o effect its object, must be
published far and wide.

The Mecklenburg committee met at Charlotte on the thirtieth of May, and
passed a series of resolutions, (making no reference whatever to a
previous declaration of independence;) suspending the former civil
constitution, and organizing a provisional republican government. The
eighteenth resolution is in these words: "That these resolves be in full
force and virtue, until instructions from the provincial congress
regulating the jurisprudence of the province shall provide otherwise, or
the legislative body of Great Britain resign its unjust and arbitrary
pretentions with respect to America:" thus explicitly recognizing the
right of eminent domain as belonging to Great Britain. It is not to be
credited that the Mecklenburg patriots made an absolute declaration of
independence on the twentieth, and in ten days thereafter acknowledged
the sovereignty of Great Britain. These admirable resolutions of the
thirtieth were published in the _Mercury_, a North Carolina newspaper,
(and others,) and a copy of it was transmitted by Governor Tryon
to the British minister, and denounced as the boldest of all, "most
traitorously declaring the entire dissolution of the laws and
constitution, and setting up a system of rule and regulation subversive
of his majesty's government." The alleged declaration of the twentieth,
brief and absolute, was published in no newspaper, and was not denounced
by the governor; while the resolutions of the thirty-first, recognizing
the sovereignty of Great Britain, were so published and denounced.
Mecklenburg, in North Carolina, was, nevertheless, then unquestionably
in a condition of actual self-government and virtual independence; and
the names of Brevard, the master-spirit of the Charlotte Convention,
(afterwards a patriot-martyr,) and of his compatriots, stand on the page
of history in characters of recorded honor which need no adventitious
lustre.[617:A]

FOOTNOTES:

[615:A] Its authenticity was admitted in the former edition of this
work.

[615:B] Especially by Mr. Grigsby, in his Discourse on the Virginia
Convention of '76, p. 20.

[615:C] Foote's Sketches of North Carolina, 205.

[616:A] Bancroft, vii. 337.

[617:A] Grigsby's Convention of Va. of '76; Martin's Hist. of N. C., ii.
372; Foote's Sketches of N. C.; Hawks' Lecture, in Revolut. Hist. of N.
C. President Swain, in a lecture before the Historical Society of the
University of North