North Carolina

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Civil War

Slavery was one of the most divisive political issues in the Congress of the United States in the first half of the 19th century. Many Congress members from the Northern states pressed to end slavery, both because it was considered immoral and because white labor could not compete with unpaid black labor. Members from the Deep South (North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida) believed that slavery was essential to their cotton-centered agricultural system and that the North was trying to dominate the national economy. By the 1850s, Southerners saw their power slipping in Congress, the clamor for abolition of slavery was at a high pitch, and many in the South came to believe that secession from the Union was the only way to protect “Southern rights,” including the right to own slaves.

As secession sentiment in the South increased, North Carolina supported the Union. In 1860, however, Abraham Lincoln was elected president as the candidate of the Republican Party, which opposed the spread of slavery. South Carolina had threatened to secede if the Republicans won, and in December 1860 it did so. Other Southern states followed, and in February 1861 they organized as the Confederate States of America and began mobilizing for war. The American Civil War (1861-1865) began officially on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery bombarded a federal fort in Charleston harbor.

When South Carolina seceded, North Carolina worked for compromise. However, after Lincoln sent out a call for troops, opinion solidified among North Carolinians that they would not take up arms against fellow Southerners. A state convention voted for secession on May 20, 1861.

As a member of the Confederate States, North Carolina furnished more than its share of troops and in the fighting lost 40,275 men, about one-fourth of all Confederate casualties. At the same time, however, under the leadership of Governor Zebulon B. Vance, the state resisted the central control by the Confederate government that was essential to efficient conduct of the war.

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Most of the fighting occurred in other states. The most significant events of the war in North Carolina included the battles of Fort Hatteras, Plymouth, New Bern, Fort Fisher, and Bentonville; the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston to General William T. Sherman near Durham on April 26, 1865; and General George Stoneman’s raid in the western counties.

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Reconstruction

Devastated and under military occupation at the end of the war, North Carolina was eager for reunion, restoration of order, and rehabilitation of the economy. In accordance with the plan of President Andrew Johnson for restoration, or Reconstruction, of the Union, a state convention in 1865 declared slavery abolished, repealed the ordinance of secession, and repudiated the state war debt. However, the Southern legislatures, including North Carolina’s, adopted the Black Codes that restricted blacks to second-class citizenship.

Partly because of these acts by the Southern legislatures, the Radical wing of the Republican Party in Congress wrested control of Reconstruction from President Johnson and imposed the harsher regime called Radical Reconstruction. In March 1867 Congress put all the ex-Confederate states except Tennessee under military rule. As a condition for returning to the Union, the Southern states were required to ratify the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which made the former slaves citizens. In addition, each state was required to hold elections, in which black men would be allowed to vote, for delegates to state constitutional conventions. The Republican Party of North Carolina, formed in 1867, dominated the constitutional convention and the elections of 1868. The new legislature ratified the 14th Amendment, and Congress admitted North Carolina’s congressional delegation on July 20, 1868.

The constitution of 1868, with significant modifications, remained in effect for a century. It provided for voting by all adult men, eliminated property qualifications for voting and officeholding, permitted anyone who did not deny the existence of God to hold public office, established a system of popular election of local government officials, required four months of public school education per year, and extended the governor’s term to four years.

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Resurgence of the Democrats

For many reasons, including the participation of blacks and Northerners, derogatorily called carpetbaggers, the Republican administration was disliked by most whites. Extravagance, waste, and corruption were widespread; taxes increased enormously, and the state debt doubled. The Democratic, or Conservative, Party publicized these abuses and regained control of the legislature in the elections of 1872 under the leadership of a group of conservatives called Bourbons. Victory was aided by the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, a secret terrorist organization that kept blacks and Republicans away from the polls by a campaign of threats, whippings, and occasional murders. In 1871 the Bourbon legislature impeached and convicted Republican Governor William W. Holden for abuses of power, and he was removed from office.

In 1875 the legislature called a constitutional convention that adopted 30 amendments, the most important of which returned local government to the control of the legislature and thus to the Democratic Party. All these amendments were ratified by popular vote. In 1876 the Democratic candidate for governor, Zebulon B. Vance, defeated the Republican candidate by a small majority.

