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 instrument despatched to Congress.  The same authority states that he was in Philadelphia in the latter part of the year 1778, and until May of the year 1779.  During that time, William Sharp.  Esq., of Rowan county, arrived in Philadelphia, as a Delegate to Congress from North Carolina.  Amidst a variety of topics introduced for discussion was that of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.  Hon. John Penn, of North Carolina, said in presence of several members of Congress, that he was “highly pleased with the bold and distinguished spirit with which so enlightened a county of the State he had the honor to represent had exhibited to the world, and, furthermore, that the bearer of the instrument to Congress had conducted himself very judiciously on the occasion by previously opening his business to the Delegates of his own State, who assured him that the other States would soon act in the same patriotic manner as Mecklenburg had done.”

This important and additional testimony, here slightly condensed, but facts not changed, is extracted from a communication in the Southern Home, by Dr. J.M.  Davidson, of Florida, a gentleman of great moral worth and christian integrity, and grandson of Adam Brevard, a brother of Dr. Ephraim Brevard, the reputed author of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.