Tryon Resolves

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Tryon Resolves were a revolutionary list of grievances with the British Government predating the United States Declaration of Independence in the American Revolution. They were drafted in response to the Battle of Lexington.

As the North American colonies grew agitated with the British government, residents began forming Committees of Safety to prepare militia companies for the coming war. The Tryon Resolves were among the earliest of many local colonial declarations against the British. They were drafted and signed on August 14, 1775 by the residents of old Tryon County, North Carolina.

On September 14, 1775 many of the signers formed the Tryon County Militia in preparation for British retaliation against the American colonists.

Other similar declarations from the same period include a document allegedly adopted in nearby Mecklenburg County, North Carolina known as the Mecklenburg Resolves and a document adopted in Suffolk County, Massachusetts known as the Suffolk Resolves.

[edit] Text of the Tryon Resolves

The unprecedented, barbarous and bloody actions committed by British troops on our American brethren near Boston, on 19th April and 20th of May last, together with the hostile operations and treacherous designs now carrying on, by the tools of ministerial vengeance, for the subjugation of all British America, suggest to us the painful necessity of having recourse to arms in defense of our National freedom and constitutional rights, against all invasions; and at the same time do solemnly engage to take up arms and risk our lives and our fortunes in maintaining the freedom of our country whenever the wisdom and counsel of the Continental Congress or our Provincial Convention shall declare it necessary; and this engagement we will continue in for the preservation of those rights and liberties which the principals of our Constitution and the laws of God, nature and nations have made it our duty to defend. We therefore, the subscribers, freeholders and inhabitants of Tryon County, do here by faithfully unite ourselves under the most solemn ties of religion, honor and love to our county, firmly to resist force by force, and hold sacred till a reconciliation shall take place between Great Britain and America on Constitutional principals, which we most ardently desire, and do firmly agree to hold all such persons as inimical to the liberties of America who shall refuse to sign this association.