TALKING POINTS OUTLINE
FOR 8^TH GRADE
HISTORY CLASS (NORTH CAROLINA)
LAW AND POLITICS IN COLONIAL NORTH CAROLINA

I. DEMANDING FREEDOM UNDER THE LAW

A. HALIFAX RESOLVES (April 12, 1776)

1. Setting: After the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge (near Wilmington) in February 1776.

2. Fourth Provincial N.C. Congress met in Halifax.

3. Unanimous resolution asking the Continental Congress to declare the colonies independence from England.

(Note: Should you field a question on the Mecklenburg "Declaration of Independence" (May 20, 1775), please be advised that this event is not mentioned in the school textbook, and serious historians tend to now agree that the purported document has never surfaced and there is no verified written record documenting the activity. Nevertheless, the date remains on our state flag.)

B. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (July 4, 1776)

1. N.C. Delegates (and signers):

a. William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, and John Penn

2. News did not reached N.C. until July 22, 1776 and Cornelius Harnett read the document publicly to a crowd in Halifax on August 1, 1776.

II. FORMING A NEW GOVERNMENT; MAKING LAWS

A. N.C. STATE CONSTITUTION

1. Fifth Provincial Congress met for six weeks in Halifax beginning in October 1776.

2. Declaration of Rights adopted on December 17, 1776

a. Forecast of the later U.S. Bill of Rights

1. Freedom to worship, bear arms, assemble, hold elections, etc.

3. N.C. Constitution adopted, setting out rules under which the new state government would operate.

B. N.C. REFUSED TO RATIFY THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

1. In 1788, Hillsborough Convention voted 184 to 83 NOT to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

2. Sent Congress a "Declaration of Rights" demanding passage.

3. After James Madison had introduced in Congress the "Bill of Rights," the Fayetteville Convention ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1789, becoming the twelfth state to join the union. (The Bill of Rights were not ratified by a new state until 1791).

4. George Washington applauded North Carolina's insistence on a statement of rights as a "laudable and sacred regard for the liberties of their country." Bell and Crowe, History of an American State, p. 217.

III. N.C.: HOME OF "THAT'S UNCONSTITUTIONAL!"

A. BAYARD v. SINGLETON

1. A North Carolina Appellate Court was the FIRST court in America to find a law UNCONSTITUTIONAL, introducing for the first time the legal concept of judicial review. (Bayard v. Singleton, 1 NC (Mart.) 5 (1787). [Judicial review is where a court will review a law passed by a governing body to determine whether it complies with the constitution.]

2. In Bayard v. Singleton, Elizabeth Bayard attempted to recover property confiscated because her father was a Loyalist. Spyers Singleton had purchased the property from the state. Judges declared the Confiscation Act, passed by the General Assembly during the American Revolution, unconstitutional. The decision is the first in any of the United States to declare an act passed by a legislature as contrary to a written constitution.

IV. NOTEWORTHY N.C. LAWYERS WHO PLAYED A NATIONAL ROLE

A. WILLIAM R. DAVIE

1. Resident of Halifax. Delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. (Most delegates were lawyers).

2. Argued forcefully for a strong central federal government.

3. 1798--elected Governor of North Carolina. President John Adams appointed him to a three-delegate panel to travel to Paris and meet with Napoleon to negotiate the end of an undeclared war with France.

4. Chief founder of the University of North Carolina, the nation's first state university. In 1810 the University Trustees conferred upon Davie the title: "Father of the University."

B. JAMES IREDELL

1. In 1790, President George Washington appointed Edenton's James Iredell to the U.S. Supreme Court.

2. His dissenting opinion in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793) arguing that individual citizens could not sue a state in federal court eventually led to the passage of the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitutional Amendment in 1798. (The first such amendment after the Bill of Rights).

Worthy of Note:

The Chowan County Courthouse, built in 1767 and where James Iredell practiced as a lawyer, is the oldest structure still in use in the state. Legal cases have been argued there for at least 235 years!