NORTH CAROLINA

NORTH CAROLINA. 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

Barrett, John G. The Civil War in North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963.

Bell, John L., Jr., and Jeffrey J. Crow. North Carolina: The History of an American State. 2d ed. Montgomery, Ala.: Clairmont Press, 1998.

Crow, Jeffrey J., et al. A History of African Americans in North Carolina. Raleigh, N.C.: Division of Archives and History, 1992.

Durden, Robert F. The Dukes of Durham, 1865–1929. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1975.

Ekirch, A. Roger. "Poor Carolina": Politics and Society in Colonial North Carolina, 1729–1776. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.

Escott, Paul D. Many Excellent People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina, 1850–1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

Glass, Brent D. The Textile Industry in North Carolina: A History. Raleigh, N.C.: Division of Archives and History, 1992.

Ireland, Robert E. Entering the Auto Age: The Early Automobile in North Carolina, 1900–1930. Raleigh, N.C.: Division of Archives and History, 1990.

Lefler, Hugh T., and Albert R. Newsome. North Carolina: The History of a Southern State. 3d ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973.

Luebke, Paul. Tar Heel Politics: Myths and Realities. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.

Powell, William S. North Carolina through Four Centuries. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

John L.Bell

See alsoDemocratic Party ; Federalist Party ; Hydroelectric Power ; Reconstruction ; Republicans, Jeffersonian ; Two-Party System .

North Carolina state in the SE United States. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean (E), South Carolina and Georgia (S), Tennessee (W), and Virginia (N).

Facts and Figures

Area, 52,586 sq mi (136,198 sq km). Pop. (2000) 8,049,313, a 21.4% increase since the 1990 census. Capital, Raleigh. Largest city, Charlotte. Statehood, Nov. 21, 1789 (12th of the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution). Highest pt., Mt. Mitchell, 6,684 ft (2,039 m); lowest pt., sea level. Nickname, Tar Heel State. Motto,Esse Quam Videri [To Be Rather than to Seem]. State bird, cardinal. State flower, dogwood. State tree, pine. Abbr., N.C.; NC

Geography

The eastern end of North Carolina juts out from the East Coast of the United States into the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, making the state prone to Atlantic hurricanes, which tend to strike the state every three to four years. Running along the entire coast of North Carolina, serving as a buffer against the Atlantic, is a long chain of barrier islands (the Outer Banks ), with constantly shifting sand dunes, from which project three famous capes—Hatteras, Lookout, and Fear. Between the islands and the shoreline stretch lagoons—Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound are the largest—that receive the Chowan, Roanoke, Tar, Neuse, and Cape Fear rivers. Wilmington , the chief port, is at the head of the Cape Fear estuary. The mainland bordering the sounds is low, flat tidewater country, often swampy, even beyond the Dismal Swamp in the north. In the upper coastal plain the land rises gradually from the tidewater, reaching 500 ft (152 m) at the fall line.

There begins the Piedmont, a rolling hill country with many swift streams such as the Broad River; the Catawba; and the Pee Dee, with its three large dams. The hydroelectric power these rivers generate has made this an important manufacturing area, and the Piedmont is home to most of the state's population and its largest cities. At the western edge of the Piedmont the land rises abruptly in the Blue Ridge, then dips down to several basins, and rises again in the Great Smoky Mts. Asheville is the leading urban center of this mountain region. Mt. Mitchell (6,684 ft/2,037 m) is the highest peak east of the Mississippi River. The French Broad River, the Watauga, and other rivers rising west of the Blue Ridge flow into the Mississippi system, almost all via the Tennessee River.

North Carolina, in the warm temperate zone, has a generally mild climate, with abundant and well distributed rainfall. The state's congenial climate, its many miles of beaches, and its beautiful mountains attract large numbers of visitors and vacationers each year. Chief among the tourist attractions are the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the Cape Lookout National Seashore, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Great Smoky Mts. National Park. Wildlife abounds in national forests (the state has four) and in the Dismal Swamp. Places of historic interest include Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, on Roanoke Island; the Wright Brothers National Memorial, at Kitty Hawk; Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, at Flatrock; and Guilford Courthouse and Moores Creek national military parks.

One of the largest military reservations in the nation is at Fort Bragg, near Fayetteville, and the huge Marine Corps amphibious training base is at Camp Lejeune, near the mouth of the New River. Raleigh is the capital and the second largest city. The largest city is Charlotte ; other major cities include Greensboro , Winston-Salem , and Asheville .