The Bourbons controlled the legislature from 1872 to 1893 and the governorship from 1877 to 1897. Government was generally honest and economical, but all tactics were aimed at keeping the party and the white people in power. Voting and officeholding by blacks were permitted only within closely guarded limits. Public education was provided for blacks, but not on an equal basis with whites. Democratic leaders tended to follow a policy that favored the railroads and business interests over the farmers. Cotton textiles, tobacco, and furniture industries grew rapidly. The Democrats, who had difficulty perceiving the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, generally ignored the growing desires for aid to agriculture, equitable taxation on the new concentrations of wealth, regulation of the new economic power, and popular control of local government.

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Agricultural Distress and Populism

A sharecropping and tenant farming system grew up as a replacement of the old plantation system. A sharecropper raised part of a landowner’s crop and was paid a share of the profit after deductions for living expenses and the cost of tools and supplies. A tenant farmer sold what he raised and paid the landlord a share of the profit as rent. If the profit was low, the landlord got his share first. The cropper or tenant took what was left or, if none was left, got an advance to keep going until the next harvest. Because farm prices fell after the war and stayed low, most tenants and sharecroppers sank into an endless cycle of debt. Not until World War II (1939-1945), when widespread mechanization of agriculture made sharecropping unprofitable, did the system begin to disappear.

Farmers in general experienced a sharp decline in income in this period, while their living and operating costs continued to rise. Farmers began to organize in the 1870s, and, during the ensuing two decades, many joined the National Grange and the Farmers’ Alliances. The Alliances were cooperative organizations that hoped to lower farmers’ costs by selling supplies at reduced prices, loaning money at rates below those charged by banks, and building warehouses to store crops until prices increased. Dissatisfied with the Democratic Party, about half of the farmers of the state, already organized in the Alliance, formed the People’s Party in 1892. This political movement, called populism, had as its principal objectives the unlimited coinage of silver and large amounts of paper money, which were inflationary measures intended to raise farm prices and help farmers pay off their debts. Populists also sought a national cooperative system like the local Alliances; lower freight rates under state-run railroads; a graduated income tax to distribute the cost of government more widely; direct popular elections of U.S. senators; and an eight-hour workday.

The elections of 1892 demonstrated that the populists could win some offices but could not become the majority party. Therefore, in the elections of 1894 the populists cooperated with the Republicans, supporting in many instances a Fusion (Republican and Populist) ticket. The Fusionists won control of the legislatures of 1895 and 1897 and in 1896 elected a Republican, Daniel L. Russell, to the governorship. Russell was the only Republican to hold the governorship of North Carolina between the end of Reconstruction and 1973.

The Fusionists liberalized the election laws. As a result, a larger percentage of men voted in the presidential election of 1896. The Fusion administration improved the public schools and stimulated interest in education. Partly out of political necessity, the Fusionists also initiated a major experiment in political equality. Blacks voted freely. Ten blacks served a total of 12 terms in the legislature, and one black, George H. White, was, from 1897 to 1901, the last person of his race to represent a Southern state in the U.S. Congress until 1973.

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White Supremacy

Toward the end of the 1890s a younger group assumed the leadership of the Democratic Party, drew up a broad platform designed to attract people of all classes, and waged a campaign exploiting the race issue. The Democrats gained control of the legislature in 1898, and in 1900, with Charles Brantley Aycock as their nominee, won the governorship on a platform of education and white supremacy. In the same election, the voters approved a constitutional amendment mandating a literacy test that Aycock promised would remove blacks temporarily from politics; eventually, he contended, universal education would lead to universal suffrage. Blacks were indeed a disproportionately small minority of North Carolina voters from 1900 to the 1960s.

In the last part of the 19th century, as throughout the South, racial segregation was instituted in North Carolina through laws providing separate public facilities for whites and blacks. Blacks had to live in a different part of town, go to separate schools, eat at separate restaurants, and use different laundries, restrooms, and even drinking fountains. The facilities provided for blacks were never as good as those provided for whites. Segregation became a basic rule in Southern society, helping to ensure that blacks would not present a serious challenge to the social order.

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