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The Mecklenburg Resolves, also known as the Charlottetown (or Charlotte Town) Resolves, was a statement adopted on May 31, 1775, in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, by the Mecklenburg Committee of Safety. The document proclaimed that all laws originating from the king or Parliament are null and void, and that the only legitimate government over the American colonies is the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia. It proclaimed that royal authority in America was suspended and said officials were to be detained.
Captain James Jack relayed the resolves to the North Carolina delegation at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia where the delegates received them, but opted not to present them to the Continental Congress as a whole.[1] These resolves were drafted only a month following the outbreak of war at Lexington and Concord, but over a year earlier than the Declaration of Independence.
According to North Carolinian folklore, citizens of Mecklenburg County assembled in Charlotte on May 20, 1775, and wrote a declaration of independence from Britain. This is known as the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and some claim it to be the first Declaration of Independence in America.
Conclusive evidence of that document, however, has not been forthcoming, since the original version of the Mecklenburg Declaration was said to have burned in a fire in 1800. Many believe the story was concocted by some old-timers many years after the event, who were simply embellishing or mis-remembering the actual Mecklenburg Resolves. Nonetheless, the North Carolina government has endorsed the story, and the date of the Mecklenburg Declaration is memorialized on the state seal and the North Carolina Flag.
