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1 II HU TELEGRAPH PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING AND TWICE A WEEK BY THE MACON TELEGRAPH PUBLISH ING COMPANY. 563 MULBERRY STREET, MACON. GA. C. R. PENDLETON, President THE VOICE OF REASON. Th* editor of The Telegraph ha* received a private letter from a prom inent Georgian, one who has held high official atatlon more than once, and the oonfldence of a large constituency, iVhicli ire take the liberty of printing here to show that there are conserva tive Democrats left, and that wisdom has not departed these coasts en tirely. It Is a -better editorial than we could writ* at this time. He says: this mornings’ Telegraph (12th tart.) I read with great pleasure and encouragement two sane and timely editorials, entitled as follows! D—n Ehrerybodyl* and *1# the Shadow of Bryan Lifting!’ ”1 was Interested In the first, be cause it referred to measures proposed under which. If enacted Into laws, I ■will have to live, and which, as a good citizen, however drastic and unrea sonable they may be, I will have to obey. In my humble opinion your sa tirical comment on these measures Is most appropriate. These legislative gyrations would be a bit humorous, and, Indeed, ridiculous. If there did not exist a serious probability of their enactment into law. "There Is both sense and wholeeome . sentiment In your timely comment on the growing disposition In the South to put forward one of the several strong Southerners for the Democratic nomination for President. The cor respondent of the New York Sun an nounces a truism, as you say, when he says that the South furnishes all the votes In the electoral college, nine- tenths of the party’s votes In Con gress and ninety-nine one hundredths of Its stfbstance and charaoter. "We’ve been doing this same thing for nearly forty years. •'Without making any comparisons, I think the shattered hosts of Democ racy would follow Culberson with mors genuine and patriotic enthusi asm Chan any man In the party North or South. I sincerely trust you will continue In your able editorials to Im press the wisdom of this initiative. "Recurring to the frenzied reform legislation that Is now being rushed to tho satisfaction of the most ex treme disciples of tho balnts’ of civic purity, I am reminded to say to The TeLgraph that a little newspaper sanity In the hour of public frenzy and hysteria is truly a benediction. "It cannot be understood or appre ciated by Chose who deliberately shut their ears to the voice of reason, hut It will ultimately, if repeated ofton enough, appeal to that modicum of common sense that has ever been In herent In our people. It will not stem tlio present tide of legislative mad ness, aroused because of some flagrant abuses which no doubt should bo cor rected, but say and do what they will, sanity and moderation In all things are the great back-stops against whloh fanaticism and intolerance will dash out Its own brains. “Some recent happenings and de velopments in Atlanta makes the Im potent rage of the (news- A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE MORE THAN BUSINESS. A Georgia contemporary discusses what It is pleased to term "Macon’s calamity howl,” with reference to the I prohibition crusade before the General I Assembly. ! Those who have followed the course ! of The Telegraph under its present ; management, and its editor’s for thirty | years, know that we have never op- j posed prohibition In unpollced sec- i tlons, nor for business reasons In the larger cities. We have tried to get at the fundamental principles involved, fall to follow the modern fashion in botb'political parties of ascribing to' Wall Street" every least movement' In the enemy's camp. It L true enough, however, that the; South has lost credit among inde- •aibitive rates of the Are Insurance companies. Wood has been another curse of the country. It Is almost-a blessing in dis guise that our forests are well-nigh devastated by our extravagant ruth- pendent voters by persisting In Its : lessness, because even to the most ob- subservience to Northern politicians tuse It must be evident that the use even at this late day, and. as the Star! of wood is no longer economy. A build- contends, "under outside leadership, 1 ing of steel frame and hollow fireproof- ^ largely of the New York complexion, .ing tile, or of structural reinforced con- has appeared to disadvantage in na- ; Crete protected from fire by tile, costs | tlonal politics, going easily from one : but a fraction over 10 per cent more in issue to another and back again, ap- ; first cost than does the usual frame of | parently with no higher ,object In view wood with wooden joists, and studs. !.4n and we never could find warrant for than mere success at the polls.” It Is absolute prohibition in Scripture or | true enou ° h our political leaders reason. We have always condemned I need t0 th!nk more about 80und P rin * the abuses of the traffic, and the cl P ,es and lcss about the wlsbes of abuses of the drink. We have always Tan >many Hall paper) against State prohibition truly pathetic. "No newspaper in Georgia, or any where else, ever laid ltB hand more willingly or vigorously to the wheel of "reform,’ or did more to stir up prejudice and passion without reason than did this paper. It stirred up these currents and fanned them Into tortuous