Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence collection

Supposedly signed on May 20, 1775, in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a committee of Mecklenburg County citizens, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is reputed by some to be the first declaration of independence made in the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolution. Evidence confirming the original document's existence is lacking, however, and extant newspapers from 1775 make no mention of it. Though professional historians now consider the document to be fraudulent, belief in the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was once widespread in the state. The date of the declaration appears on the North Carolina seal and flag, and "Meck Dec Day" is celebrated on May 20, though not as widely as it once was. The text of the declaration first appeared in an article by Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander in the Raleigh register and North Carolina gazette on April 30, 1819. In his article, Alexander reconstructed from memory the text of the original, which was allegedly destroyed in a fire in 1800. Subsequently the same article was published in numerous other U.S. newspapers. Despite skepticism expressed by Thomas Jefferson and others, the document was by and large accepted as genuine. After the discovery in 1838 of an abbreviated list of resolutions adopted in Mecklenburg County on May 31, 1775, a wider debate began about the veracity of the Declaration. Known as the Mecklenburg Resolves, the newly discovered document raised the question of why two markedly different sets of resolutions were adopted in Charlotte only 11 days apart. Skeptics contend that the Declaration is a garbled and wrongly dated version of the original Resolves text.