History of North Carolina

This article discusses the history of a U.S. state. For information on the state today, see North Carolina.

Spanish attempts at colonization

Recent archaeological finds at Joara, a Mississippian culture settlement near Morganton, in Burke County, North Carolina, attest to Spanish settlement at Fort San Juan in 1567-1568. Joara was the largest mound builder settlement in the region. The finds are causing a reworking of the history of contact between Native Americans and European colonists in North Carolina. Spanish explorers traveling inland encountered the last of the Mississippian culture at Joara, near present-day Morganton. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540.

More significantly, in 1567 Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition from Santa Elena at Parris Island, South Carolina, then the capital of the Spanish colony in the Southeast, into the interior of North Carolina. His journey was ordered to claim the area for the Spanish colony, pacify and convert the natives, as well as establish another route to protect silver mines in Mexico (the Spanish did not realize the distances involved). Pardo went toward the northwest to be able to get food supplies from natives. He made a winter base at Joara, which he renamed Cuenca. They built Fort San Juan and left 30 men, while Pardo traveled further, establishing five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa Elena. After 18 months, in the spkims hottonering of 1568, natives killed all the soldiers and burned the six forts, including the one at Fort San Juan. The Spanish never returned to the interior to press their colonial claim, but this marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior. Translation in the 1980s of a journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera and archaeological findings at Joara have confirmed the expedition and settlement.

==British colonization== PIE PIE

See also: Roanoke Colony, Province of Carolina and Province of North Carolina.

The Province of North Carolina developed distinctly from South Carolina almost from the beginning. The Spanish experienced trouble colonizing North Carolina because it had a dangerous coastline, a lack of ports, and few inland rivers by which to navigate by. In the 1650s and 1660s, settlers (mostly British) moved south from Virginia, in addition to runaway servants and fur trappers. There were only about 5,000 settlers in 1700 and 11,000 in 1715. While mostly British, the settlers included a few African slaves and a colony at New Bern composed of Swiss and German settlers.

As early as 1689, the Carolina proprietors named a separate governor for the region of the colony that lay to the north and east of Cape Fear. By 1712, the term "North Carolina" was in common use. In 1728, the dividing line between North Carolina and Virginia was surveyed. In 1730, the population was 30,000. By 1729, the Crown bought out seven of the eight original proprietors, making North Carolina a royal colony.

The proprietor who refused to sell was John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville, who in 1744 received rights to the vast Granville Tract, constituting the northern half of North Carolina. This happened just as the tide of immigration to North Carolina from Virginia and Pennsylvania began to swell. Many of the mid-18th-century immigrants were farmers of Scots-Irish or German descent. On the eve of the American Revolution, North Carolina was the fastest-growing British colony in North America. The small family farms of the Piedmont contrasted sharply with the plantation economy of the coastal region, where wealthy planters grew tobacco and rice with slave labor. It had a population of 100,000 in 1752 and 200,000 in 1765. By 1760, enslaved Africans constituted one quarter of North Carolina's population and were concentrated along the coast.

In the late 1760s, tensions between Piedmont farmers and coastal planters welled up in the Regulator movement. With specie scarce, many inland farmers found themselves unable to pay their taxes and resented the consequent seizure of their property. Local sheriffs sometimes kept taxes for their own gain and sometimes charged twice for the same tax. Governor William Tryon's conspicuous consumption in the construction of a new governor's mansion at New Bern fuelled the movement's resentment. As the western districts were under-represented in the colonial legislature, it was difficult for the farmers to obtain redress by legislative means. Ultimately, the frustrated farmers took to arms and closed the court in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Tryon sent troops to the region and defeated the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance in May 1771.

North Carolina in the American Revolution

In the spring of 1776, North Carolinians, meeting in the fourth of their Provincial Congresses, drafted the Halifax Resolves, a set of resolutions that empowered the state's delegates to the Second Continental Congress to concur in a declaration of independence from Great Britain. In November 1776, North Carolina representatives gathered in Halifax to write a new state constitution, which remained in effect until 1835.