motion and It Is now reaping the whirlwind thereof, and Is utterly powerless to stem the onward sweep of lta course." STILL OUT WITH THE TOMA HAWK. Haitchet-wleldlng Carrie Nation may he described as a faded fad, but she ■till succeeds In attracting attention now and then. In York, Pa., the other day, -wrought up at sight of a crowd of boys and young men In the street most of whom were smoking, she swooped down upon them and began to lecture (them In an accusing man ner. By way of defending himself and tols fellows, one of the boys shouted: "Teddy smokes!" "Whereupon Mrs. Nation cried: "Yes, and his daughter, Alice Longworth, uses cigarettes. What do you think of your President, who has a daughter who smokes ci garettes, and a son who is training to he a prise fighter?" The street boys of York did not say what they thought of the persons named, but showed what they thought of Mra Nation by throwing cigar and cigarette stamps at her. One of the latter that was burning set fire to her ▼ell and she narrowly missed Injury. The hoodlum boys of York should have been summarily dealt with, but Mrs. Nation received no mors than a howling fanatic who goes out to re form the world with a tomahawk must expect We can see no valid objection to the military men following Sherman’s march to the sea. There will be no necessity of locking np things on this j •coastan, or danger of fires and ouch believed, and we still believe, that Reg ulation of the traffic, and the punish ment of the excessive drinker, were the true correctives to apply. But men can adapt themselves to almost any condition sooner or later, and If State prohibition comes, wheth er Macon and Bibb County want It or not, this city will find a way to meet the new conditions and she will go on to prosper. The Central City stood the crash of four years of Civil War, she stood her greatest single loss in the collapse of the Macon Construction Company, she weathered the panics of the ’70s and It is likely.that we shall have to do good many things as yet undone The life of such framing is infinitely longer than the old wood affair, the cost of maintenance is less, so Is the insurance rate, and, all in all, in a very few years’ time, good construction not only means safety, but an actual econ omy. The enclosing of stairways and before we shall either fully assert our elevator-wells, the protection of win- independence or succeed in placing a j dows and sky-lights with wired-glass, man of Southern birth In the White j the making of a ‘building fireproof in House. I d^kign costs nothing more in money , I than the cheap fire-traps, but is merely the expenditure of a'little intelligence THE GREAT RED PLAGUE. The country has grown to the point where everything about It is big; its commerce, its products, yes, even its crimes are colossal. Presumably to keep things harmonic we permit our fire waste, our national ash heap, to be also mammoth, incidentally losing the 90s, she stood tho Jar of several | sight of the fact, however, that It Is, bank failures, and today she is ex- j at the idiotic, our burnt of ferings, our national ash-pile, could well be called a tribute to the "merci less stupidity of the most enlightened nation on earth!” . perienclng her greatest prosperity. It Is true that in addition to these afflic tions prohibition will cost her a good deal of money, but Macon will sur, vive. She Is In the heart of Georgia and she cannot be destroyed without the destruction of the State. Public sentiment taken as a whole in Georgia Is against the saloon, but tho "reformers” now In power do not propose to stop at the saloon. They will cut it all out, even to domestic wines and wine for the holiest of church rites. To be consistent with their pro- The strange thing about it all is that so much Is said In the daily and peri odic press about life Insurance abuses, the plccadilloes or more serious of fenses of State and municipal grafters and all that sort of thing, indeed a wave of reform has made Itself felt the country over, but so far little or noth ing has been done to reform one of the greatest abuses, the costliest and most hlbltlon sentiments many leading | murderous of municipal Ills from which churchmen have convinced themselves that unfermented grape juice Is a suf ficient substitute. If it must come In the absolute form It will be better for the Legisla ture (though less democratic) to put it through, and save the annoyance of a State election. THE SOUTH AND THE PRESI DENCY. Discussing the lack of proper recog nition of the South in national poli tics and representation on its Presi dential ticket, the Richmond Tlmes- Dlspatcb recalls the provision of the Constitution that "no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States . . shall be eli gible to the office of President,” and observes: "The unwritten law pro vides that no person except a citizen born In a State' which has never se ceded shall be eligible to the office Of President. In order to bring the mat ter to a test we propose that the un written law b’e enacted and made a part of the Constitution. It Is always best to be frank. If Southern men are ineligible in fact to the office of Pres ident they should be Ineligible in law.” Commenting, the Washington Star declares this is “too lugubrious a view of the matter,” and adds: The South Is herself responsi ble for the