North Carolina history

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The history of North Carolina , one in the southeast of the United States lying state , begins by artifacts used and excavations prehistoric settlement of the region by Native Americans . Europeans first set foot in the area in 1524, and real history begins with the colonization of the region by British settlers around 1580. The first colony was established on the island of Roanoke . North Carolina is one of the original Thirteen Colonies and was named after the English King Charles I ( Latin : Carolus). The province of Carolina existed until 1729 and later split into two parts that now form the states of North and South Carolina . After the declaration of independence and the detachment of the province from the British Crown, North Carolina became the 12th state in the Union. During the Civil War , North Carolina sided with the Confederate States of America as a traditional slave-owning state on May 20, 1861, and adhered to racial segregation even after re-entry into the Union on July 4, 1868 into the 20th century. The Wright brothers' first successful flight took place in Kitty Hawk , North Carolina in 1903 . Until the beginning of the 21st century, the image of the agricultural state changed due to various political measures towards an up-and-coming and economically successful part of the United States.

Native and English colonization

Main articles: North American Indians , Roanoke (colony) , History of the United States

Originally, North Carolina was inhabited by many different Native American tribes. When the first European, Giovanni da Verrazzano , entered the country in 1524 in search of a passage into the Pacific, the Cherokee , Tuscarora , Muskogee , Cheraw , Tutelo , Catawba and some smaller tribes related to the Iroquois and Algonquians settled Tribes, the land. After crossing Europe, Verrazano first met the Cape Fear headland and then sailed north along the offshore Outer Banks .

Sixty years later, in 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted the namesake of the present-day capital of North Carolina, Sir Walter Raleigh , permission to found a colony called Virginia in North America and to colonize the continent. On the coast of North Carolina, the first attempt at permanent colonization of the continent by English-speaking settlers led by Ralph Lanes was made in the 1580s, but it failed.

The second attempt, directed by John Winter and also initiated by Raleigh, began in the spring of 1587 with 110 settlers, among whom were 17 women and nine children. The group arrived near Cape Hatteras in June 1587 and settled on the island of Roanoke , where they found the houses of the previous settlement attempt. After the arrival there were only two recorded events: two "friendly" Indians were converted and on August 18, 1587 a baby was born. Virginia Dare, the girl's name, was the first child to be born in the New World to English-speaking settlers. Dare County was later named in her honor.

The settlers encountered great difficulties and when supplies ran out they forced White to return to England to fetch supplies. Once in England, White was unable to return to Roanoke immediately because of an impending attack by the Spanish Armada . When he finally returned to the island in 1590, he found only the remains of the settlement there. There were no signs of life, the only clue was the word "CROATAN" that had been carved into one of the surrounding trees. Despite much speculation, it could never be clarified what really happened in the settlement and with the settlers and the second English attempt at settlement, the Lost Colony is considered one of the most mysterious events in American history.

Development of the Carolina colony between 1663 and 1776

Around 1650, settlers from Virginia moved from the north to the area around Albemarle Sound , in 1663 Charles II allowed the establishment of a new colony on the North American continent and established the district for it. He handed the land over to eight Lord Proprietors and named the new colony "Carolina" in honor of his father Charles I (Latin Carolus ). Another decree from 1665 regulated territorial disagreements. In 1705, Bath , the first city in what is now North Carolina, was founded by British explorer John Lawson . Carolina began to split in 1710 due to differences in government, and North Carolina and South Carolina were formed. The latter became an English crown colony in 1729 , which means that the separation was officially completed.

The different settlement structures of the eastern and western regions of the colony had a decisive influence on the political, economic and social development of North Carolina from the 18th to the 20th century. The coastal plain in the east was predominantly settled by immigrants from England and the Scottish Highlands , while the higher-lying area in the west was built on by the so-called Cohee , poor settlers of Scottish- Irish origin and Protestants of German descent. During the late 18th century, the group of Scottish-Irish immigrants was the largest to come from the British Isles. The English and the Scots from the Highlands tended to be loyal to the Crown due to longstanding private and business ties, while the settlers in the west of the colony tended to favor America's independence from England.

Revolt of the regulators

In the late 1760s, tensions arose between the farmers of the Piedmont , mainly residents of Orange , Anson and Granville Counties , and the wealthy planters of the coastal regions, who culminated in the regulator movement . Due to their very modest cash reserves, it was almost impossible for the farmers in the interior to pay the taxes and duties and they resisted the consequent downsizing of their property by selling and pledging to cover the tax debt. The apparent waste of public money by Governor William Tryon to build a new seat of government in New Bern broke the barrel for the farmers, who mainly come from the lower classes of the population.

The main aim of the so-called regulators was to establish a democratic representative body, but since the western regions of North Carolina were underrepresented in the government of the colony, it was difficult for the farmers to enforce themselves legally and to fight the corruption of the colonial servants. Ultimately, the frustrated farmers took up arms and occupied the Hillsborough courthouse . After a few minor skirmishes, the serious threat to the supremacy of the ruling class led Tryon to send troops to the crisis region. He defeated the regulators on May 16, 1771 at the Battle of Alamance , not far from today's Burlington , ending the seven-year uprising. The captive leaders were hanged and many of the surviving regulators moved further west to Tennessee after losing the battle .

Some historians see this uprising as one of the contributing factors for the outbreak, or already one of the first military acts, the American War of Independence , although the discontent was directed not against the crown itself but against the corruption in the public offices of the colony.

North Carolina during the Revolutionary War

Main article: American War of Independence

Most of the English colonists were contract workers who sold their labor for a period of time to cover the cost of the passage to America. Initially, the boundaries between contract workers and African slaves and workers were fluid, and some Africans were given the opportunity to earn their freedom before slavery became a life-long status. Most of the free families of African descent that existed in North Carolina before the revolution came from relationships or marriages between free white women and free or enslaved African or African-American men. Many had immigrated from the colony of Virginia or were the descendants of such immigrants. When the supply of contract workers from England waned due to improved living conditions in the British Isles, more and more slaves were imported and the legal regulations on slavery tightened. The prosperity and economic growth were based on slave labor, in the early years mainly in the area of tobacco cultivation .

In Charlotte, Mecklenburg County residents allegedly made the first declaration of independence during the American Revolution on May 20, 1775, but there are no sources and no references to such a declaration in the newspapers of that year. The earliest copy of the document appeared in 1819 and was formulated from memory. Expressions such as "the rights of man" sound like adoptions from the French Revolution and were not in use in 1775. There is no further evidence for the existence of the original document, but the date of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is still used in the seal and flag of the current state of North Carolina.

On April 12, 1776, the fourth Provincial Congress , the Congress of the Province of North Carolina, decided to declare independence from the British Crown. This made North Carolina the first colony to authorize its delegates to the second continental congress to renounce England through the so-called Halifax Resolves . This event in the history of the state's independence is also commemorated by the date on the seal and the flag of North Carolina.

Nathanael Greene, 1783

In the early years of the war, North Carolina was largely spared acts of war, but became an important theater of the war in 1780 and 1781. The breakaway Americans won a major victory on the border between North and South Carolina in the Battle of Kings Mountain at King's Pinnacle . On October 7, 1780, a group of 1000 mountain people from western North Carolina, which partly also belongs to today's Tennessee, defeated British troops with about 1000 men under the leadership of Major Patrick Ferguson. Most of the British soldiers in this battle were loyal Carolinians, the so-called Tories . This victory gave the colonists fighting for independence a decisive advantage and prevented further recruitment of Tories from the population of North Carolina by the British armed forces.

As the British Army moved northward after victories in Charleston and the Battle of Camden , South Carolina, they encountered the troops of the Southern Division of the Continental Army awaiting them. After General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British cavalry commander, Banastre Tarleton , at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781 , Nathanael Greene lured the British troops under Lord Charles Cornwallis into the heartland of North Carolina. He cut him off from the English supply stores in Charleston. This maneuver was known as "The Race to the Dan" (English. The Race to the Dan) or "The Race for the River" (English. The Race to the River).

Generals Greene and Cornwallis met on March 15, 1781 at the Battle of Guilford Court House in what is now Greensboro . Although the British troops were victorious at the end of the battle, they were severely affected by the heavy losses inflicted on them by the vastly outnumbered American Army. After this Pyrrhic victory , Cornwallis decided to move to the coast of Virginia and wait for reinforcements and to protect his troops from the British Navy. This decision ultimately led to the final defeat of Cornwallis in 1781 at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia. The victory of the American-French army ensured America's independence from the crown. The warring parties signed the Peace of Paris in September 1783 and America was also recognized as a sovereign state by England.

Between the Wars (1783-1825)

The 1787 draft of the United States Constitution was controversial in North Carolina. The delegates who met in Hillsboro in July 1788 to decide on the draft initially voted because of anti-federalist reservations about the proposed constitution. James Iredell and William Davie went to enormous lengths to persuade the delegates to adopt the constitution, while meanwhile the affluent northeastern regions of the state threatened secession if the rest of the state did not ratify the constitution they endorsed. Another meeting of delegates in Fayetteville over a year later resulted in a positive vote and North Carolina became the twelfth and final state to ratify the American Constitution.

In 1790, North Carolina put the western lands, including Washington , Davidson , Hawkins , Greene , Sullivan , Sumner, and Tennessee counties under government. The area was designated the Tennessee Territory between 1790 and 1796, then became Tennessee, the 16th state in the Union, in 1796.

Before the Revolutionary War, North Carolina was a rural state, even by southern standards. In 1860 only the port city of Wilmington had more than 10,000 inhabitants, while the capital of North Carolina had barely more than 5,000 inhabitants. After the revolution, Quakers and Mennonites tried to persuade the slave owners to free their slaves. Many slave owners were won over by their efforts and released slaves. The number of free blacks in North Carolina rose steadily during the first decades after the Revolutionary War.

Though slavery was less widespread than some other southern states, according to the 1860 census, more than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population, were African-Americans. Most of them lived and worked on the plantations in the east of the state. There were also another 30,463 free blacks who lived primarily in the same region, preferably in port cities such as Wilmington or New Bern. They had access to a variety of professions and were eligible to vote until 1835. North Carolina passed a new constitution in 1835 that reformed the electoral law. From now on the governor could be directly elected for a term of two years. At the same time, the right to vote for African Americans was restricted

State Capitol in Raleigh, NC

In 1836 the railway company Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad was founded, which was later renamed the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad . The aim was to connect the port city of Wilmington with the capital of North Carolina, Raleigh. By a government resolution of 1849, the North Carolina Railroad was founded, whose task was the western extension of the existing railway lines to Greensboro, High Point and Charlotte. During the Civil War , the Raleigh-Wilmington railroad proved essential for the Confederates . Supplies arriving at Wilmington Harbor could be shipped over this rail line to the Confederation capital, Richmond , Virginia.

In 1840 the government building in Raleigh, which still exists today, was completed. In contrast to many other states in the south, no dominant class from the ranks of the slave owners, the so-called cotton aristocracy , developed in North Carolina , but the state and its government were predominantly controlled by independent farmers from the middle class. Most of the slave owners lived in the coastal regions of the east, while the population in the northwest of the state consisted more of self-employed farmers who did not own slaves. In the middle of the 19th century, the rural regions of North Carolina were connected by the 208-kilometer “Farmer's Railroad”. It ran from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania , northwest of Winston-Salem and consisted of wooden rails.

American Civil War and Reintegration

Main articles: Civil War , Reconstruction

In 1860, North Carolina had a long history of slavery, with about a third of the population being slaves of African descent, a smaller proportion than most of the rest of the Confederation. In addition, there was a remarkable proportion of free blacks in the population, about 30,000 people, mostly descendants of the settlers who immigrated from Virginia in the 18th century. North Carolina initially did not vote in favor of joining the confederation, only after President Abraham Lincoln's appeal to the sister state South Invading Carolina caused North Carolina to join the Confederate. Governor Zebulon Baird Vance , elected in 1862, tried to defend the state autonomy of North Carolina against Jefferson Davis , the President of the Confederate in Richmond.

Even after the secession , some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederates, mostly farmers from the mountains and the Piedmont who were not slave owners. Some of these farmers remained neutral during the civil war, while some secretly supported the Union. Even so, men from all over North Carolina were involved in the major battles of the American Civil War as part of the Army of Northern Virginia , one of the major Confederate units . Four regiments from North Carolina served in the Army of Tennessee . Although few battles were fought in the North Carolina area, more than 125,000 soldiers were recruited, more than any other Confederate state. About 40,000 soldiers did not survive the war.

The greatest battle in North Carolina was the Battle of Bentonville in the spring of 1865. It was a desperate attempt by Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston to stop the advance of Union forces under Major General William Tecumseh Sherman through the Carolinas. A few days later, Johnston surrendered to his opponent Sherman in Bennett Place, near present-day Durham. The last major Confederate task force surrendered, which ended the military conflict. Wilmington, the last port of the Confederation, also fell in the early summer of 1865.

The first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was Henry Wyatt of North Carolina. He died in action at Big Bethel in June 1861. In July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment in Gettysburg was involved in the Picketts Charge and made it farthest into the lines of the Union Army of all the Confederate regiments involved. During the Battle of Chickamauga , it was the 58th North Carolina Regiment that advanced furthest up Snodgrass Hill to force the withdrawal of Union soldiers from the battlefield. At Appomattox Court House , soldiers from the 75th Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit , fired the final shots of the Army of North Virginia in the Civil War. For many years, the North Carolinians claimed to have been "First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox."

After the war, during the Reconstruction , both African American and white immigrants, known as carpetbaggers , moved to the state from the north. Many of the blacks had escaped from slavery and were returning after receiving a basic level of education in the north. Still, illiteracy remained a major problem among the lower classes, African Americans and about a third of the white population. The indigenous population was very distrustful of both Afro-American and white immigrants, at the constitutional assembly only 18 of 133 delegates were from the north and only 15 were of African-American origin.

North Carolina was re-admitted to the confederation on July 4, 1868, following the passage of a new constitution promoting education, prohibiting slavery, universal suffrage, and the creation of social services. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution , which regulated equal treatment for citizens after the Civil War, was also ratified. During this difficult phase of Reconstruction, a citizen of North Carolina was President of the United States, Andrew Johnson who served the country as its 17th President from 1865 to 1869.

Disenfranchisement of the black population

In 1870 the Democratic Party came to power in North Carolina. Governor William Woods Holden , using all civilian forces, tried to contain the rampant violence emanating from the Ku Klux Klan . The Conservatives then accused him of making common cause with the Union, of believing in social equality between the races and of corruption . When the legislature initiated impeachment proceedings against him, however, he was only accused of improper use of the troops and funds to put down a riot, that is, the activities of the clan. He was removed from office in 1871.

After the Ku Klux Klan Act came into force in 1871, Attorney General Amos T. Akerman persecuted the Klan members relentlessly. Violence broke out in Piedmont during the late 1870s as whites tried to prevent African Americans from voting.

As in other southern states, as soon as the whites were back in power, tried to re-establish the supremacy of the white population. Still, the number of African-American officials at the local level was at a high point, elected in districts with a black majority. In 1894, after a long period of grave agricultural problems, a multiracial coalition of Republicans and populists won a majority in the state. White Democrats worked to destroy the coalition and restrict the franchise of African American and impoverished white populations.

In 1896, North Carolina passed a statute that made voting more difficult and significantly reduced the proportion of black voters. After a violent election, the Democrats won the election in 1896 and regained power in the state. After the adoption of a new constitution in 1900 with an addition to the right to vote, the conditions for an election were made so difficult that no African-Americans and only a few whites from the lower classes could participate in the 1904 election. Contemporary sources estimate that around 75,000 black men lost the right to vote.

Thanks to the control of the legislature succeeded the Democrats Jim Crow laws of racial segregation enforce in public buildings and transport. It took more than 60 years for the African American population to regain full access to civil rights. Without being able to vote, black citizens were unable to take on public office such as sheriff , justice of the peace, jury member , investigator or member of the school inspectorate. The eviction of blacks from the ballot box permanently disrupted the development of the emerging black middle class in North Carolina.

Development of North Carolina after the Civil War

First flight in Kitty Hawk

In the late 19th century the cotton and textile industry developed in the Piedmont, the development of these industries helped the state to develop an alternative to the economy, which was previously mainly based on agriculture. Initially, because of racial segregation, African Americans were not employed in the newly created textile factories.

On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers launched mankind's first successful manned powered flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

In response to racial segregation, disenfranchisement, and agricultural difficulties, tens of thousands of African Americans left North Carolina in the first wave of African American population migration between 1910 and 1930. They moved north, especially to cities like New York , Washington, DC , Baltimore and Philadelphia in hopes of better living conditions and jobs.

In the early 20th century, North Carolina embarked on a large-scale education and road construction project to stimulate the state's economy. The education initiative, launched by Governor Charles Aycock , saw about one school being built in North Carolina during Aycock's tenure. In addition, the state received support from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation , which provided funds for the construction of hundreds of schools for African American children in the rural regions of the state in the 1920s and 1930s. The state road construction project began in the 1920s after the automobile had become a popular means of transportation. During the first decades of the 20th century, several important facilities of the American armed forces , for example Fort Bragg in North Carolina, were settled.

North Carolina after the New Deal

North Carolina did particularly well in education and manufacturing following the New Deal , a domestic business recovery program by Franklin D. Roosevelt . During the Second World War , North Carolina supplied the country's armed forces with a number of locally produced goods. More textiles were shipped from North Carolina to the army than from any other state. North Carolina also focused on research and university development. Three of these universities form the so-called Research Triangle , English Research Triangle Park : The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been continually expanded, founded in 1789 and by the 1930s, the newly founded in 1924, North Carolina State University and Duke University .

The Levine Science Research Center at Duke University

In 1931 the Negro Voters League was formed in Raleigh , which campaigned for the electoral registration of African American citizens. The city had an educated and politically interested black middle class, and by 1946 the League managed to get 7,000 African-American voters entered on the electoral roll. Given the segregation, it was a notable achievement. Work on desegregating and restoring civil rights for the African American population continued across the state; in 1960, North Carolina nearly 25% of the population were African American and deprived of full civil rights African American students began the Greensboro sit-ins at the lunch counter in the Woolworth department store in Greensboro, where there were two areas: first, a counter section with chairs for whites and an area without chairs for blacks. Four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University , traditionally a university for blacks, sit down and continue to refuse to eat while standing. They continue this protest and on July 25, 1960, blacks were officially allowed to sit down at Woolworths. This form of resistance spread all over the south, which slowly resulted in integration in public buildings.

Following the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the African-American population of the state began to participate fully in political life. In 1973, Clarence Lightner made American history with his successful candidacy for the office of Mayor of Raleigh: He was the first African American to be elected mayor in the United States, the first black mayor in the city, and the first black mayor in a predominantly white community .

In 1971 the third constitution of the state of North Carolina was ratified; a 1997 amendment gives the governor the right to veto most legislative decisions.

In the 1990s, North Carolina initiated the Smart Start Program (1993), a nationally recognized model program to lead children to school readiness from a health and mental perspective. In 1994 the Raleigh-Durham region was voted the most livable place in the United States. While Governor James Baxter Hunt Jr. was re-elected for the fourth time in 1996, setting a lonely record, Elaine F. Marshall was the first woman to be elected to the office of Secretary of State and thus to an office of state-wide significance in North Carolina.

literature

  • Val Atkinson: Southern Racial Politics & North Carolina's Black Vote. Trafford Publishing, 2007, ISBN 1-4120-9324-4 .
  • Hugh T. Lefler, William S. Powell: Colonial North Carolina: A History. Krauss, New York 1973, ISBN 0-527-18718-6 .
  • William S. Powell: North Carolina Through Four Centuries. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill / London 1989.
  • Sarah Rafle: North Carolina: The Tar Heel State. Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2002, ISBN 0-8368-5289-3 .
  • Milton Ready: The Tar Heel State: A History of North Carolina. University of South Carolina Press, 2005, ISBN 1-57003-591-1 .
  • W. Buck Yearns: North Carolina Civil War Documentary. The University of North Carolina Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8078-5358-5 .

Web links

Wiktionary: North Carolina  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : History of North Carolina  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The National Center for Public Policy Research: The Colony At Roanoke
  2. ^ William Henry Hoyt: The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence , GP Putnam's Sons, 1907
  3. ^ A b State Library of NC The State Flag of North Carolina ( Memento August 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Last accessed May 16, 2008
  4. ^ A b North Carolina General Assembly: State Seal and Motto ( Memento June 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Last accessed May 16, 2008
  5. ^ Sons of the American Revolution: Text of the Halifax Resolves (English) ( Memento from January 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Last accessed on May 16, 2008
  6. ^ A b c Hugh Talmage Lefler, Albert Ray Newsome: North Carolina: The history of a Southern State University of North Carolina Press, 1963
  7. ^ John Hope Franklin: Free Negroes of North Carolina, 1789-1860 , University of North Carolina Press, 1941, 1991 reprint
  8. ↑ a b US Census 1860, University of Virginia
  9. ^ John Gilbert and Grady Jefferys: Crossties Through Carolina: The Story of North Carolina's Early Day Railroads , Helios Press, 1969
  10. ↑ WEB Du Bois: Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 , Harcourt Brace, 1935. Reprinted from The Free Press, 1998. Pages 529-531
  11. ↑ Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality , Oxford University Press, 2006. p. 30
  12. ^ Albert Shaw: The American Monthly Review of Reviews , Vol XXII, Jul-Dec 1900, p. 274
  13. ↑ a b Richard H. Pildes: Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon , Constitutional Commentary, Vol.17, 2000, pages 12 and 13. Last accessed March 10, 2008
  14. ^ Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality , New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, p.32
  15. ^ Telegram from Orville Wright in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to His Father Announcing Four Successful Flights, 1903 December 17 . December 17, 1903. Retrieved July 21, 2013.
  16. ↑ Eric Arnesen: Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents , Bedford / St. Martin's, 2002, ISBN 0-312-39129-3
  17. ↑ a b ( page no longer available , search in web archives: News & Observer of July 14, 2002: Lightner's Election Was News ) Last accessed on March 18, 2008@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.newsobserver.com
  18. ↑ US Census 1960, University of Virginia
  19. ^ Civil Rights Movement Veterans - First Southern Sit-In in Greensboro, NC Last accessed May 16, 2008
  20. ^ Secretary of the State of NC: Biography of Elaine F. Marschall Last accessed May 16, 2008