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 Ante-Bellum North Carolina: A Social History Ante-Bellum North Carolina Guion Griffis Johnson xvi, 1- 935 p. CHAPEL HILL THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS 1937 Call number C917 J67a c. 18 (North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

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 Library of Congress Subject Headings English North Carolina -- Social life and customs. African Americans -- North Carolina -- Social conditions. North Carolina -- Social conditions. Women -- North Carolina -- Social conditions. North Carolina -- History. Plantation life -- North Carolina -- History. City and town life -- North Carolina -- History. Education -- North Carolina -- History. North Carolina -- Religion. Slavery -- North Carolina -- History. Social service -- North Carolina -- History. North Carolina -- Politics and government. Johnson, Guion Griffis, 1900- -- Interviews. 2002-02-28, Celine Noel and Wanda Gunther revised TEIHeader and created catalog record for the electronic edition. 2002-02-15, Natalia Smith, project manager, finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing. 2002-01-16 Melissa Meeks finished TEI/SGML encoding 2001-12-21, Apex Data Services, Inc. finished transcribing the text.

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 ANTE-BELLUM NORTH CAROLINA

The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, N. C.; The Baker and Taylor Company, New York; Oxford University Press, London; Maruzen—Kabushiki—Kaisha, Tokyo; Edward Evans & Sons, Ltd., Shanghai; D. B. Centen's Wetenschappelijke Boekhandel, Amsterdam.

TO Guy, Benton, and Edward

 ANTE-BELLUM NORTH CAROLINA A Social History BY GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON CHAPEL HILL THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS 1937 COPYRIGHT, 1937, BY THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE SEEMAN PRINTERY, DURHAM, N. C., AND BOUND BY L. H. JENKINS, INC., RICHMOND, VA. PREFACE

THIS STUDY of the main currents of life and thought in North Carolina from the close of the Revolutionary period to the era of a new war is an attempt to describe the processes of social change. In the transition of a community of people from one philosophy of life to another, there are many gradations. All do not think alike or live alike. A few lead the way to a new order; but, long after the majority has fallen in line, a few still lag behind. This study is consequently a picture of the way the average North Carolinian lived his life between 1800 and 1860 with occasional details of the extremes to give emphasis to the whole.

In 1860 the average North Carolinian had seen many changes since the turn of the century. He had lived to see the results of the inventions of the steam engine and of the spinning-jenny. He had seen cables traverse his State from Virginia to South Carolina to bring news of the outside world by “lightning telegraph.” He had seen the stage coach give place to miles of railroads stretching north and south, east and west. He had seen property rights gradually give way to human rights at the polls, and he had seen the “eastern oligarchy” yield to “the unterrified democracy” of the West. He had seen the introduction of a public school system and the building of colleges. He had seen the State take a hand in the care of the insane, the deaf, and the blind. He had seen a convulsion of religious emotion at the opening of the century which added great numbers to the denominations and created new sects. He had seen the churches go out in the “waste places” seeking for members. In the field of medicine, he had seen the superstitious folk doctor gradually give ground to the trained practitioner. He had seen smallpox vaccine lessen the scourge of that dreaded disease and he had lived to see the introduction of chloroform, that “heaven-sent miracle.” He had seen the newspapers grow from puny sheets to organs of power and prestige. He had seen his State gradually acquire a native literature.

But he had seen other things as well. He had seen North Carolina drop from third to twelfth rank in the nation's population. He had seen his farm lands grow sterile from exhaustive methods of agriculture. He had seen his neighbors pull up stake and leave for more fertile regions in the South and Northwest. He had seen those left behind, bilious and despondent from malaria, fight against the competition of slave labor. He had seen the large planter growing more and more dependent upon slavery and slavery itself creating an ever increasing social problem as the black population grew in numbers. He had seen slavery become a great moral issue and insinuate itself into every phase of life. Of recent years each gale that swept from the North and West was bringing with it louder and louder imputations against the peculiar institution.

He had heard other echoes of reform. He had heard it said that the State should take a hand in caring for the poor unless it wished the poor eventually to smite it down. He had heard it said that the superior courts were inadequate and that the county courts ought to be abolished. He had heard that the State had the bloodiest criminal code in the nation, that it was unjust to hang a man for a crime when he might be sent to prison instead.

On all sides he heard people saying that the present generation was building a gingerbread civilization, that the youths of 1860 had become “extravagant and effeminate, fond of fine clothes and rich living, well-timed music and delicate women.” In the towns he saw sleek horses and handsome barouches, satins and hoop skirts; but on the small farms he still saw women laboring by day and by night, both in the house and in the field, to aid their husbands in feeding and clothing the family. Despite divorce suits and the agitation for larger property rights of the married woman, the wife's personality was still legally merged in that of the husband.

The average North Carolinian himself was confused by all this talk of reform and this malediction of the present generation. He went to church on Sunday, paid his taxes, and was at peace with the world. But he was at peace only so long as his taxes were low and he had enough left over from the sale of his crops to buy a few of those little luxuries which made life worth living. He had little time for reading; he acquired his knowledge through the ear, caught simultaneously without study and without trouble in the group at the crossroads store, talking over the news and the politics of the day, at church, at the muster-ground or tax-gathering, at the electioneering from the speeches of those who had been to Raleigh or to Washington. He sturdily supported the opinions which he gleaned and prided himself in the belief that he had evolved them out of his own wisdom.

This picture of North Carolina—a body politic emerging from the simplicities of the frontier to the complexities of civilized life—has cast long shadows, prophetic fingers pointing to the inevitable for a hundred years to come. The years between 1800 and 1860 shaped the future; it was a time of origins which still control many ways of life in North Carolina.

This study has been generously financed by the Institute for Research in Social Science of the University of North Carolina. It was planned originally as a study of “the newspaper press as a social force” under the direction of Gerald W. Johnson, at that time professor of journalism in the University of North Carolina, now editorial writer for the Baltimore Sun. Although this project has been greatly changed since Mr. Johnson first outlined it in 1924, it still retains something of his original plan. When it was decided to enlarge the study into a social history of the State, R. D. W. Connor, then professor of history in the University of North Carolina and now United States Archivist, gave many hours to discussion and suggestion and sympathetically guided the work during the first three years of research.

Many others have facilitated the research and organization of the study, patiently helping to uncover obscure data difficult to obtain, graciously improving the manuscript in style and perspective. Dr. A. R. Newsome, professor of history in the University of North Carolina, and Dr. C. C. Crittenden, secretary of the North Carolina Historical Commission, have read the entire manuscript and made many valuable notations. Dr. J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, director of the Southern History Collection in the University of North Carolina, Dr. Avery O. Craven, professor of history in the University of Chicago, Dr. T. J. Woofter, Jr., co-ordinator of rural research in the Works Progress Administration, and Dr. Jesse F. Steiner, professor of sociology in the University of Washington, have read Chapters I to VI. Dr. G. W. Paschal of Wake Forest College, Dr. Paul Neff Garber of the Duke University School of Religion, Miss Adelaide L. Fries, archivist of the southern province of the Moravian Church in America, Dr. S. M. Tenney, curator of the Historical Foundation of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches, the Reverend Charles C. Ware, corresponding secretary of the North Carolina Christian Missionary Convention, and the Reverend A. S. Lawrence of the Chapel of the Cross have read Chapters XII to XV. The late Dr. B. U. Brooks of Durham read Chapters XVI to XXIV. Dr. J. S. Spurgeon of Hillsboro has read Chapter XXIV, Dr. A. C. McIntosh of the Law School of the University of North Carolina has read Chapters XXI and XXII, Mr. J. A. Warren of Chapel Hill has read Chapters XIV and XV. Professor Ernest R. Groves of the University of North Carolina has read Chapters VII and VIII, and Dean Elbert Russell of the Duke University School of Religion and Professor S. T. Emory of the University of North Carolina have read portions of chapters.

The materials used in this study have been obtained largely from North Carolina libraries, but the search for data has also led to such diverse sources as the Library of Congress and a farm-house attic in Texas. The librarians of the University of North Carolina and of Duke University have made their collections accessible for the purposes of this study. Miss Mary L. Thornton, librarian of the North Carolina Collection in the University of North Carolina Library, has been especially untiring in her assistance, as have Miss Elizabeth Hailey, assistant of the circulation department, Miss Georgia Faison, reference librarian, and Mrs. Lyman A. Cotten, in charge of the Southern Collection. Mr. B. E. Powell, reference librarian of Duke University, and Miss Katherine Hall, reference librarian of the University of Chicago, also have given valuable assistance. Dean R. B. House, Dr. A. R. Newsome, and Dr. C. C. Crittenden, who have served respectively as secretary of the North Carolina Historical Commission during the period of this research, and their assistants, Mrs. Susan T. West, Miss Sophie D. Busbee, and Mr. D. L. Corbitt, have greatly facilitated the collection of data. Miss Carrie L. Broughton, librarian of the North Carolina State Library, has patiently verified data, and Miss Pauline Hill, assistant librarian, has assisted in the location of materials. The late Marshall deLancey Haywood, Supreme Court librarian; Miss Nellie Rowe of the Greensboro Public Library; Miss Adelaide L. Fries of the Moravian Church Archives; Dr. S. M. Tenney of the Historical Foundation of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches have all assisted in the location of materials in their care. Dr. and Mrs. J. S. Spurgeon of Hillsboro and Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Warren of Chapel Hill have discovered material in private hands and made it available for this study. During these tedious years of research, Dr. Howard W. Odum, director of the Institute for Research in Social Science, and Dr. Katharine Jocher, assistant director, have been sympathetically co-operative. Of Dr. Jocher's secretarial staff Mrs. A. E. Bevacqua has helped most with the details of the study. During the period of the collection of data, Miss Jessie Alverson typed many of the documents. To each of these and to many others, unnamed but nonetheless appreciated, I am deeply grateful. To my husband, Guy B. Johnson, I am especially indebted, for upon his sociological insight I have relied constantly.

G. G. J. Chapel Hill North Carolina CONTENTS PREFACE . . . . . vii I. COLONIAL ORIGINS . . . . . 3 Geographic Influence—Racial Composition—Extent of Settlement in 1790—Economic Conditions—Social Classes—Religion and Education. II. SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS . . . . . 20 Provincialism—Sectionalism—Conservatism—Individualism—Superstition. III. SOCIAL CLASSES . . . . . 52 Economic Basis—The Gentry—The Middle Class—The Yeomanry and Mechanics—The Poor Whites—The Movement toward Democracy—The Degradation of Labor. IV. RURAL LIFE . . . . . 80 Life on the Plantation—Ante-Bellum Fashions—Social Life on the Farm—Dance Frolics—The Country Tavern—The Crossroads Store and Merchant Mill—The Church, the School, and the Lodge—Militia Musters and Election Days—Country Fairs—Rural Sports. V. THE TOWN . . . . . 114 Locations—Town Portraits—Town Government—The Town Commission—Street Repairs—Protection against Fire—Town Markets and Town Halls—Public Celebrations—Funeral Ceremonies—Special Days. VI. TOWN LIFE . . . . . 151 Public Social Centers—Subscription Balls—Teas and Set Suppers—Benevolent and Literary Clubs—Lyceum Societies—Temperance Societies—City Guards—Music and Theatrical Societies—Sports—Summer Resorts. VII. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS . . . . . 191 Courtship Customs—The Coquette—The Engagement—The Marriage Ceremony—Extra-Marital Relations—Divorce and Alimony. VIII. FAMILY LIFE . . . . . 224 The Family Dwelling—The Ante-Bellum Woman—Housewifery—Woman's Legal Status—Woman as a Wage Earner—The Status of Children. IX. PUBLIC SCHOOLS . . . . . 259 Agitation—Early Free Schools—The Movement for Public Schools—Public Schools at Last—Calvin H. Wiley and the Common Schools. X. PRIVATE SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES . . . . . 283 Subscription Schools—Academies—Special Schools—The University of North Carolina—Denominational Colleges—The Education of Women. XI. EDUCATIONAL METHODS . . . . . 309 The Schoolhouse—School Equipment—The Curriculum—Grammar School Teachers—Academy Teachers—School Discipline. XII. RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS . . . . . 331 The Protestant Episcopal Church—Baptists—Methodists—Presbyterians—The Society of Friends—Lutherans—The German Reformed Church—Moravians—Disciples of Christ—Other Religious Groups. XIII. CAMP MEETING AND REVIVAL MOVEMENTS . . . . . 371 Antecedents of the Great Revival—The Coming of the Great Revival—The Great Revival Among the Methodists—The Baptists and the Great Revival—Revival Cycles—A Camp-Meeting Scene—Camp-Meeting Methods—The “Exercises”—The Psychology of the Revival—Camp-Meeting Disorders. XIV. CHURCH BENEVOLENCE . . . . . 410 Church Missions—Bible and Tract Societies—The Sunday School Movement—Poor Relief—Religious Work of Women—Religious Toleration. XV. THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL CONTROL . . . . . 434 The Meeting Houses—The Laborers in the Vineyard—Ministerial Education—Church Services—Keeping the Sabbath—Church Discipline—The Temperance Movement—The Church and Slavery. XVI. THE SLAVE SYSTEM . . . . . 468 The Slave Trade—Slave Labor—Typical Plantations—The Overseer. XVII. THE SLAVE CODE . . . . . 493 Plantation Discipline—The Slave Code—Slave Crimes—Slave Conspiracies. XVIII. THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SLAVE . . . . . 522 Living Conditions—Slave Health—The Slave and His Money—Family Life—Education and Religion—Recreation. XIX. ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT . . . . . 560 Some Anti-Slavery Views—Anti-Slavery Advocates—Colonization—Reaction against Abolition. XX. THE FREE NEGRO . . . . . 582 Distribution—Origin—Race Mixing—Manumission—Legal Status—The Free Negro as a Laborer—Notable Free Negroes. XXI. THE COURT SYSTEM . . . . . 613 The Magistrate's Court—The County Court—The Superior Court—The Supreme Court—The Movement for Reform—Reform in the County Courts—The Superior Court and Reform. XXII. THE CRIMINAL CODE . . . . . 644 Crimes and Punishments—The Movement for Reform—Imprisonment for Debt—Typical Crimes—Agitation for a Penitentiary—The Results of a Do-Nothing Policy—Public Executions—The County Jails. XXIII. THE CARE OF UNFORTUNATES . . . . . 683 Wardens of the Poor—Poor Tax—Care of the Poor—Poorhouses—Private Philanthropy—Charitable Societies—Orphans—Care of the Insane—The Deaf and the Blind. XXIV. SANITATION AND HEALTH . . . . . 717 Sanitation—Chills and Fevers—Summer and Winter Complaints—Smallpox—Other Communicable Diseases—Diseases of Women and Children—Surgery—Dentistry—The Faculty—Medical Therapy—Native Simples—Quackery—The Medical Board. XXV. THE NEWSPAPER AND PERIODICAL PRESS . . . . . 764 The Newspaper Press—Make-up and Contents—The News Policy—The Editorial Policy—The Periodical Press—Newspaper Finances. XXVI. THE INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING . . . . . 810 Broadsides, Almanacs, and Pamphlets—Book Printing—Religious Literature—Historical Writings—Biographies and Miscellaneous Writings—Ante-Bellum Wit—Fiction and Poetry—Retrospection. BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . 832 INDEX . . . . . 909 LIST OF TABLES Population by Nationalities in 1790 . . . . . 9 Population by Counties in 1790 . . . . . 14 Per Cent Increase of Population, 1790-1860 . . . . . 38 North Carolinians Living outside the State in 1860 . . . . . 40 Size of Farms in North Carolina in 1860 . . . . . 54 Slaveholding in 1790, 1850, and 1860 . . . . . 55 Per cent Distribution of Slaveholding in 1790, 1850, and 1860 . . . . . 56 Per Cent of Slaveholding Families in 1790, 1850, and 1860 . . . . . 56 Occupations in North Carolina, 1860 . . . . . 57 Labor Wage Scale in 1860 . . . . . 70 Size of North Carolina Towns, 1850 and 1860 . . . . . 114 Rate of Growth of Four Largest Towns in North Carolina, 1840, 1850, and 1860 . . . . . 117 Library Societies Incorporated before 1852-1853 . . . . . 166 Number of Illegitimate Children per Parent, 1800-1827 . . . . . 210 Number of Bastardy Cases in County Courts, 1801-1805, 1831-1835, and 1851-1855 . . . . . 211 Causes for Divorce, 1800-1835 . . . . . 221 Number of Free Persons per Dwelling, 1790, 1850, and 1860 . . . . . 227 Size of Families in 1790 . . . . . 251 Average Size of Free Families, 1790, 1850, and 1860 . . . . . 251 Size of Families in Slaveholding and Nonslaveholding Families, 1790 . . . . . 251 North Carolina Churches in 1860 . . . . . 369 Cases of Church Discipline, 1791-1860 . . . . . 450 Frequency of Trials at Wheeley's Meeting House, 1791-1860 . . . . . 453 Slave Interests of North Carolina Editors, 1850 . . . . . 566 Per Cent Increase of Free Negroes, 1790-1860 . . . . . 583 Offenses Heard in North Carolina County Courts, 1801-1805, 1831-1835, 1851-1855 . . . . . 658 Offenses Heard in Sixty-four North Carolina Courts, 1811-1815 . . . . . 659 Offenses Heard in Thirty-nine North Carolina Courts, 1839 . . . . . 660 Prosecutions in Sixty-four North Carolina Courts, 1811-1815 . . . . . 667 Prosecutions in Thirty-nine North Carolina Courts, 1839 . . . . . 670 Number of Children Apprenticed, 1801-1805, 1831-1835, 1851-1855 . . . . . 707 ANTE-BELLUM NORTH CAROLINA CHAPTER I COLONIAL ORIGINS

IT WAS 1849. The Gold Rush was on. Here and there a North Carolina farmer was selling out his little patch of land for a stake in far-off California. Like his brothers who had gone earlier to swell the tide of immigration that had peopled the Lower South and the Middle West, he had long since given up hope of prosperity in his native State. During this feverish time of clutching for the pot of gold which lay on the opposite side of a vast continent, the Raleigh Star dreamed of a day when North Carolina would smile to think that its people “ever supposed any land to be so happy and enticing as their good old State.”

“Let us indulge in a dream of the future and raise the curtain which hides coming events from us,” wrote the Star. Let us see North Carolina “opening highways, clearing out her rivers, improving her harbors, building railroads and turnpikes, and sending down the produce of her soil by lumbering car, or puffing steamboat, to the harbors which line her coast and are whited with the sails of the commerce of the world.”1

1 August 1, 1849.

Then, North Carolina will be able to keep her restless sons at home, and together her people will build up the great commonwealth of which the State gave promise at the close of the American Revolution.

Almost a hundred years earlier a North Carolina shipbuilder had also dreamed of a time when “this Thing Called Industry, or Labour, with the Produce of it” would make this “Government more valuable, and make the Commonalty a happy People.” It was 1746. William Borden had moved from Rhode Island to take up his trade on the coast of North Carolina. Instead of deep harbors and a brisk shipping trade, he found a sand-choked coast and a population paying tribute to neighboring colonies for want of a better system of navigation of their own. “Are not the Inhabitants [of North Carolina],” wrote William Borden, in an address to the people of his new home, “obliged to purchase all their foreign Necessaries at the very last and dearest Hand? When, perhaps, a Parcel of Goods or Merchandize have passed through the Expense of Navigation &c. in the neighboring Governments, and have passed through the Hands of many Merchants or Traders, and they have all had their Profits on them, and Living from them, then, perhaps, poor North-Carolina Planters have the Honour of eating, drinking, and wearing some of the riff-raff Remains, at a dear Rate: Pray, consider, then, what all this amounts to, but supporting Navigation and Trade in the neighboring Governments, at the Expence of the poor North Carolina Planters.”2

2 “An Address to the Inhabitants of North Carolina,” in W. K. Boyd (ed.), Some Eighteenth Century Tracts Concerning North Carolina, p. 72.

GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCE

The geographic situation of North Carolina3

3 E. M. Douglas, Boundaries, Areas, Geographic Centers and Altitudes of the United States and the Several States, pp. 145-51, 248, 252, 254, 256; N. C. State Board of Agriculture, North Carolina and Its Resources, and North Carolina, the Land of Opportunity; Ebenezer Emmons, Geographical Report of the Midland Counties of North Carolina, Report of the North Carolina Geological Survey: Agriculture of the Eastern Counties, and Agriculture of North Carolina, Part II; W. C. Kerr, Report of the Geological Survey of North Carolina; Edmund Ruffin, Sketches of Lower North Carolina.

destined the Province to play a losing role in the competition for population and commerce.4

4 See R. D. W. Connor, North Carolina: Rebuilding an Ancient Commonwealth, 1584-1925, I, 3-25; J. S. Bassett, “The Influence of Coast Line and Rivers on North Carolina,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1908, I, 58-61; P. B. Barringer, “Influence of Peculiar Conditions in the Early History of North Carolina,” Publications of the North Carolina Historical Commission, Bulletin No. 23, pp. 13-25; C. C. Crittenden, “The Seacoast in North Carolina History, 1763-1789,” North Carolina Historical Review (hereafter cited as NCHR), VII, 433-42; A. D. Murphey, “Memoir on the Internal Improvements Contemplated by the Legislature of North Carolina,” in The Papers of Archibald DeBow Murphey (ed. W. H. Hoyt), II, 105-95.

 Undoubtedly, the swift currents and the terrors of the reefs of Hatteras were influences in diverting colonization to the Chesapeake Bay after Sir Walter Raleigh's disastrous attempt on Roanoke Island in 1585. When settlement in North Carolina actually began, the absence of good harbors and the dangers of the sand bars off the coast impeded its colonization directly from Europe. The entire sea front, nearly 300 miles in length, is fringed by a series of narrow, shallow sounds which are separated from the ocean by a chain of sand dunes. These banks are occasionally pierced by narrow inlets, the changing character of which has been such as to make coastwise navigation at any point other than at the mouth of the Cape Fear River impracticable except for small vessels.

The presence of rocks, shoals, and falls in the rivers seriously obstructed their navigation, and the direction in which the rivers flow led the farmers along their banks to market their produce in Virginia or South Carolina. The Roanoke, one of the most important rivers in the State in the ante-bellum period, rises in Virginia, flows through a considerable portion of northeastern North Carolina, and empties into the Albermarle Sound. Virginia and North Carolina competed for the trade of the region watered by this river, Virginia usually being successful because of the reefs along Albermarle Sound. The Tar River rises near the Virginia line, and, running almost south, widens as it approaches the coast, taking on the name of Pamlico River. The tobacco and wheat which were raised on the upper branches of this river in Franklin, Granville, Warren, and Halifax counties were taken by wagon to Virginia in ante-bellum days. The Neuse River also has its sources near the Virginia line, and, running south, flows into Pamlico Sound. The tobacco, cotton, and wheat grown on the branches of the Neuse above Smithfield were taken by wagon to Virginia, while below Smithfield the river was used chiefly for transporting lumber and naval stores to New Bern.

The Cape Fear, like the Tar and the Neuse, rises near the Virginia line; but, unlike them, it empties into the Atlantic at a point accessible to ocean-going vessels. The river was navigable from Wilmington to Fayetteville and early became the principal channel of commerce in the State. The Yadkin, rising in the Appalachian region, flows east in Wilkes and Yadkin counties, then turns south and, after joining the Uharie, enters South Carolina as the Peedee. Produce raised along the upper branches of the Yadkin was frequently marketed in Virginia, while that of the lower Yadkin was taken to South Carolina. The Catawba rises near the Yadkin and also flows into South Carolina, becoming the Wateree and finally joining the Santee. The streams which form the Broad River unite in Cleveland County near the South Carolina line and flow into the Santee. Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina, were the markets for the region watered by the Broad River.

“Thus it has happened,” wrote Archibald D. Murphey, chairman of the Board of Internal Improvements in 1819, “that we have shipped from our own Ports not more than one-third of our Agricultural products; and even a considerable portion of our Staves, Lumber and Naval Stores, have been sent to other ports by the Dismal Swamp Canal, on one side; or by the Wackamaw, Little Pedee and Lumber Rivers, on the other. This unfortunate division of our trade produces many bad effects. It makes us appear a poor state in the union. It leaves us without markets at home: and thus we lose the profits upon our Commerce.”5

5 The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey, II, 142.

North Carolina is divided topographically into three nearly parallel belts, the coastal plain, the piedmont plateau, and the Appalachian region. The interregional isolation of these three areas has had an important influence upon the history of the State. The total land area of the present boundaries of the State is 48,740 square miles. Of this area the coastal plain constitutes nearly four-tenths and the piedmont region about five-tenths. During the period of settlement, the coastal plain region of North Carolina was more closely associated with the tidewater of Virginia and the piedmont of North Carolina with that of Virginia than were the coastal plain and the piedmont of North Carolina with each other.

The coastal plain was the first section settled in North Carolina. The region was especially adapted to hog raising and the production of corn and tobacco. This large unobstructed area, gently undulating except along the river courses, was covered with forests easily cleared by girdling the trees after the fashion learned from the Indians. The tendency was toward expansion. The method of agriculture demanded it, for the best crops were produced on virgin soil. Land freshly cleared of trees was planted in tobacco three years and then in corn. This superficial method of agriculture invited slave labor and at the same time exhausted the soil in a remarkably short time. The best low lands were worn out in about eight years and the less fertile in three. More forests were then cleared and the unprofitable acres left to revert to nature. The coastal plain also became the center of other industries, for the pine forests yielded lumber and naval stores. Communication between the sections of the coastal plain, however, was difficult because the region was interlaced by swamps and rivers.

The line of demarcation between the coastal plain and the piedmont plateau is roughly marked by the fall line of the rivers. The broad streams of the coastal plain become swift and difficult of navigation in the interior of the State. Moreover, the topography of the piedmont is such that communication in the early frontier days was chiefly along north and south lines. The piedmont, therefore, was settled not so much from the coastal plain as from the piedmont of Pennsylvania and Virginia. The gap of the Roanoke River was the road of entrance and the head streams of the Yadkin, the destination.

The soil of this area is more difficult of cultivation than that of the coastal plain, harder to clear of forest, but not so easily exhausted. It is better adapted to the growing of black tobacco, corn, cereals, and grasses. It was inevitable, then, that landholdings should be smaller and slave labor less profitable than in the coastal plain. When manufacturing industries began to develop in the State, it was in the piedmont that they appeared, for here was found the chief source of water power.

The third geographic zone is the Appalachian region, a rugged mountainous plateau which forms a narrow indented trough lying between the great arms of the Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge. In the colonial period the western boundary of Carolina was undefined. The charter of the Lords Proprietors had fixed the western limits as the South Sea, but in reality the claims of the Spanish and the French, as well as the Appalachian barrier itself, established the mountains as the extreme western limits of North Carolina almost to the revolutionary period.

The Appalachian region, springing suddenly to an elevation of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the piedmont plateau at its base, was the last section of the Colony to be settled. Even when the first serious attempt at settlement was begun in 1770 by James Robertson, he sought the fertile valley beyond the mountains rather than the narrow gaps of the Blue Ridge itself. Driven back by the approach of white settlers, the Cherokee Indians took their last stand in the fastnesses of the mountains, and it was not until their forced removal in 1836 that the entire Appalachian area was open to occupation by the whites.

The influence of geography upon the political and social character of North Carolina was early recognized by its inhabitants. It was offered by colonial governors as an excuse for the slow development of the Province. This influence was succinctly pointed out by the Board of Internal Improvements in a report to the General Assembly in 1833. Weary from unsuccessful attempts to devise a system of transportation for the State, the Board sorrowfully pointed to the causes of its failure:

There is in the State no commercial metropolis at which the interest of the community requires them to meet, and hence they are strangers to each other. The citizens of the West are familiar with the laws, the institutions, the politics and the towns of Tennessee, of South Carolina and Georgia. A few of them have visited New York and other eastern cities; but the individual is rare who possesses any accurate information with respect to Wilmington or Newbern. On our northeastern border, Virginia is much more extensively known to our citizens than the State which should be the great object of their affections; and on the south, an extensive intercourse with Augusta, Savannah and Charleston, transfers to these towns the attachments which should centre at home. . . . No one, who reflects for a moment on these facts, can be at a loss to discover the source of the sectional feelings and jealousies, which have so long distracted our public councils, and retarded our prosperity.6

6 Star, December 20, 1833.

 RACIAL COMPOSITION

Three race elements were to be found in colonial North Carolina: whites, Indians, and Negroes. The number of Indians in the Colony at the time the charter of 1663 was issued has been estimated at about thirty-five thousand.7

7 J. H. Rand, The Indians of North Carolina and Their Relations with the Settlers, James Sprunt Historical Publications, Vol. XII, No. 2, p. 8.

Three important Indian groups were located here: the Tuscaroras on the seaboard, the Catawbas in the lower piedmont, and the Cherokees in the West. It is difficult to estimate the number of white inhabitants in North Carolina during the early colonial period. At the close of the proprietary period in 1729 the white settlers probably did not exceed 30,000,8

8 R. D. W. Connor, History of North Carolina, p. 143; North Carolina, I, 149-51.

 and the population was confined to the coastal plain. By 1760 the settlements extended to the base of the Blue Ridge. The English settlers had been reinforced by Scotch-Irish, Scotch Highlanders, Germans, a negligible number of French, Swiss, and Welsh, and an increasing number of Negroes. By 1790 the white population had reached 289,181. The proportion of the various nationalities in the white population is indicated in the following table:

POPULATION BY NATIONALITIES IN 17909 Nationality Number Per Cent of Total English 240,309 83.1 Scotch 32,388 11.2 German 8,097 2.8 Irish 6,651 2.3 French 869 .3 Dutch 578 .2 All Other 290 .1 Total 289,182 100.0

9 U. S. Census Office, A Century of Population Growth, p. 117. The basis for determining nationality as used by the Census Office was the indication of the name of heads of families. Cf. R. D. W. Connor, Race Elements in the White Population of North Carolina, p. 18.

Each group had its influence upon colonial society. The Indians10

10 John Lawson, History of Carolina, pp. 19-105, 277-390; John Brickell, Natural History of North Carolina, pp. 277-408; Rand, op. cit.; O. M. McPherson, “Indians of North Carolina,” Sen. Doc., 677, 63d Cong., 3d. Sess.; Connor, North Carolina, I, 40-61; V. W. Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732, Chaps. V-VII.

made certain contributions to the white culture, although they left no important ethnic influence upon the population. The English incorporated a few Indian words into their language and took over a few Indian myths and customs. They adopted the Indian method of clearing the forests and of planting corn. Their roads closely followed the Indian trading paths. They gained a knowledge of herbs and primitive medicines from their Indian neighbors.11

11 See J. W. Mahoney, The Cherokee Physician, or Indian Guide to Health, p. 16.

 Indian villages were places of refuge for Negro slaves and white criminals, and, as such, were constant sources of friction. The white settlers early attempted to enslave the Indian, but the difficulties of enslavement and the superiority of the Negro as a slave tended to restrict the process.

At the close of the revolutionary period, there were still several groups of Indians in North Carolina. Their stronghold was in the extreme West, but there were also a few in the central and eastern parts of the State. The Catawbas in Mecklenberg County were in 1784 “a melancholy picture of the singular and fatal ravages of the vices, with which they became contaminated from an association with their civilized neighbors.”12

12 Elkanah Watson, Men and Times of the Revolution, p. 258.

The Cherokees in the West continued to be a problem to the State even after their forced removal in 1836. In 1860 the Indian population of North Carolina numbered 1,158.

A few Negro laborers were brought into the Colony soon after the first permanent white settlement was made. In 1733 Governor Burrington estimated the number of blacks to be one-sixth of the total population. By 1790 this proportion had risen to one-fourth. It is possible to detect the concentration of the black population as early as 1755. The number of slaves listed at that time, although incomplete, indicates that slave labor was most profitable in the tobacco belt which was moving west along the Virginia boundary.13

13 Colonial Records of North Carolina (hereafter cited as CRNC). V, 575. For an analysis of slaveholding in colonial North Carolina see R. H. Taylor, Slaveholding in North Carolina: An Economic View, James Sprunt Historical Publications, Vol. XVIII, Nos. 1 and 2, pp. 9-19.

Here the plantation regime was developing with its distinctive economic and social organization. No estimate of the number of free Negroes can be determined accurately before 1790, when the number was 4,975. From that time the position of this class became increasingly important. Around the Negro there developed theories and social practices which bore significantly upon the whole of society.

The English, the Scotch, the Irish, and the Germans were the largest national groups composing the white race in the Colony.14

14 See Connor, Race Elements in the White Population of North Carolina.

The English made the first settlements in North Carolina and occupied the territory for almost a century without interruption, thereby fastening the English political and social institutions upon the Colony. English customs molded the form of local government, the system of judicature, and the whole body of legislation.

The character of the first permanent settlers in North Carolina has been much in controversy. Certainly the first to come were hunters from Virginia. Then came farmers in search of fertile land. Since 90 per cent of the landowners in Virginia during the Commonwealth period belonged to the yeomanry, it follows that those who overflowed into North Carolina must also have been largely of that social class.15

15 T. J. Wertenbaker, The Planters of Colonial Virginia, p. 83.

In 1669 the Albemarle Assembly passed two laws to encourage immigration which led Virginia to call the Albemarle “Rogues Harbour.”16

16 See Colonel William Byrd's opinion of North Carolinians in his Westover Manuscripts, pp. 27-28; W. K. Boyd (ed.), William Byrd's Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, p. 92.

 The first was a stay-law patterned from a Virginia law of 1642 and the other a law exempting new settlers from taxation for a year. Indentured white servants formed a part of the population, but the number in North Carolina seems to have been smaller than in Pennsylvania, Virginia, or Maryland.17

17 See C. A. Herrick, White Servitude in Pennsylvania; J. C. Ballagh, White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia; E. I. McCormac, White Servitude in Maryland; J. S. Bassett, Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North Carolina.

The Scotch inhabitants of North Carolina were both Highlanders and the so-called Scotch-Irish whose ancestors had been settled in Ulster beginning with the great migration of 1610. The Highlanders were the first of the Scotch to come to North Carolina in any considerable numbers. As early as 1729 a few of them had settled on the upper Cape Fear.18

18 Connor, History of North Carolina, pp. 143-61.

Ten years later, 350 landed at Wilmington under the leadership of Neill McNeill, of Kintyre, Scotland. The Highlanders continued to arrive even to the outbreak of the Revolution. They spread through the Cape Fear region and about 1746 laid out a town which came to be known as Fayetteville, one of the most important markets in colonial and ante-bellum North Carolina.19

19 S. A. Ashe, History of North Carolina, I, 266.

The Scotch-Irish landed principally at Philadelphia and poured into North Carolina along the piedmont road which led to the Yadkin River. As early as 1740 a few Scotch-Irish families were scattered along the Hico, the Eno, and the Haw rivers. After 1750 a steady stream flowed into the Colony. In 1751 Governor Gabriel Johnston of North Carolina reported to the Board of Trade that “Inhabitants flock in here daily, mostly from Pennsylvania and other parts of America . . . and some directly from Europe, they commonly seat themselves toward the West and have got near the mountains.”20

20 CRNC, IV, 1073.

Admirers of the Scotch-Irish have attributed to them most of the virtues which have appeared in North Carolina society. “They were the most efficient supporters of the American cause during the struggle for independence,” wrote the Reverend Eli W. Caruthers in 1842, “and they have done more for the support of learning, morality and religion than any other class of people.”21

21 Sketch of the Life and Character of the Reverend David Caldwell, p. 87. See also W. H. Foote, Sketches of North Carolina, pp. 120-24, 137-47; C. K. Bolton, Scotch Irish Pioneers in Ulster and America, Chap. XVI; L. H. Floyd, “Some Presbyterian Contributions to Education in North Carolina” (unpublished typescript), pp. 153-56.

Following the same route traveled by the Scotch-Irish, several thousand Germans also came into North Carolina between 1745 and 1775. Like the Scotch-Irish, they were thrifty and fervently religious, but instead of representing one communion as in the case of the Scotch, they were members of three different branches of the Protestant church: the Lutheran, the German Reformed, and the Unitas Fratrum, or Moravian Church.

The Lutheran and German Reformed settlers concentrated in the piedmont from the Haw River southwest through the Yadkin and Catawba river valleys, and the Moravians22

22 See A. L. Fries, Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, I, and “The Moravian Contribution to Colonial North Carolina,” NCHR, VII, 1-14.

settled at Wachovia in the present county of Forsyth. Both the Scotch and the Germans preserved their native customs for several generations. Gaelic and German were rapidly giving way to English by 1825,23

23 Mrs. Basil Hall, The Aristocratic Journey, p. 205; W. H. Gehrke, “The Transition from the German to the English Language in North Carolina,” NCHR, XII, 1-19; Carolina Watchman, September 9, 1847.

 but even in 1888 Jethro Rumple declared that the accent and idiom of “Pennsylvania-Dutch” might still be heard on the streets of Salisbury.24

24 History of Rowan County, North Carolina, p. 46.

 EXTENT OF SETTLEMENT IN 1790

North Carolina was but thinly settled except in certain favored areas even at the opening of the Revolution. By 1760 the piedmont had been settled to the base of the Blue Ridge. Ten years later James Robertson visited the fertile valley of the Watauga which lay beyond the Appalachian barrier and was preparing to lead a band of settlers there.25

25 A. W. Putnam, History of Middle Tennessee; or, Life and Times of General James Robertson, p. 18 et seq.

Yet all the land in North Carolina had not been taken up. The process of settlement, the nature of the soil, the topography of the Province made it inevitable that the settlers should spread out over a large area and that the average density of population per square mile should be low.

For instance, Moore County, whose area in 1810 was about 490,000 acres, contained 300,000 acres which were sand hills or pine barrens. The northern section of the county, watered by Deep River and its branches, contained four-fifths of the entire population of the county. The density of this section was reckoned at twenty-two persons per square mile, while the density of the remainder was only two and one-fourth persons per square mile.26

26 A. R. Newsome, “Twelve North Carolina Counties in 1810-1811,” NCHR, VI, 282.

Many acres in North Carolina at the opening of the nineteenth century were still unoccupied and even unclaimed. Cumberland County, which contained the chief home market for the entire back country, was still recording land entries in its county court.27

27 See MS in Cumberland County Court Minutes, 1805-1808.

Elkanah Watson, who had traveled several times throughout North Carolina, wrote that the State was thinly settled except in favored spots. In October, 1777, he traveled from Edenton on Albemarle Sound to New Bern on the Neuse and from there to Wilmington, seeing only few signs of habitation. “The dreariness,” he said, “was scarcely relieved by the appearance of a house except a few miserable tar burners' huts.”28

28 Op. cit., p. 38 et seq.

 In 1784 and 1785 he traveled from Edenton northwest to Murfreesboro. Warrenton was just “emerging from the forest” and the sections around the head waters of the Neuse and Tar rivers were “new and thinly settled.” William Attmore, a merchant of Philadelphia, who more than once visited the most important towns of the State, wrote in his journal of 1787 that the State had a scattered and frontier population.29

29 Journal of a Tour to North Carolina, 1787, James Sprunt Historical Publications, Vol. XVII, No. 2.

In 1790 the density of population in the State was 8.1 persons per square mile.30

30 U. S. Census Office, op. cit., p. 58.

The distribution of population by counties and by geographic areas is indicated by the following table:

POPULATION BY COUNTIES IN 179031     NUMBER OF COUNTIES     Scale of Population Total Coastal Plain Piedmont Mountain 15-16,000 1   1   14-15,000 1 1     13-14,000         12-13,000 2 1 1   11-12,000 1   1   10-11,000 5 2 3   9-10,000 4 2 1 1 8-9,000 4 1 1 2 7-8,000 7 2 4 1 6-7,000 6 4 2   5-6,000 14 9 5   4-5,000 4 4     3-4,000 4 3 1  

31 Ibid., p. 199. The population for Caswell, Granville, and Orange counties was taken from the county tax lists.

In 1790 Rowan, in the piedmont, was the only county in the State containing a population of more than fifteen thousand. The back country, which began in most instances with the piedmont and included three-fifths of the total area of the State, contained twenty-four counties as compared to twenty-nine in the coastal plain. Although nineteen of the western counties and only thirteen of the eastern counties contained a population of more than six thousand, the density of population was higher in the coastal plain than in the back country.

 ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

In a region thus sparsely settled the average prosperity of the inhabitants was necessarily low. Those who produced a surplus found difficulty in disposing of it because of the lack of convenient markets. Planters living near the mouths of the rivers might, by the purchase of sea-going vessels, transport their commodities to the West Indies or to northern markets with the assurance of a reasonable return. Plantations so situated usually had private wharves where the produce was loaded.32

32 Brickell, op. cit., p. 10.

Occasionally a planter accumulated a considerable fortune.33

33 Attmore, op. cit., pp. 16-17, calls attention in 1787 to the rise of John C. Stanly of New Bern from a debtor's prison in Philadelphia to a condition of affluence in North Carolina. “He has a large Wharff and Distillery near his house; upon Neuse River side of the Town—and a fine plantation with sixty slaves thereon.”

 But most of the inhabitants lived, as one traveler observed, “scantily in a region of affluence.”34

34 Watson, op. cit., p. 255.

 Industries were limited, towns small, and each farm an economic unit. In 1790 sixty-nine per cent of the families in North Carolina owned no slaves, while the average number of slaves per slaveholding family was 6.29. In Warren County, however, where there was considerable concentration of slaves due to the predominance of tobacco culture, eleven slaveholders in 1790 owned more than fifty slaves.35

35 Taylor, op. cit., p. 19.

Throughout the colonial period the price of tobacco was uncertain and the fluctuations were accompanied by economic distress. The production of naval stores was usually profitable, but life in the pine forests was hard and primitive. Stock raising and farming were the chief occupations of the settlers. The raising of stock was, in fact, the most profitable pursuit of those living in the back country, for the woods provided forage and the cost of transportation to market was negligible.

Specie, which is rare in all frontier countries, was especially scarce in North Carolina because the Province had no considerable commercial town.36

36 C. L. Raper, North Carolina, A Study in English Colonial Government, pp. 125-47.

Barter was used extensively until 1712 when the first paper money was issued. But even with the appearance of paper currency, barter continued for many years to be the prevailing method of exchange. By act37

37 CRNC, IV, 291-92.

 of assembly which was allowed by the Lords Proprietors in 1715-1716, seventeen commodities were assigned legal tender values: tobacco, Indian corn, wheat, cheese, raw buck and doe skins, dressed buck and doe skins, tallow, leather, beaver and otter skins, wildcat skins, butter, feathers, tar, pitch, whale oil, beef, pork. The act was in operation with slight modifications until the middle of the century. The legal ratios, however, fluctuated throughout the period. At times the average market rate in terms of sterling was three to one.38

38 Ibid., III, 185.

 The various issues of paper currency sanctioned by the General Assembly also depreciated greatly in value.39

39 C. L. Raper, “The Finances of the North Carolina Colonists,” North Carolina Booklet, VII, 84-104.

 Some of the planters and merchants, in the absence of coin, issued bills of credit of their own which passed as currency. In the middle of the eighteenth century the due bills of William Borden, a shipbuilder on New Port River in Carteret County, circulated widely and were known as “Borden's Script.”40

40 See Borden's plan for the rehabilitation of monetary affairs in North Carolina in his “Address to the Inhabitants of North Carolina,” in Boyd, Some Eighteenth Century Tracts, pp. 65-100.

 On the eve of the Revolution, Alexander Schaw, a North Carolina loyalist, writing to Lord Dartmouth, said of the monetary condition of the colony: “There is no specie in the province and there never was a person who could command a sum of any consequence even of their paper currency. Nothing in the stile of a banker or money merchant was ever heard of.”41

41 E. W. and C. McL. Andrews (eds.), Journal of A Lady of Quality, p. 281.

 SOCIAL CLASSES

Even in the early days of the frontier, life had its social distinctions. There were the great and the lowly. In general, colonial society was divided into four classes: the gentry, the yeomanry, the indentured servants and poor whites, and the Negroes. The highest social group was that of the large landholders, professional men, and public officials.42

42 See Connor, History of North Carolina, Chap. XII; T. J. Wertenbaker, Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia.

Bringing with them ideas of class distinction from the Old World, they insisted upon a recognition of superiority in the New World. In documents such as wills, deeds, and county court records, signatures may be found followed by such terms as “gentleman,” “esquire,” “planter.” Members of this group were usually well educated and cultured. Miss Janet Schaw, a Scotch “lady of quality” who visited North Carolina on the eve of the Revolution, found some ladies in Wilmington who “would make a figure in any part of the world,” but the gentlemen, she lamented, knew no “nice distinctions.”43

43 Andrews, op. cit., pp. 154-55.

 Although critical and suspicious of the colonists, Miss Schaw, nevertheless, admitted that the people of Wilmington lived “decently,” and added that “tho' their houses are not spacious, they are in general very commodious and well furnished.”

Small farmers made up by far the largest single social group in the Province. They worked the land with their own hands, knew few conveniences, and were contented to subsist on corn and pork “in the most slovenly manner.”44

44 Ibid., p. 153.

They took pride in the title of yeoman and those who could write attached the title to their names in all their public dealings. On holidays, at militia musters, and during court week they usually flocked to town where they drank deep and played hard. Cockfighting, horse racing, and wrestling were their favorite sports, and in these they indulged with great enthusiasm. On such occasions “many genteel people” were “promiscuously mingled with the vulgar and debased,” bets ran high, and the amusement often terminated in fighting.45

45 Watson, op. cit., pp. 261-62.

 When yeomen fought, the battle usually continued until one antagonist succeeded in twisting a forefinger in a side-lock of the other's hair, and with a dextrous thrust of the thumb scooped out his opponent's eye. The eye might be saved, however, if the beaten man bawled out “King's curse” in time.

The class next below that of the yeomanry was composed of indentured white servants.46

46 Bassett, Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North Carolina, pp. 75-86.

It was made up of convicts sold as punishment for petty crime or for political offenses, of women and children kidnapped in London or other English ports, of colonial dependent children, and especially of those who voluntarily sold their services in payment for passage to the New World. The term of service for those under sixteen years of age brought from Europe was five years.47

47 Laws of North Carolina, 1741, reprinted in State Records of North Carolina (hereafter cited as SRNC), XXIII, 62, 191. The law of 1741 stated no specific term of years, but left the matter to an agreement between master and servant.

 Dependent orphans or illegitimate children of white parents were legally known as apprentices but actually they were in the same social class as indentured servants. They served their masters from the time of apprenticeship to the age of maturity, which was fixed at eighteen for the girl and twenty-one for the boy.48

48 Ibid., p. 581, Act of 1762, Chap. V, sec. xix.

 Until 1737 or later, the indentured servant was able, if he chose, to enter the class of small farmers shortly after his freedom, for by the Concessions of 1665 and of 1681, the Lords Proprietors offered Christian servants at first forty and then fifty acres of land at the end of their servitude.49

49 CRNC, I, 334; Brickell, op. cit., p. 268; Raper, North Carolina, p. 78. Cf. T. J. Wertenbaker, The First Americans, pp. 25-26.

At the bottom of the social scale stood the Negro. It was possible for the white man by diligence and hard work to pass from one social class to that next above; but the cultural development of the Negro, the color of his skin, and the laws of the Province operated to keep him at the bottom.

 RELIGION AND EDUCATION

The religion of the gentry in the coastal plain was, for the most part, that of the Church of England, although the Baptists and Quakers also had a stronghold in this region. In the back country were to be found Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Lutherans, and Moravians. The colonial governors were never able to obtain the legislation necessary for the proper support of the Church. In fact, the quarrel over a vestry act acceptable to the Crown left the clergy without support, and it was not until Governor Tryon's administration in 1765 that conditions began to improve. Even then, support of the Established Church was to be short-lived, for the Constitution of 1776 forbade the “establishment of any one religious Church or Denomination in this State in Preference to any other.”

The history of education in North Carolina is closely related to that of religion. For more than a century the preachers of North Carolina were also the school teachers. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel made the first attempt to establish schools in the Colony. The first teacher to come to North Carolina, about whom any record has been found, was Charles Griffin, a lay reader of the Established Church. In 1705 he opened a school in Pasquotank County.

The Colony also had a few academies. New Bern Academy was incorporated in 1767; and an academy at Edenton in 1770.50

50 See E. W. Knight, Public School Education in North Carolina; C. L. Coon (ed.), North Carolina Schools and Academies: A Documentary History.

Writing of conditions in North Carolina during the Revolution, Elkanah Watson said: “Perhaps no State had at that period performed so little to promote the cause of education, science and arts, as North Carolina. The lower classes of that region were then in a condition of great mental degradation.”51

51 Op. cit., p. 253.

 Children of the gentry had been educated at home by their mothers, taught by tutors, or less frequently were sent to school in Britain, but the majority of inhabitants were neither educated nor had a great thirst for knowledge.52

52 “Edgecombe County,” MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book; Newsome, op. cit., p. 88.

Nearly every planter had a small collection of books.53

53 See S. B. Weeks, “Libraries and Literature in North Carolina in the Eighteenth Century,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1895, pp. 171-224.

Extant wills and inventories show these to have numbered from twenty-five volumes to more than five hundred. A few planters and professional men had considerable libraries. Samuel Johnston, at one time governor of the State, had at his plantation, Hayes, probably the largest library in the Colony. It contained more than a thousand volumes and included standard works on philosophy, law, history, political science, medicine, and theology.

Aside from their libraries, the colonists had little to read unless they subscribed to the gazettes of South Carolina or Virginia. The first press54

54 See C. C. Crittenden, North Carolina Newspapers Before 1790, James Sprunt Historical Studies, XX, No. 1; S. B. Weeks, The Press of North Carolina in the Eighteenth Century.

in North Carolina was set up at New Bern in 1749 by James Davis, but the first newspaper probably did not appear until 1751.55

55 D. L. Corbitt, “The North Carolina Gazette,” NCHR, II, 84-85.

 During the Revolution, four presses were operated in North Carolina at different times: one in Halifax and one in New Bern, a third with the army of Cornwallis, and a fourth with the army of General Greene. After 1785 the number of papers began to increase more rapidly.

Since the press was not established until the middle of the eighteenth century and even then was not a medium for the communication of much local news, the colonists had to depend chiefly upon letters for information. The first regular post route established in North Carolina seems to have begun operation in 1770 and to have delivered mail about once a month.56

56 CRNC, VIII, 3-4; C. C. Crittenden, “Means of Communication in North Carolina, 1763-1789,” NCHR, VIII, 376.

Yet even at the opening of the nineteenth century letters were most frequently sent by travelers. The percentage of illiteracy, however, was so high that this limited service worked no hardship on the majority of the inhabitants.

Social conditions at the opening of the nineteenth century still bore the marks of a frontier community. The Revolution had been a time of civil war. The advancement of socializing forces which was well under way in 1770 was interrupted, and readjustment was just beginning in 1800.

 CHAPTER II SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS

THE TRIP in 1840 over the newly completed railroad from Weldon in Halifax County to Wilmington on the coast was a humiliating experience to a North Carolinian. He was “certain to have his feelings wounded at the sneering remarks of scoffers and witlings as they defamed the Old North State for her poverty of soil and primeval style of log cabins,” wrote a state-proud Tar Heel to the Fayetteville Observer in 1856. “Sixteen years ago, I passed over the road, and as I heard the carping, captious remarks of travellers . . . I blushed, and dared not vindicate our State fame, so greatly were the odds against her.”1

1 September 1.

On every hand were sterile pine barrens, acres of sickly weeds or riotous masses of honeysuckle, cabins weathered and beaten by the pulsation of generation after generation of grubbing poverty. A swarm of barefooted children with only a shift to their backs played in the hog wallow at the door. In the distance were the toiling bodies of father and mother, bent indifferently over hoe or ax.

Thirty years after joining the Union, North Carolina had sunk into vegetative indolence. “She has become, voluntarily, the tributary to other states,” mourned “Aristides” in the Western Carolinian of November 14, 1820, “and has habitually yielded to their pretentions, until she is viewed with that contemptuous indifference which a want of personal dignity never fails incurring. . . . She is ignorant of her own resources and passive under the neglect and obloquy of her sister states.”

When Governor Swain made a stirring speech to the Legislature of 1833, in which he likened the State to Rip Van Winkle, he was but using a figure of speech long a “pleasant sarcasm” among the newspapers of the nation. During her heavy slumber she has, like Rip Van Winkle, “grown poor and ragged,” wrote the New York Evening Star, “from permitting her native energies and strength to lie for so protracted a period dormant and unemployed.”2

2 Quoted in Raleigh Star, December 27, 1833.

In 1845 Governor Graham was still reminding the Legislature that it had done little to elevate the national character of the State. “We cannot delude ourselves with the belief, that our advancement in prosperity and wealth, has equalled that of most of our sister States, . . . Such has been the flow of emigration, that our population has not yet doubled its number at the first Federal census in 1790. . . . The inlets on our coast have undergone no change for the better; but few of our rivers have undergone in navigation, though all have obstructions, and that extended tract of country lying between this capital and the Blue Ridge, and north-west of the Cape Fear, comprehending more than one-third of our whole territory, population and taxable wealth, enjoys but little better facilities of transportation than when it was traversed by the baggage wagons of hostile armies, in the midst of the Revolution.” Humanitarian reforms “have as yet no foundations among us; and although a Common School system has been commenced, a surprisingly large part of our people are yet destitute of the first rudiments of education.”3

3 North Carolina Standard, January 8, 1845.

By 1851, however, the Raleigh Register could write: “A change in our Legislative halls, manifested during the last two sessions of the Assembly, might lead to the hope, that Old Rip may wipe the dew out of his eyes and wake up to a sense of his real dignity. . . . Nothing checks us but our own indifference in gaining an equal footing with other States not more favored than our own.”4

4 August 9.

And the Tar Heel who was painfully chagrined on his trip from Weldon to Wilmington in 1840 could write in 1856, “Less than sixteen days ago in passing over the same route, my State pride was exalted in listening to encomiums on the style of buildings and crops of grain and fruits and grass that met the eye, as the steam horse sped along its iron track.”

But North Carolina had so long been the target of newspaper ridicule that when Frederick Law Olmsted, a New York journalist, came to estimate the character of the slave states in 1856 he placed North Carolina at the bottom of the list. Pointing out that one-fourth of the native white adults could neither read nor write, he said:

North Carolina has a proverbial reputation for the ignorance and torpidity of her people; . . . I do not find the reason of this in any innate quality of the popular mind; but, rather, in the circumstances under which it finds its development. Owing to the general poverty of the soil in the Eastern part of the State, and to the almost exclusive employment of slave labor on the soils productive of cotton; owing, also, to the difficulty and expense of reaching market with bulky produce from the interior and western districts, population and wealth is more divided than in the other Atlantic States; industry is almost entirely rural, and there is but little communication or concert of action among the small and scattered proprietors of capital. For the same reason, the advantages of education are more difficult to be enjoyed, the distance at which families reside apart preventing children from coming together in such numbers as to give remunerative employment to a teacher.5

5 A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States in the Years 1853-1854, p. 366.

For more than a century, the State's public men had been pointing out the same facts. “Our wide extent of territory and sparseness of population, together with those geographical disadvantages which prevent that speedy interchange of sentiment between one portion and another of the people, enjoyed by other states, renders it necessarily very slow in collecting, and, therefore, in expressing, the public sentiment of our State,” declared Robert Strange at a Southern Rights Meeting in Wilmington in 1850. “This slowness of expression has been usually attributed to some peculiarity in the people themselves, involving the imputation of Boeotian stupidity or phlegmatic indifference. Never was there greater error.”6

6 North Carolina Standard, March 27, 1850.

Although there was cause for North Carolina's poor reputation abroad, perhaps no State in the Union was exposed to such extravagant misrepresentations. Instead of being “deficient in moral, physical, and intellectual resources,”7

7 Raleigh Register, February 20, 1829.

the State was merely a land-locked, agricultural province exhibiting the usual characteristics of such a region: provincialism, sectionalism, conservatism, individualism, and superstition.

PROVINCIALISM

“It is a singular circumstance, that North Carolina, with a wider sea coast8

8 It is presumed that the Board of Internal Improvements had reference to the length of the shore line of the mainland. In 1833 the extent of the North Carolina shore line was exceeded by that of Florida and Louisiana. On the Pacific coast, the shore line of California exceeds that of North Carolina and the shore line of Washington is approximately the same length as North Carolina's.

than any State in the Union, and the fifth in extent of territory and in population, has less commerce and fewer important towns than any of her Atlantic sisters,” reported the Board of Internal Improvements to the Legislature in 1833. “The effect which this condition has produced upon the prosperity of the State and the character of its citizens is apparent.”9

9 Star, December 20, 1833.

 Any region without a large commercial town to tie together the common interests of its people and to focus the rays of fashion and science is necessarily provincial.

The most striking feature of North Carolina's transportation10

10 Sec C. C. Crittenden, “Overland Travel and Transportation in North Carolina, 1763-1789,” NCHR, VIII, 239-57.

problem was the fact that various sections of the State were more isolated from one another than from neighboring States. For instance, as late as 1850 a large part of western and southwestern North Carolina found a market in Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina; while the northern and parts of the eastern and central sections sent produce to Richmond, Petersburg, and Norfolk, Virginia. Under such circumstances, it was difficult for the public men of the State to unify State enterprise or to obtain a concert of action. When legislators met they bristled with sectional prejudices and frittered away their time over small issues. Vexed with session after session of the General Assembly which did “nothing for the honor and advantage of the Old North State,” the Fayetteville Observer said bitterly in the issue of January 25, 1843, “We think it will be acknowledged that never were $40,000 of the public money more uselessly expended, . . . than in paying a set of young men ‘fresh from School,’ and of old men, some of whom are greener still, for the ‘child's play’ in which they have been engaged for the nearly 70 days past.”

Even before 1800 a few public men saw the necessity of binding together the different sections of the State if the provincial outlook of its people was ever to give way to a common interest in the State as a whole. Such a goal could never be reached until the farmers could find accessible markets within the State for their produce. In 1812 that idealist and fervent North Carolinian, Archibald D. Murphey, urged such a course upon the General Assembly. Under his influence, the General Assembly did open the State purse beginning with 1815 and let out small driblets for river improvement, but the returns from such a reluctant policy were negligible.11

11 W. K. Boyd, History of North Carolina: The Federal Period, 83-100; Connor, North Carolina, I, 484-94; C. C. Weaver, Internal Improvements in North Carolina Previous to 1860.

Murphey had dreamed of a complete system of inland transportation which would connect every portion of the State. The Roanoke River and its tributaries would have had an outlet through Albemarle Sound. The Tar and the Neuse would have been connected and given an outlet through Ocracoke Inlet. The Yadkin and the Catawba would have been joined to the Cape Fear with its outlet at Wilmington. The rest of the State would have been connected with these water routes by a system of turnpikes and thus the State would have become an economic unit.12

12 Papers of Archibald D. Murphey, II, 103-53.

Whatever such a system might have meant to the prosperity of the State, the magnitude of the undertaking was clearly beyond the capacity of the Legislature to realize. It was not until the beginning of the railroad era13

13 C. K. Brown, A State Movement in Railroad Development, pp. 15-148.

in 1836 that Murphey's dream was even partly accomplished. Two years after the building of the first American railway, President Joseph Caldwell of the University of North Carolina wrote a series of newspaper articles called “The Numbers of Carlton” in which he urged North Carolina to build a railroad from Beaufort to the Tennessee line. For the first time public sentiment was aroused. In 1834 the Legislature chartered the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad Company, but work on the road did not get well underway until 1837 when the Legislature under Governor Edward B. Dudley's influence gave financial support to the company. In 1840 the road was formally opened. It covered a distance of 161 miles and connected Wilmington on the coast with Weldon, a point on the Roanoke River near the Virginia line.

Once having committed itself to a policy of State aid, the Legislature went steadily forward with the work. In 1838 it gave assistance to the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad Company which had been chartered in 1835. By this route the State capital was connected with the Greenville and Roanoke Railroad in Virginia and indirectly with Petersburg. The Legislature of 1848 chartered the North Carolina Railroad Company with a capital stock of $3,000,000, two-thirds of which was to be subscribed by the State. The course of the road was from Goldsboro on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to Charlotte, by way of Raleigh and Salisbury. By 1856 the road had been completed, a distance of 223 miles, proudly called “the longest railroad in the world.” There now remained the task of connecting East with West. In 1852 the Legislature chartered the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad Company to connect Beaufort Harbor with Goldsboro, and the Western North Carolina Railroad Company to connect Salisbury with the French Broad River within the vicinity of Asheville. By 1860 the Atlantic and North Carolina line had been completed and the Western road to within five and a half miles of Morganton. In 1854 the Legislature chartered a company to build a railroad from Wilmington to Rutherfordton by way of Charlotte, and by 1861 the line had been extended out of Wilmington as far as Rockingham. By the close of the period North Carolina had a total of 889 miles of railroads, constructed at a cost of $167,709,793.

The effect of the system upon the people and upon the State's reputation abroad was immediate. “Those who fail to see and appreciate the enterprize and talents of ‘Old Rip,’ as some do most scandalously call her, must themselves be sound asleep,” said the Danville, Virginia, Reporter, in 1845. Is it nothing to have one of the longest railroads in the Union?14

14 Quoted in Star, November 19, 1845.

In the first year that the Wilmington and Weldon railroad was opened to traffic, the farmers within its reach were able to rush their wheat to Petersburg to take advantage of a temporary rise in price.15

15 Boyd, History of North Carolina, p. 236.

 No longer need the farmers' crops moulder in granaries at home because of the high cost of getting them to market. From one end of the State to the other, the people thrilled to “the echoes of thundering wheels” and to the promise of prosperity which the reverberation held out.

“Whose heart would not beat with quickened vibration at the idea of meeting his brethren from all parts of the State at Raleigh, in 12, in 24 hours! for either religious, political, or other purposes,” cried the Asheville Messenger in 1852. “What poor man could not then visit his friends and relatives, and make life more social and endurable. We now pay $40 to get to Raleigh and lose ten days.” When the Western Railroad is completed we will “lose three and pay $12!” Look at our markets that will be built up; the impetus that will be given to erect manufactories which will attract capital at home and abroad; the inducement that will be held out to labor; the incentive that we will have to improve our crops and our stock!16

16 “Railroad to the Mountains,” quoted in Star, November 24, 1852.

The railroads, however, still left a large portion of the State with no better transportation facilities than it had during the Revolution. Of the important towns only Charlotte, Salisbury, Morganton, Rockingham, Greensboro, Raleigh, Goldsboro, Wilmington, and New Bern had railroad connections. In 1850 more than half of the State was still dependent on the old four-horse wagon system for transportation over a distance of from fifty to four hundred miles to market.17

17 J. D. B. DeBow, Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States, II, 174 n.

As late as 1870 Greenville, South Carolina, was still the town within easiest reach of Haywood County and neighboring sections.18

18 W. C. Allen, Centennial of Haywood County, p. 35.

Had North Carolina connected its railroad system to the rest of the State by a system of public highways the picture of prosperity which the Asheville Messenger drew in 1852 might actually have been realized and the spirit of localism which stalked the land might have given way sooner to one of laudable State pride. The Legislature did actually give some aid in the building of public highways, but the amount spent was insufficient to build roads which would stand the wear of more than a few years. The famous system of plank roads which Fayetteville built to connect that town with points in the West was popular for a decade after 1848, but the roads were profitable for only a few years.19

19 Boyd, History of North Carolina, pp. 350-52; “Plank Roads,” North Carolina Standard, September 3, 1851.

The Legislature of 1850 chartered companies to build roads out of Charlotte, Concord, Salisbury, Asheville, Oxford, and Wilmington; and the Legislature of 1852 chartered forty-one plank road companies.

The road system of the ante-bellum period made transportation along the public highways often difficult and uncertain. Supervision of roads, ferries, and bridges was under the jurisdiction of the county courts.20

20 Revised Code of North Carolina, enacted by the General Assembly at the session of 1854 (prepared and published in 1855, and hereafter cited as Revised Code, 1855), Chap. CI. See also C. K. Brown, The State Highway System of North Carolina, Chap. I.

Each court annually appointed overseers of public roads who were alloted portions of convenient length to keep in good order. These overseers, who were not compelled to serve more than one year in three, acted without remuneration but were liable to fine if they refused to serve or if they neglected to perform their duties when appointed. All white males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five and free Negro males and male slaves between the ages of sixteen and fifty were subject to work as hands under the direction of the overseer.

The upper classes substituted slave labor for their personal service or paid the fine of one dollar a day imposed on those refusing to work. This forced labor was a source of bitter complaint but in most instances the inhabitants preferred it to a money tax. The result was that the county roads were usually in need of repair; bridges were built slowly, and ferries established only where the streams were so deep as to make fording dangerous.

In 1800, for instance, a wagon from Chatham County on its way to New Bern with two hogsheads of tobacco fell into the river while crossing the bridge over the Neuse at Kinston and the driver and three horses were drowned. “This accident,” wrote the Raleigh Register, “was owing to the very shameful state of the bridge, the planks covering which, lying aslant and loose, gave way. How can those who have the charge of public bridges acquit themselves for suffering them to remain in such a state?”21

21 February 11, 1800.

In 1802 when Congress was preparing to extend the great northern and southern stage mail through North Carolina, a congressman wrote home hastily, “If a little more attention were paid to the roads and bridges on the main line, it would tend greatly to the advantage and credit of the State.”22

22 Ibid., March 30, 1802.

 In October, 1834, the Hillsborough Recorder declared that wagoners between that town and Fayetteville found the roads so bad that they were forced to leave a part of their loads on the way and that all returned from the trip with broken-down horses.23

23 Quoted in Fayetteville Observer, October 14, 1834.

 In 1846, however, when Professor Elisha Mitchell of the State University examined for the Legislature the main road from Raleigh west through Salisbury and on to Asheville, he reported that the system of local road police answered very well except in places where the nature of the soil made road building difficult. But he strongly urged the State to build a main turnpike west to attach the interest of the western people to North Carolina. “An intelligent gentleman in the western part of the State,” wrote Professor Mitchell, “remarked to me that as things now are he has less to do with people on the northern side of the Albemarle Sound than with those on some of the remotest regions of the globe.”24

24 “Report of E. Mitchell on Turnpike,” MS in Legislative Papers of North Carolina, December 3, 1846.

The poor mail facilities within the State, especially before 1820, also contributed toward its internal isolation. The bad condition of the roads was partly responsible for the poor mail service but it was a fact, often complained of by leading citizens of the State, that the people themselves were indifferent as to whether they received mail and consequently would not demand better postal service of Congress. In 1800 North Carolina had sixty-eight post offices serving her sixty-one counties.25

25 Report of the Postmaster General in Return of the Whole Number of Persons within the Several Districts of the United States, report of the second census, 1800, made by the U. S. Census Office.

At that time the most frequent mail service was three times a week. The first mail stage from the North running as far south as Augusta, Georgia, was begun in 1803 and passed through Raleigh, causing the Raleigh Register to rejoice that “the means of diffusing information” was so much greater than “the contracted limits of a few years since.”26

26 February 15, 1803.

 The first six-day service in the State was begun in 1813 as an experiment during the remainder of the war with Great Britain. By 1820 Raleigh was receiving a daily mail from the north and south and had a connection with some points in Western North Carolina as often as three times a week. By 1826 mail stages were penetrating the West. The first mail stage between Salisbury and Lincolnton was established in that year and all the mail carried at one trip instead of being left to accumulate in the post office at Salisbury. Sometimes packages had been left behind as long as two weeks because the saddle bags were too small to contain them.

By 1835 Raleigh had two daily mails, one from the north and the other from the south; a mail service from Greensboro, New Bern, and Tarboro three times a week; from Oxford twice a week; and from Roxboro and Haywood once a week.27

27 Ibid., November 17, 1835.

With the building of railroads the mail was carried by train, but long after the ante-bellum period it was still delivered by a carrier on horse-back in many sections of the State.

Newspapers constantly complained even to 1860 of the failure of the mails to arrive according to schedule.28

28 Ibid., March 16, 1809. “We were yesterday again disappointed in not receiving any mail from the northward, the stage arriving without the mail. We are sorry to state, that these failures are very frequent, and except means be taken to insure greater regularity in the conveyance of the mail, it will be of no avail that plans are formed for increasing the expedition in the running of the mail-stages.”

Usually the failure was due to swollen streams or impassable roads. In the issue of December 26, 1820 the Western Carolinian of Salisbury complained that “the bare appearance of a cloud above the horizon” was sufficient to interfere with the weekly mail service. William White, the Raleigh postmaster, thought that no State in the Union or at least none of the old States was as poorly provided with mail service in 1851 as was North Carolina.29

29 The Papers of Thomas Ruffin (ed. by J. G. deR. Hamilton), II, 316.

 He attributed this fact to the apathy of the people and urged that a movement be started to procure a daily mail west as far at least as Greensboro if not to Salisbury.

The improvement of the transportation system in the State greatly increased the use of the mails. Postmaster White of Raleigh estimated in 1851 that the movement to build a railroad to Asheville had increased the mail to the western towns by 20 per cent.30

30 Ibid.

The decreases in the postal rates also greatly encouraged the use of the mails. Letters which had formerly cost 18¾ cents to be sent from Asheville to Raleigh cost only 10 cents in 1860.31

31 The postal rates in 1823 “for single letters composed of one piece of paper” were as follows: any distance not exceeding 30 miles, 6 cents; over 30 and under 80 miles, 10 cents; over 80 and under 150 miles, 12½ cents; over 150 and under 400 miles, 18¾ cents; over 400 miles, 25 cents. Letters composed of two sheets of paper were charged with double these rates. See Colin McIver, The North Carolina Register and United States Calendar, p. 73. It was not until 1845 that Congress changed the basis of postal rates from the number of sheets which the letter contained to the weight of the letter. In that year the charge became 5 cents a half ounce for any distance up to 300 miles and 10 cents a half ounce for any greater distance anywhere in the United States except the Pacific coast.

 In 1853 the postmaster of Fayetteville estimated that the cheaper postal rates had more than doubled the use of the mails. One daily mail to Wilmington, he said, contained more letters, newspapers, and periodicals than passed in a month through the Fayetteville office to the South in 1818 on the great northern and southern route.32

32 Fayetteville Observer, April 18, 1853.

 Yet private conveyances were still being used extensively for sending mail even after 1860.

The coming of the telegraph in 1848 also helped to break down the isolation of the State.33

33 Ibid., January 4, 1848.

The line ran from Virginia through Raleigh and Fayetteville. From that time the leading newspapers of the State began to carry telegraphic news, and as the years advanced toward 1860, the newspapers themselves began to play a more important role as a medium of communication. In 1849 a correspondent of the Raleigh Star called attention to the influence which the press had exerted in the development of the State, declaring that the local newspapers had done much to advance “the enterprise, prosperity and independence of our people.”34

34 “Sinceritas,” in the issue of May 23.

In 1810 there had been only ten newspapers published in the State. By 1850 this number had increased to fifty-one, but at no time during the period was the circulation of any State paper very large.35

35 Infra, pp. 805 et seq.

Most of the editors complained of being able hardly to keep alive on the patronage received.36

36 Greensboro Patriot quoted in Carolina Watchman, May 30, 1850.

 Nevertheless, the total circulation of local periodicals in 1850 was one for every three white adult males.37

37 Report of the U. S. Census Office, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850, pp. 299-300, 324. The total circulation was 36,839 while the total number of males over 20 years old was 120,781.

 At the same time one in every four adult white males could neither read nor write, while 29 per cent of the total white adult population was illiterate.38

38 Ibid., pp. 299-300, 316-17.

The majority of the people in the State had few contacts with the outside world; they did not come in touch with advanced ways of living and thinking; and provincialism was the inevitable result. Traveling was fashionable among the upper classes who used malaria and ill health as an excuse to make frequent trips to the North as well as to the resorts in Piedmont and Western North Carolina; among the lower classes, however, there was practically no traveling except to carry produce to market. It often happened that a person lived and died without ever having gone beyond the bounds of his native county.

The experience of being in Washington as United States congressman had a broadening effect upon John H. Bryan, a prominent ante-bellum lawyer. In the first few weeks of his residence in Washington he thought the society of New Bern superior to that of the capital city, but after a few months he came to regard his home town as a “confined circle” and wrote to his wife that the great advantage of travel and residence in a place like Washington was “to enlarge and inform the mind, to emancipate it from the shackles of habit & prejudice which a constant residence in a village like ours very frequently imposes upon it.”39

39 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, February 10, 1828.

 SECTIONALISM

The sectional character of life in ante-bellum North Carolina was as pronounced as its provincialism. Indeed, her public men often declared that sectionalism was at the root of the State's do-nothing policy and responsible for the backwardness of the people. “Too long has North Carolina been rent assunder by sectional jealousies and paltry local feuds,” lamented fourteen of the State's ablest men in 1833 at a public meeting in Raleigh on internal improvements.40

40 Star, August 2, 1833.

“Sectional feelings and jealousies” have always “distracted our public councils and retarded our prosperity,” declared a committee reporting to the Legislature later in the same year.41

41 Ibid., December 20, 1833.

 “All are trying to elevate themselves,” wrote home Charles B. Shepard in despair during his first term in the Legislature in 1832. “Local parties are struggling to gain ascendency & none, not one, wisely endeavouring to raise the character of N. C., to bring to light her vast resources, & to enrich & honor her people.”42

42 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, November 24, 1832.

 The Legislature, said Frederick Blount in 1834, “has always been controlled by a few little demagogues who live in fear of a loss of personal popularity in their native districts.”43

43 Ibid., February 16, 1834.

Sectionalism had characterized North Carolina society since the first adventurers pushed beyond Albemarle Sound and settled on the Pamlico. As the Neuse and Cape Fear regions were settled, they, too, became separate sections with separate interests. They quarreled over land patents, representation in the provincial assembly, and over the location of the seat of government.44

44 Connor, North Carolina, I, Chap. XIV; Ashe, op. cit., I, Chaps. XIX, XX, XXI.

These jealousies continued through the revolutionary and federal periods and on into the ante-bellum period.

The location of the seat of government at Raleigh had been a sore point with the sections around Edenton, Wilmington, and Fayetteville. In 1804 when the Raleigh boarding houses advanced their prices as the session of the General Assembly opened, an indignant representative from Cumberland County moved that the Assembly “adjourn from this place and meet at the town of Fayetteville.”45

45 Raleigh Register, November 22, 1804.

No sooner had the capitol burned in 1831 than the question of locating the seat of government had to be settled again. “. . . if the Cape Fear men . . . should next session be assured of the seat of government being fixed at Fayetteville,” wrote Richard Dobbs Spaight, senator from Craven County, in December, 1831, “they would give up everything else.”46

46 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, December 19, 1831.

The location of the county seats was contested with almost as much bitterness as was the location of the state capital. The General Assembly usually tried to get around these local quarrels by requiring that the courthouse be situated as nearly as possible in the exact center of the county, but the records of the General Assembly are crowded with such controversies throughout the ante-bellum period. The settlement of boundary lines, the control of navigable streams, the erection of bridges and ferries, the composition of the county courts, all were subjects which led to sectional disputes within a county. A conflict between upper and lower Pasquotank, which resulted “after sundry political contests,” finally degenerated about 1808 into a quarrel over the possession of a ferry across Pasquotank River.47

47 MS in Legislative Papers, 1808.

In Wayne County a contest between two factions arose over the position of clerk of the county court.48

48 “Wayne County,” MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book; Newsome, op. cit., pp. 306-7.

To make certain of the office, one faction obtained the appointment of nine new justices of the peace whose vote could be depended upon. Some time previous to the sitting of the court, the question arose as to what business should be transacted first when the court should meet. Those who had the ascendency in court insisted that it was necessary to proceed at once to the appointment of a clerk, while the group to whom the new justices were attached was equally insistent that they be qualified first so that they might vote in the election. The latter faction, fearing the strength of the opposing group, assembled their new justices at the courthouse shortly after midnight of the date set for the meeting. As one of the acting justices began to administer the oath to the new members, their opponents who had been on watch, opened battle. The lights were extinguished, and “some other Business done not strictly characteristic of a Court of Judicature.” The result was the formation of two courts and the appointment of two clerks who at once entered suit for the possession of the office. The case was settled, but the discord continued, creating “lasting and deep-rooted animosities” tending “very much to sour society.”49

49 Ibid., p. 307.

The most apparent sectionalism in the State in the ante-bellum period was that which existed between the eastern and western counties. The interests of the sections were divergent. They did not grow the same crops or market their produce at the same towns. In the eastern counties there was a concentration of slave labor, while in the West free labor predominated. The East was settled chiefly by the English, while in the West there was a large proportion of Scotch and German settlers who still retained many of their native customs.

The poor transportation system in the State kept the two sections apart so that even during the ante-bellum period the people never really came to know one another. In 1833 his hosts in the East had filled Henry Barnard with such fearful tales of Western North Carolina that the young New Englander, after leaving Charlotte for Morganton, at once began to fear for the safety of his watch and purse.50

50 Henry Barnard, “The South Atlantic States in 1833,” Maryland Historical Magazine, XIII, 344-49.

As late as 1856 an Easterner wrote patronizingly in the Raleigh Register of his visit to the West:

The people who inhabit this country may possibly not be so energetic as many whose aim is pecuniary gain alone. But surely they are as cordial and hospitable a class of people as live any where in the Union. Here and there you will be struck with a lack of taste in locating or constructing a house and farm. But beauty has not been the single purpose of the people.—One is struck with the prompt, substantial cast of the people. They are hardy: made so by active exercise, and by a healthy country and abundance of the necessaries of life. And I question whether there can be found a more moral and religious class of people than reside in the western sections of this State.51

51 The issue of July 16.

 After returning from a trip to Asheville in 1859, F. L. Wilson of the North Carolina Standard wrote that such a trip was “calculated to soften the asperities of sectional feelings, and to convince the Eastern people that the people of the West are neither savages nor ignoramuses; but on the contrary, that they are intelligent, high-minded, hospitable, and civilized.”52

52 The issue of September 7.

The section known as the West was a changing area, but in general it was thought of as being located beyond the fall line of the rivers. If a north and south line were drawn, with some reference to the coast line of the State, along the eastern boundaries of Person, Orange, Chatham, Stanly, and Anson counties, it would designate the East and West of the ante-bellum period.53

53 Raleigh Register, August 21, 1850.

In 1770 the two sections had come to blows in the War of the Regulators and twice during the ante-bellum period they almost clashed.

The social and economic differences which separated the two sections had political manifestations which widened the breach. The Constitution of 1776 gave the East a predominance in the General Assembly. The county was the basis of representation, each being allowed one senator and two members of the House of Commons.54

54 H. G. Connor and J. B. Cheshire, Jr., The Constitution of North Carolina Annotated, p. lxx., Arts. ii-iii.

The West, which was divided into counties of large areas, thus had fewer representatives in the Assembly than the East. At the same time the West was increasing more rapidly in population than the East.55

55 Boyd, History of North Carolina, pp. 147-65; F. M. Green, Constitutional Development in the South Atlantic States, 1776-1860, pp. 176-79, 204-33.

