Local history goes that Mecklenburgers have long had an independent streak and a history of being trend setters. Case in point: The area's rebellious Presbyterians settlers declared their independence from Britain more than an year ahead of the nation -- on May 10, 1775.
Of course, not everyone believes the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence really happened or that Thomas Jefferson borrowed from it in writing the version we as a country celebrate tomorrow.
But George Will lends credence to MecDec in a column in today's The Washington Post and The Charlotte Observer. Click here to read it. I like how Will starts off:
"The impatient patriots here had splendidly short fuses in 1775. Those who tilled the startlingly red clay or who lived in the town named for George III's wife, Charlotte, might have been bemused had they foreseen the annual hoopla that commemorates July 4, 1776."
So do you believe in MecDec or is it a bunch of hooey?
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Mecklenburgers first in independence?
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54 comments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecklenburg_declaration_of_independence
The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence of May 20, 1775 may be "hooey" (to use your word), as no original text exists to prove it actually came out in 1775. But the Charlottetown Resolves of May 1775 and the Tryon Resolves of August 1775 are most certainly legitimate.
No matter how you slice it, North Carolinians were definitely at the forefront of the independence movement, at least in terms of formally standing up to the British, even though more of its high-profile members were from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
You should read through the entire Wikipedia article and then decide for yourself whether there is sufficient evidence to prove the Mecklenburg Declaration came out in 1775 as claimed.
The Confederacy was simply an extension of those same ideals.
The more I read and the more I hear, the more I believe this item never existed. Sorry guys. Charlotte will be famous for something, but not this.
Once again, Charlotte and NC try to make themselves the center of the world.
As one blogger said," that North Carolinians were at the forfront of the independance movement".. I must disagree... more like at the forfront of running the other way when it came time to fight. If history recalls correctly, it was the North Carolina Militia at the Battle of Camden, SC that broke and ran under the first shots fired by the British. There "First in Flight" caused the left flank of the army to collapse and in the long run caused the Continentals to loose the battle. I also remember reading that is was either the Maryland Continentals or the Delaware Continentals who first coined the phrase "Tar Heels" and there needing of it to keep them from running away from the fight. I also recall that the majority of NC were loyalists, so much that they named their city after King George III of England's wife. Not to mention how it was mostly Tennesse and South Carolinians who fought the Battle of King's Mountain, North Carolina against NC Loyalist militia.
To the other about the Confederacy:
The State of North Carolina was one of the last states to secede from the United States of America and as a result the state was nicknamed the "reluctant state" by others in the south. The joke circulating around at the beginning of the war went something like this: " Got any tar?"- "No, Jeff Davis has bought it all."- "What for?"- "To put on you fellow's heels to make you stick."
I have lived in Charlotte for almost 9 years and have been studying history for almost 28. The one thing I have seen is that there is real history and there in NC/Charlotte's version of history.
I think there was resistance here because CORNWALLIS CAME through Charlotte and slaughtered them in Downtown Charlotte; He didnt do a good job because many are left; None the less Cornwallis was in here going around with them so someone Please cough up the MECK DECK so we can settle this issue. The British own everthing and all the streets anyway and still do; Why the BANK of AMERICA is really the BANK OF ENGLAND they have to incorporate their name and change it like HONDA of AMERICA.
www.gobacktoohio.com
Listen to my song sungto the song The BRITISH are coming through town thru town,
There making our women go down go down
Their making us feel like a clown a clown
they go to our pubs and drink one on down.
Well it sounds better when you've had a few .
The confederate were ran by People who were into slavery and those same People were slaves themselves by the EGyptians. They all have something in common. Slavery is a bad topic but it must be discussed for reperations.
QUEEN CHARLOTTE was MULATO or half White and half Morrish Portuguese. History does not spell this out very well but Queen Charlotte stopped slavery just months before we went to war with the America. I do believe that she was trying to end slavery in the Americas in the 1700s. She had it stopped in England.
It's probably just a legend but who knows. We natives are all a bunch of pirates anyway so it could be true.
Here is history again being mis quoted:
"Queen Charlotte did not abolish slavery in England:.
1. March 25, 1807 the slave trade in the British colonies was abolished and it became illegal to carry slaves in British ships.
2. August 1, 1834 - William Wilberforce's efforts were finally rewarded when the Abolition of Slavery Act was passed in the British Empire.
2a. all slaves under the age of six were to be freed immediately.
2b. slaves over the age of six were to remain as part slave and part free for a further four years.
2c. the government was to provide £20 million in compensation to the slave-owners who had lost their "property."