figure she has cut In presidential calculations these Thirrv years prist. She has kept in the background, and . played second fiddle to some very com monplace Northern politicians. She has assumed that the prize was not for her, and that her only part was to help secure It for a man of Northern birth and resi dence. The place she occupies to day, therefore, is practically of her own choosing. It is easy for a Republican news paper to dismiss the matter in this glib fashion, but the editor of the Washington Star Is well aware that the stump speakers of his party , from one end of the North to the other would have burled "secession” and "treason” and "traitor” and “the Confederacy in the saddle” at any Southern candidate for President we suffer—Fire. True, millions are on the part of the architects. Millions are spent yearly in handling this plague, but only hundreds are doled out in steps to prevent its out break. Looked at fairly, says the American Architect, the leading architectural Journal of the country, it is the com- J munity at large that is the culprit, since it "suffers” fires to take place, when It really has the power to pre vent them. It looks calmly on at the expenditure of millions annually, mil lions that come out of Us own pockets, for the maintenance of Imperfectly effective fire departments, and yet, U but-half of the money spent in this way had been used in the difference In cost between combustible and Incombustible construction, the greater part of our cities would now be indestructible. It has 'been the assumption that a real estate improver, as a sane busi ness man, should be able to perceive how much it was to his own ultimate advantage to build an Indestructible building. The true theory is that In spent in actually fighting fire, but a combustible buildings must be built. minute’s thought is sufficient to con vince any one that an attempt at cure Is futile. Preventive measures can be the only solution of the matter. A normal year’s losses (and, by the way, there are mighty few normal years, what with Baltimore In 1904 and San Francisco In 1906) mean $200,000,- 000 In smoke. At least another $150,- 000,000 is spent in fire protection, fire departments, high pressure water plants, etc., beyond which we expend another $196,000,000 In attempting to get some solace via -the fire Insurance route. The sum of those figures repre sents our annual normal cost of fire. In 1905 a phenomenally prosperous and busy year in building, we did In actual construction and repairs of buildings, $525,000,000. What think you of a na tion that wastes as much as It prd- duces? We burn up more property than a half-dozen first-class nations put together. Just fire, eliminating in surance, protection and everything else, merely smoke, costs us over $2.00 per capita a year; the average of all Eu rope is less than $0.33 per capita! Incidentally we have destroyed over 6,000 human lives by fire In one year’s time. But all this is a normal year’s record. See what we did in 1906. At no time or place on earth has there been so much building done. We passed the $600,000,000 mark in construction that year, but what with San Francisco and our “regular fires,” we also destroyed over $500,000,000 worth of property! The cost of our alleged fire protection has also Increased and we have gam bled with the insurance companies in still heavier amounts than usual, so that our total expenditure for fire must be away In excess of $700,000,000*. It indeed Is a cancer eating at the very vitals of our economic structure, a de vastating plague. The apotheosis of folly! Few people realize the degree In which gambling penetrates the busi ness fabric. We see the work of the gambling-bug but accept It as a mat ter of course. Rather than build It is really Immaterial to the taxpayer whether an individual elects to let his building be destroyed by fire, but It Is of very real interest to the public that the lives and property of other people shall not he jeopardized and destroyed at the same time. It is desirable to substitute unburnable for burnable buildings with the shortest delay possi ble, since a conflagration may occur any day, and the process can he better acconiplished by coaxing than by com pulsion. The one thing for our municipalities to do Is to arrange the taxation of property In accordance with the lat ter’s permanency and indestructibility. A fixed rate on ground values and a sliding rate on buildings, tho minimum on fireproof buildings and the maxi mum on fire-traps would be perfectly equitable to.all. It would put the bur den of paying for the maintenance of fire departments upon those who needed the service, and would mean a lessened load of tax on those who are public- spirited as well as business-like enough to build so as not to require such ser vice. It is the one sane municipal so lution of the problem, the one way of extracting ourselves from under the yoke of the insurance companies; the surest means of stopping the ravages of the Great Red Plague—Fire. New Jersey gets $2,706,284 this year in taxes levied on Industrial corpora tions organized In that State "but mostly preying outside of It." This snug sum, the Philadelphia Record thinks, is "small In proportion to the rights given to the octopl; for in stance,, the privilege of writing any thing they choose into their char ters, which