PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 7, 1775. DEAR SIR: We have no late intelligence here except of the surrender of Chambly, with 90 prisoners of war, 6 tons of powder, 150 stands of arms, and some other small matters. The acquisition of this powder, we hope, has before this made us masters of St. John's, on which Montreal and the upper parts of St. Lawrence will of course be ours. The fate of Arnold's expedition we know not as yet. We have had some disagreeable accounts of internal commotions in South Carolina. I have never received the scrip of a pen from any mortal in Virginia since I left it, nor been able by any inquiries I could make to hear of my family. I had hoped that when Mrs. Byrd came I should have heard something of them; but she could tell me nothing about them. The suspense under which I am is too terrible to be endured. If anything has happened, for God's sake let me know it. My best affections to Mrs. Eppes. Adieu.

To MR. FRANCIS EPPES, At the Forest, Charles City.

TH. JEFFERSON.

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 21st, 1775.

DEAR SIR: After sealing my last letter to you, we received an account of the capture of St. John's, which I wrote on the letter. What I then gave you was a true account of that matter. We consider this as having determined the fate of Canada. A committee of Congress is gone to improve circumstances, so as to bring the Canadians into our Union. We have accounts of Arnold as late as October 13. All well and in fine spirits. We cannot help hoping him in possession of Quebec, as we know Carleton to be absent in the neighborhood of Montreal. Our armed vessels to the northward have taken some of the ships coming with provisions from Ireland to Boston. By the intercepted letters we have a confirmation that they will have an army of four or five and twenty thousands there by the spring, but they will be raw-teagues. 3,000 are lately arrived there. I have written to Patty a proposition to keep yourselves at a distance from the alarms of Ld. Dunmore. To her, therefore, for want of time, I must refer you, and shall hope to meet you as proposed. I am, dear Sir, with my best affections to Mrs. Eppes,

Your friend and servant,

FRANCIS EPPES, Esq.,

At the Forest, Charles City.

TH. JEFFERSON.

APPENDIX NO. II.-Vol. I., p. 190.

The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.

The following is a copy of this paper as it was first published in the Raleigh (N. C.) Register, April 30th, 1819. The phrases coinciding with those of the National Declaration of Independence are placed in italics :

20th May, 1775.

"That whosoever directly or indirectly abetted, or in any way, form, or manner, countenanced the unchartered and dangerous invasion of our rights, as claimed by

Great Britain, is an enemy to this country, to America, and to the inherent and1 inalienable rights of man.

"That we, the citizens of Mecklenburg county, do hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the mother country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British crown, and abjure all political connection, contract, or association with that nation, who have wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties, and inhumanly shed the blood of American patriots at Lexington.

"That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people; are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing association, under the control of no power, other than that of our God, and the general government of the Congress; to the maintenance of which independence, we solemnly pledge to each other, our mutual cooperation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor.

"That as we now acknowledge the existence and control of no law or legal officer, civil or military, within this county, we do hereby ordain and adopt as a rule of life, all, each, and every of our former laws; wherein, nevertheless, the crown of Great Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authority therein.

"That it is further decreed, that all, each, and every military officer in this county, is hereby reinstated in his former command and authority, he acting conformably to these regulations. And that every member present of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil officer, viz., a justice of the peace, in the character of a committee man, to issue process, hear, and determine all matters of controversy, according to said adopted laws; and to preserve peace, union, and harmony in said county, and to use every exertion to spread the love of country and fire of freedom throughout America, until a more general and organized government be established in this province.

"JOHN MCNITT ALEXANDER, Secretary."

"ABRAHAM ALEXANDER, Chairman.

There is nothing at all noticeable in most of these coincidences. Any man might use as his own such collocations of words as "free and independent," "all political connection," etc., in 1776, or at any time before or since, without the imputation of plagiarism. In fact, the whole matter, so far as Mr. Jefferson is concerned, would not be entitled to a moment's notice, had not a train of subsequent circumstances given a degree of factitious notoriety to his connection with it.

On the publication of the paper in the Raleigh Register in 1819, it was copied (June 5th) into the Essex Register, in Massachusetts, and John Adams inclosed a copy of this (June 22d) to Mr. Jefferson, with some remarks from which we select the following:

"How is it possible that this paper should have been concealed from me to this day? Had it been communicated to me in the time of it, I know, if you do not know, that it would have been printed in every whig newspaper upon the continent. You know that if I had possessed it, I would have made the hall of Congress echo and reëcho with it fifteen months before your Declaration of Independence. What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass is Tom Paine's "Common Sense" in comparison with this paper. Had I known it, I would have commented upon it from the day you entered Congress till the fourth of July, 1776. The

1 The words "inherent and" were connected with the others in Mr. Jefferson's draft, but were stricken out.

genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before or since."