 The movement for reform began shortly after 1790, but the East successfully withstood it until 1835. The East was really divided in two sectional parties, the East and the Cape Fear. By this trio—East, Cape Fear, and West—“all questions must under the present unequal basis of representation be referred and decided,” wrote the Rutherford Spectator in 1831. “And who is able to say where this dragooning and log rolling system will lead or what will be its consequence.”56

56 Quoted in Fayetteville Observer, February 17, 1831.

About 1820 the West began insistently to demand reform. The Western Carolinian, which had been established in Salisbury in 1820 “to achieve the independence and obtain the equal rights of the western part of North Carolina” declared that the West was in a great moral and political awakening brought on by repeated oppression.57

57 September 5, 1820.

In 1834 a correspondent demanded that the General Assembly call a constitutional convention. “Let us ask,” and let us “ask but once more—from our brethren of the East, for Justice,” he cried. “Justice is all we want. If we are refused it, I hope my countrymen will show they still possess the same abhorrence of oppression that distinguished their fathers in the field of Ramsour's Mills.”58

58 Ibid., October 3, 1834. Demands for a convention had been made earlier.

The East, however, was powerful enough to hold off the back country for fourteen years. By 1834 the excitement in the West had reached such a tension that even the conservative Raleigh Register became alarmed and warned the Legislature “that unless the grievances complained of be speedily redressed, the yeomanry of the West will take the remedy in their own hands.”59

59 January 14.

The Constitutional Convention which was called in 1835 compromised on the differences between East and West by fixing the representation in the Senate on the basis of public taxes and in the House of Commons on the basis of federal population.

The Constitution still retained the property qualification required in voting for senators, and it was upon this provision that the western leaders next made their attack.

In the meantime, a more liberal spirit was growing throughout the State, an aggressive spirit of reform which came in time to view manhood suffrage as an inalienable right. It chanced, therefore, that when the Democratic Party was casting about for a candidate for governor in 1848, it hit upon David S. Reid of Rockingham County. Reid would not consent to make the race unless the party endorsed free suffrage, and thus it happened that a party whose stronghold was not in the West championed a reform which this section had been advocating for many years.60

60 J. W. Carr, Jr., “Manhood Suffrage Movement in North Carolina,” Historical Papers of Trinity College Historical Society, XI, 47-48; C. C. Norton, The Democratic Party in Ante-Bellum North Carolina, 1835-1860, pp. 155, 169-73; Green, op. cit., pp. 265-72.

During the nine years that the Democratic Party sponsored the reform, the West, as in 1835, threatened to revolt unless a speedy redress of grievances was made. For instance, “Buncombe,” writing in the Whig Raleigh Register of July 10, 1850, declared: “Such, Freeman of Western Carolina, is the history and fate of this question,—slighted in '35, laid on the table in '40 and '41 and killed in '48 and '49, . . . The West has been borne down by the unequal influence of the East.” We have “no desire to wage a sectional warfare against our brethren of the East. But sirs, . . . this thunder triumphed before. Remember 1835. And mark my prediction, it will triumph again.” It did triumph, but not until after seven more years of controversy. By the Constitutional Amendment of 1857, every free white man, twenty-one years of age, who had paid taxes, was entitled to vote for a member of the Senate for the district in which he resided.61

61 Proposed by the General Assembly in 1854, December 11, 1856, January 8, 1857, and ratified by the people August, 1857.

Yet social and economic differences between the two regions still remained. A few months after the passage of the Constitutional Amendment of 1857, Samuel H. Wiley, contributing editor of the North Carolina Journal of Education, predicted that it would be a long time before eastern and western prejudices would be broken down:

Now if our Eastern and Western teachers . . . will so mould and discipline the minds of their pupils as to bring them up free from sectional bias . . . (not Eastern or Western men), they will effect a great good which the wisdom of our legislators and the influence of a free press, for the last seventy-five years, have been unable to accomplish . . . ; and a new era in our State's history will begin. . . . Our Western friends grow up too much with the notion that the East is a nation composed of “niggers,” half-starved, half-clad and worked to death, of pale, pine-smoked white born paupers, living on fish and “huckleberries,” and of rich, proud, oppressive Nabobs, whose only god is money and whose only pleasure is the wine cup. While our Eastern friends are much of the notion that the West is a nation of semi-barbarians, destitute of good breeding, politeness and everything else like refinement, living in the woods and subsisting on roots and berries.62

62 “The East and the West,” North Carolina Journal of Education (hereafter cited as NCJE), I, 13.

 CONSERVATISM

The reluctance with which North Carolina changed its constitution to fit the needs of its aggressive western population is typical of the way the State met nearly every important issue which arose during the ante-bellum period. The people, as a whole, were conservative and proceeded cautiously to adopt new ideas. They looked upon untried methods suspiciously; the “way of the fathers” was the only safe policy. “We are opposed to innovations,” wrote the Cape Fear Recorder in 1820 when the agitation for constitutional reform became a major political issue, “for experience shows, that when once we commence, it is uncertain where we will stop. . . . We have tried the constitution: the innovators may, perhaps, and only perhaps, make it more perfect . . . we view it as a sacred bequest of the heroes of the revolution and shall approach it with the utmost sanctity.”

As early as 1790 a few public leaders sought to obtain a penitentiary system for the State to ameliorate the bloody criminal code, but the movement was successfully defeated throughout the ante-bellum period. The code had been approved by the revolutionary fathers; change would be madness, especially since it would involve an expenditure of public funds. More than fifty years of agitation were necessary to obtain a public school system for the children of the State. The Legislature evidenced the same conservative spirit in regard to the chartering of banks, the encouragement of transportation, the establishment of public institutions for the care of the underprivileged, in fact toward the adoption of any significant change. Such a hesitant policy led to shame at home and sarcasm abroad. Newspapers humorously referred to “North Carolina's army of leather-headed apostles and do-nothing sons.”63

63 Asheville Messenger quoted in Star, November 24, 1852.

“Ignorance is the inseparable companion of poverty,” wrote the Raleigh Register in 1824 in explaining North Carolina's conservatism, “and a country thus cut off from the facilities to wealth and knowledge has been seldom blessed with the kindly influences of a liberal policy. This latter is the humiliating situation of N. Carolina” and her name has been “stamped with contempt.”64

64 An article entitled, “The Policy of North Carolina,” and printed in the issue of December 3.

Disgusted by the State's do-nothing policy, Frederick S. Blount, a young North Carolina lawyer, migrated to Alabama where he viewed with deep mortification the proceedings on internal improvements in the North Carolina Legislature of 1833. “The period of action had arrived,” he wrote home to a relative, “and the energies of the people had been awakened to the importance of an uniform and centered movement on a subject of such vital importance to themselves and their children. . . . I have given up my state—and shall hereafter associate imbecility and impotency, as terms synonymous with North Carolina.”65

65 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, February 16, 1834. Not all who went West from North Carolina thought it a better place than their native state. Ebenezer Pettigrew wrote in 1819 after returning from Tennessee (MS in Pettigrew Papers, December 10, 1819): “I hope never to see any of the West country again, not liking any of it which I saw nor any which I could have an account of. I am satisfied it has no advantages over that in which I live, and any man who will move to it without seeing it is crazy and he who moves to it after such be still more so. . . .” (This reference is to the collection in the University of North Carolina Library, but all subsequent references to these Papers are to the collection in the North Carolina Historical Commission, Raleigh, unless otherwise stated.)

Many of North Carolina's most enterprising and able citizens had earlier come to the same conclusion; and, like Frederick Blount, migrated to the new and prosperous regions in the West and Lower South. The following table showing the low rate of increase in the population of North Carolina as compared with that of Mississippi and Indiana, two states, one slave and the other free, which drew large numbers from North Carolina, indicates the drain which was being made upon the State's population:

PER CENT INCREASE OF POPULATION Year North Carolina Mississippi Indiana 1790 ..... ..... ..... 1800 21.4 ..... ..... 1810 16.2 355.9 403.0 1820 15.0 87.0 500.2 1830 15.5 81.1 133.1 1840 2.1 174.9 99.9 1850 15.3 61.4 44.1 1860 14.3 30.4 36.6

In the decade from 1830 to 1840, which marked the low tide of population growth in the State, the increase was only 2.1 per cent, while in Mississippi it was almost 175 per cent and in Indiana nearly 100 per cent. The increase in Virginia for this decade, however, was only 2.34 per cent and in South Carolina only 2.27 per cent, in both cases but slightly more than in North Carolina. Throughout the period, Virginia shows a slightly lower average rate of increase than North Carolina, and South Carolina a slightly higher rate. But neither state was held up to the world as the seat of backwardness and desolation as was North Carolina. Indeed, Virginia was considered one of the wealthiest states in the Union.

But when an artist of Ohio wished to portray the rise of the West, he entitled his picture “Emigration from North Carolina.” The signboard which guided the exhausted travelers pointed west to Ohio through green fields and stately woods, while in the distance lay the barren hills of North Carolina. The picture was exhibited in the rotunda of the national capitol, much to the indignation of North Carolinians who considered it “a slur on the state.” “Had such a picture described Maryland or Virginia,” declared one hotly, “it would have been removed immediately from the Capitol; or, if not, it would have been thrown out. No one bears with patience to see the nakedness of his country exposed.”66

66 North Carolina Standard, April 8, 1848.

It is difficult to estimate the exact amount of population which North Carolina lost in the ante-bellum period, but certainly its people were on the move southward and northwestward from the opening of the century. In 1818 Governor Branch urged the Legislature to adopt measures at once “to arrest the progress of emigration” and make “our citizens contented and happy to remain at home.”67

67 Journal of the House of Commons of the General Assembly of North Carolina, November 18, 1818, p. 7. (Hereafter cited as House Journal.)

In 1827 a correspondent from Buncombe County wrote to the Western Carolinian that “during the last four months the flow of emigration through Asheville has surpassed any thing of the kind the writer has ever witnessed. It was not uncommon to see eight, ten, or fifteen waggons, and carts, passing in a single day. . . . The great body of the emigrants were from the middle or eastern part of the State, wending their way to the more highly favored climes of the West.”68

68 Quoted in Raleigh Register, March 16, 1827.

In 1834 the Raleigh Register urged: “North Carolina must do something NOW or be content to take a position lower and lower in the Confederacy, until she becomes without weight in the National Scale. . . . Our wealth is decreasing daily—our commercial towns present decayed wharves, dilapidated warehouses and untenanted dwellings; while in the country, may everywhere be found deserted plantations and abandoned settlements. Our roads are thronged with emigrants to a more favored Country; who have been forced unwillingly to forsake the homes of their fathers.”69

69 Ibid., April 29, 1834.

In 1838 the Internal Improvements Convention, meeting in Raleigh, petitioned the Legislature, saying, “More than a half million of our people have left the place of their nativity and carried with them wealth, talent, and enterprise.”70

70 Ibid., January 7, 1839.

 Still the stream of emigration continued. In 1845 the Greensborough Patriot recorded: “On last Tuesday morning nineteen carts, with about one hundred persons, passed this place, from Wake County, on their way to the West. And thus they have been going almost every day from the lower counties.”71

71 Quoted in Fayetteville Observer, November 25, 1845.

At the close of the period, 272,606 native North Carolinians were living outside the State as is shown in the following table:

NORTH CAROLINIANS LIVING OUTSIDE THE STATE IN 186072 State Number Slave State Number Free State Tennessee 55,227 ..... Georgia 29,913 ..... Indiana ..... 26,942 Alabama 23,504 ..... Missouri 20,259 ..... Mississippi 18,321 ..... Arkansas 17,747 ..... Kentucky 13,609 ..... Illinois ..... 13,597 Texas 12,138 ..... Virginia 9,978 ..... South Carolina 7,818 ..... Ohio ..... 4,701 Iowa ..... 4,690 Florida 4,168 ..... All others 3,212 6,782 Total 215,894 56,712

72 U. S. Census Office, Statistics of the United States (a compilation of mortality and miscellaneous statistics taken from the eighth census, 1860), pp. lxi-lxii.

The total number of free persons born in North Carolina and living in the United States in 1860 was 906,826. Of this number 30 per cent lived outside North Carolina. One out of every five, or 20 per cent, of those leaving North Carolina went to free states.

The reason for this general exodus is to be found in the widespread belief that the soil of North Carolina had been exhausted, in the high cost of transportation within the State, in the better adaptation of the Lower South to the growth of cotton, and in the conservative policy which the State Legislature followed.73

73 See “The Convention Question,” Fayetteville Observer, May 22, 1832; “To the People of North Carolina,” Star, August 2, 1833; “Hillsborough Convention,” Star, September 27, 1833; “To the People of North Carolina,” Raleigh Register, April 29, 1834.

The result was a loss in capital, labor, and creative ability. In 1829, for example, the heads of the Navy, War, and Post Office departments of the national government were all natives of North Carolina as was also the minister to Colombia and eight of the forty-eight senators in Congress. Colonel William Polk in an “Address to the Citizens of North Carolina” in 1833 sadly pointed out that the bench, the bar, the legislative hall, and the drawing-room in other states were “graced with genius, and sparkling with wit and elegance which a narrow course of State policy has driven from North Carolina.”74

74 Star, November 15, 1833.

 A year later James H. Ruffin, writing from Alabama to his brother Thomas Ruffin, who had recently been appointed chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, said, “I was almost in hopes, her wise men would have abolished her Supreme Court, and by that means have driven from the State the eminent men who yet linger within her limits, thereby leaving her barren of talent and a prey to the silly demagogues who rule her destinies.”75

75 The Papers of Thomas Ruffin, II, 111-12.

By 1820 North Carolina had been popularly dubbed “the Boeotia of America,” or “the second Nazareth.”76

76 Western North Carolinian, November 14, 1820; Star, July 14, 1831, November 15, 1833.

Archibald D. Murphey, discouraged by repeated failures to steer the General Assembly to a liberal state policy, described the spirit of North Carolina as “radically mean and grovelling.” “The Mass of the Common People in the Country,” he said, “are lazy, sickly, poor, dirty and ignorant.”77

77 Papers of Archibald D. Murphey, I, 151, 138.

 It is undoubtedly true that emigration took from the State many of its best citizens and left behind the reactionary and the conservative.

 INDIVIDUALISM

If the average North Carolinian was a conservative when in the legislative hall, he was an individualist when dealing with his neighbors. Individualism is a characteristic of all frontier societies, and North Carolina society at the opening of the nineteenth century had not yet left the frontier behind. During the ante-bellum period the spirit of individualism expressed itself in an unwillingness to wait for the delays of judicature, in an emphasis upon the rights of the individual as opposed to those of the State, in a freedom of speech which sometimes ran to license, and in a contempt for the value of human life.

When an issue arose between individuals, the yeomanry was likely to resort to a trial by physical combat, while the gentry and middle class proceeded according to the elaborate code of duello. Sturdy North Carolinians did not as early forget their frontier tactics of gouging and biting as their betters would have desired. In the issue of May 31, 1810, the Raleigh Star was indignant at the publication in the Augusta, Georgia, Centinel of the insinuation “that a North Carolinian cannot salute you without putting his finger in your eyes.” While the Star acknowledged that quarrels in North Carolina were at one time conducted with less regard to etiquette than a modern duel, he insisted that the practice of gouging had long since “yielded to the advance of civilization and refinement” and had “retired to Georgia and the wilds of Louisiana.”

In 1816, however, there were twenty-two indictments for mayhem in the State, and a few such indictments as late as 1840.78

78 MSS in Legislative Papers, 1816, 1840.

Laws against mayhem had been passed in 1754 and in 1791 but a more stringent measure was enacted in 1831.79

79 Revised Statutes of the State of North Carolina, passed by the General Assembly at the session of 1836-1837 (hereafter cited as Revised Statutes, 1837), Vol. I, Chap. XXXIV, secs. 13, 48.

 Punishment for the first offense of malicious maiming was a sentence of two hours in the pillory and thirty-nine lashes on the bare back, while for the second it was death without benefit of clergy. Maiming without malice was punishable by fine and six months imprisonment.

Throughout the period, indictments for assault and battery far outnumbered all other offenses tried in the county courts. In 1839, for instance, all but three out of sixty-nine indictments in Buncombe County were for assault and battery.80

80 MS in Legislative Papers, 1840. See also infra, pp. 657 et seq.

Instances are on record in which parties, dissatisfied with the results of a case, agreed to settle the dispute by a physical contest.81

81 Raleigh Register, August 11, 1815. “In returning from a Justices' Court, a quarrel ensued, which they [two brothers, dissatisfied over the division of their father's estate] agreed to settle by fight; but the deceased finding his brother armed with a knife refused to engage him and endeavored to make his escape by running, but alas! he ran but a few steps before he stumbled and fell, when his brother pitched upon him and stabbed him in three places in the back . . . which immediately put a period to his existence.”

 Occasionally a litigant would refuse to accept the court's verdict and would take the law in his own hands. For example, in September, 1809, Mrs. Mary Connelly of Currituck County bought at a sheriff's sale property belonging to William Etheridge which he afterward refused to give up. She brought suit against him and the sale was confirmed, but when she went to claim the property, Etheridge shot her down as she entered the gate,82

82 Ibid., March 21, 1811.

 doubtless justifying himself on the ground that the State had no right to take in payment for taxes the property which his industry had earned.

In ante-bellum days duelling83

83 S. B. Weeks, “The Code in North Carolina,” Magazine of American History, XXVI (December, 1891), 444-56.

was the most honorable method of settling a quarrel. The duel between former Governor Richard Dobbs Spaight and John Stanly of New Bern in 1802 was one of the famous duels of the period. The controversy, which commenced a few days previous to the election for the Legislature, arose from General Spaight's having been informed that Stanly had stated publicly that the General “was no Republican and that the Federalists never lost a question whilst he was in congress for want of his vote.”84

84 Raleigh Register, September 14, 1802.

 Spaight at once challenged Stanly who immediately offered an explanation. But the General was not satisfied and Stanly, wishing to avoid a difficulty, wrote a second and a third letter. The last was accepted on the condition that it should be published. When he had it printed, Stanly also inserted a certificate of the words which had given rise to the difficulty. The General replied and the correspondence was continued in every issue of the paper from that date until the duel. Finally, Stanly published a handbill in which he pictured Spaight as attempting “to play the hero, to strut the bravo, to ape the duellist,” insinuating that Spaight's former sensibilities had been appeased easily. A few hours later the General responded with a handbill, concluding, “In my opinion, Mr. Stanly is both a liar and a scoundrel, and although I hold his character in so contemptible a point of view, yet as he had the confidence of the people of this district, I shall always hold myself in readiness to give him satisfaction, and to assure him, if he asks for it once, he shall not be under the necessity of doing it a second time.” The duellists with their seconds met the next day about five o'clock. Upon the exchange of the fourth shot, Spaight was wounded in the right side. He died the next day, and “his remains were deposited in the family vault, at his principal country seat near Newbern, with expressions of universal sorrow and all those testimonials of respect . . . due to his acknowledged merit.”

Some attempt was made by Stanly's political enemies to make an example of the case, but the only definite result was the law of 1802. This law made liable to indictment any person sending, accepting, or bearing a challenge to fight a duel, and on conviction made him subject to a fine not exceeding $200. Such a person was rendered ineligible to any office of trust, honor, or profit in the State, “any pardon or reprieve notwithstanding.”85

85 Laws of the State of North Carolina, enacted by the General Assembly at the session of 1802 (hereafter cited as Sessional Laws), Chap. V.

If the duel resulted in the death of one of the participants, the survivor, together with his abettors or aiders, should suffer death without benefit of clergy. An unsuccessful attempt was made the following year and on several occasions thereafter to repeal or modify the law. From the first the law was inoperative. Those desiring to engage in duels usually, but not always, withdrew to another state. In 1833 the Legislature itself flaunted the law in restoring to James Madison Baird of Asheville “all the privileges of a free man and a citizen” after he had been convicted of sending a challenge.86

86 Ibid., 1833, Chap. C; MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, December 13, 1833.

Leading newspaper editors, notably Joseph Gales of the Raleigh Register and Edward J. Hale of the Fayetteville Observer, consistently opposed duelling. On one occasion Gales wrote after a duel in Virginia between two young men without seconds and at a distance of only two paces: “The blood-thirsty and lawless custom of duelling is so repugnant to religion, justice & mercy, and so strongly tinctured with the barbarity and ignorance of the Gothic ages which gave birth to it, that every fresh instance is a reflection on the humanity and policy of civilized nations.”87

87 Raleigh Register, March 17, 1826.

Nevertheless, the custom continued throughout the period. In 1845, for instance, Thomas L. Clingman of North Carolina and William L. Yancey of Alabama, both members of Congress, fought with “smooth-bore pistols of the usual duelling length” near Beltsville, Maryland, and were “reconciled” after an exchange of shots.88

88 Don C. Seitz, Famous American Duels, pp. 310-16.

 It did not always happen that a duel ended so happily. In 1856, for instance, Dr. William C. Wilkings and Joseph H. Flanner, Esq., of Wilmington fought at Marion, South Carolina, with pistols at the usual distance of ten paces, or thirty feet. Even after two unsuccessful shots, the contestants were unwilling to compromise and on the third fire Dr. Wilkings received a wound from which he died immediately. “The parties were very much esteemed here by their friends and acquaintances,” wrote the Wilmington Journal, “. . . this tragical result has cast a gloom the like of which, we trust, may never occur again.”89

89 Quoted in North Carolina Standard, May 14, 1856; James Sprunt, Chronicles of the Cape Fear River, 1660-1916, pp. 231-37.

Trials of honor were frequent, for unrestrained freedom of speech was the custom throughout the period. Slander suits were likely to be employed only by women, cowards, and those religiously opposed to engaging in the more speedy processes. In 1741 profane swearing90

90 Revised Code, 1855, Chap. CXV, sec. 2. By 1855 this law had been altered and swearing before a justice while on his bench was alone subject to a fine.

was made subject to a fine of twenty-five cents, but in 1801 it was complained that the penalty was not sufficient to prevent the practice and that foul names often provoked innocent persons to break the peace.91

91 MS in Legislative Papers, 1801. The bill drafted to remedy the situation proposed the following relief: “If any person or persons shall call another a Lyar or a damned Lyar he shall forfeit and pay the sum of 40s.

“And for calling any person a Rogue and damned rogue the sum of 30s.

“And for calling any person a rascal or a Scoundrel the sum of 20s.

“And for calling a person a thief or a damned thief the sum of 40s . . .

“Unless the person or persons who shall be guilty of the above offences can make it appear by some respectable witnes, that him or them so abused or nicknamed has commonly bourn the character or justly deserves to be so nicknamed.”

Despite their hue and cry against “the lawlessness of the period,” local newspapers encouraged personal abuse by the publication of scurrilous advertisements.92

92 Infra, pp. 792-94.

It was not unusual before 1830 for an opponent to delineate in several columns of a state paper the details of a personal quarrel, concluding with the statement that the public should beware of the “liar and scoundrel.” Early in January, 1810, a controversy, which continued in almost every issue of the Raleigh Register and the Halifax Journal until well into March, began with an advertisement in the Register over the names of Thomas Telfair and Benjamin B. Hunter: “Beware of Robert Joyner, of the State of N. Carolina and the county of Halifax, . . . Altho' the proofs of . . . [his] villianous conduct are founded on facts indisputable, but too delicate to trust to the inclement storms of public scrutiny; yet, thro' the medium of this paper, we avail ourselves of the opportunity of proclaiming to the world, that this Robert Joyner is a Calumniator, and a Scoundrel, whose tongue, like the stroke of the Torpedo, paralizes every object with which it may come in contact.”93

93 January 4, 1810.

 At length, Joyner forced his assailants to reveal that the cause of their attack was that he had whispered around the streets of Tarboro that Telfair and one of the Hunter girls had been taking “private walks” and that “the young lady had left home on that account.”94

94 Ibid., March 4, 1810.

Personal quarrels frequently continued over a period of years and as a rule were upheld by all members of the contending families. Frederic Beasley, of a respectable family in Edenton, on learning of an attack made on his brother through the local newspaper, wrote to his mother that it must have been launched by some of their old family enemies, “for it seems,” he said, “as if our family was perpetually pursued by them.”95

95 MS in Pettigrew Papers, May 28, 1799.

The feud which arose between the Culpeppers and Foremans of Camden County over the possession of a swamp resulted in the murder of Henry Culpepper in 1823 and the organization of a Foreman gang to protect them in the ownership of the land.96

96 MS in Legislative Papers, August 1, 1824.

 On being pursued, the gang would take refuge in Virginia and thus elude arrest.

In 1856 the Fayetteville Observer attributed the “increasing number of murders in the United States to the habit of carrying deadly weapons, bowie knives, revolving pistols, &c.” In former days it was considered “an evidence of conscious unmanly fear” to wear arms habitually. Instead of its being “a word and a blow,” as in old times, it was now “a word and a stab, or a word and a pistol ball.”97

97 Petersburg Intelligencer quoted in Fayetteville Observer, July 3, 1856.

The case of William Waightstill Avery, prominent lawyer and Democratic leader, is a significant example of an encounter between an armed and an unarmed antagonist.98

98 Papers of Thomas Ruffin, II, 317.

Samuel Fleming, who was armed, attacked Avery unexpectedly in Marion. Having disabled his opponent by a blow with a stone, Fleming publicly cowhided him. Shortly afterward, while serving as counsel in a case on trial at Morganton, Avery saw Fleming enter the courtroom. He immediately arose from his chair and shot Fleming down. When Avery was tried for manslaughter, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty, acceptable to all except Avery's political opponents. W. W. Holden, who had supported Avery in politics, summarized public opinion on the case, in an editorial published in the Standard at the close of the trial:

That man who has acted the part of an assassin, by attacking a peaceable man without arms, himself being fully armed, creates a reasonable ground for supposing that he who has once so acted, will renew his dastardly attack the first chance that presents itself. It is more dangerous to society for the law to give protection to such characters, than to authorize and excuse those who must otherwise submit to irreparable injury, or defend themselves at every hazard. And whatever these political maligners may say, the voice of the public has already pronounced its approval of the verdict rendered by the jury.99

99 December 17, 1851.

Had more ante-bellum characters been as generous as L. T. Sawyer of Edenton was in his controversy with Dr. James Norcom, the history of the period might have been somewhat different. “This is to request,” he wrote Dr. Norcom in July, 1828, “that all that has passed between us of an unpleasant nature may be forgotten and buried in oblivion. On my part, I regret it exceedingly, and being far your junior in years, am free to admit that you have not been treated by me with the decorum which your age, your character and your standing in society merited.” To this Dr. Norcom replied, “Letters of this kind are rare; but they are far more honourable than a thousand victories gained by treachery or the sword!”100

100 MS in James A. Norcom Papers, Edenton, July 2, 1828.

Rare, indeed, was any admission of fault in an ante-bellum controversy. Had Sawyer's fellow townsmen known that he had written such a letter they would probably have branded him as a coward, lacking the fortitude to carry on a man's fight in a man's world.

 SUPERSTITION

A characteristic of ante-bellum North Carolina which was intimately associated with the daily lives of the people was the prevailing belief in the supernatural. Popular superstitions are an interesting indication of the status of social progress. In some instances, they represented the advance of scientific method rather than a blind reverence for the mystical. For instance, the planting of crops according to the signs of the zodiac was at one time the most advanced method of farming known. While it had been generally disproved by the nineteenth century, this method of agriculture was still the one most commonly known to the majority of North Carolinians during the ante-bellum period. William Boylan, portly editor of the Raleigh Minerva, was once saved from being forcibly dragged into a country dance near Pittsboro when a friend whispered about the crowd that he was the almanac maker.101

101 D. L. Swain, Early Times in Raleigh, p. 18.

Looks of scorn turned to awe when it was known that a man who could foretell thunderstorms was present.

Only the most educated and skeptical were free from popular superstitions. While both the Indians and Negroes practiced maleficium, it cannot be said that they are responsible for the tendency among the whites. The colonists undoubtedly brought the fundamentals of the creed with them.102

102 G. L. Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England; P. A. Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, I, 280; Tom Peete Cross, “Witchcraft in North Carolina,” Studies in Philology, XVI, 222-87; A. Nixon, History of Daniel's Lutheran and Reformed Churches, pp. 14-15.

Dr. John Brickell, writing of North Carolina about 1730, attributed powers of witchcraft to the Indians. Several planters told him that the Indians “raise great Storms of Wind and that there are many frightful Apparitions that appear above the Fires during the time of their Conjuration.”103

103 Brickell, op. cit., p. 370; see also N. N. Puckett, Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro.

The Reverend Brantley York, born in Randolph County in 1805, writes in his Autobiography that belief in witchcraft was general in that section of the State prior to the Civil War. At any neighborhood gathering the most prominent topic of conversation related to witches, ghost-seeing, and shape-shifting. The people “believed that a witch could transform herself into any animal she chose, whether bird or beast.” A witch could “creep through a key-hole, by the magic of a certain bridle called the witch's bridle—she could change any person on whom she could place it, into a horse; and then what is still more remarkable, both could come out through a key-hole, and, being mounted, she could ride this remarkable horse wherever she chose, nor could such an animal assume its identity till the bridle was removed.”104

104 P. 8. See also Rumple, op. cit., pp. 324-32.

A witch could withstand lead balls when shot from a rifle but no magic was proof against silver. She could place a spell on a gun so that it could not hit the object aimed at, a spell on growing crops or on a piece of work undertaken by an enemy. She could cause illness and the afflicted person would not get well as long as the witch retained in her possession something belonging to her enemy.105

105 D. A. Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg County, pp. 81-82; Margaret Devereux, Plantation Sketches, pp. 32-34; Mary Mason, The Young Housewife's Counsellor and Friend, pp. 61-62; Rumple, op. cit., pp. 355-61; J. P. Green, Recollections of the Inhabitants, Localities, Superstitions, and Ku Klux Klan Outrages of the Carolinas, pp. 43-44.

 Some witches professed to hold communion with the dead and to have nightly séances with departed spirits. An instance is on record of a North Carolina woman who requested a “male witch” to call up the spirit of her husband so that she might learn where he had hidden his money.106

106 James Mooney, “Folk-Lore of the North Carolina Mountains,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, II, 101.

Some persons who were not witches, nevertheless, had the power to make a magic grease which would make invisible the person on whom it was rubbed. In 1828 Dr. Elisha Mitchell of the University of North Carolina, while on a geological tour in Western North Carolina, found an old man who knew the wonders of magic ointment:

. . . while breakfast was getting ready heard an amusing account of an old man who determined the locality of ores by the mineral rod, and by his own account is very busy in digging for gold and silver taken from the Whites by the Indians, and laid up in “subteranium chambers.” Said he greased his boots with dead men's tallow, and is prevented from getting the treasure out not by the little spirit with head no bigger than his two thumbs who came to blow the candle out, but by the big two horned devil himself.107

107 Elisha Mitchell, Diary of a Geological Tour in 1827 and 1828, James Sprunt Historical Monographs, No. 6, p. 25.

In almost every neighborhood there existed some one who had the peculiar power of breaking spells. When such a reputation was once obtained, the popularity of the possessor soon spread to many sections. When Old Bass came to Brantley York's home professing to be a Portuguese fortune teller with influence over witches, the whole community stopped work, and spent the day having Bass break spells.

More prevalent than belief in witches but closely related to it was faith in signs. A natural phenomenon never failed to arouse the anxieties of a large part of the inhabitants. The fall of meteors in 1833 caused a general alarm,108

108 J. B. Alexander, History of Mecklenburg County, p. 315.

and an unusual storm following a night session of a camp meeting in 1837 so excited the people that they crowded in great numbers around the preachers' tent loudly crying for more preaching as a protection against the elements.109

109 York, op. cit., p. 40.

 The so-called shower of flesh and blood in Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1841 caused considerable fright in North Carolina and the report was circulated that similar showers had taken place in this State.110

110 Raleigh Register, September 10 and October 1, 1841.

 The phenomenon was explained as being the discharge of a reddish fluid by a species of butterfly on emerging from the chrysalis state; but the terror which had taken hold of the popular mind was not allayed by so simple an explanation.

Even those who ridiculed ghost-seeing and shape-shifting were not entirely free from other superstitions. A fortune teller was able to support herself in almost any community in the State. In 1850 it was proved in the famous trial of Mrs. Ann K. Simpson of Fayetteville for murder of her husband by poisoning that she often visited Mrs. Anne Rising, the village fortune teller. Mrs. Simpson herself frequently told the fortunes of her friends. On various occasions, she would take coffee or tea cups and, turning them about in her hand, declare that she saw the future unfold. On the day before her husband's death she took his cup and said, “I see a sick bed, a coffin, and a dark and muddy road with clouds around.”111

111 The Trial of Mrs. Ann K. Simpson (reported by W. H. Haigh), pp. 37 et seq.

One of the most common superstitions of the time was the belief that knocking on wood prevented unhappy consequences of idly spoken words.112

112 For some present-day beliefs of the mountain folk of North Carolina see C. R. Sumner, “Woodrow Wilson Fascinated by Mountain Witch Stories,” Greensboro Daily News, February 20, 1927.

To begin a piece of work on Friday meant certain ill fortune, while to wash clothes on New Year's Day would bring death to a member of the family. If an amorous maiden could induce her lover to wind a ball of thread with her, marriage would inevitably result.113

113 MS in Governor's Papers, State Series LV, pt. 1, March 24, 1825.

 Before the thread was wound, however, a circle must first have been made in the front yard with the handle of a frying pan. All human relations, in fact, could be governed or foretold by a knowledge of signs and their interpretation. It was rare, indeed, for a person of the lower classes to escape the effect of such beliefs. Nor has the present generation even yet entirely freed itself from such superstitions. An issue of a prominent state paper in March, 1935, contained accounts of a Negro conjure doctor and of a man who had become endowed with the power of the devil by chewing the boiled bones of a black cat.114

114 Raleigh News and Observer, March 15, 1935: “Judgment Awaits in ‘Doctor's’ Case,” and “Condemned Man Spurns Prayer on Death's Eve.”

Society in North Carolina in the period prior to the Civil War was permeated by superstitious notions; but this was only one characteristic of a people whose chance for getting ahead in life was limited and whose opportunity of learning new ways of doing things was circumscribed by conditions which made travel difficult and expensive. Isolation had produced a provincial and sectional society which reacted conservatively to innovation. Enough of the frontier characteristics still clung to the people to make them individualistic. Another aspect of ante-bellum society was the division of the people into well-defined social classes.

 CHAPTER III SOCIAL CLASSES

WHEN General Jeremiah Slade of Martin County visited Raleigh in 1819, he found the State capital bristling with class feeling, distasteful to a man of “republican simplicity.” He strolled up and down “the principal streets without appearing to notice any of the puffed little great men of the city, being resolved to observe as little ceremony towards them as they are usually in the habit of shewing to all strangers.” The General called upon the deputy clerk of the federal court and “was ushered into his office with all the hauteur of a French exciseman, and treated with every mark of supercillious pride and haughty arrogance and finally dismissed with contempt.”1

1 Jeremiah Slade, “Journal of a Trip to Tennessee,” Trinity College Historical Papers, VI (1906), 38. Joseph Green Cogswell who came from the celebrated Round Hill School in Massachusetts to conduct an Episcopal school for boys in Raleigh said of North Carolina society in 1835 and of Raleigh society in particular: “In no part of the United States have I found so primitive a people as in this State. The descendants of the early Scotch settlers retain all the peculiarities of their ancestors. The towns are all small, and have consequently never had any great influx of foreigners, hence language, usages and manners are all provincial. Raleigh, being the capital, has a sort of court character less distinctive, . . . these strange people . . . seem to me to be a stranger mixture of good and bad qualities, than any I have known.” (Life of Joseph Green Cogswell as Sketched in His Letters, pp. 200-1.)

More than forty years later, a citizen of Raleigh, “no link in the golden chain of aristocracy nor a member of the popular so-called uppertendom,” declared that the city had always been “unjustly assailed and abused for the manner in which many of its citizens have adhered to these distinctions.” He wrote in the Greensboro Times of November 17, 1860: “It is true that the different castes and distinctions of society exist here as indeed they do in all cities and as they do more especially, perhaps, in all capitals. . . . The law of caste is a law of nature . . . in all ages of the world, we find that, the rich man, whether he has become so through his own industry and management or inherited his wealth from others, has had at least more artificial respect and deference paid him than . . . those who, though they may have been equally meritorious, were nevertheless poor. . . . Raleigh, after all, is no more aristocratic than most other towns and cities, in which doubtless a similar aristocracy and its similar modus operandi prevail.”

Class distinction, which had existed as a feature of colonial society, underwent many modifications during the ante-bellum period. New fortunes were made and lost. Fine distinctions in the social niceties became more pronounced, but a strong current toward democracy took definite political shape and won victory after victory for the common people.

ECONOMIC BASIS

Society in North Carolina continued to be predominantly rural. Agriculture, the chief occupation of the inhabitants in colonial days, continued to engage the greatest numbers throughout the ante-bellum period. Out of 235,532 persons listed by the United States Census Office in 1840 as engaged in occupations, 217,095 were employed in agriculture.2

2 Compendium of the Sixth Census, p. 43.

In 1810 cotton had not become a staple commodity in the State. Hog raising and the planting of corn were occupations common to all sections and so continued throughout the period. By the thirties, the State had taken on the general economic routine which was to characterize it during the remainder of the period.3

3 Taylor, op. cit., Chap. III.

 Cotton had become a relatively prosperous crop and was grown in many sections. It was a major crop, however, in only two areas: the one in the eastern part of the State including Edgecombe, Bertie, Pitt, Martin, and Lenoir counties and the other in the southwest including Mecklenburg, Iredell, Union, Anson, and Richmond counties. Tobacco, which had been a leading staple of the coastal plain, was now confined to the tier of piedmont counties along the Virginia border. In the long-leaf pine region of Eastern Carolina lay the turpentine belt;4

4 After the forties the turpentine industry was largely confined to the long-leaf pine belt, a strip of territory varying in width from thirty to eighty miles and commonly called the “pine barrens.” See infra, pp. 486-88.

 and near the coast, especially in New Hanover and Brunswick counties, rice was a staple crop. In the northeast, a region of large plantations, wheat and corn were the staples; in the piedmont, south of the tobacco belt, where farms were small, food crops were largely grown; in the mountainous counties, also a region of small farms, grain and livestock were the principal products.

Although there were instances of large accumulations of land and slaves, the holdings in most counties were small. In 1790 almost a fourth, or 23 per cent, of the tax payers in Orange County, at that time including also a large part of Alamance and Durham counties, owned no land, and the average farm contained 352 acres. Two men in the county, however, owned plantations of more than 5,000 acres.5

5 “Tax List,” in SRNC, XXVI, 1296-1313.

In 1810 John Washington of Kinston wrote of Lenoir County, “Though there are some wealthy men in this county, they are not numerous, they being generally of that happy medium. . . .”6

6 Newsome, op. cit., 183.

 About the same time a resident of Moore, a county of small farmers, wrote, “. . . we have Surely more below than above Mediocrity”; while Dr. Jeremiah Battle of Edgecombe, giving a table to point out the small-farm economy of the county, wrote, “There are no overgrown ‘estates’ here & there are comparatively very few oppressed with poverty.”7

7 Ibid., pp. 81, 285.

In 1837 the Fayetteville Observer, while lamenting the “sad reverses in the pecuniary state of the country . . . both North and South of us,” exulted that “the great mass of our population is composed of people who cultivate their own soil, owe no debt, and live within their means. It is true we have no overgrown fortunes, but it is also true, that we have few beggars.”8

8 Quoted in North Carolina Standard, March 29, 1837.

The last decade of the period showed a marked increase in the number who worked their own soil. The average size of farms decreased from 369 acres to 316 acres and the number of farms in 1860 increased 18,240 over the number in 1850. The size of farms in 1860 is shown in the following table:

SIZE OF FARMS IN NORTH CAROLINA IN 18609 Acres Number of farms Per Cent of total 3 and under 10 2,050 3.0 10 and under 20 4,879 7.3 20 and under 50 20,882 31.1 50 and under 100 18,496 27.6 100 and under 500 19,220 28.7 500 and under 1,000 1,184 1.8 1,000 and over 311 .5 Total 67,022 100.0

9 U. S. Census Office, Agriculture in the United States in 1860, p. 210. The census gives no indication of the size of landholdings. It often happened that one man had holdings that were not contiguous and that likely would be counted in a census report as separate farms.

