William Hooper – My First Wish Is To Be Free

Posted by Billy Hart in American History | Comments Off

My Notes

I enjoy reading the writings below from William Hooper. You can tell that he was keen to reconcile with England but it is also clear that he is set on independence. I also enjoy the strength of his writing. Mr. Hooper seemed to be a man of deep passions.

Quotes I Like from William Hooper

William Hooper to James Iredell
April 26, 1774

With you I anticipate the important share which the colonies must soon have in regulating the political balance. They are striding fast to independence, and ere long will build an empire upon the ruins of Great Britain, will adopt its constitution purged of its impurities, and from an experience of its defects will guard against those evils which have wasted its vigor and brought it to an untimely end.

Robert Digges Wimberly Connor. Cornelius Harnett: an essay in North Carolina history. Edwards & Broughton. 1909

William Hooper to Johnston
February 6, 1776

My first wish is to be free, my second, to be reconciled to Great Britain.

Samuel A’Court Ashe. Biographical history of North Carolina from colonial times to the present, Volume 7. C. L. Van Noppen. 1908

William Hooper to Joseph Hewes
April 14, 1776

My progress through Virginia, was marked with nothing extraordinary. . . . . The language of Virginia is uniformly for independence. If there is a single man in that province who preaches a different doctrine I had not the fortune to fall in his company. But rapid as the change has been in Virginia, North Carolina has the honour of going far before them. Our late instructions afford you some specimen of the temper of the present Congress and of the people at large. It would be more than unpopular, it would be Toryism, to hint the possibility of future reconciliation. For my part if it were my sentiment that such conduct was premature, I should not think it prudent to avow it We can not stem a torrent and one had better swim on the democratic flood than, vainly attempting to check it, be buried in it. . . . . Britain has lost us by a series of impolitic, wicked and savage actions as have disgraced a nation of Hottentots. Human patience can bear no more and all ranks people cry, ”that the cup of bitterness is full running over. Let the miseries of be what they will they can not enhance misery. We may be better, we can not be worse.” Thus they reason and when I survey what been done I have too much the feeling of a man to attempt to reason them out of this effusion.

Robert Digges Wimberly Connor. Cornelius Harnett: an essay in North Carolina history. Edwards & Broughton. 1909

Brief Biography

William Hooper, a Delegate from North Carolina; born in Boston, Mass., June 17, 1742; attended the Boston Latin School and was graduated from Harvard College in 1760; studied law; was admitted to the bar; moved to Wilmington, N.C., in 1767, where he began practice; member of the Colonial Assembly of North Carolina 1773-1776; published a series of articles against the Crown and was disbarred for one year; Member of the Continental Congress 1774-1777; a signer of the Declaration of Independence; mover for the first Provincial Congress in 1774; member of the State assembly in 1777 and 1778; member of the commission to settle a boundary dispute between Massachusetts and New York in 1786; died in Hillsboro, N.C., October 14, 1790; interment in Guilford Battle Ground, N.C.