Why The Halifax Resolves Matter

By John Hood

RALEIGH — On April 12, a large crowd of North Carolinians will gather in the town of Halifax to commemorate the 250th anniversary of a pivotal historical event.

It was on April 12, 1776, that 83 delegates representing all 35 (at the time) counties plus nine municipalities affirmed what became known as the Halifax Resolves. They instructed North Carolina’s representatives to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to “concur with the delegates of other Colonies in declaring Independency.”

The wording may sound tentative — to “concur with” rather than “initiate” — but everyone understood their import as well as the potential consequences. Over the first few months of the Revolutionary War, an increasing share of the emerging nation’s leaders had concluded that a clean break with Britain, not just a renegotiation of colonial relations, was necessary. Still, none had yet attempted to make it an explicit aim of the war.

Some feared getting too far ahead of public opinion. Others feared that, if Britain managed to prevail, individuals most closely associated with the cause of independence would at least be ostracized and financially ruined if not prosecuted for treason.

Among the delegates arriving in Halifax in early April for the Fourth Provincial Congress were several Carolina firebrands no longer willing to countenance a rapprochement with Parliament or King George III. One was John McKnitt Alexander. One of the two dozen signers of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence the previous May, Alexander had just returned from captaining a company of Mecklenburg men at the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, where the Patriots blocked and decisively defeated a column of Carolina Tories on their way to Wilmington to join up with a British invasion force.

Another delegate, Cornelius Harnett, had challenged the Crown even earlier than Alexander and the Mecklenburgers did. The main organizer of Wilmington’s Committee of Safety in 1774, Harnett was one of the leaders of the Patriots who the following year burned Fort Johnson to keep it out of the hands of pro-British forces. He was then elected president of the statewide Council of Safety, essentially North Carolina’s first governing body after the start of the war, and became vice president of the Fourth Provincial Congress.

Other delegates traveling to Halifax included five militia colonels present at Moores Creek Bridge — Thomas Robeson of Bladen County, Griffith Rutherford of Rowan, Allen Jones of Northampton, John Ashe of New Hanover, and Richard Caswell of what is now Lenoir County, who’d been in overall command — along with other veterans of the battle such as Joseph Winston of Surry County. If those surnames sound familiar, that’s because either they or their relatives subsequently became the namesakes of new counties or municipalities.

These men weren’t just flush with recent victory. They were angered by even-more-recent events. That British invasion fleet had, indeed, reached the North Carolina coast in early March. Finding no Tory reinforcements to meet them, General Henry Clinton landed a few foraging parties, rescued a few Loyalists, captured a few Patriots, and then announced that any North Carolina rebel who came forward, renounced his prior misdeeds, and pledged allegiance to the Crown would be pardoned.

Any rebel, that is, except two. One was Robert Howe of Brunswick County. A former British officer, Howe had once commanded the very Fort Johnston that he later helped set ablaze. The other man General Clinton refused to pardon was Cornelius Harnett, vice president of the provincial congress that convened in Halifax.

See the problem? General Clinton apparently didn’t. He thought singling out a couple of ringleaders for potential punishment would induce the other Patriots to seize the opportunity for a pardon. What his proclamation actually did was harden many hearts that might otherwise have yielded to fear.

On April 12, then, the delegates in Halifax were the first provincial leaders in North America to formally embrace independence. Three months later, the Continental Congress did the same. A rebellion became a war for independence. The world would never be the same.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).