North Carolina

Article Outline

Introduction; Physical Geography; Economic Activities; The People of North Carolina; Education and Cultural Institutions; Recreation and Places to Visit; Government; History

The Lords Proprietors

Heath was never able to undertake the settlement of Carolana. So in 1663 King Charles II, the son of Charles I, changed the name slightly to Carolina and regranted the land to eight lords who had helped him regain the English throne. In 1665 these men, known as the lords proprietors, obtained a new charter that greatly extended the boundaries to the north and the south to include all the land between latitudes 36°30’ north and 29° north.

The lords proprietors planned three counties in Carolina, each named for one of them: Albemarle, Clarendon, and Craven. Albemarle County already had some settlers who had come from Virginia in the 1650s and was the only one of the three counties to play an important role in North Carolina history.

Until 1689 Albemarle County had the only proprietary government in Carolina. During that period 12 officials served by appointment, under varying titles and for irregular terms, as governor of the county. The governor was assisted by a council, which he appointed. The council advised the governor in executive and legislative matters, sat with the elected assembly as part of the legislature, and served with the governor as the general court for legal disputes. In most matters the legislature was subordinate to the governor. It could not convene unless he called it, and he could veto its decisions. However, the legislature controlled the governor’s salary and used this power to strengthen its authority.

In 1689 the proprietors, in an effort to improve administration, began appointing governors over that part of Carolina lying north and east of Cape Fear. This was a first step toward creation of a distinct identity for North Carolina, although the governor was a deputy under the governor of Carolina. North Carolina and South Carolina became popular terms.

The 18th Century

The Emergence of North Carolina

Finally, in 1712, the proprietors began to appoint governors for North Carolina who were independent of the Carolina governor. From 1711 to 1713 the colony was involved in a war with the Tuscarora people, and it relied on assistance from South Carolina to defeat them. Pirates posed another problem for North Carolina. The colony’s unusual coast, with its sandbars and shallows, provided a haven for pirate ships. Furthermore, the colonists frequently benefited from purchasing the pirates’ goods. It was not altogether accidental that the two most notorious pirates, Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet, were captured by expeditions sent out by the governors of Virginia and South Carolina, respectively, although they operated from North Carolina. Some of North Carolina’s governors are believed to have collaborated with the pirates.

Settlers came from Virginia and South Carolina and directly from France, Germany, and Switzerland. By 1729 the estimated settler population was 35,000. As settlement spread, dispute over the Virginia-North Carolina boundary intensified. Finally, in 1728, commissioners representing both colonies chose a point on the coast and surveyed a line west. The line proved to be north of the land already claimed by North Carolina and also north of latitude 36°30’ north, but Virginia accepted it.

Royal Colony

In 1729 King George II of Great Britain (a union of England, Scotland, and Wales) bought out seven of the eight shares in the Carolina grant. One owner, John Carteret, refused to sell. A strip of land just south of the Virginia border was assigned to him and became known as Granville District. He continued making grants to settlers out of that tract. During the American Revolution (1775-1783), North Carolina abolished the district and confiscated its lands that had not yet been regranted.

Under the king, the quality of administration improved. In general, the royal governors demonstrated significant ability compared to the proprietary governors. The legislature became two-house, or bicameral: The council sat as the upper house, and the assembly as the lower house. The judicial system was enlarged by the creation of new courts but continued to be subordinate to the governor.

Through the Vestry Act of 1701 and subsequent acts, the legislature had established the Anglican Church as the official church of the colony. However, the church’s influence gradually weakened because of the rapid growth of Presbyterian, Quaker, Baptist, Lutheran, German Reformed, Moravian, and Methodist congregations.

The colony’s politics was marked by sectional controversies. There was an early north-versus-south sectional division of the Coastal Plain, but this faded in importance as these two eastern sections united in competition with the growing west. The east dominated the colony. New Bern, in the east, was chosen as the permanent capital. Tryon’s Palace, the nickname for an expensive residence and statehouse erected for Governor William Tryon (1765-1771), was built in New Bern over the objections of the west. To the east’s advantage, local government was in the hands of the justices of the peace, who were appointed by the governor. The whole structure was conducive to abuses of power.

