North Carolina Declares Independence on May 20, 1861

The North Carolina Monument at the Gettysburg Battlefield
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“Stephen Douglas of Illinois let everyone in hearing distance know his prediction of the future. He said on August 21, 1858 that “I believe that this new doctrine preached by

Mr. Lincoln and this Abolition party would dissolve the union. They try to array all the northern States in one body against the South, inviting a sectional war…to last until one

or the other is driven to the wall.” (Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Holzer)

The Old State Capitol at Raleigh

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North Carolina Secedes From the Union:

The legislature set May 13^th as election day for delegates to a State convention that would convene at 11AM on May 20^th, the very day when, in 1775, North Carolina

revolutionaries had signed the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, and declaring themselves a free and independent people. In precipitating war with North Carolina,

the Lincoln regime had already begun blockading its coast on 27 April -- an act of war and treason --even before the legislature had convened. This left little to discuss.

On May 20^th, 122 delegates filed into the southern wing of the State Capitol to decide whether The Old North State would join 10 other Southern States already out of the

old Union. With the galleries crammed with onlookers, the delegates argued the merits of leaving the union or staying a member despite the threatening federal agent.

The April 17^th secession of Virginia caused even staunch Unionists in North Carolina to accept the inevitability of a break with Washington, and debate ended at 6PM when

by unanimous vote, the convention adopted an Ordinance of Secession penned and presented by Burton Craige of Salisbury at the request of Governor Ellis. Craige was a

strong Southern rights advocate as was part of the 1860 Goldsboro convention of the Southern Rights party which called for North Carolina’s secession.

Though rejecting a lengthy document which enumerated the reasons and justifications for North Carolina’s sovereign action, including Lincoln’s unconstitutional and

coercive actions against the States, Craige’s ordinance simply repealed the one in 1789 by which the State had voluntarily joined the second union.

“I immediately….called upon the assembled multitude to volunteer not to fight against, but for South Carolina. I said,

if war must come, I preferred to be with my own people. if we had to shed blood I preferred to shed Northern rather than Southern blood.

If we had to slay I had rather slay strangers than my own kindred and neighbors; and that it was better, whether right or wrong, that communities and

States should get together and face the horrors of war in a body---sharing a common fate, rather than endure unspeakable calamities of internecine strife.”

Zebulon Vance

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Celebration in Raleigh:

Immediately after passage of the Ordinance, Major Graham Davee, private secretary to Governor Ellis, threw open a window on the west side of the building and

related the news to Ellis Artillery Captain Stephen Dodson Ramseur. One hundred cadenced discharges marked the occasion of North Carolina reclaiming her independence;

and this was followed by a ten gun salute to the other independent States. Within a short time it was announced that the convention had adopted the

Constitution of the Confederate States, whereupon a twenty-gun salute was commenced.

May 20^th was a much-revered date in North Carolina---Ada Amelia’s Diary entry of Tuesday, May 21^st, 1861 mentions that “the centenary celebration is near at hand.

It is likely to be hereafter marked by a still more solemn and important event in the history of the State. It will be known, we trust, as the anniversary not only of the first,

but of the second and crowning declaration and act of independence for the old State.”

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