Apostolic Prefecture of the United States Apostolic Prefecture of the United States The Apostolic Prefecture of the United States () was the earliest Roman Catholic ecclesiastical jurisdiction to be officially recognized after the United States declared independence in 1776. Before and during the American Revolutionary War, the Catholics in the Thirteen Colonies (not including Canada) were under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishop of the Apostolic Vicariate of the London District in England. The war was formally ended by the Treaty of Paris, which was signed on September 3, 1783, and was ratified by the Congress of the Confederation (of the newly independent United States of
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.