America250: Heroes of Our Coast — Cornelius Harnett

Cornelius Harnett — born April 1723 in Chowan County; died April 1781 in Wilmington. 🇺🇸

Josiah Quincy called him “the Samuel Adams of North Carolina.” He led the 1766 armed march on Brunswick Town, helped burn Fort Johnston, chaired the committee that wrote the Halifax Resolves, and gave the first public reading of the Declaration in North Carolina. When the British invaded in 1781, the ailing Harnett was captured, “thrown across a horse like a sack of meal,” and locked in a roofless blockhouse. Paroled, he died days later — a free man at last, in a free state.

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