The Halifax Resolves was a name later given to the resolution adopted by the North Carolina Provincial Congress on April 12, 1776. The adoption of the resolution was the first official action in the American Colonies calling for independence from Great Britain during the American Revolution. The Halifax Resolves helped pave the way for the presentation to Congress of the United States Declaration of Independence less than three months later.
The creation and ratification of the resolves was the result of a strong movement in the colonies advocating separation from Great Britain. These separatists, or "American Whigs" (later, "Patriots"), sought to mobilize public support for a much discussed and all encompassing declaration of independence. [1] [2] The primary impediment to an outright declaration of independence from Great Britain was that none of the delegates to the Second Continental Congress were authorized by their home governments to take any action that would lead to such a declaration. Advocates of independence therefore sought to revise the instructions to each congressional delegation and remove any restrictions regarding a declaration of independence.[ citation needed ]
The resolution of April 12, 1776, became known as the Halifax Resolves because the Fourth Provincial Congress of North Carolina adopted them while meeting in the town of Halifax, North Carolina. The 83 delegates present unanimously adopted the resolves, which encouraged delegates to the Continental Congress from all the colonies to finally push for independence. The adoption of the Halifax Resolves was the first official action in the colonies calling for independence from Great Britain. [3]
The Halifax Resolves only empowered North Carolina's three delegates to the Second Continental Congress (Joseph Hewes, William Hooper, and John Penn) to join with those from other colonies to declare independence from Great Britain's rule. [4] [3]
With the passage of the resolves, North Carolina became the first colony to explicitly permit their delegates to vote in favor of independence. [4] The Halifax Resolves, however, stopped short of instructing North Carolina's delegates to introduce a resolution of independence to Congress, [4] a step which was taken by Virginia in June with the adoption of the Lee Resolution [3] [5] The Second Continental Congress issued the United States Declaration of Independence the following month, in July.
Every year, on April 12, the Halifax Historic District, a historic site operated by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, celebrates Halifax Day. Interpreters in period costumes provide guided tours of historic buildings, demonstrate historic crafts and teach about colonial activities. Occasionally, reenactors portray revolutionary-era soldiers and demonstrate the use of historic weapons during the Halifax Day events. [6]
The United States Declaration of Independence, officially The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, is the pronouncement and founding document adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Pennsylvania State House, which was later renamed Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. Enacted during the American Revolution, the Declaration explains why the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain regarded themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states and no longer subject to British colonial rule. With the Declaration, the 13 states took a collective first step in forming the United States and, de facto, formalized the American Revolutionary War, which had been ongoing since April 1775.
The Continental Congress was a series of legislative bodies, with some executive function, for thirteen of Britain's colonies in North America, and the newly declared United States just before, during, and after the American Revolutionary War. The term "Continental Congress" most specifically refers to the First and Second Congresses of 1774–1781 and, at the time, was also used to refer to the Congress of the Confederation of 1781–1789, which operated as the first national government of the United States until being replaced under the Constitution of the United States. Thus, the term covers the three congressional bodies of the Thirteen Colonies and the new United States that met between 1774 and 1789.
Joseph Hewes was an American Founding Father and a signer of the Continental Association and U.S. Declaration of Independence. Hewes was a native of Princeton, New Jersey, where he was born in 1730. His parents were members of the Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers. Early biographies of Hewes falsely claim that his parents came from Connecticut. Hewes may have attended the College of New Jersey, known today as Princeton University but there is no record of his attendance. He did, in all probability, attend the grammar school set up by the Stonybrook Quaker Meeting near Princeton.
The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is a text published in 1819 with the now disputed claim that it was the first declaration of independence made in the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolution. It was supposedly signed on May 20, 1775, in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a committee of citizens of Mecklenburg County, who declared independence from Great Britain after hearing of the battle of Lexington. If true, the Mecklenburg Declaration preceded the United States Declaration of Independence by more than a year.
The Second Continental Congress was a late-18th-century meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that united in support of the American Revolutionary War. The Congress created a new country that it first named the United Colonies, and in 1776, renamed the United States of America. The Congress convened in Philadelphia, then the federal capital, on May 10, 1775, with representatives from 12 of the 13 colonies. This came shortly after the Battles of Lexington and Concord and was in succession to the First Continental Congress which met from September 5 to October 26, 1774. The Second Congress functioned as a de facto national government at the outset of the Revolutionary War by raising armies, directing strategy, appointing diplomats, and writing petitions such as the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms and the Olive Branch Petition. All thirteen colonies were represented by the time the Congress adopted the Lee Resolution which declared independence from Britain on July 2, 1776, and the congress agreed to the Declaration of Independence two days later.
The Continental Association, also known as the Articles of Association or simply the Association, was an agreement among the American colonies adopted by the First Continental Congress on October 20, 1774. It called for a trade boycott against British merchants by the colonies. Congress hoped that placing economic sanctions on British imports and exports would pressure Parliament into addressing the colonies' grievances, in particular, by repealing what were referred to as the Intolerable Acts.
The Suffolk Resolves was a declaration made on September 9, 1774, by the leaders of Suffolk County, Massachusetts. The declaration rejected the Massachusetts Government Act and resulted in a boycott of imported goods from Britain unless the Intolerable Acts were repealed. The Resolves were recognized by statesman Edmund Burke as a major development in colonial animosity leading to adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1776, and he urged British conciliation with the American colonies, to little effect. The First Continental Congress endorsed the Resolves on September 17, 1774, and passed the similarly themed Continental Association on October 20, 1774.
What is known today as the Tryon Resolves was a brief declaration adopted and signed by "subscribers" to the Tryon County Association that was formed in Tryon County, North Carolina in the early days of the American Revolution. In the Resolves—a modern name for the Association's charter document—the county representatives vowed resistance to the increasingly coercive actions being enacted by the government of Great Britain against its North American colonies. The document was signed on August 14, 1775, but—like other similar declarations of the time—stopped short of calling for total independence from Britain.
The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from 12 of the 13 British colonies that became the United States. It met from September 5 to October 26, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after the British Navy instituted a blockade of Boston Harbor and the Parliament of Great Britain passed the punitive Intolerable Acts in response to the December 1773 Boston Tea Party. During the opening weeks of the Congress, the delegates conducted a spirited discussion about how the colonies could collectively respond to the British government's coercive actions, and they worked to make a common cause.
The Lee Resolution, also known as "The Resolution for Independence", was the formal assertion passed by the Second Continental Congress on July 2, 1776, which resolved that the Thirteen Colonies, then referred to as the United Colonies, were "free and independent States" and separate from the British Empire, which created what became the United States of America. News of this act was published that evening in The Pennsylvania Evening Post and the next day in The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Declaration of Independence officially announced and explained the case for independence and was approved two days later, on July 4, 1776.
The United Colonies was the name used by the Second Continental Congress for the emerging nation comprising the Thirteen Colonies in 1775 and 1776, before and as independence was declared. Continental currency banknotes displayed the name 'The United Colonies' from May 1775 until February 1777, and the name was being used as a colloquial phrase to refer to the colonies as a whole before the Second Congress met, although the precise place or date of its origin is unknown.
The Liberty Point Resolves, also known as "The Cumberland Association", was a resolution signed by fifty residents of Cumberland County, North Carolina, early in the American Revolution.
The Committee of Five of the Second Continental Congress was a group of five members who drafted and presented to the full Congress in Pennsylvania State House what would become the United States Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. This Declaration committee operated from June 11, 1776, until July 5, 1776, the day on which the Declaration was published.
The North Carolina Provincial Congresses were extra-legal unicameral legislative bodies formed in 1774 through 1776 by the people of the Province of North Carolina, independent of the British colonial government. There were five congresses. They met in the towns of New Bern, Hillsborough (3rd), and Halifax. The 4th conference approved the Halifax Resolves, the first resolution of one of Thirteen Colonies to call for independence from Great Britain. Five months later it would empower the state's delegates to the Second Continental Congress to concur to the United States Declaration of Independence. The 5th conference approved the Constitution of North Carolina and elected Richard Caswell as governor of the State of North Carolina. After the 5th conference, the new North Carolina General Assembly met in April 1777.
The New York Provincial Congress (1775–1777) was a revolutionary provisional government formed by colonists in 1775, during the American Revolution, as a pro-American alternative to the more conservative New York General Assembly, and as a replacement for the Committee of One Hundred. The Fourth Provincial Congress, resolving itself as the Convention of Representatives of the State of New York, adopted the first Constitution of the State of New York on April 20, 1777.
The Mecklenburg Resolves, or Charlotte Town Resolves, were a list of statements adopted at Charlotte, in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina on May 31, 1775; drafted in the month following the fighting at Lexington and Concord. Similar lists of resolves were issued by other local colonial governments at that time, none of which called for independence from Great Britain. The Mecklenburg Resolves are thought to be the basis for the unproven "Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence". While not a declaration, the Resolves annulled and vacated all laws originating from the authority of the King or Parliament, and ended recognition of the Crown's power in the colony of North Carolina and all other American colonies. It became the first colony to formally do so, taking place about a year before the Halifax Resolves were passed by the Fourth North Carolina Provincial Congress.
The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence occurred primarily on August 2, 1776, at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, later to become known as Independence Hall. The 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress represented the 13 colonies, 12 of which voted to approve the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The New York delegation abstained because they had not yet received instructions from Albany to vote for independence. The Declaration proclaimed the signatory colonies were now "free and independent States," no longer colonies of the Kingdom of Great Britain and, thus, no longer a part of the British Empire. The signers’ names are grouped by state, with the exception of John Hancock, as President of the Continental Congress; the states are arranged geographically from south to north, with Button Gwinnett from Georgia first, and Matthew Thornton from New Hampshire last.
Halifax Historic District is a national historic district located at Halifax, Halifax County, North Carolina, US that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. It includes several buildings that are individually listed on the National Register. Halifax was the site of the signing of the Halifax Resolves on April 12, 1776, a set of resolutions of the North Carolina Provincial Congress which led to the United States Declaration of Independence gaining the support of North Carolina's delegates to the Second Continental Congress in that year.
The Virginia gubernatorial election of 1776 was the first gubernatorial election of the newly independent Commonwealth of Virginia. It was held on June 29, 1776, forty-five days after the adoption of the Lee Resolution by the Fifth Virginia Convention asserting the independence of the United Colonies from Great Britain. The election was conducted under the provisions of the Constitution of Virginia, which had been adopted by the convention the same day and went into effect immediately. Patrick Henry, a leading advocate for independence who had served as a delegate to the First Continental Congress, was elected governor by a majority vote, defeating Thomas Nelson Jr. and John Page.
The Augusta Declaration, or the Memorial of Augusta County Committee, May 10, 1776, was a statement presented to the Fifth Virginia Convention in Williamsburg, Virginia on May 10, 1776. The Declaration announced the necessity of the Thirteen Colonies to form a permanent and independent union of states and national government separate from Great Britain, with whom the Colonies were at war.
Origins of the American Revolution: writings | |||||||||||||||
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American resolves, declarations, petitions, essays and pamphlets prior to the Declaration of Independence (July 1776) | |||||||||||||||
| Following the Stamp Act (1765) |
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| Following the Townshend Acts (1767) |
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| Following the Coercive Acts (1774) |
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| Essays and pamphlets |
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