Economy

North Carolina leads the nation in the production of tobacco and is a major producer of textiles and furniture. It grows 40% of all U.S. tobacco, but the continuing trend is toward diversification. Broilers, hogs, turkeys, greenhouse products, sweet potatoes, corn, soybeans, peanuts, and eggs are important. Plentiful forests supply the thriving furniture and lumber industries. The state has long been a major textile manufacturer, producing cotton, synthetic, and silk goods as well as various kinds of knit items. Other leading manufactures are electrical machinery, computers, and chemicals; the Research Triangle complex near Chapel Hill has spurred high-tech manufacturing, as well as bringing federal jobs into the state. The state also has mineral resources: It leads the nation in the production of feldspar, mica, and lithium materials and produces substantial quantities of olivine, crushed granite, talc, clays, and phosphate rock. There are valuable coastal fisheries, with shrimp, menhaden, and crabs the principal catches. Charlotte developed in the 1980s into a major U.S. banking center, and related businesses have flourished in the area.

Government and Higher Education

North Carolina's first constitution was adopted in 1776. Its present constitution dates from 1868 but was thoroughly revised in 1875–76 as a result of Reconstruction experiences; it has been amended many times since. The state's executive branch is headed by a governor elected for a four-year term. North Carolina's general assembly has a senate with 50 members and a house with 120 members, all elected for two-year terms. The state elects 2 senators and 13 representatives to the U.S. Congress and has 15 electoral votes. James B. Hunt, Jr., a Democrat, was elected governor in 1992 and reelected in 1996. In 2000, Democrat Mike Easley won the governorship; he was reelected in 2004. Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat, won in the post in 2008, becoming the state's first woman governor.

The state's notable institutions of higher learning include the Univ. of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill and four other campuses; Duke Univ., at Durham; North Carolina State Univ., at Raleigh; Wake Forest Univ. and the North Carolina School of the Arts, at Winston-Salem; East Carolina Univ., at Greenville; North Carolina Agricultural and Technical Univ., at Greensboro; and Appalachian State Univ., at Boone.

History

Exploration and Colonization

North Carolina's treacherous coast was explored by Verrazano in 1524, and possibly by some Spanish navigators. In the 1580s, Sir Walter Raleigh attempted unsuccessfully to establish a colony on one of the islands (see Roanoke Island ). The first permanent settlements were made (c.1653) around Albemarle Sound by colonials from Virginia. Meanwhile, Charles I of England had granted (1629) the territory S of Virginia between the 36th and 31st parallels (named Carolina in the king's honor) to Sir Robert Heath. Heath did not exploit his grant, and it was declared void in 1663. Charles II reassigned the territory to eight court favorites, who became the "true and absolute Lords Proprietors" of Carolina. In 1664, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia and one of the proprietors, appointed a governor for the province of Albemarle, which after 1691 was known as North Carolina.

By 1700 there were only some 4,000 freeholders, predominantly of English stock, along Albemarle Sound. There, with the labor of indentured servants and African- and Native-American slaves, they raised tobacco, corn, and livestock, mostly on small farms. The people were semi-isolated; only vessels of light draft could negotiate the narrow and shallow passages through the island barriers. Furthermore, communication by land was almost impossible, except with Virginia, and even then swamps and forests made it difficult. There was some trade (primarily with Virginia, New England, and Bermuda).

In 1712, North Carolina was made a separate colony. The destructive war with Native Americans of the Tuscarora tribe broke out that year. The Tuscarora were defeated, and in 1714 the remnants of the tribe moved north to join the Iroquois Confederacy. A long, bitter boundary dispute with Virginia was partially settled in 1728 when a joint commission ran the boundary line 240 mi (386 km) inland.

The British government made North Carolina a royal colony in 1729. Thereafter the region developed more rapidly. The Native Americans were gradually pushed beyond the Appalachians as the Piedmont was increasingly occupied. German and Scotch-Irish settlers followed the valleys down from Pennsylvania, and Highland Scots established themselves along the Cape Fear River. These varied ethnic elements, in addition to smaller groups of Swiss, French, and Welsh that had migrated to the region earlier in the century, gradually amalgamated. There has been little new immigration since colonial days, and North Carolina's white population is now largely homogeneous.

Resistance and Revolution

In 1768 the back-country farmers, justifiably enraged by the excessive taxes imposed by a legislature dominated by the eastern aristocracy, organized the Regulator movement in an attempt to effect reforms. The insurgents were suppressed at Alamance in 1771 by the provincial militia led by Gov. William Tryon, who had seven of the Regulators executed.

