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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

25 Battle, Early History of Raleigh, p. 75

 After the regular sets on the program, dancing was usually confined to those who visited in the same circles.

In 1820 a correspondent of the Hillsborough Recorder objected to subscription balls because they created class feeling between those who attended and those who did not. “The former feel a disposition to look down with contempt upon the latter, as beneath their rank and standing in society,” he said. He also thought them injurious to female health and morality. A ballroom lighted with many candles and filled with sixty or seventy persons was not a suitable place for exercise. Young ladies, thinly clad and overheated with dancing, rushed out into the open air and as a result caught violent colds and coughs, which too frequently terminated fatally. Then, too, when a girl's mind was once possessed with the vain though pleasing anticipation of a dancing party, she could no longer pursue her school work calmly or attend to her domestic duties. And finally, subscription balls “nourished and increased the disinclination to attend divine worship,” already too prevalent.26

26 August 20.

The evangelical denominations did not have the same success in the towns as they did in the country in their opposition to dancing. Such pressure was brought to bear upon the Reverend Dr. Freeman, rector of Christ's Church, Raleigh, because he disapproved of dancing that he resigned in 1840. In his formal resignation the rector stated that he did not deem it consistent with the vows taken by the communicants for them “to give at their own houses, or attend at the houses of others, those worldly entertainments, commonly called dancing parties” or to “attend places of worldly amusements, such as Theatres, Circuses, and Balls.”27

27 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, 1840.

In reply to this charge, George E. Badger and John H. Bryan stated on behalf of the vestry that there were many things in the conduct of life, “on which every member of the church has a right to form his own judgment, and is not justly liable to condemnation for it by them who embrace an opposite opinion.”28

28 Ibid.

 Undoubtedly, however, the lower social classes in the towns came to join with the clergy in considering ball room dancing an evil, just as they considered evil most things from which social status barred their participation and of which, consequently, they had little knowledge.

Dancing was, indeed, the favorite form of amusement at any social gathering of the gentry. Their balls were usually formal and well appointed. A Raleigh ballroom was “spacious and handsomely furnished.” “A range of sofas, rich and yielding, were placed around the room; from the centre of the ceiling a large chandelier was suspended, from which a flood of trembling light was thrown over the interesting company.”29

29 Star, November 8, 1837.

The women were clad in “light, flowing garb” and the men in dark broadcloth and satin waistcoats. Dancing parties, as distinguished from balls, were, as a rule, informal and lively.

In 1801 John Bernard, an English comedian, attended a wedding party in North Carolina, “which wound up with violent exercise under the title of a ball”:

The company, on their arrival, had been shown promiscuously into two rooms, well-lighted and divided by a thin partition, both being laid out with tea, coffee, sling, and toddy. The sexes, however, soon separated, and, for the space of an hour, the merriment seemed equal on each side of the wainscot. At length the host gave the signal for clearing decks and preparing for action; the tables and partition-boards (sliding in a groove) were instantly removed by the blacks, to form the requisite arena, and the seats were ranged around the walls. The musicians (half a dozen operators on catgut, of the same color . . .) were then introduced at one end, and the diversion commenced by a gentleman leading a lady to the middle of the room, and, after a formal salutation, bursting into an eccentric movement, which to me had a new and peculiar significance. No regular steps, but a lattitude of shuffle was adopted, in a system of alternate pursuit and retreat, now the lady, now her partner gaining the advantage, testing at every turn the respective strength of their sinews.30

30 Op. cit., pp. 207-8.

At the opening of the century, the favorite dances in North Carolina, even among the upper classes, were still the rural dances, or “scampers” as they were called. As late as 1822 William B. Shepard, later a member of Congress, found “the collected beauty and fashion” of Elizabeth City dancing only scampers. “I reprobated the things and collected a set in a cotillion,” he wrote his sister, “but I found that I was too deep for them.”31

31 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, February 14, 1822.

Dancing masters were teaching “the fashionable light steps,” the minuets, and Parsby's Rigadoon, early in the century in Raleigh, New Bern, Wilmington, and Fayetteville. Stephen Perrin was one of Raleigh's first instructors in “this polite branch of education.”32

32 Raleigh Register, February 10, 1801.

In 1805, William H. Clay, an itinerant dancing master, who claimed to know thirty-one different steps “in the latest and fashionable Dances,” opened a school in April at Mr. Mear's house in Raleigh.33

33 Ibid., March 11, 1805.

 Under the influence of these dancing masters, fashionable society in the State gradually accepted the cotillion which remained the most popular form of dancing throughout the ante-bellum period. In 1858 “Prof. P. Whitaker . . . reputed as adept in that graceful accomplishment,” was teaching “Polkas, Shottisches, Highland Fling, Cotillions,” and “those tasteful and highly agreeable Fancy Dances” at Williams' Hotel in Oxford.34

34 Leisure Hour, May 6, 1858.

The “flowing bowl” was as necessary a part of the “mazy dance” as were the colored “operators on catgut.” Wine, whisky, and brandy were sometimes served at a dance, but the favorite refreshment was fruit punch flavored with domestic peach moby35

35 Stephen A. Norfleet manufactured at his Bertie County plantation large quantities of peach moby for exportation. See MS in Norfleet Farm Record Book.

or blackberry wine or with an imported liqueur. Although some-drunkenness did occur, the amount has been exaggerated by advocates of the temperance movement and those opposed to dancing. Usually, respect for the host and hostess “gave to all a dignity of sentiment and manners that forbade excess, and preserved the most perfect decorum.”36

36 Raleigh Register, July 15, 1800.

In 1820, however, one who called himself “A Stranger” declared in the July 25 issue of the Western Carolinian that it was customary for the beaux of Salisbury either to go to a subscription dance disgracefully drunk or to get so “blue” after arriving as to stagger in their movements. Instead of being ordered from the floor, they were invited to walk up to the side-board and take another drink, while a servant now and then was sent with water and lemonade for the ladies. These “drunken fellows” would dance three or four times in succession with favorite girls and leave all the married women and old maids to shift for themselves. If a staggering beau sometimes ruffled the cape and tread on the toes of a fair one, she smiled her forgiveness for she preferred having a staggering beau to none at all. The “Stranger” later admitted that this description was too highly colored but insisted that it was at least half true.

TEAS AND SET SUPPERS

The gentry occasionally relieved the boredom of village life with teas, set suppers, and visiting parties. A large tea party in Halifax, as described by the North-Carolina Journal, was “decorated with taste and elegance, adorned by beauty and wit, enlivened with vocal and instrumental music, and the evening gaily closed with the sprightly dance.”37

37 July 9, 1805.

Small teas were less formal and of more frequent occurrence. A few friends might be invited to call at five-thirty. They would be served in the parlor with muffins, beaten biscuits, waffles, nut bread, thinly sliced ham, brandied peaches, ginger and lemon preserves, fine coffee and tea. The hostess poured the hot drinks at a mahogany tea table in the parlor while a black servant passed about the tidbits. After a pleasant hour over the teacups, the guests left for home or, upon invitation, spent the rest of the evening in conversation and music. Instead of an invitation to tea, friends might be asked “to take a glass of wine immediately after supper.”

In 1833 a New England visitor described an evening after supper spent in the home of a member of the gentry in Salisbury as a delightful affair: “Wine, almonds, and raisins are set in the room and you help yourself when you please—there is no sitting around the fire—but all is life, and conversation and music. I did not take much part in the conversation—it was light, but with sense enough scattered through it, to keep it from flying off to the moon— . . . broke up about 12.”38

38 Barnard, op. cit., p. 334.

A party was a general term for an evening of conversation, music, and elaborate refreshments to which formal invitations had been issued. The company, both ladies and gentlemen, usually assembled at eight o'clock and remained until twelve. A “set supper” required a large dining table and a superabundance of dainties. In 1828 when John H. Bryan, who was in Washington serving a term as United States congressman, found that his wife had undertaken a set supper he was irritated at her extravagance:

I wonder . . . that you should have had one of those old fashioned, countryfied set suppers (you have no room fit for one—or for an entertainment) as if instead of assembling for the feast of the soul, the body & appetite were principally to be gratified—you had so fair an opportunity too, of introducing the Washington style—which is more convenient, much cheaper & more rational.—If that style too should prevail, the parties might be much more frequent, as persons could afford to give five for one of the old style.39

39 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, January 19, 1828.

The Washington style of entertaining had little vogue in North Carolina, for the practice of serving a variety of heavy and expensive foods prevailed throughout the ante-bellum period.40

40 Mary Mason in her Young Housewife's Counsellor and Friend, p. 339, says that “a meat supper should consist of a cold round or Alamode beef, ham, chicken salad, oysters, roasted turkeys or other fowls, smoked tongues, lobster, celery in glasses, rasped rolls, sandwiches, crackers, biscuit, etc., wines, if you choose. . . .”

Mrs. Bryan, perhaps, had forgotten her husband's rebuke of twelve years earlier when she wrote to him in 1840: “Ma had her party last Thursday, it was very pleasant. I think you would have enjoyed it, she had many good things to eat.”41

41 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, February 21, 1840.

The members of the lower social classes had neither the time nor the money to indulge in such festivities. Their wives gave no formal teas or set suppers. Domestic duties kept them thoroughly occupied. The lower classes did have occasional fireside chats at which a bottle of “home-made” might be passed, but their chief diversions were those to be enjoyed at public gatherings in common with the rest of the townspeople.

The young mechanics and store clerks might decide to have a charivari, and, after all were in bed, serenade the town with a mighty beating of tin pans and buckets. Every town had a group of rowdies which could always be relied upon to play pranks at unexpected times; nor were the rowdies always confined to the lower classes. The prank would be hatched over a bottle of whisky.42

42 Raleigh Register, October 12, 1850.

If it were cold weather the scheme perhaps would be to ring the town bell sharply at midnight and, amid the rapid shooting of guns, to give the alarm of fire. As the citizens would come hurrying to the scene with night shirts flapping in the winter breeze, someone against whom the disturbers had a grudge would suddenly be drenched with a bucket of water. In the confusion which would follow the rowdies would make their escape.

“When a spree breaks out” in town, wrote the Carolina Watchman of Salisbury in 1845, the rowdies “seem mostly inclined to make awful noises and to sing pretty songs. . . . We have heard them, before now, braying like asses; and bellowing like bulls, and bull frogs. If they do mischief at all, it is more frequently on the small order; such as breaking decanters and glasses, shattering chairs and tables, exchanging sign-boards, taking carriages apart, piling boxes and barrels in the streets, &c.”43

43 September 20.

In 1858, however, rowdies of Hillsboro perpetrated “a gross outrage” which led to the arrest of three of the young fellows.44

44 Hillsborough Recorder quoted in Raleigh Register, October 13, 1858.

 BENEVOLENT AND LITERARY CLUBS

The townspeople occasionally formed clubs and societies which afforded recreation for the members and not infrequently had a salutary effect upon the life of the whole town. This was true of most of the women's clubs which were concerned chiefly with charitable work. Foreign mission societies were the most general type of women's clubs throughout the ante-bellum period but female benevolent societies45

45 The female benevolent societies incorporated during this period are as follows: in 1812 the Newbern Female Charitable Society; in 1813 the Female Orphan Asylum Society of Fayetteville; in 1817 the Female Benevolent Society of Wilmington; in 1821 the Raleigh Female Benevolent Society; in 1830 the Dorcas Society of Elizabeth City; in 1833 the Ladies Working Society of St. James' Church of Wilmington; in 1852 the Ladies Benevolent Society of Wilmington; in 1854 the Female Benevolent Society of New Bern.

were also active in the large towns of the State. The first of these benevolent societies to be incorporated was the Newbern Female Charitable Society in 1812. It had a precarious existence for several years and finally ceased to function. Another organization under the name of the Female Benevolent Society of New Bern was organized in 1837 and chartered in 1854. This society exists today and continues to do much relief work.45a

45a Gertrude Carraway (comp.), Historic New Bern.

The Raleigh Female Benevolent Society was incorporated in 1821 with Mrs. Sarah Hawkins Polk, wife of William Polk, as “directress.” She was the life of the organization until her death, and under her influence a thriving charity school for the instruction of orphan girls was maintained. The society observed an anniversary celebration which was the occasion for a sermon at one of the local churches and the collection of funds for the maintenance of the school. In 1846 the Raleigh Register thought the society was one of the most valuable influences in the life of the town.46

46 November 13.

Prior to 1813 a group of Fayetteville women had organized themselves into the Female Orphan Asylum Society and in that year obtained a charter to carry on their school. By 1822 the society had given place to the Female Benevolent Society of North Carolina, of which Mrs. Sarah McIver was first directress.47

47 McIver, op. cit., p. 100.

This society had ceased to exist by 1830, for in that year the Female Society of Industry organized from the congregation of St. John's Church seems to have been the only active organization of the kind in Fayetteville.48

48 Infra, p. 425.

 Edward J. Hale of the Fayetteville Observer lent his support to the school, declaring in his paper that he was “pleased to see that a portion of the Ladies of our town, instead of engaging in the common crusade of Foreign Missions, have turned their attention to objects at home.49

49 April 22, 1830.

The clubs which attracted the membership of the village men were of a different nature. Some of them, such as the library, literary, and debating societies, were designed chiefly for the entertainment of the members, while others, such as the theatrical and lyceum clubs, were planned to furnish recreation for the entire town. These clubs seldom had an existence of more than ten or fifteen years, while the average duration was but two or three. A library society was organized by a number of men in the community joining in the payment of a small annual membership fee of from fifty cents to ten dollars and thus obtaining a few books which circulated among the subscribers. As the number of books increased, the society usually sought incorporation by the General Assembly. If the society prospered over a period of several years, the members occasionally established a reading room equipped with newspapers, maps, and globes.

In 1808 the students of the Raleigh Academy and a few prominent men of the town organized a circulating library club under the name of the Polemic Society. The books were kept at the academy and a student acted as librarian. No person was allowed to keep a book longer than two weeks on penalty of a fine of fifty cents or to take out more than one book on the same day.50

50 Raleigh Register, April 21, 1808.

In 1813 the society aspired toward a reading room. “There are reading rooms in Newbern, Wilmington, & Fayetteville,” wrote the Star, “and they are the fashionable resort of all respectable people of those places. It would be a reproach to this Metropolis to remain longer without such an establishment. The town wants a fashionable lounging place, where intelligent citizens and strangers can meet daily, and enjoy the pleasures of reading and conversation.”51

51 October 8, 1813.

It was not until two years later with the organization of the Raleigh Library Company, including the membership of the Polemic Society, that Raleigh actually had a reading room. The company was made up of forty members who paid a membership fee of ten dollars the first year and five dollars a year for five years thereafter. The reading room was actually opened early in November, 1815, to subscribers and “respectable strangers” who were to be in the city not longer than a week. It was provided with maps, gazetters, public documents, four magazines, and sixty-seven newspapers, with one from every State in the Union and three printed in foreign languages. General Calvin Jones, a planter near Raleigh and former co-editor of the Star, deposited there some of the articles which he had collected for a museum. The funds necessary for such an establishment were difficult to obtain so that the Library Company was forced to abandon its reading room sometime after 1820.

During this time, a collection of books which was later to develop into the North Carolina State Library had been accumulating in the various offices of the State officials. Most of these books were destroyed when the capitol burned in 1831. In 1837 the General Assembly instructed the Secretary of State to begin the collection of books for the State Library and authorized him to discharge the duty of librarian, but it was not until 1840 that the Assembly made an appropriation for the purchase of books. The few books saved from the fire were moved into the new capitol upon its completion in 1840, and, with the $500 “annually appropriated for the increase of the Public Library,” the North Carolina State Library came into existence.52

52 For eighty years, from 1841 to 1921, the annual appropriation for the purchase of books for the State Library remained at $500. The Legislature of 1921 increased the appropriation to $3,000 and the Legislature of 1923 to $5,000.

