History of North Carolina
Spanish colonial forces were the first
Europeans to make a permanent settlement in the area, when the Juan Pardo
expedition built Fort San Juan in 1567. This was sited at Joara, a Mississippian
culture regional chiefdom near present-day Morganton in the western interior. It
lasted only 18 months as the natives killed all but one of the 120 men Pardo had
stationed at a total of six forts in area.
North Carolina became one of the English
thirteen colonies, and was originally known as Province of Carolina. Originally
settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented
toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked cities or even towns. The
menace of pirates along the seacoast settlement, but by 1718 the pirates had
been captured and executed. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century,
as the economy attracted Scotch-Irish, Quaker, and German immigrants. The
colonists strongly supported the American Revolution, and there was some
military action especially in 1780-81. About 8,000 men joined the Continental
Army under General George Washington, well over 10,000 served in local militia
units under such leaders as General Nathanael Greene. Many Carolinian
frontiersman had moved over the mountains into Tennessee, and the state
relinquished its claims to his Tennessee to the national government in 1789.
After 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops, and the eastern
half of the state developed a plantation system based on slavery, while the
western areas were dominated by white families who operated small farms. In the
early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian Democracy and
Jacksonian Democracy with a strong Whig presence especially in the West.
On May 20, 1861, North Carolina was the last of
the Confederate states to declare secession from the Union. Some 125,000 North
Carolinians saw military service; 20,000 were killed in battle and 21,000 died
of disease. The state government was reluctant to support the demands of the
national government in Richmond, and the state was the scene of only small
battles. With the end of the war in 1865, the Reconstruction Era began, slavery
was abolished without any compensation to the slave-holders, or reparations to
the freedmen. A coalition of black Freedmen, northern Carpetbaggers, and local
Scalawags controlled state government for three years but the white
conservatives were back in control by 1871. The system of Jim Crow and legal
segregation made the blacks into second-class citizens from the 1880s until
1964. Angry memories of Reconstruction helped make the Democratic Party dominant
in state and national elections. By the 1960s, changing party politics, and the
passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, significantly reversed the role of
Democrat and Republican parties in the South.
North Carolina was impoverished
by the Civil War, and became increasingly locked into a cotton economy. Towns
and cities remained few in the east, but a major industrial base emerged in the
late 19th century in the western counties based on cotton mills. The state was
the site of the first successful controlled, powered and sustained
heavier-than-air flight, by the Wright brothers, near Kitty Hawk on December 17,
1903. North Carolina was hard hit by the Great Depression, but the New Deal's
farm programs for cotton and tobacco significantly helped the farmers. After
World War II, the state's economy grew rapidly, highlighted by the growth of
such cities as Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham. In the 1990s, Charlotte became a
major regional and national banking center.
Native Americans, lost colonies, and permanent settlement
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Map of the coast of Virginia
and North Carolina, drawn 1585–1586 by Theodor de Bry, based on map
by John White of the Roanoke Colon |
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Map of the coast of Virginia
and North Carolina, drawn 1585–1586 by Theodor de Bry, based on map
by John White of the Roanoke Colony |
North Carolina was originally
inhabited by many different prehistoric native cultures. Before 200 AD, they
were building earthwork mounds, which were used for ceremonial and religious
purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the ancient Mississippian
culture established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont, continued to build or add on to
such mounds. In the 500–700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian
culture built large, complex cities and maintained far flung regional trading
networks. Historically documented tribes in the North Carolina region included
the Carolina Algonquian-speaking tribes of the coastal areas, such as the
Chowanoke, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, Coree, Cape Fear Indians, and others,
who were the first encountered by the English; Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin,
Cherokee and Tuscarora of the interior; and Southeastern Siouan tribes, such as
the Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, and Catawba.
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Sir Walter Raleigh returns to
find the colony abandoned |
Spanish explorers traveling
inland in the 16th century met the Mississippian culture people at Joara, a
regional chiefdom near present-day Morganton. Records of Hernando de Soto
attested to his meeting with them in 1540. In 1567 Captain Juan Pardo led an
expedition into the interior to claim the area for the Spanish colony, as well
as establish another route to protect silver mines in Mexico. Pardo made a
winter base at Joara, which he renamed Cuenca.
The expedition built Fort San Juan and left 30 men, while Pardo traveled
further, and built and staffed five other forts. He returned by a different
route to Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, then a center of Spanish
Florida. In the spring of 1568, natives killed all but one of the soldiers and
burned the six forts in the interior, including the one at Fort San Juan.