Although North Carolina was spared violence in the early years of the Revolutionary War, it was a major focus of fighting in 1780-81. American general Nathanael Greene engaged British forces under Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Guilford Court House in March 1781. In 1786, the population of North Carolina had increased to 350,000.

The United States Constitution drafted in 1787 was controversial in North Carolina. Delegate meetings at Hillsboro in July 1788 initially voted to reject it for anti-federalist reasons. They were persuaded to change their minds partly by the strenuous efforts of James Iredell and William Davies and partly by the prospect of a Bill of Rights. Meanwhile, residents in the wealthy northeastern part of the state, who generally supported the proposed Constitution, threatened to secede if the rest of the state did not fall into line. A second ratifying convention was held in Fayetteville in November 1789, and on November 21, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

North Carolina adopted a new state constitution in 1835. One of the major changes was the introduction of direct election of the governor, for a term of two years; prior to 1835, the legislature elected the governor for a term of one year. North Carolina's current capitol building was completed in 1840.

James K. Polk, who was president of the United States from 1845 until 1849, was born in North Carolina. Andrew Jackson, who was president of the United States from 1829 until 1837, was most likely born in South Carolina, but is sometimes also claimed as a native of North Carolina. Andrew Johnson, President of the United States from April 15, 1865 to March 4, 1869,was born in Raleigh.

Civil War, Reconstruction and disfranchisement

See also Reconstruction era of the United States and Disfranchisement after the Civil War.

As a plantation state, North Carolina had a long history of slavery. It also received numerous African American migrants from Virginia who had been free people of color since the colonial period. They tended to settle in frontier areas, where relations were easier. Up until 1835, free African Americans had the right to vote in the state, but they were disfranchised and put under increasing restrictions as tensions built toward the Civil War. By the 1860 census, there were 629,942 whites and 361,544 Negroes, of whom 30,000 were free.

In the fraught election of 1860, North Carolina's electoral votes went to Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, an adamant supporter of slavery who hoped to extend the "peculiar institution" to the United States' western territories. He defeated the Constitutional Union candidate, John Bell, who carried much of the upper South.

In marked contrast to most of the states which Breckinridge carried, North Carolina was reluctant to secede from the Union when it became clear that Republican Abraham Lincoln had won the presidential election. North Carolina did not secede until May 20, 1861, after the fall of Fort Sumter and the secession of the Upper South's bellwether, Virginia. North Carolina was the last of the 11 Confederate states to leave the Union.

Many North Carolinians, especially yeoman farmers who owned few or no slaves, were not supportive of the Confederacy. Draft-dodging, desertion, and tax evasion were common during the Civil War years. The Union's naval blockade of Southern ports and the breakdown of the Confederate transportation system took a heavy toll on North Carolina residents, as did the runaway inflation of the war years. In the spring of 1863, there were food riots in North Carolina (as well as Georgia).

Reconstruction

During Reconstruction, African American leaders came both from those free before the war, from men who had escaped to the North and decided to return, and from migrants from the North who wanted to help in the postwar years. Many of these had escaped from slavery and got some education before they came back to the state. In general, however, illiteracy was a problem shared by most African Americans and about one-third of the whites in the state.

A number of white northerners migrated to North Carolina to work and invest. While feeling in the state was high against carpetbaggers, of the 133 persons at the constitutional convention, only 18 were Northern carpetbaggers and 15 were African American. North Carolina was readmitted to the Union in 1868, after ratifying a new state constitution. It included provisions to establish public education, prohibited slavery, and adopted universal suffrage. It also provided for orphanages, public charities and a penitentiary. The legislature also ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In 1870 the Democratic Party came to power in the state. Governor William W. Holden had used civil powers and spoken out to try to combat the Ku Klux Klan's increasing violence. Conservatives accused him of being head of the Union League, of believing in social equality between the races, and of being corrupt. When the legislature voted to impeach him, however, it charged him only with using and paying troops to put down insurrection (Ku Klux Klan activity) in the state. They removed Holden from office in 1871.