By 1860 it had grown to a thousand or more volumes, and the librarian was collecting and preserving the principal newspapers of the State, forming the basis of the valuable newspaper collection now in possession of the State Library. But the library was in an obscure corner of the capitol, little used except by state officials and a few members of the Assembly; and the townspeople of Raleigh still felt the need of a public reading room.

In 1856 the Oak City Guards had a reading room “in the second story of Smith's Building, Corner of Fayetteville and Hargett Streets, . . . very neatly fitted up,” which the corps kept open day and night for the accommodation of subscribers and strangers.53

53 Raleigh Register, November 15, 1856.

As early as 1810 the Register commented upon the increasing number of library clubs, and expressed the hope that they would become general as they were “better calculated to enlighten the Public Mind, and to improve the condition of society, than any other means that could be devised.” 54

54 July 19.

Between 1794 and 1848 the General Assembly incorporated thirty-two library societies. 55

55 The General Assembly of 1852-1853 passed an act whereby literary institutions and benevolent societies might be incorporated without legislative act. It was necessary for the society desiring incorporation to file articles of agreement with the clerk of the county court who transmitted the document to the secretary of state. The governor then issued letters patent to the society. Sessional Laws, 1852-1853, Chap. LXVII.

The societies incorporated prior to this act are as follows: Year Incorporated Place Name 1794 Fayetteville Fayetteville Library Society 1799 Williamsboro Franklin Library Society 1803 New Bern Newbern Library Society 1815 Person County Person Library Company 1816 Raleigh Raleigh Library Company 1817 Iredell County Centre Library Society 1818 Lincoln County Buffalo Library Society 1818 Fayetteville Fayetteville Library Company 1819 New Salem New Salem Library Society 1819 Guilford County Alamance Library Society 1820 Randolph County Carraway Library Society 1821 Iredell County Union Library Society 1822 Guilford County Richland Creek Library Society 1822 Hillsboro Franklin Library Society 1823 Mecklenburg New Providence Library Company 1823 Davidson County Sandy Creek Library Society 1824 Stokes County Clinton Library Society 1825 Northampton County Farmers' Library Society 1825 Greensboro Library Society 1825 Davidson County Abbott's Creek Library Society 1826 Randolph County Ebenezer Library Society 1827 New Garden Library Society 1827 Nazareth, Guilford County Library Society 1827 Hookerton Library Society 1829 Asheville Vance Circulating Library Society 1831 Lenoir United Brothers' Library Society 1833 Hookerton Library Society 1833 Chatham County Farmers' Library Association 1834 Providence, Mecklenburg County Juvenile Library Society 1840 Fayetteville Franklin Library Institute 1844 Fayetteville Fayetteville Library Institute 1848 Williamston Library Association

Toward the close of the period these library societies gave rise to a movement for town libraries. By November, 1855, the Wilmington Library had been opened. It “will succeed—it must,” wrote the Wilmington Herald, November 30, 1855. “Donations of books are coming in every day from far and near.”

Debating clubs and literary societies were also popular during this period. The clubs met sometimes as frequently as once a week and held public debates several times a year to which ladies and gentlemen of the town were invited. Popular subjects for debates were such abstract ones as, “Which contributed the most to mankind, Columbus in discovering, or Washington in defending, America?” and “Which would be the greater blessing to mankind, kind, the mineral or animal kingdom, provided the other should be extinct?”56

56 See ridicule of debating societies in Greensborough Patriot, April 6, 1831.

A current political question was usually unsafe, for it might create such feeling as to disrupt the organization. The literary, or reading societies as they were also called, were organizations for the discussion of geography, history, philosophy, and related subjects. The club usually purchased a few books which were the basis of the group discussions held at the meetings. Some young men obtained their chief education through these literary societies. In 1820 a young man who had himself acquired a taste for reading in this manner urged the organization of literary societies throughout the State as a substitute for a formal education.57

57 Hillsborough Recorder, September 6, 1820.

 LYCEUM SOCIETIES

The lyceum society, which began to appear in North Carolina about 1830, was an outgrowth of the literary society. A few educated and influential citizens, those generally in the learned professions, would organize a society, purchase a small library, and deliver public lectures during the winter months. The first lyceum association of Fayetteville was formed in 1834 and Robert Strange, a prominent lawyer and political leader, gave the first lecture. “It is expected that this Lecture will be the first of a series, to be delivered by different members of the Association, to which the public are respectfully invited,” the society announced. “The happy effects produced by such means in other places, justify the hope that the taste for literature in the community will be greatly increased thereby.”58

58 Fayetteville Observer, December 23, 1834.

Later the Fayetteville Observer wrote that the large room in which the lectures were being delivered was crowded at each meeting. “The increasing attention bestowed on the Lectures delivered by members of the Lyceum,” said the editor, “are not only highly gratifying to those who projected and have commenced them, but afford undoubted evidence, that it is a mistaken notion, too hastily adopted here, that commerce and literature cannot flourish together in the same community.”59

59 March 3, 1835.

Following closely the plan of the lyceum association, Salisbury organized in 1848 an Institute which devoted itself to the investigation of “all subjects of practical utility to man,—politics and religion excepted.”60

60 North Carolina Standard, December 8, 1848.

Agriculture, mechanics, and the various branches of the arts and sciences were to be studied and their origin, progress, and benefits made known to the public. This laudable object was to be accomplished by assigning members of the Institute various topics which were to be prepared and delivered in the form of lectures. It was planned to have one lecture a week before a small group of friends, a more public lecture once a month, and a still more important one every court week. The first of the series was delivered by Charles Fisher, for many years the most influential political leader of Western North Carolina, in the courthouse in November, 1848, on the subject of railroads and the applicability of steam as a moving power.

Perhaps it was Salisbury's Institute that led residents of Raleigh to feel “the want of an association for mutual improvement and entertainment, in the nature of a Lyceum or Debating Society, with a suitable Hall for meeting, a well selected library, and Periodicals; which may become a place of resort for social and intellectual enjoyment, as well as improvement, and which could not fail also to exert a happy moral, as well as refining influence.”61

61 Star, January 7, 1852. “In many towns and villages of less population and less material they have their lyceums, their Atheneums and their Debating Societies,” said the Star, “and they are kept up with spirit and energy combining the utile dulci, and conferring incalculable benefits upon the communities in which they exist. . . . Why should Raleigh, the Metropolis of a great and glorious State, lag behind, or rather not participate at all in this race of intellectual and moral improvement?”

 TEMPERANCE SOCIETIES

The temperance societies which began to be organized in North Carolina about 1822 were an expression of the general movement for humanitarian reform which was sweeping over the country, but they also had their recreational side. Some of the societies combined the features of the library and literary societies with the new vogue for moral reform. For instance, the society in the Spring Hill settlement, now Wagram, in Robeson County went by the name of the Richmond Temperance and Literary Society. In August, 1860, the society had a program in its new hall, a small octagonal-shaped building made from brick molded by the young men of the community and burned in a home-made kiln.62

62 E. D. Hancock, “Richmond Temperance and Literary Society,” Charlotte Observer, March 25, 1934.

The prototype of the temperance society was the moral or beneficent society organized about 1815 under the influence of the religious denominations, especially the Presbyterian and Baptist. In 1815 the North Carolina Synod of the Presbyterian Church urged the congregations under its care to organize “Moral Associations for the suppression of Vice and Immorality,” and the Reverend James Hall called a state-wide meeting at Centre Church in Iredell County in November to create a State society and to encourage the formation of auxiliary branches.63

63 Infra, pp. 454-55.

In 1818 the Beneficent Society of New Providence petitioned the General Assembly against the “flagrant evils prevailing in society at large,” declaring that “the intemperate use which is daily made of ardent spirits” is “the chief inlet to almost all the evils referred to.”64

64 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, November 19, 1818.

It was not until 1822, however, that temperance societies as such seem to have been organized, although newspaper correspondents were calling for their organization in 1819.65

65 Raleigh Register, September 17, 1819; Western Carolinian, August 1, 1820.

In 1822 “a number of the inhabitants of Guilford County,” having “formed themselves into a society for the suppression of intemperance occasioned by the immoderate use of spirituous liquors,” appointed Hance McCain chairman of a corresponding committee “to invite the friends of morality in the neighboring counties . . . to form similar societies.”66

66 Hillsborough Recorder, June 12, 1822.

 In 1826 Presbyterians organized a Society for the Suppression of Intemperance within the bounds of Orange Presbytery, including “several Eminent divines and some of the most respectable gentlemen in the State,” in its membership.67

67 Carolina Observer, November 8, 1826.

By the close of 1828 two societies affiliated with the American Temperance Society, which had been organized in Boston in 1826, had been established in North Carolina and by 1830 this number had increased to thirty-one, the societies being restricted, for the most part, to the piedmont area.68

68 Permanent Temperance Documents of the American Temperance Society, p. 38; see also D. J. Whitener's MS, “History of the Temperance Movement in North Carolina, 1715-1908,” p. 59.

After about four years, the North Carolina societies drifted away from the American Society and some became affiliated instead with their own State society. In 1841 John F. Carey, one of the founders of the Washingtonian Movement, was in the State attempting to reorganize local societies upon the Washingtonian principles. This “messenger of good tidings from the North” gave new life to societies wherever he spoke, but the Washingtonian Movement had no permanent effect upon temperance societies in the State.69

69 North Carolina Standard, December 1, 1841.

In the meantime, a North Carolina Temperance Society had been organized at Hopewell Academy near Stantonsburg on January 9, 1828, with Dr. Josiah R. Horn as president and Lemuel D. Berry as secretary. The society was to solicit membership but does not seem to have sought auxiliary societies.70

70 Star, January 31, 1828.

It was not until January, 1831, that a North Carolina Temperance Society, formed on the basis of auxiliary societies, was organized in Raleigh.71

71 Fayetteville Observer, January 20, 1831.

 The State Society immediately employed the Reverend Thomas P. Hunt, a Presbyterian minister, to travel for three months through the State, organizing local societies and obtaining signers to the “entire abstinence pledge.” By the close of February, Hunt had traveled through the Fayetteville, Lumberton, and Wilmington sections, had organized several temperance societies, and “enrolled on the principle of entire abstinence upwards of four hundred names.”72

72 Raleigh Register, March 3, 1831.

 Years later, the Reverend Mr. Hunt, writing the memoir of his life, said of his efforts in behalf of organized temperance: “At the first efforts to organize a temperance society in Raleigh, we could not get a sufficient number to fill the offices. Indifference, hesitation, opposition, and ridicule met us on every hand. . . . Three months effort in raising funds, found me three dollars and fifty cents over expenses,” and there had been no expenses.73

73 Op. cit., pp. 73-74.

 In 1834 the State Society had 51 auxiliary societies located in 27 counties, composing a total membership of about 4,700.74

74 MS Minutes of Pleasant Hill Temperance Society, July 4, 1839.

In 1843 a representative of the Sons of Temperance, a fraternal order with benevolent features founded in New York in 1842, organized a branch of that order in Raleigh. Although a secret organization with a grip, signs, and symbols, the Sons of Temperance also had the total abstinence pledge. The order “followed a member to the grave” and contributed $15 toward the funeral expenses and $10 toward the expenses of a member's wife or brother. In case of sickness, a member might draw $1 a week for a given length of time. In return for these benefits, the member paid a small fee of not less than five cents a week. The order grew slowly, having in 1846, when the Grand Division of North Carolina was organized, only four divisions with 139 contributing members.

In 1851, however, the Sons of Temperance employed Philip S. White, a successful temperance lecturer, to tour the State, and the order gathered new members wherever he went, the Sons estimating at the close of the year a membership of 12,000 in 281 divisions.75

75 Proceedings of the Grand Division of North Carolina Sons of Temperance, 1851, p. 53.

“On Friday and Saturday last, Mr. White again favored our citizens with humorous and instructive addresses on the subject of Temperance,” wrote the Tarborough Press, March 22, 1851. “On Friday night, the Edgecombe Division had a procession with their regalia and fancy lights. Several Sons from neighboring counties were in attendance. The Division appears to be rapidly increasing in numbers, and bids fair to be of great utility.” This growth was short-lived, for the following year the order endorsed state prohibition, becoming involved in politics76

76 See Whitener, op. cit., Chap. III.

 and other controversies to such an extent that some divisions, notably the Edgecombe,77

77 J. K. Turner and J. L. Bridgers, History of Edgecombe County, p. 465.

 repudiated the laws of the organization.

A division of the Daughters of Temperance was organized in 1849 and in October, 1850, delegates from three divisions organized a Grand Union in Raleigh.78

78 North Carolina Standard, November 2, 1850.

By 1852 there were twenty-nine divisions. When the Reverend Thomas P. Hunt was traveling for the State Temperance Society in 1831 he organized branches among academy students wherever he could,79

79 Fayetteville Observer, January 20, 1831.

 but the juvenile order of Cadets of Temperance was not organized until about 1849. Soon afterward it had fallen into decay.

Although ministers and other leading men in the community were influential in organizing temperance societies, the movement made its greatest appeal to the masses. The recreational features of the societies were as important in the life of the community as was the moral reform. Temperance lectures and debates gave the people some place to go. On January 27, 1848, for instance, J. E. Lumsden of Raleigh and Dr. S. Weller of Halifax County debated at the Wake County Courthouse on the subject: “Will the increase of vineyards in our country prove detrimental to the cause of temperance therein?”80

80 Star, January 27, 1848.

Anniversary days and county temperance conventions were gala occasions. In October, 1845, Iredell County had a county temperance convention at Centre Church which was attended by twelve or fifteen hundred people, including “five hundred ladies.” The convention had a procession, speeches, and “then came the Temperance feast, and a feast indeed it was. The table literally groaned under the weight.”81

81 Carolina Watchman, October 11, 1845.

On the occasion of the first anniversary of the Sons of Temperance “a goodly company of ladies and gentlemen” celebrated the event in the Masonic Hall in Raleigh. There were speeches, “appropriate songs,” and “at the close of the services, the large and well filled waiters of lemonade and delicious eatables circulated freely.” “The way we blessed the Temperance folks and packed way the delicacies, was what we call comfortable,” wrote the Star, of May 8, 1844.

Some temperance societies, instead of celebrating the Fourth of July in the usual way, had cold water celebrations much to the amusement of the State press. After “a party of gentlemen” in Raleigh had a cold water celebration in 1829 at which all intoxicating liquors had been excluded, the Camden Journal regretted that “the march of improvements” should force gentlemen to make jackanapes of themselves.82

82 Quoted in Star, August 6, 1829. Most of the leading papers in the State supported the temperance cause. For a list of the temperance papers see infra, pp. 803-4.

