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 North Carolina’s Bill of Rights Is Worth Seeing
by Tom Campbell
September 19, 2007
We have a rare opportunity and privilege to view North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights, currently at the North Carolina Museum of History and later at other venues across the state. It is worth the effort to remind ourselves of early struggles for individual and collective freedoms, but also to revisit the saga of this historic document. Our state engaged in two fights for it. The first was to have it added to the Constitution and the second was to recapture the document after it was stolen.
North Carolina proudly claims we were “First in Freedom,” the first to formally declare independence from English rule in the Mecklenburg Declaration of 1775. Early settlers here were not the wealthy gentry, but hard-working yeomen and their families who came for a few acres of land they could farm and the opportunity to improve their station in life. They were also a people who bristled under excessive taxation and burdensome laws.
Despite strong loyalties to the crown these freedom-loving people did their part in the Revolution and supported the weak government formed under the Articles of Confederation after the war was won. When it proved ineffective, North Carolina refused to sign the new Constitution that established a stronger executive branch and gave the federal government more power, holding out approval until a Bill of Rights was added.
It was this document, now on display, that guaranteed our freedoms to speak and assemble, worship, bear arms, and have a trial decided by a jury of peers. It further gave states all powers not expressly given to the federal government. You might be surprised to learn that the document on display contains twelve articles, not the ten we came to know as the Bill of Rights. The first two, dealing with the composition of and salaries of Congress, failed to pass.
Only fourteen copies of this document existed, one for each of the thirteen original colonies and one for the federal government. Union troops looted our capitol and stole this treasure in the closing days of the Civil War. Over the next 139 years North Carolina’s Bill of Rights changed hands, and on at least two occasions, the state was given the chance to buy it back. State officials refused to pay for something that rightfully belonged to its citizens, and, in 2003, the document surfaced again.
A well designed and executed “sting” operation, bearing a striking resemblance to a cloak-and- dagger movie plot, secured the Bill of Rights from further speculators, but legal battles over ownership ensued until 2005. It is rich irony that it was one of the articles contained in the Bill of Rights, the 11th Amendment, prohibiting federal courts from intervening in a lawsuit against a state, thus ensuring its return to our state.
Each of us needs to see the Bill of Rights and to be reminded of sacrifices made on our behalf to establish this nation and state. We need to read these personal guarantees of our freedoms. We need to remember the story of its importance in being returned to our state. This Bill of Rights is our birthright. We have fought twice for it and should revere and guard it, and more importantly, pass it along to future generations. |
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