3. Queen Charlotte died on November 17, 1818, at Kew Palace. Which means she was dead 15 years before slavery was abolished in England.
4.Also, she was of Germany descent and not a mulato. Both her parents bloodlines go back to Prussian/Germany ancestory.
To the Rev War Question of Loyalist, let us not forget the North Carolina Highland Regiment.
Unit began in 1776 when North Carolina's governor Joseph
Martin, convinced King George III that, he, Martin could raise
10,000 Loyalists who could march to Wilmington, join forces
with English troops, and quell the growing rebellion in the south.
An army of 1600 loyalists, mainly Highland Scots, gathered in
Cross Creek ( now Fayetteville ) and began the 90-mile march
to Wilmington, these men became designated as the North Carolina Highanders.
Even the Governor of North Carolina was a Loyalist to the Crown.
Yes, well Boston and New York were both full of loyalists too. All of the colonies were split between loyalists, patriots, and those in between.
What we have here is documented history of a section of North Carolina that was very independent. I'm not sure they could even be called patriots because they didn't seem to care about any mother country, not just England.
Well according to Frontline on Public TV and reference the Queen Charlotte frontline and the Charlotte Observer Mint Museum paintings she was Mulato; Even the Painter painting the new Queen Charlotte painting said " she was Mulato; Her Father was the King of Portugal and was Black as an eight ball; Her Mother was from Schwarzburg area in Germany ; If you look up the Royal painter "ALAN RAMSAY" the famous Scottish Painter he noted he had to lighten her up to match KING GEORGE III. I was just as shocked to read this as you are hearing it for the forst time. I was floored History never told us this in our books. This is a white perception of what happened.
Well what ever she Queen Charlotte is related to me and I am proud to be an ancestor; My family is related to Fredrick Schwarz a count from Germany ; I not sure why all the confusion about where she was from and why" ALAN RAMSAY" had mentioned that because of her black features he had to lighten her up on the portrait; Did you all know those Paintings at the mint Museum are on loan from the HOUSE OF WINDSOR that took me by suprise.
Well what ever she Queen Charlotte is related to me and I am proud to be an ancestor; My family is related to Fredrick Schwarz a count from Germany ; I not sure why all the confusion about where she was from and why" ALAN RAMSAY" had mentioned that because of her black features he had to lighten her up on the portrait; Did you all know those Paintings at the mint Museum are on loan from the HOUSE OF WINDSOR that took me by suprise.
Whatever I just hope the Queen of England will let us keep the portraits forever in Charlotte thats the only thing we have to link us with British history.
www.gobacktothehills.com
Lets face it most People here are trying to hold on to twenty years ago . Let it go and get a new day. The city is growing with People who really dont give a flying fuck about what you want or me for that fact. Millionaires are coming here that look at all of us like trailer trash . Look you could kill me tonight and its still going to happen as if you didnt kill me. Its called progression. Its called Money talks and trailer trash walks. Im trailer trash and Im seeing this.
Lets face it most People here are trying to hold on to twenty years ago . Let it go and get a new day. The city is growing with People who really dont give a flying fuck about what you want or me for that fact. Millionaires are coming here that look at all of us like trailer trash . Look you could kill me tonight and its still going to happen as if you didnt kill me. Its called progression. Its called Money talks and trailer trash walks. Im trailer trash and Im seeing this.
You're wrong on one point. The people moving here are the trailer trash. They couldn't make it in NY, PA, CA, etc. so they moved to NC and SC for the lower cost of living. Just look at the way that these jort wearing, mouth breathers take care of their houses and yards and you'll see what I mean.
Thats odd, one of my trusty history books says Queen Charlotte was the daughter of Karl Ludwig Frederick of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. I believe thats in Germany, not Portugal. Actually, all of her ancestors seem to be of German blood except for some distant Scandinavian ties.
Queen Charlotte, wife of the English King George III (1738-1820), was directly descended from Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a black branch of the Portuguese Royal House...
Six different lines can be traced from English Queen Charlotte back to Margarita de Castro y Sousa, in a gene pool which because of royal inbreeding was already minuscule, thus explaining the Queen's unmistakable African appearance.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/royalfamily.html
Hopefully this may end the whole Queen Charlotte mulato question:
Charlotte was the youngest daughter of Duke Charles Louis Frederick of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Prince of Mirow (23 February 1707 – 5 June 1752) and his wife, Princess Elizabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen, Duchess in Saxony (4 August 1713 – 29 June 1761).
She was a granddaughter of Adolf Frederick II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (19 October 1658 – 12 May 1708) by his third wife, Christiane Emilie Antonie, Princess of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen (March, 1681 – 1 November 1751). Her father's elder half brother reigned from 1708 to 1753 as Adolf Friedrich III.