Another paper suggested that since the men had taken to temperance societies the women might organize Anti-lacing-too-tight societies.83

83 Ibid., October 22, 1829.

 CITY GUARDS

The regalia, the processions, and the ceremony of the Sons of Temperance were attractive features of the order. The same love of display, added to the desire to have “an ever-ready protection in time of danger,” led every ambitious town in the State to organize a corps of “city guards.” A village boasted as much of its uniformed company of guards as it did of its academy or its town pumps, and on every public occasion the guards were out in full regalia. “Their dress, we had supposed would be neat, but we were by no means prepared for seeing one of the richest, and at the same time, one of the most tasteful costumes in which we have ever seen a Military Company equipped,” wrote the Wilmington Journal after the first parade of the Clarendon Horse Guards. “The dress of the private is blue, faced with scarlet: that of the officers blue, gorgeously faced with gold lace.”84

84 November 29, 1844.

There had been volunteer military companies sanctioned by legislative act prior to 1800, but in 1806 the Legislature passed a general act authorizing volunteer companies of artillery, light infantry, grenadiers, or riflemen to organize and provide themselves with uniforms of their own choice and fashion. These companies, officered by the village gentry, were important socializing agents in ante-bellum life. The companies made a practice of having a dinner in celebration of the Fourth of July; occasionally they gave balls; sometimes they functioned also as literary or debating societies. In 1857 the Oak City Guards of Raleigh organized itself into a lyceum association and brought prominent southern men to Raleigh to give public lectures. William Gilmore Simms, the South Carolina novelist, gave four lectures in February as one of the speakers in the series.85

85 North Carolina Standard, February 25, 1857.

The young ladies of the local female academy sometimes embroidered banners for the city guards and the ladies of the town occasionally presented a gold medal to the best marksman in the company. In 1859, Charles H. Thompson, captain of the Oak City Guards, offered a gold medal to the best shot in the company. On the occasion of the match the company paraded to the suburbs of Raleigh where the contest was to be held. Each member was entitled to three rounds. After the match, the company marched back to town, and, after parading through the principal streets, proceeded to Capitol Square where a large crowd had assembled to witness the presentation of the medal. In a neat and appropriate address, Quentin Busbee awarded the prize to Sergeant Pool who, being more expert with his musket than his tongue, blushingly received the medal and requested a friend to reply. W. H. Finch, accordingly, responded with an acceptance speech “in his usual felicitous style.”86

86 Raleigh Register, May 11, 1859.

The tradesmen also came to have organizations of their own. As early as 1795 mechanics' associations87

87 Some of the mechanics' associations were organized for benevolent purposes. In 1805 the petition of the “mechanics and tradesmen of the town of Newbern” for incorporation as the Newbern Mechanic Society stated the association to be “for the purpose of assisting unfortunate and decayed tradesmen;—for relieving distressed members and widows of members deceased; and generally, for promoting harmony and good will.” See MS in Legislative Papers, 1805.

had been organized in Wilmington and Fayetteville. In 1802 the Wilmington Association petitioned the General Assembly against Negro slaves being employed as mechanics.88

88 Ibid., 1802.

 There were similar organizations in New Bern and later in Plymouth, Fayetteville, Raleigh, Oxford, and Asheville. These societies were forerunners of the present labor unions. As the century progressed, mechanics began to seek a fair wage and to unite for that purpose. The associations were local and had occasional meetings for the discussion of ways of protecting the skilled trades from encroachment by the Negro mechanics and the ways of securing prompt payment from their customers.

 MUSIC AND THEATRICAL SOCIETIES

Nearly every town of more than five hundred inhabitants had at least one band; and, if an academy was located in the community, it might even have a music club. All who owned and could play a musical instrument were usually eligible for membership. The band master was frequently a local music teacher. Occasionally, such an organization evinced its modesty by choosing such a name as the Amateur's Band; but, after faithful practice and especially after uniforms were obtained, it became “the City Brass Band.”

The band appeared on all important occasions. If students were to be examined at the local academy, the band enlivened the occasion by a few selections. If the Fourth of July was to be celebrated, the band led the parade; a criminal to be hanged, the band cheered the crowds with flare of trumpets and beating of drums. In 1829 the Raleigh band gave a concert to the ladies. The grove in Capitol Square was lighted with variegated lamps and the seats were arranged in a semicircle. After the program, refreshments were served and “a part of the company joined for a short time in the mazy dance.”89

89 Raleigh Register, July 9, 1829.

Young Mary Bryan, when visiting friends in New Bern in 1848, wrote to her mother that the town had two very good bands, the Negro band and the City Brass Band.

Only a few towns could boast of Harmonic or Euterpean societies, and even these clubs were usually short-lived. In 1819 Goneke of Raleigh announced a concert at the State House by his music pupils and the Harmonic Society. Greensboro had a glee club in the fifties, directed by Heinreich Schneider, the music teacher of Edgeworth Seminary.90

90 B. D. Caldwell (comp.), Founders and Builders of Greensboro, p. 197.

His music classes at the academy also gave concerts.

Strolling bands of players had visited North Carolina prior to the opening of the nineteenth century, but their trips were few and their performances indifferent. Notable exceptions were the troupes from the two Charleston theaters which occasionally appeared in North Carolina. By 1800 there were groups of young men in the State who, having some leisure at night, turned their attention to amateur theatrical performances. In New Bern there was a Theatrical Society composed of “the Gentlemen of the town,” prosperous enough to erect a handsome brick building which Bishop Asbury thought would have made a fine church.91

91 Asbury, op. cit., III, 51.

In 1806 the North-Carolina Journal of Halifax was pleased to announce that a number of gentlemen had organized themselves into a company for the purpose of amusing the public with theatrical representations and that they would perform the comedy of Who Wants a Guinea? by Coleman, the younger.

The Thespian Society of Raleigh, which had a checkered career for three decades, was organized in 1807 to entertain the public and to obtain funds for the Raleigh Academy.92

92 Raleigh Register, March 30, 1807.

In 1814 the society erected a theater which was opened in January of the following year with Morton's comedy Secrets Worth Knowing and a farce entitled The Bee Hive. The design of the interior, extravagantly praised as being “superior to that of any theatre of its dimensions in America,” was the work of A. Lucas.93

93 “Dramaticus” in Star, January 13, 1815.

 The society had scenery and decorations, which were “almost unrivalled in splendor and tasty execution,” and it bought copies of the most fashionable music for the orchestra. The all-male casts must have done justice to their new building, for the Raleigh papers when praising a production would often say that it “evoked soft showers from the sympathetic eyes of the fair part of the audience.”

By 1835 the old Thespian Society had fallen into decay, and a Mr. Preston had taken over the Raleigh theater. “The House, of late years, being so neglected as to render it almost unfit and uncomfortable for Ladies to enter, is now undergoing a thorough repair,” wrote the Raleigh Register. “And, instead of the cold stony (painted) walls on the Proscenium and fronts of the Boxes, which gave the looker-on a chill, will be found a soft warm painting of variegated colours, intermingled with gold. Over the Stage doors and Hollow wooden windows, will hang a pair of festooned curtain Drapery, neatly fitted up. . . . And ‘last not least,’ the Ladies Boxes, are handsomely decorated, and the hitherto cold, thick, clumsy benches, are transported into beautiful crimson cushioned seats. The broken walls and windows will have been repaired, and in short, the whole interior of the house is so altered as to make it almost unknown to the Theatre-going people of Raleigh.” To this statement, the manager added significantly, “A strict Police will be employed to preserve order.”94

94 November 17, 1835.

Local clubs may have performed in the Preston theater, but it was not until 1838 that another Thespian Society was organized in Raleigh. The club made its debut with that favorite comedy She Stoops to Conquer, but even the Raleigh Register, which encouraged the society, admitted that the players were raw. The next performance showed a marked improvement, and the Register thought that with a little more promptitude in scene-shifting the society could safely challenge criticism. “We attribute the success of the last performance in some measure,” said the editor, “to the good order enforced in the House, which may still be further improved, if gentlemen, who prefer the Pit, will bear in mind that the seats were made to sit and not to stand on—and if the junior branches of the audience will crack fewer nuts.”95

95 Ibid.

The Thalian Association of Wilmington which had been organized prior to 1800 had a career similar to the Thespian Society of Raleigh. It was organized three different times during the ante-bellum period, the last being about 1846.96

96 Sprunt, op. cit., pp. 198-209; see also J. G. Burr, The Thalian Association of Wilmington, N. C., with Sketches of Many of Its Members.

This society had made an arrangement with the trustees of Innes Academy for the exclusive use of the lower part of the building as a theater. The building was completed about 1800; and, long after the academy had closed, the Thalian Association continued to hold possession of the building. Among its members were such influential men as Governor Edward B. Dudley; James S. Green, treasurer of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad Company, who was the star comedian; and William M. Green, later Bishop of Mississippi, who excelled in the role of heroine.

Fayetteville also had a Thalian Association which was incorporated in 1814, and Salisbury, a Thespian Society incorporated in 1813. The Salisbury society, like the one in Raleigh, was organized to encourage the establishment of a local academy.97

97 Sessional Laws, 1813, Chap. LIX. See also Archibald Henderson, “Salisburian Thespian Society,” Greensboro Daily News, December 5, 1926.

John Lawson Henderson, president of the society for a number of years, associated with him such men as Charles Fisher, James Martin, Stephen Lee Farrand, Thomas L. Cowan, and John Giles. A barn served for a time as the Thespian playhouse, but by 1822 the society had a somewhat better theater. Later, Salisbury had a Thalian Association which was giving performances in the summer of 1829 at the house of Mrs. Yarborough, the widow of Colonel Edward Yarborough of Revolutionary fame.98

98 Western Carolinian, June 30, 1829.

 Other towns, such as New Bern and Warrenton, also had their Thalian and Thespian societies. In 1859 the Semi-Weekly Standard praised the Thespian Society of Warrenton, saying that the company was made up principally of “the clerks and mechanics of the town.” In the early spring the all-male cast gave The Lady of Lyon in a room “well fitted up” with very good stage scenery.99

99 March 9.

Under the influence of female academies, young ladies also gave plays for the amusement of their classmates. It was but a step from these school plays to the presentation of plays for the public. In 1851 five girls of Little Bend, near Henderson, “joined in a play called ‘Copen Hagen,’ in which,” wrote one of them, “I don't think there is any harm.” But “Bro. Faning heard that [I] played old sister Phebie” and he “is about to bring us to law100

100 The church court, see infra, pp. 448 et seq.

for playing.”101

101 MS in Gash Papers; Hattie McCain to Adelaide, March 30, 1851.

Theatrical companies from the North also visited the State, usually playing at Raleigh, Fayetteville, New Bern, and Wilmington. A company might spend several weeks in one town, giving two or three performances a week. After a few plays, the companies would then give benefit performances for the actors, the receipts of the ticket office going to the player specified. In 1818 a northern company played several times in Raleigh before “a numerous and fashionable audience.” Some claimed that the patronage of the theater had never been surpassed in a town of that size in America.102

102 Raleigh Register, July 17, 1818: “The same liberality it is confidently hoped, will be extended to the Performers at their Benefits; the only prospect they have of recompense, for very heavy travelling expenses. It is a fact that the whole of the salaries which will be received by some of the company during their stay here, will not repay the sums expended by them in their journies from the North.”

With the appearance of the Beggar's Opera in America, the press of North Carolina as well as that of other states began to carry protests against “the eternity of terrors” which a theater hid beneath its magnificence. “The necessity for theatrical exhibitions does not exist in our day” said a correspondent of the Raleigh Register.103

103 Ibid., February 7, 1823.

“Every time we indulge in these amusements,” wrote another, “we run the risque of giving nature a victory over conscience. . . . A month has not elapsed, since part of the audience abandoned the theater, during a performance, in a neighboring city, on account of indecent exposure of person in a female! Perhaps it will be said that this argues a virtuous refinement, prevalent among those who attend the Theatre in our day. Not so—for the number that retired, was unfortunately but small.”104

104 Ibid., March 7, 1823.

 Shakespearian plays were denounced as being nothing more than oaths and imprecations clothed in poetic language.

This attitude on the part of a few citizens and especially of the evangelical clergy, together with the inferiority of most of the strolling companies, led to an increasing distrust of the theater after 1825 which was not overcome during the remainder of the period. When a visiting company appeared in Fayetteville in 1828, only a handful of men attended the first few performances. At length, a “Grateful Auditor” assured the public that the plays were of the right sort. “Perhaps the best evidence of this,” he said “is that their audience has doubled each night, and that a number of Ladies honored them with their presence on the two last nights.”105

105 Carolina Observer, December 24, 1828.

In 1835 the Fayetteville Observer wrote that a theatrical company had for the first time in many years made money by a visit to that place. “And it is accounted for,” said the editor, “by their good acting, and the uniformly correct and gentlemanly deportment for which they were distinguished.”106

106 July 14.

Other performances, such as wire walking, comic singing, Negro minstrels, and the exhibition of natural and artificial curiosities usually drew large crowds. In 1829 “the Wonderful Birds of Knowledge, Tippo Saib and Fairy, from England, India and the Canary Islands” were being exhibited in Fayetteville. “Tippo Saib, the Little Indian Tumbler,” would “balance, stand on his head, mount sentry, lie down and feign to be dead, and jump up at the word of command.” Fairy played “a Match at Dominoes with the Canine Philosopher.”107

107 Ibid., January 15, 1829.

The Siamese Twins, who were frequently exhibited in North Carolina, aroused great curiosity and the state press followed their subsequent history with interest, especially since they married and settled at Mt. Airy.

Every few years a circus company passed through North Carolina, visiting the most important towns. The company usually stayed several days or even a week in one place. In the decade of the thirties Joseph D. Palmer's Circus, Harrington's Circus, and Miller, Yale, Sands and Company's Menagerie and Circus visited the State, while in the fifties Robinson and Eldred and Raymond and Company exhibited in North Carolina. Raymond boasted “the astonishing performance of Mons. Schaffer” who harnessed and drove a large lion under the pavillion.108

108 Tarborough Press, July 13, 1850.

Negro minstrels, with an all-white cast, began to appear in the State in the forties. In December, 1844 the Original Plantation Melodists, “composers and singers of all the most Popular Negro Songs and Chorusses of the present day,” gave a “grand concert” in Wilmington.109

109 Wilmington Journal, December 13, 1844.

Parrow's Sable Minstrels “gave entire satisfaction” to “very respectable audiences” in Salisbury in 1849,110

110 Carolina Watchman, October 11, 1849.

 and West and Piel's “old and original Campbell Minstrels” were singing “The Campbell's Are Coming” in Wilmington in 1851.111

111 Wilmington Daily Journal, September 18, 1851.

Despite these performers, the average town in the State had few opportunities to spend its money on commercialized recreation. In 1832, for instance, Tarboro had only one public performance of any kind and in 1852, twenty years later, it had only five: three concerts, one circus, and the exhibition of a natural curiosity.112

112 MSS in Edgecombe County Court Minutes, August term, 1832; August term, 1852.

 SPORTS

The townspeople were as ardent sportsmen as were the country folk. The century opened with cockfighting in general favor. The main usually consisted of twenty-one cocks with a purse of from three to five hundred dollars a main. Easter Monday was a popular time for cock mains, but there were also spring and fall contests. On the day of a fight, all roads leading to the town where the main was to be held were alive with carriages, horses, and pedestrians hastening to the cock pit which might be at a tavern, a store, or in a spacious square near the center of town. Spectators crowded about, the gentry with the yeomen “without regard to status,” waiting for the birds to be produced.113

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

The cocks were often beautiful and well trained fowls. Each was armed with long, steel-pointed gaffs firmly attached to its spurs. Amid the lusty shouts of the crowds, the birds stepped proudly about, advancing nearer and nearer, until with a rush each suddenly drove its gaffs into the other. Both might be struck dead at the first thrust, but, if not, they fought on with spirit. After repeatedly being pierced, they would continue to make stabs as long as they were able to crawl.

In 1806 a three-day main was fought in Pittsboro at Joseph Harman's tavern for ten dollars each fight and three hundred dollars the main.114

114 Raleigh Register, July 14, 1806.

In the same year a number of gentlemen of two lower counties in North Carolina and of two counties in Virginia offered to meet gentlemen of Maryland at Norfolk any time between March 20 and July 18, 1807, to show fifty cocks and match not less than twenty-one in the main. The main was to be for a purse of from one to ten thousand dollars according to the amount agreed upon.115

115 North-Carolina Journal, July 28, 1806.

Church people generally frowned upon cockfighting as being barbarous and irreligious, and this opinion increased as the camp meeting movement spread. In 1810 a correspondent of Thomas Henderson, editor of the Star, stated that the religious beliefs of the people of Moore County had caused them to give up cockfighting as contrary to benevolence and humanity.116

116 MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book, “Moore County”; Newsome, op. cit., p. 294.

In 1824 James Wellborn, senator from Wilkes County, presented a bill to suppress the sport, but it was immediately defeated.117

117 Senate Journal, December 8, 1824; MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate December 8, 1824.

 In 1845 a correspondent of the Star was indignant at finding in Dr. Thomas Dick's Philosophy of Religion that “our own North Carolina should be held up to Europe, and to all the world as the theatre of such inhuman amusements.”117a

117a Pp. 401-2 in the first American edition (1829). The offensive statement was a quotation from Jedidiah Morse's American Universal Geography as follows: “The following is a short description of the moral character of the inhabitants of Carolina, and of one of the amusements of a people who boast of their liberty and their civilization,—as it is found in ‘Morse's American Geography.’ ‘The citizens of North Carolina who are not better employed, spend their time in drinking, or gaming at cards or dice, in cockfighting, or horse-racing. Many of the interludes are filled up with a boxing match; and these matches frequently become memorable by feats of gouging.’ . . .”

