Everyone knows that July 4 is a historical day in the United States. It is the day the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 in Philadelphia, announcing the independence of the 13 colonies from Britain. The Declaration was formed by the Second Continental Congress (made of delegates from all 13 colonies) and written by founding father Thomas Jefferson. So then, the first declaration of freedom was a unified decision that took place in the historical city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Or was it? There is one story that claims the first declaration of independence came from what was then the small town of Charlotte, North Carolina.

After all, the date of May 20, 1775, which signifies the signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, is featured on the North Carolina state flag and seal. So, what really happened on this date? Did anything happen at all? Was it actually here, in Charlotte, that the first declaration of independence from Britain was created? Like the claim on many North Carolina license plates, is North Carolina really the “First in Freedom?” Let’s dig in.

In 1819, an article in the Raleigh Register newspaper was published that made a proclamation that was largely unknown, even throughout North Carolina. “It is probably not known to many of our readers that the citizens of Mecklenburg County, in this state, made a Declaration of Independence more than a year before Congress made theirs. The following document on the subject has lately come to the hands of the editor from unquestionable authority, and it is published that it may go down to posterity.”

Along with the published document, the newspaper story claimed that on May 19, 1775, around two-dozen patriots in the state of North Carolina had gathered in Mecklenburg County with intentions to discuss what to do about the colonies’ relationship with Britain, which had rapidly deteriorated at that point. But the discussions quickly turned to action once a horseback rider rode through town to spread the news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. With fellow Patriots now having been fired upon for the first time by the Redcoats, the men in Mecklenburg County decided it was time to declare separation from the motherland.

The very next day, May 20, 1775 (the infamous date on the NC state flag), the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was signed and read aloud to numerous listeners on the steps of the Charlotte courthouse. “That we the citizens of Mecklenburg County, do hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother Country, and…declare ourselves a free and independent people.” After it was signed and read aloud, it was given to militia captain James Jack to deliver to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and Mecklenburg County would go down in history as the first to declare freedom in the new world. Right?

This is where things get murky. According to the 1819 story published by Joseph McKnitt Alexander (whose father had served as a secretary at the legendary Mecklenburg County meeting), the document was indeed delivered to Congress in Philadelphia, but they considered the drastic measure in which it called for too premature at the time. Thus, it was stored away somewhere and basically forgotten about for a while, before later destroyed in a fire.

With no evidence of the original document, McKnitt claimed the document he posted in the Raleigh Register newspaper article came from a copy of notes his father had put together when the original one was created. But a later study came out with the discovery of a note from the younger McKnitt claiming that his re-creation of the document came partially from memory, rather than from a copy of the original version.

But upon its release in the Raleigh newspaper, it quickly became a point of pride for North Carolinians that they were actually the first to declare freedom. The son of local military colonel Thomas Polk (Thomas Polk was the one who read the document aloud to the people on the courthouse steps) even gathered evidence from some of the surviving delegates from that Mecklenburg County meeting, who all claimed the document was real.

So without the original document, and only notes of it, McKnitt’s recollection of what his father had told him, and several surviving delegates’ word on the matter, several investigations began seeking the truth. Even John Adams, who claimed he had never heard about it, wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson to find out more. Jefferson wrote back his firm belief that the document was not real, claiming there was no original copy and no papers or historians of the time had ever made mention of it. McKnitt’s newspaper version, after all, did have some of the exact language word for word from Jefferson’s Declaration. So, either McKnitt copied a lot of Jefferson’s wording or vice-versa (to which of course Jefferson would deny it).

But the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence continued to be challenged over the next century and researchers began to find holes in the story. One researcher pointed to a series of resolutions that were passed in Mecklenburg County on May 31, 1775, just 11 days after the supposed Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence signing. These were the Mecklenburg Resolves and were similar in nature to the “Meck Dec,” but instead of establishing independence, it listed grievances with Britain and urged political action if the British didn’t resolve them. None of the delegates that were interviewed by the son of Thomas Polk made mention of having two meetings, even though they were just 11 days apart, covered the same issue, and took place in the same town. Could it be possible that the authenticity of the Meck Dec document they claimed was actually from the Mecklenburg Resolves? Was it actually the Mecklenburg Resolves that was rushed on horseback to Philadelphia instead of the Meck Dec? Whereas there is question to whether the Meck Dec ever existed, the Mecklenburg Resolves is without a doubt a real document.

With this new knowledge available, along with the discovered fact in 1853 that McKnitt had re-counted parts of the document based on his memory, the Meck Dec began to be widely accepted as a made-up document. Even the difference of the two dates have been interpreted as a most-likely calendar mistake. Though the British adopted the new Gregorian-style calendar in 1752, many remote areas in the new world had yet to make the switch. At the time, Charlotte was still a pretty remote area and it would have been very likely many people there still used the old, Julian-style calendar. The difference in the two calendars…you guessed it…was 11 days. This means the date given to the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence could have been mistaken for the date of the Mecklenburg Resolves 11 days later, and that the two were the same exact document.

Over the years, even North Carolinians began to be skeptical of the Meck Dec. In the early 1900s, two respected historians from the Tar Heel state, William Henry Hoyt and Samuel Ashe seemed to give the matter a “knock out punch” when they printed their firm belief that the Meck Dec never existed and was actually just the Mecklenburg Resolves. That belief is now a widely accepted one among historians everywhere, even in North Carolina.

Though the story heavily leans one way, there is no exact proof one way or the other. Many North Carolinians stick to the “First in Freedom” claim, whether they really believe McKnitt’s 1819 claim or not. The May 20, 1775 date can still be found on the state flag and seal and many choose to drive with “First in Freedom” license plates. If anything, it’s more of a folklore story that has been passed down in the state for many generations. Whether you choose to believe that American freedom started right here in Mecklenburg County or not, it will always be our story and we’re sticking to it.

https://www.history.com/news/did-north-carolina-issue-the-first-declaration-of-independence

https://www.ncpedia.org/mecklenburg-declaration

Garett

Charlotte, NC: The First in Freedom?