One of the thirteen states to declare independence from Great Britain in 1776, North Carolina has also been a proprietary British colony, a royal colony, and a state in the Confederacy.
Beginnings
Native Americans have populated North Carolina since about 10,000 B.C.E. After European contact in the 1600s, some thirty tribes numbered about 35,000 people. The largest tribes were the Tuscarora, the Catawba, and the Cherokee. Early European explorers of North Carolina were Giovanni da Verrazzano (1524), Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon (1520 and 1526), Hernando de Soto (1540), Juan Pardo and Hernando Boyano (1566–1567), and Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe (1584). Receiving a patent from Queen Elizabeth in 1584, Walter Raleigh dispatched the Ralph Lane Colony to Roanoke Island in 1585, but it returned to England in 1586. In 1587 Raleigh sent a colony under John White to Roanoke Island, but it also failed and became known as the "Lost Colony" because the people disappeared. Virginia sent the first settlers into the Albemarle Sound region of North Carolina in the 1650s.
Proprietary period, 1663–1729. In 1663 Charles II granted eight proprietors a charter for Carolina, intended as a buffer colony between Virginia and Spanish settlements. This charter provided for religious liberty and representative government. Carolina's boundaries extended from 29 degrees north to 36 degrees 30 minutes, and from sea to sea. The proprietors sought to establish a feudal society through the Fundamental Constitutions but abandoned the idea by 1700. Instead, the society and government developed as in other colonies, the Assembly being elected by freeholders. In 1711 the proprietors established the separate colonies of North and South Carolina.
North Carolina grew slowly; towns were established at Bath, New Bern, Edenton, Beaufort, and Brunswick from 1705 to1727. New Bern was devastated by the Tuscarora War, 1711–1713. Aided by headrights, colonists arrived from England, Switzerland, the German Palatinate, and France. Slaves also arrived from Africa, and African slavery became a fixed mode of labor. Quakers helped thwart the establishment of the Anglican Church. In 1729 North Carolina became a royal colony; all the proprietors but the earl of Granville sold their interests to the Crown.
Royal colony, 1729–1775. Under royal government North Carolina experienced phenomenal growth. Highland Scots settled the Cape Fear Valley, but most settlers in the Piedmont arrived via the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania. They were of Scotch-Irish and German origins and established Presbyterian, Lutheran, Moravian, German Reformed, and Baptist churches. In 1771 Presbyterians founded Queen's College, the first in the colony. The Assembly established the Anglican Church in 1765, but it was never strong. New towns sprang up in the back-country: Cross Creek (Fayetteville), Hillsborough, Salisbury, and Charlotte. Cherokees siding with the French were defeated in 1761 at the Battle of Echoee. The colonial economy was based on tobacco, foodstuffs, livestock, naval stores, and lumber products.
In government three major conflicts developed, the struggle for power between the governor and the Assembly, the Regulator movement, and opposition to parliamentary taxation. Royal governors used their royal prerogative to demand on occasion that the Assembly do their bidding. The Assembly, however, used its "power of the purse" to control the governor's salary, establish courts, determine a quorum, prevent the appointment of judges for life, and issue bills of credit, all actions the governor was instructed to prohibit.
The Regulator movement was an attempt by back-country farmers to "regulate" the corrupt actions of county officials. In 1766 Regulators met in Orange County to protest extortionate public fees and corrupt practices. In 1768 they refused to pay taxes, charging the sheriff with embezzlement. While Governor William Tryon ordered Regulators to disband and pay taxes, he also warned county officials against extortion. In 1770 Regulators assaulted local officials at the Orange County courthouse, and Tryon assembled an army and defeated them at Alamance Creek in 1771.
The political issue causing the most conflict was parliamentary taxation. When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, pamphleteer Maurice Moore argued that colonists could be taxed only with their consent, and they had not consented to the stamp tax. Many towns protested the tax, but in Wilmington the Sons of Liberty forced the stamp master William Houston to resign, leaving no one to enforce the act. HMS Viper then seized two ships on Cape Fear because their papers lacked stamps. Armed insurgents, led by Cornelius Harnett and others, boarded the Viper and forced the release of the ships.
After the repeal of the Stamp Act, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts (1767), which, among other things, imposed duties on many imported goods. The 1769 Assembly organized an association boycotting British goods until Parliament repealed the taxes. In 1770 Parliament repealed the Townshend Acts but retained the tax on tea, thus leading to the Boston Tea Party. When Parliament ordered the port of Boston closed in 1774, North Carolina sent a shipload of food to help the city. The colony also elected delegates to the First Continental Congress in 1774, which urged nonimportation of British goods. Locally elected committees of safety enforced the boycott. Supposedly a Charlotte committee of safety adopted a declaration of independence on 20 May 1775. Although corroborating evidence for this event is lacking, the North Carolina flag bears this date.