Dick was not the first European who gleaned his knowledge of North Carolina from Morse's American Geography. For example, Henry Ker's Travels through the Western Interior of the United States (p. 356), of 1816, had used the same quotation. In 1795 William Barry Grove wrote of the Morse geography, “Morse's Book has injured the reputation of our State extremely, by his false, infamous account of the Country & its inhabitants.”—H. M. Wagstaff, ed., Letters of William Barry Grove. James Sprunt Historical Publications, IX, 58.

After about 1815 the State press no longer published advertisements of cock mains, for cockfighting had definitely come under the ban of the church. In time, the towns drove the sport outside the city limits by passing such ordinances as Salisbury did in 1858: “Ordered, That any person who shall engage in Cock Fighting in the town of Salisbury either for amusement or profit, shall forfeit and pay the sum of Ten Dollars for each and every offence.”118

118 Leisure Hour, June 28, 1858.

But cockfighting has continued under cover to this day.119

119 The writer has seen cocks exhibited openly on the streets of a large North Carolina town and has gone into country stores where proprietors have had to give a signal for cock owners to put their birds under cover.

However exciting cockfighting may have been, horse racing was the favorite sport of the ante-bellum period. By 1800 jockey clubs had already been organized in several counties; thoroughbreds had been imported from England; and Hillsboro, Halifax, Pittsboro, Warrenton, New Bern were having their fall and spring races.120

120 For the regulations of course-racing in North Carolina in 1804 see the Constitution of the Salisbury Jockey Club in The Papers of John Steele, II, 791-94. See also North Carolina Journal, October 14, 1805.

The races were usually held over a period of three days; the town was crowded with visitors; bets ran high; and a tremor of excitement pervaded the whole community. Each day was usually concluded with a ball, attended by the fashion and beauty of the surrounding country. In the North Carolina Journal of October 21, 1805, a “Friend to the People” rejoiced to see that the people of North Carolina were “getting in the spirit of raising fine horses.”

At first, course-racing was carried on in a small way, for very little time was spent in preparing tracts or in training horses and very little money ventured in purses. The following advertisement which appeared in the Raleigh Register of September 28, 1802, is typical of the favorite type of racing at the beginning of the ante-bellum period:

On the fifth Friday in October next, will be run for, at Cedar Hill Course, near Lewisburg, one Mile Heats, an elegant Saddle, Bridle, Martingale and Whip, free for any Nag that never won a Purse, carrying weight for Age, agreeable to the New-Market Rules. Entrance Five Dollars, to be paid at the Time of subscribing. The saddle &c., will be hung up at the starting-Post. All the Money subscribed after paying for the Saddle, will be run for on the succeeding Day, free for any Saddle Horse. Entrance Five Dollars, to be paid as above. The Field will be furnished with the best Liquors and Provisions.

Quarter-racing was pursued with great spirit. It was a quarter-mile race by two or more horses along parallel paths,121

121 Edward Eggleston, “Social Life in the Colonies,” Century Magazine, XXX, 397.

the village streets sometimes serving for the purpose. It was not uncommon for these races to be made for as much as a thousand dollars by men in moderate circumstances.122

122 Newsome, op. cit., 93. See also Raleigh Register, March 18, 1800.

 As the years advanced toward 1860 more money was invested in horses, and more attention given to training.123

123 Thomas Ruffin, for nineteen years chief justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, was said to have owned one of the best thoroughbred mares in the South. The pedigree of this horse, Cherokee, may be found in The Papers of Thomas Ruffin, II, 99-101. See also letter from A. J. Davis in ibid., pp. 151-52.

 Competition was keen and the races sometimes resulted in fights, duels, and trickery. In 1839 Major David McDaniel's stable was set fire at midnight; and his valuable race horse and stallion, Red Wasp, probably worth $10,000, perished.124

124 Raleigh Register, May 11, 1839.

In 1827 the Baltimore and Washington City jockey clubs began to penalize the entrance of southern horses. The Washington races were free only for sportsmen and horses north of the Pamunkey River. “We are afraid that our friends of N. Carolina are displeased at our Jockey Clubs having excluded the Roanoke racers, but surely without reason,” wrote the National Intelligencer. “Whenever we can produce animals that are able to compete, with any chance of success, with those South of the Pamunkey, our friends may be assured that they are welcome.”125

125 Quoted in Carolina Observer, September 20, 1827.

A turf convention was held in Charleston in February, 1835, at which North Carolina sportsmen were present, for the purpose of fixing the time for holding the important races of the South and for improving the sport in general.126

126 Star, January 8, 1835.

Three years later, North Carolina formed a State jockey club of its own, of which General Beverly Daniel was president and Major David McDaniel treasurer and proprietor. The course was located near Raleigh. The State association announced that its purses would be “equal to those of almost any Jockey Club in the United States.” “. . . from the Location of the Track, and the fine order in which it will always be found . . . we anticipate with some confidence that it will speedily become the Central Race Course of the Union.”127

127 Raleigh Register, September 3, 1838.

 The first races on the State course were run in November, 1838, with purses “greater than those of any club south of Baltimore or north of Mobile.”128

128 Ibid., October 29, 1838. For accounts of the Salisbury and the Charlotte jockey club races see Western Carolinian, October 29, 1832, and Raleigh Register, March 30, 1838.

 So popular had the Raleigh track become that the Register had begun to carry several columns of racing news and the paper developed a special sports style by 1840.129

129 Ibid., December 1, 1840. The first day of the fall races was reported in the following style:

“Well, after a leetle waiting, in come the horses; and such a babbling and jabbering probably you never did hear tell of it. Fleta against the field, said those who ought to have known; (but unluckily for them they didn't). Then you met a few fancy men, sweet on “Willie P”.—darned if I didn't think these Raleigh chaps were calculating more about their Senators than the race nags; but I put my stick hard up to my nose, and told 'em: Go to it tulips! you, at least are O. K. As for the “Niggs” the way they piled their quarters on Ginger Blue was a caution. And yet, there was a filly staring these fellers in the face all the time, entered on the bill as No. I; (and No. I, I thought she would stand, then have three ones tacked to her name instead of 1;—) but no, thy couldn't sort of find it out, that a Cameo was a jewel, until rather too late in the afternoon.”

The interest in horse racing very likely led to the development of the ring tournament,130

130 E. J. Crooks, The Ring Tournament in the United States, p. 70; Hanson Hiss, “The Knights of the Lance in the South,” Outing, XXI, 338, ff.; Marjorie Craig, “Survivals of the Tournament in Southern Life and Literature” (unpublished typescript), pp. 44, 62; F. P. Gaines, The Southern Plantation, pp. 152, 162, 166; G. A. Foote, Old Watering Places in Warren County, p. 5; Strutt, op. cit., pp. 195-97.

a spectacle of horsemanship and pageantry. This sport, which was begun in Maryland in 1840 and in Virginia in 1841, appeared in North Carolina in the late fifties. The tournament131

131 The use of the word tournament in ante-bellum literature does not necessarily imply that the ring tournament is the sport referred to, for tournament was a general term applied to a variety of sports, such as cockfighting, gander pulling, and some types of horse racing.

 was a joust patterned after the sport of medieval days. Riders, dressed in “their Sunday-best” or in the costumes of chivalry, drove their horses rapidly over a designated course in the attempt to remove with a long lance rings which had been suspended on a hook fastened to a bar. The course, which varied from 100 to 125 yards, was either straight or semicircular and must be covered in a given time, usually ten seconds. The rings, placed in a series of three, twenty-five or thirty yards apart, might be from two inches to half an inch in diameter. The rider must carry the rings triumphantly on his lance to the judges' stand. At the close of the contest, the rider who had removed the greatest number of rings was declared winner and had the privilege of crowning the “Queen of Love and Beauty.”

Each tournament rider chose the name of a knight, taken most often from the works of Scott, Spenser, Tennyson, and Cervantes. When the spectators had assembled and the knights were in place, a distinguished person, chosen for the occasion, delivered a stirring charge. The oratory at an end, each knight answered to his name and charged down the field. Often the winner received a substantial prize as well as the privilege of crowning “the queen of his heart,” for a tournament was often held as a means of raising money for some benevolent purpose.

The coronation ceremony, which usually followed at night, was a dramatic part of the pageantry. The victor chose the queen and together they usually selected the knights and maids who were to compose the royal party. After a brief oration by one of the judges or by the victor himself, the queen was crowned with a wreath of flowers and seated upon a flower bedecked throne. Later came the maids, escorted by their knights, to pay homage and receive their crowns. The royal party then led the opening dance of the ball.

Prior to the tournament in the field or occasionally following it, a burlesque tournament by riders in amusing costumes some times entertained the spectators with their drollery. The performers might be local wags or a strolling company of professionals who cavorted for whatever they might collect from the hat. A favorite knight of the burlesque tournament was Don Quixote accompanied by his servant Sancho Panza on a mule. References to these knights of the burlesque appear in the North Carolina newspapers prior to the appearance of the serious tournament in the State. In the Fayetteville Observer of November 1, 1855, a correspondent, describing a day at a county agricultural fair, refers to “the ridiculous performances of a passing company of Don Quixote Invincibles,” and the Raleigh Register of October 6, 1858, welcomed the ring tournament at the State Fair as a substitute for “that abominable and now stale exhibition of fantasticals who style themselves D. Q. I.'s.”

A ring tournament was held in Weldon, September 15, 1857, and another the following year. The tournament at the State Fair probably popularized the sport, but the ring tournament as a form of recreation did not become well known in North Carolina until after the Civil War.

As early as 1810 an attempt was made to pass a law preventing horse racing, but all efforts to make the sport illegal were abortive. Attempts were also made to restrict betting at horse races. In 1806 a bill was introduced to prevent bets on horse races for a distance less than a mile, and in 1810 a bill was passed to prevent recovery at law of any bet made on a race.131a

131a Sessional Laws, 1810, Chap. XIV.

The result was that bets, which had been made openly through the newspapers in the early part of the century, came now to be wagered privately.

There was a distinction in the public mind between betting on a sport and gambling at a game of chance. Anthony Trollope, writing on British sports in 1868, declared that “the noblest gambling in existence” was betting on the speed and endurance of a race horse. “Without betting there would be much fewer owners of race horses in England.”131b

131b Op. cit., p. 20.

Excessive gaming was a term generally applied only to games of chance. In 1764 it was made illegal to win more than five shillings at a game of chance within twenty-four hours.132

132 SRNC, XXIII, 611-13.

 Several laws against “excessive gaming” had been passed in colonial days but the first drastic one was that of 1791 whereby public gaming tables, such as those commonly called A.B.C., E.O., or faro bank, were forbidden under a penalty of two thousand dollars.133

133 Revised Statutes, Vol. I, Chap. XXXIV, sec. 64.

 This law was reinforced in 1798 by another making it illegal for a person to suffer games at such tables to be played at his house under a penalty of two hundred dollars, and any money or property staked on such a game was liable to seizure by a justice of the peace. In 1799 tavern keepers and retailers of spirituous liquors were forbidden to permit any game at cards at which money or property was staked to be played on their premises. Lotteries, which had been popular in the first quarter of the century as means of raising money for the erection of academies, churches, and lodges, were forbidden in 1834 on penalty of two thousand dollars,134

134 Ibid., secs. 62-63.

 and in 1835 it was made an indictable offense to play at a gambling table of any variety.

Gambling continued despite these laws. Dr. Jeremiah Battle in his history of Edgecombe County, written in 1811, listed card playing as an amusement “confined to a few” who were “not much disposed to make the winning & losing any great object.” “The Ladies,” he said, “have never been known to play here for money.”135

135 MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book, “Edgecombe County”; Newsome, op. cit., p. 93.

Alexander Sneed of Rockingham, listing the sports of his county, said, “I forbear to mention that vile and abominable practice of card playing &c and many other nefarious practices to delude the young and unwarrey; as they cannot be too severely reprehended by every honest and patriotic Citizen.”136

136 Ibid., p. 301.

 Bartlett Yancey included card playing as one of the amusements of Caswell County, saying, “Now and then may be seen a party with an old rusty pack of cards playing for whiskey.”

Perhaps the best-known instance of gambling in the ante-bellum period was the case of Robert Potter, already notorious for his connection with the anti-bank movement. In 1835 he was deprived of his seat in the House of Commons for having “behaved in an ungentlemanly manner at a card game.” It appears that Potter lost a considerable sum of money at cards at a game one night during the sitting of the Legislature.137

137 House Journal, January 1, 1835; Raleigh Register, January 6, 1835.

Suddenly he snatched his former holdings which were lying on the table before him, drew a gun, and made his retreat.

The bills against gambling had not restricted billiard and backgammon tables and shuffle boards, but permitted them to be maintained on the payment of a tax. Some of the State papers, led by the Fayetteville Observer, began a crusade against the billiard table as early as 1830, denouncing it as giving rise to the licensed gambling house.138

138 June 24.

“It may plead the sanction of law and the countenance of the law-giver,” said the editor “but it is the destroyer of public morals; the corrupter of individual character; the assassin of the peace and prosperity of persons and families.” In the issue of October 29, 1835, the North Carolina Standard thought that it might be necessary to resort to “Lynch-law” to get rid of the “den of licensed Blacklegs” in Raleigh. Oxford had a town meeting in 1837 for devising ways of dealing with “a certain class of itinerant gamblers, black-legs or vagabonds, called Faro-bank dealers.”139

139 Ibid., June 28, 1837.

 In 1856 the Fayetteville police seized a faro-bank and burned the cards and boards in the public street.140

140 Faro is a game of cards in which the players bet against the dealer as to the order in which certain cards will appear. Faro-bank is the equipment for playing faro, the house in which it is played, or the proprietors' funds risked in the game.

 One of the owners escaped from the window of the room in which the apparatus was in operation, while the other deposited a bail of $1,050. Gambling continued, however, for it was hard to detect and its fascination difficult to combat.141

141 An act was passed in 1856 making a person playing at a faro table or bank liable to a fine of $25; and in 1858 another for procuring evidence against keepers, owners, and dealers of faro banks.

 SUMMER RESORTS

To escape the heat and malaria of the coastal towns the people of Eastern North Carolina had retired in colonial times to the edge of the piedmont where they might find cool springs out of reach of the “miasma.” This custom was continued in the antebellum period until it came to be a means of distinguishing those who were fashionable in town life from those who were not. There were some who made a yearly pilgrimage to Saratoga and other northern resorts as well as to springs in Virginia and North Carolina. “The ‘Spring season’ is almost at hand, and soon the moneyed part of our population, who have time at their command, will be moving off on various lines of travel, in pursuit of health and excitement, at the numerous watering places and fashionable resorts of the Union,” wrote the Southern Weekly Post of Raleigh on July 2, 1853. “Newport, Saratoga, Niagara, Cape May, the Virginia Springs, Old Point, Nag's Head, and many other places of less note, will be thronged with visitors, and almost every one of these will have some plea of ill health, some dyspepsia or rheumatism or other, to reveal to their acquaintances as the true cause of their travels.”

In 1802 Lenox Castle was perhaps the most popular summer resort in the State, but by 1810 a few were also visiting the Warm Springs near Asheville. By 1850 the number of visitors to Asheville had increased to five hundred but of that number only fifty were North Carolinians, for, as the Raleigh Register complained, residents of the State had rather gad off to Virginia or the North than to patronize Western North Carolina. Shocco Springs and the Sulphur Springs near Warrenton were popular resorts for many years where one might spend his days “in intercourse with the elite of the State, denuded of its useless and oppressive forms.”142

142 August 3, 1841.

In addition to the Warren County springs, the popular summer resorts in North Carolina in 1860 were the Piedmont in Stokes, the Warm Springs in Madison, the Sulphur Springs and the Warm Springs in Buncombe, the Piedmont in Burke, the Wilson Springs in Cleveland, the Catawba Springs in Lincoln, and the beaches at Nags Head, Beaufort, Wrightsville, Masonboro, and Ocracoke.