Sixty-nine per cent of the farms contained less than a hundred acres, while only 2.3 per cent contained more than five hundred acres. It is a significant fact that only 311 plantations in the entire State contained more than a thousand acres, while 2,050 farms contained less than ten acres and 25,761 contained less than fifty acres.

In 1810 the price of land varied from five cents an acre in unfavorable locations to thirty dollars for rich land along the river banks, while the average price was between three and four dollars an acre.10

10 MSS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book; Newsome, op. cit.

In 1818 the Legislature fixed the price of the State lands at ten cents an acre and held it there despite various attempts to reduce the price to five cents. In 1858 a legislator wanted to divide all the State lands into 100-acre farms and distribute them as gifts among the tenant farmers.11

11 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, December 20, 1858.

The average price of land at the assessment value varied from $2.69 in 1815 to $4.41 in 1859, dropping as low as $2.27 in 1833.12

12 Treasurer's Report printed with Sessional Laws, 1833; Treasurer's Report, 1860, printed in Legislative Documents, No. 6.

The average value as given in the census of 1850 was $3.23 per acre and in 1860 it had arisen to $6.03. The cash value of the average size farm in 1860 was, therefore, a little less than two thousand dollars.13

13 316 acres at $6.03 an acre. This sum, of course, does not include the value of farm implements, stock, or buildings.

Slaveholding followed the same general trend as landholding. The following table shows the size of slaveholdings in 1790, 1850, and 1860:

SLAVEHOLDINGS IN 1790, 1850, AND 186014 Number of Slaves Number of Owners 1790 Number of Owners 1850 Number of Owners 1860 1 slave 4,040 1,204 6,440 2 and under 5 4,959 9,668 9,631 5 and under 10 3,375 8,129 8,449 10 and under 20 1,788 5,898 6,073 20 and under 50 701 2,828 3,321 50 and under 100 90 485 611 100 and under 200 11 76 118 200 and under 300 2 12 11 300 and under 500 0 3 4 Total 14,966 28,303 34,658

14 U. S. Census Office, Agriculture in the United States in 1860, pp. 235-36. In the report for 1790 data are not available for Orange, Caswell, and Granville counties. There is doubtless an error in the number of slaveowners reporting one slave in 1850, for the number of persons owning one slave in 1860 is five times as large as that of 1850 while there is no corresponding increase in South Carolina or Virginia. See also Taylor, op. cit., p. 46 n.

The foregoing table shows a gradual increase in slaveholding in each group, but the relative position of the groups is shown better by the percentage of distribution of slaveholding as given in the following table:

PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF SLAVEHOLDING Number of Slaves Number of Owners 1790 Number of Owners 1850 Number of Owners 1860 1 slave 27.0 4.3 18.6 2 and under 5 33.1 34.2 27.8 5 and under 10 22.5 28.7 24.4 10 and under 20 11.9 20.8 17.5 20 and under 50 4.7 10.0 9.6 50 and under 100 0.6 1.7 1.8 100 and under 200 0.1 0.3 0.3 200 and under 300 * * * 300 and under 500 .0 * *

* Less than one-tenth of one per cent.

While 27 per cent of the slaveholders in 1790 owned only one slave, this group had declined in 1860 to 18.6 per cent. In 1790 only 5.4 per cent owned more than twenty slaves, but this group had more than doubled by 1860. A little more than 2 per cent owned more than fifty slaves in 1860 and 70.8 per cent owned less than ten.

The per cent of slaveholding families of the total number of families in the State is as follows:15

15 U. S. Census Office, Century of Population Growth, p. 135.

SLAVEHOLDING FAMILIES Year Per Cent Slaveholding 1790 31.0 1850 26.8 1860 27.7

The trend, despite the increase in the number of small slaveholders, was toward a gradual decrease in the percentage of slaveholding families. After 1850 there was a slight increase over the number of the preceding decade, but it is significant that at no time did as many as a third of the families in the State own slaves.

The occupations of persons gainfully employed in North Carolina in 1860 as listed by the census report of that year afford another basis for determining the economic status of the inhabitants. For purposes of this study, the occupations have been divided into eight groups so that a somewhat accurate picture of the economic structure in 1860 may be obtained at a glance. The number employed in each group and the percentage which each group forms of the total are given in the following table:

OCCUPATIONS IN NORTH CAROLINA, 186015a Occupations Number Per Cent Farmers 87,025 45.20 Laborers 63,481 32.94 Tradesmen 27,263 14.15 Professional Workers 7,436 3.85 Merchants 3,479 1.80 White-collar Workers 1,913 .99 Manufacturers 1,308 .70 Planters 121 .06 All Others 608 .31 Total 192,634 100.00

15a U. S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States, 1860: Population, pp. 657-80. Dairymen, nurserymen, and overseers have been placed in the farmer group; farm hands, day laborers, laundresses, servants, teamsters, apprentices, drivers, and those similarly employed have been placed in the laborer group; those who followed a craft, such as cooper, blacksmith, carpenter, have been classified as tradesmen; physicians, teachers, lawyers, engineers, public officials, and the like have been classified as professional workers; grocers, druggists, innkeepers, traders, bankers, and the like have been placed in the merchant group; clerks, bookkeepers, collectors, and those of similar employment have been classified as white-collar workers; and coachmakers, cabinet makers, harnessmakers, distillers, tobacco manufacturers, and establishments of a similar nature which seem to have been operated on more than an ordinary outlay of capital have been classified as manufacturers. See also Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, pp. 317-18.

It is significant that only 121 persons out of a total of 192,634 gave their occupation as that of planter, while 87,025, or 45 per cent, gave their occupation as that of farmer. The next largest group of workers in the State, almost a third of the total, were common laborers, farm hands, workers by the day, servants, laundresses. The professional group was small, about 4 per cent; the merchant group, the manufacturers, and the white-collar workers, such as clerks and bookkeepers, were even less. If it was true, as often stated by ante-bellum writers and speakers, that the farmers and tradesmen were on the same economic level, it will be found that this group composed 60 per cent of the total and that the professional, planter, merchant, and manufacturing groups, which were generally conceded as being on a higher economic level, composed only 6 per cent of the total.

If occupations, land, and slaves be taken as indices of wealth, it is evident that the average per capita wealth in the State was not large. There were few overgrown estates, and the majority of the inhabitants lived upon the produce of their own labors. William B. Shepard, speaking in the Legislature of 1838, summarized the general economic condition of the State throughout the antebellum period: “A community exclusively agricultural must always be poor. . . . An individual without land and negroes, finds but few avenues to wealth; and those of difficult and laborious access. The planter, himself, although he may spend his days in abundance, finds the difficulty of providing employment for a numerous offspring his greatest care.”16

16 Star, January 9, 1839.

Under such economic conditions, rigid distinction of social classes could not exist. Fully half of the inhabitants approached the same economic level and considered themselves as belonging to the same social class. But the division of society into classes was inevitable.17

17 D. R. Hundley, Social Relations in Our Southern States; Alexander, op. cit., pp. 323-38; Greensboro Times, November 17, 1860.

At the top of the social scale stood the gentry. This class was composed of the planters, those engaged in the learned professions, and the holders of important state and federal offices. Next below came the class composed of the merchants, small officeholders, and small planters. The third class was composed of the yeomanry, that group of whites which was largest of all in North Carolina, the small farmer. Associated with the yeomanry and generally conceded as being on the same social level was the class of inhabitants engaged in some form of mechanical work, such as the carpenter and the blacksmith. The apprentice, or indentured servant, was sometimes grouped in the same class with the yeomanry or even with the middle class, but he was more often thought of as belonging to the poor whites. The poor-white class was composed, for the most part, of day laborers, farm tenants, hired hands, and house servants. The free Negroes ranked next below the poor whites, and at the bottom stood the slaves.18

18 Infra, Chaps. XVI, XVII, XX.

 THE GENTRY

The number of the gentry in North Carolina during the antebellum period was at no time very considerable. In 1860 about an eighth, or 12 per cent, of the total number of slaveholders could be considered in the planter class.19

19 Those owning twenty or more slaves.

This number was a little less than 2 per cent of the total number of free families in the State. But this method of determining the social status of an agricultural population is untrustworthy, for the large slaveholder was not automatically a member of the gentry. While wealth undoubtedly contributed toward passage into the gentry class, as much emphasis was placed upon the prestige of the family as upon the number of slaves and acres owned. It was necessary for a slaveholder to have been supported by several generations of respectability for him to move with ease among that small group known as the genteel society. The term gentry in North Carolina did not have the signification given to it in England or even that generally attributed to it today by admirers of ante-bellum society. Instead of being the descendants of the younger sons of the English nobility who were discriminated against by the law of primogeniture, the gentry of North Carolina came, in most instances, from those middle class families who by thrift and energy were able to get ahead in life. In 1853 Edward J. Hale, editor of the Fayetteville Observer, indignant at an article which he read in the Edinburgh Magazine on the inherited property of the South, wrote with warmth: “Every body here knows, that very few of the present slaveowners, (in Cumberland County for instance, or any other neighborhood,) inherited their slaves or other property, and how many began life with nothing, and have made their own fortunes. The man with wealth who inherited it, is the exception. The poor man who made his own fortune, is the almost universal rule.”20

20 Fayetteville Observer, February 28, 1853.

 With accumulation of wealth came time for leisure and education. A refinement in manners was an ultimate consequence.

Once a family entered an upper class, it usually retained the status for several generations despite reverses in fortune. The default of John Haywood, public treasurer of the State for forty years, (1787-1827) deprived the family of most of its wealth and created great excitement for a few years; yet no social taint was attached to the family because of it. In 1846, when another scandal occurred in a prominent family in Raleigh, no one thought of expelling them from the leading social circles of the State, although everyone joined in “deploring the tragedy.” When the details of the affair were being gossiped about, the Raleigh Register found occasion to lament the pride of birth which had become a characteristic of the North Carolina gentleman. “Of all follies and foibles to which frail humanity is subject, that which leads a man to pride himself less upon his own merit than that of his ancestors, is the most contemptible,” wrote the editor, adding significantly that “in the best of families there must be some who are a disgrace, as well as others who are an honor.”21

21 October 6, 1846.

A man's occupation might influence the social status to which he attained almost as much as the family into which he was born. The gentry was recruited not only from the planter class but also from the group of prominent officeholders and from the leaders in the learned professions. In the early part of the century lawyers and doctors were the principal members of the professional class, but later in the period, as academies and colleges became more permanent and religion more fashionable,22

22 Infra, pp. 331-32, 370.

the higher church and school officials also took their places among the gentry. Sir Charles Lyell, an English geologist, who visited North Carolina in 1842 and again in 1846, thought that governesses in the South were treated with much more equality than in England.23

23 A Second Visit to the United States of North America, I, 223.

 Yet the mere fact of being a school master or a preacher did not open the doors of polite society to one. The gentry frequently looked upon the leaders of camp meetings with suspicion. Only the educated clergy found entrance to the highest social classes in the State.24

24 E. W. Caruthers, “Life and Times of Richard Hugg King,” in manuscript; Barnard, op. cit., p. 328.

In 1860 there were only 1,266 physicians and 500 lawyers in the State.25

25 U. S. Census Office, The Eighth Census of the United States: 1860: Population, pp. 667-71.

The gentry often complained that persons of inferior rank entered the learned professions in an attempt to elevate their social positions. Soon after beginning law practice in Virginia in 1820, John Y. Mason, youthful graduate of the University of North Carolina, later Secretary of Navy under Tyler and Polk, wrote in disgust to John H. Bryan of North Carolina:

I have taken a most invincible distaste to the practice of Law, and nothing but hard necessity should ever compel me to open my lips in another court of Justice. . . . The profession of Law is becoming daily fashionable. It is, the dernier resort, in this State of every s—o—b—, who fails in every other attempt at subsistence—The profession has lost much of that dignity and elevation of character which in former times was the passport to honorable reputation and which united the most distinguished and most virtuous into its ranks.26

26 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, May 6, 1820.

The lower classes frequently charged the gentry with snobbery and false pretensions. With regard to this accusation, later writers on ante-bellum society are of conflicting opinion. Dr. J. B. Alexander states in his History of Mecklenburg County that the “better classes of society” were never “thrown together with people of a lower caste”;27

27 P. 324.

but Dr. Kemp P. Battle declares that the society of Raleigh, “though composed of the elite of the State, equal to any in the South, was never haughty and exclusive.”28

28 The Early History of Raleigh, p. 75. See also Swain, op. cit., p. 12.

 Yet he tells of an instance in which the political opponents of Colonel William Polk attempted to offend him by assigning his wife a dance partner very much inferior to her in social rank.

The Carolina Watchman of Salisbury occasionally ridiculed the show of aristocracy in that town. Once, after declaring that the young people took pride in the wealth of their parents and spurned the society of mechanics for fear their own reputations would be soiled, the editor exclaimed, “God deliver us from the bastard aristocracy of our little villages, and the cod fish aristocracy of our larger towns.”29

29 May 16, 1850. Quotation taken by the editor from Brownlow, On Village Aristocracy.

In 1860 “an humble and unpretending citizen, who wishes to speak the truth in regard to this matter,” defended Raleigh's elite, saying:

My honest opinion . . . is, first, that there is a great deal of humbuggery in this hue and cry about the aristocracy of Raleigh. Secondly, that many of those who are raising this hue and cry, would make the most intolerable aristocrats themselves, had they the power of metamorphosing themselves, by any means, into this precious commodity. Thirdly, that this hue and cry is not confined solely to the second class, who are trying to get into the first or “upper crust” nor to the third class, who, are straining every nerve to get into the second or what is commonly termed the “Cod-fish Aristocracy”; nor yet is it confined to the fourth class who are endeavoring to get into the third. But fourthly and lastly my observation is, that the exclusiveness of the first class versus the second is no more inveterate than that of the second versus the third and so on through all the intermediate grades.30

30 Greensboro Times, November 17, 1860.

Visitors in North Carolina were usually impressed with the simplicity of society in comparison with that of Virginia and South Carolina. Sir Charles Lyell who was pleased on the whole with the nice distinctions of society in Charleston, nevertheless, found too great a predominance of the mercantile class. In North Carolina he would have found this objection even more noticeable. William Peace, who owned a general store in Raleigh, was the favorite of several governors and was received in the most fashionable sets.31

31 Swain, op. cit. pp. 16-18.

About the time of Sir Charles' visit in North Carolina, a northern visitor said of Raleigh, “. . . the elite of its people are as accomplished in matters of fashion and etiquette, as the ton of Broadway.”32

32 Alexander's Messenger, quoted in Star, June 30, 1847.

 Even before the American Revolution, Wilmington “was noted for its unbounded hospitality and the elegance of its society. Men of rare talents, fortune, and attainment, united to render it the home of politeness, and ease, and equipment.”33

33 Sprunt, op. cit., p. 76.

The nature of the aristocracy varied in different areas of the State but in each county and in each neighborhood there was a “set” more “fashionable” than the rest. For instance, in 1853 a young lady of Buncombe County wrote patronizingly to her aunt in Franklin of a neighborhood Christmas party to which she had taken her visiting relatives: “. . . to tell you the plain truth there was only a few young ladies there that I thought proper to introduce them to, and I managed that admirably, as it was rather a mixed multitude, mountain boomers and backwoods folks in abundance. It reminded one of the ‘poor man's dinner’ and it was given for the purpose [of] encouraging that class; . . .”34

34 MS in Gash Papers, February 15, 1853.

The real test of social status came in the contact of the fashionable set of one section with that of another. Thus a young lawyer in 1816 who was familiar with the polite society of both New Bern and Warrenton wrote to his friend who was contemplating a visit to Warrenton that “the society, tho' not as learned or brilliant as that which New Bern affords is compleatly unexceptionable.”35

35 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, November 2, 1816.

 THE MIDDLE CLASS

The class next below that of the gentry was composed of small planters, merchants, and manufacturers, a few successful artisans, small officeholders, and country schoolteachers, lawyers, doctors, and parsons. These were the men who sought the county offices and delighted in the title of 'squire which the position of justice of peace carried with it.36

36 The Raleigh Register of February 14, 1845 writes concerning the term esquire: “Counsellors of law, Justices of the Peace, and aged gentlemen were formerly entitled to it, more by reputation than in strict right. But now, no one can venture to address a youth who came of age last week, without esquiring him . . . it is strangely out of keeping with our boasted simplicity, and strongly indicative of the ultraism of the day.” The Register of July 7, 1806, points to the fact that “your justices of the peace . . . are generally drawn from the yeomanry of the counties, . . .”

By far the largest number in this class was engaged in agriculture. The small planter usually possessed some two or three hundred acres of land and as many as ten or fifteen slaves. He sometimes worked beside his slaves in the field, and seldom risked the management of the farm to an overseer. The homes of the middle class were not infrequently as substantially built as those of the aristocracy. Along the public highway, in the streets, and in the shops their superiors greeted them cordially. They predominated at political gatherings and were often elected to membership in the Legislature. In 1834 the Raleigh Register stated that out of a total membership of 199 legislators, 145 were farmers and seven were merchants.37

37 January 14. The editor probably used the democratic term of farmer to include all those engaged in agriculture.

The merchant, or storekeeper as he was generally called, was more interested in turning an honest penny than he was in science or politics. His shelves were stocked with a miscellaneous assortment of goods including both domestic and northern products which he procured at Charleston or Petersburg. The more prosperous merchants went to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York for purchases. These trips gave them a feeling of superiority over their neighbors, ill concealed when recounting tales of their adventures abroad. The storekeeper sometimes had his home and shop in the same building with enough land in the rear for a garden and outhouses,38

38 In the North Carolina Journal of September 23, 1798, William Shaw advertised for sale or rent: “Three Store Houses with Commodious counting Rooms, with Fire places to each. They are in an excellent stand for business, nearly central between the State House and the Court House, on the flourishing and beautiful street of Fayetteville. The said Store houses have attached to each of them a sufficient quantity of ground (now under fence) for a good garden, also out houses, either for a small family, or a single man who should choose to board himself.”

but his ambition was to have a white painted house in the village and to own a carriage driven by a black boy.39

39 Hundley, op. cit., p. 103.

The children of the middle class were often as well educated as those of the gentry, associating with them in the same private schools and academies. If they possessed self-assurance and were sensitive to nice distinctions in manners, they continued their friendly relations with the upper class through life; but some were never able to feel at ease in the presence of the gentry. The Reverend Braxton Craven, one of humble origin who attained distinction as a teacher and minister, complained, “We never know when to remove our hats or wear our gloves; for one family attempts the manner of the old French noblesse, another that of the English Baron; one affects the affability of the Frenchman, another the stately hauteur of the Castilian; one hour we meet the rough kindness of the Scotchman, and next the nice etiquette of a Pasha.”40

40 Jerome Dowd, Life of Braxton Craven, p. 206.

As a humble and unpretentious “citizen of Raleigh” pointed out in 1860, the middle class was sometimes as guilty of affectation of manners as the gentry was of snobbery. In 1839 the Star, under pretense of describing the absurdities of the newly made officeholder, took occasion to ridicule this affectation of aristocracy:

How unfortunate it is for mankind, that scarcely any human being can reach even a small degree of conspicuity without being metamorphosed into a natural curiosity. . . . No person who knew him at the parental fireside, . . . would recognize him as the same being after he has been elected a member of Congress, a Judge of the Superior Court, or more especially after he has risen so high on the ladder of promotion as to earn a seat in the State Legislature, . . .

In order to be considered a great man, one must look as grave as an ass, which is the gravest of all animals. He must carry about him the squint and the lear of wisdom too. He must affect to appear exceedingly difficult to please on the subject of what he shall eat and what he shall wear. He must affect to be the cherished confidant of every person whose regard is worth having in the land. He must set at nought all the established dictates of modesty, when he is at a party of any description; while at the same time, he must set himself up as the very apostle of etiquette; and if he wishes to be exceedingly great, he must fail at times to speak to his most intimate acquaintances, . . . and we are at a complete loss to know which would constitute the more desirable companion . . . the race of great men which we have just mentioned, or that most beautiful and delectable little animal which so highly adorns our forests, and is so prodigal of its fragrant odours, we allude to the Skunk.41

41 September 11.

Editors and political leaders constantly referred to the farmer and the merchant, however, as “the substantial citizenry.” They usually could be depended upon in any appeal to State pride or patriotism, and their favor was well worth cultivating. As descendants of the honest English franklins, the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, the German Protestants, and the English Baptists, they adhered to standards of pure morals and strict religious principles. Their frugal and industrious habits gave them a bold demeanor which was their boast.

 THE YEOMANRY AND MECHANICS

The largest single class of whites in the State was the yeomanry. Their farms were small, and they cultivated their own land with the assistance of their families and an occasional hired hand or slave. Some estimate of the number of this class may be obtained from the fact that 72 per cent of the total number of white families in the State in 1860 owned no slaves. During the panic of 1837 the Fayetteville Observer rejoiced that the “great mass of our population . . . cannot be reduced to bankruptcy by a money pressure—They are beyond its influence.”42

42 Quoted in North Carolina Standard, March 29, 1837.

Fluctuations in the price of produce or of slaves had by no means as great an effect upon the living conditions of the yeomanry as upon that of the two higher social classes, for the yeoman derived the major part of his needs from his farm. The small farm was much more a self-sufficing unit than was the plantation.43

43 Taylor, op. cit., p. 36.

In August, 1855, the editor of the Arator, an agricultural magazine published in Raleigh, described his visit to the home of a small farmer in Wake County:

We had the pleasure, on the 25th ult., to visit Mr. Gully, . . . and were highly gratified to witness the evidences of industry, good management, abundance, and contentment, which his snug little farm, neat dwelling, thrifty looking stock, &c., presented. . . . He has only fifty acres of land, located on a stony pine ridge, originally thin and poor; about twenty acres of which are now in corn and peas well cultivated, . . . Besides this, there is a fine sweet potato patch, a melon patch, a good garden, and promising young orchard. . . . His cart and tools are kept in place and good order under shelter. He has raised a family of several very respectable sons and daughters, but as his sons have all become of age and left him, he has no person to work in the field but himself; . . . He has four or five cows giving milk, which are a source of handsome profit by the sweet and excellent cheese and butter made from them by his wife and daughter. He attends well to his hogs, and usually has a surplus of pork also for market. There were exhibited on every hand, system and neatness, with an air of comfort and cheerfulness, which told that plenty and contentment were there.44

44 P. 152.

Overseers and the mechanics of the villages and towns were usually grouped in the same social class as the yeomanry. Employees of the mills which began to be established in increasing numbers about 1845 were looked upon as a type of mechanic and, therefore, as belonging to the yeomanry. Several thousands were also employed in the forests, mines, and fisheries.45

45 Carolina Watchman, January 11, 1845; U. S. Census Office, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850, pp. 317-18.

In 1850 more than nine thousand men were employed in industries having establishments producing more than $500 each, while more than fifteen thousand were listed as being employed in manufacturing and the skilled trades.46

46 Ibid., pp. 315-16.

 In 1860 there were 27,263 skilled tradesmen in the State.46a

46a Supra, p. 57.

It was frequently said in the North, especially after 1830, that “mechanics and laboring men” could not “attain a respectable position in society” in the South. In North Carolina such a statement was, under varying circumstances, both admitted and denied. In 1854, when delivering an address before the State Agricultural Society, Kenneth Rayner, a planter and leading Whig politician, said: “It is not to be expected, or desired that intellect shall fraternize with ignorance or virtue with vice. Public opinion needs no reformation in this respect. But the reformation which is needed, and which we are led to hope, is silently working its way, is this—that the pursuits of honest labor shall no longer be a bar to the highest social position; and a stimulus thus given to the laboring man for the cultivation of his intellect, . . . These annual festivals of agricultural and mechanical industry, are working a powerful, though imperceptible moral influence in this respect. For the time being, they break down all the artificial barriers with which man has hedged in his lordly self.”47

47 Address Delivered Before the North Carolina Agricultural Society, October 19, 1854, p. 15.

But Edward J. Hale, editor of the Fayetteville Observer, who had himself learned his trade as an apprentice in the office of the Raleigh Register and later attained both fortune and leadership in the State, would never admit that a yeoman was barred from the gentry. In 1856, illustrating his point, he cited the case of James J. McCarter, a mechanic, who had migrated from New Jersey to Charleston. McCarter said, in telling his own story: “In that city, I pulled off my coat, rolled up my sleeves, and in as public a manner as the nature of my vocation admitted of, went to work. And I can assure you, my friends, that in two years I had attained to as high a social position as I could have reached in New Jersey in twenty years.” To this Hale added, “Besides having an enviable rank in social life” he has just been elected to the Legislature.48

48 Fayetteville Observer, November 8, 1856.

 THE POOR WHITES

At the bottom of the social scale of the dominant race stood the poor whites. They were those unfortunates who from sickness, desire for drink, or inertia either were unable to acquire land or had lost their holdings through severe reverses in fortune. For instance, the father of Brantley York, a prominent Methodist preacher and schoolmaster, became so deeply involved in debt because of drunkenness that his property and household furniture were sold at a public vendue, and he, with the children who were old enough to work, was compelled to find employment as a hired hand.49

49 York, op. cit., pp. 12-14.

The first settlers in North Carolina had been hunters but unless they combined with this pursuit some cultivation of the soil they were soon outstripped in economic progress by their more industrious neighbors. As late as 1810 the hunter type of inhabitant formed the bulk of the poor whites in Moore County.50

50 “Moore County,” MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book; Newsome, op. cit., p. 283.

The poor whites may be divided into three general groups: farm tenants, day laborers, and ne'er-do-wells.51

51 See A. N. J. Den Hollander, “The Tradition of ‘Poor Whites’,” Chap. XX in Culture in the South (ed. by W. T. Couch); Den Hollander, De Landelijke arme Blanken in het Zuiden der Vereenigde Staten; P. H. Buck, “The Poor Whites of the Ante-Bellum South,” American Historical Review, XXXI, 4-54; A. O. Craven, “The Poor Whites and Negroes in the Antebellum South,” Journal of Negro History, XV, 14-250.

As a rule they were viewed with contempt at home and disgust abroad. To the Negroes they were “poor white trash” or “poor buckra” and to the upper social classes they were “red necks” and “the dregs of civilization.” Perhaps the largest group of this class of whites were the farm tenants. They cultivated the old fields of the large plantations, land which the owners considered too unprofitable for slave labor.51a

51a See T. P. Hunt, Life and Thoughts, pp. 54-55, for the experiment tried by a Brunswick County, Virginia, planter who sent his slaves to the Lower South and placed white tenants on his Virginia plantation.

 They often lived in abandoned outhouses, some with only a clay floor and no means of ventilation or light except the door. Their personal property was almost negligible and they were constantly in debt either to their landlord or the keeper of the cross-roads store. In their behalf, Representative Cunningham of Person spoke in the General Assembly of 1844-1845:

A large portion of the laborers of North Carolina are tenants occupying yearly leases. Under the operation of the present law, as soon as the tenant pitches his crop and prepares his land, a constable comes and levies upon the growing crop, it is sold for a mere song, the creditor gets a few cents in the dollar of his debt; the other creditors are deprived of making their debts; and the debtor, disheartened, either spends the year in idleness and dissipation or becomes a day laborer and secretely secures his wages beyond the reach of all creditors. Thus we see that in North Carolina, tenants are a careless, idle class. They care not to sow when another reaps; they will not make repairs when they have no interest in the crop. . . . Hard is the lot of these poor men who have large families to support and pay debts besides, with a small portion of what they can raise by their own hands from a barren soil. But how much harder does this lot become when even the scanty crop which they force from the sterile old-fields of their landlords is taken, . . . 52

52 North Carolina Standard, January 15, 1845. In Brazier v. Ansley, 33 N. C., 12, the Supreme Court decided that “a cropper has no such interest in the crop as can be subjected to the payment of his debts while it remains in mass; until a division the whole is the property of the landlord.” For the usual terms between cropper and landlord, see Deaver v. Rice, 20 N. C., 567.

It was to this class that Ebenezer Pettigrew, a planter of Washington County, referred when he wrote in 1842 that 3,000 of the 6,000 inhabitants of Tyrrell County and the lower part of Washington County would be without bread on the first day of January, 1843. “They are without money, without credit, and the most of them without property.”53

53 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, August 3, 1842.

Not all of the farm-tenant class entered into a lease with their landlord. A great many squatted on the land and were quietly left there. They worked little patches of their own and did extra work on the plantation at the prevailing wage scale. Every county had its tenants, but travelers in the State noted them especially in the sand ridges along the fall line of the rivers. Around every town there was also an outskirt of these day laborers, some working faithfully year by year, others a day or two at a time to pick up just enough money for immediate use.

In August, 1855, the Arator of Raleigh thought this group was large:

How many hundreds and thousands of poor men with families, who are existing upon half starvation from year to year, are there congregated especially about our towns and villages, . . .

There are many in this city, whose wives and children are suffering for the want of food and raiment, who, if they remain here, are doomed to drag out a miserable and useless existence, but who, by procuring . . . a homestead in the country and going to work in the right way, might soon become respectable, useful and happy citizens. This is a subject which demands the serious consideration of the statesman and philanthropist.54

54 P. 152.

The percentage of day laborers in the total white population is difficult to determine, but it was probably larger than has usually been estimated. In 1850 more than twenty-eight thousand males in North Carolina gave their occupation as that of unskilled laborer,55

55 U. S. Census Office, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850, pp. 317-18.

and in 1860 more than thirty-six thousand gave their occupation as that of unskilled day laborer or farm hand.55a

55a U. S. Census Office, The Eighth Census of the United States: 1860.

 This number probably did not include the numerous children of poor parents who each year from 1800 to 1860 were apprenticed in almost every county of the State to serve their masters until they were of age.56

56 Infra, pp. 703 et seq. The census of 1860 lists only 646 apprentices in North Carolina.

 Some apprentices were children of the yeomanry or even of the middle class whose parents took this means of putting them to a trade, but the majority were orphans left without property or children whose parents had “no visible means of support.”

Those without property found it difficult at all times to make a living, for wages were low and the means of livelihood few. The following table gives the average wage paid the laborer in 1860 in North Carolina and in three other typical sections of the United States:

LABOR WAGE SCALE IN 186057AVERAGE WAGE Type of Labor N. C. Ala. Miss. Ind. U. S. Farm hand with board Monthly $10.37 $12.41 $16.66 $13.71 $14.73 Day laborer with board Daily .54 .70 .85 .73 .81 Day laborer without board Daily .77 .96 1.26 .98 1.11 Carpenter without board Daily 1.56 2.15 2.47 1.65 1.97 Female domestic Weekly 1.08 2.08 2.25 1.28 1.85

57 U. S. Census Office, Statistics of the United States, 1860, p. 512. The wage scale of Alabama has been given because this state represents fairly well the economic conditions in the South; Mississippi, because it represents the highest wage scale paid in the South; and Indiana, because more North Carolinians emigrated there than to any other middle western state.

North Carolina had the lowest average wage scale of any state in the Union. Delaware had a slightly lower scale for carpenters and Pennsylvania and Ohio for female domestics, but in other respects North Carolina ranked lowest.

An intelligent New England traveler described the poor whites in 1833 as being “not as well off in their physical condition as the slaves, and hardly as respectable.”58

58 Barnard, op. cit., p. 388.

As hired hands or apprentices they sometimes fared worse than the Negroes with whom they worked side by side. The case of Silas Bond of Martin County, before the General Assembly of 1828, was probably not an exaggeration.59

59 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate December 16, 1828.

 He was born to poor parents shortly before his father's death. The mother, sickly and uneducated, was scarcely able to support the family. Three children were bound out as apprentices, but Silas, who was weak and ill grown, could not find a master willing to clothe and feed him for his services. Mother and child wandered from place to place looking for work and, despite their greatest exertions, were always on the verge of starvation. When Silas was nineteen, his mother was at last able to hire him out. One day he “took from his employer one joint of Meat to gratify an appetite which had been several days unsatisfied in consequence of the scanty morcel afforded him for his subsistence.” His master, vengeful, preferred a bill of indictment against him for petit larceny, and “the judge with apparent reluctance passed sentence that he receive ten lashes lightly laid on.” This conviction deprived him of the rights of citizenship.

Brantley York, who worked as a hired hand under more normal conditions, complained of the poor food provided by most masters. His clothing in cold weather consisted of a shirt and loose trousers, “shoes, but no socks or coat.” He resented having to work with Negroes in the field. It acted as a spur to self-education, and before many years he had left his work as a hired hand and was teaching a subscription school.

On others the effect of associating with Negroes in work led to a kind of social equality. Polly Lane, a white servant in the home of Abraham Pessenger of Davidson County, accepted as her lover a slave with whom she had to work in the kitchen and aided him in stealing a purse of $260 so that the two might escape to another State where the slave might be free.60

60 MS in Governor's Papers, State Series, IV, pt. 1, December 8, 1825.

But the general attitude of the whites who came into economic competition with the Negroes was one of hatred. In the western counties, where slaveholding was negligible, the free Negroes were a source of much friction,61

61 MS in Legislative Papers, in House of Commons, December 6, 1824. A petition from Buncombe County requesting that a poll tax of $50 be imposed upon free Negroes migrating to the western counties stated: “Anterior to 1823-24 we had enough of this unfortunate & troublesome portion of our species to feel them a public nuisance, but subsequent to that period . . . there has been a constant influx of free negroes of every character and description into the western part of the state.”

 and there was in all towns some antagonism between Negroes and white laborers because of economic competition.62

62 Sessional Laws, 1802, Chap. XL. The Wilmington Herald. July 27, 1867, tells of the burning of a building because it was erected by negro labor.

Farm tenants and day laborers were accorded some degree of respect in the community as long as they kept at their work, but there was a class of poor whites in the State, the ne'er-do-wells, known variously as vagabonds, clay eaters, sandhillers, held in utter contempt. Frederick Law Olmsted found “the great mass of white people inhabiting the turpentine forest” in North Carolina to be of this class. They were entirely uneducated and had no habitual occupation. Such a family would either occupy an empty cabin with the tacit consent of the owner or squat on the land and build a little log hut, “so made that it is only a shelter from the rain, the sides not being chincked.” “A gentleman of Fayetteville,” wrote Olmsted, “told me that he had, several times, appraised, under oath, the whole household property of families of this class at less than $20.” They usually cultivated a little corn, a few rows of sweet potatoes, peas, and collards; they had a few hogs that supported themselves in the forest; and always a rifle and a pack of half-starved dogs. “The men, ostensibly occupy most of their time in hunting. . . . If they have need of money to purchase cloathing, etc., they obtain it by selling their game or meal. If they have none of this to spare, or an insufficiency, they will work for a neighboring farmer for a few days, . . . The farmers say, that they do not like to employ them, because they cannot be relied upon to finish what they undertake, or to work according to directions; . . .”63

63 Op. cit., pp. 348-50.

Travelers invariably commented upon the queer speech, the strange habits, and the peculiar color of this class of people. Their speech was a corruption of the seventeenth-century English which they had learned from their ancestors; their strange habits that of clay-sucking, resin-chewing, and snuff-dipping.64

64 Snuff-dipping was not confined to this class. See infra, pp. 92-93.

A traveler in the South during the early years of the Civil War said of them:

Many of them are clay- or dirt-eaters, which is said to cause their peculiar complexion. Their children, at a very early age, form this filthy and disgusting habit; and mere infants may be found with their mouths filled with dirt. The mud with which they daub the interstices between the logs of their rude domicils must be frequently renewed, as the occupants pick it out in a very short time and eat it. This pernicious practice induces disease. The complexion becomes pale, similar to that occasioned by chronic ague and fever.65

65 J. H. Aughey, The Iron Furnace: or, Slavery and Secession, pp. 212-13. See also Den Hollander, De Landelijke arme Blanken in het Zuiden der Vereenigde Staten, pp. 100-3.

Clay-eating was not a habit peculiar to the ante-bellum South. It has existed in many parts of the world, notably in China and India, where there is undernourishment and an insufficient quantity of salt in the diet. The clay may have had something to do with the peculiar color of many of these people, but the general undernourishment, malaria, and hookworm were undoubtedly more at fault. Malaria invariably produces a general listlessness and a yellow or brownish complexion; and hookworm produces listlessness, emaciation, and an ashy brown color. The soil pollution around the cabins of these people also accounted for the scabies and impetigo, commonly known among them as “fall” and “spring” sores.

Travelers in the South invariably pointed to these poor whites as “living examples” of the evil of slavery and of the resulting degeneracy which inbreeding produced on the Anglo-Saxon race. The South itself pointed to them as a proof of the necessity of slavery, proof that the white man could not successfully cultivate the fever-infested region of the southern coast and the Deep South. South and North alike frequently overlooked the fact that northern prisons and charitable institutions were also crowded with “off-scourings of human society.” A semi-tropical climate, malaria, and hookworm gave the poor whites of the South their peculiar characteristics.

 THE MOVEMENT TOWARD DEMOCRACY

Despite the persistence in America of the class structure which the settlers brought with them from the Old World, the United States was essentially democratic. In 1832 Mrs. Trollope described the United States as “a vast continent, by far the greater part of which is still in the state in which nature left it, and a busy, hustling, industrious population, hacking and hewing their way through it.”66

66 Domestic Manners of the Americans, II, 107.

Under such conditions, there must necessarily be a bubble-aristocracy, which was constantly being inflated and deflated. Fortunes were made and lost; new families were rising into prominence; old families were occasionally dropping back into the ranks; but “the advancing power of the people” marched on. It culminated in the Jacksonian movement in politics. The lower classes began to demand more and more voice in the government.

In 1840 when the British Captain Marryat declared in his Second Series of a Diary in America that a stable aristocracy was “absolutely necessary for America both politically and morally, if the Americans wish their institutions to hold together,”67

67 P. 156.

the monthly Democratic Review could laugh loudly at his stupidity. “For a country like ours, producing in profusion the most important commercial staples which find a ready demand in the great markets of the commercial world—favored with political institutions as free as is consistent with the preservation of property and good order—inhabited by people of plain manners and simple habits” to tolerate a hereditary aristocracy is absurd.68

68 An article entitled “American Democracy,” in VIII, 131.

 The vast resources of the continent were not alone responsible for the march of the people. The industrial revolution, just begun in America, was silently working toward the same end, while at the same time the movement for humanitarian reform was stressing the importance of the common man.

With respect to class feeling Kenneth Rayner declared on the oratorical platform in Raleigh in 1854, “A new era is beginning to dawn upon the world. The last quarter of a century has done more to revolutionize public sentiment on this subject, than the eighteen centuries preceding, . . . The diffusion of intelligence, the operation of commerce, and the utilitarian tendency of the age, are beginning to teach mankind that labor is the source of all wealth and prosperity, the means of individual comfort and luxury, the basis of national strength and greatness.”69

69 Op. cit., p. 13.

As early as 1845 William W. Holden, a Democratic leader of the State and editor of the North Carolina Standard, cried ominously in his paper of October 1:

Here, as in other portions of the country, the professions are all crowded. Shall we crowd them still more, and thus encourage quackery and pettifogging, while our lands are neglected and our workshops silent? Let the truth be taught to our children as a house-hold word, that labor is honorable—labor of the hands, as well as of the head. . . .

Labor must ultimately take the place of idleness, and the refinements and elegancies of life will then be left to take care of themselves. The radicalism of labor, which makes men of all the masses, is coming on apace. Capital is now the strong arm, as labor will be then.