This use of, and consequent claim of priority to, expressions in the national Declaration of Independence, and something in the tone of Mr. Adams's inconsistent' and not very delicate critique imparted, perhaps, a portion of its liveliness to the following reply from Mr. Jefferson (July 9th):

"But what has attracted my peculiar notice, is the paper from Mecklenburg county, of North Carolina, published in the Essex Register, which you were so kind as to inclose in your last, of June the 22d. And you seem to think it genuine. I believe it spurious. I deem it to be a very unjustifiable quiz, like that of the volcano, so minutely related to us as having broken out in North Carolina, some half dozen years ago, in that part of the country, and perhaps in that very county of Mecklenburg, for I do not remember its precise locality. If this paper be really taken from the Raleigh Register, as quoted, I wonder it should have escaped Ritchie, who culls what is good from every paper, as the bee from every flower; and the National Intelligencer, too, which is edited by a North Carolinian: and that the fire should blaze out all at once in Essex, one thousand miles from where the spark is said to have fallen. But if really taken from the Raleigh Register, who is the narrator, and is the name subscribed real, or is it as fictitious as the paper itself? It appeals, too, to an original book, which is burnt, to Mr. Alexander, who is dead, to a joint letter from Caswell, Hughes, and Hooper, all dead, to a copy sent to the dead Caswell, and another sent to Dr. Williamson, now probably dead, whose memory did not recollect, in the history he has written of North Carolina, this gigantic step of its county of Mecklenburg. Horry, too, is silent in his history of Marion, whose scene of action was the country bordering on Mecklenburg. Ramsay, Marshall, Jones, Girardin, Wirt, historians of the adjacent States, all silent. When Mr. Henry's resolutions, far short of independence, flew like lightning through every paper, and kindled both sides of the Atlantic, this flaming declaration of the same date, of the independence of Mecklenburg county, of North Carolina, absolving it from the British allegiance, and abjuring all political connection with that nation, although sent to Congress, too, is never heard of. It is not known even a twelvemonth after, when a similar proposition is first made in that body. Armed with this bold example, would not you have addressed our timid brethren in peals of thunder, on their tardy fears? Would not every advocate of independence have rung the glories of Mecklenburg county, in North Corolina, in the ears of the doubting Dickinson and others, who hung so heavily on us? Yet the example of independent Mecklenburgh county, in North Carolina, was never once quoted. The paper speaks, too, of the continued exertions of their delegation (Caswell, Hooper, Hughes) in the cause of liberty and independence.' Now you remember as well as I do, that we had not a greater tory in Congress than Hooper; that Hughes was very wavering, sometimes firm, sometimes feeble, according as the day was clear or cloudy; that Caswell, indeed, was a good whig, and kept these gentlemen to the notch, while he was present; but that he left us soon, and their line of conduct became then uncertain until Penn came, who fixed Hughes and the vote of the State. I must not be understood as suggesting any doubtfulness in the State of North Carolina. No State was more fixed or forward. Nor do I affirm, positively,

1 After reading Mr. Adams's phrase about the "genuine sense of America at that moment," the reader is requested to turn to his declarations in Vol. i. pp. 123–125, et seq.

that this paper is a fabrication; because the proof of a negative can only be presumptive. But I shall believe it such until positive and solemn proof of its authenticity be produced. And if the name of McNitt be real, and not a part of the fabrication, it needs a vindication by the production of such proof. For the present, I must be an unbeliever in the apocryphal gospel."

There was much in the facts and arguments of this letter which could not then be answered, and which never has been shaken by testimony since discovered. But it would have been more politic in its author to confine himself to a simple denial of having seen the Mecklenburg paper (if he thought that necessary), and leave time to set "things even." When his communication came before the world, it impeached the genuineness of a paper which had come to be regarded with peculiar veneration throughout a State. His manner of referring to the North Carolina delegates in Congress was unfortunate, granting all the facts asserted by him to be true. The term "Tory" applied to Hooper grated harshly on the public ear, accustomed by familiar use to specially apply that designation to the American loyalists. Some petty critics, too, considered or affected to consider his questioning the authenticity of certain names or signatures as an impeachment of the veracity of the individuals who actually bore those names or affixed those signatures! Putting these various causes together, a statement of facts which he had intended only as a defence of the originality and priority of the National Declaration of Inde. pendence, was construed in some quarters to be an aggressive attack on the authenticity of another and scarcely less venerated instrument.

The controversy on the subject commenced at the period when the publication of his Works had reopened so many wounds-when all the interests, public and private, he had ever offended, were banded together afresh to hunt down and overthrow his reputation. It was a moment when the dead lion could be kicked with apparent impunity by the merest ass. Acrimonious replies to his "insulting attack" on the Mecklenburg Declaration, and "on the State of North Carolina," rapidly swelled from newspaper articles into pamphlets, and from pamphlets into books. We shall not here notice the contents of any of these.