Obviously the trailer trash in Charlotte can not read very well, since this blog is about the Mec-Dec document and Queen Charlotte.
Obviously the trailer trash in Charlotte can not read very well, since this blog is about the Mec-Dec document and Queen Charlotte.
Go back to Chicago Mrs. Buttinski.
Hopefully this may end the whole Queen Charlotte mulato question:
No, it does not. You simply listed her parents' and grandparents' names. What does that prove?
It says nothing of her ancestry and it doesn't address accounts of her dark skin recorded by her comtemporaries.
Since it seems that I must give more ancestral lineage on Queen Charlotte here it is. Also here are the 2 websites that have the bloodlines for both her father and mother.
Queen Charlotte father was:
Charles Louis Frederick, Duke of Mecklenburg-Mirow –
His father was Adolf Frederick II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
His mother was Christiane Emilie von Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
His father’s father was Adolf Frederick I, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
His father’s mother was Maria Katharina of Brunswick-Dannenberg
His mother’s father was Christian Wilhelm, Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
His mother’s mother was Antonie Sybille of Barby-Muhlingen
Queen Charlotte mothers was:
Princess Elizabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen
Her father was Ernst Frederick I, Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen
Her mother was Sofie Albertine of Erbach-Erbach
Her father’s father was . Ernest III, Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen
Her father’s mother was Sophie Henrietta of Waldeck-Eisenberg
Her mother’s father was Georg Ludwig I of Erbach-Erbach
Her mother’s mother was Amalia Katharina of Waldeck-Eisenberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Charles_Louis_Frederick_of_Mecklenburg-Strelitz%2C_Prince_of_Mirow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Elizabeth_Albertine_of_Saxe-Hildburghausen
Queen Charlotte was an arranged marriage to KING GEORGE to keep the sugar cane in the Royal family ; Sugar Cane was like OIL is today a commodity People could not live with. Portugal was the leading supplier of SUGAR CANE to the world. Queen Charlotte was Black just look at her Portrait in the Mint Museum. She was much darker than King George so are some Germans .
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/royalfamily.html
-----------------------------------
I have read this website and have also looked into more of Mario de Valdes y Cocom writings and have found it to be very hazy and inconsistent. Some of the earlier writing contradicts what is he had later written. In another article done about race he is quoted as saying:
“Could the queen's features have had significance to the Abolitionist movement?”
This comment, directed to Queen Charlotte, could imply that the painting was done as a slight against the Royal family due in part to their pro-slavery sentiments.
Sir Allan Ramsay, an anti-slavery artist, was responsible for the majority of the paintings of the queen. By the time of his portraits, Ramsay was married to the niece of Lord Mansfield, the English judge whose 1772 decision was the first in a series of rulings that helped end slavery in the British Empire.
In another bit of writing he implies that the current Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II, is of Asian and African bloodline. If anyone has ever seen the Queen, she does not look Asian or African to me.
From my reading of his work, and his studies background, it appears that his only goal is to imply that there is African in everyone bloodlines.
Look I know most of you were hoping for a white Police chief for Christmas but not to worry ; This guy is dynamic and ging to do a great job. He was in Washington hes knows the ropes. Stop being PREJUDICE Charlotte. ok Charleston the greatest Police chief that got the city back on its feet. He roller bladed through out the city and VOILA' the city is much safer.
Look the U.S. money in your wallet is nothing but PAPER; The Governmnet can print more and put People to work Clinton did the best job in the last 35 years.
Queen Charlotte was beautiful and I love her ; I genuflect to her and SAY "HAIL to the QUEEN' HAIL TO THE QUEEN! I cant wait until I rejoin with her. I am her loyal subject and at her service.
Queen Charlotte asked me to come here and guideall of you; Im kaiser Sosa Im KAISER SOSA
MOOR : During the Middle Ages, Moor was a common term to refer to the Muslims of the Islamic Iberian Peninsula, who were of Arab and Berber descent. They inhabited the Iberian Peninsula after the Arab conquests of the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates.
Portuguese : Are an Iberian ethnic group and their ancestry is very similar to other western and southern European peoples, particularly from the Iberian Peninsula, with whom it shares ancestry and has cultural proximity.
So of these 2 ethnic groups that are implied to be in the lineage of Queen Charlotte, none of them are a black skinned or a black featured people.
It seems that people are going by one person’s writings and his focus on the all things black history, since I have found 10 websites to 1, that show Queens Charlotte’s all Germany/Prussian bloodlines. I guess that every other historian who has written on the subject is wrong and that this one person must be right.