Interlineations, according to the most authoriitatlve expounder of the law, have the same force as a special act of legislation.” The way the scheme works out is responsible for the unenviable distinction attained by New Jersey of being described as “the traitor State.” for any one to talk glibly of "these thirty years past" is to be palpably in sincere. The Star goes on to say: Is up to Secretary Taft to get a hustle on and show that he can do something besides sit on the lid. Now that Vice-President Fairbanks thirty years, twenty years, or even ten [ little better and thus avoid fire, we (e , a * dr ° Tvn * n £ ^ years ago, and that the Democratic have built, to use a mild term, “rot- leaders had good reason to fear the j tenly,” but have sought "protection” results of assault that would have j from the gentlemen who, 'banded to- been as inevitable as outrageous. After ] gether in that legitimate spoliation un- the Spanish-American war a marked der the name of fire insurance, have change of attitude gradually made It- ' graciously condescende4 to sit in the self felt in the North, and now it Is j game with us and rake in our shekles. possible to speak seriously of choos- l We paid them In premiums since 1860, ing a candidate from the South, but i $3,622,000,000, or, Just in the past ten The "Washington Post asks: "Do brutes reason?” We cannot say ais to that, but we know that some men do. A X Congress at Philadelphia and gave the history of his trip. But all thes-j things went for naught with those who had apparently made up their minds that nothing great or good could come out of this obscure i outpost on the frontier of civilization i in North Carolina. There was no con- n , , I; temporary record extant, or known to ArffflfTtPm* fiPnlVIIKF? be extant, at this time to show that ltw|/IJ £ : anything had been done and the whole j I story was consequently discredited To Critics ±iwlth them - ■i-i-'.-t m i -i- i-h m-h-i-h-i-M' MECKLENBURfi j DECLARATION 5 By James H. Moore. 11 In 1825, fifty years after the event, ■4* | veterans of the Revolution who were j contemporaries of the met in Charlotte and celebrated the rodiv as thev were then, is one of the most* conclusive and indisputable evi dences of the high and intellgcnt character of these early settlers, j e fragments of ute r? h tU Se charac er o' fl are in keeping " ,lh '^ v c ™ their architecture. They &mstnic.\ei a state paper as they built a hot • Their stone houses have the ■ .«n o the square and compass chisel**. mu the keystones, and theic political pa- pers are constructed along tne of economic logic and reason. In another column of The Telegraph j day, but the controversy still raged, today will ’be found a review of Mr. j however, and in 1830-31 sons who had William Henry Hoyt’s “Mecklenburg j heard their fathers speak of the De- Declaration of Independence.” ’It is claratlon took the question up, the stated to be ”as able a brief for the J State, ^g>slature investjgated_it, oh case against the Declaration as can be | made,” and that “it is confessedly writ- | ten as an argument, not a a an histori cal narrative.” The object of the writer of this article is likewise to make “an argument” and not to write “an historical narrative.” He purposes to establish the .proposition that for all essential historical purposes the known and undisputed facts of this contro versy demonstrate that the Mecklen- burgers did on May 20, 1775. promul gate the’"r Declaration of Independence. The writer, unlike Mr. Hoyt, has not before him the historical documents and data from which he will argue, but for these will appeal in the main to memory, having been familiar with the subject in years past. There will not arise, however, any important issue as to the facts, as those presented in Mr. Hoyt’s very able and interesting work will be accepted as the basis for the argument, and nothing will be offered, as far as can now be, anticipated, to controvert any fact of a positive char acter that he advances. At the very threshold of the argu ment the friends of the Declaration have to complain of its critics for the determined purpose rtianifested to slight off and disregard the human doc uments and witnesses in this case, whenever it is necessary to do so, in support of their theory that there was only one paper, promulgated in Meck lenburg in May, 1775, and that is the Resolves of the 31st of May. A11 his tory is not founded on written and printed records. If it was the people who neglected to record and publish their doings verbatim at the moment would necessarily be and forever re main without a history. History is largely a matter of surprises. Events transpire unexpectedly and the pen of the Muse is not always poised to record the facts at the moment. When Pat rick Henry electrified the Virginia con vention in old St. John’s Church in Richmond with his famous "Give me liberty or give me death’’ speech warn ing the colonies to prepare for the coming conflict, there was no short hand reporter present to take down the words as, they fell from his lips. It was not until many years after that the brilliant William Wirt going among and interviewing many of the aged Virginians whose privilege it was to have been present on that historic oc casion, gathered from first one and then another the recollections of each as to the words and sentiments of the “forest born