A certain “leveling influence” had always been noticeable in North Carolina politics, but with Andrew Jackson's first campaign for the presidency “the common people” became an unmistakably popular term in political parlance. The North Carolina Standard later explained the term to mean the “honest yeomanry and mechanics” as opposed to “the ruffled shirt gentry” and “sneaking Aristocrats.” “Republican farmers look at this!” shouted the Standard of September 29, 1836. “See the estimation in which you are held by the nullifiers and federalists. It has ever been their doctrine that the ‘common people’ . . . are incapable and unfit to manage Governmental matters— . . . Thus we find, that one of their Editors expressed his conviction, . . . that ‘THE HUGE PAWS OF THE FARMERS are not fit to handle the statute books’—that ‘a Blacksmith might as well undertake to mend a watch as a FARMER TO LEGISLATE’!!”

In 1840 when the Whigs turned the tables on the Democrats and sought the vote of the masses under the slogan of “log cabin and hard cider,” the Standard of May 27 retorted that “a goodly portion of the Democrats of our State do live in very comfortable log cabins, a circumstance which by no means diminishes their independence of feeling or derogates from their purity of character.” While appealing to the masses to support the Whig candidates, the conservative Raleigh Register at the same time deprecated the movement to array rich against poor.70

70 September 3, 1838.

But from this time on “the honest yeomanry” became increasingly important in North Carolina politics. To get their votes candidates often stood before rural gatherings, boasting that they were destitute of education and unused to the refinements of the gentry. These political devices did much to stir class consciousness and ultimately operated to make the yeomanry more articulate.

The Constitution of 1776 practically gave the two upper social classes a monopoly of the state and county offices. The antebellum period saw a gradual relaxation of this policy and the democratization of officeholding. The qualification for a seat in the Senate of the General Assembly was the possession of 300 acres of land, while in order to vote in the election for senators it was necessary to possess fifty acres. A landed qualification of a hundred acres was required of candidates in the House of Commons and suffrage in this instance was restricted to taxpayers. The governor, elected by the General Assembly, must have a “freehold in land and tenants, above the value of one thousand pounds.”71

71 Constitution of the State of North Carolina, Art. xv. See Connor and Cheshire, op. cit., p. lxxxi.

Other State officers, while not being required to possess a property qualification, were elected by the General Assembly; and the county officials were chosen by the county court. The court was composed of justices of the peace who were commissioned by the governor on the recommendation of the legislators of their respective counties.

Early in the nineteenth century a movement got under way against the property qualifications placed on the franchise and on office-holding and against the indirect election of important state and county officials. But it was not until the Constitutional Convention of 1835 that the office of governor was made elective and not until 1857 that senatorial suffrage was vested in “every free white man” who “shall have paid public taxes.”72

72 Amendments to the Constitution [subjoined to Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of North Carolina called to Amend the Constitution of the State which assembled at Raleigh, June 4, 1835 (hereafter cited as Debates in Convention, 1835)], 1835, Art. II; “A Bill to Amend the Constitution of North Carolina” [Senate Bill, ses. 1856-1857], in a volume of such bills bound under the title Amendments to the Constitution; Connor and Cheshire, op. cit., pp. lxxviii, lxxx. See also supra, pp. 34-36.

As early as 1814 a bill was introduced into the House of Commons calling for the popular election of sheriffs, but it was not until 1829 that this mode of election was authorized by law.73

73 Sessional Laws, 1829, Chap. V.

 Throughout the antebellum period there was a constant effort on the part of the yeomanry to take from the upper classes the control of public offices. They constantly demanded the popular election of justices of the peace, constables, and of other petty office-holders, but these reforms did not come until after the ante-bellum period.

Under the appointive system, it was not only possible for the two upper classes to control officeholding, but for one person to hold several influential local offices at one time. When the distinguished Nathaniel Macon resigned his office as United States senator in 1828, he also resigned “the appointment of Trustee of the University of the State and that of Justice of the Peace for the County of Warren.”74

74 MS in Legislative Papers, November 14, 1828.

Although few objected to the number of offices that Nathaniel Macon might hold, a loud protest went up over such cases as that of Zacharias Pigott of Carteret County. In 1831 he was chairman of the county court, treasurer of public buildings, master of wrecks, and chairman of patrols.75

75 Carteret County Court Minutes, 1831-1837, in MS.

 One who held so many influential offices, despite the fact that no emoluments were attached, had a powerful hold on county affairs. In 1804 a petition was sent from Anson County signed by officers of the militia asking that the appointment of second major be denied Adam Lockhart who had “for some time been pushing himself for ever[y] appointment within the power of the county to grant him.”76

76 MS in Legislative Papers, 1804.

 THE DEGRADATION OF LABOR

Despite protests to the contrary,77

77 Supra, pp. 66-67.

the existence of slavery in North Carolina, as elsewhere in the South, tended to place a social stigma upon those who worked with their hands. “The great curse of slavery with us,” wrote Ebenezer Pettigrew in 1847, himself a prosperous slaveholder, “is not the fanatical notion of its sinfulness, but the rendering manual labour & pursuits degrading in the eyes of pretended gentlemen, who had rather cheat than work.”78

78 MS in Pettigrew Papers, November 4, 1847.

 It was about one of Pettigrew's neighbors that the Farmer's Journal wrote in May, 1853: “We recollect about two years since to have visited the farm of a wealthy planter in Washington county, in this State, and found his three sons at work in the field, and his two daughters at work in the house. We were surprised at this sight, . . . they went to school during the first five days of the week, and worked until 12 o'clock on Saturday.”79

79 P. 52.

“When will the days of sickly sentimentality be over in North Carolina?” asked Holden in the North Carolina Standard of 1845. “When will those of our young men who are now fashionable idlers, cease to be so, and turn their hands either to farming or to some useful branch of the mechanics? . . . The truth is, many of our young men have been ruined perhaps for life, by the mistaken kindness of parents, and by the false and pernicious notion that labor is dishonorable. ‘The toil-hardened hand and the sunburnt face,’ are esteemed by many a ‘reproach’— . . . ”80

80 October 1.

At the close of the period, Holden was still preaching his doctrine that honest labor is at once the support and pride of the State. “For my part,” he said in 1857, “I despair of that young man who is above labor, and who considers farming beneath him. If too proud to farm—to manage his own hands and pitch his own crops, he will turn out to be too indolent to succeed in any thing.”81

81 Address . . . before the Duplin County Agricultural Society, November 6, 1857, p. 16.

It is no wonder that the editor of the Farmer's Journal could not believe his ears when someone told him in May, 1853, that “one of the presiding Judges of the Superior courts of law in this State, may be frequently seen driving his own wagon and horses out of town to his farm, with his plows and other utensils aboard,” or that the editor should ask, “what can these silk glove gentry think of this? Indeed, if they were to see the sight they would faint.”82

82 P. 51.

Although the class system in North Carolina was not extremely rigid, social distinctions and class interests were definite enough to give rise to friction. As the period was drawing to a close, yeomen and mechanics became increasingly resentful of the attitude of the upper classes. They were ready to admit the superiority of the upper classes in matters of education, manners, and dress, but they would never admit that these superficial things made them any “better.” “There is little cordiality of feeling between the people of the provincial Towns and those of the surrounding Country,” lamented the Southern Weekly Post of Raleigh in the issue of December 13, 1851. “The people of the Towns must necessarily dress better than those of the Country; and this together with the fact that the citizens of the Towns labor by their wits rather than their hands, creates on the part of the rural denizens a prejudice, a suspicion of pride and vanity: and they think their neighbors live without care or fatigue.” Hinton Rowan Helper was not the only North Carolinian who foresaw class war in the ante-bellum South. Even so respectable a man as Calvin H. Wiley warned the State in his report on public education in 1860 that there was as much danger from the prejudice existing between rich and poor as between master and slave. “The peace of every social and political system depends on a just recognition of the mutual dependence of every rank on each other, and of the mutual obligations which this interest imposes. . . . And all attempts . . . to widen the breach between classes of citizens are just as dangerous as efforts to excite slaves to insurrection, . . . ”83

83 “Suggestions and Recommendations,” NCJE, III (May, 1860), 132.

Thus it was demagoguery in candidates for public favor to decry the towns, the professions, and the planters. But it was not entirely the politicians who had set in motion the tide toward democratization. The social and economic conditions of the time had played a large part.

 CHAPTER IV RURAL LIFE

WE SEE, in the short space of forty years, an almost total revolution in our habits, and customs,” lamented Salisbury's only newspaper in 1820. “We behold very little of that plain republican simplicity which characterized our fathers—a ridiculous pomp, and an enervating luxury have usurped its place: and instead of witnessing a hardy race of freemen growing up, we see an effeminate, puny race of dandies: instead of rosy-cheeked damsels, fresh and blooming as the morn, we see too many of those sickly, delicate things, . . .”1

1 Western Carolinian, September 12, 1820.

Thirty years later Raleigh's conservative Register was sounding the same note. Fulton's steamboat had set the country running a mad, neck-or-nothing steeplechase. A new generation of Americans had come into existence who were building a ginger-bread civilization in comparison with the solid masonry of the past. “This is the age of high pressure. . . . Men eat faster, drink faster and talk faster, than they did in our younger days, and, in order to be consistent on all points, they die faster. . . . It is to be feared that the invention of the lightning telegraph will give an additional go-ahead impulse to humanity, equal to that imparted by the rush of steam. If so, Progress only knows where we shall land.”2

2 June 5, 1850.

The “fast age” ushered in by the industrial revolution had far less effect in North Carolina than it did in most States. “The settlers in this part of North Carolina,” wrote a British traveler in 1844 after a visit to Greensboro, Salisbury, and Salem, “seem to be quiet, old-fashioned people, content with little, and not at all disposed to trouble themselves with the mania of internal improvements.”3

3 G. W. Featherstonaugh, Excursion through the Slave States, II, 359-60.

In 1857 the Reverend H. E. Taliaferro found Surry County much as he had left it as a boy: “With most of the people a rifle, shot-pouch, butcher-knife, and an article they dubbed ‘knock-'em-stiff’ were of vastly more importance than larnin; while the younger ones preferred the sound of the fiddle, a seven-handed reel, and ‘Old Sister Phebe’ to a log-pole school-house. Yet for all this, they were a clever folk, . . .” By hard labor and the most rigid economy, they lived well. But they had no extravagancies; money was scarce, and “corrupting fashions seldom reached them.”4

4 Fisher's River (North Carolina) Scenes and Characters, pp. 18, 19.

Social life in North Carolina was largely rural in character, for the majority of the inhabitants lived on plantations and farms. For the most part, the people were thrifty and hard-working, warm-hearted and good natured, taking their work or play as they found it.5

5 Carolina Watchman, May 16, 1850; Petersburg Intelligencer quoted in Raleigh Register, August 3, 1850.

LIFE ON THE PLANTATION

Life on the large plantation represented the most refined type to be found in rural North Carolina, but even here, if the planter looked well to the future, he spent far more time at business that at recreation. Charles Pettigrew, planter and Episcopal minister, wrote in 1802, “I am under . . . the fullest conviction that overseers require little less oversight from their employers than the negroes require from them, & that in point of fidelity, there is not so much difference between white and black.”6

6 MS in Pettigrew Papers, May, 1802.

Forty-five years later his son wrote in the same vein: “A Plantation to be well managed should never be left but at very short intervals . . . if it is a matter of life & death, & the owner is of any use then he should go away, but not otherwise.”7

7 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, October 26, 1847.

Likewise, the household duties of the thrifty matron consumed a large portion of her day.8

8 Infra, pp. 231 et seq.

 The wife of even a wealthy planter sometimes sighed for leisure in which to make a trip to town or to visit friends.

Nevertheless, the planter's work gave him some leisure. He had time to cultivate hobbies, and, thus, many entered politics, serving in both the State Legislature and in Congress. The planter had time for scientific experiments, reading, and elegant letter-writing if not the composition of essays and books. “My plan is to amuse myself with improvements in agriculture, and as my principal business to resume a course of general reading which my appointment six years ago interrupted,” wrote John Steele in 1802 after resigning the office of comptroller of the United States Treasury.9

9 Papers of John Steele (ed. H. M. Wagstaff), I, 322.

A planter of Colonel Willie Jones' intelligence and wealth had time to cultivate “liberality of sentiment and benevolence toward his fellow-men,” an “engaging and social turn,” a “friendly and hospitable disposition.”10

10 Raleigh Register, June 23, 1801.

 Colonel Henry Shelby's home was “the abode of Hospitality, where the respectable stranger found an early introduction, and the child of want forgot his misfortune.” Like John Steele, Colonel Shelby spent most of his leisure in self-education. “In mental acquirements few men surpassed him,” wrote the Raleigh Register. “His literary taste was pure and classical; his understanding, deep, active and vigorous. His colloquial powers seemed to flow from an inexhaustible fund of mental treasure.”11

11 Ibid., February 14, 1812.

The reputation of the planter for hospitality was well deserved, although often it has been exaggerated. A stranger was seldom welcomed into the family as a guest unless he brought letters of introduction,12

12 Barnard, op. cit., p. 325.

but if he were well attired and conducted himself with the demeanor of a gentleman, the host often graciously waived the formality of an introduction. “Travellers with any pretensions to respectability, seldom stop at the wretched taverns,” wrote Elkanah Watson of Massachusetts after a trip to the South, “but custom sanctions their freely calling at any planter's residence, and he seems to consider himself the party obliged by this freedom.”13

13 Op. cit., p. 289.

But on one occasion a wealthy planter of Gates County received Watson coldly because he appeared at the door in a coal cart with a miserable horse and a tattered Negro boy at the time the planter was giving a dancing party. Although he had entertained Watson several years before, he now had no recollection of the man, and from his suspicious mode of traveling, was reluctant to believe his story. He would have turned the traveler out in a heavy rain to seek a tavern several miles distant had it not been for the latter's persistence. “In the succeeding summer,” wrote Watson, “I again, at the close of a day, for the third time in my wanderings, approached the mansion of this gentleman. He now received me as he might have received a General, and in truth I and my man Mills made quite a military display.”14

14 Ibid., p. 284.

A North Carolinian, when traveling in sections of the State where he was unknown, sometimes fared not so well as the Northerner. If he applied for accommodation at the home of a casual acquaintance, the “money mad” host was likely to charge him the regular tavern fee. When General Jeremiah Slade traveled across the State to Tennessee in 1819, at one place he received “every demonstration of unalloyed friendship and almost relative affection” when in the presence of “genlmn. & ladies of the first standing.”15

15 Slade, op. cit., pp. 40-41.

But when he was preparing to leave the next morning, his host presented him with the exorbitant bill of eighty cents for breakfast, dinner, and horses' feed.

The plantation home, with its house servants, horses, coaches, home-grown food, and varied amusements, might well be a hospitable place. On every plantation where there were more than twenty slaves at least one was set aside as a house servant. The very young and the old were usually engaged in the house, while the full “taskables” were more profitably employed in the field. For instance, the house servants on Henry C. Middleton's Weehaw plantation near Georgetown, South Carolina, were “a cook that is not a full task, a girl of twelve and a boy of fourteen.” An old man was “stable boy” and coachman for the family and an old woman was gardener.16

16 G. G. Johnson, A Social History of the Sea Islands, p. 81.

Stephen A. Norfleet of Woodbourne in Bertie County often put his house servants at other work during the rush season; and when his wife became ill in 1858, he employed a white housekeeper. In some families, however, the household retinue was large: a cook and assistant, a butler in uniform, a parlor maid, a personal maid, a “boy” to serve the master, a nurse if there were children, a liveried coachman, a gardener, and a stable boy.

It is no wonder that distinguished visitors in the South remarked on “the perfect ease and politeness” with which the planters entertained in their homes. Sir Charles Lyell, however, did not think southern manners entirely dependent upon “mere wealth and retinue of servants.” “There is a warm and generous openness of character in the southerners,” he wrote. “. . . they have often a dignity of manner, without stiffness, which is most agreeable. The landed proprietors here visit each other in the style of English country gentlemen, sometimes dining out with their families and returning at night, or, if the distance be great, remaining to sleep and coming home the next morning.”17

17 Op. cit., I, 246.

The planter whose home was near a village was often host at tea, a dinner party, a dance, or a week-end excursion. In 1833 Henry Barnard, a Connecticut visitor in the South Atlantic States, described a day spent at Shirley,18

18 Shirley was probably owned at this time by Hill Carter, a first cousin of General Robert E. Lee.

the seat of the Carter family near Petersburg, Virginia, as typical of “the princely hospitality of the gentle born families” of the South:

When you wake in the morning, you are surprised to find that a servant has been in, and without disturbing you, built up a large fire—taken out your clothes and brushed them, and done the same with your boots—brought in hot water to shave, and indeed stands ready to do your bidding—as soon as you are dressed, you walk down into the dining room—At eight o'clock you take your seat at the breakfast table of rich mahogany—each plate standing separate on its own little cloth—Mr. Carter will sit at one end of the table and Mrs. Carter at the other—Mrs. C. will send you by two little black boys, as fine a cup of coffee as you ever tasted, or a cup of tea—it is fashionable here to drink a cup of tea after coffee—Mr. Carter has a fine cold ham before him of the real Virginia flavor—this is all the meat you get in the morning, but the servant will bring you hot muffins and corn batter cakes every 2 minutes—you will find on the table also, loaf wheat bread, hot and cold—corn bread—

After breakfast visitors consult their pleasure—if they wish to ride, horses are ready at their command—read, there are books enough in the Library,—write, fire, and writing materials are ready in his room—The Master and Mistress of the House are not expected to entertain visitors till an hour or two before dinner, which is usually at 3. If company has been invited to dinner they will begin to come about 1—Ladies in carriage and gentlemen horseback—After making their toilet, the company amuse themselves in the parlor—about a half hour before dinner, the gentlemen are invited out to take grog. When dinner is ready . . . Mr. Carter politely takes a Lady by the hand and leads the way into the dining room, and is followed by the rest, each Lady led by a gentleman. Mrs. C. is at one end of the table with a large dish of rich soup, and Mr. C. at the other, with a saddle of fine mutton, scattered round the table, you may choose for yourself, ham—beef—turkey—duck—eggs with greens—etc—etc for vegetables, potatoes, beets—hominy . . . after you have dined, there circulates a bottle of sparkling champagne. After that off passes the things, and the upper table cloth, and upon that is placed the desert, consisting of fine plum pudding, tarts, etc, etc,—after this comes ice cream, West India perserves—peaches perserved in brandy, etc,—When you have eaten this, off goes the second table cloth, and then upon the bare mahogany table is set, the figs, raisins, and almonds, and before Mr. Carter is set 2 or 3 bottles of wine—Maderia, Port, and a sweet wine for the Ladies—he fills his glass, and pushes them on, after the glasses are filled, the gentlemen pledge their services to the Ladies, and down goes the wine, after the first and second glass the ladies retire, and the gentlemen begin to circulate the bottle pretty briskly. You are at liberty however to follow the ladies as soon as you please, who after music and a little chit chat prepare for their ride home.19

19 Op. cit., pp. 319-20.

Leaving Shirley, Henry Barnard went to Raleigh where he visited Thomas Pollock Devereux, a large slaveholder in North Carolina. His reception there was “a fine specimen of the real southern hospitality and manners.” In Chapel Hill, Barnard was delighted to find Professor Elisha Mitchell, a graduate of Yale and native of Connecticut. After spending the evening at the professor's home, he wrote, “I should not have known from anything I saw at his table, or the manners of his family, that I was out of Connecticut. I didn't see two or three black servants standing at your elbows to execute your slightest wish, even to pushing the salt cellar a little nearer, if it is a foot from you.”20

20 Ibid., p. 328.

Such an evening was a relief to the young New Englander after having experienced several weeks of southern hospitality.

At night the planter might entertain his guest with a deer hunt. A party carrying guns and brandy would enter the woods, scrambling over briers and ravines close behind a Negro carrying lighted charcoal in a pan. In case a deer was found, the light from the pan would blind the animal and the gleaming eyes of the victim would offer the sportsman an excellent target. But this method of deer hunting sometimes resulted in the death of a stray cow or horse so that in 1784 the Legislature made it a misdemeanor. The custom persisted, however, and the Legislature passed a more stringent law in 1810. A restricted season for deer hunting had been established in 1784,21

21 Revised Statutes, 1837, Vol. I, Chap. VI, sec. 1.

but by 1810 deer were no longer plentiful in Eastern North Carolina.22

22 Newsome, op. cit., p. 87.

 When Elkanah Watson visited the State in 1786 he was the guest at a deer hunt near Warrenton. “I was no sportsman,” he wrote, “but was anxious to see the sport, and, mounted with my gun, rode to an abandoned tobacco field. A party of negroes had preceded us with a pack of hounds, to range a circuit of woods, and to insure us game. We were placed in proper positions across the field; . . . In a few minutes, we heard the distant yell of the hounds, approaching nearer and nearer. All dropped upon one knee, with guns cocked. We heard the rustling of leaves and bushes: . . . In a twinkling, two noble deer brust into the clearing, directly in front of me, with the hounds in full cry at their heels.”23

23 Op. cit., p. 288.

Raccoon and opossum hunting was a favorite night sport of the young boys on the plantation. Followed by a troop of yelping 'coon and 'possum dogs, the young masters would traverse the neighboring woods in company with several slaves bearing lighted pine torches.

Hunting, especially for wild turkeys, ducks, and quail, was also a day-time sport on the plantation. The fox chase was a popular diversion, but the abundance of the game and the unfriendly attitude of landowners toward trespassing hunters made it impracticable to follow the customs of the English chase.24

24 John Bernard, Retrospection of America, 1797-1811, pp. 156-57; Newsome, “Twelve North Carolina Counties,” NCHR, VI, 87; A. Trollope, British Sports and Pastimes, pp. 71-73.

A few affluent planters kept as many as twenty-five fox hounds, and everywhere, on plantation and farm alike, there were dogs trained to the chase. Fishing,25

25 See William Elliott, Carolina Sports by Land and Water.

 cockfighting, and horse racing were also favorite forms of recreation.26

26 Infra, pp. 180 et seq.

 ANTE-BELLUM FASHIONS

Hunters in North Carolina seldom dressed for the chase unless it was to don their oldest clothes for fear of tearing new ones in the mad rush through thicket and forest, but at a dance or on a visiting party the dress of the gentry conformed to the dictates of fashion from Charleston, Petersburg, Philadelphia, and New York. Styles did not change rapidly in the State.27

27 L. W. Montgomery, Sketches of Old Warrenton, p. 27.

A particular mode of dress might have been worn a year or more in Richmond before it was generally adopted in the villages of North Carolina, but the leaders of society in the State always had a definite idea as to what was in style and what old-fashioned.

At the opening of the nineteenth century, everyone had discarded the bell-hoop of the late Revolutionary period, the drole, a pad worn on the abdomen, which quickly followed the fashion of hoops, and most had put aside the cul de Paris, a pad worn a posteriori. The ladies of 1800 “muffed themselves up in muslin,” trying to hide even “the smallest part of the neck from the most observing eye.” They had discarded stays and moved about in great freedom with short waists, long petticoats, covered bosoms, and flowing hair.28

28 “The Follies of Fashion,” Post-Angel, or Universal Entertainment, November 12, 1800.

But this was not for long. In 1807 the ladies had again taken to stays and low necks and the Edenton Gazette was writing in alarm, “Our females are declining and sinking into the regions of death, from an adherence to the curse of fashion. The cob web vesture, lighter than the vapours of summer, the dampened bare arms and neck, are the costume in which our ladies now brave all the variations in our extremely variable climate.”29

29 October 1.

Instead of swathing themselves again in yardage, leaders of fashion shortened the dress almost to ankle length, lowered the neck still further, and reduced the number of petticoats until in 1812 a horror-stricken Pennsylvanian attempted to pass a law requiring the women of his State to wear at least three petticoats. A wag suggested that if the State Legislatures did regulate female dress the women in defiance would soon be dressing “throughout the summer without even a single Petticoat and wearing flesh colored pantaloons” with only a muslin over them.30

30 Star, March 6, 1812.

Those “evil-conceived, torturing machines styled corsets” were destined to go again. By the late summer of 1820 a correspondent of the Western Carolinian was rejoicing that “the young ladies of Salisbury, with the exception of a few old offenders, seem to have cast off such unbecoming appendages as worthless frippery, and content themselves with appearing in a shape nature designed them to appear in—their muscular systems unrestrained,” leaving them “free to move and act with unaffected ease and native gracefulness.”31

31 August 8.

And so the game of keeping up with the fashions continued throughout the period. Dresses were now long and high-necked; now full, short, and low-necked; now straight and slender in front and gathered into a “Grecian bend” in the back; now gored and close fitting about the waist. To the newspapers “it was laughable enough to see ladies obliged to walk as erect as a soldier under arms when padded; and the next time we meet them to view them stooping forward with the load of the rump behind”;32

32 Post-Angel, November 12, 1800.

or it was alarming to see them “go out to dinner parties in February and March, with an inch of sleeve and a half-a-quarter of bodice.”33

33 Carolina Watchman, February 20, 1846.

 The hooped skirts which again came into fashion in the late fifties shared the same fate; but they had at least one defender in Dr. W. C. Lankford of Franklin County, who called off the editorial corps, saying, “There is no article of dress which should receive more patronage from the ladies than the hoop. It has superseded the half-dozen heavy skirts formerly worn. It combines grace, beauty, and elegance, while it gives ease and comfort to the wearer.”34

34 “Report on the Diseases of Franklin County,” North Carolina Medical Journal, III, 49-50.

 But Dr. Lankford joined in the general lament that “the absurd edicts of the mighty Moloch of fashion,” have too overwhelming a sway “upon the female mind and are responsible for her ill-health and weakly constitution.”

The materials used for an evening gown were of silk, velvet, or wool; the silk being taffeta, satin, canton, or a heavy brocade, according to the fashion of the moment; the wool being usually a soft cashmere or a light mixture of silk and wool. After about 1820 when mill-woven cotton goods came into general use, the ordinary clothes even of the gentry were of calico and similar materials. Sheer muslins and dimities were also fashionable for elegant summer wear.

Homespun, both cotton and woolen, which had been used in large quantities in the first half of the century had been relegated by the forties to the poor whites and Negroes. In 1830 the Miner's and Farmer's Journal of Charlotte had written, “When I see a farmer appear in company genteely dressed in homespun, I think of Solomon's description of a good wife,” adding, “if the farmer's family wants new clothes, the industry of his wife supplies them.”35

35 October 11.

By 1860, however, looms and cards had been stored in outhouses and every miss must have her “store boughten” calico. At a meeting called in Asheville “to consult upon the means to live more independently,” N. W. Woodfin contrasted “the manner in which our people dressed twenty-five years ago and now. Then all wore homespun, now those who do so are the exceptions. Twenty years ago there were looms to be found in every farm house—now it is hard to get a good piece of home-made jeans.”36

36 Fayetteville Observer, January 30, 1860.

The dress of the men of the gentry class, although not as elaborate as that of the women, was none the less sensitive to modes of fashion. For some time after the Revolution the style of the well-dressed gentleman had something of the military effect with cocked hat, blue coat, and crimson velvet cape.37

37 Watson, op. cit., p. 284.

A gentleman dressed in fashionable style in 1805 would have on, if he fancied making a display, a London brown coat, high rolling cape, velvet pantaloons of a dark color to harmonize with his coat, a silk swan's-down waistcoat yellow striped, and Suwarrow jackboots. Over his arm he would carry a drab great-coat and in his hands a pair of tan leather gloves.38

38 Raleigh Register, November 18, 1805.

 If he were calling for dinner, a black silk waistcoat would replace the yellow stripes and black velvet slippers the jackboots. His hat was small-brimmed with a high crown.

After the War of 1812 the term dandy became well recognized in North Carolina. The requisites of a dandy in 1820 were considered to be a cue, a cane, a pair of large pantaloons, and “a sufficient store of affectation.” As described by a newspaper correspondent, posing as a German farmer who had encountered a group of men in fashionable dress, a dandy was a creature fit for the mad house. “I saw a whole parcels of a de peoples wid dare cravats tied on likshd de Methodist preachers,” said the old fellow. “Day had on coats not half so long in de back as mine wife Krotata's calico gown is; and dare breeches . . . was pig enough to make mine wife two petticoats and three night caps. Day had vone little yellow stick in dare hands wid a pig puck's horn on de head.”39

39 Star, July 16, 1819.

Still the rage of “the ruffled-shirted gentry” continued. In 1845 a North Carolina planter lamented the worship of dress which was infatuating the State: “All this impropriety grows out of the extravagance in dress & lazyness to work for it, & when people become given up to dress they will sell themselves for it. It is an awful curse.”40

40 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, November 6, 1845.

The average planter, however, dressed in a conservative manner.41

41 See Montgomery, op. cit., pp. 27-28.

 He usually wore a white stock of silk, linen, or more often cotton. His waistcoat for ordinary wear was of drab wool. His suit was also of dark wool, with the coat, which usually had a cut-away effect, of a mildly contrasting material. The trousers were loose and high waisted, and to prevent bagging they had a strap which was worn under the shoe.

The style which the country folk followed in cutting garments tended to remain the same from year to year, but there was by no means an utter disregard of the prevailing fashions. The complaint from local newspaper editors was, in fact, that the farmers aped the styles of their betters too much for their own welfare.42

42 Western Carolinian, September 12, 1820.

A northern visitor to North Carolina in 1833, however, described the rural inhabitants as being shabbily dressed.43

43 Barnard, op. cit., p. 321.

When Braxton Craven started to school at New Garden about 1840 he carried over his shoulder a bag containing a few shirts of homespun and several pairs of knitted socks.44 He had on a

44 Dowd, op. cit., p. 37. See also Nixon, op. cit., p. 22.

broad-brimmed woolen hat, a loose coat and baggy trousers of blue jeans, and a pair of stitched-down shoes, made by sewing the uppers to the soles so that the seams were turned out instead of in. For Sunday he had a pair of welted shoes. Welted shoes, however, were difficult to make and the possessor of such a pair used them carefully. It was customary for even the women to walk bare-footed to social gatherings, carrying their shoes which they put on just before arriving.

 SOCIAL LIFE ON THE FARM

On the farm the housewife performed many of the domestic labors. Social occasions were, accordingly, less formal than upon the large plantations. A dinner or “dance frolick” entailed heavy burdens on the housekeeper whose labors already kept her busy early and late, but she seemed to relish the extra work, and spent long hours at apple jacks, sweet potato pies, and jelly cakes. The prosperous farmer prepared bountifully for his guests. He usually kept open house on Sundays, in anticipation of which his wife began her baking on Friday. In case of an emergency she could always find an abundance of sweet pickled peaches, wild plum jam, and blackberry acid on her cupboard shelves.

Among the poorer classes visitors were likely to be asked to share the regular family meal of hog and hominy served in heavy earthern ware upon a pine table. In 1837 when William H. Wills, a Methodist preacher and merchant of Tarboro, made a trip to the Lower South, he complained that he was served nothing except fried pork, eggs, and coffee from Tarboro to the State line. The second night of his journey he stopped in a pouring rain at a small farm house. “Having alighted, I first saw my horse provided for, and then after a little came on more Meat & Eggs & Coffee! All was very clean however and the coffee much better than what I before had found.—They were poor people but I expect as good as they knew how to be.”45

45 W. H. Wills, “A Southern Sulky Ride in 1837, from North Carolina to Alabama,” Publications of the Southern History Association, VI, 473.

The man who worked his farm, supported his family, obeyed the laws, paid his taxes, and drank his glass of grog in good humor with all the world was a respectable citizen and a leader in the social activities of the neighborhood. His fireside was a favorite gathering place where the men would draw close to the broad hearth, smoke their corncob pipes, spit tobacco juice into the fire, and pass a mug of brandy around.46

46 “Country-Man,” in Raleigh Register, June 10, 1800.

After discussing the common news of the settlement, the weather, and the condition of the crops, they would naturally turn to politics. If a ghost had lately made its appearance in the neighborhood, the conversation would center about witchcraft. The women who sat with their knitting on benches just back of the men would keep steadily at their work and a conversation of their own.

Recreation on the farm often combined work and play. Throughout the ante-bellum period such forms of amusements as corn shucking, wood chopping, house moving, fence building, and cotton picking were popular.47

47 Nixon, op. cit., p. 47.

At the gatherings in which the young people predominated, more courting and frolicking were done than work. The refreshments on such occasions were usually persimmon beer and roasted sweet potatoes. When the hour for serving arrived, the potatoes would be raked out of the fireplace and the ashes dusted off with a turkey wing.

Every prosperous farmer would give an annual corn shucking to which all who lived within a radius of five or six miles were invited. The host would place upon a long table in the yard beef and mutton stews, roasted sweet potatoes, pumpkin pies, and apples. Jugs of whisky and brandy were plentiful and were patronized so frequently that many guests would fall asleep in the shucks. At midnight when the crowd had dispersed, the thoughtful host would drag the drowsy ones into the house and lay them on the floor by the fire.48

48 Dowd, op. cit., pp. 31-32.

Those whom too much whisky made quarrelsome would sometimes come to blows and break up the gathering with a brawl.

In 1849 the men of the Pungo Creek settlement gave one of their neighbors a fence-building spree. Fire had destroyed about a hundred rods of his field fence, and no sooner was it known than a group gathered and went to work to repair the damage. They mauled and carted rails, and put up the fence in an incredibly short time.49

49 North State Whig quoted in Star, May 9, 1849.

Quilting was a long and tedious task if done by one woman; but, when the housewife was assisted by a dozen neighbors, she might complete the quilt in a day. The guests would usually assemble in the morning, bringing their own needles and thimbles. Amid a lively conversation, needles would fly back and forth. Scattered over the surface of the quilt might be seen four or five round tin boxes containing pungent Scotch snuff. Now and then a seamstress would take from her mouth a small black stick from three to four inches in length, and, after dipping it in the snuff box, rub her teeth briskly with it. This process completed, she would resume her work continually moving the brush up and down or from side to side, engaging in conversation all the while. Some dippers, less expert than others, would soon have their snuff, like an overseer's wages, spread “from y-ear to y-ear.”

In 1833 Henry Barnard of Connecticut was surprised to find in North Carolina that “the ladies, aye fine ladies, eat snuff,” and if gentlemen come in “all the apparatus will disappear as if by magic.”50

50 Op. cit., p. 343.

The country women, however, were open in their habit of snuff dipping and were not ashamed when they came to market to walk along the streets with brushes in their mouths. In 1845 a correspondent of the Carolina Watchman thought that the use of snuff was a daily habit among all ranks of female society throughout the length and breadth of the State.51

51 April 5.

 A European gentleman once offered his snuff box to a lady in North Carolina and to his amazement she thrust in a toothbrush. While he was waiting to see how she would poke it up her nose, he was even more amazed to see the brush disappear into the lady's mouth. In 1855 the Carolina Cultivator of Raleigh was still condemning the habit of “snuff rubbing” among the women of the State.52

52 July, p. 165.

 DANCE FROLICS

In some communities “dance frolicks” were held as often as twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday nights. The young men would “gallant the girls” to the frolic, and dancing would last until midnight. The musician would be a local fiddler who would also call out the steps. Amid the sound of merry laughter and the cry of “Salute your partner,” “cut the pigeon wing,” the dance would proceed. Mint-sling, blackberry acid, and cider were served between dances and not infrequently the men also had their whisky and brandy. But as the camp-meeting movement53

53 Infra, Chap. XIII.

grew more popular, dancing came to be frowned upon.54

54 York, op. cit., p. 19.

 The fiddle became an instrument of the devil, and the pious looked upon the mere possession of one as an indication of an irreligious spirit.

In 1821 a dance in Randolph County was turned into a prayer meeting. When the young men began to select their partners for the first dance, one of the most popular girls there refused to join the rest; and when the music started, she dropped to her knees and prayed aloud. The fiddler fled for home and most of the dancers likewise sought protection in escape, believing that the devil was in hot pursuit. The less superstitious who stood their ground were soon won by the praying girl. From that time, prayer meetings took the place of dance frolics in that neighborhood.55

55 Ibid., p. 20.

Singing schools were a popular diversion for the young people toward the close of the ante-bellum period. Groups of boys and girls in their teens thought nothing of walking several miles to participate in such a gathering, and when once a singing school had been started in the neighborhood an epidemic of them seemed to break out. Young Mary Clark of Catawba County wrote in 1858 to her brother in Texas:

Calvin and I have been out on [a] spre. I tell you we had a pretty good one on last Friday night. We went up to a singing at Uncle John Clark's that night. William Witherspoon and his sister came home with us. The next day went to a singing up at Purth. Bill Lemley was teacher. That evening there was a crowd of us came back to Mr. Brown's had a singing there that night. I tell you we had a fine time. Little Cirtis Chaimbers was there you just ought to see him kissing the girls. This neighborhood is coming out a great deal. People are getting to have some spirit in them. I was at a singing down at Mr. Baringers last weak. We had a fine time.56

56 MS in Clark-Johnson Papers.

The farmer was as fond of hunting and fishing as the planter, and spent many a winter day in tramping the woods with his guns and dogs. Janet Schaw, a young Scotch woman who visited North Carolina on the eve of the Revolution, thought that the farmer was more concerned about being a good marksman than about raising a good crop.57

57 Andrews, op. cit., p. 53.

In 1833 a group of landholders of Currituck County petitioned the Legislature for a law to prevent fowling at night in the winter months on the rivers and waters of the county, saying that the birds were becoming wild because of it.58

58 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate December 13, 1833.

 A law had been passed as early as 1784 making it unlawful to hunt on posted grounds, but poaching was a common practice. In 1859 an attempt was made to prevent hunting with guns and dogs on Sunday, but the bill was promptly defeated.59

59 Ibid., in Senate January 6, 1859.

Fishing was considered one of the “natural rights of man.” On the assumption that fish were a bounty of nature, it was argued successfully that they were free to all. Accordingly, any obstruction, such as fallen trees or a mill dam, which prevented the free passage of fish up a stream was unlawful. The Legislature was annually deluged with petitions complaining that a mill dam or a fishery at the mouth of some stream obstructed the run of the fish and so divested the people of their natural rights.60

60 See, for example, the “Petition of Sundry Inhabitants of Surry County” in Senate, December 8, 1830: MS in Legislative Papers.

Shad and herring were especially prized and the diminishing numbers which came in the spring into the sounds and up the rivers were looked upon with anxiety. Every spring one might see innumerable wagons and carts on the public roads making their way to the fisheries from distances of a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles. From as far west as Guilford County they came, exchanging their hard earnings for loads of fish, and returned home to make what profit they could from the sale.61

61 Ibid., in House, December 17, 1850. Report of Select Committee on Fisheries, Sen. Doc. No. 22.

 In 1852 a lay day was imposed upon all fisheries in the State to safeguard the supply of fish.

With some poor whites, fishing, like hunting, was a business as well as a recreation. In 1857, for instance, a petition from Martin County stated “that the free & unobstructed passage of fish, up the Roanoke River, has, in time past, been a great public blessing, to those residing on, near, & for many miles from said river, that a great many persons in indigent circumstances, have annually, made it a business, to resort to said River, & by means of sien or dip nets, to supply their families with fish, and other necessaries of life.”62

62 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate January 9, 1857.

The sport entailed no great amount of outlay and usually resulted in a temporary increase of supplies for the family larder. A corn-husking or quilting party involved an expenditure of provisions which many, even in the yeoman class, could not afford; whereas hunting and fishing carried with them their own justification.