"Go back to Chicago Mrs. Buttinski."
Is that the only responce a southern has ? Give me a break...
"It says nothing of her ancestry and it doesn't address accounts of her dark skin recorded by her comtemporaries."
Just because someone has a darker skin color doe not mean that they are black/African. Look at most of southern europeans who have a olive and darkend complection. So now we are saying that all Europeans are African.
One the question of Margarida:
Margarida de Castro e Souza, a 15th century Portuguese noblewoman, was an ancestor of Queen Charlotte, 1744-1818, consort of King George III of the United Kingdom, through her mother Princess Elizabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen.
Margarida's descent from a 6 times removed speculated (albeit unproven) Moorsish women is one of several reasons Queen Charlotte, and consequently the present British Royal Family, is thought to have African ancestry. This, however, is contradicted by genealogists, who trace Margarita's descent to Afonso III of Portugal and a mistress of his called Madragana (Mor Afonso), daughter of the Mozarab (Iberian Christians living under Muslim domination) governor of Faro, Aloandro Ben Bekar.
"She was much darker than King George so are some Germans."
I must have missed all those dark skinned Aryans and Teutonic’s when I was living in Germany for 18 years. I must agree with the other blogger with his observation that all Spaniards, Italians, French, Greek,Austrian and all other Europeans must be Africian as per skin tone.
In regards to the German comments, maybe people should watch a few of the WW2 documentaries on the history channel and see how many dark skinned Germans there were. I guess I must have been in the bathroom when those scenes came on because I have never seen any. Yea right, Germany and Hitler fought to preserve the Aryan race of dark skinned people.
It makes me chuckle to see so many people working so hard to deny Queen Charlotte's African ancestory. Is it really so hard to accept that the woman was mixed race?
There is nothing wrong with being of a mixed race. I am and very proud of it but because I am of a mixed race does not mean that I am African or black. People of hispanic decent are darker skinned but they are not African or black.
What is with everyone, over the last few years, having to black up all of history.
"It makes me chuckle to see so many people working so hard to deny Queen Charlotte's African ancestry. Is it really so hard to accept that the woman was mixed race?".......
Lets, for a minute, say that the information might be true, so since when does being part Portuguese and part Arabian make you black or African. It does not sound like anyone is disputing her being of a mixed race. Many in Europe are but what seems to be the strong push to insure that she must be black.
Where can you buy a mecklen burger? Does it come with slaw?
"...since when does being part Portuguese and part Arabian make you black or African."
If your Portuguese ancestors were black, as Queen Charlotte's were, then of course it makes you black.
It's okay to admit that Charlotte was black. Black people aren't going to start getting all uppity and demanding reparations because of it. LOL.
No matter which way you go
No matter which way you stay
You're out of my mind, out of my mind
Out of my mind, out of my mind
I was walking with a ghost
I said please, please don't insist
I was walking with a ghost
I said please, please don't insist
Charlotte didn't have any newspapers in 1775 to splash headlines across the front page such as:
"Mecklenburg Declares Independence!"
Or: "What the Heck, Back the Meck Deck."
Or: "Davidson, Brevard, Polk Lead Mecklenburg Out of Colonial Bonds."
Indeed, The Charlotte Daily Observer wouldn't appear at the intersection of Trade and Tryon until well into the 19th Century. And the colonial newspapers which were being published in New Bern and Charleston didn't have Charlotte bureaus to relay the pace-setting news.
And you just about have to go all the way to Louisville to find much newspaper reporting about what some of the reform-minded Presbyterians are saying in the country today. So "the more things change..."
Another difficulty in gaining greater public notice and understanding about the Mecklenburg Declaration was the reluctance of the North Carolina Continental congressional delegation in Philadelphia to relay Mecklenburg's views on the need for independence to the other members of the Congress. It's just about the same today as it seems a trifle difficult to get some of the good folks in the N.C. Legislature and the U.S. Congress to consider the opinions of 21st Century Mecklenburgers.
However, John Adams certainly thought enough about the historic significance of the Mecklenburg independence movement to state his approving views on the subject in his post-presidential correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, whose friends in Charlottesville weren't getting much in the way of good intelligence from farther down the Piedmont in Charlotte. And that's still about the case today because if you want the latest news from both Charlotte and Charlottesville, you'll have better luck going online to read The Charlotte Observer and The Daily Progress of Charlottesville.
There should be a room at one of Mecklenburg's colleges and university designated for collecting all historical references to the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence so that scholars and citizens alike can consider the historic evidence on both sides of the question.
