Charleston, and on through the broad sweep of the Yadkin Valley,
was a conquering people's challenge to the Wilderness which lay
sleeping like an unready sentinel at the gates of their Future.

It is maintained still by many, however often disputed, that the
Ulstermen were the first to declare for American Independence, as
in the Old Country they were the first to demand the separation
of Church and State. A Declaration of Independence is said to
have been drawn up and signed in Mecklenburg County, North
Carolina, on May 20, 1775.* However that maybe, it is certain
that these Mecklenburg Protestants had received special schooling
in the doctrine of independence. They had in their midst for
eight years (1758-66) the Reverend Alexander Craighead, a
Presbyterian minister who, for his "republican doctrines"
expressed in a pamphlet, had been disowned by the Pennsylvania
Synod acting on the Governor's protest, and so persecuted in
Virginia that he had at last fled to the North Carolina Back
Country. There, during the remaining years of his life, as the
sole preacher and teacher in the settlements between the Yadkin
and the Catawba rivers he found willing soil in which to sow the
seeds of Liberty.

* See Hoyt, "The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence"; and
"American Archives," Fourth Series. vol. II, p. 855.


There was another branch of the Scottish race which helped to
people the Back Country. The Highlanders, whose loyalty to their
oath made them fight on the King's side in the Revolutionary War,
have been somewhat overlooked in history. Tradition, handed down