f patriotism among their fellow-countrymen that
McCree, in his "Iredell Letters," declares that "Much of the triumph at
Moore's Creek must be ascribed to those three men, who at one time held
frequent consultations in Johnston's office."

By the close of 1774, and the beginning of 1775, the flames of the
Revolution, which had been slowly kindling, now burst into open
conflagration, and Edenton began to experience something of the
consequences of war.

Her militia had for some time been drilling, in preparation for the
inevitable struggle; and Mrs. Iredell, in a letter to her husband,
written in the spring of 1775, thus expresses the general anxiety and
the apprehensive state of mind of the Edenton people: "The drum which is
now beating while our soldiers exercise, drives every cheerful thought
from my mind, and leaves it oppressed with melancholy reflections on the
horrors of war."

In November of that year emissaries sent by Lord Dunmore, the Governor
of Virginia, were discovered near the town, endeavoring to incite the
slaves of that section to rise against their masters, murder them, and
join the Tory army. But General Robert Howe, at the head of a detachment
from his regiment, quickly drove these agents away, and thwarted the
dastardly attempt; then marching on with six hundred North Carolina
militia, into Virginia, the gallant General reached Norfolk two days
after the victory of the patriots at Great Bridge, helped to expel
Dunmore from Norfolk, and to take possession of the city for the
Americans.

In April, 1776, the Halifax Convention authorized the delegates from
North Carolina to the Continental Congress of that year, "to concur with
the delegates of the other Colonies in declaring independence," and upon
Joseph Hewes, of Edenton, fell the honor of presenting the Halifax
Resolution of 1776 to the Congress at Philadelphia. To the instructions
of the State he represented, Hewes added his own urgent plea for
immediate action, and cast his State's vote squarely against postponing
the declaration of independence. When the Continental Congress finally
agreed to secede from the English Government, Hewes, with John Penn and
William Hooper, of North Carolina, affixed his name to that famous
document in which the thirteen Colonies foreswore their allegiance to
King George.

Some two months after the Halifax Convention, and two weeks before the
Continental Congress had formally declared independence, the vestry of