his brother's hand writing, and vigor of composition--not supposing
for a moment, their authenticity would ever be called into question.
This venerable patriot, in a manuscript account of a celebration in
Iredell county on the 4th of July, 1824, in discoursing on a variety
of revolutionary matters, says among other things, he was in Salisbury
in June 1775, attending to his professional duties as a lawyer, and
that during the sessions of the General Court in that place, the
bearer of the Mecklenburg Declaration arrived on his way to
Philadelphia. When the object of his mission became known, and the
Mecklenburg resolutions of independence were read in open court, at
the request of Col. Kennon, several Tories who were present said they
were treasonable, and that the framers of them were "rushing headlong
into an abyss where Congress had not dared to pass. Their
intemperance, however, was suddenly arrested by a gentleman from the
same county, who had entered with all his powers into the impending
contest and offered to rest the propriety and justness of the
proceedings, both of Mecklenburg and the Delegate, upon a decision by
the _arm of flesh_ with any one inclinable to abide the result.
Matters, which threatened a conflict of arms were soon hushed up by
this direct argument _ad hominem_, the Delegate retired to rest for
the night, and, on the next morning, resumed his journey to
Philadelphia."

He also states, in the same manuscript, that in the autumn of the year
1776, he was one of the number who composed the College of Queen's
Museum, and lived with his brother, Dr. Ephraim Brevard, and that in
ransacking a number of his brother's papers thrown aside as useless,
he came across the fragments of a Declaration of Independence by the
people of Mecklenburg. Upon inquiry, his brother informed him they
were the rudiments out of which a short time before, he had framed the