Mecklenburg Resolves - Controversy Surrounding A "declaration" - Conjecture and Missing Evidence

Conjecture and Missing Evidence

Conclusive evidence of an independence-seeking document has not been found, even in extant newspapers of the time.

Following the 1800 fire, several reported attempts at that time to re-create the text of the burned document added to the confusion and controversy. This is especially true because some of the "re-created text" now borrowed actual passages from the United States Declaration of Independence. The text of the supposed declaration was created not only from an attempted reconstruction cobbled together decades after the events of 1775 from the memories of the few surviving signers (including John McKnitt Alexander), but also from the descendants of the May 1775 drafting committee relying on passed-down family lore.

Many historians believe the story of a declaration of freedom was concocted by surviving document signers many years after the event, who were simply embellishing–or mistakenly remembering–the actual events surrounding the adoption of the Mecklenburg Resolves. Following the fire that destroyed the originals, references to the Resolves and the Declaration are used increasingly more interchangeably, until the time of the Massachusetts Essex Register News publication (1819) of the purported text of a "Declaration". The background information for this article was also supplied by McKnitt's son—two years after his death. Each statement printed in the Essex Register article begins with the word, 'Resolved'. The article was denounced as a hoax at the time by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

The controversy over the Mecklenburg Declaration entered a new phase with the discovery of the text of Mecklenburg Resolves. It was then asked how can one account for two very different sets of resolutions supposedly adopted only eleven days apart by the same committee? How was it possible that citizens of Mecklenburg County declared independence on May 20, and then met again on May 31, to pass less revolutionary resolutions? For skeptics of the Mecklenburg Declaration, the answer was that the Declaration was a misdated, inaccurate recreation of the authentic Resolves. Supporters of the Declaration maintain that both documents are genuine, and were adopted to serve different purposes.