Although the Spanish never returned to the interior, this marked the first
European attempt at colonization of the interior of what became the United
States. A 16th-century journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera and archaeological
findings since 1986 at Joara have confirmed the settlement.
In 1584, Elizabeth I, granted a charter to Sir
Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present-day
North Carolina (then Virginia). Raleigh
established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, both ending in failure.
It was the second American territory the English attempted to colonize. The
demise of one, the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island, remains one of the mysteries
of American history. Virginia Dare, the first English child to be born in North
America, was born on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587. Dare County is named for
her.
As early as 1650, colonists from the Virginia
colony moved into the area of Albemarle Sound. By 1663, King Charles II of
England granted a charter to start a new colony on the North American continent
which generally established its borders. He named it Carolina in
honor of his father Charles I. By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt
to resolve territorial questions. In 1710, due to disputes over governance, the
Carolina colony began to split into North Carolina and South Carolina. The
latter became a crown colony in 1729. Smallpox took a heavy toll in the South.
The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one-half of the Cherokee, with other
tribes of the area suffering equally.
Colonial
Period and Revolutionary War
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Reconstructed royal governor's mansion
Tryon Palace in New Bern |
The first permanent European settlers of North
Carolina after the Spanish in the 16th century were English colonists who
migrated south from Virginia, following a rapid growth of the colony and the
subsequent shortage of available farmland. Nathaniel Batts was documented as one
of the first of these Virginian migrants. He settled south of the Chowan River
and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655. By 1663, this northeastern area of
the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was undergoing
full-scale British settlement. During the same period, the English monarch
Charles II gave the province to the Lords Proprietors, a group of noblemen who
had helped restore Charles to the throne in 1660. The new province of "Carolina"
was named in honor and memory of King Charles I (Latin: Carolus).
In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony. Except for the Earl Granville
holdings, it became a royal colony seventeen years later.
Differences in the settlement patterns of
eastern and western North Carolina, or the low country and uplands, affected the
political, economic, and social life of the state from the eighteenth until the
twentieth century. The Tidewater in eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly
by immigrants from rural England and the Scottish Highlands. The upcountry of
western North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish, English and German
Protestants, the so-called "cohee". Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th
century, the Scots-Irish from Ireland were the largest immigrant group before
the Revolution. During the Revolutionary War, the English and Highland Scots of
eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of
longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain. The English,
Welsh, Scots-Irish and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor
American independence from Britain.
Most of the English colonists arrived as
indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay
for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and
African slaves or laborers was fluid. Some Africans were allowed to earn their
freedom before slavery became a lifelong status. Most of the free colored
families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from
unions or marriages between free white women and enslaved or free African or
African-American men. Because the mothers were free, their children were born
free. Many had migrated or were descendants of migrants from colonial Virginia.
As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving
economic conditions in Great Britain, more slaves were imported and the state's
restrictions on slavery hardened. The economy's growth and prosperity was based
on slave labor, devoted first to the production of tobacco.
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1st Maryland Regiment holding the line
at the Battle of Guilford. |
On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first
to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence
from the British crown, through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North
Carolina Provincial Congress. The dates of both of these events are memorialized
on the state flag and state seal. Throughout the Revolutionary War, fierce
guerrilla warfare erupted between bands of pro-independence and pro-British
colonists. In some cases the war was also an excuse to settle private grudges
and rivalries. A major American victory in the war took place at King's Mountain
along the North Carolina–South Carolina border. On October 7, 1780 a force of
1000 mountain men from western North Carolina (including what is today the State
of Tennessee) overwhelmed a force of some 1000 British troops led by Major
Patrick Ferguson. Most of the British soldiers in this battle were Carolinians
who had remained loyal to the British Crown (they were called "Tories"). The
American victory at Kings Mountain gave the advantage to colonists who favored
American independence, and it prevented the British Army from recruiting new
soldiers from the Tories.
The road to Yorktown and America's independence
from Great Britain led through North Carolina. As the British Army moved north
from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division
of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following
General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre
Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander
Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of
North Carolina, and away from Cornwallis's base of supply in Charleston, South
Carolina. This campaign is known as "The Race to the Dan" or "The Race for the
River."
Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at
the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781.
Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their
casualties at the hands of the numerically superior American Army were
crippling. Following this "Pyrrhic victory", Cornwallis chose to move to the
Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the Royal Navy to protect
his battered army. This decision would result in Cornwallis's eventual defeat at
Yorktown, Virginia later in 1781. The Patriots' victory there guaranteed
American independence.