A day at the springs might be as full of gaiety as a day in Washington with Congress in session, if one were disposed to be convivial. Breakfast over, one might sing or dance with a group in “the long room,” or, if he preferred, play a game of whist or go for a ride. Several nights a week there was a ball with music furnished by a band, under contract to play for the season. Shocco was thought in 1857 to be an ideal place for love-making and engagements. “We have seldom seen a more handsome or a more brilliant display of female beauty than we looked upon in the ball room at Shocco on Saturday and Monday evenings,” wrote the North Carolina Standard. “The young men were of course gallant and attentive to the fair, and some of them were positively handsome.”143

143 September 2, 1857.

In the last two decades of the period, as society became gayer and more restless in its search for amusement, some of the North Carolina resorts had a remarkable growth, drawing guests from Virginia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.144

144 Ibid.

Within a few years the Piedmont Springs in Stokes County had been transformed from “Dame Nature's rough ground work” into a smart watering place. “Simon” described the transformation in a letter to the Raleigh Register on August 4, 1858:

It seems but yesterday, I used to come to these Springs when in their original native simplicity. The worst kind of “old corn Whisky” was retailed by “Flinchem” in a gourd, from a brown jug with a corn-cob stopper. Now champagne, &c., is the order of the day.—We then scraped away the “trash,” leveled the dirt, and sprinkling down the bran, had the real bran dances of primeval times to the music of the Banjo. Now, fair ladies trip the light fantastic in fine saloons, to the music of brass, catgut, or whatever you wish. Then, a tough sheep, stolen by “Dick Chamberlain,” was a delicacy rare as tough. Now “anything you call for” is furnished by polite and trained servants. Then, log cabins, ox wagons, and tents sheltered our beavers from the mountain showers. Now, splendid, big buildings, all white and stately, cast their proud shadows across the way.

The summer months at a resort were, indeed, more lively than the winter months in town, and at the end of the season might leave one exhausted from the gaiety. For this reason, Mrs. Ebenezer Pettigrew wrote from her plantation home in Washington County to her sister in New Bern, “I think those people who are constantly gadding about from Shocco to Saratoga, from thence to the city &c.—are in a state of most perfect derangement.”145

145 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, October 7, 1823.

Town life in ante-bellum North Carolina was monotonous, nevertheless. Despite the gay respite in July and August, despite visiting parties, teas, balls, public celebrations, literary societies, and theaters, time hung heavily on the hands of those who had much leisure. Horse races came but twice a year, and there was only one Fourth of July. In 1826 Edward J. Hale of the Carolina Observer declared that Fayetteville had been so long without any form of amusement he was happy to announce the coming of a circus. The Raleigh Register in the issue of October 10, 1843, suggested the organization of “conversation societies by which the dull monotony that lingers around us might be broken.” The majority of the townspeople, however, had little time for polite social gatherings. They took their recreation in Saturday night frolics, in visits to the tippling houses, and in the free whisky and barbecue of election day. They were little concerned about social status, and, as long as they were able to make an honest living, they were satisfied with their lot.

 CHAPTER VII COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS

THERE WAS no institution in the ante-bellum South, not even slavery, about which there were so many prejudices as about the family. In the pulpit, on the oratorical platform, and in the legislative hall, speakers heralded the family as “the cradle of morality” and the “nursery of patriotism.” In 1833 James Seawell declared before the General Assembly: “The social relations of family connections . . . constitute the most lasting cement of the political permanency of any country. Indeed, what else is it but the social ties of family connections, when rendered happy and prosperous by their own industry, that stamps a value upon society?”1

1 MS in Legislative Papers, 1833; also in C. L. Coon, The Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina: A Documentary History, 1790-1840, II, 633.

The Legislature jealously guarded the family relationship and the few legal changes which occurred in the period came slowly. A glance at the laws alone, however, gives a distorted picture of family life in ante-bellum North Carolina. Legislation was slow in meeting every-day needs, and custom pushed ahead to answer these deficiencies.

COURTSHIP CUSTOMS

If a young man wished to enter courtship under propitious circumstances, he first obtained permission from the head of the family. When an Edenton physician fell in love with fourteen-year-old Maria, her father being dead, he obtained her mother's consent before he “paid his addresses” formally to the young girl.2

2 MSS in James A. Norcom Papers, Philadelphia, December 4, 1808, January 29, 1809, January 1, 1810. An anonymous writer declared in 1813 (in Daniel Fenton and J. J. Wilson's compilation, Letters on Courtship and Marriage, p. 55), “. . . no parental authority, thus to make ourselves unhappy by marrying, is any ways binding on children.”

About to leave for Philadelphia for a long visit, he again sought the mother, this time for permission to write to Maria and extracted in return a promise that the girl might be permitted to answer his letters. The mother evidently considered the doctor a good catch, for Maria complained, in a letter to her lover, “I believe in my soul that mama would always keep me awriting.”3

3 MS in James A. Norcom Papers, February 4, 1810.

In deciding upon the eligibility of a prospective son-in-law, parents usually looked well to his family connections and his immediate wealth.4

4 Hillsborough Recorder, March 15, 1820. For other discussions of marriage for money see Western Carolinian, February 6 and 20, 1821; J. S. Buckingham, The Slave States of America, II, 13.

In 1846 Dr. James Norcom cautioned his daughter, Elizabeth, who was spending several weeks at Nags Head, a summer resort where one of her admirers was likely to appear, that she must not become engaged to a man who was unable to give her “a comfortable and respectable support.”

I, my dear, could never never ratify such an engagement, were you to make it—Every thing, therefore, in relation to this matter, must be conditional. It cannot be positive; for, however meritorious a man may be, & how high-soever he might be in my opinion or esteem, I could not sanction his connexion with a daughter of mine, in “the Holy Estate,” with the prospect of poverty & wretchedness before her. . . . W— is a meritorious & respectable young man, an honour to his family, & worthy of general esteem; and had I a fortune, my daughter, to give you, or the means of making you independent, I see nothing in his character to object to,—But his inability to support a family, as long as it lasts, is an insurmountable objection.5

5 MS in James A. Norcom Papers, August 19, 1846.

Dr. Norcom was of the opinion, and there were many who agreed with him, that a woman should never consider seriously the attentions of one beneath her social class. On writing to his son, James Norcom, Jr., concerning the marriage of a cousin, he said:

To Mr.— I have no objection, he is a prudent & an industrious young man, and I hope will do well—but his connexions are of the lower class & not such as can be agreeable to your cousins character or disposition. I have always thought it of the utmost consequence that young people should be very choice and particular with respect to their associates, & this perhaps is the best reason that can be assigned why persons about to be married should object to a partner who is poor; for poverty generally subjects a man to the evil of vulgar connexions & is too apt to vitiate his manners & corrupt his character—Nor does any merit in the individual certainly protect him from such a fate; for merit in poverty like merit in obscurity, is, for the most part, neglected or oppressed.6

6 Ibid., December 3, 1818. The Reverend Dr. Witherspoon, president of Princeton, said in his “Letters on Marriage” (in Fenton and Wilson, op. cit., p. 119), “It is by far the safest and most promising way to marry with a person nearly equal in rank . . .”

An eligible suitor was himself frequently looking for an eligible bride.7

7 See MS in Calvin H. Wiley Papers, F. P. Julian to Wiley, February 12, 1852. See also John Bayley, Marriage As It Is and As It Should Be, pp. 57-67.

“It is now become too much the fashion of the day,” objected “A Caswell Matrimonyist” writing in the Raleigh Register of October 12, 1809, “that when a young man is about to get him a wife, the first enquiry he makes, is, Has such a young lady much property; how much land does she own, and how many negroes?” If he is informed that she is rich but not pretty he replies, “Let beauty be hanged; property is my object.”

The desire to build up a large estate was sometimes the motive for the intermarriage of near relatives. When a gentleman of New Bern married a close relative in 1834, Frederick S. Blount wrote in disapproval, “He has made some considerable acquisition to his estate—but I must say that he has done it at the sacrifice of some very proper scruples, which any man of refinement must acknowledge, who marries a lady so nearly related to him.”8

8 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, September 1, 1834.

The most famous case of the intermarriage of near relatives was that of the Reverend Mr. McQueen who in 1841 married the sister of his deceased wife.9

9 Fayetteville Observer, June 14, 1843, October 6, 1846.

 He was promptly suspended from the functions of the ministry and from the communion of the Presbyterian Church and was not restored to his former position in the church until 1846 and then only by a majority of four votes. Such marriages were infrequent, and they were always considered objectionable.10

10 See the case mentioned in the Star, May 17, 1810.

 In 1852 marriages “between persons nearer of kin than first cousins” were declared to be illegal.11

11 Revised Code, 1855, Chap. LXVIII, sec. 9.

The opportunities for association between the sexes were too great to make the custom of obtaining parental consent prior to courtship a rigid one. In case a young man was forbidden to call on a young woman at her home, there were then, as now, ways of communication between the two. Even a strict disciplinarian who rigidly observed the proprieties of his day and kept a watchful eye on his daughters was not always successful in maintaining his authority. The eldest daughter of a distinguished Edenton physician defied her father by eloping with a young man whom he had forbidden her to see.12

12 MS in James A. Norcom Papers, July 4, 1848. See also MS, E. M. Holt, Occasional Diary, 1844-1854: February 28, 1846, May 20, 1853.

Lemuel Sawyer of Camden County, several times representative in Congress, was not satisfied after the death of his first wife to wait “for the usual tedious process of courtship.” A Washington acquaintance “informed me that he knew of a good opportunity of my being accommodated, as there were two sisters who occupied a part of the same house with his family. He offered to introduce me, and I accordingly accompanied him to the house, . . . I called again the next afternoon, and, observing the younger sister, . . . busily employed in the labor of the house, I approached her, and after a few preliminary remarks, opened at once the business of my negotiation. . . . I did not leave their door” until her parents “had given their approbation to the match. Thus, within three days after I first saw the young lady, she became my wife.”13

13 Op. cit., pp. 24, 25.

After the death of his second wife in childbirth, Sawyer determined in 1828 to marry again and made a visit to northern watering places with that in view. “ . . . some friends undertook to make a match for me, and proccured [sic] a rich widow, a neighbor of theirs, who they judged would answer my purpose. . . . After an introduction and three short visits, we proposed in form, and they conducted the affair with such expedition that in three weeks I became married a third time. It was a desperate chance. I was poor and growing old, but my congressional dignity turned the scale in my favor; . . .”14

14 Ibid., p. 42.

Young girls of marriageable age were by no means inaccessible creatures in ante-bellum days. A correspondent of the Western Carolinian found them in 1820 parading the streets of Salisbury, staring at the men “with a fixed and intent gaze.” At first it was a shock to him to see the streets crowded with young girls, but he soon became accustomed “to encounter the gazers.” “I take it as a matter of course,” said he, “and always place my hat on one side, when about to pass in review before them. But my aunt Dorothy tells me it was not so when she was young; then, if the gentlemen wished to see the young ladies, they had to enter the house, where they found them employed either in reading or sewing; and ‘thinks I to myself,’ . . . they were better employed, than in giggling and gazing on the side-walk.”15

15 “Ichabod,” writing in the issue of July 25.

It was within the bounds of propriety for a young man to take his sweetheart for a ride or to accompany her on a walk. They might be seen together at church or at the races, although it was customary for a young lady to accompany the family to a ball rather than to be escorted by her lover. Among the yeomanry, however, and even among the middle class the young men usually would “gallant the girls to the frolic.”16

16 York, op. cit., p. 19.

John Y. Mason, later Secretary of Navy, gives a vivid description of a lovers' stroll which he observed in Raleigh in 1816. “As I rode into the city,” he wrote, “the first objects which struck my attention . . . were an elegant couple very familiarly walking arm in arm. On nearer approach I discovered them to be J— T— and E— M—. Miss E. very politely invited me to call on her before I left the city. . . . The playful vivacity with which E. anticipated her beau, in every observation, which he wished to make during our short conversation, indicated the ascendancy which she had acquired over him. And the winning smile with which she apologised for her conduct, sufficiently manifested her partiality for him. . . .”17

17 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, May 2, 1816.

The methods for winning the approval of the opposite sex were the same then as at present. Coquetry and dress were woman's stock in trade but to these she added other accomplishments. In 1810 a correspondent of the Star declared that women thought it was only necessary to know how to play the piano in order to get a husband.18

18 October 25.

About 1820 the newspapers were full of scorn for “that ape of female foppery, called a beau.” “If you were to see one of our beaux by the side of his dulcina,” said one writer, “you would think he proceeded by as many rules as a mathematician when making trigonometrical calculations. When walking into church, if he happen to accentuate the wrong leg, all is over for the rest of the week.”19

19 Hillsborough Recorder, April 26, 1820; see also Western Carolinian, September 26, 1820.

 “Beau,” “dandy,” “coxcomb” were ante-bellum terms for what is variously termed today a “smoothie” or a “sweet papa.” The “flapper” and “red-hot mamma” were formerly known as belles, “dulcinas,” and “load-stones.”

The age-old custom of making and receiving gifts had lost none of its ability to win favor during the ante-bellum period. When J. Johnston Pettigrew, later a hero of the Confederacy, desired to present a young woman whom he had admired with a small piece of jewelry he accompanied it with the following note:

Although I have not the presumption to claim any but an undistinguished place among the number of your admirers—will you allow my respect for your father to obtain for me the privilege of . . . adding this little ornament as a token of the good wishes for your perfect felicity. . . .20

20 MS in Pettigrew Papers, July 4, 1853.

to which the young lady replied, in a formal note written in the third person, that she hoped Mr. Pettigrew would not leave the city “without affording her the opportunity of expressing in person the feeling which is so much better seen in action than in words. Should destiny deny her this boon, however, she will ever treasure the bracelet as a memento of one, whose character has long-since called forth her esteem and whose friendship she would be proud to win.”21

21 Ibid.

 THE COQUETTE

The coquette was fond of boasting of the number of her admirers, and she was even more fond of keeping them dangling while she enjoyed the sensation of being much sought after.22

22 See the March, 1856, issue of The University of North Carolina Magazine, V, 81-84, “A Letter From a Lady” which gives an account of a university student who out-flirted a rural belle.