There was, however, an entirely different class of objectors to Mr. Jefferson's conclusions. They were prominent and highly respectable citizens of North Carolina, who believed the Mecklenburg Declaration a genuine document, and therefore were laudably anxious in justice to their State and in justice to the individuals who took part in making that Declaration, to collect and perpetuate the proofs of its authenticity. Accordingly, the Legislature of the State very properly took up the affair in 1831, and published in a pamphlet (commonly mentioned as "the State Pamphlet "), a mass of testimony which had been collected, intended to prove, first, that a Declaration of Independence was made by representatives of the County of Mecklenburg in May, 1775, and, second, that the paper first published in the Raleigh Register, April 30th, 1819, was a copy of that identical Declaration.

The first fact-or rather the fact that a paper was adopted which the witnesses contemporaneously considered a Declaration of Independence-was as satisfactorily established as could well be done, after such a lapse of time, by oral evidence. Numerous perfectly credible survivors who participated in or witnessed the scene, positively affirmed that a Declaration was made, and that they understood it to be a Declaration of Independence. And we shall see that documentary evidence subse quently sustained these recollections.

That the newly discovered paper was a copy or record of the manifesto thu

remembered, several witnesses felt as positive as it would be practicable to feel in respect to the identity of a document which they had heard read but once so many years before. A part of their certificates was made in 1819 and a part in 1830-so that the recollections of those who testified nearest the event, were required to stretch back forty-four years, and those of the others fifty-five years.

The internal and external evidences of authenticity connected with the paper itself, were as follows. A copy of it was found among the papers of John McNitt Alexander, signed by himself as secretary wholly or mostly in his own hand-writing.* He was a man of the highest respectability of character, and the idea that he would have forged the document could not be entertained. It was "mentioned on file" of the paper "that a copy of the proceedings was sent to Hugh Williamson, in New York, then writing a history of North Carolina, and that a copy was sent to William R. Davie." After Davie's death, a copy (or part of a copy3) was found among his papers, in the handwriting of John McNitt, Alexander. Hon. Montfort Stokes, Governor of North Carolina, declared (in 1831) that he saw a copy in Hugh Williamson's possession in 1793. Finally, the Rev. Humphrey Hunter published an autobiography in 1827, in which he stated that he was present when the Mecklenburg Declaration was made, and he gives Mr. Alexander's copy of the body of that paper.

But Mr. John McNitt Alexander set forth no claim that the copy preserved by himself was the original record of the Declaration (or proceedings) or a copy made from such original. His manuscript concluded thus:

"It may be worthy of notice here to observe that the foregoing statement, though fundamentally correct, YET MAY NOT LITERALLY CORRESPOND WITH THE ORIGINAL RECORD of the transaCTIONS OF SAID Delegation and court of Enquiry, as ALL Those records AND PAPERS WERE BURNT WITH THE HOUSE, ON APRIL 6TH, 1800; but previous to that time of 1800, a full copy of said records, at the request of Doctor Hugh Williamson, then of New York, but formerly a representative in Congress from this State, was forwarded to him by Col. Wm. Polk, in order that those early transactions might fill their proper place in a history of this State, then writing by said Doctor Williams, in New York.

"Certified, to the best of my recollection and belief, this 3d day of September, 1800, by

"Mecklenburg County, N. C."

"J. MCN. ALEXANDER."

In a History of North Carolina, published in 1829, by Judge Martin, a North Carolina gentleman of the highest respectability, appears another version of the Mecklenburg declaration or resolutions. The document is as follows:

Resolved, That whosover directly or indirectly abets, or in any way, form, or manner, countenances the invasion of our rights, as attempted by the Parliament

1 We think none of the witnesses mention having heard it read but once, and then from the steps of the courthouse, as a public proclamation. The point, however, is of no consequence, whether they heard it once or a dozen times.

2 We are informed by one who has often seen Mr. Alexander's manuscripts on this subject, that they exhibit a diversity of hand-writing, frequent interlineations, erasures, etc. Whether this applies to the resolutions themselves we are not specially apprised, but suppose our informant intended such application.

3 It is generally stated to have been a copy, but we observe that the North Carolina University Magazine says that the Davie copy consisted of the last two resolutions "found on a mutilated manuscript" [see May No., 1858, p. 170].

We are not aware, however, that he ever pretended that he obtained his copy when the Declaration was made. And no such contemporaneous document of Mr. Hunter has met the eyes of Governor Swain or the other eminent North Carolina investigators of the subject.

University Magazine for May, 1853, p. 175. We find the name Williamson written Williams, as above, where it occurs the second time in this copy.