Mike Parker: Halifax Resolves, the first call for independence
When residents of North Carolina purchase a new vehicle, they can choose among three standard license plates. The most common plate says: “First in Flight.” Two other choices are “In God We Trust” and “First in Freedom.”
“First in Freedom” may seem a bold claim in the face of what was happening in Massachusetts and Virginia, but North Carolina took the first official action to call for independence from Great Britain. That action is reflected in one of the two dates on North Carolina’s flag: May 20, 1775, and April 12, 1776. This month, 250 years ago, delegates to North Carolina’s Fourth Provincial Congress voted to urge all the colonies at the Second Continental Congress to vote to sever the ties with Great Britain.
This action was no knee-jerk reaction. For the better part of 13 years, since the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, Great Britain had tried to tighten control over the colonies and coerce taxes from them. As British efforts grew, some colonists' determination for independence deepened.
But we must never forget that those who sought independence, called Patriots, were never the majority. Roughly one-third of the population were Patriots, one-third were Loyalists to the King, and one-third were not committed to either position. As the British took increasingly coercive actions, the divide between Patriots and Loyalists grew – and the third of undecided colonists trended more toward independence.
The Halifax Resolves were the culmination of a year of discussions at county-level conferences across North Carolina. At Halifax, the 83 delegates who attended the Provincial Congress unanimously adopted the resolves, writing them into the meeting minutes and preparing a copy to send to North Carolina’s delegates to the Second Continental Congress.
The resolves outlined the steps that North Carolina and the other colonies had taken to mend the growing divide between the colonies and the so-called “Mother Country.” Keep in mind that for nearly 150 years, the colonies had operated with little interference from England. The colonials were used to electing their own representatives and levying their own taxes. This policy was called “Salutary Neglect.”
But in the 13 years after the French and Indian War, proponents of independence saw the King and Parliament take actions the Patriots described as “usurpations and violences” against the colonies.
The final paragraph of the Halifax Resolves reads:
“Resolved that the delegates for this Colony in the Continental Congress be impowered to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency, and forming foreign Alliances, resolving 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 Representation thereof to meet the delegates of the other Colonies for such purposes as shall be hereafter pointed out.”
By December 18, the North Carolina Provincial Congress had approved the new state’s first constitution, and, on December 23, as its last official act, the assembly appointed Richard Caswell of Kingston in Dobbs County as the first governor of the State of North Carolina.
Much of the first constitution of 1776 remains in Article 1 of our state’s present constitution, adopted in 1971 – nearly 200 years later.
Mike Parker is a columnist for the Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.