Young Theodorus of Lincolnton, in a series of letters to his brother, telling of the progress of his love affair with a belle of Columbia, South Carolina, gives, unaware, a lively description of the methods of an ante-bellum coquette. He fell in love with “the blue-eyed divinity” at first sight and repeatedly called upon her. “I have gone to her sisters purposedly [sic] to see and converse with her,” he wrote to his brother. “I have spoken to her in such a way as to convince her beyond possibility of doubt to what point my attention tended[;] in short she knows that I will address her[;] yet damn me if I can determine with what kind of success my undertaking may be attended.”23

23 MS in Brevard Papers, June 6, 1825.

 She smiled “most bewitchingly” on him and then shifted more of her attention to a certain Hammond whom the young lover thought for a while of challenging to a duel. Again she seemed to prefer Theodorus; she walked home with him from a party and gave him permission to call. On the appointed evening, he arrived only to find two others also present. “Nor would they leave” he wrote his brother, “until after eleven o'clock when my patience wearied and I left them. . . . God only knows when I will be favoured with an opportunity of addressing.” The opportunity came a few days later when the young lady accompanied him alone in a gig with a party of others to Saluda Falls. The “address” and the response are better told in the lover's own words:

She confessed today that she had the greatest esteem for me and considered herself favoured by my attention She begged me not to discontinue my attention on any account. . . . I mentioned every thing that was calculated to forward my undertaking [;] begged her to assign her reasons for rejecting me. Asked her if she had ever heard any thing that would tend to lower me in her estimation. To all this she replied that she did not feel a greater partiallity for me than some others. That she had never heard from any one vices alleged against me but on the contrary my character stood with her unimpeached—She said that I took her on surprise. I begged that she would then defer her answer untill time would enable her to determine an affair of so much importance. She answered that perhaps she would by so doing only excite hopes which she might never have it in her power to gratify. I told her then I awaited a decisive answer Yes or No I would be satisfied with nothing else She then answered that she thought I kneed [sic] never hope. . . . When we parted I pressed her hand and told her I would still continue to love her but that I hoped we would never meet again. Great God I was not dismissed even with a tear which I would have kissed away—Joe I am heartily tired of Columbia . . . send for me as soon as you get this. . . . That splendid gig of Fathers would not be greatly damaged by a summers trip of this kind. . . . Believe me every hour I now spend in this place would not be worsted by being spent in Hell.24

24 Ibid., June 7, 1825.

But the little coquette had no idea of dismissing him so soon. She left a comb and a white kid glove in his hat the afternoon of the proposal and the rejected lover called again, “determined therefore that the opportunity thus afforded should not be passed over.” As soon as he entered the room, her sisters immediately withdrew and he seated himself on a sofa by the side of his sweetheart. She still toyed with him, insisting, however, that he call again. Fearing that she might lose her impetuous lover altogether, the young coquette gave him an evasive acceptance a few days later. “She answered,” wrote Theodorus, “that she thought more of me than she ever did of any gentleman, That I now possessed the first place in her affections. That there were great hopes of my finally succeeding. What more could I expect[;] what wish. Her delicacy acted as the only preventive of an avowal.”25

25 Ibid., June 14, 1825.

Theodorus followed her to a summer resort only to find that he could still obtain nothing more definite than encouragement.

It was not until six years later that he married another, but he had learned his lesson. This time he wrote to his brother, “I am engaged to be married . . . and as matters now stand it rests altogether with myself in setting upon the time for the celebration of our nuptials.”26

26 Ibid., March 6, 1831.

What was the fate of the South Carolina coquette has not been recorded. Perhaps she met a better fortune than a young lady of Edenton, who for five or six years held all the beaux in Eastern North Carolina by the ears. Her fate, as William B. Shepard related it, was “a most terrible and afflicting calamity.” “— —, the beautiful and accomplished, is no more,” he wrote to his sister. “She married a few days ago a man named Thompson near fifty years old, and a bankrupt not worth one cent. . . . Her exit ought to be an awful lesson to all fine ladies who sport with fortune, for instance, Miss M.— J.— runs some risk, that she may be reduced to the sad necessity, of marrying some advanced cock fighter.”27

27 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, March 7, 1824.

Just as there were coquettes, so were there also “coxcombs,” and it was the duty of the ante-bellum father and brother to protect the daughters of the family against these conceited fops. After a young lady had received “marked attentions” from a young man, her family had the right to expect “an address” to follow; and, unless it did follow, the young man might have her brother calling on him at his office or plantation and asking what his intentions were. “Certainly there couldn't be a greater bore than to have to shoot a good-hearted fellow merely because one didn't want to make him a brother in law,” wrote a young man from Savannah after one of his friends had barely escaped a duel on such grounds.28

28 MS in Couper-Wylly Papers: Hamilton Couper to his sister, Margaret, Savannah, April 29, 1859.

This same young man had several years earlier warned his sister against coxcombs. “Tender words are but uncertain signs of a tender heart,” he cautioned her. “Flirtation is not courtship. All men are villains. Keep very shady as to your own feelings. Always try to draw the enemy out first. Mention casually that pistol shooting is a gift of your family, and that your grown up brothers are all crack shots, and single men. If matters come to the worst, and you are formally called upon to surrender, look sweet and tell your fond adorer to ‘ask Pa.’ . . . Above all never refuse a man until he offers himself, or run away with a sentimental looking young gentleman by moonlight. They are both blunders, which you know are worse than crimes.”29

29 Ibid., Cannon's Point, August 26, 1856.

 THE ENGAGEMENT

There seems to have been no special public ceremony associated with the marriage engagement. Neither the present-day announcement party nor the public statement made by the parents of the bride-to-be through the society page of the local newspaper were in common practice in ante-bellum days. A few intimate friends were told of the engagement and soon the fact was common knowledge. The period of engagement was usually brief. In 1804 a young man of Edenton declared to his friend, Ebenezer Pettigrew, that a young girl whom he was courting would “run crazy if she thought she had to wait two years” to be married.30

30 MS in Pettigrew Papers, October 7, 1804.

The bride-to-be, however, usually insisted upon having two or three months in which to prepare her wedding outfit of clothes and household linens. In 1846 James Norcom, Jr., wrote to his betrothed, “Place no bar in the way of our union, but as speedily as possible, make all & every necessary preparation to bid me come as early to the marriage feast as you can.”31

31 MS in James A. Norcom Papers, September 18, 1846.

Despite the fact that no public announcement was made of the marriage engagement, custom and law regarded the betrothed ones as owing each other certain obligations. When an Edenton gentleman wrote to his fiancée in 1810 to pursue “the course I have laid down for you,” he justified himself by saying, “It is my duty to instruct you in that course of life & conduct which will not only be most conductive to my happiness, but to yours also.”32

32 Ibid., February 4, 1810.

Property belonging to the woman prior to and during the engagement was considered legally an object of the marriage, and a secret conveyance of it was deemed a fraud upon the rights of the intended husband.33

33 Johnson v. Peterson, 59 N. C., 12. “A conveyance, by a woman, after a marriage engagement, and upon the eve of its solemnization, is a fraud upon the rights of the intended husband and will not be upheld, unless it appear clearly and unequivocally, that the husband had full knowledge of the transaction and freely assented to it.” See also Johnson v. Hamblet, 4 N. C., 193, and Poston v. Gillespie, 58 N. C., 258.

The age at marriage during the ante-bellum period depended somewhat upon the economic status of the individual. The gentry class tended to marry several years earlier than the yeomanry, although only the most general conclusions can be drawn in this connection. Judge William Gaston's first wife was sixteen when she was married, as was also Dr. James Norcom's second wife. Dr. Norcom, however, was strongly opposed to a man's marrying before he was settled in a profession. “To see a youth,” said he in a letter to his son in 1819, “talking of marriage, & about to place himself in a situation to be encumbered with the cares of a family without any determined character or settled principles, moral, social, or religious, without a profession, & not having thought of an occupation or employment by which he is to gain for himself the comforts & conveniences of life, is certainly the greatest of all absurdities!”34

34 MS in James A. Norcom Papers, May 7, 1819.

In 1811 when a boy of fourteen married a girl of twelve the Raleigh Star referred to it as “mere children's play.”35

35 July 5.

 The Revised Code of 1855 declared girls under fourteen and boys under sixteen incapable of contracting marriage.36

36 Revised Code, 1855, Chap. LXIX, sec. 14.

In 1820, upon the resolution of Edward F. Graham of New Bern, a bill was drafted and passed “concerning the marriage of infant females” which forbade the marriage of girls under fifteen without the written consent of their fathers.37

37 Sessional Laws, 1820, Chap. VI.

The husband was made guilty of a misdemeanor and the clerk issuing the license was made liable to forfeit $1,000. The property of a girl married contrary to this act was vested in trustees for her “sole and separate use.” The object of the act, however, was not so much to raise the age at marriage as it was to make some provision to “secure infant female wards against being driven into premature marriage by the interested views of unprincipled guardians.”38

38 House Journal, December 9, 1820, p. 46.

 Despite efforts to repeal the act,39

39 Senate Journal, November 28, 1822; House Journal, December 18, 1823.

 it remained among the statutes, but evidently it was not enforced, for in 1848 both the North Carolina Standard and the Star called for a bill “more effectively providing against the marriage of female minors without the consent of their parents or guardians.”40

40 Star, November 22, 1848.

 The Star suggested further penalties on clerks for issuing licenses.

Second, third, and even fourth marriages were favorably looked upon if not too soon after the death of the last mate. But a hasty remarriage was invariably ridiculed. The Star, announcing the marriage of a certain Charles Hood of Johnston County in 1810, remarked that he had taken a second wife “after enduring the forlorn condition of a widower, with the most exemplary patience and fortitude, for the tedious space of nearly two months.”41

41 May 17.

Bachelors and spinsters were out of place in the social order. In 1800 the General Assembly considered a bill “for the further taxing of bachelors, and to forward the population of the State, by promoting and encouraging matrimony,” which proposed a special tax upon all unmarried men.42

42 Senate Journal, 1800, p. 45; MS in Legislative Papers, 1800.

Newspaper correspondents occasionally came to the defense of the unmarried. In 1810 “A Bachelor's Advocate” protested against an unmarried man's being considered “a mere frolick of nature,”43

43 Star, April 19, 1810.

 and in 1844 a correspondent of the Star declared that spinsters were women of superior minds, for “most men dread sensible women.”44

44 November 25.

 In 1845 “An Old Lady” complained against the ridicule of unmarried women, saying, “Hardly can half a dozen persons spend an evening together without the manoeuvres of some (alleged) husband-hunting spinster becoming the subject of discussion.”45

45 Carolina Watchman, January 25, 1845.

 The actual proportion of the unmarried to the total population is difficult to determine, but it was probably small. The census of 1860 lists the total number of free families in North Carolina at 129,585. Of this number 5,204 were composed of but one member. Thus, four in every one hundred heads of families were unmarried, that is bachelors, spinsters, or widowed.

 THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY

The consent of parents was even more necessary for marriage than for courtship. A daughter and even a son who defied the parental wish ran the risk of being disinherited. When a young lady of Edenton eloped, the first letter she dared address her parents was on the occasion of the death of her first child more than two years later. “Ask Pa to forgive and forget all” she entreated her mother. “If I could be with you once again, My dear Parents, I would prove by my devotion to you both, how sincerely I regret the pain I occasioned you, and that we could not have been married with your consent—for now I can appreciate all your motives, and understand all your feelings— . . . but if you could throw aside your prejudice, . . . your feelings I'm sure would change, for no one ever had a kinder, a better husband.”46

46 MS in James A. Norcom Papers, July 4, 1848.

In 1833 a seventeen-year-old wife petitioned the Legislature for a divorce on the ground that her father had compelled her to marry a man whom she did not “favour.” She “consented to pass through the ceremony provided no license should be had,” intending, as she said, “to have the license afterwards obtained and the marriage consumated” if she could become reconciled to him. Much to her distress, she found that the marriage was legal.47

47 MS in Legislative Papers, 1833. The father had evidently regretted forcing the marriage upon his daughter and joined with her in petitioning for a divorce.

In 1850 a young girl of the small farmer class wrote her sister concerning an elopement: “J . . G . . and E. . . Smith is married they run away & married he never asked for her. I learn that Mr. Smith is quite insulted but not so bad as the old lady.”48

48 MS in Gash Papers, September 20, 1850.

 The custom of obtaining parental consent for marriage was evidently in general practice throughout North Carolina, although occasionally there were couples who “flew the track.”48a

48a MS, Holt, Occasional Diary: May 20, 1853.

From colonial days marriage was considered a civil contract in North Carolina. As stated by Chief Justice Ruffin in his review of the history of the marriage contract in State v. Samuel, “in this state there never was a jurisdiction similar to that of the spiritual courts in England; and it is plain from the earliest period of our legislation, that in consequence thereof, it has been constantly required as an essential requisite of a legal marriage that it should either be celebrated by some person in a sacred office, or be entered into before some one in a public station and judicial trust.”49

49 S. v. Samuel, 19 N. C., 177; see also J. C. Jeffreson, Brides and Bridals, I, Chap. I.

Judge Ruffin based his opinion upon the terms of the first marriage act of 1715, the acts of 1741 and 1778, and upon the constant usage in North Carolina since those acts.

The act of 1741 called for the publication of banns or the issuance of a license prior to the wedding ceremony.50

50 Laws of 1741, Chap. I, in SRNC, XXIII, 158-61.

Banns were to be published three times “as prescribed by the ruberick in the book of common prayer,” or, according to the act of 1778, three Sundays in the congregation immediately after or during divine worship, and the minister was to give a certificate of such publication. In case the bridegroom preferred to have a license rather than to publish banns, he obtained it from the clerk of the county court in which the woman resided, but before the clerk issued it he required the bridegroom to enter bond for £500, later $1,000, that there was no lawful cause to obstruct the marriage.51

51 Sessional Laws, 1778, Chap. I, sec. 3; Revised Code, 1855, Chap. LXVIII, sec. 2.

This procedure was evidently subject to abuse, for the attempts to amend it and the protests against its laxity were common in the ante-bellum period. In 1801 and again in 1803 the Baptist Society “residing in sundry counties in this State” petitioned the General Assembly for a more rigid law, saying that “the good people of this state have suffered great inconveniences from the present law.”52

52 MSS in Legislative Papers, 1801, 1803.

The petitioners objected to the mode in which licenses were obtained because the county clerks were not required to demand the written consent of parents. They pointed out that the county clerks in most instances had given the license blanks to a justice of the peace and permitted him to issue licenses merely by filling in the names of those to be married. Thus, they argued, “the marriage may be solemnized before the parent &c is apprised that such a thing is intended which has often proved a source of very great calamity to many families.” The publication of banns was liable to similar abuses, “for a forged certificate has frequently been produced to a Justice or Minister which they were unable to discern was such till after the marriage was celebrated.” Couples from Virginia frequently slipped over the border into North Carolina for a hurried marriage, for “the people of that State have no such opportunities within their own limits being circumscribed by certain laws or rules calculated to prevent such clandestine marriages.”53

53 House Journal, November 25, 1801, p. 8; December 3, p. 22.

The method most frequently suggested for preventing abuse of the marriage law was that of registration of marriages. In 1807, 1808, 1817, 1821, 1827, and especially in 1850 efforts were made to obtain the passage of an act requiring registration. This movement was sponsored by such political leaders as Jesse Pearson of Rowan; Henry Irvin Toole of Edgecombe; John M. Morehead of Rockingham, later of Guilford; and Thomas N. Cameron of Cumberland. In 1850 the first and only registration act of the antebellum period was passed. It required the person who performed the marriage ceremony to return the license with a certificate of marriage to the county clerk within three months under a penalty of $25 for failure to do so.54

54 Sessional Laws, 1850, Chap. LXXXIV.

The colonial laws attempted to restrict the performance of the wedding ceremony to the clergy of the Church of England. The act of 1741 gave this privilege to “every clergyman of the Church of England,” but for lack of such to “any lawful magistrate within this government”; the magistrate, however, was not to perform the ceremony under a penalty, “in any parish where a minister shall reside and have a cure” without permission from the minister. Even then the fees for the marriage belonged to the minister unless he had refused to perform the ceremony. By 1766, however, the Presbyterian denomination had obtained the passage of an act making it lawful for their ministers to perform the ceremony.55

55 Ibid., 1766, Chap. IX.

The act of 1778 declared that “all regular ministers of the gospel of every denomination, having the cure of souls, and all justices of the peace” were empowered to “solemnize the rites of matrimony, according to the rites and ceremonies of their respective churches,” and this was the law of ante-bellum days.56

56 For a historical review of the law concerning those having the right to perform the marriage ceremony, see Judge Ruffin's decision in S. v. Bray, 35 N. C., 289.

The performance of the wedding ceremony by a minister or by a justice of the peace was the chief essential of a valid marriage, according to two important decisions handed down by the Supreme Court. In 1845, in the case of State v. Robbins, Judge Nash held that:

It is not necessary to the validity of a marriage, that the parties should have obtained a license from the Clerk of the County Court. The omission of the license only subjects the minister or the justice performing the ceremony to a penalty.