 THE COUNTRY TAVERN

Besides their private social functions, the planter and the farmer alike found recreation at certain public social centers, such as the crossroads tavern, the country store, the “merchant mill,” the church, the schoolhouse, and the lodge. A goodly number of taverns were sprinkled throughout North Carolina, and could be found on public roads at a distance of six or seven miles apart. They were so important as centers in the daily life of the surrounding country that the people computed intermediate distances by them. At the tavern, or ordinary, as it was also called, farmers met to talk politics, play at all fours,63

63 All fours is a card game similar to seven up and muggins. The players build in suits or match exposed cards, the object being to get rid of the cards as quickly as possible.

make bets, and stand treat for mint-sling or brandy. Every ambitious tavern subscribed to at least one State newspaper, which was carefully thumbed by all who knew their letters.

At the opening of the century, most of these country taverns were log huts or rough weather-boarded buildings. The more prosperous ones consisted of several rooms, but most of them had only one large room with no interior division. In one corner was the family bunk, in another a pine chest, and in a third a railing which formed the bar. Upon this a rum keg and a tumbler were arrayed. The rest of the furniture consisted of several split-bottom chairs and a rough pine table. An English traveler in North Carolina who claims to have visited twelve country taverns gives the information that one might always know an ordinary, on emerging from the woods, “by an earthen jug suspended by the handle from a pole; the pipe of the chimney never rising above the roof; or a score of black hogs luxuriating in the sunshine and mud before the door.”64

64 Bernard, op. cit., p. 203. A colonial law of 1776 required that a tavern be indicated by a sign “set up in Public View,” SRNC, XXIII, 728.

Such was the country tavern of 1800.

Quite a different picture has been drawn by Frederick Law Olmsted, a New York journalist, who visited the State in 1856. He spent his first night in North Carolina at a piney-woods stage-house. “It was right cheerful,” he said, “to open the door . . . into a large room, filled with blazing light from a great fire of turpentine pine, by which two stalwart men were reading newspapers, a door opening into a background of supper-table and kitchen, and a nice, stout, kindly-looking, Quaker-like old lady coming forward to welcome me.”65

65 Op. cit., p. 326.

His bedroom was a separate house connected to the main building by a platform. Before a bright blaze in the broad fire-place was a stuffed easy chair. On the hearth was a tub of hot water to bathe his weary feet.

The bar was probably the chief attraction of the tavern, for drinking was common, and here could be obtained liquors which could not be made at home. The sale of West Indian and continental rum, of claret, Madeira, port, and Teneriffe wine, besides the domestic whisky, beer, wines, and cider, formed an important part of tavern business. A tavern keeper had to obtain a license before he was permitted to retail spirituous liquors by a measure less than a quart. As the opposition to the sale of liquors by the small measure increased, the law regulating the issuance of these licenses became more rigid and the tax higher.

By the close of the period a person wishing to retail liquors was required to apply to the county court for a license which could be granted only if seven justices were on the bench and if two witnesses who had known the applicant more than a year swore to his good moral character.66

66 Revised Code, 1855, Chap. LXXIX, sec. 6.

At the first of the century the license tax was only four dollars but by 1860 it had been increased to twenty.67

67 Ibid., Chap. XCIX, sec. 23.

 The tendency to run up large bills for liquor led to a law prohibiting a “keeper of an inn, tavern, or ordinary, or retailer of liquors by the small measure” from selling liquors on credit to a greater amount than ten dollars unless the person so credited should sign a note for the debt.68

68 Ibid., Chap. LXXIX, sec. 4.

Habitual drunkenness was quite generally frowned upon, but no stigma was attached to “restrained drinking.” In fact, a moderate use of liquor was generally considered healthful. This belief was common not only in North Carolina but in the Lower South and in Hispanic-America, in fact, in all climates where bilious fevers were prevalent.69

69 Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan [y Santacilia], A Voyage to South America, I, 38.

Grog was often taken before breakfast to whet the appetite and “to keep the fevers off.” Fretful babies were soothed with a teaspoonful of diluted liquor, reputed to be a certain cure for colic.70

70 York, op. cit., p. 5.

No holiday was thought to have been celebrated properly unless one succeeded in “getting a little corned.”71

71 “A Stranger,” in Western Carolinian, July 25, 1820.

Concerning this custom, Dr. Brickell wrote in 1731: “I have frequently seen them come to the Towns, and there remain Drinking Rum, Punch, and other Liquors for Eight or Ten Days successively, and after they have committed this Excess, will not drink any Spirituous Liquors, 'till such time as they take the next Frolick as they call it, which is generally in two or three months.”72

72 Op. cit., p. 33.

 A century later the Western Carolinian, commenting upon this same custom said, “It is feared that many of our patriotic citizens will OVER CHARGE themselves with strong drink as this is the anniversary of Independence, so as to overturn reason, it being the custom to get devoutly drunk on such occasions.”73

73 July 4, 1820.

It is not strange that drinking should have been common since distilling was an important industry in the State. In 1840 North Carolina produced more than a million gallons of distilled and fermented liquors.74

74 U. S. Census Office, Compendium of the Sixth Census, 1840, lists North Carolina as producing 1,069,410 gallons of distilled and fermented liquors, while South Carolina produced only 102,288 gallons and eastern Virginia, 169,732 gallons.

In the western counties, especially, it was more profitable to market grain and fruits as “corn” and “apple jack” than in the more bulky form. In the East, too, such planters as Stephen A. Norfleet of Bertie profitably turned their large peach crops into brandy.75

75 See MS, Stephen A. Norfleet Farm Record.

 THE CROSSROADS STORE AND MERCHANT MILL

The country store was another important public social center for the rural population of the State, and even today it has lost little of its former popularity. Here the country folk for miles around met about the roaring fire, exchanged jokes, and learned the news of the neighborhood. These stores, often owned by planters, were located at the crossroads, at junctions of two creeks, or near some important bridge. Such a store was owned by E. D. McNair of Edgecombe County, ten miles above Tarboro, at his country seat, Strabane, contiguous to Sessum's bridge across Deep Creek. McNair annually collected a considerable quantity of various kinds of country produce which he sent in flat-bottomed boats down the creek and river to Tarboro and Washington.76

76 MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book, “Edgecombe County.”

The country store often bore the name either of the planter or of his country seat. In 1811 there were seven such country stores in Edgecombe County.

As the century progressed toward 1860, these stores came more and more into the hands of men who made storekeeping their chief business. Village storekeepers would sometimes enlarge their enterprise by opening stores in the country or a northerner might come into the State and, by associating himself with a native, set up a thriving country store. It would be the polling place for elections. Here militia musters would be held and important holidays celebrated by those who could not take a trip to town.

“It is very well known,” wrote “Y. Y.” in the Weekly Post in 1852, “that in every neighborhood through the country, there is a store, and a blacksmith shop; and often a merchant-mill or factory. It very often happens that country merchants keep spirits for sale. And not a few among them think themselves obliged by policy, or the laws of hospitality to ask a customer who comes in to take a drink of grog. This pernicious practice as surely draws together neighborhood loungers, as honey gathers flies. A man in the neighborhood has an axe to be jumped, or a coulter to be pointed. He very prudently determines not to stop one of his hands from work.” Giving his orders for the day, he goes to the shop himself and, while waiting for the work to be done, saunters over to the store. “And there he sits, whittling a switch with his pen-knife, talking about hard times and heavy taxes . . . and drinking grog . . . and thus the whole day is wasted. The negroes at home know their master's habits well enough to be assured that he will not come upon them,” and of course they do only a half day's work, and that badly.77

77 An article entitled “On the Manner in Which Some People Spend Time,” in the issue of March 27.

On Saturday, too, the country store was a favorite resort for drinking, lounging, and horse racing. For instance, in May, 1825, “there was a considerable gathering of people” at Mocksville, near Salisbury; and, “as is too frequent the case at similar Saturday meetings at country stores, too much whiskey had been drank.” Some one proposed a race. One of the horses, becoming unruly, left the track and threw his rider against a tree with such violence that the man died instantly.78

78 Hillsborough Recorder, June 8, 1825.

Those who had “more spirit than to sit all day on the counter of a country store to get a drink of grog,” gathered at the “merchant-mill” of the neighborhood. The mill might be one which ground corn into meal or grits, or wheat into flour; it might be one which converted rags into wrapping paper or newsprint or which spun cotton into coarse thread. Those who congregated about the “merchant-mills” were usually “gentlemen farmers, who rise at eight, and breakfast at nine o'clock; ride out into the fields and ask a few questions of the overseer, and then repair to some place of customary resort, whether a tavern, or a store at some cross-roads, or to a merchant-mill.” There, with gentlemen farmers like themselves, they would “spend the day in playing marbles or pitching quoits, and drinking toddy; and perhaps, at intervals, sneering at the efforts for agricultural and other improvements.” This habit, declared “Y. Y.” in the Weekly Post in 1852, had brought “many families from opulence to poverty” and “turned many tracts of fertile lands into barrenness” and was “fast depopulating some of the best parts of the State.”79

79 March 27.

 THE CHURCH, THE SCHOOL, AND THE LODGE

As the camp meeting, which came to be sponsored by the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian denominations, won converts, “meeting houses” began to dot the rural districts thickly and to furnish gathering places for the inhabitants. The first churches of these denominations were, in fact, erected in the rural districts rather than in the villages of the State.80

80 Foote, op. cit., Chaps. IV, XIII, XXVIII.

The exciting methods of the camp meeting appealed to the country folk and furnished an outlet for pent-up emotions. They flocked in great throngs to the camp grounds and, while listening to the impassioned words of the preacher, took a holiday from work.

Preaching, which was held once or twice a month at the meeting house, was usually an all-day affair. Those who did not have conveyances would walk as far as seven or eight miles to attend, bringing in their pockets a few biscuits to munch. More affluent worshipers would bring great baskets of food which they would spread on the ground for a magnificent picnic. When preaching was not being held, the church house might also be used for a Fourth-of-July celebration, a political meeting, a singing school, or a box supper.

The church house was also frequently the schoolhouse. When the Reverend Brantley York went about the State teaching short-term schools, he usually met his classes in the neighborhood church. After the establishment of the public school system in 1840, the number of schoolhouses greatly increased and they came, in some measure, to take the place of the church as a public gathering place. The school came to be looked upon as public property, and church members to protest against defiling the House of God. “There exists amongst us a custom against which it becomes us, as Christians, to protest,” wrote a correspondent of the Carolina Watchman in 1851. “I allude to the prevailing practice of allowing every petty politician and undignified temperance lecturer to enter our churches, and there, not infrequently, employ language altogether at variance with the sacredness of the place. . . . The Church of God, is neither a Court House nor a Town Hall, and many things that might be innocently indulged in the latter, would be exceedingly unbecoming and sinful in the former.”81

81 December 13.

The fraternal orders drew large numbers from the rural population. Usually the members were of the upper classes, for the amount of the initiation fee excluded many who otherwise would have flocked to the lodges. The Grand Lodge of the Order of Free Masons, which had been extinct since 1776, was revived in 1787, and subordinate lodges began quickly to make their appearance. It is a significant fact that many of these local units were situated in rural communities. In 1815 Davie Lodge at Sandy Run Crossroads in Bertie County was prosperous enough to erect a two-story brick building for its use. The first floor contained one large room while the second floor was divided into three. The walls were “wainscoated chair board high” and the rest plastered and white washed.82

82 Raleigh Register, August 4, 1815.

By 1823 there were thirty-nine Masonic lodges in the State.83

83 McIver, op. cit., pp. 104-5.

The Masonic order was the most popular of the secret lodges throughout the ante-bellum period. Although the Free Masons were the most numerous, the Royal Arch Masons, Ancient York Masons, and Knights Templar also had lodges in the State at various times during the period. The first of the Royal Arch chapters was located at Wilmington and incorporated in 1804. The Grand Royal Arch Chapter of North Carolina was incorporated in 1828 and again in 1854, but only a few local chapters were incorporated during the ante-bellum period. The Knights Templar Grand Lodge of North Carolina and Tennessee had several subordinate chapters in the rural communities. In 1813 the regular meeting place of Freeland Lodge No. 33 was Mock's Old Field in Rowan County and the meetings were held on Christmas, Good Friday, and Ascension Day.84

84 Raleigh Register, January 14, 1814.

The first Yorkish Right lodges were incorporated in 1848, Phalanx Lodge, No. 31, in Charlotte, and Germanton Lodge, No. 116, in Stokes County.

The first lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows was organized in 1841 in Weldon, and the following year the Grand Lodge of North Carolina was incorporated. In 1856, the Grand Lodge had 1,530 contributing members.85

85 Fayetteville Observer, December 1, 1856.

Prior to 1860 the largest number of subordinate Odd Fellow lodges was forty-eight, but most of these were in the towns of the State, for the Odd Fellows at this time did not make a wide appeal to the rural population. These lodges, whether or not they had their own buildings, afforded a means of recreation to the rural population and as such were important socializing agents.

 MILITIA MUSTERS AND ELECTION DAYS

Although militia duty was irksome to some,86

86 A petition from Rutherford County in the House of Commons November 26, 1825 (MS in Legislative Papers), states: “This system of reviews is very oppressive on a number of our fellow citizens who are in moderate circumstances and barely able by their honest industry to support themselves and numerous families—Many of them scarce a horse to ride and often not fifty cents in their purse yet notwithstanding all these inconveniences they are draged of[f] a distance of from 15 to 30 miles to the Court house which to do themselves and their horses (if they have a horse) any kind of justice will take nearly or quite three days.”

it was ordinarily looked upon as a holiday and celebrated as such by heavy drinking, betting, fighting, and sports. All free white men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were enrolled in the militia and required to report for a company muster at least twice a year. Regimental or battalion musters were held only once a year. Some counties had only one regiment of militia while a few of the large western counties had as many as four.87

87 Revised Code, 1855, Chap. LXX, sec. 8.

 The privates usually selected the place for holding the company musters but the officers chose the meeting place for the battalion musters.

These companies developed a certain amount of political and social consciousness. The early advocates of elective officeholding usually wanted to vest the franchise in the captains' companies. These companies were often the first to petition the Legislature on important local and state questions. Muster day brought men together who otherwise would seldom have met; and, while the occasion helped to form a local spirit of coöperation, it also kindled neighborhood jealousies.

In 1787 William Attmore, a Pennsylvania merchant, was in Washington on muster day. “A large number of people from the Country are here,” he wrote. “Many disorders in town, the Militia some of them fighting. This is the practice every Muster-day.”88

88 Op. cit., p. 13; see also C. D. Smith, A Brief History of Macon County, North Carolina, p. 13.

It was long a custom for the champion of one neighborhood to fight the champion of another on muster day. Candidates for election often provided liquor for the day and thus augmented the general propensity for fighting. Leading citizens deplored the custom of “treating” at musters, but it was so much approved by the militia that the practice was quite generally followed.

Weeks before a certain muster day in Surry County, it was rumored, according to Skitt of Fisher's River Scenes, that Hamp Hudson, the only man in the county who kept a “still-house” running the year round, was “gwine to carry” to the May muster for sale liquor that had been distilled from a mash-tub in which his dog Famus had been drowned. All believed the story, and there was a general determination “not to drink one drap uv Hamp's nasty old Famus licker.”

Muster day arrives. The sergeant calls for the company to “fall in”:

“O-yis! o-yis! The hour of muster have arrove! O-yis! All uv ye what b'longs to Cap'en Moore's company, parade here! Fall inter ranks right smart, and straight as a gun bar'l, and dress to the right and left, accordin' to the militeer tack-tucks laid down by Duane in his cilebrated work on that fust of all subjecks. . . .”

Cap'en Moore now appears in his old-fashioned uniform, worn probably by some “'Lutionary cap'en” in many a bloody fight. 'Tis an odd-looking affair; the collar of it repulses his “ossifer hat” from the top of his “hade”; the tail, long and forked, striking his hams at every step, and two great rusty epaulets on his shoulders—enough to weigh down a man of less patriotic spirit, and on a less patriotic occasion.

Thus equipped, “as the law directs,” he commences the “drill accordin' to Duane.”

It is now one o'clock. Hamp is sitting under the shade of an apple tree astride his whisky-barrel. “Nigger Josh Easly” is doing a thriving business with his “gingy cakes.” By two o'clock the men are noticeably depressed; parched tongues vainly moisten parched lips. Uncle Jimmy Smith is the first to give in. “Famus or no Famus,” he declares, “I must take a little.” Soon the condemned barrel is dry. “Cap'en,” “leftenant,” and “sargint” alike forget the hard day's work. The 'litia begin their usual sports and the whole affair ends in “skinned noses, gouged eyes, and bruised heads.”89

89 Taliaferro, op. cit., pp. 20-27.

From colonial days, an election was the occasion for general merry-making despite the fact that some were debarred from the polls by the qualifications placed on the franchise. With the practice of electioneering which began to take shape in the “Republican Revolution of 1800,” election day became even more of an occasion. In 1811 Dr. Jeremiah Battle of Edgecombe County described electioneering as a certain suavity of manners employed by candidates for popular favor. “It consists,” said he, “in a certain peculiar shake of the hand, called by our farmers the electioneering shake—in purchasing brandy and drinking with the people—persuading them to get drunk, whereby they may lose sight of the objects of an election—flattering & gulling the people, with empty professions of extraordinary devotion to their interests.”90

90 Newsome, op. cit., p. 88.

In crowds the people came, some walking, others riding, bringing the entire family to enjoy the sports of the day. A fiddler would appear, a circle be formed, and the dancing would begin. In another circle would be a fist-and-skull fight for a quart of brandy, while another group would be eagerly following the harangue of a political orator. As political competition increased and electioneering became more widespread, the scenes on election day tended to become more intense. An election day in 1850, as described by the Raleigh Register, is typical of such a day all over the State, the details varying with the relative strength of the two political parties in the given district: “At the polls, there was a slight lack of that calm Roman dignity ascribed to us by our Fourth-of-July orators—inasmuch as the voters skipped about with the vivacity of Frenchmen, and exercised their tongues with the unanimity of old women. If some staid sober citizen was observed making his way to any spot where votes were to be taken and brandy given, he was immediately surrounded” by electioneers, “employing their talents, energies, and lungs, in the wake of conversion.” They “mobbed, and twisted, and turned” the voter “in a very hackney-coachman like style, in order to gain his attention to their various claims, until the four points of the compass became . . . a matter of doubt and uncertainty.”91

91 August 3.

In 1789 the Legislature established a uniform election day for the State, but so numerous were the petitions for exception from this law and so many were the private laws passed in response to these petitions that a single county might have three or four different elections days.92

92 Revised Statutes, 1837, Vol. I, Chap. LII, sec. 1.

Some of the country folk made a practice of attending each election to share in the brandy provided for the occasion.

Election days were sometimes arranged so that a candidate for Congress might be present at most of the important polling places in his district. Lemuel Sawyer, candidate for Congress in the northeastern district in 1825, admits that he won the race by treating. The election took place in Currituck the last week in July, about two weeks before the general election. Sawyer visited the county about a week before election but was seized with bilious remittant fever which confined him until election day. “I resolutely kept on my feet, though quite feeble, until the polls were closed” and carried the principal election grounds by forty votes. “Though I learned the next day, my adversary, by means of treating and other electioneering tricks, succeeded in the county at large” by about three hundred votes.

Sawyer then determined to use the same methods. Two days before the election in the district at large, he went to Perquimans, the most doubtful of the counties.

There was a separate election the Thursday or day before the principal one, in the upper part of the county, which I attended. I . . . treated pretty largely to such entertainment as the place afforded, in the shape of melons and the distilled juice of the apple, which I repeat, is the most palatable in our opinion, of all the products of the still. I obtained a majority there of four-fifths with the news of which I returned to Hertford, as a favorable prelude to the battle of the next day. Before the polls were opened on the morning of Friday, I distributed my file leaders at their posts, well supplied with proper ammunition and went up and down the ranks to encourage my partisans. We gained the day by an overwhelming majority.

Knowing the anxiety of his friends at Elizabeth City to hear the result of the election, Sawyer wrote them a letter that he had won with the aid of “white ruin, melons, and gingerbread,” and “what was droll, sent it by a parson who was passing at the time.”93

93 Auto-Biography, pp. 27, 28.

 COUNTRY FAIRS

Country fairs always drew large crowds. They were established first to provide a market for produce and later, under the auspices of local agricultural societies, to encourage scientific farming. Country fairs were popular in the last decade of the eighteenth century. In the space of two years, from 1792 to 1794, the Legislature had authorized the establishment of fairs at South Washington in New Hanover County, at the plantation of James Campbell in Cumberland, at Brown-Marsh in Bladen, at Laurel Hill in Richmond, at Monroe's and the Grove in Moore County, at the courthouses of Mecklenburg and Lincoln counties, and at Rockford, Huntsville, and Shallowford in Surry County.

In 1794 the power of establishing fairs was transferred to the county courts. They were authorized to appoint places for holding fairs in their respective counties “for the convenience of the inhabitants, so as to afford an opportunity and give encouragement to industry, by collecting the inhabitants for the purpose of exchanging, bartering and selling all such articles as they may wish or be necessitated to dispose of.”94

94 Revised Statutes, 1837, Vol. I, Chap. XLVII, sec. 1.

Commissioners, appointed by the county court, regulated and conducted the fair. A fair was usually held three days and such articles as, “horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, pork and all kinds of provisions, country produce, goods, wares & merchandize, foreign and domestic,”95

95 MS in Legislative Papers, 1802: bill to establish fairs in the town of Halifax.

 were offered for sale. The importance of these fairs as markets at the opening of the century is indicated by the numerous attempts made to regulate their procedure by legislative act. In 1802 an effort was made to exempt from executions all the produce for sale three days before and three days after a fair.96

96 Ibid.

These county fairs came to attrack strolling players, wire walkers, and jugglers. Drunkenness on the fair grounds was usually considerable. In time, the general disorderliness led some counties to discontinue fairs. They were labeled “sinks of iniquity” and were said to attract all the undesirable persons of the surrounding country.97

97 Ibid., 1840.

It is difficult to determine when the first agricultural fair was held in the State. There was an agricultural society in Edgecombe County as early as 1810,98

98 Newsome, op. cit., p. 91.

but there is no record of its having conducted a fair. The first incorporated agricultural society in the State was the Cape-Fear Agricultural Society of New Hanover County which obtained its charter in 1813.

A State agricultural society was organized in 1818 with John branches, and in 1822 obtained the passage of a bill for State aid so offered in 1819 for the best crops of hay, corn, wheat, and cotton; for the first discovery of plaster of Paris in North Carolina, for the best barn, and for an effectual cure for common distemper among cattle.99

99 Raleigh Register, January 1, January 15, 1819.

The society encouraged the organization of local branches, and in 1822 obtained the passage of a bill for state aid so that county agricultural societies might give premiums.

The act of 1822 created an Agricultural Fund derived from the sale of vacant land and unclaimed sums in the hands of the clerks of the county courts. From this fund an amount not exceeding $5,000 a year for two years was to be distributed among the county agricultural societies in proportion to the federal population of the county. Whenever a county agricultural society was formed it was permitted to draw from the public treasury a sum equal to what the society had voluntarily raised. A Board of Agriculture was established with a membership composed of the presidents or delegates from the local societies. The Board was authorized to purchase and distribute seeds and to publish the reports of county societies.

Only a few county societies were organized despite this encouragement, but in 1824 the plan of State aid was continued for two more years in order to give counties which had not yet established societies time to obtain their proportion of the fund. In 1825 the following agricultural societies had claimed State aid to the amount of $812: Beaufort, Chatham, Duplin, Edgecombe, Guilford, Iredell, Lincoln, Mecklenburg, Orange, Rowan, and Robeson, and $200 had been used for the publication of Professor Denison Olmsted's geological survey of the State.100

100 MS in Legislative Papers, 1825.

The remainder of the Agricultural Fund, $6,334, was transferred to the Literary Fund.

In December, 1824, the Beaufort County Agricultural Society had its first fair, a cattle show, which it proposed to make an annual occasion. Premiums ranging from two to ten dollars were offered for the best exhibits of cattle, hogs, sheep, and household manufactures. “We were much gratified at the interest evinced on the occasion,” wrote an officer of the Society, “and have no doubt that the next, which will take place the ensuing Fall, will be very generally attended, and from the zeal displayed by some of the members, that in a few years our Cattle, Hogs, &c., will equal those we are so often reminded of by our brother Editors in the Northern States.”101

101 Raleigh Register, March 2, 1825.

The Greensborough Patriot thought that the cattle show which the Guilford Agricultural Society held in Greensboro in 1827 showed the general lack of interest which farmers had in agricultural improvements. “The exhibition of Domestic Manufactures was of an excellent quality, for which the Ladies deserve much credit,” said the Patriot, “we are sorry that as much cannot be said for the Farmers.”102

102 Quoted in Raleigh Register, December 14, 1827.

Between 1813 and 1860 agricultural societies were incorporated in New Hanover, Rowan, Burke, Rutherford, Mecklenburg, Robeson, Lincoln, Beaufort, Richmond, Stokes, Macon, Buncombe, and Craven counties, and many other counties had societies which did not seek incorporation. Most of the incorporated societies conducted fairs, but until the organization of the State Agricultural Society in 1852 it was not often that one society endured long enough to have more than four or five exhibits. The State Agricultural Society was organized under the leadership of such men as Thomas Ruffin, Robert A. Hamilton, Frederick Hill, and J. W. Norwood. The Society established the custom of having an annual fair in Raleigh and encouraged the formation of county societies and fairs.

A county fair in the fifties was usually held at the courthouse. Premiums were offered for the best displays of farm products, household manufactures, and livestock. The courtroom was usually reserved for the display of “household industries.” Here were arranged such articles as vases made of perforated cardboard adorned with painted rice, worsted footstools, bonnets made from long-leaf pine, knitted hats, quilts with crimson borders, hand woven coverlets, and crocheted counterpanes. Here would also be the display of vegetables and fruits. The stock exhibit, which usually made “a tolerably fair show,” was held in the courthouse yard or at a local livery stable.103

103 Fayetteville Observer, November 1, 1855.

In the afternoon an address would be delivered at one of the village churches, after which the crowd would reassemble at the courthouse where the premiums would be announced. From the judges' bench the president of the society would deliver a lengthy speech prior to the announcement of the winners, sometimes interrupted by an uproar on the outside from a street fight or the ridiculous performance of a passing company of “Don Quixote Invincibles.”

 RURAL SPORTS

At public gatherings the rural population usually joined enthusiastically in certain favorite games. Members of the upper classes seldom took part in these sports but were often present to swell the crowd of spectators. To a newspaper correspondent of 1810 these games showed “truly primitive ingenuity and freedom worthy to characterise and distinguish the independence of our country.”104

104 MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book.

The favorite sports were throwing the sledge, wrestling, jumping over ditches or hedges, fives, long bullets, bandy and probably football, gander pulling, slow racing, shooting, and horse racing. These games were designed to test the prowess or horsemanship of the players and always required considerable physical exertion. In 1810, for instance, a young man dropped dead while playing a game of fives at a muster near Warrenton.105

105 Raleigh Register, August 9, 1810.

 He had previously fainted twice and his friends had urged him to stop playing; but, fearing the taunts to which such an indication of physical weakness would subject him, he remained in the field, declaring that he would finish that game if he never played another.

Fives106

106 Joseph Strutt, Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, p. 163; Edmund Routledge, Every Boy's Book: A Complete Encyclopedia of Sports and Amusements, pp. 223-24.

was a variety of hand tennis played either in open court or against a high wall. It might be played with a small tightly-sewn leather ball and a fives bat, an instrument with a long handle and an oval bowl of wood, or with a larger ball which was hit entirely by hand. From two to ten persons might play the game. When it was played against a wall, a line was drawn on the wall about thirty-eight inches above the ground, another line on the ground about ten feet from the wall, and two other lines on each side to mark out the boundary of the court. Partners were chosen; sides were drawn; and the players tossed up for innings. The first player took the ball, struck it against the wall with his bat above the line on the wall so that it might fall without the line on the ground. His opponent then struck it and the players continued until one of them lost.

Bandy, called also cambuc and more often goff, was the sport from which golf was developed. Joseph Strutt, writing of the pastimes of the English people at the opening of the nineteenth century, said, “It requires much room to perform this game with propriety, and therefore I presume it is rarely seen at present in the vicinity of the metropolis.”107

107 Strutt, op. cit., p. 170. Field hockey resembles the ante-bellum bandy.

But the American players took their sport where they chose and were as often found swinging the bandy on the public square as in an old field near the crossroads store. Throughout the ante-bellum period, the young boys who insisted upon playing bandy in the streets and on the vacant lots in town were a constant source of irritation to law-abiding citizens. The bandy, or bat, had a straight handle made of wood about four and a half feet long with a curvature affixed to the bottom, usually faced with horn and backed with lead. The ball was “a little one,” exceedingly hard, made with leather and stuffed with feathers. The game consisted in driving the ball into holes made into the ground and the player who finished the last hole first or in the fewest number of strokes was the winner.108

108 Ibid., pp. 170-71; Routledge, op. cit., pp. 226-27.

 When more than two persons played, each player had his bandy but only two balls were used, one belonging to each party, each player taking his turn at striking the ball. The grounds used for the sport varied in different localities. In Scotland a quarter of a mile was usually allowed between each hole, but in the villages and on the plantations of North Carolina the distances were varied to suit the space available to the players.

Not all the ball games objected to by “Lovers of Peace,” writing to the village papers of ante-bellum North Carolina, were bandy ball. Some of them undoubtedly were football, for this sport was popular in England before the reign of Edward III. The ball used was sometimes a blown bladder encased in leather but more often merely a blown bladder weighted with peas or shot so that the ball rattled when kicked about. When a match at football was agreed upon, two parties chose sides and took the field, standing between two goals placed at from eighty to one hundred yards apart. The number of the players was of no importance, and might even be as great as fifty, so long as there was an equal number of competitors. The teams tossed for choice of goals and the team which lost had the privilege of the kick-off. The object of each team was to drive the ball about with the feet until it was sent through the goal of the contending side. This accomplished, the game was won. The players developed many devices at attacking and defending the goals so that before a game was over there was likely to be much “hacking” and “shinning,” much sprawling upon the ground, and tumultuous shouting.

Long bullets109

109 MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book. The game was also called long ball.

was a variant of football. It was played with a large iron ball instead of with a bladder. As in football, the players were divided into two rival groups with each defending a goal. The object was to prevent the ball, which was rolled with great force, from crossing the goal line. Unlike football, it was played with the hands as well as with the feet, and there was much tugging at the ball and upsetting rival players.

Gander pulling was a game usually dedicated to the celebration of Easter Monday. A tough old gander with neck well oiled with grease and soft soap was hung by the heels to a convenient branch of a tree. The object of the contest was for the mounted players to wrench off the fowl's neck while riding past at full speed. The amusement for the spectators consisted in the oft-repeated failure of the riders to grasp the long-necked fowl. There was also involved the danger of contestants being pulled from their horses.

The announcement of a gander pulling was usually made several weeks in advance, and was “anticipated with rapture by all bruisers either at fist or grog, all heavy bottomed, well balanced riders, all women who wanted a holiday, and who had a curiosity to see the weight and prowess of their sweethearts tried in open field.”110

110 Ibid.; see also A. R. Craig, “Old Wentworth Sketches,” NCHR, XI, 199; C. G. Parsons, Inside View of Slavery or a Tour among the Planters, Chap. XIII.

The country folk hoarded pennies so that on the day of the contest they might buy whisky, treat companions, and stake bets on their favorite contestant.

On the appointed day, the spectators would begin to arrive early. The whisky bottle would be circulated among friends and plenty of “the ardent” bought from a vender who served his liquors in broken tumblers, gourds, and heavy mugs. While the crowd waited for the event of the day, a shooting match might be arranged, the target fixed, and the contestants sight their guns. If the skill of a marksman sent the bullet straight to its aim, his reward was a hearty shout which sent his name to the skies. Another group might be absorbed in a wrestling match. Now one and now the other was on top. With muscles bulging and faces distorted, the contestants struggled, forgetting the rules of the sport long enough to draw a little blood. Suddenly one of the wrestlers would be lifted and tossed to the earth with a heavy thud, and the victor would soon be strutting proudly about receiving the hearty slaps of his friends.

Finally it would be rumored that “the dodging, gabbling, and pulling of the great gander of the day” was about to begin. Swinging from the flexible bough of some near-by tree or from some elastic pole was the venerable fowl; opposite on the other side of the field, the glittering hat which was to be the winner's reward. The candidates appeared on their horses ready for the signal. As the gun was fired, the first in the list sped away amid loud cheering. A sentinel who had been stationed near the gander to urge the horses to greater effort would strike the animal a sharp blow as it passed. The rider would lean forward to grasp the squalling prize, only to make a wild thrust in the air, while the gander continued to sway his neck easily back and forth. Another would follow with the same success, but his place would be taken by one of more determined spirit who with firm grasp would lay hold the gander's head only to find himself unhorsed and dangling for a moment in the air. The next, who already pictured himself wearing the victor's hat, would snatch violently at the oily neck and then lie sprawling on the ground. Shouts of laughter would pierce the air, but the fallen rider would mount again ready for a better fate. I was left for one of more dextrous muscles to seize the neck and with a quick wrench carry off the gory head.111

111 MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book.

Amateur horse racing or horse running, as this particular sport was called, was another favorite and dangerous contest. An ordinary road was sufficient to serve as a race track. In case a horse left his side of the road the rider automatically lost the race, and this danger was always present, for the horses had seldom been trained. Not infrequently the horse ran into a tree, giving the rider such a blow as sometimes to cause his death. But contestants for a race could be found at any time for a quart of whisky. Slow racing was a more popular sport at a general gathering than quick running, for it was a never failing source of merriment. As described by a writer in 1810 slow running united the strange excellence of trying whose horse shall be slowest while the rider is fastest:

It is usual to say that the foremost beats, but the chief merit here consists in that rigidity of sinews which shall overcome every effort of velocity and which shall exhibit the invincible patience of the animal by the deliberation with which he advances under the most urgent laceration of spur and whip. In one of these exhibitions of the powers of tardiness, I was fully of opinion that a nag had outstripped all his antagonists by standing stock still under the most outrageous blows of his rider. . . . But as fortune would have it, the other horse took it into his head that the speed with which he advanced was too meritorious to be awarded with the blows with which his sides were belabored, so that he all at once began to run backwards, and in the issue gained a complete victory for his master.112

112 Ibid.

The social life of the rural population gave the characteristic tone to the whole society, for North Carolina was largely a rural state. Two distinct types of social conditions might be found among the inhabitants of the country with each shading off into numerous intermediate conditions. The one was characterized by the formality and refinement of the planter family which had back of it several generations of good breeding; the other by the rude simplicity of the small farmer. The planter and the farmer shared in common, however, certain public social centers, such as the tavern, the country store, the church, the schoolhouse, and the lodge. They were often to be found rubbing elbows at public gatherings, but on such occasions the small farmers greatly outnumbered the planters just as the proportion of small farmers far outnumbered the proportion of planters in the total population of the State. The ambition of all those who lived in the country was to take a trip to town as often as possible. The planter with his fine horses and carriages might frequently visit the near-by village or he might even maintain a home there. The farmer, on the other hand, was able to make the trip only when he had produce to sell or when a public holiday gave him an excuse to leave his work. The social life of the village had many rural aspects which were accentuated by this close association between country and town.

 CHAPTER V THE TOWN

A TRAVELER in North Carolina in the ante-bellum period was likely to notice no great difference in the manner in which the country folk and the townspeople spent their leisure. “The generality of the towns are so inconsiderable that in England they would scarcely acquire the appellation of villages,” wrote a Briton after a tour of North Carolina shortly before the American Revolution.1

1 J. F. D. Smyth, Tour in the United States of America, I, 61.

Ante-bellum North Carolina was a civitas sine urbibus. It had no business centers which could compare with Petersburg, Richmond, Norfolk, or Charleston. Only two towns in the State had a population of more than five thousand at the close of the period; and, of the twenty-five towns listed in the Census of 1860, thirteen had a population of less than a thousand.

The following table shows the size of the towns in the State as given by the census reports of 1850 and 1860:

SIZE OF THE NORTH CAROLINA TOWNS2   Population Number of towns 1850 Number of towns 1860 Less than 500 5 4 500 1,000 11 9 1,000 2,000 4 6 2,000 3,000 2 2 3,000 4,000     4,000 5,000 3 2 5,000 10,000 1 2 Total   26 25

2 U. S. Census Office, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850, p. 308; The Eighth Census of the United States: 1860: Population, p. 359.

In 1860 Wilmington and New Bern had populations of more than five thousand; Raleigh and Fayetteville, of more than four thousand; Charlotte, Beaufort, Edenton, Elizabeth City, Henderson, Hendersonville, Kinston, Salisbury, Tarboro, Warrenton, and Washington of more than a thousand. All the rest had less than a thousand, scarcely deserving “the appellation of villages.”

Ambitious North Carolinians bitterly pointed out that the State was merely a crossroads between Virginia and South Carolina. North Carolina, mourned a Legislative committee reporting on a bill to incorporate the Mecklenburg Gold Mining Company in 1830, was “A State without foreign commerce, for want of seaports, or a staple; without internal communications by rivers, roads, or canals; without a cash home market for any article of agricultural product; without manufactures; in short, without any object to which native industry and active enterprise could be directed, or which could offer a stimulus to exertion.”3

3 House Journal, December 17, 1830.

In the antebellum period North Carolina did not possess the economic factors which tend to build large towns; nevertheless, there was a slow process toward urbanization underway. It is noticeable first in the period between 1815 and 1825 during the fervor for canal and road building which Archibald D. Murphey ushered in. The number of hamlets and crossroads communities in the State receiving postal service had risen from 82 at the opening of the century to 301 in 1823.4

4 McIver, op. cit., pp. 65-73.

 The next movement toward urbanization began about 1835 when the State first launched its program of railroad building, and another movement began about 1845 when the State experienced a period of industrialization.5

5 Boyd, History of North Carolina, Chap. XVII.

LOCATIONS

The first towns in North Carolina were erected at points convenient to navigation; then, as the frontiersman pushed westward, at the juncture of trails leading west, north, and south. Thus Warrenton, Hillsboro, Salisbury, Charlotte, Statesville, Morganton, and Asheville all came into existence. Wilmington derived its importance from its location near the mouth of the Cape Fear, but the sand-choked inlet prevented its being an excellent natural harbor. Added to this was the fact that the port was denied an extensive back country to feed its commerce. New Bern was located near the mouth of the Neuse River and thus was the market town for the region watered by the river and its tributaries. Fayetteville, the third largest town in the State in 1860, was located at the fall line of the Cape Fear and derived its importance from the fact that it was the only convenient market in the State for the produce of the back country. Raleigh, legislated into existence in 1792, had become the fourth largest town in the State by 1860, not from its advantageous situation, but from the fact that it was the State capital.

Most of the towns in the State were significant only as being the seats of justice of their respective counties. It was convenient for a man to buy and sell at the place where he also attended to his public business. In 1852 a petition to the Legislature from Statesville declared that “the Court House and the necessary offices form the nucleus around which every inland town of our state is built. Around this nucleus, arise Hotels, Retail Stores, Mechanic's Shops of various kinds, Physician's and Lawyer's Offices, and Mansion Houses and Churches.”6

6 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate November 12, 1852.

The location of the county seat became, therefore, a matter of rivalry with the result that the courthouse was sometimes located at a sterile and unfrequented spot.

In 1821, for instance, the seat of Surry County was Rockford. The town was located on a hill, the level surface of which was perhaps not more than an acre. It was surrounded on the north, east, and west by still higher and more rugged hills, while on the south it was bounded by a narrow strip of low ground which separated the town from the Yadkin River by some two hundred yards. A few persons had bought up all the town lots, but this was of small consequence, for there was no encouragement to settle on such a forbidding site. Only three families made their homes there.7

7 Ibid., in Senate, December 18, 1821.

The Yadkin River divided the county into a northern and southern section, the southern portion being the more populous and enterprising. Yet Rockford was situated in the northern section, because the hill on which the courthouse was located marked the center of the county.