After the outbreak of the American Revolution, royal authority collapsed. A provisional government was set up, the disputed Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was allegedly promulgated (May, 1775), and the provincial congress instructed (Apr. 12, 1776) the colony's delegates to the Continental Congress to support complete independence from Britain. Most Loyalists, including Highland Scots, fled North Carolina after their defeat (Feb. 27, 1776) at the battle of Moores Creek Bridge near Wilmington. The British, however, did not give up hope of Tory assistance in the state until their failure in the Carolina campaign (1780–81). The designation of North Carolinians as "Tar Heels" was said to have originated during that campaign when patriotic citizens poured tar into a stream across which Cornwallis's men retreated, emerging with the substance sticking to their heels.

Westward Expansion and Civic Improvements

Settlements had been established beyond the mountains before the Revolution (see Watauga Association and Transylvania Company ) and were increased after the war. In 1784 North Carolina ceded its western lands to the United States, spurring the transmontane people to organize a new, short-lived government (see Franklin, State of ). Within the year North Carolina repealed the act ceding the land; however, the cession was reenacted in 1789, and that territory became (1796) the state of Tennessee.

North Carolina opposed a strong central government and did not ratify the Constitution until Nov., 1789, months after the new U.S. government had begun to function. Little social and economic progress was made under the state's undemocratic constitution (framed in 1776), which largely served the interests of the politically dominant, tidewater planter aristocracy, and North Carolina appeared to be on the verge of revolution.

In 1835, however, the western part of the state, now its most populous section, finally succeeded in enacting a constitution that abolished the property and religious qualifications for voting and holding office (except for Jews) and provided for the popular election of governors. In the same year began the final forced removal of most of the Cherokee ; but to check the steady, voluntary outmigration of whites, internal improvements, especially the building of railroads and plank roads, were effected. The Public School Law (1839) inaugurated free education, and other important reforms were instituted. The period of progress continued until the Civil War.

Secession and Civil War

Few North Carolinians held slaves, and considerable antislavery sentiment existed until the 1830s, when organized agitation by Northern abolitionists began, provoking a defensive reaction that North Carolinians shared with most Southerners. Yet it was a native of the state, Hinton Rowan Helper , who made the most notable southern contribution to antislavery literature. Not until President Lincoln's call for troops after the firing on Fort Sumter did the state secede and join (May, 1861) the Confederacy. The coast was ideal for blockade-running, and the last important Confederate port to fall (Jan., 1865) was Wilmington (see Fort Fisher ).

Gov. Zebulon B. Vance zealously defended the state's rights against what he considered encroachments by the Confederate government. Although many small engagements were fought on North Carolina soil, the state was not seriously invaded until almost the end of the war when Gen. William Sherman and his huge army moved north from Georgia. After engagements at Averasboro and Bentonville in Mar., 1865, Confederate Gen. J. E. Johnston surrendered (Apr. 26, 1865) to Sherman near Durham; next to Lee's capitulation at Appomattox, it was the largest (and almost the last) surrender of the war.

Reconstruction and Agrarian Revolt

In May, 1865, President Andrew Johnson applied his plan of Reconstruction to the state. The radical Republicans in Congress, however, adopted their own scheme in 1867, and the Carolinas, organized as the second military district, were again occupied by federal troops. The Reconstruction constitution of 1868 abolished slavery, removed all religious tests for holding office, and provided for the popular election of all state and county officials. In 1871 the legislature, with conservatives again in control, impeached and convicted Gov. William H. Holden.

The often maligned period of Reconstruction actually saw the beginning of the modern state, with a tremendous rise in industry in the Piedmont. Increased use of tobacco in the Civil War stimulated the growth of tobacco manufacturing (first centered at Durham), and the introduction of the cigarette-making machine in the early 1880s was an immense boon to the industry, creating tobacco barons such as James B. Duke and R. J. Reynolds.

Agriculture, however, was in a critically depressed condition. The old plantation system had been replaced by farm tenancy, which long remained the dominant system of holding land. Much farm property was destroyed, credit was largely unavailable, and transportation systems broke down. The nationwide agrarian revolt reached North Carolina in the Granger movement (1875), the Farmers' Alliance (1887), and the Populist party , which united with the Republicans to carry the state elections in 1894 and 1896. However, the Fusionists (as members of the alliance were called) were blamed for the rise of black control in many tidewater towns and counties, and in the election of 1898, when the Red Shirts, like the Ku Klux Klan of Reconstruction days, were active, the Democrats regained control.

