Have you ever wondered why the date May 20, 1775, is on North Carolina’s state flag?
It’s there to commemorate the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence of 1775. According to legend (and to past historians), the declaration was made on May 20, 1775, at a meeting of county representatives in Mecklenburg, North Carolina. It was made as war with Great Britain drew near.
Short but powerful, it was a formal statement of independence. It sounds a little like the Declaration of Independence announced in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. To wit:
That we, the citizens of Mecklenburg county do hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us with the mother county, and absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British crown, abjuring all political connection with a nation that has wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties and inhumanly shed the innocent blood of Americans at Lexington.
The problem is that the Mecklenburg Declaration isn’t what it appears to be! It was probably written many years later (perhaps influenced by the actual Declaration of Independence). It was “discovered” in 1819, and has been a subject of controversy ever since. Thomas Jefferson called it a hoax but initially many historians thought it was for real.
The controversy over the May 20, 1775, declaration has overshadowed the document the county did approve 11 days later, on May 31, 1775. We know this document, the Mecklenburg Resolves (i.e., resolutions), is genuine.
The Mecklenburg Resolves don’t resonate with words like independence, rights, and liberties, but they were an important practical step taken by North Carolina to prepare for breaking away from Great Britain.
The May 31 resolves start by saying that in a recent address by parliament, the king noted, “the American Colonies are declared to be in an actual State of rebellion.” Therefore, the resolves continue, the laws of the British government are “annulled and vacated and the formal Civil Constitution of these Colonies for the present wholly suspended.”
The statement called on all the American colonies to start their own governments. And it laid out just how North Carolina would be run in the absence of the British.
The statement we call the Mecklenburg Resolves, unlike the Mecklenburg Declaration, was a practical document and a true plan for the difficult days that lay ahead.
This article was adapted from “May 20, 1775: What was the Mecklenburg Declaration?” originally published on the Carolina Journal.