Demosthenes” and. piec ing them together, constructed and gave to the world this unequalled spec imen of patriotic oratory. Today Pat rick Henry's speech as resurrected and reconstructed by Wirt Is a part of his tory and finds a prominent place in every schoolboy's 'book of oratory in the land. The illustration is not iso lated. It could be multiplied indefi nitely. The truth is that a considera ble portion of history is constructed from the recollections of men, fre quently from mere tradition. tained the testimony of many wit nesses and solemnly recorded the truth of the event, but the doubters continued to doubt and disparage the matter, and thus stood the original phase of It until after the contempo rary actors and witnesses had all passed from the stage of affairs. History at last began to arouse from her sleep. The records of the Revolution began to 'be investigated and rescued from the dust and rub bish of time. Official archives were explored. Dr. Francis Hawkes lighted upon a manuscript copy of a procla nation by Governor Josiah Martin, the royal Governor of North Carolina in the Revolution period, dated Au gust S, 1775, in which he stigmatized as a "most infamous publication” the "resolves of a set of people stiling themselves a committee for the county of Mecklenburg, most traitorously de claring the entire dissolution of the laws, Government and Constitution of this country, and setting up a system of rule and regulation repugnant, the. laws and subversive of his majes ty's Government.” In the British archives later was found a dispatch from Governor Martin to the Earl of Dartmouth, secretary for the colonies, dated June 30. 1775, in which he said: "The resolves of the committee of Mecklenburg which your lordship will find In. the enclosed newspaper sur pass all the horrid and treasonable publications that the inflammatory spirits of the continent have yet pro duced. and your lordship may depend its authors and abettors will not escape when my hands are sufficiently strengthened to attempt the recovery of the lost authority of Government. A copy of the resolves was sent off, I am Informed, by express to the Con gress at Philadelphia as soon as they were passed 'by the committee.” But to return to the dusty record and researches of the antiquarian. _ , . The discoveries did not stop Declaration, ^jj 0Se that have been mentioned. contrary, in several different cuar er printed copies of a document w must have proved a godsend to tnpae who disputed the authenticity of tne Declaration, as it has ever since con stituted the only argument they na\e left with which to confront and con tradict the statement of John McKnitt Alexander. The May 31st Hc s 2*Tf®" without prologue ■ or explanation, signed simply 'by Abraham Alexander, chairman. and Ephraim clerk, were found printed and filed contemporaneously in various papers and pigeon-holes. This is the docu ment. say the objectors, to which v everything that was done in Meck lenburg in May. 1775, refers. Only one paper was adopted and this Is tiie paper. It is true it suspends his maj esty’s Government and formulates a system of Government by the people of the colony themselves, but it is not the absolute Declaration of Independ ence attested by John McKnitt Alex ander and the “entire dissolution of the laws.” etc., as described by Gov ernor Martin. By this proposition the objectors unqualifiedly bind them selves. Here, then, was John McKnitt Alex ander, a leading actor In the event con cerning which ho left his written tes timony to posterity. "John McKnitt Alexander’s statement In this matter is the keystone on which rests the fab ric of May 20. 1775" said Col. Paul B. Means, one of the earliest and ablest objectors to the Declaration, in his let ter to the Concord Register In 1S79. Let us accept this as true and try this issue as opposing advocates would try a legal controversy arising out of mixed positive and circumstantial evi dence in the court house. John Mc Knitt Alexander stands before us In dicted by the critics of the Declaration for false swearing and forgery. Under tho rules the presumption of innocence would attach to him until guilt is proven. "We wish to waive this ad vantage. "We wish to strip him of any and all technicalities that would take in the slightest from the moral value of the verdict. Let the legal presump- tion be thrown In the scale against him. Let us examine his testimony and the related facts that go to cor roborate or refute it with the reserva tion and suspicion that attach to the witness in interest or one whose testi mony for any other reason may be considered Impeached, only premising that there was an absence of any per sonal motive for falsifying. "When witness who rests under suspicion comes into court and testifies, we will say, to the commission of a murder, a search is first made for what the law yers call the corpus delicti, and this being found, the contemporary circum stances, environments and physical co- incidents are examined Into and if such evidences corroborate the story of the witness in chief. It Is accepted in law as substantiating the witness' testimony. It Is the highest and com pletest moral as well as legal proof of a question In dispute which can be of fered to the human mind. Just now there is a good deal of talk about nomina’lng a Couthern man for President. But It is