Progress in the Twentieth Century

The turn of the century marked the beginning of a new progressive era, typified by the successful airplane experiments of the Wright Brothers near Kitty Hawk. The crusade for public education for both whites and blacks led by Gov. Charles B. Aycock, elected in 1900, had a wide impact, and new interest was created in developing the state's agricultural and industrial resources. However, one old pattern was strengthened when a suffrage amendment, the "grandfather clause" assuring white supremacy, was added (1900) to the state constitution.

Since World War I the state government has increasingly followed a policy of consolidation and centralization, taking over the public school system and the supervision of county finances and roads. A huge highway development program, begun by the counties in 1921, was assumed by the state a decade later when the counties could no longer meet the costs. Expenditures for higher education were greatly increased, and the three major state educational institutions were merged into a greater entity, the Univ. of North Carolina. North Carolina, more than many other Southern states, was able to make a peaceful adjustment to integration in the public schools following the Supreme Court's desegregation ruling in 1954.

Industrialization burgeoned after World War II, and in the 1950s the value of manufactured goods surpassed that of agriculture for the first time, as North Carolina became the leading industrial state in the Southeast. The Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham airports were both transformed into major air-travel hubs during the 1980s, reflecting the tremendous growth (most of it suburban) in those metropolitan areas, which were becoming financial, business, and research boomtowns. Traditional, low-skill industries have been gradually replaced by high-technology concerns, especially in the Research Triangle between Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, which draws on the resources of the three cities' universities. Farming in North Carolina has become increasingly dominated by the large-scale production of hogs and broiler chickens, raising environmental concerns about the disposal of their waste. In Sept., 1999, floods on the Cape Fear and other rivers followed Hurricane Floyd, causing widespread devastation in the southeast.

Bibliography

See Federal Writers' Project, The North Carolina Guide, ed. by B. P. Robinson (rev. ed. 1955); J. H. Wheeler, ed., Historical Sketches of North Carolina from 1584 to 1851 (from original records, 1964); J. Brickell, The Natural History of North Carolina (1737, repr. 1969); H. T. Lefler and A. R. Newsome, North Carolina: The History of a Southern State (3d ed. 1973); H. T. Lefler and W. S. Powell, Colonial North Carolina: A History (1973); J. W. Clay, North Carolina Atlas (1975); J. Vickers et al., Chapel Hill: An Illustrated History (1985); J. Crutchfield, The North Carolina Almanac and Book of Facts (1989).

NORTH CAROLINA

Charlotte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

Greensboro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

Raleigh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389

The State in Brief

Nickname: Tar Heel State; Old North State

Motto: Esse quam videri (To be rather than to seem)

Flower: Dogwood

Bird: Cardinal

Area: 53,818 square miles (2000, U.S. rank: 28th)

Elevation: Ranges from sea level to 6,684 feet above sea level

Climate: Warm and mild with abundant rainfall; subtropical in southeast, cooler in the mountains

Admitted to Union: November 21, 1789

Capital: Raleigh

Head Official: Governor Mike F. Easley (D) (until 2009)

Population

1980: 5,882,000

1990: 6,628,637

2000: 8,049,313

2004 estimate: 8,541,221

Percent change, 1990–2000: 21.4%

U.S. rank in 2004: 11th

Percent of residents born in state: 63.0% (2000)

Density: 165.2 people per square mile (2000)

2002 FBI Crime Index Total: 392,826

Racial and Ethnic Characteristics (2000)

White: 5,804,656

Black or African American: 1,737,545

American Indian and Alaska Native: 99,551

Asian: 113,689

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 3,983

Hispanic or Latino (may be of any race): 378,963

Other: 186,629

Age Characteristics (2000)

Population under 5 years old: 539,509

Population 5 to 19 years old: 1,653,851

Percent 65 years and older: 12.0%

Median age: 35.3 years (2000)

Vital Statistics

Total number of births (2003): 117,981

Total number of deaths (2003): 73,443 (infant deaths,931)

AIDS cases reported through 2003: 6,545

Economy

Major industries: Textiles, agriculture, tobacco, furniture, bricks, metalworking, chemicals, paper, tourism, manufacturing

Unemployment rate: 5.2% (December 2004)

Per capita income: $28,301 (2003; U.S. rank: 37th)

Median household income: $38,096 (3-year average,2001-2003)

Percentage of persons below poverty level: 14.2% (3-year average, 2001-2003)

Income tax rate: Ranges from 6.0% to 8.25%

Sales tax rate: 4.5% (food and prescription drugs are exempt; food sales are subject to local sales taxes)

North Carolina, USA See Carolina.