It is sufficient proof of a marriage, that the ceremony was performed by one, who was in the known enjoyment of the office of a justice of the peace, and notoriously acting as such.57

57 S. v. Robbins, 28 N. C., 23.

In 1852 in State v. Christopher Bray, a case of bigamy, Judge Ruffin held that it was not necessary to the validity of a marriage that the minister performing the ceremony should be a person “in charge of a church or the rector of a parish, or pastor of a particular flock.”58

58 S. v. Bray, 35 N. C., 289.

 “But it is necessary,” he declared, “that he should have appeared to be a minister, capable of entering upon the duties of such a charge, according to the ecclesiastical economy of his church, with the faculty of celebrating the rites of matrimony.”59

59 In 1858-1859 an attempt was made to declare valid all marriages solemnized by persons professing to be authorized to celebrate the rites of matrimony provided the marriage had been consummated in the belief of the contracting parties that they had been lawfully married. For the bill, see MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, January 19, 1859.

As has already been indicated, the actual wedding ceremony varied according to the practice of the person officiating. In State v. Patterson, reviewed by the Supreme Court in 1842, it was brought out by several witnesses that the common ceremony in both Tennessee and North Carolina was similar to that used at the marriage of Thomas Patterson and Diemena Kidwell in 1823:

. . . the marriage ceremony was performed by one Isaac Barton, an old Baptist preacher, . . . The witness stated that it was not a large wedding, nor a very small one; he supposed about twenty persons were present; that Barton stood up in the floor, Patterson and Miss Kidwell standing before him; Barton asked for the license; Patterson handed him a paper; Barton said that authorized him to celebrate the marriage, and called upon all, who knew any impediment, to make it known or forever thereafter hold their peace; Barton then told the parties to join hands; asked Patterson do you take this woman for your wedded wife and will you love and cherish her and cleave to her only until death, to which Patterson assented; he then asked Miss Kidwell, do you take this man for your wedded husband and will you cherish and obey him and cleave to him only until death, to which she assented; he then pronounced them man and wife.60

60 S. v. Patterson, 24 N. C., 346.

For most North Carolinians, therefore, the wedding ceremony was simple and soon over. The feasting and frolicking which so often accompanied it were more impressive than the ceremony itself. The duration and extravagance of the festivities depended, of course, upon the economic status of the bride's family. In 1818 Dr. James Norcom described the marriage festivities of a relative in a letter to his son John:

We have all been eating & drinking in very considerable style here for 5 or 6 days past in consequence of Jas. Horniblows marriage to Miss Eliza Brewer, on the 15.th Inst. On the 17.th . . . I gave the wedding party a dinner & a tea drinking at my house & tomorrow we shall have the scene repeated at Mrs. Horniblows; a few days afterwards at Mrs. Blounts on the sound; & about the close of the week we shall wind up at Mr. Jas. Wills's—I shall be heartily glad when the giddy round is ended; for it is far from being agreeable to me, & keeps my family in great confusion.61

61 MS in Norcom Papers, December 20, 1818.

The festivities of a country wedding as described by a young boy in a letter to his sister, lasted only one night:

Henry Macky had his Fiddle he & his fiddle were both in good tune It would have done you good to have heard it They was a fine crowd of Ladyes & Gentlemen Mr. McWilliams and Lady you know was old hands they know so many plays62

62 Games, such as “selling the thimble,” “clap in and clap out.”

we would all play till we would get tired, and then Mr. Macky would play the Fiddle till he would get tired, and we would commence [again].63

63 MS in Gash Papers, November 17, 1850.

Wedding trips were indulged in only by the most affluent. The bridal tour of Henry W. Conner, later a political leader in both of the Carolinas, was also a business trip in which he looked after holdings in Western North Carolina and Tennessee.64

64 MS Diary of Juliana Margaret Conner.

If the marriage was in the fall or spring, the planter usually wished to hurry back to his crops,65

65 MS in Norcom Papers, September 18, 1846.

 but if it was in the summer, he might spend a few weeks with his bride at a health resort. In August, 1860, the wedding expenses of a wealthy planter in Bertie County amounted to $1,235.50. Of this sum, he gave $20 to the Episcopal minister for performing the ceremony. Thirty-three dollars went for incidental expenses pertaining to the ceremony and $115 for the bridal present. The remaining $1,067.50 he spent on the wedding trip to northern watering places.66

66 MS in S. A. Norfleet Farm Record, 1844-1895.

A month before her marriage in November, 1860, young Mary Norcott of Eastern North Carolina was in New York at the St. Nicholas selecting her trousseau. “What dreams of beauty my dresses were!” she wrote later. Her honeymoon was a two-month tour of the South, including a six-day voyage down the Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans on the steamer Ingomar in company with seven other bridal couples.67

67 M. N. Bryan, A Grandmother's Recollection of Dixie, pp. 22, 23.

There were those who married in North Carolina without obtaining a license, without publication of banns, or observance of the common ceremony,68

68 MS in Legislative Papers, 1805. The petition of Henry G. Gardner of Edenton to the General Assembly states: “That . . . your memorialist, intermarried with one Catherine Edwards, . . . That previous to the said Intermarriage, your Memorialist . . . lived for many years in habits of Intimacy with the said Catherine Edwards, and during all that time, considered her as his wife. That the same union of interests the same reciprocity of affection the same Interchange and good offices existed between them, as are incident to the marriage state.”

despite the fact that the preamble of the Marriage Act of 1778 declared that “it is absolutely necessary that rules should be observed concerning celebrating the rites of matrimony.” The practice of taking a woman quietly to one's bed and board and having children by her was common enough by 1827 for the Supreme Court to declare in Weaver v. Cryer that “general reputation and cohabitation are evidence of a marriage in all cases except action for crim. con.”69

69 Weaver v. Cryer, 12 N. C., 337.

 Again in Archer v. Haithcock the Supreme Court held it “to be a general rule that reputation, cohabitation and the declaration and conduct of the parties are competent evidence of a marriage between them, except in two cases, i. e. on an indictment for bigamy and in an action of ‘crim. con’.”70

70 Archer v. Haithcock, 51 N. C., 421.

 “We are not . . . disposed to make another exception without a reason,” said Chief Justice Pearson. “Especially, as in this State there is no registry of marriages and frequently circumstantial evidence is the only mode of proving one.” It was a simple matter, therefore, for a couple to agree to live together.

 EXTRA-MARITAL RELATIONS

Undoubtedly ante-bellum society frowned upon extra-marital relations, but it did not frown sufficiently to prevent them. The extent of intimacy during courtship usually varied with the family discipline and training of the lovers. In 1810 “Observer” protested through the columns of the Raleigh Star against such games as “selling the thimble,” played at tea parties, which required that the loser pay a kiss as a forfeit. “To my understanding it is pretty evident,” he wrote, “that the young lady, who in a promiscuous company of segar and pipe-smokers, and perhaps debauchees, suffers herself to be kissed, by any one whom chance may select, either wants a just sense of that virtuous delicacy, which heightens beauty and adorns virtue; or that having this sense, she scruples not to violate it for the wretched fear of being accounted singularly modest.”71

71 October 11.

When young James Norcom, Jr., at school in Philadelphia, wrote his father about a fascinating Miss Ford whom he had met, Dr. Norcom replied that there were many Miss Fords to be found in the world. “They show one, to be sure,” the father cautioned, “how far the pleasures & gaieties of the world may be indulged in, without any very positive & flagrant violations of virtue or discretion; but they generally live in the habitual omission or neglect of some important duty.”72

72 MS in James A. Norcom Papers, January 14, 1823.

In 1813 a young man wrote his sister, about to leave her home in the country for a visit in the city, that he hoped she could “associate with those who are called the polite and well bred, the gay and fashionable ladies of the present day, without assuming their manners, and adopting their free and forward airs, without, like them, admitting the gentlemen among your acquaintances, to liberties, to familiarities, which, if they are not criminal, are at least inconsistent with that modesty, and chastity of manners, which constitute the first female charm, . . .” He thought that “those fashionable ladies . . . who in public companies suffer themselves to be clasped in our arms, seated on our knees, kissed, pressed and toyed with in the most familiar manner—with whom our hands scarce need restraint” were guided by “the desire of making conquests.”73

73 Fenton and Wilson, op. cit., pp. 199-205.

Against such conduct as this, the camp-meeting leaders hurled their thunder. The whole strength of organized religion came in time to oppose “gaieties of fashionable life.” Even as late as 1859, the Reverend John Bayley, Methodist minister of Virginia, writing on the duties of a faithful wife, declared, “She does not injure her constitution . . . by midnight revelings, . . . or any sensual indulgence whatever. . . . Instead of running night after night to the haunts of fashionable folly, . . . she will retire early, rise with the lark, and find her pleasures in the face of day, . . .”74

74 Op. cit., p. 144.

The “romantick novel” which helped to usher in the “sentimental lady” of the early Victorian period also lent its influence in behalf of “blushing modesty,” for the heroines were usually females of “enchanting bashfulness,” “images of spotless purity.” Although a vast change took place in the relation between the sexes during the ante-bellum period, reformers found it necessary to continue raising their voices against “irregularities” and a reference to the legal documents of the period shows that irregularities continued to exist.

The petitions to legitimate children, submitted to the General Assembly between 1800 and 1827, show that couples sometimes had one or more children prior to marriage. The petitioners in most cases belonged to the upper classes, for they were men who had property to bequeath. These petitions do not represent the extent of the custom, but only give some indication of the number of children born to a couple prior to marriage. Forty of the 171 petitions which have been preserved in the Legislative Papers state definitely that the petitioner later married the mother.75

75 MSS in Legislative Papers, 1800-1827. This is by no means the total number of petitions for legitimating children submitted to the Legislature during this period, as can be determined by checking the Legislative Manuscripts with the Legislative Journals. A typical petition, is as follows (MS in Legislative Papers, 1801):

“The Petition of Nathaniel Merritt of Sampson County humbly sheweth

“That your petitioner intermarried with a certain Mary Grantham of Sampson County with whom he continues to live finding her an affectionate wife.—But so it was that before his marriage he had by her five children by the name of Gabriel, Patrick, Treasy, Nancy and Unity Grantham. . . .”

The petition then continues with the usual request that an act be passed to alter the children's surname to that of the father and “to make them inherit as if they had been begotten in lawful wedlock.”

Of this number, as shown in the following table, 22 petitioners had 1 child born prior to marriage with mother 7 petitioners had 2 children born prior to marriage with mother 4 petitioners had 3 children born prior to marriage with mother 2 petitioners had 4 children born prior to marriage with mother 3 petitioners had 5 children born prior to marriage with mother 1 petitioners had 6 children born prior to marriage with mother 1 petitioners had 7 children born prior to marriage with mother

Some idea of the extent of illegitimacy can be obtained from the bulk of these petitions. The following frequency table made from the 171 extant petitions submitted between 1800 and 1827, shows the number of illegitimate children per parent: NUMBER OF ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN PER PARENT, 1800-1827 Number of Children Number of Parents Per Cent 1 98 57.3 2 33 19.3 3 15 8.8 4 12 7.0 5 6 3.5 6 2 1.2 7 to 9 3 1.7 10 and over 2 1.2 Total 171 100.0
Slightly more than half of the petitioners, or 57 per cent, had one illegitimate child; and almost twenty per cent had two. One petitioner, however, had sixteen, seven by one woman and nine by another.76

76 MS in Legislative Papers, 1827.

An examination of the records of the county courts of six counties, representing different sections of the State, also reveals some data concerning illegitimacy, for the county courts had jurisdiction over bastardy cases. The number of cases appearing on the dockets of these county courts during three different periods between 1800 and 1860 is shown in the following table: NUMBER OF BASTARDY CASES IN COUNTY COURTS77BASTARDY CASES ON THE COUNTY COURT DOCKETS County 1801-1805 1831-1835 1851-1855 Carteret 8 11 2 Cumberland 17 10 .....* Edgecombe 14 33 35 Orange 17 2 4 Pasquotank 35 1 .....* Rutherford 27 6 .....* Total 118 63 41

77 MSS, Carteret, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Orange, Pasquotank, and Rutherford County Court Minutes. Both the counties and the years chosen have been selected chiefly with a view to the records which are available.

*Not available.

It would seem that the tendency was toward a decrease in the amount of illegitimacy; yet such a conclusion might be inaccurate, for the number of cases appearing on the docket was largely dependent upon the vigilance of the justices of peace in bringing these cases to court. The case of Edgecombe County is significant, for there were more than twice as many cases on the docket from 1851 to 1855 as from 1801 to 1805.

One of the chief values of the data collected from the county court dockets is the information given in regard to the offenders. For instance, Millicent Newby of Pasquotank County charged a certain William Lane with being the father of her illegitimate child born in 1803, but two years later she had another child by a different man.78

78 Pasquotank County Court Minutes, March term, 1803, September term, 1805.

Susannah Tadlock and Bathsheba Garret of Pasquotank County had similar records;79

79 Ibid., March term, 1801, June term, 1804, September term, 1800, September term, 1804.

 and Isaac Wyatt was found to be the father of two illegitimate children born in 1804.80

80 Ibid., June term, 1804, September term, 1804.

 The same family names continually appear in bastardy cases. In Cumberland County, for instance, Polly Knight, Mary Knight, and Henry Knight had illegitimate children born within a few years of one another.81

81 Cumberland County Court Minutes, 1800-1805. These persons, of course, may not have been related.

Some offenders were men and women who figured prominently in ante-bellum life. Among the Revolutionary patriots who had illegitimate children were such distinguished names as Cornelius Harnett, Robert Halton, Francis Nash, and Matthew Rowan.82

82 Andrews, op. cit., p. 178 n.

The fact that stigma was attached to illegitimacy is indicated by expressions used by some of the petitioners to the Legislature. For instance, the petition of John Clayton of Tyrrell County in 1801 stated “that your Petitioner has had the misfortune to become the father of two illegitimate children.”83

83 MS in Legislative Papers, 1801.

 In 1826 Robert Murdock of Randolph County admitted that he had postponed asking for a bill to legitimate one of his children because he was ashamed of the circumstances surrounding its birth. “Your petitioner from a reluctance to expose the improprieties of his youth” ran the petition “has heretofore abstained from applying to your Honorable body to remedy as far as is practicable the evil which his imprudence has produced; but justice for his son for whom he has the same esteem that he has for his other Children, requires that something should be done for his relief.”84

84 Ibid., attached to bill in Senate, January 2, 1827.

 Most petitioners, however, expressed no regret on account of their “wild oats.”

Society was much more severe upon the woman offender than upon the man. In 1809 the Star related the story of the suicide of a young girl in Cabarrus County who hanged herself by a bandanna handkerchief to the limb of a peach tree. “She became the victim of seduction, yet retained so much of the pride of human nature, that, when her situation could no longer be concealed, she declared her resolution of escaping the scoffs of an unfeeling world, by destroying herself.”85

85 September 14.

A few months later the Star carried an advertisement for fifteen-year-old Betsy Fowler who had strolled into Cross Roads community in Wake County to give birth to a child. Three weeks later she had “absconded,” and an indignant resident of Cross Roads sought information of her through the newspapers “so that she could be compelled to take and maintain her child.”86

86 January 4, 1810.

A significant instance of concealing the birth of an illegitimate child occurred in Fayetteville. In 1850 a number of residents of that town petitioned the Legislature to emancipate Lucy, “the daughter of a respectable white woman.” “To protect the reputation of the real mother, Lucy at her birth was placed in charge of a woman, a slave of one John Selph,” so the petition claimed.87

87 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, December 5, 1850.

