“First in Freedom,” our state license plates proclaim. Is this claim true?
Great Britain was heavily in debt following the “French and Indian War.” Parliament thought it fitting to tax the American colonies to help pay the debt since the war was fought on our soil.
In Dec. 1773, Cornelius Harnett hosted a gathering of leaders at his home near Wilmington and established a Committee of Correspondence. It also advocated for a Provincial Congress to be held without the Royal Governor being present.
North Carolinians joined other colonies protesting the Stamp Act and the Townsend Acts, passing a resolution in the Colonial Assembly condemning them. Governor Tryon dissolved the Assembly, but most of its members met in an extralegal convention in 1769 and approved a “non-importation association.” Historian William Powell says it was, “the first such legislative body in any of the colonies.”
In response to the Boston Tea Party and “Intolerable Acts” passed by Parliament, elections were held and 71 delegates from 30 counties, and four towns assembled in New Bern for The First Provincial Congress from Aug. 25-27, 1774. My ancestor, Farquard Campbell, from Campbellton (later renamed Fayetteville), was one of them. This was the first Congress conducted in the American colonies against the authority of the Royal Crown.