not sincere. It has Its origin in the quarter which has long received the South’s favors In national con- x'entions, and is expecting more of them. AH the South is really asked to do is to wtlhdraw her preference for Bryan, and leave it to the men who have for long been naming the candidate to name the man for next year. Wall street does hot want a Southern man in the White House, and would not aid in an earnest effort to put one there. Sudh a man as Judge Gray, or Mr. Daniel, or Mr. Culberson could not be pulled and hauled in office to answer Wall street’s pur poses. years, $1,610,885,000. In 1905 we car ried Into the "house” over $196,000,000 in premiums and got back In salve for our losses a trifle over $95,000,000. See ' how far that solace goes. Take San Francisco as an example: over $300,- 000,000 went up In smoke there. The ) loss in business to the city and to the I country generally as a result of that i fire very nearly reached $1,000,000,000; lit is costing fully $12,000,000 to clear I Thursday’s Augusta Herald carries a photograph of Evelyn Nesblt Thaw. Is It time for that episode to come on again? American Cotton Supremacy. An appropriation of $12,000,000 by the German government—on condition that German maufacturers raise a larger sum—to encourage cotton growing in the colonies of the Father- land, has called attention anew to the supremacy of America in the produc- I tlon of this great staple. In average years the fields of the United States ! awaj the debris and $350,000,000, at, pro duce more than three-quarters of j least, and twenty years’ time will be I the cotton crop of the world. We j expended to repair the damage. Mean- I hold our own, although, since our Civil while the insurance companies have I vrar, many and costly attempts have _ j .i, i been made in various parts of Asia figured their losses and find that they .... . 7.. *. _ , „ , and Africa to compete with our cotton —- wP-xxM-^siMnoonnn «™«^» gIOW|nc states . Today Texas alone owe San Francisco $132,000,000. Surely | it was a most unprofitable game for San Francisco. Yet the Insurance companies wrote a Again, It is both easy and agreeable! very low rate on San Francisco be- for a Republican organ to see nothing cause, forsooth, of Its excellent fire de but an anti-Bryan impulse of ’‘Wall j partment Peeople gauged the require- Street” In the friendly utterances of j ments of construction thereby and built certain New York newspapers. The! Just as shoddily as insurance regula- Star, In common, with other Republi- tlons would permit. They and the peo- casi organs, would prefer to see Bryan j pie of the country at large have vlrtu- maintsln his ascendancy in the Dem- ally been seduced Into combustible, ocratlc party, knowing that another i shoddy construction of buildings under ^•feat awaits him, and it dees not J false pretenses made by the non-pro- produces nearly as much as all non- American countries combined. During the year ending September 1, 1906, our cotton orop aggregated 11,319,860 bales, of which 6 716.351 bales were export ed to Europe. During the same period the Bast Indies, .Egypt and the rest of the world produced 2.562,000 bales. The production of Russia Is Increas ing rapidly. According to Baron Kaneko, three-quarters of all the raw cotton used in the mikado’s empire comes from this country. The fact underlying the whole situation is that the world’s demand for cotton Is ex panding far more rapidly than the world’s supply.!—American Monthly Review of Reviews, On September 3. 1800, John McKnitt Alexander wrote down and certified to the best of his recollection a copy of the "Declaration of Independence adopt, ed and promulgated at a convention of the people of Mecklenburg .held on May 20. 1775. Mr. Alexander claimed to be the clerk or secretary of the con vention and as such he was the custo dian of the papers. On April 6 pre vious Mr. Alexander’s home had been destroyed by fire and "all those rec ords and papers,” he wrote, "had been burned with the house.” In 1817 Mr. Alexander died and on April 13. 1819, his son. Joe McKnitt,, published in the Raleigh, N. C.. Register an article giv ing an account of the proceedings of the Mecklenburg convention of May 19 and 20, • 1775, Included in which was what is known as the Davie copy of the May 20 Declaration, and appended to which was his certificate that "the foregoing is a true copy of the papers on the above subject left In my hands by John McKnitt Alexander, dec’d.” . The date of the printed announce ment of the event may be said to be the date of the beginning of the con troversy about the Declaration. It was denied in toto. Mr. Jefferson regarded it Is “an unjustifiable quiz” and de nounced it as "spurious” when Mr. Ad ams called his attention to it. He did not even know where Mecklenburg was located. In the great man’s view of It, John McKnitt Alexander had fabri cated the entire story and It was a He out of the whole cloth. To offset this the testimony of esti mable citizens who had been eye-wit nesses of the proceedings was then obtained in the form of affidavits; their story of the two-day convention was told with accompanying details; the arguments of speakers were re called in some instances: the adoption of the paper and the reading of it to the assembled citizens and their ratifies tion of it with huzzas; Capt Jack told how he was