The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence: North Carolina’s Bold (If Disputed) Claim to History

Two Flags on the Porch

Every day at our office, two flags fly proudly from the columns on the front porch — the Stars and Stripes and the North Carolina state flag. If you look closely at that NC flag, you see two dates, stitched into the fabric of the banner itself.  One of those dates, “May 20, 1775”, has been the subject of great debate by historians over the years.

May 20, 1775 was the moment, according to North Carolina tradition, when a group of citizens in Charlotte declared independence from Great Britain, more than a year before Thomas Jefferson put pen to paper in Philadelphia.

As we head into Memorial Day weekend, and on toward the 250th anniversary of American independence, it seems like the right moment to tell the story of the “Meck Dec”…honestly, and with just the right amount of good ol’ North Carolina stubbornness.

The Story

The account goes like this: On May 20, 1775, delegates from across Mecklenburg County convened in Charlotte. The shots at Lexington and Concord had been fired just weeks earlier. The mood was defiant. According to legend, those delegates produced a declaration proclaiming that British authority over the colonies was effectively void and they used language strikingly similar to what Thomas Jefferson would write more than a year later.

North Carolina wasn’t waiting on anyone.

The Problem

Here is where intellectual honesty requires us to pump the brakes…but just slightly (we’re also the birthplace of NASCAR after all):

No original version of the Mecklenburg Declaration exists – it was allegedly destroyed in a fire in 1800. The version published in 1819 was reconstructed, largely from the memory of one signer, John McKnitt Alexander, nearly 45 years after the fact. Thomas Jefferson himself found the document suspicious, noting the similarity to his own Declaration and suggesting the inspiration ran the other direction. Many serious historians have called the “Meck Dec” apocryphal, or simply unverifiable.

We are a law firm. We deal in evidence. And the evidence here is…well…to put it charitably, thin.

What Is Beyond Dispute

What is authenticated is the Mecklenburg Resolves of May 31, 1775 — a separate document, which can be historically verified, in which Mecklenburg County delegates formally suspended British authority and established their own governing structure. Contemporaneous originals of this document exist. There’s no suspicious similarity to later documents. Just a group of determined North Carolinians telling the Crown where it could go.

The existence of the Mecklenburg Resolves themselves are remarkable. North Carolina was organizing resistance – real, structural resistance – while the rest of the colonies were still debating.

Why The Real Story Doesn’t Matter

Here is the thing about North Carolinians: we have never much cared what the rest of the world thinks of us.

Whether the “Meck Dec” is historically authentic in every detail is, in some sense, beside the point. The spirit it represents – the stubborn, early, unapologetic commitment to independence – is entirely consistent with who North Carolinians have always been. The state motto, Esse Quam Videri, means “to be rather than to seem.” We are not interested in performing independence.,,we are interested in having it.

Long before Philadelphia, long before the formal machinery of revolution caught up, North Carolina was already there in spirit. The Mecklenburg Resolves prove it in fact. The “Meck Dec”, real or embellished, captures something true about the people who produced it.

250 Years Later

As the nation marks the 250th anniversary of American independence in 2026, it is worth remembering that the story of American freedom did not begin on July 4, 1776. It began in places like Mecklenburg County, where ordinary citizens – farmers, tradesmen, merchants – decided they had had enough and said so out loud, on the record, consequences be damned.

North Carolina was out front then. That independent streak hasn’t gone anywhere.

A Firm Rooted in That Tradition

At Coltrane Grubbs, PLLC, we love practicing law in North Carolina, not just because it is where we are proud to call home, but because of what this state represents. The values that animated those Mecklenburg County delegates in 1775:  integrity, plain dealing, the courage to say what you mean and mean what you say, those are the same values we bring to our clients every day.

Esse Quam Videri. To be, rather than to seem.