In 1822 Davidson County was so determined to have its courthouse located in the exact center of the county that the Legislature commissioned President Joseph Caldwell and Professor Elisha Mitchell of the University of North Carolina to determine that point with mathematical nicety. “The center of the County it seems,” said President Caldwell in making his report, “must first be precisely ascertained, and upon that spot precisely the Courthouse must be built; as though one or two or even five miles were really of so much consequence as necessarily to decide a question of this kind, against all other advantages and considerations.” He would urge that a county seat be located upon “a spot recommended at once by the quality of the soil, the pleasantness of the site, the prospect of health, and the opportunities of business” so that the country folk on visiting the town might return home “with improved feelings, minds enlarged, information increased, their various business in courts and stores finished to their minds, and their publick spirit gratified and excited by the scene of general activity and prosperity.” Instead, the county seats of North Carolina were places of “wildness and rudeness, intemperance, ferocity, gaming, licentiousness, and malicious litigation.”8

8 Ibid., dated Chapel Hill, November 20, 1823.

Despite internal improvements and the beginning of the cotton mill industry, the towns of the State, except for a few favored ones, grew slowly. The rate at which the population increased in the four largest towns is given in the following table:

RATE OF GROWTH OF THE FOUR LARGEST TOWNS IN NORTH CAROLINA9POPULATION Town 1840 1850 1860 Wilmington 4,744 7,264 9,552 New Bern 3,690 4,681 5,432 Fayetteville 4,285 4,646 4,790 Raleigh 2,244 4,581 4,780

9 U. S. Census Office, Compendium of the Sixth Census, 1840, p. 42; The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850, p. 308; The Eighth Census of the United States: 1860: Population, p. 359.

The completion of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad in 1840 doubled Raleigh's population in the next decade. The railroads terminating in Wilmington helped to double that town's population by 1860. The Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad with Beaufort Harbor as its terminal put New Bern clearly in the second rank by 1860. But Fayetteville had been left off the main railroad arteries. As early as 1819 Archibald D. Murphey had written to Thomas Ruffin: “I thought it as plain as Truth itself, some time Ago, . . . that Fayetteville would become an insignificant Village, if Improvements were not speedily made for bringing the Trade of the Deep and Haw Rivers, and of the Pedee, to the Cape Fear. . . . I fear . . . that the place will go to Ruin. . . . Mr. Conty has completed his Survey of the Lumber River Canal, and laid out the Route of the Canal. . . . His Report is favourable, very favourable. His estimates of the expence are $372,000. Would Fayetteville do this Work, and open the Cape Fear to Haywood, We might concentrate at this place one half of the Trade of the State.”10

10 The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey, I, 132-39.

But almost a half million dollars was too staggering a sum for North Carolinians to raise for internal improvements in 1819. Fayetteville continued to remain at a standstill despite the fact that the town entered feverishly into road building in the late forties. In the last twenty years of the period its population increased by only 505.

Kinston is another example of the struggle which the North Carolina villages had during the ante-bellum period. On a high bluff some twenty-five feet above the Neuse River, in what is now Lenoir County, a few families had taken up land prior to 1762 and had designated the place as Atkin's Banks. In 1762 the General Assembly authorized the laying out of a town there by the name of Kingston. It was a healthful situation, high enough to escape the “miasma” of the adjacent swamps and abundantly supplied with fresh water. For a while the village flourished and there was hope of building a prosperous town which would attract the trade of farmers along the upper Neuse and its tributary creeks. But New Bern was more favorably situated at the mouth of the river and many years before had a similar dream of drawing the trade of the Neuse River country. Lenoir County, too, soon became involved in feuds which divided the population into contending parties, nullified legal authority, and jeopardized personal safety.11

11 MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book, “Lenoir County”; Newsome, op. cit., p. 182.

In 1800 Kinston had a population of 107.12

12 U. S. Census Office, report of the second census, 1800: Return of the Whole Number of Persons within the Several Districts of the United States, p. 73.

In 1810 it was still the only town in Lenoir County, but it contained only ten families. The courthouse was a small wooden structure with a courtroom and offices for the clerk and recorder. Other buildings were in the same style, for, as a correspondent of the Raleigh Star explained, the ambition of the people seemed not to run toward elegant homes, “but more to the spirit of accumulation.” During the fever for canal building about 1815, Kinston again dreamed of being a commercial town, and again New Bern drew most of the trade. By 1850 the population had increased to only 455. But the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad brought a wonderful change. During the next decade Kinston's population almost trebled, reaching 1,333 in 1860.

 TOWN PORTRAITS

The center of each town was usually the courthouse with the stocks and whipping post occupying a prominent place in the courthouse yard.13

13 After 1830 towns frequently relegated these instruments of punishment to the backyard of the county jail.

The town as a rule had but one street worthy of the name. At one end, just opposite the courthouse, were the stores and shops; while spread out along the length of the street were the homes of the most prosperous citizens set a few yards back in groves of trees. Every self-respecting town of at least five hundred inhabitants contained a tavern, five or six retail stores, a blacksmith's shop, and perhaps a shoe shop, a church or two, and a male or female academy, “situated eligibly, and neatly appointed, upon lots purchased by the citizens.”14

14 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate November 12, 1852.

The larger towns usually had a public market where country produce was brought for sale. When this was not the case, the courthouse yard or the street in front of the courthouse served the purpose. Some towns, such as Raleigh, Fayetteville, and Wilmington, boasted a city hall, the first floor of which sometimes housed the town market. A center of activity in every village was the grog shop or tippling house, as the local saloon was called. Each town also had its public water pump located conspicuously at a central point to serve as a water supply for those who did not have private wells, as a watering trough for horses, and as a precaution against fire.

A few towns in the State were built according to some plan, notably New Bern, Salem, and Raleigh, but most villages were left to grow at will. Baron Christoph von Graffenried plotted New Bern so that it would have two main streets, one running from the Neuse River toward the forest and the other at right angles to it, intersecting the narrow strip of land between the Trent and the Neuse. The church was to be placed at the intersection of the two streets and thus command the town. He also planned for two other streets to follow the shores of the rivers. They were to be broad and the lots three acres each “since in America they do not like to live crowded.”15

15 Todd, op. cit.

The Tuscaroras sadly put an end to Graffenried's planning, but the town was later built upon the same large outline. Today it is sometimes called the “Athens of North Carolina.”16

16 C. F. Hannigan, “New Bern, ‘The Athens of North Carolina’,” The White Pine Series of Architectural Monographs, XIII, No. 1.

 When Bishop Asbury visited there in 1802, he wrote, “Newbern is a trading and growing town; there are seven hundred or a thousand houses already built, and the number is yearly increased by less and greater additions, among which are some respectable brick edifices; the new courthouse, truly so; neat and elegant; another famous house, said to be designed for the Masonic or theatrical gentlemen; it might make a most excellent church.”17

17 Journal, III, 51.

Count Zinzendorf drew up in London the plan for Salem, a circle with an eight-cornered church in the center. Eight streets were to radiate from the church, “each with twenty town lots, to be interspersed with gardens and rows of shade trees in double circles.”18

18 L. T. Reichel, Moravians in North Carolina, p. 16.

But when the town was actually laid out, Count Zinzendorf's plan was obviously impracticable. Instead, it had a main street, sixty feet wide, with six streets each thirty-three feet wide, crossing at right angles. When Elkannah Watson toured North Carolina in 1786 he found that Salem “comprehended about forty dwellings, and occupies a pleasant situation.” Every house “was supplied with water, brought in conduits a mile and a half.” The Moravian chapel was “a spacious room in a large edifice, adorned with that neat and simple elegance, which was a peculiar trait of these brethren and their Quaker neighbors.”19

19 Op. cit., pp. 293, 294.

The builders of these little North Carolina towns left many of the forest trees standing so that the mire of streets and the shabbiness of unpainted buildings were often mitigated by graceful branches of pine and oak. The residents, too, shaded their lawns with elms and embowered their houses with flowering shrubs. A Connecticut visitor described ante-bellum Hillsboro as the finest village he had seen in the South. “Several beautiful residences,” he said, “with large gardens, full of flowers and fruit trees, crown the eminences around it. If the houses had a new covering of paint—and the yards were a little more neat, and there were fewer blacks, you might suppose from external appearances, that you were in a New England village.” He also thought Greensboro “a very pretty place” and Charlotte “a very beautiful village . . . formerly famous for its splendid dinners and evening parties.”20

20 Barnard, op. cit., pp. 329, 331, 342.

In 1820 a British traveler described Raleigh as a town of wide streets, “which all terminate in the surrounding forest.” “The white frame-houses, with their neat Venetian blinds, which the heat renders almost indespensable to the smallest house, give the town a clean and interesting appearance.”21

21 Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America, I, 35.

Near the close of the period a northern journalist found Raleigh to be “a pleasing town—the streets wide and lined with trees, and many white wooden mansions, all having little courtyards of flowers and shrubbery around them. The State-House is, in every way, a noble building, constructed of brownish-gray granite, in Grecian style.”22

22 Olmsted, op. cit., p. 318.

In 1828 a British visitor thought Fayetteville “a very pretty and fluorishing town” with excellent tavern accommodations,23

23 Basil Hall, Travels in North America, II, 179, 180.

but in 1837 a native of Tarboro visited the town for the first time and was disappointed in the appearance of the place because it still bore traces of the fire which had almost destroyed it in 1831. “A traveller forming his opinion of the town from the Country he traverses and in which it is settled,” he wrote, “will be astonished that such a place is sustained and he would almost come to the same Conclusion with the Dutchman, that ‘they lives by cheatin one another.’”24

24 Wills, op. cit., pp. 474-75.

 Wilmington early attracted the favorable comment of visitors. Many of the buildings, wrote one, are “brick, two and three stories high with double piazas, which make a good appeara[nce].”25

25 Andrews, op. cit., p. 284.

Although the towns did not present scenes of bustling enterprise and thrift, their quiet charm led visitors to think them pleasing despite the general air of neglect. The white wooden mansions which attracted northern travelers were the homes of the prosperous lawyers, planters, and officeholders. A planter whose land lay near a village not infrequently made his home in town. This class of resident held much of the town property in Eastern North Carolina.

The towns of Western North Carolina presented a somewhat different appearance. There, houses tended to be smaller, and the inhabitants made less of their gardens. In 1802 F. A. Michaux, a French scientist, described Morganton as containing

about fifty houses, built of planks, and . . . almost wholly inhabited by working people. Only one store, kept by a commercial house at Charlestown, is established in this small town, at which all the inhabitants for five-and-twenty miles round buy articles of mercery or haberdashery, brought from England, or give in exchange for them a part of their produce, which consists principally of smoked hams, barrelled butter, tallow, bear's and deer's skins, and also ginseng, which they bring from the mountains.26

26 Travels to the Westward of the Alleghany Mountains, Chap. XXX.

Lincolnton, he said, “is formed of the junction of forty houses, surrounded by the woods like all the small towns of the interior.” By 1840 Lincolnton had become “a beautiful and flourishing village,” with the property “greatly divided, and owned principally by hard working mechanics, whose whole substance is invested in the houses and lots.”27

27 MS in Legislative Papers, 1840.

 The principal charm of these western towns lay in their being situated among the hills and streams of the Blue Ridge, but they also boasted mansion houses and broad shaded streets.

 TOWN GOVERNMENT

Towns were established in colonial North Carolina by legislative act and by royal charter.28

28 See M. P. Smith's MS, “Municipal Government in North Carolina, 1665-1930,” Chap. IV.

After the Revolution a town appealed to the Legislature for incorporation. The act of incorporation delegated specific rights and privileges to certain local officials. The type of government granted the incorporated town varied in detail according to the demands of the petitioning town. During the ante-bellum period scarcely a Legislature assembled that was not called upon to settle by private acts innumerable questions relating to local town government. As a remedy for this situation, there was codified29

29 Revised Code, 1855, Chap. III.

 a general law relating to the government of incorporated towns, but even today a town can make no important change in its form of government until it first obtains from the Legislature an amendment to its charter.

The General Assembly, by act of 1855, vested power to make by-laws and regulations for the government of a town in a mayor and commission made up of not more than seven nor less than three citizens of the town. These officers were to be elected annually by ballot by all free white males who had paid the annual tax imposed by the town commission. To be eligible to the office of commissioner one must have possessed for at least one year a freehold or a leasehold in real estate situated within the town. The mayor was given the powers of a justice of the peace to issue process, to hear and determine all cases that might arise under the town ordinances, to enforce penalties, and to execute the laws made by the commissioners. An appeal from his judgment to the superior court was allowed as in the case of a judgment rendered by a justice of the peace.

Most of the important towns of the State had been incorporated previous to the passage of this act. Their charters show the tendency to place the control of the city government in the hands of the landed class, for in many instances a property qualification was required both for voting and holding office. The government of Raleigh is interesting as an example of the change which was gradually taking place in town government during the antebellum period. An act of 1795 placed the government of Raleigh in a commission of seven persons who were appointed by the General Assembly.30

30 The term of office was three years. In 1797 the act of 1795 was renewed for another three years, and in 1801 a similar renewal was made and three others appointed as “additional and permanent commissioners.”

The commissioners were not required to be residents, and it is known that four of them were not, although they did own lots within the corporate limits. The commission was given the power to elect a treasurer, clerk, and intendant of police. The clerk was to hold office during good behavior and the other two officers for a period of one year. This form of government continued until 1803 when the Legislature granted the town a regular charter. Under the new law seven commissioners and an intendant of police were to be elected annually by all freemen who were residents and owned a lot within the corporate limits.

Dissatisfaction soon arose, however, and the charge was made that those living on Halifax and Fayetteville streets monopolized all the offices and the money arising from the city tax. The General Assembly, accordingly, divided the town into three wards, giving the eastern ward the right to elect three commissioners; the western, one commissioner; and the middle ward, five commissioners. The taxes of each ward were to be spent therein by the respective commissioners. This law was a frank concession to property and the gentry class, for a census taken the next year indicated that the eastern ward outnumbered the middle ward by fifty-seven white polls, while the middle ward possessed the preponderance of slaves.31

31 Battle, op. cit., p. 46.

The plan of having three distinct boards of commissioners to expend the town tax proved unwieldy, and a law was passed in 1813 establishing one governing body of seven commissioners elected by the three wards, with the middle ward again having the greatest number.32

32 Raleigh Register, January 7, 1814.

Some friction continued throughout the ante-bellum period. It found expression in a quarrel over the erection of a new city hall in 1840 and in a demand in 1856 for an entirely new set of commissioners.33

33 In this year the term mayor was substituted for that of intendant of police, a term borrowed from France.

In this year a resident opposing the long supremacy of the middle ward, declared through the North Carolina Standard that the present situation was insufferable:

And what is the remedy for this state of things? Is it not in a new Board?—in a Mayor and Commissioners pledged to reform, and who will devote themselves energetically, sternly, and faithfully, to the duty of reducing the taxes—of improving the streets—of enclosing the City cemetary—of paying off the City debt—of expending all funds judiciously, as they would expend their own private funds; and of establishing and maintaining stricter police regulations? Party has nothing to do with a matter of this sort; nor am I influenced by any personal feeling towards the present Mayor and Commissioners, or their subordinates.34

34 January 16.

 Despite such protests, new elections brought little change, and the powerful middle ward continued to control Raleigh's civic life.

In Wilmington the aristocracy also dominated the town commission. Before 1843 the government was vested in five commissioners elected biennially.35

35 For government during the colonial period see Smith, op. cit., pp. 78, 81.

In 1842, however, a group representing the popular element obtained the passage of a bill, without the knowledge of the large property-holders, providing for the annual election of seven commissioners.36

36 Sprunt, op. cit., p. 174.

 Upon learning of this act, a town meeting was called which passed a resolution protesting against “all interference on the part of the Legislature of the State with the internal regulations and public government” of the town without the advice and consent of its citizens. John McRae, chairman of a committee to petition the Legislature, gave as the chief reason for objecting to the new law the fact that it provided for frequent elections. “By the frequent recurrence of said elections a partisan spirit is ever excited,” he said, “social feuds are engendered, and the harmony of the community seriously if not lastingly disturbed.”37

37 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, January 12, 1843.

 The act, however, was not repealed despite an effort to do so the following year. During most of the period the justices of peace of New Hanover County Court elected Wilmington's mayor, or magistrate, but in 1850 the Legislature made this office elective by the town residents.38

38 Sessional Laws, 1818, Chap. XLII; 1850, Chap. CCXII.

The government of Salem was unique in that it was under the control of the Moravian Congregation until the act of incorporation which was passed by the General Assembly of 1856-1857. The Salem Congregation Diacony had been established in 1771.39

39 A. L. Fries, Forsyth County, p. 58.

It assumed all responsibility in the erection of buildings in Salem and leased from the Unitas Fratrum a tract of 3,158 acres for the purpose of maintaining the township.

In 1826, some 2,485 acres of this tract were sold to the Diacony. Under this system no individual could own a house in Salem and only a member of the Moravian Church could lease one. Thus all the municipal affairs of the town were controlled by the Congregation Council of the local church. But with the erection of Forsyth County in 1849 and the building of a courthouse near the town, it was no longer advisable for the church monopoly to be maintained. Accordingly, the Council voted November 17, 1856, to abolish the policy of restricting leaseholders to members of the Moravian Church, and a few days later a town meeting was held and a petition drawn asking for a charter from the General Assembly.40

40 MS in Legislative Papers, 1856-1857. The resolutions of incorporation were introduced at the town meeting by Francis Fries. They were in part as follows:

“Whereas, the authorities that have hitherto had the supervision of the spiritual welfare of the Moravian Congregation in Salem, & at the same time also, of all the municipal affairs of the Town, have for some time become satisfied, that a separation of these mixed duties would be advantageous to the spiritual as well as temporal prosperity of this community, & have therefore recently abolished the old system of government; and

“Whereas under the new order of things, any one, without regard to religious qualifications, may become a citizen of the place, buy lots in fee simple, and not be subject to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction hitherto exercised; and

“Whereas, under the peculiar lease by which all the citizens of Salem heretofore held their lots, the authorities had power to make and enforce rules for preventing nuisances, & for preserving the health of the citizens, to keep in repair the streets & bridges in town, & make improvements where necessary, to care for lighting our streets in the night, to procure a sufficient nightwatch, & generally to make such rules & regulations for the better government of the town as were deemed necessary,—but by abolishing the old system, the former authorities no longer claim the right to exercise these powers;—Therefore resolved,

“That in the opinion of this Meeting, it is highly important, that . . . powers such as those above enumerated should vest in some body.”

As long as the town was under the jurisdiction of the Congregation Council, it was generally conceded to be one of the best regulated towns in ante-bellum North Carolina.

 THE TOWN COMMISSION

The functions of a town commission varied with the character and interests of the commissioners as well as with the type of the community, but there was a general complaint that the duties of the governing body were performed indifferently. Citizens of Raleigh, for instance, frequently accused their commission of following a do-nothing policy, but in 1858 residents of Trenton complained that their commission was enforcing the laws too rigorously.41

41 Ibid., 1858-1859.

The general act of 1855 gave town commissions power to levy taxes on real estate, retail liquor dealers, shows or exhibitions charging an entrance fee, on dogs, and on hogs, horses, and cattle running at large. They were also empowered to appoint a town constable and fix the salaries of the town officers; to establish and regulate public markets; to prevent nuisances and safe-guard health; to keep streets and bridges in repair; and to regulate the quality and weight of bakers' bread.

Nearly every town commission had four standing committees: a committee appointed to attend “the due repairing of the streets”; another, “the keeping in order the Public Pumps”; still another, “the repairs of the Grave Yard”; and a fourth, “for classing the Citizens as Watchmen.”42

42 Raleigh Register, January 30, 1829.

A commission might also, on occasion, appoint a committee to examine into the practicability of conveying water to the town in pipes; it might encourage the planting of trees, purchase a new fire engine, or pass an ordinance for the better observance of the Sabbath. It might even become daring enough to forbid owners to allow their hogs to run at large. In case of an epidemic of cholera or small pox, the commission was always prompt to order the citizens to use lime about their premises and to have their privies cleaned. In some cases, as, for instance, in Raleigh, Fayetteville, and Asheville, the commission appointed boards of health.

In an attempt to obtain the coöperation of the residents in the execution of an ordinance, a commission might call a town meeting, but the town meeting in North Carolina did not function in the New England sense. For instance, in 1806 the commissioners of Raleigh, wishing to divide the citizens into a night patrol, called a town meeting before passing an ordinance to that effect. Whereupon, the meeting resolved the measure to be inexpedient and “recommended it to the city Commissioners to appoint two proper persons as a Patrol, to designate their duties, and allow them such a salary, to be paid out of the city taxes, as will make it their interest to perform them.”43

43 Ibid., August 25, September 1, 1806.

Wilmington had a council composed of mayor, recorder, aldermen, and the freeholders. The consent of the freeholders was necessary before the commission could fix the tax rate; freeholders took part in debates on other subjects; and even served on committees.44

44 K. P. Battle (ed.), Letters and Documents Relating to the Early History of the Lower Cape Fear, James Sprunt Historical Monographs, No. 4, p. 72.

Most of the ordinances which a town commission passed had to do with police regulations. “We are glad to find that the Board has determined to use a greater degree of energy than heretofore in maintaining good order in the city,” wrote the Raleigh Register, of February 1, 1822. “For this purpose several Ordinances have been passed, which direct the apprehension and punishment of vagrants, gamblers, swindlers, prostitute women, and disorderly negroes. The Constable is also instructed to use greater vigilance than heretofore in the exercise of his duty. . . . The City Watch will hereafter be set at nine, instead of ten o'clock at night, and the Constable is directed to patrol the streets till nine.” The most frequent type of town ordinance had to do with “the better observance of the Sabbath” and the control of the Negro population. For “keeping the Lord's Day holy,” town commissions usually made it illegal to watch cock fights within the city limits or to play games, such as bandy, ten pins, long balls, or fives. They required that all shops be kept closed, that grog should not be sold during church services, and, in most instances, that all vehicles of transportation, such as boats, wagons, carts, drays, and later railroad cars, not be loaded or unloaded during the day.

Ordinances relating to Negroes greatly restricted that class of the town's population.45

45 See also infra, pp. 497 et seq.

The curfew, which was rung in most towns during the first half of the ante-bellum period, was especially designed as a warning for the Negroes to clear the streets. In 1807 a respectable citizen of Edenton called on the town commission to establish a curfew there and “to select a sufficient number of vigilant and trusty men” to enforce its observance. “Were this effected,” wrote the citizen, “and notice given every night, by ringing of the bell, at a proper hour, that all negroes should be at their places of abode and all noise and riots cease, . . . good order, peace and decorum, would reign in our streets, and our midnight slumbers be undisturbed by the rude din of noise and rioting, or the distressing apprehensions of fire and other casualties.”46

46 Edenton Gazette, November 18, 1807.

 Even when there was no curfew, town patrolmen were required to stop Negroes on the streets after about ten o'clock at night. If the Negro were free, he might show his badge; if slave, his pass and thus escape punishment. Otherwise he was subject to ten stripes well laid on. Slaves could not buy or sell without written permission from their owners, and all found carrying packages or jugs were stopped and required to show their permits.

In some towns, especially in Edenton, Fayetteville, Wilmington, and Washington, the free Negroes were required to register with the town clerk and to wear cloth badges on their left shoulders bearing the word FREE. Raleigh would not permit a free Negro to reside within the city limits unless he had obtained permission from the commission.

It was the Negro population which led most towns to adopt a night watch. In some places the constables patroled the streets; in others the citizens were divided into patrols, each with its captain, taking turns at watching the town; in still others, the town commission employed a salaried watchman. Even in towns where the citizens took turns at patrol work, some residents hired substitutes. In 1802 “Quandry” asked of the Raleigh Register why the commissioners “do not appoint a sufficient number of patrollers so as to patrole the streets every night, in order to discover and suppress fire and robbery.”47

47 May 4.

In 1808 “Mentor” announced in the Edenton Gazette that the inhabitants of that town, “roused by a just sense of their danger, have established a nightly patrol, who perambulate the streets, and cry every hour of the night.”48

48 October 5.

To have lighted the village streets at night might have been almost as effective as a patrol, but most towns did not take this step until late in the period because of the fire hazard. It was not until 1830 that the commissioners of Raleigh provided a few lamps for lighting Fayetteville Street, but in a few years the town was again wrapped in darkness. In 1835 the Register rejoiced that the commissioners had resolved to light the streets again so that “the nocturnal traveller, in his perambulations through the town, can no longer say ‘Silence how dead! darkness how profound!’ ”49

49 November 17.

Charlotte installed street lamps in 1853. The commission appointed a committee to buy twelve lamps and posts and instructed the constable to buy a barrel of oil. The town watch washed the lamps “once a week during the dark of the moon.”50

50 Charlotte Records, August 26, 1854, quoted in M. P. Smith, op. cit., p. 125.

 But after the Charlotte Gas Light Company had laid pipes in 1858 the commission contracted for eight lamps which were to burn from twilight until ten-thirty at a cost of $600 a year.51

51 Ibid.

 Wilmington also had gas lights in the closing years of the period, having depended previously upon whale oil lamps.52

52 Sprunt, op. cit., p. 163.

 When New Bern lighted up with gas on September 15, 1859, “the Light Infantry and the Elm City Cadets were out on the occasion.”53

53 North Carolina Weekly Standard, September 21, 1859.

The inhabitants of every town in the State considered it an inalienable right to allow their stock, and especially their hogs, to roam at liberty through the streets, and despite ordinances to the contrary, many of them exercised this right even to 1860. As early as 1740 Edenton obtained a legislative act permitting any person in the town to impound swine running at large. Such an animal was to be sold and the money given to the poor. More than seventy years later, however, the Edenton Gazette was reminding the sheriff “that there are a vast number of fine fat Hogs at large again in our streets, to the great annoyance of the citizens generally, . . .”54

54 September 10, 1811.

In 1852 when the commission of Murfreesboro sought to extend the town limits, those who would be included in the new incorporation fought the measure on the ground that “if we were incorporated [it] would exclude hogs from running in the road.”55

55 MS in Legislative Papers, in House, December 24, 1852.

 In 1851, however, one of the reasons that Lenoir sought incorporation was “the unrestrained passing: of cattle, Hogs, and other noxious animals through the streets [which] render[s] our village disagreeable and unpleasant, particularly in the winter season.”56

56 Ibid., in House, January 6, 1851.

 But in 1858 Trenton split in two factions over “arbitrary and tyrannical municipal laws” which prevented cattle from running at large.57

57 Ibid., November 3, 1858.

 As late as 1856 a northern visitor in Raleigh regretted the singular negligence or more singular economy of the state which permitted the capitol square to be used as a hog pasture.58

58 Olmsted, op. cit., p. 319.

 STREET REPAIRS

An important duty of the town commission was to keep the streets cleared for traffic and the sidewalks in reasonable repair. Thus residents of Lenoir, seeking incorporation in 1851, said: “ . . . for want of an act of incorporation under which your Petitioners would be able to pass by-laws to Govern their village, they labor under many inconveniences, . . . Owing to the peculiar construction of the Town, and narrowness of the streets, they are subjected to many nuisances, such as wood piles . . . and the difficulty of keeping up the streets by the ordinary system of keeping up roads, . . .”59

59 MS in Legislative Papers, January 6, 1851.

Most town charters gave the commission authority “for laying out, regulating, paving, lighting, amending, repairing and cleansing the streets, lanes, alleys, wharves, and docks, of the said town; for ascertaining and defining the lines and levels thereof; for fixing and constructing drains and common sewers; for preventing, and removing nuisances and obstructions in the streets, lanes, alleys, wharves, and docks.”60

60 Ibid., a bill for the government of the town of Plymouth, 1813.

Town commissions usually passed specific ordinances forbidding residents to place wood piles on the sidewalks or in the streets so as to block traffic, forbidding them to dump clay or pour washings from their kitchens or shops in the streets, and requiring them to drain stagnant water off their lots.

The ante-bellum town followed various methods of keeping the streets and sidewalks in repair. A great many copied the county method by appointing an overseer whose duty it was to call out the male residents to work the streets. Other commissions let out the work under contract, and thus one might find in the local newspapers advertisements such as follows: “The working of the streets and repairing of the sidewalks in the town of Oxford, will be let to the lowest bidder on Saturday the 29th inst. at the Court House door. The contractors will be required to put them in good order forthwith and keep them so until the 1st January next.”61

61 Leisure Hour, January 13, 1859.

In case the streets were let out under contract the commission levied a poll and property tax for the purpose. In some cases, as for instance, Chapel Hill, the village streets were regarded as a part of the county roads and worked accordingly.62

62 M. P. Smith, op. cit., p. 116.

The upkeep of the streets and sidewalks was one of the chief causes of friction in the ante-bellum town. This was the subject of the protracted controversy in Raleigh previously mentioned between the middle ward and the eastern and western wards, finally ending in a lawsuit in which the Supreme Court declared that the omission to repair streets on the part of the commission was an indictable offense.63

63 State v. Commissioners of Raleigh, 48 N. C., 399.

Earlier than this Fayetteville had taken its fight over street repairs to the Supreme Court,64

64 State v. Commissioners of Fayetteville, 6 N. C., 371; see also 4 N. C., 419.

 but a mere court decision was not sufficient to insure passable streets. Early in the period the commissioners had ordered ditches dug on the sides to keep streets drained and to prevent the collection of water on the sidewalks and had ordered householders not to throw filth into them. But in 1833 “Health” appealed to the Fayetteville Observer, saying: “You will please be good enough to say (through the medium of your paper) to the Commissioners of Wards No. 3 and 4, that if the nuisances in the Ditches, particularly on the back Streets, be not removed forthwith, we will tell them of it in an audible voice in January next. The Ditches on Donaldson, Mumford and Old Streets, are in a horrid condition, . . .”65

65 August 13.

As early as 1824 the commissioners of Charlotte ordered the sidewalks on Trade and Tryon streets raised above the street level and centered with stone or hewed timber and “posted with post oak, . . . or instead of posts, good live trees. . . .”66

66 Charlotte Records, June 2, 1824, quoted in M. P. Smith, op. cit., p. 119.

In 1854 Charlotte let a contract for macadamizing the public square and an eighteen-foot strip on Trade and Tryon streets from the square to the first cross street.67

67 Charlotte Records, January 14, 1854, quoted in ibid., p. 121.

 By 1837 Wilmington had paved some of its sidewalks and in 1856 let a contract for paving North Water Street with stone.68

68 Ibid., pp. 120-31.

 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE

The danger of fire was always present in the ante-bellum town, for most of the buildings were wooden structures and the water supply was often inadequate to meet the emergency of a conflagration. Every town in the State at one time or another suffered great loss by fire, and some of the larger towns, such as Wilmington, Fayetteville, and Raleigh, several times were burned almost to the ground.

Protection against fire was one of the most important duties of a town commission. With this in view, commissions generally forbade wooden chimneys and chimneys of mortar and clay, permitting only those of brick or stone. They required that chimneys be built according to certain specifications, as, for instance, three or four feet above the ridge of the roof and only upon stone or brick hearths. Some commissions required that the village chimneys be swept clean from top to bottom once a month or even as often as every two weeks. When stoves came into use, commissions often required that written permission be obtained before the stove was put up, and they passed regulations concerning the manner in which stove pipes should be inserted. They also restricted the areas in which blacksmith shops and bakeries might be erected and passed ordinances concerning the emptying of ashes and the method of carrying fire through the town.

Before fire companies came into general use in the thirties, fire fighting engaged all residents. Edenton required each householder to have his own ladder kept against the house, and New Bern required not only a ladder but two leather buckets. As early as 1745 Wilmington obtained a law authorizing a tax levy for the purchase of a fire engine, but it was not until 1755 that the town bought a “water engine.” Other towns, notably New Bern and Edenton, also obtained laws looking toward the purchase of fire engines but the century opened without adequate fire protection for most towns in the State.

In 1802 “Quandry” asked the town commissioners through the columns of the Raleigh Register, “Whether 'tis better for every Inhabitant of the City to protect his own Property from fire and robbery or for a number to join, and by turns, protect the whole?”69

69 May 4.

A few months before, a group of citizens in Fayetteville had organized a fire company and bought an engine by private subscription. Shortly afterward, a fire occurred which threatened the entire town, and the company rendered such efficient service that it attracted attention throughout the State.

The Fayetteville company assessed each member twenty-five cents every three months until a sufficient amount had been accumulated to purchase an engine.70

70 Ibid., April 13, 1802.

At regular intervals the company had fire drills under the direction of captains. Each member provided himself with “two leather buckets, two Osnaburg bags, and a suitable hat” which were to be kept hanging within easy reach in his house or store. Newspapers at once caught at the idea, and urged every town in the State to organize against this “devouring element.”

In 1806 the General Assembly passed the first law authorizing the formation of “fire engine companies,” giving Wilmington and New Bern authority to exempt members of their fire companies from militia duty. In 1820 the Assembly renewed this privilege in behalf of Wilmington and New Bern and extended the benefit to Fayetteville and Tarboro. Five years later, however, the Assembly repealed the act because fire companies had “served as a screen for those wishing to escape military duty.”71

71 Carolina Observer, December 15, 1825.

By 1830 the Fayetteville Observer was earnestly calling for the reorganization of the fire companies. Since the abandonment of the Fayetteville company in 1825, insurance premiums had risen so high as to be almost prohibitive.72

72 Ibid., January 14, 1830. The new act which the Legislature passed in response to this appeal was practically the same as that of 1820.

In the meantime other towns were proceeding slowly to protect themselves against fire. Usually they did not feel the necessity of providing against the danger until a fire had actually occurred. After two attempts had been made to set fire to Plymouth in 1808, a patrol was formed by the inhabitants which walked the streets and cried out every hour of the night.73

73 Edenton Gazette, October 5.

In Edenton a large property owner bought a fire engine of his own and on one occasion saved the town from destruction.74

74 Ibid., February 3, 1808.

 In other towns the commissions were usually contented with passing an ordinance that the citizens provide themselves with ladders and buckets.75

75 Hillsborough Recorder, September 13, 1820.

 In 1820 a correspondent of the Hillsborough Recorder pointed out in alarm that winter was approaching without any provisions having been made to guard against fire. “We have not an engine, fire-hook, or pump,” he said. “If a central building should take fire and make headway before discovered, what human effort, under our present circumstances, would prevent the entire destruction of the most valuable part of our town?”76

76 Ibid., October 6.

 He suggested the organization of a fire company which he thought could be trained for service in a month if the members practiced every Saturday night.

At this time Wilmington, New Bern, Fayetteville, and Tarboro already had fire companies, as it has been pointed out. By 1826 Raleigh, Lincolnton, and Washington had companies whose members were exempted from militia duty. In 1829 the Legislature extended this privilege to members of all fire companies in the State.77

77 Sessional Laws, 1829, Chap. XXV. This act was supplemented by another in 1833 making it the duty of captains of fire companies to make a regular report of the membership of the company once a year to the colonel commandant of the regiment of his district.

Some of the incorporated companies had such fanciful names as the Neptune Fire Company of Washington and the Atlantic Fire Company of New Bern. In 1858 the Legislature permitted the town commission of Tarboro to exempt the fire company from the payment of town taxes to the amount of twelve dollars a year for two years, and in the same year exempted the fire department of Washington from jury duty.

In 1785 Salem bought fire engines in Europe, but most of the engines in use during the ante-bellum period were procured from the North. They were worked by hand and ordinarily carried about two or three hundred feet of hose.78

78 See description in Raleigh Register, March 12, 1819.

After the disastrous fire in Fayetteville in 1831 members of the Boston fire department presented Fayetteville with a “Boston built Fire Engine.”79

79 Fayetteville Observer, May 22, 1832.

By the forties most of the large towns in the State were boasting of “the city fire department.” In 1848 Fayetteville had two engine companies and a hook and ladder company, all made up of slaves, twenty-five for each engine and ten for the hook and ladder. Each slave wore a glazed cap with the number of the engine to which he belonged conspicuously marked on the front.80

80 Fayetteville Records, June 24, 1848, quoted in M. P. Smith, op. cit., p. 129.

About this time Wilmington's fire engines were also operated by slaves and on the occasion of a fire appreciative citizens plied them generously with grog.81

81 Wilmington Daily Journal, February 20, 1852.

 In the last decade of the ante-bellum period Wilmington had four fire companies.82

82 M. P. Smith, op. cit., pp. 127, 128.

Fire engines were usually furnished with water from the public wells, but in case of a large fire this supply was inadequate. At one time twelve barrels of vinegar were used in Raleigh when all water in the near-by wells had been exhausted.

Municipal water-works systems developed more as a means of fire fighting than as a convenience to the residents. In September, 1818, the Raleigh commissioners announced that after three years of work the city water system had at last been completed. “. . . the city is furnished with a regular and constant supply of Water,” ran the announcement, “which fills three Reservoirs placed under ground in different parts of the City, containing about 8000 Gallons, besides supplying several Hydrants in Convenient situation, affording Water sufficient for culinary and other purposes, and a supply, always in readiness, in cases of Fire.” The water was conveyed in wooden pipes from springs nearly a mile and a half distant. After running about a half mile, the water entered a propelling engine worked by a water wheel which was turned by a stream from Rocky Branch. The water wheel kept four forcing pumps in constant motion which raised the water into a tower from which it descended into a reservoir in the State-House yard.83

83 Raleigh Register, September 25, 1818.

But the system was not so successful as the commissioners had expected. In droughts the springs ran low, and in time the wooden conduits decayed. In 1852 a correspondent to the Raleigh Star urged the town commission to pass an ordinance requiring every person living on Fayetteville Street to have a water pump on his lot, for without such a provision, the town was unprepared to combat a general conflagration.84

84 January 14. “It cannot be expected that an inland city, where no river passes through or near it can have in the streets a sufficient number of pumps which would be adequate in a trying and great emergency to put out all fires.” In 1820 the editor of the Hillsborough Recorder wrote: “If a fire were to originate in one of our central buildings, even though it were discovered almost at its commencement, no human effort could arrest its progress; in one hour our little village would be but a heap of smoking ruins.”

After Fayetteville's disastrous fire of 1845 various residents suggested a water system for that town. Someone urged that the high ground near the site of the old Eccles mill be bought or leased with the contiguous water power and that a reservoir of hewn logs be constructed thirty feet high. Someone else thought that the object might be “accomplished more easily and cheaply by attaching forcing pumps to one of the Factories within the town, and connecting it with the centre of the town by iron pipes.”85

85 Fayetteville Observer, July 16, 1845.

In 1850 the Wilmington Aurora came forward with a plan to provide that town with water by utilizing the spring near the railroad depot “at the simple expense of conduits.”86

86 Quoted in Carolina Watchman, May 9, 1850.

 As early as 1778 the Congregation Council employed a certain. J. Krause to erect a municipal water-works system for Salem.

 TOWN MARKETS AND TOWN HALLS

The town commission was given power to establish and regulate the public market and to prescribe whether produce should be sold by weight or measure. Scales were erected at public expense and a weigher appointed who was directed to charge fees for his service at a rate determined by the commission. The first market house of Raleigh was built in 1799 at a cost of £298 so that farmers might know where “to find a ready market for their produce” and the townspeople where “to purchase such necessaries as are now precariously supplied.” The building was “to be of an Octagon form, 30 feet in diameter, with a Cupola on the top for a bell; to be set upon eight posts; to have four gates; to be banistered around three feet high; the floor to be laid with brick; the whole to be neatly painted.”87

87 Raleigh Register, October 2, 1799.

From great distances, sometimes as far as two hundred miles, produce was brought in for sale. The trip sometimes involved several days' travel. Almost any night in the fall, one might see near a market town, such as Fayetteville, a number of remarkably bright lights. These were the fires of wagoners who were camping for the night on the edge of an old field ready to get their produce to the market square early the next morning.88

88 See Olmsted, op. cit., pp. 357-59.

Around each fire would be a few blacks, joining heartily in the work of the camp, apparently on an equality with their masters. Some might be eating from the same kettle with them, while others strummed on a banjo to the general amusement of the listeners. Now and then a group of wagoners would burst into a camp-meeting song. From another part of the field would come uproarious laughter cut short by a growl for silence, for under low tents or the bodies of great wagons other campers were trying to sleep. These wagons were strongly built and would generally hold as much as seventy-five bushels of grain. They were drawn by from two to six horses, the rear wheeler having a large saddle on his back for the driver. A wagon so loaded would be driven near the market house where purchasers might be found.