Revolutionary War and Early Statehood
North Carolina devised a new government after Governor Josiah Martin fled in May 1775. The provincial congress, meeting in Hillsborough, established a provisional government headed by a council of thirteen men and supported by district safety committees. On 12 April 1776 in Halifax the provincial congress urged the Continental Congress to declare independence. This was the first official state action for independence, and this date too is emblazoned on the state flag. The same congress abolished the council of thirteen and created a Council of Safety to govern the state.
Needing a permanent form of government, delegates to the provincial congress in Halifax late in 1776 drafted the first constitution. Conservative delegates wanted a strong executive and protection for property, but radical delegates desired more democratic government, religious freedom, and a strong legislature. The Constitution of 1776 reflected both positions. Conservatives got property and religious qualifications for holding office and a property qualification for voting, while the Radicals got a strong legislature, religious liberty, and the abolition of the established church. The new constitution provided for the separation of powers, but the legislature had preeminent power because it elected the governor and judges.
North Carolina became a battleground in the Revolutionary War. In February 1776 loyalist Scottish Highlanders marched down the Cape Fear Valley to make Wilmington a British base but were defeated at Moore's Creek. The British incited the Cherokees against the colonists in 1776, and General Griffith Rutherford burned their towns. The Cherokees then concluded in 1777 the Treaty of Holston, ceding their lands east of the Blue Ridge. Lord Cornwallis's invasion of North Carolina in late 1780 was blunted by three defeats at Ramsour's Mill, King's Mountain, and Cowpens. Although Cornwallis occupied Wilmington and Hillsborough, he was unable to destroy General Nathanael Greene's army at Guilford Courthouse in March 1781. Cornwallis then abandoned North Carolina for Virginia and defeat at Yorktown.
As an independent state, North Carolina faced many challenges. Industries no longer received British bounties, trade languished, inflation raged, and state government proved weak. Still, much progress was made. Most Tories were pardoned, but much animosity toward them remained. One law confiscating Tory property was declared unconstitutional in the North Carolina Supreme Court decision Bayard v. Singleton (1787), the first use of judicial review in one of the United States. The Hillsborough Convention of 1788—called to act on the U.S. Constitution—located a state capital in Wake County. In 1792 the state purchased 1,000 acres of land there and laid off the city of Raleigh. In 1789 the legislature chartered the University of North Carolina, which in 1795 became the first state university to enroll students.
North Carolina sent five delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, William R. Davie and Hugh Williamson taking active parts. When the new constitution was publicized, eastern planters, merchants, and professionals supported it while western small farmers were opposed. The Hillsborough Convention of 1788 demanded a bill of rights before it would act on ratification. In 1789 Congress proposed a bill of rights and public opinion favored the constitution. The Fayetteville Convention of November 1789 then ratified the constitution.
As in other states, the two-party system that arose around the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton developed in North Carolina as well. The Federalists were at first ascendant, but opposition to Federalist initiatives—especially Jay's Treaty (1794), the Judiciary Act (1801), funding the national debt, assumption of state debts, and the excise tax—emerged and formed the Republican Party. In North Carolina Republicans gained control of the state government, and the Federalist Party declined rapidly after 1800, making North Carolina a one-party state.
Poor Carolina, 1801–1834. Many factors contributed to the state's relative economic and population decline through the 1830s. Although the Republican legislature chartered the state's first two banks in 1804 and created a state bank in 1810, the state lacked capital and a stable currency to support development. The Republican philosophy of the least government being the best government precluded using government for economic development. The lack of cheap transportation also retarded the state. Only one river, the Cape Fear, flowed directly into the ocean; it was navigable up to Wilmington. The state's other main port was Beaufort. The lack of good roads increased the costs of transporting farm products to market and thus discouraged exports. In addition, the lack of an urban culture, little manufacturing except for a few textile mills, emigration to more fertile western lands, and legislative underrepresentation of western counties all hindered development.
Two-party politics and progress, 1837–1861. Following changes in the state constitution made in 1835, the lower house of the legislature came to represent the population and the upper house the amount of taxes paid by county. These constitutional changes ushered in a second era of two-party politics. The Whigs, a new party supporting internal improvements, controlled the governorship 1837 to 1851 and the legislature some of these years. The Whigs supported the state's first railroads, which sped transport, lowered freight costs, and spurred trade and manufacturing. Another Whig contribution was a public school system. In 1839 the legislature enacted a school law allowing counties to establish schools by referendum. The first school opened in 1840, and by 1850 over 100,000 pupils were enrolled statewide. All of these changes quickened economic activity. The expansion of cotton acreage and the discovery of brightleaf tobacco curing increased farm income by half in the 1850s. Gold mining also flourished and necessitated a branch U.S. mint in Charlotte. Improved transportation greatly enhanced manufacturing, which nearly doubled in value in the 1850s. The leading products by order of value in 1860 were turpentine, flour and meal, tobacco, lumber, and textiles.
