be in the minority on any argument, never have, but I find myself asking why James Jack got on a horse and rode from Charlotte to Philadelphia to give the North Carolina delegates to the second Continental Congress a routine resolution and why the contents of the resolution caused such a furor when he stopped to rest his horse at Salisbury. I understand why the North Carolina delegates did not want to show his document to the whole Congress: there were delegates who would have gotten on their horses or in a stagecoach and fled back to their own colony rather than be associated with a truly radical declaration of independence.

Jack was not one of my uncles, but his cousin Joseph Jack was married to my Aunt Margaret Ewart, daughter of Robert Ewart (the Committee of Safety man) and sister-in-law of the Tryon signer Jonathan Price. If you read the aged James Jack's affidavit--well, as I read it I believe him, now. Maybe I had better stop working on my Tryon piece and post James Jack's certificate here, someway.

No comments:

Post a Comment