Key figures: Cornelius Harnett, Thomas Burke, Abner Nash, Allen Jones, Joseph Hewes, William Hooper, John Penn
Summary
The Halifax Resolves were adopted unanimously on April 12, 1776, by North Carolina’s Fourth Provincial Congress, meeting at the county courthouse in Halifax with 83 delegates from 34 counties present. The resolution empowered North Carolina’s three delegates to the Second Continental Congress — Joseph Hewes, William Hooper, and John Penn — to join with delegates from the other colonies in declaring independence from Great Britain, should Congress choose to do so. In taking this step, North Carolina became the first of the thirteen colonies to issue an official, colony-wide authorization for its delegates to vote for independence.
The Resolves emerged from a select committee of the Provincial Congress, chaired by Cornelius Harnett and including members such as Thomas Burke and Abner Nash, tasked with reviewing the deteriorating relationship with Great Britain in the wake of the Patriot victory at Moore’s Creek Bridge in February 1776. Rather than instructing delegates to actively propose independence, the Resolves conditionally authorized them to “concur with the delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency,” a more cautious formulation than the instruction Virginia’s convention would issue five weeks later, but one that predated it as the first formal colonial sanction of the idea.
Context and Passage
By early 1776, sentiment in North Carolina had shifted decisively toward independence following the rout of Loyalist forces at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge on February 27, 1776, which removed the immediate Loyalist military threat within the colony and emboldened Patriot delegates. When the Fourth Provincial Congress convened at Halifax in early April 1776, it appointed a committee to consider the colony’s course. The committee’s report, presented and adopted without dissent on April 12, catalogued British actions — including the alleged encouragement of enslaved uprisings, the destruction of colonial commerce, and the use of foreign mercenaries — as grounds for finding reconciliation with the Crown no longer possible, and concluded by authorizing the colony’s Congressional delegates to vote for independence in concert with the other colonies.
Relationship to Virginia and the Lee Resolution
The Halifax Resolves preceded by more than a month both Virginia’s May 15, 1776 resolution instructing its delegates to formally propose independence in Congress, and Richard Henry Lee’s resulting motion of June 7, 1776 (the Lee Resolution), which Congress adopted on July 2, 1776 as the operative act of separation from Britain. Unlike Virginia’s later instruction, the Halifax Resolves stopped short of directing North Carolina’s delegates to introduce an independence motion themselves; it merely permitted them to support one brought by others. Even so, the Resolves stand as the first instance in which an entire colony’s governing body formally authorized its representatives to vote for independence, predating every other colony’s comparable action.
Significance
The Halifax Resolves gave North Carolina’s Continental Congress delegation — Hewes, Hooper, and Penn — clear authority to vote for the Declaration of Independence when it came before Congress on July 4, 1776. The date is commemorated on the North Carolina state flag and the state seal, and April 12 is observed in North Carolina as “Halifax Day.” As the earliest formal colonial sanction of independence, the Resolves are cited as evidence for North Carolina’s traditional motto “First in Freedom,” marking the colony as a pacesetter in the movement that culminated in the Declaration of Independence three months later.