At sunrise the market square was a bustle of activity. The first amusement presented to the onlooker might be a dog fight, for the market place was always alive with dogs, woolly water-dogs, great Newfoundlands, shaggy setters, sleek pointers, and stub-nose terriers, snarling over sheep's feet, growling over cast off bits of beef, running, fighting, and yelping. At this early hour the blacks were to be found in greater numbers than the whites, for the slaves often did the household marketing. It was not unusual to hear a Negro cry out to the owner of a market cart as he entered the square, “Hey, you! I want some of 'em.” A correspondent of the North Carolina Standard, declaring that he was neither too proud nor too lazy to do his own marketing, complained that slaves rushed ahead of white men and overbid them in order to get the produce they wanted. “Only one ever attempted this with me,” he wrote with warmth, “and he got out of the way of a walking stick in double quick time.”89

89 December 7, 1859. On this subject, the writer said further: “A white man stands but little chance to buy an article until the negroes are served. Darkey has ‘Master's money,’ and darkey has been directed to purchase certain things. Darkey cares not what price he pays, and often pays exorbitant prices.”

Stalls of the market house came in time to be occupied by townspeople who raised their own produce or obtained their wares from the wagons which had come in with heavy loads of corn, meal, flour, and pork. The farmer frequently found it more profitable to dispose of all his load to one merchant than to sell in small quantities to household purchasers. The commissioners of Fayetteville encouraged the use of the market by imposing a fine on all those found selling produce outside the market house or square. By legislative act of 1834 this ordinance was repealed and it became lawful for produce to be sold outside the market after seven o'clock in the spring and summer and after eight o'clock in the winter.90

90 Sessional Laws, 1834, Chap. CXXIX, sec. 4.

This act also made it unlawful for the clerk of the market to exact a fee unless the blocks or scales were used. In Raleigh no huckster was allowed to sell produce on the streets until after noon.91

91 W. C. G. Carrington, Laws for the Government of the City of Raleigh, p. 53.

 After the market house in Oxford had burned in 1858, the village newspaper urged the commissioners to build a new one which would also be large enough for a town hall. “The old one that was burned was a nuisance,” said the editor. “But we ought to have a new one with a Hall above.”92

92 Leisure Hour, October 28, 1854.

In 1839 when the commissioners of Raleigh decided to build a new market house, they resolved to make it large enough to contain a town hall as well, saying that “the citizens should have a place of their own to hold public meetings.”93

93 Raleigh Register, January 3, 1840.

When the town commission refused the Mechanics' Association the use of the hall in 1841, the North Carolina Standard called for a showdown, declaring that a town hall was the logical place where all classes of citizens should gather on any lawful occasion. “Of all tyrannies in the world,” said the Standard, “that of a city police is the most ridiculous and absurd.”94

94 July 7.

 After the controversy had raged for about three weeks, the Board of Commissioners resolved “that the City Hall be hereafter used for the following purposes, to wit: Public Meetings of the Citizens; meetings of the Commissioners of the City; Fire Company; Uniform Military Company; City Watch; and private Associations or Societies of the City.”95

95 Ibid., August 4, 1841.

 In a statement to the public, the board expressed the hope that this arrangement would be “highly satisfactory to all parties.” In 1840 the town hall in Wilmington stood in “Mud Market” at the intersection of Market and Second streets, a building closely resembling the courthouse except that the first floor was open and paved for the use of the town market.96

96 Sprunt, op. cit., p. 189.

 In many communities the courthouse did take the place of a town hall. Here the commissioners frequently had their monthly meetings; here public lectures were held and agricultural societies arranged their displays.

For many years the courthouse at Elizabeth City served as the village church, town hall, lecture room, and theater. In 1851 after a boisterous meeting which had ended with the destruction of some of the courtroom furniture, the county court resolved that the courthouse should not be opened “for the Exhibition of any show, lecturing, slight of hand, or other purpose whatsoever, save political & religious meetings & county purposes.”97

97 Pasquotank County Court Minutes, March term, 1851. See also order of Carteret County Court of May, 1851 in Carteret County Court Minutes, 1849-1852.

But the clamor of the townspeople for a public hall was too much for them, and at the June session of 1852 the justices passed an order “that it be made the duty of the Sheriff to keep the Court room Key & not permit the court room to be used for purposes of Exhibition by itinerant performers except upon the payment of Ten Dollars to the county and that they be required to repair any damages.”

Previous to the erection of the town hall in Raleigh the capitol served in this capacity. For a number of years it was the church of the community where all evangelical denominations joined alike in worship. The “long-room,” as the Conference Chamber was called, was also the ballroom for the town and surrounding country. On occasion, it was used for less formal gatherings so that in time the space overhead became a mass of rope and wire entanglements. In 1810 the patience of the commoners was exhausted and they ordered the doorkeepers “immediately after the adjournment of the house this day to remove from the Conference Hall, any rope or wires, or other apparatus there found for the purpose of rope or wire dancing, or any hook or staple attached to the wall of said Hall for such purpose, and to prevent in the future the introduction for any such purpose.”98

98 House Journal, December 6, 1810.

 PUBLIC CELEBRATIONS

Any public celebration, such as the Fourth of July, an agricultural fair, a political barbecue, or the visit of a national hero, was a gala day in town. The intendant of police, the magistrate, or mayor, as this officer was variously called, was always on hand to make a speech and take charge of the ceremonies. Sometimes the town commission paid for the expenses of the celebration out of the public treasury. In 1825, for instance, when General Lafayette was in North Carolina accompanied by his son, Washington Lafayette, and his secretary, M. Levasseur, the town commission of Fayetteville resolved “to appropriate from the funds of the town such sum as shall be necessary for the accommodation of Gen. LaFayette during his stay in this place, in such manner as shall comport with the dignity of that distinguished personage and the respectability of the town of Fayetteville.”99

99 Carolina Observer, February 24, 1825.

Lafayette's visit, indeed, set the whole State agog. Governor Burton appointed Colonel William Polk, a polished gentleman who had the distinction of having been wounded at Brandywine, to meet the General at the Virginia line and escort him to the capital. Colonel Thomas Polk, in company with a corps of cavalry from Mecklenburg and Cabarrus and nearly a hundred citizens on horseback, met the party near Raleigh. At the city limits Captain John S. Ruffin, commanding the Raleigh Blues, met the cavalcade and led the procession to the Governor's Mansion amid the firing of cannon and the hearty shouts of the assembled people. Governor Burton received the General with a formal address in which he welcomed the French soldier to the State in the name of the people of North Carolina. Lafayette replied briefly, and, after partaking of some refreshments, he was escorted in state to the Capitol to view Canova's statue of Washington. The sight of Lafayette riding with the state officers to the capitol in a handsome barouche drawn by four iron-grays sent the patriotic crowds into a wild burst of huzzas. At the State House, Colonel William Polk addressed the General in behalf of the citizens of Raleigh and then introduced him to the students of the University who had come from Chapel Hill to pay their respects to the State's guest. The day closed with a dinner at five o'clock and a ball in the evening.100

100 Catawba Journal, March 15, 1825. Dr. Battle gives a slightly different account in his Early History of Raleigh, pp. 87-88. Lafayette spent two days in Raleigh and then proceeded to Fayetteville.

President Washington's southern tour in 1791 had set the style for pompous celebrations, it having been in North Carolina, as elsewhere in the South, more like a royal progress than the visit of a “plain republican president.” In 1819 President Monroe with Secretary John C. Calhoun and “his Lady” were in North Carolina. As the “Presidential cortege” approached Wilmington, it was met on the old New Bern road by Colonel Cowan, commanding the Wilmington Light Horse. “They proceeded down Market to Front and up Front to the Wilmington Hotel, where the usual formalities of a grand reception were tendered the President.”101

101 Raleigh Minerva, April 23, 1819; Sprunt, op. cit., pp. 209-10.

Edenton had “honored the company by a grand ball and supper in the evening, after a sumptuous dinner in the large room of the Court-house.”102

102 Sawyer, op. cit., p. 22.

 In March, 1849, when “the ex-President, Mr. Polk, and Lady and Niece, together with Mr. Secretary Walker and Niece, and Mr. Grahame, solicitor of the Treasury, and Lady” reached Wilmington, “their arrival was heralded by the booming of cannon, the ringing of bells, and the floating of banners and streamers from stalls, housetops, and mastheads.”103

103 Sprunt, op. cit., p. 211.

 The visits of President Fillmore, President Buchanan, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Edward Everett were also occasions for grand celebrations, a dinner at which the town magistrate was toastmaster, or perhaps a ball conducted by the town commission.104

104 See ibid., pp. 212-22.

A guest who caused a furor without the usual pomp, was Mrs. Anne Royall, author of the Black Book, Tennessean, and other works. “Her arrival immediately threw our tranquil metropolis in commotion,” wrote the Star upon her arrival in Raleigh. “Many visited her, while others seemed desirous of avoiding her. . . . All who saw her affirmed that they had never seen her like before.”105

105 March 4, 1830.

Most newspapers ridiculed her openly, referring to her as “Mrs. Napoleon le Grande.” Great crowds flocked to town to see “this bold woman” more from the desire to view a natural curiosity than to extend hospitalities to her.106

106 From Mrs. Royall's account of the visit see her Southern Tour, I, 120-68.

The celebration of the Fourth of July was a civic occasion when the townspeople laid aside their work and joined in a public demonstration. The day was usually announced at dawn by the firing of cannon; or, if the town were not fortunate enough to possess a cannon, by the firing of thirteen rounds of small arms. At nine o'clock the independent volunteer corps usually assembled at the courthouse and marched to one of the village churches were the inhabitants had already assembled to hear the reading of the Declaration of Independence and a patriotic address. This over, the corps usually had dinner at the courthouse or at a tavern where as many toasts were drunk as there were States in the Union. If the dinner was turned into a political barbecue or picnic held at some nearby spring or grove, each toast was usually followed by firing a salute.

Frequently a small group of prominent men of the town would have a separate dinner where they made toasts and sang patriotic tunes. In the afternoon the ladies of the gentry might give a tea in a grove in the vicinity of the town where vocal and instrumental music was the chief entertainment. The day usually closed with a subscription ball.

In 1823 the residents of Hillsboro celebrated the Fourth by gathering at the Red House near Murphey's Hill at 11 o'clock where they heard Victor Murphey read the Declaration of Independence and Dr. James A. Craig deliver an oration. At 12:30 the procession to the courthouse began, “preceded by a fine band of musicians playing Jefferson and Liberty. During the march there were two companies of infantry under parade, commanded by captains Russell and M'Daniel, which fired a round for each of the United States. When the procession had finished, the company partook of a plentiful dinner and refreshments prepared by captain Wm. Jones.” After “the cloth was removed,” the company drank twenty-four toasts, among them, “The Constitution of North Carolina—There is no state constitution so perfect, but that time may discover in it defects, and wisdom and justice suggest amendments”; “The Old Batchelors—May the law of the land be, that in winter, they sleep under a linen sheet; and in summer three dutch blankets (Cheers, three times three! ! !)”107

107 Hillsborough Recorder, July 16, 1823.

Other occasions, such as Washington's birthday, a national political victory, the completion of a railroad line, or the gathering of a state convention, might also be celebrated with oratory, feasting, and drinking. In 1800 nearly a thousand attended in Raleigh the celebration of “the birth of the late General George Washington.” The occasion was a solemn one because of his recent death. “The day was announced by the firing of Cannon; and . . . the Inhabitants . . . assembled below the Court-House in Fayetteville-Street; and . . . moved in procession to the State-House . . . the bell tolling and minute-guns firing during the procession.” “A numerous and respectable assemblage of Ladies” had already gathered at the State House to hear the oration.108

108 Raleigh Register, February 25, 1800.

Warrenton celebrated Thomas Jefferson's inauguration with “the firing of sixteen platoons . . . (they having no cannon).” At 12 o'clock “the inhabitants from all parts of the county arrived, with countenances expressive of their feelings, and after mutual congratulations upon the happy cause of their meeting, sat down at two o'clock to a large and substantial dinner.” Two days later “the Gentlemen of the county gave a ball to their fair country-women; where harmony and good cheer, enlivened by the sprightly dance, was graced with a large collection of the fair and beautiful daughters of Columbia.”109

109 Ibid., March 10, 1801.

The celebration in Wilmington in April, 1840, of the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad was a joyful occasion.110

110 Sprunt, op. cit., p. 151.

Raleigh delayed its celebration until June so that the new capitol might be ready for inspection. Although the exhibition of a “steam carriage” was the most spectacular part of the celebration, parades, oration, and subscription balls were a part of the program. After much oratory the second day of the festival closed with a supper ball in which distinguished visitors from Virginia and the aristocracy of the State participated. Dancing began in the Senate Chamber at nine o'clock and lasted until midnight. In the Commons Hall there was conversation and a “soiree musical which left those who could not squeeze into the Ball room nothing to regret.”111

111 Raleigh Register, June 16, 1840.

 The celebration closed the following night with a ball in the Senate Chamber, “more agreeable than the preceding one,” for “the company not being so large, the dancers had a better chance, and improved it, too, by indulging in the hilarities of the evening, until a late hour.”

Thanksgiving Day was not observed regularly in North Carolina until 1849 and then without the ceremony which has later been associated with it. In 1812 President Madison set aside the third Thursday in August as a day for fasting and thanksgiving on the conduct of the War,112

112 Ibid., July 13, 1812.

and in 1815 the General Assembly of North Carolina requested the governor to set aside a day of public thanksgiving in “grateful acknowledgment for the restoration of peace to our beloved country.”113

113 Journal of the Senate of the General Assembly of North Carolina, December 15, 1815. (Hereafter cited as Senate Journal.)

 The governor accordingly issued a proclamation inviting the citizens of the State to meet in prayer and fasting in their respective communities. Many in North Carolina objected to proclamations for an annual day of thanksgiving issued by presidents of the United States on the ground that Thanksgiving Day was “a mixture of religion and civil government.” They declared, as did James Madison, that these proclamations “seemed to imply and certainly nourished the erroneous idea of a national religion.”114

114 Gaillard Hunt (ed.), “Aspects of Monopoly One Hundred Years Ago, by James Madison,” Harpers Monthly Magazine, CXXVIII, 489-95.

 Thanksgiving Day, they argued, would become in North Carolina as it had in other States another opportunity for expounding political views to the scandal of religion and the increase of party animosity.

In 1848, however, Governor W. A. Graham's recommendation for a day of annual Thanksgiving met with general favor. The Raleigh Register hastened to approve, calling on the Legislature not to let another year pass without inviting the people of the State to make Thanksgiving an annual occasion. The day should be “a season for kind, social sentiment—for the forgiveness of injuries—for acts of good neighborhood and especially for the charitable remembrance of the Poor.”115

115 December 5, 1848.

A joint resolution in response to Governor Graham's request was ratified January 16, 1849.116

116 Sessional Laws, 1848-1849, p. 239.

 It authorized the governor to set apart a day in every year for public thanksgiving and to give notice of it by proclamation.

Christmas, the one grand holiday of the year, was celebrated without official ceremony. Except for doubling the watch, the town commission ordinarily made no occasion of the day, leaving it to quiet church services, visiting parties, and pleasant family reunions. “Christmas is coming,” wrote the Wilmington Daily Journal on December 23, 1851, “. . . and were it not for the little and big niggers begging for quarters, and the ‘noise and confusion’ and the ‘Kooners,’117

117 For a description of the Kooners, Kuners, or John Canoes, as they were called, see infra, pp. 552-53.

. . . and the fire crackers, and all the other unnamed horrors and abominations, we should be much inclined to rejoice thereat. But whether we rejoice or not the egg-nog stock begins to look up. By the by, egg-nog is a most villainous compound to get sober on. The getting drunk is rather pleasant than otherwise—at least, so we have been informed.” Christmas over, the editor, reviving, no doubt, from an egg-nog jagg, wrote, “. . . some how it did seem yesterday as if the negroes had a little too big a swing.”118

118 Wilmington Daily Journal, December 26, 1851.

Eight years later the Journal wrote in a different vein: “Christmas is past. . . . The Don Quixotes were not strong. A crowd on foot preceded by an ox team was quite amusing. John Kuner was feeble. John Barleycorn retained his usual spirit, and when hit hard and often was sure to return the blow with interest. . . . With a good sense that eschews Blue-lawism, our town authorities on Christmas generally let the boys have their way so far as mere noise is concerned, although order in all essential particulars is enforced.—There was therefore much firing of crackers, rockets, sarpients, etc., and a good deal of cheering and shouting, but nothing worse, and as the night wore on even these ceased, and the town slept.”119

119 Wilmington Weekly Journal, December 29, 1859.

 FUNERAL CEREMONIES

The deaths of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Taylor were mourned in North Carolina with quiet solemnity. Each ceremony was the occasion for orations and a funeral procession. In Raleigh the funeral procession mourning President Taylor's death in 1850 was nearly a half mile in length. It formed in front of the Governor's mansion at nine o'clock. The military company in full uniform with reversed arms and shrouded colors led the parade. Next came the funeral car drawn by six white horses with housing of black, each horse being led by a groom in uniform. Eight pallbearers accompanied the hearse. After this came other citizens on horseback and on foot. The sad procession made its way to the Presbyterian Church where a eulogy was delivered by Henry W. Miller, a prominent lawyer and Whig leader of Wake County, before one of the largest audiences that had ever gathered there. The Governor's mansion, the post office, and most of the stores and private residences on Fayetteville Street were draped with black. “The measured tread of men and horses—the beat of muffled drums—the loud lamentations of cannon—the woful peal of bells—the closed stores and the mourning Statues on the side-walks—” the sincere sadness which pervaded the whole throng—“all these things spoke, in eloquent terms the sorrowful tribute of a no ordinary admiration for the living Hero, a no common grief for the departed Patriot.”120

120 Raleigh Register, July 24, 1850.

Wilmington observed a similar pageantry in April, 1850, when the body of John C. Calhoun was carried through that town on the way to Charleston.121

121 Sprunt, op. cit., pp. 170-74.

Since colonial times, a funeral had been the occasion for a solemn ritual and the gathering of large crowds. Aside from those who came from respect for the dead, large numbers flocked to the funeral out of curiosity and a desire to participate in the food provided for the entertainment of the mourners. “Provisions of some kind were set out, commonly before the door, or carried round in baskets, and spirits offered freely to those who desired,” wrote the Reverend Henry Foote in his Sketches of North Carolina in 1846. “The solemnity of the occasion was sometimes lost in the excitement, and scenes of drinking invaded the house of mourning. To preserve the appearance of religion, someone, an officer of the church, if present, was called upon to open the scene of eating and drinking by asking a blessing on the refreshments prepared.”122

122 P. 371. See also E. W. and C. M. Andrews, op. cit., p. 171; B. S. Puckle, Funeral Customs, Their Origin and Development, Chap. VI.

Barbecued meat and brandy were favorite refreshments, although the food provided by affluent families was often varied and abundant enough to be termed a feast.

In 1808, the Edenton Gazette, after recording the death of the infant daughter of a merchant of that town, observed that “the melancholy event furnished the rare and commendable instance of a funeral without a feast:”

We hope that this laudable and pious example will henceforth be universally imitated; that the house of mourning may not be decked out with the symbols of mirth and rejoicing; that the sanctity of real grief may not be profaned by a monstrous and unnatural mixture of pride, sensuality and affected sorrow; that the tear of heartfelt anguish may not be mingled with the artful whinings and grimaces of the hypocrite; and that the truly sorrowful may be allowed to mourn over the remains of their departed friends and relations in silence and godly sincerity.123

123 September 8.

Early in the century it was a custom, with those who could afford it, to provide minister and pallbearers with white scarfs and hat bands of linen of convenient quantity to make a shirt after the ceremonies were over.124

124 Attmore, op. cit., p. 18.

The scarf was usually of about three and a half yards of linen. It was draped from the right shoulder and caught in a knot with a white rose and ribbons just under the left arm so that the ends of the scarf might flutter gracefully in the breeze. The band for the hat was about a yard and a half of linen. It was tied about the crown so that it might have two long streamers.

The Sunday following the funeral or at some other convenient time the pallbearers, wearing their decorations, usually assembled at a tavern and proceeded in a body to the church where they were met at the door by the minister who was also decked in his symbols of mourning. This was the occasion of the funeral oration, a ceremony entirely distinct from the actual burial. Sometimes the oration was delayed several months, even years, so that it was not uncommon for a man with crepe on his hat and sleeve to take his second wife to his first wife's funeral. The Reverend R. R. Michaux relates that he once attended “the preaching of a whole family's funeral, some of whom had been buried about fourteen years.”125

125 Sketches of Life in North Carolina, p. 33.

Although the elaborateness of a funeral ceremony usually indidated the social status of the family, there were some who were repelled by such a display. John Bonner, a rich bachelor and member of the General Assembly, was buried with a simple ceremony. The funeral was conducted at his home about a mile from Washington. The house was crowded with men and women sitting and standing about the corpse. The coffin had already been nailed and covered with a sheet when the minister arrived. After a lengthy service from the liturgy of the Church of England and a simple funeral sermon, the coffin was taken to the family cemetery by six pallbearers. The hand which supported the coffin was covered with a white napkin; on the left arm was a black ribbon.126

126 Attmore, op. cit., p. 25.

It was customary to send printed invitations, bordered in black, both to the burial and the funeral oration. In the towns, these invitations often took the form of handbills which little Negro boys distributed from door to door. Deep mourning was the custom throughout the ante-bellum period. Men sometimes wore crepe on their left sleeves a year or two and widows, who did not remarry, wore heavy veils and black the rest of their lives.

 SPECIAL DAYS

Court week, general muster, and election day were always busy times for the town commission. Country folk thronged to town in great numbers; “gingy” cake and grog vendors sold their wares on every corner; and all the rowdies from the surrounding neighborhoods were on hand. The town commission met the occasion by licensing vendors and doubling the local police.

Enterprising merchants made the most of the occasions by selling their wares at good prices; and politicians, by treating the crowds with tumblers of brandy. If a fiddler appeared, someone might start a dance or “h'ist” a tune. Quarrelling and fighting were usual occurrences.

In 1805 the Pasquotank County Court sought to quiet court week by passing an order “that no person or persons shall erect or form a stand or Booth within the confines or bounds of the public ground in Elizabeth City at the time of the setting of the Court or at any other public time as the clamour and noise of company interrupts the business of the Court and the business transacted in the Courthouse at other times.”127

127 Pasquotank County Court Minutes, June term, 1805.

Public entertainers, such as wire dancers, Negro minstrels, “Don Quixote Invincibles,” and sleight of hand performers were frequently present to lend gaiety to the transaction of judicial business. John H. Bryan, attending Superior Court at Oxford, wrote his wife that a group of traveling players drew large crowds every night. “Their singing & dancing,” he said, “is as much enjoyed by the country folk as the opera is by the more refined citizens of N. Y.”128

128 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, September 5, 1850.

Battalion musters129

129 Supra, pp. 102-4. Captain's companies usually mustered at the crossroads and battalions within the vicinity of a town.

and elections130

130 Supra, pp. 104-5.

 were also occasions of general celebration. An election day in 1840 at Germantown in Hyde County, resulting in Edward Stanly's election to Congress, was an occasion for feasting and drinking as described by Whig leader, W. B. Hodges:

I got in the Village early in the morning. Two handsome flags, with Stanly and Liberty hoisted—a fine dinner was prepared and a plenty of the ardent, set out (we the people of Hyde County would not suffer the little ‘Conquerer’ to be at any expense). After the Polls was opened, the Hall gentry began to rave, curse and threaten. I took my station, at the ballot box—determined to see that there was no foul play. I kept my station until the Polls was closed. The patient democrats were routed—they beat a retreat, and a considerable number of them were found lying along the road.131

131 MS in Pettigrew Papers, July 27, 1839.

 Had the writer been impartial in relating the events of the day, he would have added that a goodly number of Whigs were also sleeping off the effect of too much “ardent” or boisterously celebrating their victory in the village streets with “three sheets in the wind.”132

132 A common term for drunkenness.

As electioneering and party organization came to play an important part in political campaigns, public barbecues grew in popularity as a means of getting votes and of celebrating victories. Distinguished personages received invitations, such as the following one sent from Hillsboro in 1836 by a Whig leader, Cadwallader Jones:

The whigs of Orange having resolved to give a Public Barbecue on the southern bank of Enoe, near this place, on the 17th day of September next, in celebration of the triumph of Whig principles and constitutional liberty, so happily evidenced by the late elections in this state, beg leave respectfully to invite your presence and participation with them on that occasion.133

133 MS in Pettigrew Papers, August 30, 1836.

All others were informed of the celebration through the columns of the local newspaper. Instead of barbecue, a dinner at some tavern might be given in honor of a man whose candidacy was being promoted.

In 1840 these political meetings were at their height in the log cabin and hard cider campaign for Harrison. Many towns had log cabins reserved for the semi-weekly meetings of the Tippecanoe Club. After a lengthy political address, brandy and roast beef were usually passed around in large quantities. Whig leaders built a log cabin in Raleigh and christened it Harrison Hall. After a three-hour “oratorical feast,” prominent Raleigh women, appropriately gowned in calico, would serve barbecue and brandy.

In July, 1840, Whigs held an elaborate “electioneering” in Salisbury for Rowan and fifteen neighboring counties. The day was a succession of speeches, parades, barbecues, banquets, hard cider, and log cabins. North Carolina had never before seen such social gatherings in the name of politics. Democrats, quick to follow the example, nevertheless, shrewdly referred for years afterward to the “drunken campaign” of 1840. Henry Clay's visit in 1844 was another opportunity for a great political festivity. Before his arrival, “Hickory Mountain” wrote to the Raleigh Register: “Money is scarce up this way, but if full cribs, fat smoke-houses, and flowing cellars will aid, just tell the feeding committee to serve up such a bill of fare as they want.”134

134 April 12, 1844.

It is difficult in many instances to distinguish between the civic life of the ante-bellum town and its recreational activities, for the celebration of the Fourth of July or the hilarities of a political barbecue were as much diversions as they were civic duties. Nevertheless, the social life of a town from the point of view of ante-bellum days was to be found in the gay scenes of a subscription ball, in the dignified lectures of the lyceum club, or in the uproar of the cock pit and the race track. These activities are another phase of town life in ante-bellum North Carolina.

 CHAPTER VI TOWN LIFE

THE “Cotton Plant,” a “new and elegant Steam Boat,” rode easily at her moorings in the Cape Fear at Fayetteville's main dock before making her maiden trip to Wilmington on April 12, 1826. Her owner had invited a large party of ladies and gentlemen aboard to witness the first performance of the boat and “to enjoy an aquatic excursion.” “Freighted with the beauty and fashion of the town,” the boat proceeded a few miles down the river; “while music, dancing, and other diversions, and a profusion of good cheer, enlivened the scene.”1

1 Carolina Observer, April 12, 1826.

For days afterward, crowds overflowed the docks when the “Cotton Plant” arrived in Wilmington or in Fayetteville, but after the novelty of a steamboat on the Cape Fear wore off, the towns returned to their usual order and quiet.

A traveler in North Carolina early in the century found the quiet little towns of the State a relief from “the bustle, the speculation, and the embarrassment of large Cities.” Raleigh was “an Oasis of calm repose” with “a polished simplicity of manners, which was very pleasing.”2

2 Raleigh Register, June 4, 1838.

A resident, however, might find this calm to be only dull monotony, and long for a thunder bolt to “dispell the unwelcomed enchantment.” In 1843, for instance, “an esteemed Correspondent” of the Raleigh Register lamented “the want of any place of amusement or recreation, in our little City.”3

3 October 10.

The townspeople relieved the routine of every-day life with friendly visits and petty gossip. Indeed, the Moral Society of Charlotte appointed a committee in 1826 which presented as the first grievances on its list:

The busy-bodies who walk about town; The inveterate chewers of tobacco; and The excessive hard drinkers.4

4 Catawba Journal, July 11, 1826.

In the course of each day's work the men of the town were accustomed to “take a daily lounge.” The village tavern, the grog shop, the courthouse, and the corner store were favorite places of rendezvous.

PUBLIC SOCIAL CENTERS

A town was not a town without a tavern. Almost every community of more than a thousand inhabitants had two or more of these “public houses” where the men of the upper classes congregated to drink grog and talk politics. A young aristocrat was said to have received half his education hanging about a tavern, and the chief occupation of a dandy was thought to have been dangling his legs on the front porch of the most fashionable hotel in town.5

5 Edenton Gazette, December 24, 1811.

Early in the century, the leading taverns in Raleigh were Casso's near the State House and the Indian Queen next door to the courthouse. For many years, the town bell was suspended at Casso's corner. In 1812 Charles Parish built a three-story brick building, one of the first in Raleigh, which he called the Eagle Hotel.6

6 The proprietor ran the following advertisement in the leading southern papers: “Charles Parish informs his friends and the public that his tavern is now open for the reception of travellers and boarders in the new three story building north of the State House and fronting Union Square. The house is spacious, completely finished, and well furnished, and the stables equal to any. For a well supplied table (served from a neat and cleanly kitchen) luxuries of the rooms, beds, attendance, &c. &c., it is determined that this tavern shall excel any in the Southern States.”

 By 1835 all the old names had disappeared and new ones now took their place: Guion's Hotel, Carter's Hotel, Blatchford's Hotel, and seven boarding houses, including Miss Pulliam's which would accommodate forty persons.7

7 Raleigh Register, November 17, 1835. For a description of the hotels in Warrenton, see Montgomery, op. cit., pp. 61-75.

The Lafayette was for many years the most popular hotel in Fayetteville. When Captain Basil Hall of the British Royal Navy toured North Carolina with his family in 1828 he took rooms at the Lafayette, and found himself to his “surprise and joy” lodged “in one of the best hotels in the country.” It had “a number of rooms, with single beds, fire-places, and bells, . . . several handsome drawingrooms, and apartments particularly suited for the private accommodation of travelling families.”8

8 Op. cit., II, 180. The Lafayette was destroyed in the fire of 1831.

In 1849 the Fayetteville, said to have been the handsomest and best equipped hotel in the State, was built and at once became popular.

As grog shops became more numerous, despite the temperance movement, they came to rival the tavern as a daily gathering place. The gentry still clung to the tavern bar, but the lower classes turned to the tippling houses, known also as doggeries. “It is notorious,” said a citizen of Raleigh in 1856, “that more ardent spirits are consumed here than at any former period.”9

9 North Carolina Standard, January 16, 1856.

The grog shop was especially popular on holidays and Saturday nights. The practice of having a Saturday night frolic was common even among the upper classes. In 1820 a reformer declared that drinking in public was “very prevalent in what is called the higher circles.” “For instance,” he said, “a set of young fellows about town will get together, drink until they are shamefully intoxicated, and then call it taking a frolic! I have known it to happen that their friends had to send for them and put them to bed.”10

10 Western Carolinian, July 25, 1820.

In 1832 residents of Hillsboro petitioned the General Assembly against grog shops, saying that they became, despite every effort that the owners made to conduct them properly, the “rendezvous for all the idle, profane, drunken and profligate of the Town & its vicinity, to the evil example of the young & unexperienced, and to the disturbance of the public peace.”11

11 MS in Legislative Papers, 1832.

 The petitioners begged in vain for a law making it an indictable offense to retail spirituous liquors of any kind within the limits of the town. Before 1800, however, the Legislature had begun the policy of permitting town commissions to pass upon the application of those wishing to retail liquors and by 1860 it had extended this privilege to twenty-three towns. In 1844 the Guilford County Court had refused to grant any petitions asking for retail liquor licenses; but when the case reached the Supreme Court, Judge Ruffin declared that a county court did not have the power to prohibit entirely the retailing of liquors.12

12 Attorney General v. Justices of Guilford, 27 N. C., 315.

The townspeople were fond of gathering at the village stores where everything from “Nigger shoes” to a yard of broadcloth might be purchased, served up with politics and town gossip. Small wooden buildings housed most of the village stores. Sometimes the money invested in stock would not have bought a workable Negro of any description. William H. Tucker, founder of the prosperous firm of W. H. and R. S. Tucker and Company, opened a store in Raleigh in 1818 with a cash capital of $125. Previous to this, Randolph Webb had at “the sign of the Mortar, nearly opposite Capt. Mitchell's tavern,” one of the leading stores in Raleigh. He kept on hand “a general Assortment of Medicines, Paints, Oils and Turpentine; China Glass, Queens & Hardware; Stationery; Groceries and Confectionary; with foreign and domestic fruits:”

All of which he is determined to sell low for ready money, or paper negotiable at either of the Banks; or he will receive in exchange, bees wax, tallow, flax-seed and cammomile flowers. All applications and orders, accompanied with the foregoing articles of exchange, will be thankfully received, and executed with the utmost dispatch. He also keeps on hand Stamped Paper of various denominations; and will receive and dispose of, on Commission, Goods and Produce of every description.13

13 Raleigh Register, February 10, 1815. See also Sprunt, op. cit., pp. 166-67; Montgomery, op. cit., pp. 76-110.

As the ante-bellum period wore on the mercantile business experienced greater specialization. Grocery stores, dry goods stores, drug stores, jewellers' and stationers' shops, and bookstores began to appear where once the general store had served for all.

Nevertheless, the popularity of congregating at places where things were bought and sold never waned. In 1827 the shop talk of Fayetteville was violently agitated for more than a week over a question of such interest as to supersede all other topics of conversation. The presidential election, the West Indian trade, the price of cotton, the weather, everything gave way to a knotty question propounded in the National Intelligencer: “How many dollars will 500 cents multiplied by 500 cents produce?” Bets ran high. The question was hotly argued day and night without being settled. A few insisted that the answer was $25, but little faith was placed in it and sums varying from two and a half cents to $2,500 were bet upon as being correct.14

14 Carolina Observer, January 10, 1827.

In fair weather the men took their problems outside. A few town loafers might sit on a box in the sun all day whittling away at a pine stick and spinning yarns; but the merchants, lawyers, and planters chose rather to stand in groups at a favorite corner, in front of the post office or on the courthouse steps and discuss the news of the day. This was so cherished a custom that groups of men might be seen on the street engaged in conversation at almost any time during the day except from one to three o'clock in the afternoon in mid-summer. The women, too, were not above the pleasure of a stroll on a public street, although no “lady” would be guilty of pausing to greet a friend for more than a few minutes. Fayetteville Street early became a favorite parade ground on Sunday afternoon for the belles and beaux of Raleigh. Newspaper correspondents were sometimes ungallant enough to condemn the Sunday afternoon stroll as a shameful indulgence of the women in their fondness for dress and display.

The village church, like the country church, was a center of activity in every community. The building itself was the meeting place of most of the reform and educational societies of the period. Church work and its related activities furnished the ante-bellum woman almost her only opportunity for public service.15

15 Infra, pp. 424-26.

The village academy was also beginning to play a leading role in town life at the opening of the century. Sometimes the school contained an auditorium large enough to accommodate village audiences and thus it soon became the recreational center of the community. The academy programs, the public examinations, the concerts, and the commencement exercises were welcomed interruptions. It was customary for academy teachers to quiz their pupils once or twice a year in oral examinations before the elite of the town, the ministers and lawyers sometimes joining in the questioning. In 1821 the semi-annual examination of the students of Raleigh Academy closed with the presentation of honorary certificates and gold medals. Dr. James M. Henderson delivered “a very appropriate Address” in behalf of the trustees, and the Amateurs' Band furnished music for the occasion.16

16 Raleigh Register, June 8, 1821.

In 1854 George Setzer wrote to a friend in Raleigh:

“We hade the jollest time here at the end of our School ever was saw in Newton. They had the Lincolnton band up to glorify the occasion. They done things up tolerable brown, all went off first rate.”17

17 MS in Legislative Papers, 1854: George Setzer to J. F. Hoke.

The ceremony of crowning the queen of May, revived by the “female academies,” always drew large crowds. By four o'clock in the afternoon of May 1, 1825, most of the townspeople of Charlotte had gathered on the college green to witness the crowning of Miss Eliza Henderson. “Under some large oaks, whose boughs afforded protection to the company against the rays of the sun, an elegant arch, decorated with such flowers as are the pride of May, had been constructed by the hands of female ingenuity.” The flower-laden throne was placed under the arch. At five o'clock the queen entered, “attended by her festive train, adorned with wreaths of flowers.” A little girl addressed Her Majesty “in a distinct and correct manner,” and then stepped aside for another to place the crown of flowers on the Queen's head. During the ceremony one of the teachers played on a piano, and a band of amateur musicians furnished music for a rural dance by the queen and her train.18

18 Catawba Journal, May 10, 1825.

The Masonic lodges and, after 1841, the Odd Fellows were not only important social and recreational agencies in town life, but the buildings which they erected also provided the community with gathering places. The Royal White Hart Lodge of Halifax was also the schoolhouse for several years.19

19 W. C. Allen, History of Halifax County, p. 94.

In Raleigh, however, Hiram Lodge, Number Forty, for many years kept the hall sacred to the use of the order, having refused in 1827 to lend the refreshment room for a formal ball in honor of Governor H. G. Burton.20

20 John Nichols, History of Hiram Lodge, No. 40, p. 20.

 The first floor of Masonic Hall in Fayetteville was the town theater. In September, 1851, “Dr. A. Crane, Professor of Phrenology, Physiology, and Physiognomy” was delivering lectures in the Wilmington Masonic Hall, describing “the ancestry and the physical organization and predispositions to any disease” of all heads presented for examination.21

21 Wilmington Daily Journal, September 11, 1851.

 SUBSCRIPTION BALLS

Subscription balls were already popular at the turn of the century, and the vogue continued throughout the ante-bellum period. In 1803 a few gentlemen of Raleigh met and resolved “to establish Subscription assemblies for the season, instead of having occasional Balls as heretofore,” and set the dates at the second Friday in November, January, February, March, April, May, and the Fourth of July.22

22 Raleigh Register, February 8, 1803.

Usually from three to ten managers would be appointed for the season and they would have charge of all arrangements, such as obtaining a ballroom and providing the music and refreshments. They fixed the subscription price, usually five dollars, and determined the eligibility of an applicant. A general rule prevailed that all “respectable” men should be permitted to subscribe. The managers also assigned dance partners, conducted the introduction of strangers, and extended invitations to visitors.23

23 The following invitation was written in accordance with the best social usage of the day: “Mrs. Ferguson

Is respectfully invited to attend a Dancing Party, to be held at the Lafayette Hotel, on tomorrow Evening the 15th inst.

L. D. Henry H. W. AyerD. Jordan, Jr. T. L. Hybart Managers” December 14, 1829.

MS in Fayetteville Papers, 1820-1871.

The manner in which these public balls were conducted led a visitor in the State to marvel at the “republican equality” of the social life. “There was no invidious distinction, based on wealth, or station, or party spirit,” he said. “Industry and integrity, and good behavior were sufficient passports to public associations and private civilities.”24

24 Raleigh Register, June 4, 1838.

Had the visitor been intimately acquainted with the life of the town he would have observed that a gentleman's daughter seldom danced with a mechanic's son. At a ball in Warrenton several ladies refused to dance with a butcher's son because he was beneath their social class.25