And they could start by including The Pennsylvania Packett of 1849, which reported on Vice President George Dallas's Philadelphia eulogy of President James Knox Polk of Mecklenburg County, N.C., and Maury County, Tenn., in which Dallas made important connections between Col. William Polk's founding generation of Mecklenburg patriots and the subsequent political career of his nephew James K. Polk, who studied the Greek and Latin classics at the University of North Carolina (ah, the branch at Chapel Hill) and continued his native Mecklenburg's traditions of independent political thinking in his service as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, governor of Tennessee and the 11th President of the United States.
George Dallas had served as U.S. Minister to both England and Russia, keeping informative diaries along the way, and his father, Alexander Dallas of Philadelphia, had been President Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury. So the Dallases were quite knowledgeable about and influential in American politics and government in the first half of the 19th Century.
In fact, Dallas, Texas, was named for Vice President George Dallas, and if that isn't impressive enough, so was Dallas, N.C., which was the county seat of Gaston County until county offices were moved to that booming upstart of a town known as Gastonia.
But supposing there actually was no historically authentic Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence agreed to in Charlotte on May 19 and 20, 1775. Then we'd just have to assume that a group of republican-minded citizens of Mecklenburg simply got together a week and a half later and announced, out of the blue, an entirely new plan of representative local government for the county under the name of "The Mecklenburg Resolves" of May 30-31, 1775, without bothering to declare their independence from England!
That would have been like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin drafting and signing the U.S. Constitution of 1787 in Philadelphia without there first having occurred the Declaration of Independence by John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and a whole host of others in that same City of Brother Love eleven years earlier in 1776.
Why, even our friends in the beloved Southern city of Atlanta should take an interest in the Mecklenburg Declaration and Resolves of May 1775:
After all, you don't have to be
In Georgia Tech's Rambling Wreck
To clap and cheer with glee
At the bold stroke of the Meck Deck.
In response to a previous anonymous comment,and as a decendent of one of the signors of the MeckDec, I have to say that this conversation is blasphemy! How dare this even be an issue?
I didn't think it was the norm to go around questioning city's history, especially if you are not from the area (love the comment earlier www.gobacktoohio.com). Even IF the US Dec of Indep. didn't use parts of the MeckDec, this areas decendents WERE forerunners in creating independence for the area. These actions should be kept in history as just that, HISTORY of our forefathers!
There are other historical, philosophical and geographic factors which figure in the unique political experience of the participants in the Mecklenburg independence movement in 1775. A number of the signers of the Mecklenburg Declaration had come to the Carolinas from "the Middle Colonies" where some had been educated at Nassau Hall of the College of New Jersey, renamed Princeton in 1896.
The College of New Jersey was led in the 1760s and 1770s by the influential Scottish-American theologian and educator, the Rev. John Witherspoon, who became a signer of the American Declaration of Independence of July 1776 and the U.S. Constitution of 1787.
Witherspoon had begun advocating American independence from England in the early 1770s, so it would have been interesting if there had been any contemporary journalistic or historical research into the educational backgrounds and philosophical moorings of the Nassau Hall-educated Mecklenburg patriots to determine whether their actions in Charlotte in May 1775 had indeed been influenced by their personal and educational connections to the independent-minded views and teachings of John Witherspoon at the College of New Jersey in the late 1760s and early 1770s.
Even today, Presbyterian ministers in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County have been known to offer occasional prescriptions for fortifying the ideals of republican democracy in North Carolina and the Nation.
By the way, Joseph Caldwell, the mathematics professor who went on to became president of the University of North Carolina in the early 19th Century and the namesake of Caldwell County, N.C., also studied under Dr. John Witherspoon in the early College of New Jersey community before Caldwell moved to North Carolina.
So there definitely was a major Princeton "independence outlook" prevalent in North Carolina in the latter part of the 18th Century.
I am happy to report that we have a plant that is a cutting from one of David Caldwell's bushes planted at Buffalo Presby Church in Greensboro, NC (ask my husband what type of bush it is for I do not know). But its really old plant. More debate on the Meck Dec is welcomed by me as well as the exploration of Queen Charlotte's heritage. Time for a DNA study of her descendants perhaps. Many American 'Blacks' and many 'Whites' are of mixed race when DNA is analyzed. The numbers are just starting to come in as people have their DNA analyzed as a part of genealogy research.... And if anyone has a clue about how the British Clarkson fellow (who helped Wilberforce fight slavery) is related to the Clarksons of Columbia/SC and also Charlotte area NC -- let us know. He is related, we just don't know exactly how....
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