After the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 went into effect, the U.S. Attorney General, Amos T. Akerman, vigorously prosecuted Klan members in North Carolina. During the late 1870s, there was increased violence in the Piedmont area, where whites tried to suppress minority black voting in the election.

Disfranchisement

As in other Southern states, after white Democrats regained power, they worked to re-establish white supremacy. Nonetheless, in the 1880s, black officeholders were at a peak in local offices, elected from black-majority districts. In 1894 after years of agricultural problems, an interracial coalition of Republicans and Populists won a majority of seats in the state legislature. White Democrats worked to break up the coalition and reduce black and poor white suffrage.

In 1896 North Carolina passed a statute that made voter registration more complicated and reduced blacks on voter registration rolls. In 1898 in an election characterized by violence, fraud and intimidation of black voters, white Democrats regained power in the state legislature. They then passed a new constitution in 1900 with a suffrage amendment. Its provisions for poll taxes, literacy tests and similar mechanisms succeeded in reducing black voter turnout completely by 1904, and disfranchising many poor whites as well. Contemporary accounts estimated that 75,000 black men lost the vote. In 1900 blacks numbered 630,207 citizens, about 33% of the state's total population.

With control of the legislature, white Democrats passed Jim Crow laws establishing segregation in public facilities and transportation. It would take African Americans more than 60 years before they would regain full power to exercise the suffrage and other full rights of citizens. Without the ability to vote, they lost all chance at local offices: sheriffs, justices of the peace, jurors, county commissioners and school board members, which were the active site of government at the turn of the century. Suppression of the black vote and re-establishment of white supremacy quickly overwhelmed people's memory and knowledge of the thriving black middle class in the state.

"Native American" groups

Post-Civil War racial politics encouraged efforts to divide and coopt groups. In 1885 North Carolina passed a law sponsored by Hamilton McMillan, a Democrat from Robeson County, to create separate school districts for free persons of color of the county. They did not want to attend the schools for freedmen, where they were directed because of segregation. McMillan invented the name "Croatan Indians" and theorized that the people had descended from a friendly tribe of Indians on the Roanoke River in eastern North Carolina who had mixed with the whites in Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony in 1587 . Twelve "Croatan Indian" districts were created from districts which had formerly been classified as "Colored".. Robeson County residents switched their votes to the Democrats as a result of McMillan's efforts.

In this way the Democrats solidified their position in the legislature. They also drew racial lines in a county where they had been blurred. In 1900 the state passed laws completing the disfranchisement of former slaves and free people of color. With conservative white Democrats in control of the state legislature, the "Croatan Indians" lost much of their influence, since the Republicans were no longer competitive in the state. Thus, the 1885 law formally created three castes in Robeson County: white, Colored and "Croatan Indian." Later, there would be three sets of water fountains, seating areas, rest rooms, etc. . The group changed their name to "Cherokee Indians of Robeson County" in 1913, "Siouan Indians of Lumber River" in 1934-1935, and were given limited recognition by the U.S. Congress as Lumbee Indians in 1956.

The 1885 North Carolina bill affected the very history of Indians in the Southeast. Anthropologist James Mooney included the Croatan Indians and other mixed-race communities in his studies of the Indian tribes of the Southeast in 1907. Frank G. Speck traveled throughout the Southeast "discovering" lost tribes .

In 1887 Person County granted a separate school to a group called "old issue negroes". It was discontinued about 1896 but reestablished in 1901. Person County Indians were recognized by the state in 1911. What some researchers call "invented" North Carolina Indian tribes followed: the Sampson County Coharie Indians, Columbus County Waccamaw-Siouan Indians, and Halifax County Haliwa-Saponi Indians. Virginia recognized the former free-person-of-color community of Norfolk County as Nansemond Indians and the community in Amherst county as Monacan Indians.

