as May, 1775, is admitted. But that they
then made an absolute declaration of independence, (supposing them
competent to do so,) does not appear to be substantiated by sufficient
evidence. The original manuscript, it is alleged, was preserved by the
secretary of the convention till the year 1800, when it was destroyed,
with his dwelling-house, by fire.[615:C] It is said, however, that he
had previously taken care to give copies of it to two or three persons;
and mention is made of one of these transcripts as early as 1793. But
they do not appear to have been any further multiplied. That a
declaration of independence, made more than a year before that of July,
1776, should have been preserved by the secretary so long, and yet have
remained unpublished and so little known, is extraordinary. It is
remarkable, too, that such a paper should appear without date of time on
the face of it. The meeting reported to have been held at Charlotte, on
the twentieth of May, is styled "the convention;" but that of the
thirty-first of the same kind, was simply a meeting of the committee of
the county, and was so called at the time. It is asserted that the
immediate exciting cause of the resolutions, or alleged declaration of
the twentieth, was, that on that day a messenger arrived in hot haste
with intelligence of the battle of Lexington. But it appears[616:A] that
this intelligence reached Savannah, in Georgia, on the tenth; and it
would appear hardly probable that it should have reached Charlotte ten
days later.

Upon comparing one of the manuscript copies with the one published in
Martin's History of North Carolina, there appears to be a remarkable
difference between them. To explain this, it has, indeed, been
conjectured, that Martin's copy contains the resolutions as at first
draughted by Dr. Brevard, the author of them, and that the other
contains them in their amended form. But the Martin copy, instead of
being a rough draught, appears to be more formal and complete than the
other. The Martin copy expresses the resolution in the present tense;
the other in the imperfect, bearing upon its face the appearance of
having been made up at a subsequent time by an effort of recollection.

The document styled a declaration, whatever may have been its origin, or
terms, remained long in obscurity, public attention having been first
drawn to it, in 1819, by the _Raleigh Register_, at the instance of
Colonel Thomas Polk. But a declaration, t