In 1768 westerners organized the Regulator movement to resist arbitrary taxes and fees and to demand honest local officials. In vain the Regulators sought redress of grievances through the courts and the legislature. Rioting erupted in several counties. In Rowan and Orange counties the Regulators declared that they would pay no more taxes and would tolerate no more courts. On May 16, 1771, Governor Tryon led the militia against a force of about 2,000 Regulators at Alamance Creek and defeated them. The movement was broken. Many Regulators left North Carolina, more than 6,000 were pardoned, and six were hanged for treason.

Conflicts with the governor were, in essence, conflicts with Britain. This became obvious after 1763, when the governor was required to enforce a new policy designed to strengthen the colonies but also to restrict them to colonial status. The colonists were aggrieved by two colonial tax laws, the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767, which were enacted without the colonies’ consent or vote in the British legislature, or Parliament. Armed members of the Sons of Liberty, a secret patriotic resistance organization, compelled all of the important North Carolina officials except the governor to agree not to enforce the Stamp Act. Nonimportation associations were formed to boycott British goods in protest against the Townshend Acts. In December 1773 the assembly created a committee to correspond with the other colonies and coordinate resistance. When Massachusetts was punished for resisting the Tea Act of 1773, North Carolina sent supplies of corn, flour, and pork.

A proposal by Massachusetts for a continental congress was opposed by North Carolina Governor Josiah Martin, who refused to call a meeting of the legislature to elect delegates. As a consequence, delegates were elected locally in counties and towns to the colony’s first provincial congress, which met in New Bern in August 1774. It declared any tax by Parliament on the colonies to be unconstitutional and chose delegates to the First Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 5, 1774. The second provincial congress met in New Bern early in April 1775.

The American Revolution

On April 18, 1775, the American Revolution began with the battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. On May 31, 1775, the people of Mecklenburg County, at a meeting in Charlotte, adopted a new county government on the basis that the king had allegedly severed relations with the colonies. Also in May 1775, Governor Martin fled from the palace to Fort Johnston on the Cape Fear River; in June he reached safety on a British ship. In August, North Carolina’s third provincial congress met at Hillsboro and provided for a new colonial government, with a congress to replace the assembly and a council to replace both the royal governor and his council.

In February 1776 Governor Martin devised a plan for combining British forces with Loyalists (locals loyal to the king) in Brunswick in order to capture all the Southern colonies. His plan failed, however, when 1,400 to 1,500 of the Loyalists, called Tories by their opponents, were defeated on the way to the rendezvous by North Carolina revolutionists, who called themselves Whigs, at Moore’s Creek Bridge on February 27, 1776. After that, no major engagements with the British occurred in North Carolina until 1781.

The fourth provincial congress met at Halifax in April 1776 and adopted the Halifax Resolves. These authorized North Carolina’s delegation to Congress to concur with the other delegations in declaring independence for the colonies. The North Carolina signers of the Declaration of Independence, adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776, were William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, and John Penn.

A State Constitution

The fourth provincial congress rejected a proposal for a state constitution, preferring to govern through a continuously functioning council of safety. However, the fifth congress, meeting in Halifax in November 1776, adopted a constitution and a bill of rights. The constitution contained protections for the political and legal rights and personal liberties of the people. It also provided for a legislative branch, consisting of a bicameral legislature; an executive branch, consisting of a governor and a council of state; and a judicial branch, consisting of supreme courts of law and equity, judges of admiralty, and justices of the peace.

Both houses of the legislature, the senate and the house of commons, were elected by the people. The senate consisted of a small body of men owning 121 hectares (300 acres) of land, who were elected by freemen owning 20 hectares (50 acres). The house of commons was open to men owning 40 hectares (100 acres), who were elected by freemen who paid public taxes. Representation was based primarily on counties, rather than on population. The governor had to own land and tenements valued at no less than 1,000 pounds, and he and the council of state were elected by the legislature for one-year terms. An official church was forbidden, but no person who denied the “Truth of the Protestant Religion” could hold public office. The legislature was required to establish a public school system and “one or more Universities.”

Legislative supremacy was the most striking characteristic of the new constitution. The dislike of a strong chief executive was reflected in his being elected by the legislature, his short term of office, and his restricted powers. The governor could recommend legislation, but had no veto power.