During this same antebellum era, religious schools that became Wake Forest University, Duke University, Davidson College, and Guilford College were founded. The federal government, moreover, concluded with the Cherokees the Treaty of New Echota (1835) that led to their later notorious removal and opened their lands to settlement by whites.
Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861–1877
Although North Carolina was not as eager for secession as Deep South states, it followed themin to the Confederacy after a state convention overwhelmingly approved secession on 20 May 1861. But state politics during the war reflected North Carolina's ambivalence toward the Confederacy. Zebulon B. Vance, a former Whig Unionist, was elected governor in 1862. He fully supported the war effort, but he fought Jefferson Davis's policies that impinged on civil liberties. In 1864 William W. Holden, a Democratic leader and engineer of Vance's 1862 victory, organized the Peace Party and became its nominee for governor. This party urged North Carolina to rejoin the Union. Vance was reelected, but Holden won favor in the North as a Unionist.
North Carolina furnished a sixth of Confederate troops and suffered high casualties. Wilmington became a major blockade-running port, providing military supplies until it was captured in 1865. The state was also a battleground. Union forces seized the Outer Banks and gained a foothold on the mainland from Plymouth to Beaufort in 1862. In 1865 Sherman's army advanced on Raleigh and secured Joseph E. Johnston's surrender near Durham.
President Andrew Johnson began reconstructing North Carolina by appointing William Holden provisional governor and pardoning many Confederates. Holden called a state convention that voided secession, abolished slavery, and repudiated the state war debt. In the fall elections Jonathan Worth, wartime state treasurer, defeated Holden for the governorship, and many former Confederate officials were elected to Congress. Congress refused to seat these and other delegates sent by governments dominated by former Confederates on the grounds that they were disloyal and freedmen were being mistreated. Indeed, North Carolina was among the states with a "black code" of laws that treated freedmen as a separate class of people, denied basic rights.
Congress and President Johnson became locked in a struggle over Reconstruction policy. Congress wanted full citizenship and civil rights for freedmen, and Johnson opposed this. Congressional Republicans passed over Johnson's veto the Reconstruction acts, which placed the southern states, except Tennessee, under military rule, disfranchised many former Confederates, and required states to revise their constitutions to enfranchise freedmen. When these states were reorganized under their new constitutions, they were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. Then they would regain their seats in Congress.
North Carolina did all that Congress required. William Holden headed the new state Republican Party, which included freedmen, carpetbaggers, and native whites. The Republicans controlled the state convention of 1868 that drafted a more democratic constitution. They also controlled the new state government, and Holden was elected governor.
Opponents of Holden's regime used the issue of "white supremacy" and violence to regain control of state government. The Ku Klux Klan operated in counties with slight Republican majorities. Using murder and intimidation, the Klan suppressed the Republican vote in 1870. Controlling the 1871 legislature, Democrats impeached Holden and removed him from office. The Republican Party still had vitality, for it elected the governor in 1872 and nearly controlled the state convention of 1875 that revised the constitution for Democratic advantage. Finally in 1876 the Democratic Party established white supremacy in state government and used fraud to remain in power.
The New South and Populism, 1877–1901
Young Democratic leaders desired a "New South" of diversified economy and greater wealth for North Carolina. Democrats supported policies under which tobacco manufacturing grew, textile mills expanded, furniture factories arose, and railroads established a 3,800-mile network. Democrats neglected public schools but did charter a black normal school in Fayetteville and an agricultural and mechanical college in Raleigh.
While industry prospered, agriculture languished. Rejecting contract labor, plantation owners adopted share-cropping and the crop-lien system for their labor needs. Tobacco and cotton cultivation were well suited to this system, and overproduction and low prices followed. To address their economic problems, farmers joined the Farmers' Alliance and controlled the 1891 legislature that chartered a female normal college and a black agricultural and mechanical college. Proposing an inflationary monetary policy rejected by the major parties, the Alliance formed the Populist Party in 1892 and fused with the Republicans to control the legislature and elect a Republican governor. The fusionists restored elective local government, secured bipartisan election boards, increased school appropriations, and enhanced railroad regulation. Seizing on the issue of growing numbers of black office-holders, Democrats vowed to restore white supremacy. Using fraud and violence, Democrats controlled the 1899 legislature that proposed a literacy test to disfranchise black voters and a grandfather clause to exempt white voters from the test. Intimidating voters again in 1900, the Democrats secured passage of the literacy test, thus eliminating most black voters and assuring Democratic ascendancy. To win white votes, Democrats began a modern public school system.