engaged as express to carry the paper to th# Continental Consider for a moment the over whelming nature of these discoveries and of this juncture to those who dis puted the Declaration. John' McKnitt Alexander had privately but promptly and conscientiously recorded from memory his recollection of the pro ceedings of the 20th of May, 1775, and of the paper adopted. He died and for a decade or more his bones had mouldered in the dust. Disputants had risen up and given the He to his story and there had been nothing but bis word and the words of his humble neighbors to oppose the obloquy. And here at this late day the royal Gov ernor of North Carolina, without pos sible collusion with him or with them, had arisen from his grave to testify that prior to June, 1775. the people of Mecklenburg had "most traitorously” .declared “the entire dissolution of the laws, Government and Constitution of this country,” and that he proposed to punish them accordingly when he re covered “the lost authority of Gov ernment.” Thomas Jefferson had not heard of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Inde pendence. He confessed he was ig norant of the precise locality of Meek lenburg. But Josiah Martin had heard of it and of the people. Ho was tho Governor of North Carolina and had reason to know of these rebellious spir its and of their doings. He reported it to Dartmouth In June and he was still issuing proclamations about it in Au gust. It is true Capt. Jack had car ried the proceedings of the Mecklen burg convention to tho Congress at Philadelphia. Capt. Jack had testified to the fact himself and now, more than half a century later. Governor Martin rose up to say that “the re solves were sent off by express to the Congress at Philadelphia as soon as they were passed in the committee." Thomas Jefferson had never heard of the matter because at the time Capt. Jack arrived in Philadelphia with the proceedings of the Mecklenburg con vention Jefferson and his colleagues were trving to patch up some compro mise with the mother country. Capt. Jack’s tidings struck such of them as they were brought to the attention of as so much dynamite. They were suppressed and smothered by the North Carolina delegates evidently without being brought formally to the attention" of the Congress at all. John Adams somewhat flamboyantly de clared in his letter to Jefferson that with this delaration in his possession at the time he would have made "the country ring.” But the contrary is the truth. The Mecklenburgers were premature and they suffered the usual fate of prematurity. They were in advance of the times. It was inevita ble they should be In advance of the times. They were Scotch-Irish Pres byterians "whose training and heredity put them In advance of their fellows. They were members of a church that had always disavowed passive obe dience. They were North of Ireland Protestants who never had subscribed to the “divine right” of kings. They were a people schooled in the love of liberty and of the continuing contest with tyranny. A people who twice in a century had been dispossessed of their homes. An adventurous people who had sought the furthest confines of civilization in their determination to get away from kings and their tyr anny. A people whoso local history shows that they always ran to meet any Invasion of their rights and lib erties half way, not for the purpose of boasting and vainglory, for, with the exception of John McKnitt Alex ander’s modest private record of what they did in 1775. they never took the trouble to record anything. Not that thev were not a liberate people. The fragments that have come down show that they were erudite in the science of Government. They were learned and progressive In church history. They took advanced ground even for Presbyterians. "Where they pitched their tents the erection and establish ment of their church was the!r .first care. Their pastor, Alexander Craig head, under whose teaching they sat. was of the same type. His ardent love of .personal liberty and freedom of opinion, as expressed in a political pamphlet as far back as 1743. had made him obnoxious to the colonial Governor of Pennsylvania and led to both himself and h*s pamphlet being disavowed by the Philadelphia Synod. There is no record of the fact but 1t Is not extravagant to fancy that these Scotch-Irish immigrants, who came to Mecklenburg from Pennsylvania, fol lowed their pastor and set up their tabernacle where they could exercise the utmost freedom of conscience. How Inevitable then that they should be 1n advance of the "Virginia colo nists, trained and habituated as these were to the doctrines of the Estab lished Church! Not only were they lettered people, they were skilled arti sans. Where the average immigrant built a log hut for his family some of these built their homos of stone and in most massive and finished type of architecture. The rock houses of Mecklenburg County built before the Revolution, but Intact and habitable, } What Is the result then? In spite of the witnesses who have risen up from the grave to corroborate his modest patriotic record, John Mc Knitt Alexander is still branded a liar. There is no less virile word for it. There is no room rfor the hypothesis-’ of a mistake. He could not have been mistaken. He puts himself forward as the clerk or secretary of the Mock; lenburg convention