Antebellum
period
On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the
twelfth state to ratify the Constitution. In 1840, it completed the state
capitol building in Raleigh, still standing today. Most of North Carolina's
slave owners and large plantations were located in the eastern portion of the
state. Although North Carolina's plantation system was smaller and less cohesive
than those of Virginia, Georgia or South Carolina, there were significant
numbers of planters concentrated in the counties around the port cities of
Wilmington and Edenton, as well as suburban planters around the cities of
Raleigh, Charlotte and Durham. Planters owning large estates wielded significant
political and socio-economic power in antebellum North Carolina, placing their
interests above those of the generally non-slave holding "yeoman" farmers of
Western North Carolina. In mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas
were connected by the construction of a 129–mile (208 km) wooden plank road,
known as a "farmer's railroad", from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania
(northwest of Winston-Salem).
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Map of the roads and railroads of
North Carolina, 1854 |
Besides slaves, there were a number of free
people of color in the state. Most were descended from free African Americans
who had migrated along with neighbors from Virginia during the eighteenth
century. After the Revolution, Quakers and Mennonites worked to persuade
slaveholders to free their slaves. Some were inspired by their efforts and the
language of men's rights, to arrange for manumission of their slaves. The number
of free people of color rose markedly in the first couple of decades after the
Revolution.
On October 25, 1836 construction began on the
Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to connect the port city of Wilmington with the
state capital of Raleigh. In 1849 the North Carolina Railroad was created by act
of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and
Charlotte. During the Civil War the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the
railroad would be vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into
Wilmington would be moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of
Richmond, Virginia.
During the antebellum period, North Carolina
was an overwhelmingly rural state, even by Southern standards. In 1860 only one
North Carolina town, the port city of Wilmington, had a population of more than
10,000. Raleigh, the state capital, had barely more than 5,000 residents.
While slaveholding was slightly less
concentrated than in some Southern states, according to the 1860 census, more
than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population of 992,622 were enslaved
African-Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the eastern
Tidewater. In addition, 30,463 free people of color lived in the state. They
were also concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially at port cities
such as Wilmington and New Bern where they had access to a variety of jobs. Free
African Americans were allowed to vote until 1835, when the state revoked their
right to vote.
American Civil War
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Union captures Fort Fisher, 1865. |
In 1860, North Carolina was a slave state, in
which about one-third of the population of 992,622 were enslaved African
Americans. This was a smaller proportion than many Southern states. In addition,
the state had just over 30,000 Free Negroes. The state did not vote to join the
Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its
sister-state, South Carolina, becoming the last or second to last state to
officially join the Confederacy. The title of "last to join the Confederacy" has
been disputed because Tennessee informally seceded on May 7, 1861, making North
Carolina the last to secede on May 20, 1861. However, the Tennessee legislature
did not formally vote to secede until June 8, 1861.
North Carolina was the site of few battles, but
it provided at least 125,000 troops to the Confederacy— far more than any other
state. Approximately 40,000 of those troops never returned home, dying of
disease, battlefield wounds, and starvation. North Carolina also supplied about
15,000 Union troops. Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to
maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in
Richmond.
Even after secession, some North Carolinians
refused to support the Confederacy. This was particularly true of
non-slave-owning farmers in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region.
Some of these farmers remained neutral during the war, while some covertly
supported the Union cause during the conflict. Approximately 2,000 North
Carolinians from western North Carolina enlisted in the Union Army and fought
for the North in the war, and two additional Union Army regiments were raised in
the coastal areas of the state that were occupied by Union forces in 1862 and
1863.
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Bennett Place historic
site in Durham, North Carolina |
Even so, Confederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in
virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the
Confederacy's most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was
at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph
Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the
Carolinas in the spring of 1865. In April 1865, after losing the Battle of
Morrisville, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today
Durham, North Carolina. This was the last major Confederate Army to surrender.
North Carolina's port city of Wilmington was the last Confederate port to fall
to the Union. It fell in the spring of 1865 after the nearby Second Battle of
Fort Fisher.
The first Confederate soldier to be killed in
the Civil War was Private Henry Wyatt, a North Carolinian. He was killed in the
Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the
26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and
advanced the farthest into the Northern lines of any Confederate regiment.
During the Battle of Chickamauga the 58th North Carolina Regiment advanced
farther than any other regiment on Snodgrass Hill to push back the remaining
Union forces from the battlefield. At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in
April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last
shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. For many
years, North Carolinians proudly boasted that they had been "First at Bethel,
Farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox."
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