Constituting Self-Government: Thomas Burke, the Coming of the Revolution in North Carolina, and the Background to the Articles of Confederation

Abstract: This article reexamines North Carolina's revolutionary trajectory by locating the colony's break with Britain not in imperial taxation alone but in a profound constitutional rupture precipitated by the Foreign Attachment Controversy. The conflict between the Assembly and Governor Josiah Martin over the status of attachment laws exposed the fragility of the empire's customary system of negotiated authority rooted in principles of consent, customary law, and the shared sovereignty that the North Carolina Assembly believed defined the imperial constitution. Amid this crisis, Thomas Burke emerged as a central figure articulating a whig political vocabulary that linked resistance to the defense of local autonomy. His work in the provincial congress demonstrated a coherent vision of popular sovereignty and the need to bind governmental power through explicit constitutional barriers. Burke's experience in North Carolina informed his later intervention in the debates over the Articles of Confederation, where he sought to preserve state authority within the emerging federal structure.