Post-war economic development

During the late 19th century, North Carolina's Piedmont region developed a cotton textile industry, based in close-knit company towns. The introduction of manufacturing helped to diversify North Carolina's chiefly agricultural economy. In the early decades, African Americans were rejected for textile industry jobs because of segregation.

On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers made the first successful airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Reacting to segregation, disfranchisement and difficulties in agriculture, tens of thousands of African Americans left North Carolina for the North for better opportunities in the Great Migration, whose first wave was from 1910-1940. They went to Washington, DC; Baltimore, and Philadelphia; and sometimes further north, where there was work.

In the early 20th century, North Carolina launched both a major education initiative and a major road-building initiative to enhance the state's economy. The educational initiative was launched by Governor Charles Aycock in 1901. Supposedly, North Carolina built one school per day while Aycock was in office. In addition, North Carolina was helped by the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which contributed matching funds for the construction of thousands of schools for African Americans in rural areas throughout the South in the 1920s and 1930s.

The state's road-building initiative began in the 1920s, after the automobile became a popular mode of transportation. During the early decades of the 20th century, several major U.S. military installations, notably Fort Bragg, were located in North Carolina. There were many usable trains in the town.

North Carolina since the New Deal

In the period since the 1930s, North Carolina's reputation as an educational and manufacturing center has continued to grow. During World War II, North Carolina supplied the U.S. armed forces with diverse manufactured goods, including more textiles than any other state in the nation. North Carolina also became known for its excellent universities. Three major institutions compose the state's Research Triangle: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (chartered in 1789 and greatly expanded from the 1930s on), North Carolina State University, and Duke University (rechartered in 1924).

In 1931 the Negro Voters League was formed in Raleigh to press for voter registration. The city had an educated and politically sophisticated black middle class; by 1946 the League had succeeded in registering 7,000 black voters, an achievement in the segregated South. The work of racial desegregation and restoration of civil rights for African Americans continued throughout the state.

In 1960 nearly 25% of the state was African American: 1,114,907 citizens who had been living without full rights. African-American college students began the sit-in at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro on February 1, 1960, sparking a wave of copycat sit-ins across the American South. They continued the Greensboro sit-in sporadically for several months until, on July 25, African Americans were at last allowed to eat at Woolworth's. Integration of public facilities followed.

Together with continued activism in states throughout the South, African Americans' moral leadership gained passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Throughout the state, African Americans began to participate fully in political life. In October 1973, Clarence Lightner was elected mayor of Raleigh, making history as the first popularly elected mayor of the city, the first African American to be elected mayor, and the first African American to be elected mayor in a white-majority city of the South.

In 1971, North Carolina's third state constitution was ratified. A 1997 amendment to this constitution granted the governor veto power over most legislation.

During the last 25 years, North Carolina's population has increased as its economy has grown, especially in finance and knowledge-based industries. Most of the growth has taken place in metropolitan areas of the Piedmont, in Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Greensboro.

See also

• History of the United States

Bibliography

• William S. Powell and Jay Mazzocchi, eds. Encyclopedia of North Carolina (2006) 1320pp; 2000 articles by 550 experts on all topics; ISBN 0807830712

Surveys

• James Clay and Douglas Orr, eds., North Carolina Atlas: Portrait of a Changing Southern State (University of North Carolina Press, 1971).
• Crow; Jeffrey J. and Larry E. Tise; Writing North Carolina History University of North Carolina Press, (1979) online
• Fleer; Jack D. North Carolina Government & Politics University of Nebraska Press, (1994) online political science textbook
• Hawks; Francis L. History of North Carolina 2 vol 1857
• Marianne M. Kersey and Ran Coble, eds., North Carolina Focus: An Anthology on State Government, Politics, and Policy, 2d ed., (Raleigh: North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research, 1989).
• Lefler; Hugh Talmage. A Guide to the Study and Reading of North Carolina History University of North Carolina Press, (1963) online
• Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome, North Carolina: The History of a Southern State University of North Carolina Press (1954, 1963, 1973), standard textbook
• Paul Luebke, Tar Heel Politics: Myths and Realities (University of North Carolina Press, 1990).
• William S. Powell, North Carolina through Four Centuries University of North Carolina Press (1989), standard textbook

