The Document that Sparked North Carolina’s Rise

Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning.

Four years ago, the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology engaged yet another firm to search for the precise location of an old building that had been demolished in 1846. It was the latest episode in a frustrating hunt that had proceeded in fits and starts since the 1960s.

This time, though, the search had two new advantages: An old map created in 1769 by a Frenchman with a reputation for being “scary accurate,” and ground-penetrating radar.

With the map and the radar (and a tape measure) in hand, the crew quickly found what had eluded researchers for eight decades: the location of the historic Halifax Courthouse. 

You’ve likely seen dozens of columns on the Halifax Resolves this month, and there will be more. Our hope is that this one tells the story in a way that resonates and inspires you. If it does, we encourage you to share it with fellow executives and leaders in your contact list. 

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Exactly 250 years ago today, a band of 83 North Carolinians gathered in that courthouse along the Roanoke River to conclude their eight-day-long deliberation on British “usurpations and violence.” They produced and delivered to Congress what would become known as the Halifax Resolves. The delegates voted unanimously to authorize the state’s representatives at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to vote for independence from Great Britain. 

The delegates knew what they were doing was consequential. Samuel Johnston of Edenton, presiding over the delegates, arrived in Halifax and wrote that “all our people are up for independence.”

This action – the first move by any colony toward independence – had an enormous impact. The Continental Congress had been meeting for a year. But the primary obstacle blocking momentum was that no colony had yet authorized its delegates to formally declare independence. The gentlemen in Halifax, North Carolina, removed that obstacle, and the political logjam began to break.

The committee that produced the Resolves was a seven-man body led by Cornelius Harnett, a Wilmington patriot who had spent the previous year organizing resistance to British authority and whom British General Henry Clinton had specifically refused to pardon – a signal of how seriously the Crown took him. 

The Resolves document itself was not signed, just entered into the minutes of the Provincial Congress. The secretary of the Congress, James Green, then sent copies to the North Carolina delegation in Philadelphia. When Joseph Hewes read the Resolves aloud before the Continental Congress, other colonies began drafting similar resolutions of their own.

Thus sparked North Carolina’s place as “First in Freedom” and moving first has been part of the state’s culture ever since.

Indeed, over the past 15 years, that claim has taken on new meaning in an entirely different arena. CNBC named North Carolina the top state for business in 2025 – the third time in four years the state has earned that ranking. The Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina cites the state’s tax climate, along with a workforce development infrastructure anchored by the UNC System and the North Carolina Community College System. North Carolina continues to attract thousands of new families and businesses, and tens of billions of dollars in new investment. 

In 1776, North Carolina’s competitive advantage was a willingness to move when others hesitated. The state didn’t wait for consensus to form around it: We created the conditions that made consensus possible.

That instinct – calling the question, making the commitment, being willing to move first – is recognizable to anyone who has started or grown a business in this state. North Carolina has a deeply embedded culture that facilitates visionaries to grow here.

Importantly, the Halifax Resolves didn’t declare independence – the Resolves facilitated independence by combining process with clarity of vision. The Provincial Congress’s actions required both conviction and understanding of what the moment called for, together with the discipline to act within the limits of what the moment would bear.

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For what is believed to be the first time since North Carolinians sent the Halifax Resolves to Philadelphia in 1776, the original document is back home in Halifax beginning this weekend. The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, working with the National Archives, will display the Resolves at a new visitor center at Halifax State Historic Site through October 6. Only two copies of the document are known to exist.