Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War colonial period in Virginia, slavery had been a part of the socioeconomic system of British North America and was recognized in the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the United States' Declaration of Independence (1776). Since then, events and statements by politicians and others brought forth differences, tensions and divisions between the people of the slave states of the Southern United States and the people of the free states of the Northern United States (including Western states) over the topics of slavery. The large underlying issue from which other issues developed was whether slavery should be retained and even expanded
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence Mecklenburg Declaration of May 20. In 1847, the complete text of these Mecklenburg Resolves was found in a South Carolina newspaper published in June 1775. Unlike the Mecklenburg Declaration that had appeared in the "Raleigh Register" in 1819, the Mecklenburg Resolves fell short of an outright declaration of independence, and did not contain language that was parallel to Jefferson's 1776 Declaration of Independence. The Resolves, though radical, were similar to other local resolutions that were adopted in the colonies in 1774 and 1775. The controversy over the Mecklenburg Declaration entered a new phase with the discovery of the Mecklenburg Resolves.