It was led by state Rep. Thomas Polk, grandson the Thomas Polk who supposedly organized the creation of the document his grandson was investigating. No conflict of interest there! Can you guess what the investigation concluded?

Right.

So residents of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County celebrated the May 20 anniversary of the missing Meck Deck as a holiday, even hosting a gathering of around 100,000 for its bicentennial in 1975. Then the celebration started petering out, as it should have much earlier. In 1838, while examining newspapers published in 1775, archivist Peter Force discovered an incomplete list of resolutions adopted in Mecklenburg County on May 31, 1775. They were different from the alleged text of the 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. The Resolves did not include an outright declaration of independence, and there was no language similar to Jefferson’s 1776 Declaration of Independence. Why were there two very different sets of resolutions supposedly adopted in Charlotte only eleven days apart? Why would the citizens of Mecklenburg County declare independence on May 20, and then meet again on May 31 to pass less revolutionary resolutions?

I have no problem believing that Thomas Jefferson was capable of plagiarism. Jefferson was brilliant, ideologically passionate man who was also a flawed, sometimes dishonest and often hypocritical human being. He was not, however, writing the Declaration for profit or fame, but to provide a resolution that could attract unanimous support in the Continental Congress, a crucial step toward not just winning the revolution but officially launching it. If he found great rhetoric that would advance that mission, he would have been a fool not to use it. Virginia’s George Mason had published the phrase “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”the same week in a Philadelphia newspaper that Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration, so I assume Tom borrowed from his friend George. Good. It’s a great line.

We also know that much of the Declaration as we know it was written by other delegates. However Jefferson provided the structure and literary flair, and no one denies that he was a superb writer. Jefferson asked that his epitaph list three accomplishments: “Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.” He was right and fair to claim authorship.

As for the Meck Deck, I am wresting between “Give me a break!,” “You gotta be kidding me,!” “Oh come on!,” and “Fuhgeddaboudit!”

The reconstructed version of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence being used to accuse Jefferson of plagiarism was created not just long after the alleged original, but after THE Declaration had become public and iconic. The version of the elusive document was supposedly reconstructed, after it was burned up, by an old man searching his memory archives that also contained Jefferson’s Declaration. It is far more likely that Jefferson’s text sneaked into the reconstructed Meck Deck than the other way around.

In the already rigged North Carolina investigation (since it was run by a member of the family that had a stake in the results) its elderly eyewitnesses were interviewed 53 years after the event they were testifying about. In the fog of decades and confirmation bias, the eyewitnesses likely convinced themselves that the Mecklenburg Resolves were an outright declaration of independence. Their answers to leading questions from the committee regarded the lost Mecklenburg Resolves. By the time the authentic text of the Resolves had surfaced, all of the eyewitnesses were dead.

The whole controversy is a mess, tainted by historians wanting credit for a scoop, a state wanting credit for a founding document, misbehaving family members of key figures, hearsay, and, I suspect, John Adams deliberately trolling his old friend, because that’s the kind of person Adams was. The evidence is weak, the eyewitnesses are long dead, and the Meck Deck has become one of those historical controversies like the Grassy Knoll and the death of Davy Crockett…people will believe what they want to believe. However, a patriot and Founding Father like Thomas Jefferson earned the benefit of the doubt, and there isn’t much doubt anyway.

The ethics verdict: Tom wrote the Declaration, and the Meck Deck is trivia at best.