This month Governor Josh Stein is marking 250 years since the founding of our nation. Media outlets are invited to publish Governor Stein’s column below.
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2026 marks 250 years since the United States was founded. Across North Carolina, communities are marking America 250, or A250, by lifting up the ideals and the people who have shaped our democracy. This milestone provides us the chance to reflect on our nation’s history and inspires us to shape its path forward.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, Americans rejected rule by a distant monarch and chose self-government instead. They declared that all people are created equal, that we are born with rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness – rights that cannot be taken away – and that government exists only with the consent of the governed. In many ways, from the beginning our nation did not live up to those ideals. But those ideals motivated us along a path toward the promise of freedom, equality, and opportunity for all people.
North Carolina played a critical role in our nation’s story, both in war and in politics. On February 27, at the Moores Creek Bridge in Pender County not too far from Wilmington, a group of patriots led by Colonel James Moore and Richard Caswell soundly defeated the loyalists under the control of the colonial governor. The Continental militiamen took 50 British lives and hundreds of prisoners. The Revolutionary War battle was one of the first in the South, and the victory helped to inspire North Carolinians and Americans to seek independence.
Just a few weeks after the battle, the North Carolina Fourth Provincial Congress met in Halifax to debate independence. In April 1776, months before the Declaration of Independence was signed, North Carolinians drafted the Halifax Resolves, authorizing its delegates in Philadelphia to vote to declare our nation’s independence from the crown. In so doing, North Carolina became the first colony to officially call for independence from Great Britain. The writers declared, “The King and Parliament of Great Britain have usurped a power over the persons and properties of the people unlimited and uncontrolled and disregarding their humble petitions for peace, liberty, and safety.” Therefore, as North Carolinian Colonel Robert Howe said to the drafters, “Independence seems to be the word; I know of not one dissenting voice.” North Carolinians knew that the people, not a king, should determine their own future.
North Carolina’s commitment to people’s rights was just as strong when it came time to ratify the US Constitution a few years later. Our leaders remembered the King of England’s abuses of unchecked power, so they balked at the Constitution’s first draft, which created a national government but failed to clearly protect individual rights. At the Hillsborough Convention of 1788, North Carolinians like Halifax County’s Willie Jones demanded stronger guarantees of personal freedom. Their stand, known as The Great Refusal, ultimately led to the creation and adoption of the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights that emerged from that debate spells out freedoms we now consider foundational: the rights to speak freely, worship as we choose, and publish and protest without fear. They protect us against unreasonable searches and seizures and guarantee us due process and a fair trial by jury. These protections were exceptional in their time and remain essential today.
Today, like North Carolina’s early leaders and every generation that came before us, we ask ourselves what kind of government we want and how we protect our freedoms. The work of democracy is never finished, and progress is rarely linear. But whether it was Richard Caswell or Robert Howe fighting for independence against a tyrannical government or Willie Jones insisting that individual liberty must be protected from unchecked power, it’s clear that meaningful change has always required courage of one’s convictions.
The examples of our founders offer both a compass and a challenge. We must continually refresh our democracy and safeguard the rights we've already won.
Two hundred and fifty years later, our democracy is something we must practice, protect, and pass on. So, as we celebrate 250 years of American independence, let us also take this moment as a call to action: to remember where we started, protect the rights that we’ve inherited, and keep striving toward a more perfect union.