While it is more important that independence should be an accomplished fact, than that the particular manor set of men who first decided to sever their relations with Great Britain should be discovered, yet in the interests of history, this volume, containing much that is new in support of the Mecklenburg Declaration and much that has been heretofore presented in .an inconvenient form through newspaper and magazine articles and historical works, I compiled in a convenient form and arranged in such a manner that the reader is able to consult in chronological order the events connected with the convention in Mecklenburg county, North Carolina, which gave to the world an example of patriotic daring hardly if ever equaled in the deliberations of freemen seeking a more open road to liberty. In addition to the mass of proof which has been compiled for the purpose of settling the question of the actual contents of the Mecklenburg Declaration, and the fact, and the date of its passage, the author has collected much interesting historical matter relating to the lives of the men who signed this interesting and spirited document thirteen months before the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. The portion of the volume devoted to the lives of the signers is important in giving us additional light upon the times in which these hardy pioneers of Freedom lived, and in settling their portion in the work of independence which was destined to become universal in 1776.