Lord Granville’s land agents seized and compelled to give bond to appear in court and to return illegally collected taxes and fees. (Halifax)

1000 armed “Sons of Liberty” in Brunswick Town confronted Royal Governor William Tryon and resisted the Stamp Act. (Brunswick)

North Carolinians, mainly from the vast interior region away from the coast (the backcountry, today the Piedmont and Mountain regions), calling themselves Regulators (they wanted to regulate themselves), organized to protest, and eventually violently oppose, the inequity of political representation in the colonial assembly and injustices of British rule.

1,100 Militia of Royal Governor Tryon defeated 2,000 Regulators, ending the War of the Regulation. First battle against Britain fought in the colonies. (Alamance)

Six Regulators hanged after Battle of Alamance. (Orange)

Backcountry Carolinians vowed to oppose excesses of English rule. (Rowan)

The first North Carolina Provincial Congress met at Governor’s Palace, New Bern (then called Newbern). It was the first such gathering anywhere in the Thirteen Colonies, held in defiance of British orders. Its moderator was John Harvey, who was concurrently the last Speaker of the Province of North Carolina General Assembly of 1775 House of Burgesses. This first provincial congress, with 69 delegates from 30 of the then-36 counties, approved the calling of a Continental Congress and elected William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, and Richard Caswell as the colony’s delegates. The congress also approved a trade boycott to protest British actions against New England. (Craven)

The Edenton Tea Party was one of the earliest organized women’s political actions in United States history.  On October 25, 1774, Mrs. Penelope Barker organized, at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth King, fifty-one women in Edenton, North Carolina.  Together they formed an alliance wholeheartedly supporting the American cause against “taxation without representation.”  In response to the Tea Act of 1773, the Provincial Deputies of North Carolina resolved to boycott all British tea and cloth received after September 10, 1774.  The women of Edenton signed an agreement saying they were “determined to give memorable proof of their patriotism” and could not be “indifferent on any occasion that appears nearly to affect the peace and happiness of our country . . . it is a duty that we owe, not only to our near and dear connections . . . but to ourselves.”

• Edenton Tea Party
• Historic Edenton, North Carolina

The second North Carolina Provincial Congress also met at New Bern, from April 3 to 7, 1775. John Harvey once again served as moderator. The congress met at the same place and almost the same time as the colonial assembly, and had almost exactly the same membership. This infuriated the Royal Governor, Josiah Martin, who dissolved the colonial legislature on April 8 and never called another. This congress approved the Continental Association, an economic boycott of Great Britain authorized by the First Continental Congress. (Craven)

The (disputed) first declaration of independence. (Mecklenburg)

The North Carolina Seal, Flag, and “First in Freedom” license plate memorialize May 20, 1775, as the date of the “Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.”  Unknown until an 1819 newspaper article, it is now believed the original verbiage was reconstructed from memory at some point (perhaps influenced by Thomas Jefferson’s words), any actual record having been lost in a fire in 1800. It is reasonable to believe that, as reported, in the wake of Lexington and Concord, Mecklenburg County citizens came together on May 19 to express their displeasure, and approved a document in the early morning hours of May 20, that did indeed call for independence, foreshadowing a formal document, commissioned to be produced by a select committee, now known as the Mecklenburg Resolves.

What is undisputed is that in May, 1775, leaders in Mecklenburg county met and approved a set of Resolves, printed in newspapers, that Royal Governor Josiah Martin considered “most traitorously declaring the entire dissolution of the laws, government, and constitution of this country, and setting up a system of rule and regulation repugnant to the laws and subversive of his majesty’s government,” forwarded those to England, and departed his Royal Residence in New Bern, never to return.