20 May 1775 - The Mecklenburg Declaration and the Ulster-Scots / Scotch-Irish

(this is a recap / summary of various posts which have appeared here over the years)
.........

250 years ago, on 20 May 1775, a local committee of overwhelmingly Ulster-Scots descent, met in Charlotte, North Carolina, to compose their ‘Mecklenburg Declaration’.

They had founded the county and its main town in 1762, and in doing so they had expressed their loyalty to the King by naming each after his bride, Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg. However less than a decade later on 16 May 1771, the King’s troops opened fire on thousands of them at the Battle of Alamance in Orange County.

Some of those who had been at Alamance moved westwards to establish a new settlement, independent from the Crown, within Cherokee country and with Cherokee co-operation. 

Some of those who stayed, such as Rev David Caldwell, were influential in writing the ‘Mecklenburg Declaration’. Caldwell cited their ancestral defiance of Derry and Enniskillen in 1689 - “They our forefathers, or many of them, sacrificed at Londonderry and Enniskillen their lives, that they might hand down to us the fair inheritance of liberty”

.........

Of the 27 who gathered at Charlotte, nine were elders in local Presbyterian churches. Their Declaration asserted “the inherent and inalienable rights of man”, and that “we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people”.

Captain James Jack (whose father Patrick Jack was from Ireland, and whose grandfather was Rev William Jack from Donegal - one of the thousands of ministers across our islands who had been persecuted by King Charles II in the 1660s) took copies of the Mecklenburg Declaration on horseback as fast as possible to Philadelphia.

.........

Two months later, the Presbyterian Synod for all of the 13 British Colonies in America issued a Pastoral Letter to all of its member congregations, advising them all to:

"... let every opportunity be taken to express your attachment and respect to our Sovereign King George, and to the (1688) Revolution principles by which his august family was seated on the British throne ..."

however, that

"... Hostilities, long feared, have now taken place; the sword has been drawn, in one Province, and the whole Continent, with hardly any exception, seem determined to defend their rights by force of arms ... If, at the same time, the British Ministry shall continue to enforce their claims by violence, a lasting and bloody contest must be expected ..."

.........

In later years, some in Washington DC challenged the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration, especially Thomas Jefferson, but its date of 20 May 1775 was later incorporated into the design of the official flag of North Carolina.