that adopted the Declaration to which he testifies. Ephraim Brevard signs the Resolves of May 31st as clerk of the committee that authorized them. Was Alexan der the clerk of the convention he re fers to? Was a paper of the import he left to the world adopted? Tf such were not the facts Alexander is neces sarily a liar, and what adequate mo tive could he have had in putting a lie on record? How w.auld lie have dared present Gen. Davie with the copy of a spurious declaration? Did he 'have any official papers In his house relating to the Mecklenburg convention? If he did he must have been the clerk and the custodian. They were not the May 31st Resolves because Ephrhim Brevard’s name was signed to them as clerk of the com mittee. It was the most likely thing in the world that John McKnitt Alex ander was the secretary of the public meeting of the Mecklenburgers. The evidences extant of his penmanship in the Mecklenburg court records estab lish the fact that he was rarely ac complished as it penman. He wrote a fine legible almost copy plate and somewhat feminine hand that "marks •him as the man who would be picked out in any community for just such an office as he professes to have per formed. { 4 •But the proposition that the May 31 Resolves must stand alone as tho only document promulgated and adopted by the Mecklenburgers in 1775, if they were adopted, refutes itself on Its face. The May 31st Re solves is an elaborate and finished pa per in itself which required repeated meetings and much discussion for its perfecting. It bears the evidence of having been carefully prepared and formulated. The very fact" that it reached and was printed in various newspapers at a distance proves that copies of it had been prepared in advance. To indulge a little in the- ,<£ ory, as the opponents of the Declara tion so constantly do, the May 31st, Resolves were doubtless the result of one or more public meetings and dis cussions. Possibly they were before the convention for discussion on the 19th and 20th of May when, as tradi tion has it, a runner arrived with the intelligence of the bloodshed at Lex ington, Mass., April 19, 1775. We know by the ■ record that the couriers did pass through North Carolina with this startling Intelligence somewhere about this date. Let us suppose this information being suddenly pro claimed in the convention. It is rea sonable to see that the convention would be swept off its feet; the care fully prepared and weighed compro mise resolutions would be put aside arid resolutions of a more ringing character like the Declaration, which refers to the Lexington bloodshed, would be brought forward and acted on. If the May 31st Resolves consti tute the only genuine paper, why is it that no mention is made therein of the Lexington incident? It is impos sible to conceive that a popular mass meeting, discussing the state of the country at this particular juncture, should have omitted to refer in its proceedings to the initial conflict of the Revolution. But the sudden and impromptu Declaration, adopted in its rough draft, without time being had to prepare copies, would never reach newspapers at a distance, while the prepared copies of the Resolves would in ail likelihood be sent . abroad, whether adopted or not. But being sent abroad in this shape there is one significant omission that tells against their authenticity as the principal pa per adopted by the convention. The convention. It is conceded by all, or dered the paper adopted to be con veyed to Philadelphia and laid before the Continental Congress. Capt. .Tack was engaged to carry the proceeding.? to Philadelphia in accordhnce with ■' / such instructions and did do so. But where in the May 31st Resolves is this instruction referred to? There was nothing hurried or incomplete about this paper. The order of the conven tion in question was an essential part of the proceedings of the convention. Why was it not included In the paper as printed? The conclusion Is forced- that some other paper was ordered to be submitted to Congress from the Mecklenburg convention and sent on j In accordance therewith. • ^ 4 This article has outgrown the ordi nary newspaper limits. Much should be said that must be left unsaid. The. early settlers of Mecklenburg were an active people. They helped to make history at every opportunity, but they failed to write It ever. John McKnitt Alexander did. it is true, make a rec ord of the Mecklenburg Declaration after the original papers were burned, but the only purpose manifest in hi? method of doing it was to perform a sacred duty and not for public noto riety. He restored the cremated pa pers as he remembered them, and hav ing apparently satisfied his conscience, let the matter rest. That ihe gave a copy of this Declaration to Gen. Wil liam Richardson Davie, the distin guished soldier and diplomat, who though not a resident of Mecklenburg, was a life-long near neighbor, and the leader, familiar and confidante of the Mecklenburg people, show? that Alex ander bad confidence : n the substan tial accuracy and rectitude of the.pa per. William R. Davie in 1775 fivt-j* near the Catawba river Just over theV li: e from Mecklenburg In South Car olina. At that time he was 19 years old and a student at Princeton, where he graduated in 1776. He subse quently studied law in Rowan County,. North Carolina, adjoining MeckJen-