In November of that year emissaries sent by Lord Dunmore, the Governor of Virginia, were discovered near the town, endeavoring to incite the slaves of that section to rise against their masters, murder them, and join the Tory army. But General Robert Howe, at the head of a detachment from his regiment, quickly drove these agents away, and thwarted the dastardly attempt; then marching on with six hundred North Carolina militia, into Virginia, the gallant General reached Norfolk two days after the victory of the patriots at Great Bridge, helped to expel Dunmore from Norfolk, and to take possession of the city for the Americans. In April, 1776, the Halifax Convention authorized the delegates from North Carolina to the Continental Congress of that year, "to concur with the delegates of the other Colonies in declaring independence," and upon Joseph Hewes, of Edenton, fell the honor of presenting the Halifax Resolution of 1776 to the Congress at Philadelphia. To the instructions of the State he represented, Hewes added his own urgent plea for immediate action, and cast his State's vote squarely against postponing the declaration of independence. When the Continental Congress finally agreed to secede from the English Government, Hewes, with John Penn and William Hooper, of North Carolina, affixed his name to that famous document in which the thirteen Colonies foreswore their allegiance to King George. Some two months after the Halifax Convention, and two weeks before the Continental Congress had formally declared independence, the vestry of Old St. Paul's Church in Edenton met in solemn conclave, and impelled by the wave of intense patriotism now sweeping over the land, drew up the so-called "Declaration of Independence of St. Paul's Parish," the context of which is as follows: