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Several European explorers made their way to present-day North Carolina. In 1524 the Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano arrived at the mouth of Cape Fear River. Hernando de Soto traveled through the western mountains in 1540. In 1584 the Englishman Sir Walter Raleigh received a grant from Queen Elizabeth I to claim land in North America, and he sent out an exploratory expedition that returned with a report optimistic for potential settlement. In 1585 Raleigh sent a group of settlers to the area, and they established a colony on Roanoke Island; Raleigh named the colony Virginia. Difficulties in obtaining food led many settlers to abandon the island and return to England. A second group of colonists arrived in 1587, but the problem of sustaining themselves forced the group’s leader, John White, to return to England for supplies. Caught in the outbreak of war between England and Spain, White did not make it back to Roanoke until 1590. No colonists were there when he arrived, and the only clues as to their whereabouts were two trees, one of which bore the carved letters CRO and the other the word CROATOAN, which referred to a neighbouring island. White went to this island but found no colonists there. What happened to the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke remains one of the great mysteries in American history.
Following the attempts by Raleigh and others to colonize the coastal regions in the 1580s, the territory remained the domain of native peoples for decades. A grant by King Charles I in 1629 for the lands south of Virginia brought the term Carolina into being, but no permanent settlement was made until farmers and traders from Virginia moved into the Albemarle Sound area in the 1650s. This resulted in a grant from Charles II in 1663 that created Carolina, but for years the settlers resisted the ineffective government imposed by the proprietors in England. Between 1712 and 1729 the separate province of North Carolina was ruled by a deputy dispatched from Charleston, which had become the centre of proprietary government. Boundaries between North and South Carolina were agreed upon in 1735 but not completely surveyed until 1821.
North Carolina’s growth was hampered by restrictions on shipping tobacco imposed by Virginia, by economic and religious quarrels with absentee proprietors that led to several uprisings, by war with the Tuscarora people (1711–13), and by coastal piracy involving Blackbeard (Edward Teach) and others. Unlike other colonies, which had grown up around coastal towns that represented the first settlements, North Carolina had no town until Bath was incorporated in 1705. By 1729, when the colony came under royal rule, several other towns also had been chartered.
A turnabout in the colony’s fortunes occurred during the decades of royal rule. The population rose rapidly, settlement spread across the Piedmont, and the wealth and quality of life expanded. A large slave population maintained an agricultural economy based on tobacco and rice and on naval stores from the region’s extensive pine forests. Prior to the American Revolution, the beginnings of an intense east-west hostility had grown into several insurrections. In 1768 western North Carolinans organized themselves into the Regulators to defy government policies, and, after being suppressed by the governor’s militia, many moved away from the colony. Hostility to British rule united North Carolinians and forced the flight of the royal governor in 1775. North Carolina quickly joined the efforts to form a new country, three of its citizens signing the Declaration of Independence. During the American Revolution, North Carolinians fought both the Cherokee (who sided with the British) and the British army. Their most noteworthy battles ended in victory at Kings Mountain in 1780, just across the state border in South Carolina, and in defeat at Guilford Courthouse in 1781.
Statehood
In 1776, early in the war, North Carolina adopted its first state constitution, which established property requirements for its first voters and its first elected public officials but gave little power to the executive branch. There was no official state religion, but no one who rejected the Protestant faith could hold office. The state’s permanent capital was established at Raleigh in 1794. In 1790 much of the state’s western territory was ceded back to the United States, and that land was soon reorganized into the state of Tennessee.
There was little government action in North Carolina during its first decades as a state. Taxes were low, and few services were provided. In 1835 the state rewrote its constitution to give legislators and the governor more power and to make it easier for white men to vote. In the 1840s and ’50s the state government provided more services to the people, including a statewide school system and state-supported transportation networks.
The Civil War and Reconstruction
Unlike South Carolina, whose strident proslavery voices led the South into secession, North Carolina left the Union reluctantly, seeking compromise until the last moment. North Carolina voted to secede only when Pres. Abraham Lincoln called up troops for war. Many North Carolinians fought for the Confederate States of America (the Confederacy), though most of the fighting took place elsewhere. Only near the end of the war, when Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman led a Union invasion of the state, did significant military action occur in North Carolina.
North Carolina ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (which abolished slavery) in 1865, but, as was the case in most Southern states, white authorities in North Carolina attempted to adopt new ways of controlling the newly freed slaves. In 1867 Republicans in the U.S. Congress asserted their power over the Reconstruction process, sent the U.S. Army to oversee the governments of Southern states (including that of North Carolina), and insisted on new constitutions that protected the rights of African Americans. The Republican Party, composed in large part of freedmen, dominated a new constitutional convention, which in 1868 gave North Carolina a new government that did protect the rights of African Americans; the state was then readmitted to the union. White Democrats, however, opposed the new government and resorted to terrorist tactics to defeat the Republicans, including the night-riding and murderous actions of the Ku Klux Klan. By 1872 the Democrats had regained control of the state and had begun instituting policies to discriminate against African Americans. They kept government spending and services low, and, as a consequence, North Carolina’s educational and health opportunities were woefully inadequate throughout the remainder of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th. A challenge by Populists to the Democrats’ control enjoyed only fleeting success in the 1890s. In 1900 the state passed constitutional amendments that resulted in the disenfranchisement of nearly all African American voters. White supremacy and hostility continued well into the 20th century.
In the late 19th century North Carolina’s economy began to develop a stronger manufacturing sector, led by the growth of textile mills and cigarette production. The Piedmont area became dotted with cotton mills. With the invention of a cigarette-making machine in the 1880s and the ensuing rise of cigarette consumption, tobacco manufacturing plants expanded, mainly in the Winston-Salem area. By the early 20th century the state’s income from manufacturing had become more important than farm income. Moreover, North Carolina had entered the age of aviation with the first successful piloting of a powered aircraft in 1903 by Wilbur and Orville Wright on the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, near Roanoke Island.
North Carolina since 1900
North Carolina in the 20th century was a part of the national experience of changing economic cycles. A decade of significant economic and social developments followed World War I, but the Great Depression of the 1930s brought widespread hardship and severe curtailment of education and other public services. However, the state benefited from national programs implemented under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which intervened in North Carolina’s economy during the depression years to bring relief to the unemployed and price supports to farmers.
In the 1940s the national defense program and World War II (1941–45) further rejuvenated the North Carolina economy. Some of the country’s largest military installations were located in the state, notably Fort Bragg at Fayetteville. North Carolina was a major supplier of manufactured war matériel, and it delivered more textile goods to the military than any other state.
The state began a period of rapid change after the war. New highways were built, and cities grew as new industry and new people moved to the state. North Carolina experienced a sustained period of growth and has maintained one of the strongest economies in the country. Its manufacturing base remained stronger than those of most states, and its service sector grew, especially in banking and in various research-based activities. Cities like Charlotte and the Raleigh-Durham area acquired much new business activity and tens of thousands of new residents.
Interest in politics revived, and by the 1970s the state again had a viable two-party system. In 1973 a Republican governor took office for the first time since the 19th century, and another served in 1985–93. The painful struggle to eliminate racial segregation, beginning in the public schools in the 1950s and at the lunch counters in Greensboro in 1960, absorbed the state’s energies throughout the 1960s. While most racial segregation had ended by the 1970s, the state continued to be burdened by the remnants of earlier discriminatory practices and prejudicial attitudes. In the early 21st century North Carolina continued to face the enormous challenges of extending the benefits of education and economic prosperity to all its citizens and eliminating the last remnants of racial discrimination.
Peter Spence Gilchrist David Grier Martin Robert J. Norrell