Economic Progress, 1901–1929
The great economic expansion of the middle decades of the twentieth century was based partly on the infrastructure developed before 1930. The advent of automobiles led the state to borrow heavily and pave nearly 6,000 miles of roads, thus securing a reputation as a "Good Roads State." Improved roads led to the creation of truck and bus lines and the consolidation of public schools. Streetcar lines flourished from the 1890s to the 1930s, when buses replaced them. Railroads created a 4,600-mile network by 1930. Communications also improved; telephones and radio became common in the 1920s. WBT in Charlotte was the state's first commercial radio station. The Wright brothers first flew at Kill Devil Hill in 1903, and aviation advanced to provide the first air mail in 1927 and the first scheduled passenger service in 1931.
Commercial electrical power generation also spurred economic growth. Companies dammed Piedmont and mountain rivers to make North Carolina a leading hydroelectric power state by 1930. From 1900 to 1930 electrical power helped the state achieve a thirteenfold increase in the value of manufactures. These rapid changes also caused conflict. In the 1920s some legislators introduced bills banning the teaching of evolution in public schools, but they were rejected. Conflict also developed over the stretch-out, a way of forcing textile workers to increase production. Violent textile strikes occurred in Marion and Gastonia in 1929 as employers forcibly suppressed union workers.
Depression and War, 1929–1945
The Great Depression caused economic damage and human suffering. Agricultural prices dropped sharply, forcing tenants from the land and bankrupting many farmers. About 200 banks failed, and the state began stricter regulation. Industrial production declined, causing 25 percent unemployment. Governments and private agencies provided relief and made jobs for the unemployed, but their efforts were inadequate. Unable to pay high property taxes that supported local roads and schools, taxpayers staged a tax revolt. They got the state to pay for all road construction and teachers' pay with a sales tax. Many local governments went bankrupt, and the state henceforth regulated their indebtedness. In 1934 textile workers struck for higher pay but achieved nothing.
New Deal programs provided effective unemployment relief and raised tobacco prices. Despite passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, textile mills blocked union organizing. North Carolina reluctantly provided matching funds for relief programs and social security. Only World War II provided full employment and quickened economic activity. The military established twenty-one training centers in the state, the largest being Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune, and Cherry Point. Farmers increased production, making North Carolina third in the nation in farm product value. Shipbuilding was one of the major new industries.
Since 1945
North Carolina has eagerly embraced the use of state government to advance the common weal. It has supported a state symphony, an art museum, a zoological park, an arboretum, a residential high school for science and mathematics, a school of the arts, summer schools for gifted students, and an enrichment center for teachers.
Most notable are the state's advances in education. From sixteen disparate state colleges and universities, the state organized in 1971 an excellent university system called the University of North Carolina. The state also constructed an outstanding community college system containing fifty-eight two-year institutions. The system's primary aim is training people for specific jobs. The state has also reformed public schools, providing improved teacher training, standardized tests, experimental charter schools, preschool enrichment, and the grading of each school's performance.
North Carolina has also tackled the problem of low wages—the state ranked forty-fourth in per capita income in 1954. The state recruited industry and helped establish a Research Triangle Park near Raleigh to attract high technology firms, about seventy of them by 2000, when these efforts had raised the state to twenty-ninth place in per capita income.
The recruitment of industry led to greater economic diversification. The old triumvirate of textiles, tobacco, and furniture manufacturing gave way, in order of value, to electrical and electronic equipment, chemicals, and textiles. New industries located mainly in cities, causing a majority of people to move from rural to urban settings. Charlotte, the state's largest city, became a national banking center.
The state also witnessed a revolution in civil rights. In the 1950s African Americans integrated the University of North Carolina and began the integration of public schools. In the 1960s black college students devised the sit-in to integrate Greensboro lunch counters and in Raleigh formed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee to launch sitins elsewhere. In Charlotte the NAACP secured the Swann decision (1971), which ordered busing to achieve racial balance in public schools.
Since 1972 North Carolina has been evolving as a two-party state. Republicans elected U.S. senators, congressmen, judges, and two governors, but by 2002 they had yet to control the legislature. In every presidential election from 1980 to 2000 the state voted Republican. As politics changed, so did the state's image. Considered a "progressive plutocracy" in the 1940s, the state's image in the early 2000s was cast as a "progressive paradox" or even a "progressive myth."
Bibliography
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