“In North Carolina the merchants of the Cape Fear were the largest importers of British goods, and everyone recognized that their actions would determine the end result of the Importation Act… As one of the chief merchants of the province, Harnett called a meeting of thirty representing all the Cape Fear counties and the towns of Wilmington and Brunswick. Among its members were James Moore, Samuel Ashe, Richard Quince, and Farquard Campbell, the most prominent merchants and planters of the Cape Fear section in opposition the in the Wilmington District June 2, 1770 to “unanimously agree to keep strictly to the non-importation agreement,” and Harnett was unanimously chosen chairman of this committee (Connor Essay 55-56)
He was a representative from the borough of Wilmington in the provincial assembly of North Carolina, 1770-71 during the REGULATOR MOVEMENT – Harnett’s response to the interior’s grievances reported that “officers who enacted greater fees than the law allowed were guilty of a very great grievance; that the acceptance of fees by members of the Assembly for securing the passage of private bills was illegal; and that the custom which had grown up in the courts of prosecuting principal debtors and their securities when all the parties were living, in different actions though bound in one specialty, was a grievance that tended only to increase the fees of attorneys, clerks, sheriffs and other officials. He therefore recommended the passage of an act plainly ascertaining what fees the officers were entitled to receive” (Colonial Records VIII Connor Essay 59-60).
“No man felt more keenly than Harnett the difference between liberty and license.’ It was for him … to show the world that the Revolution in North Carolina was to be led by men who knew as by instinct the difference between lawlessness and self-government, who had weighted the questions at t issue in the scale of pure principle, and who ceased to be loyal to England only that they might pledge undying loyalty to the spirit of liberty.’ Liberty regulated by law was the goal at which they aimed. When the tyranny of a king threatened the one, and when the anarchy of a mob endangered the other, Cornelius Harnett was equally ready to sacrifice himself and his fortune in resistance” (UNC Mag 1908 387-88).
Josiah Quincy Jr. of Boston arrived at Brunswick March 26, 1773, and spent the next five days enjoying the hospitality of the Cape Fear patriots. He found William Hill ‘warmly attached to the cause of American freedom;’ William Dry ‘seemingly warm against the measures of British and continental administration;’ diary entry of 30th March, 1773: “Dined with about twenty at Mr. William Hooper’s find him apparently in the Whig interest — has taken their side in the house – is caressed by the Whigs, and is now passing his election through the influence of that party.” He spent the night at the home of Cornelius Harnett’s. “Here all doubt of his host’s political sentiments vanished. ‘Spent the night, he records, ‘at Mr. Harnett’s the Samuel Adams of North Carolina (except in point of fortune). Robert Howe Esq., Harnett and myself made the social triumvirate of the evening. The plan of continental correspondence highly relished, much wished for, and resolved upon as proper to be pursued’…. Quincy remained with Harnett through the next day and night (Memoirs of the life of Josiah Quincy, Jr. 120). His conference with Harnett, therefore, was almost like a personal conference between the Samuel Adams, the pioneer of independence in the North and Cornelius Harnett, the pioneer of independence in the South” (CONNOR Essay 79-80)
Based the exchange of ideas among men of both fortune and resistance, Harnett becomes member of the continental Committee of Correspondence for North Carolina in 1773 and 1774, consisting of John Harvey, Howe, Harnett, Hooper, Caswell, Edward Vail, Ashe, Hewes and Johnston (Colonial Record Vol IX 740-741). Harnett will also serve as chairman of the Wilmington Committee of Safety in 1774 and 1775.
When the first Continental Congress convenes on September 4, 1774, North Carolina is without delegates. However, Harnett was a Mason, and held a position of no less dignity than Deputy Grand Master of North American, having jurisdiction of the entire continent (Connor 200). He is the one of few men most connected to the Common Cause from North Carolina and is abridged of all comings and goings and arguments and discussions of this first Congress.
On April 19, 1775 begins at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. There were few presses to dispatch the news, relying instead on each colony’s Committee of Correspondence to communicate. “In early May, 1775, news from Massachusetts of the battles of Lexington and Concord, traveled through the committees of safety. From colony to colony, from town to town, from committee to committee, messengers hurried the news along. New York received the dispatches at midday, New Brunswick at midnight, around Princeton at 3 o’clock in the morning. Trenton read them at daybreak, Philadelphia at noon. They reached Baltimore at bed-time. Alexandria at the breakfast hour. Three days and nights the express rode on, down the Potomac, across the Rappahannock, the York and the James, and on to Edenton, which received the dispatches at 9 a.m. May 4, and hurried them on to Bath with the injunction ‘to disperse the material passages through all your parts.’ Bath hastened them on to New Bern with a message to send them forward ‘with the utmost dispatch.’ ‘Send them on as soon as possible to the Wilmington committee,’ directed New Bern to Onslow. ‘Disperse them to your adjoining counties,’ echoed Onslow to Wilmington.
At 3 o’clock p.m., May 8, the messenger delivered his dispatches to Cornelius Harnett. Delaying just long enough to make copies, Harnett urged him on to Brunswick. ‘If you should be at a loss for horse or a man,’ he wrote to the Brunswick committee, ‘the bearer will proceed as far as the Boundary House. You will please direct Mr. Marion or any other gentleman to forward the packet immediately southward with the greatest possible dispatch,’ then overcome with emotion, he dashed off impulsively, ‘P.S. For god’s sake send the man on without the least delay and write to Mr. Marion to forward it by night and day’” (Connor Essay 92-94).
The Second Continental Congress convened on May 10, 1775, at Pennsylvania’s State House in Philadelphia shortly after the start of the Revolutionary War. Initially, it functioned as a de facto common government by raising armies, directing strategy, appointing diplomats, and making formal treaties.
- June 14: Congress establishes the Continental Army
- June 15: Congress appoints one of its members, George Washington, as commander of the Continental Army
The Congress had no power to levy and collect taxes, nor was there a tangible basis for securing funds from foreign investors or governments. The delegates resolved to issue paper money in the form of bills of credit, promising redemption in coin on faith in the revolutionary cause. On June 22, 1775 — only a few days after the Battle of Bunker Hill, Congress issued $2 million in bills
- July 1: King George III addresses Parliament, stating they will “put a speedy end” to the rebellion
- July 6: Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms is approved
- July 8: Second petition to the king (the Olive Branch Petition) is signed and sent to London
From Ft. Johnston, frightened from the palace at New Bern, Governor Martin dispatches Whig activity to Lord Dartmouth that “they are at this day to the distance of an hundred miles from the sea coast, so generally obsessed with the spirit of revolt” that the Wilmington committee sends out the alarm that “the governor is collecting men, provisions, warlike stores of every kind, spiriting up the back country, and perhaps the slaves, finally strengthening the fort with new works in such a manner as may make the capture of it extremely difficult (Colonial Records X 91).
“Nothing, declared Harnett, “shall be wanting on our part to disconcert such diabolical schemes.” The committee keep such close watch over his movements that Martin declared no messenger or letter could escape them. They intercepted his dispatches, frustrated his plans, and declared on June 20 that the governor had ‘by the whole tenor of his conduct, since the unhappy disputes between Great Britain and the colonies, discovered himself to be an enemy to the happiness of this colony in particular, and to the freedom, rights and privileges of American in general. Cornelius Harnett, John Ashe and Robert Howe along with 500 minute-men made up their minds to take the fort (Connor Essay 97-100).
“On July 16, holed up in the Cruizer, Sloop of War on the Cape Fear River, Governor Martin writes to Lord Dartmouth: “Hearing of a proclamation of the king, proscribing John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the Massachusetts Bay, and seeing clearly that further proscriptions will be necessary before government can be settled again upon sure foundations in America, I hold it my indispensable duty to mention to your Lordship Cornelius Harnett, John Ashe, Robert Howes and Aber Nash, as person who have marked themselves out as proper objects for such distinction in this colony by their unremitted labors to promote edition and rebellion here from the begins of the discontent in America to this time, that they stand foremost among the patrons of revolt and anarchy” (Connor Essay 100) Colonial Records X).
“Early in the morning of July 19, the governor was aroused from his quarters by the announcement that Fort Jonson was on fire. Hurrying to the deck he beheld the rapid spread of the flames as they reduced the fort to ashes… “Mr. John Ashe and Mr. Cornelius Harnett, wrote the enraged governor, were the ringleaders of this savage and audacious mob (Connor Essay 101 Colonial Records X).
“North Carolina forms a provisional government eight months before the 1st Continental Congress advised the colonies to adopt new constitution, the president of which was bestowed unanimously to Cornelius Harnett; “he thus became the first chief executive of North Carolina independent of the Crown. Governor in all but name … in the Defense of North Carolina, Jones observes: ‘the office was the most arduous and dangerous post to which a citizen could be called, and representing the executive officer of government, was exposed to all the abuse and insolence of the proclamation of the British authorities’” (Connor Essay 110-112).
Harnett was a delegate to the Provincial Congress of 1775 and was made president of the provincial council appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the abdication of Governor Martin, thereby becoming the governor of the colony pro tempore.