Secondary Sources

Pre 1900

• Eric Anderson, Race and Politics in North Carolina, 1872-1901 (Louisiana State University Press, 1981).
• Bolton; Charles C. Poor Whites of the Antebellum South: Tenants and Laborers in Central North Carolina and Northeast Mississippi Duke University Press, 1994
• A. Roger Ekirch, "Poor Carolina": Politics and Society in Colonial North Carolina, 1729-1776 (University of North Carolina Press, 1981)
• Escott; Paul D. Many Excellent People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina, 1850-1900 University of North Carolina Press, (1985) online
• Fenn, Elizabeth A. and Peter H. Wood (1983). Natives and Newcomers: The Way We Lived in North Carolina Before 1770. University of North Carolina Press.
• Gilpatrick; Delbert Harold. Jeffersonian Democracy in North Carolina, 1789-1816 Columbia University Press. (1931)
• Harris, William C. "William Woods Holden: in Search of Vindication." North Carolina Historical Review 1982 59(4): 354-372. ISSN 0029-2494
• Harris, William C. William Woods Holden, Firebrand of North Carolina Politics. Louisiana State U. Press, 1987. 332 pp.

Since 1900

• Abrams, Douglas Carl; Conservative Constraints: North Carolina and the New Deal University Press of Mississippi, 1992
• Badger, Anthony J. Prosperity Road: The New Deal, Tobacco, and North Carolina University of North Carolina Press, (1980) online
• Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 University of North Carolina Press, 1996
• Grundy, Pamela. Learning to Win: Sports, Education, and Social Change in Twentieth-Century North Carolina University of North Carolina Press, 2001
• Key, V. O. Southern Politics in State and Nation (1951)
• Pildes, Richard H. "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", Constitutional Commentary, 17, (2000).
• Puryear, Elmer L. Democratic Party Dissension in North Carolina, 1928-1936 (University of North Carolina Press, 1962).
• Taylor, Elizabeth A. "The Women's Suffrage Movement in North Carolina", North Carolina Historical Review, (January 1961): 45-62, and ibid. (April 1961): 173-89;
• Weare, Walter B. Black Business in the New South: A Social History of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company University of Illinois Press, 1993
• Wood, Phillip J. Southern Capitalism: The Political Economy of North Carolina, 1880-1980 Duke University Press, 1986

Primary sources

• Lindley S. Butler and Alan D. Watson, eds., The North Carolina Experience:An Interpretive and Documentary History (University of North Carolina Press, 1984), essays by historians and selected related primary sources.
• John L. Cheney, Jr., ed., North Carolina Government, 1585-1979: A Narrative and Statistical History (Raleigh: Department of the Secretary of State, 1981)
• Jack Claiborne and William Price, eds. Discovering North Carolina: A Tar Heel Reader (University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
• Memoirs of W. W. Holden (1911) complete text
• Holden, William Woods. The Papers of William Woods Holden. Vol. 1: 1841-1868. Horace Raper and Thornton W. Mitchell, ed. Raleigh, Division of Arch. and Hist., Dept. of Cultural Resources, 2000. 457 pp.
• Hugh Lefler, North Carolina History Told by Contemporaries (University of North Carolina Press, numerous editions since 1934)
• H. G. Jones, North Carolina Illustrated, 1524-1984 (University of North Carolina Press, 1984)
• Yearns, W. Buck and John G. Barret; North Carolina Civil War Documentary (University of North Carolina Press, 1980)
• North Carolina Manual, published biennially by the Department of the Secretary of State since 1941.

External links

• North Carolina Museum of History
• North Carolina Encyclopedia
• North Carolina Highway Historical Markers