Lucy's father was also white, and her associates were “distinct from the coloured population, and her whole demeanor that of the whites.” Selph had intended to manumit Lucy, but he died suddenly and his administrator had sold the girl as a slave. Now the Legislature was petitioned to emancipate her, “an unfortunate woman illegally held in bondage.” Some unmarried mothers, lacking an easy means of escape, resorted to the ancient crime of infanticide.88

88 Hillsborough Recorder, September 6, 1821.

In 1844 the Biblical Recorder began an attack upon what later has been called the “double standard” of morality by a severe article on “the seducer,” and other papers in the State took a momentary interest in the fight. The Biblical Recorder thus expressed itself:

It has long been manifest that something is wrong, not only in the laws, but also in public opinion. It is repugnant to every principle of Justice as well as of common decency, that, while the miserable victim of seduction is consigned to hopeless and irremediable infamy, the seducer is not only permitted by the law to exult in his villany, but is even honored and caressed by the best circles of society. It has appeared strange to us that virtuous and respectable females should so far lose sight of what was due to themselves, to society, and to common decency, as to accept of the attentions of men, who are known to be foul and unprincipled libertines.89

89 Quoted in Hillsborough Recorder, February 22, 1844; see also Carolina Watchman, April 5, 1845, October 25, 1845.

The law attempted in various ways to prevent extra-marital relations. An illegitimate child was prohibited from inheriting from its father, but by act of 1799 it could inherit from the mother provided she left no children born in wedlock.90

90 Revised Code, Chap. XXXVIII, sec. 10. See Kimbrough v. Davis, 16 N. C., 71, for an instance of a woman's providing for her illegitimate son in a marriage settlement entered into prior to marriage.

 A father, by petitioning the Legislature, possibly might obtain the passage of a private act changing the name of his illegitimate child from that of the mother to his own and making it capable of inheriting in like manner with his children born in wedlock.91

91 Drake v. Drake, 15 N. C., 110.

 The Supreme Court decided, however, in Drake v. Drake that the wording of the private act must be so specific as to make the child legitimate to a particular person, otherwise the only effect of the act was to change the child's name.92

92 This power was denied the Legislature by an amendment of 1835.

 Since most of the children legitimated prior to this decision in 1833 were done so by carelessly drawn acts, the purpose of the father was in many cases defeated. Consideration of “bastardy petitions” took up so much of the Legislature's time that as early as 1805 a movement was started to vest the courts with power to legitimate.93

93 MS in Legislative Papers, 1805; House Journal, December 17, 1812, p. 47; MS in Legislative Papers, 1828.

 In 1829 an act was finally passed giving the county or superior courts jurisdiction in such cases. The act required that the petitioner should have married the mother or that the mother be dead, married to another, or living outside the State. The courts seldom made records of these cases94

94 See Pasquotank County Court Minutes, December term, 1831, for a copy of proceedings in such a case.

 with the result that questions concerning legitimation sometimes occurred. The act of 1838 sought to prevent these controversies by requiring clerks of the courts to record the decrees.95

95 See Craig v. Neely, 51 N. C., 170 for the Supreme Court decision on this act.

The act of 1741 “to suppress vice and immorality” was the basis of the law during the ante-bellum period concerning extra-marital relations. The act of 1741 stated “that if any person commit fornication, upon due conviction, each of them shall forfeit and pay twenty-five shillings . . . for each and every such offence.”96

96 The Public Acts of the General Assembly of North Carolina, revised and published under the authority of the Legislature by Francois Xavier Martin (hereafter cited as Martin's Revisal), I, 53.

But in 1805 this act was altered in response to a petition from the justices of peace of Edgecombe County to apply to “fornication and adultery, where a man shall take a woman into his house or a woman a man, and they shall have one or more children without parting or an entire separation.” This offense, which the justices thought more grievous than a single act of incontinence, was made indictable and the offenders held liable to a fine not exceeding $200.97

97 Revised Statutes, 1837, Vol. I, Chap. XXXIV, sec. 46; for petition see MS in Legislative Papers, 1805.

The procedure in bastardy cases as set down by the act of 1741 was slightly altered by the acts of 1799, 1814, 1832, and 1850, in each instance looking to a more liberal interpretation of the law.98

98 Revised Statutes, 1837, Vol. I, Chap. XII; Revised Code, 1855, Chap. XII.

According to the Revised Code of 1855, a justice of the peace might require a single woman who was pregnant or who had recently given birth to a child to be brought before him to declare the father upon oath. If she refused to name the father, she was fined $5 and required to enter bond to keep the child from becoming a public charge. If she named the father, the man so accused was ordered to appear before the next term of the county court “to stand to, abide by, and perform whatever order the court may make for the maintenance of said bastard.”99

99 Chap. XII, sec. 1.

 Usually the court required the father to give bond for the support of the child and to pay the mother a certain amount “for lying in expenses” and a specific sum at regular intervals until the child had reached from three to seven years of age. The amount of the bond required varied from £200 to £500 in 1805 and from $500 to $1,500 in 1850. In 1805 the father was usually required to pay the mother £10 for the first year and £6 a year thereafter, while in 1850 the order usually read “$10 for the first month and $1 a month thereafter.” A man charged with being the father of an illegitimate child might make up an issue and obtain a trial of the case.100

100 See S. v. Floyd, 35 N. C., 382 in which the act of 1850 was discussed.

It was recognized that the bastardy law was subject to abuse. If a designing woman chose to accuse a man, he might have difficulty in proving his innocence. Or, on the other hand, a man might attempt to escape payment of the yearly fee to the mother either by making a compromise with her or by deliberately neglecting to pay the sum.101

101 See MS in Legislative Papers, in House, January 22, 1827.

There is ample evidence to show that all of the largest towns in the State had their “lewd houses,”102

102 See ibid., in House, December 2, 1813. Several documents taken on oath tell something of the life of a prostitute, the fee charged, etc. MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, November 24, 1813, tells of a visit to a house of prostitution in Wilmington.

and it is reasonable to believe that most of the smaller towns did also. “Monitor” in the Edenton Gazette of 1811 said, “It is a matter of concern and regret to every person who is interested in the welfare of our Town, that some of the young men are of a licentious turn.”103

103 March 8.

 He then spoke of their “very great propensity” for visiting brothels. In 1821 “A Friend to Industry,” writing from the Forks of the Yadkin, sent a warning through the columns of the Western Carolinian “to such characters as follow ‘no honest calling’ for a livelihood, but slink about from one place to another, alluring minors and heedless young men to the gaming table, and other scenes of vice and depravity.”104

104 April 3.

 In 1822 the commissioners of Raleigh began a campaign against “prostitute women,”105

105 Raleigh Register, February 1, 1822.

 and in the same year the Legislature considered a motion to make the vagrant laws of the State more stringent by permitting three persons of good character to charge another of ill fame before a justice of peace.106

106 House Journal, December 2, 1822, p. 134.

 If the charge was proved, the offender was subject to an imprisonment of ten days and after that she was to be hired out to the highest bidder for a term sufficient to pay all costs. The persons giving the information were to receive “ten dollars in compensation.”

Strolling prostitutes were always present at any large gathering.107

107 See testimony in S. v. Evans, 27 N. C., 603.

They attended public celebrations, the musters, the fairs, and the courts. A. S. Merrimon, attending Madison County Court in 1853, wrote in disgust: “Scores of women attend this court for the sole purpose of drinking and pandering to the lustful passions of dirty men, and I regret so excee[d]ingly to say, that some men, I will not say gentlemen, are guilty of intercourse with these dirty, filthy strumpets, that ought to be, and one would think they are above doing such things.”108

108 A. R. Newsome (ed.), “The A. S. Merrimon Journal,” NCHR, VIII, 311.

 It is a significant fact that many of the prostitutes were white women. Although there is ample evidence of race mixing, the extent has often been exaggerated.

Several cases of incest attracted public attention during the ante-bellum period, one that of a member of the Legislature who was forced to resign his seat because of the fact but was promptly returned by his constituents.109

109 House Journal, November 30, 1809, p. 20; Raleigh Register, October 26, 1809. The fiancé of the injured girl, together with a group of his friends, tarred and feathered the offender, who was her step-father.

Cases of bigamy never failed to arouse indignation,110

110 Star, May 18, 1842; see also S. v. Patterson, 24 N. C., 346; S. v. Bray, 35 N. C., 289.

 but the ante-bellum legislation on this subject looked steadily toward mitigation of the punishment imposed. The act of 1790 which declared bigamy a felony was gradually altered until it was listed as a misdemeanor in the Revised Code of 1855, the offender to be “fined and imprisoned, and receive one or more public whippings, and be branded on the cheek with the letter B.”111

111 Sessional Laws, 1790, Chap. XI, 1829, Chap. IX; Revised Code, 1855, Chap. XXXIV, sec. 15. The act of 1809 had deprived offenders of the benefit of clergy.

 DIVORCE AND ALIMONY

The question of divorce was one of the most vexed of all problems relating to the family during the period from 1800 to 1860. Agitation for a divorce law began as early as 1790, but the Legislature steadfastly set itself against such an innovation until 1814. Practically every year, from 1799 when a bill “authorizing the judges of Superior Courts to grant divorces, whenever a husband and wife should shew cause which to them appeared sufficient” was rejected on the second reading in the Senate112

112 Raleigh Register, December 10, 1799. See also North Carolina Mercury and Salisbury Advertiser, June 27, 1799.

until the passage of the first divorce law, the General Assembly listened to prolonged debates on divorce and spent much time considering divorce petitions. The General Assembly delegated to itself the power to receive petitions for divorce and to pass private acts divorcing husband and wife when in its judgment the cause or influence of the petitioner was sufficient to demand it. As a result, hundreds of petitions poured into the Legislature and the time required to consider them reached enormous proportions. But the number of divorces actually granted was very few. In 1810, for instance, out of twenty petitions for divorce, the Legislature granted only one. In 1813, the year before the passage of the first divorce act, the Legislature granted four divorces out of twenty-two applications.

“A Friend to Good Order and Religion” discussed this situation when the divorce bill became an issue in 1809. He said quite truthfully:

It is supposed that there are from thirty to sixty Petitions presented to the Legislature every year, praying for relief in cases of this kind, and that a large standing Committee is regularly appointed by the Assembly, to consider and report them, which must employ a very considerable part of the time of the Legislature and of course consume a considerable part of the taxes which are paid every year by the people. It has been said that one Divorce which was granted some years ago (Naylor & Wife)113

113 Sessional Laws, 1794, Chap. LXXXI.

cost the State upwards of two thousand dollars. Does not plain reason and common sense point out to us that this is improper and wrong, and that the injured ought to be at liberty to obtain redress in a Court of Justice, where the cost would fall on the guilty, as in justice it ought? It is now tho't that for the last twenty years, it has cost the State nearly fifty thousand Dollars, and that the expense is increasing every year.114

114 Raleigh Register, June 8, 1809.

The divorce bill of 1808, which was published with the laws of that year for the general consideration of the public, provided relief for three sets of injured persons: (1) for such as were married to those incapable through impotence of performing the duties of the married state, (2) for such as were injured by a violation of the marriage contract, and (3) for wives barbarously treated by their husbands. In the last instance, the wife was to be allotted a third of the husband's annual income. The bill was widely discussed and the newspapers were full of articles on the subject.115

115 Ibid., October 12, November 16, November 30, 1809.

Designing politicians, seeing in the issue an opportunity to win votes, industriously circulated the idea that the friends of the divorce bill had in view a general law whereby “they intended to loosen the bands of Society and turn mankind upon each other like brutes.”116

116 Ibid., June 8, 1809.

 The bill was also opposed by the ministers and the religious part of the community. When the measure finally came to a vote in the Legislature the vote stood 25 to 32 against the bill.

Nevertheless, the increasing number of petitions indicated that there was a real demand for a divorce law. In 1812 the Senate was found sending an urgent appeal to the House of Commons for the appointment of a “joint select committee” to inquire if any “provisions can be made by law to prevent this growing evil.”117

117 Senate Journal, November 26, 1812; see also House Journal, December 22, 1812.

But it was not until two years later that a divorce bill was passed,118

118 Sessional Laws, 1814, Chap. V.

 and then it was only a makeshift piece of legislation.

The act of 1814 followed closely the bill of 1808. It permitted a complete divorce for impotence and adultery, provided the petitioning party was not also guilty of adultery, and a divorce from bed and board to wives cruelly treated by their husbands. In the latter case, the wife might be granted alimony “as her husband's circumstances will admit” not exceeding one third of his annual income or a third of his estate. This section of the act was amended two years later to secure to the wife such property as she might thereafter acquire.119

119 Ibid., 1816, Chap. XXXIII.

The superior courts were given jurisdiction over divorce cases and the material facts in the petition had to be submitted to a jury, but the divorce was not effective until ratified by the General Assembly. The act then proceeded to limit the benefits to the propertied class by requiring that the petitioning party give bond for the prosecution of the suit and that a tax of £10 be imposed upon the party cast. This provision was not modified until ten years later.120

120 Ibid., 1824, Chap. XVIII.

 The status of a divorced wife was not defined until 1819 when she was given the legal status of a feme sole.121

121 Ibid., 1819, Chap. XX.

 She might also assume her maiden name.

The act of 1814 served to give the General Assembly only a brief respite from divorce petitions. By 1824 they were coming again in large numbers. In 1827, therefore, the Legislature relinquished its right to have the last word in divorce cases by giving sole and original jurisdiction to the superior courts.122

122 Ibid., 1827, Chap. XIX.

The Legislature then gave the courts authority to exercise the practice which it had always followed, the right to consider divorces for causes other than impotence and adultery. But it offset this liberality by declaring that the offending party was not to marry again.123

123 Ibid., secs. 2 and 5.

 Although minor changes were made in 1828, 1829, 1834, 1842, and 1852, the divorce law of the ante-bellum period was essentially that of the acts of 1814 and 1827. An amendment to the constitution passed in 1835 forbade the General Assembly power to grant a divorce or secure alimony in any individual case.124

124 Amendments of 1835 (subjoined to Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of North Carolina Called to Amend the Constitution, 1835), art. i, sec. iv, cl. 3; Revised Code, 1855, p. 23.

Prior to the passage of the act of 1827, those who considered themselves injured were meeting the situation in various ways. Some entered into “separation contracts” which contained provisions as various as those signing them. In 1786, for instance, Benjamin Coakley entered into bond with security never thereafter to intermeddle with his wife's person or property which remained with her by his consent.125

125 House Journal, November 29, 1800, p. 22.

In 1803 John and Rebekah Farrow of Currituck County entered into the following contract:

This Indenture made this 24 Day of May 1803 . . . Between John Farrow of the State of North Carolina and County of Currituck . . . of the one part and Rebekah Farrow his wife of [the] other part witnesseth That whereas some unhappy Differences have arisen Between them in consequence of which they have Mutually agreed to separate themselves and are at this time in separate condition we the aforesaid John & Rebekah do firmly agree with Each other to finally Desolve the Marrage Contract once made between us and that Either of us may and Shall have Free and undenied Liberty to Live Single or to Entermarry again with any other person without any manner of hindrance or denial of the adverce party and we . . . do further agree that if Either of the partners should in Future marry again with any other person that we will not carry on any prosecution against the other so marrying . . . and we . . . do further agree that all children hereafter Begotten by Either of us shall not in any wise stand chargeable to the adverce party . . . in as full and ample manner as if the Former marrage had never been contracted in Witness whereof we have here unto set our hands & seals the day and date above written.

John Farrow Rebach Farrow126Christopher Robinson Major Whidbee

126 MS in Legislative Papers, 1807.

Still others, without show of legality, were remedying their situation as best they could. As William Kerr of Stokes County stated to the Legislature in 1808, “. . . it is extremely hard to be bound during life by the laws of this country in consequence of that violated and broken covenant between her and him in respect to which I have a good conscience.”127

127 Ibid., 1808.

Having the sanction of their own conscience and being unable to obtain relief by legislative sanction, many laid aside one partner and took up another. In 1800, for instance, one Thomas White petitioned the Legislature to legitimate certain of his children. He stated quite frankly that he had been lawfully married, but his wife's third child was black, whereupon he left her and shortly thereafter “took to his bed and board Esther Bittle by whom he . . . had ten children.”128

128 Ibid., 1800.

The causes which were deemed sufficient for a divorce by petitioners to the Legislature as set forth in 266 applications which have been preserved in the Legislative Manuscripts are listed in the following table:129

129 These petitions cover the period, 1800-1835, but the petitions for ten years have not been located: 1811, 1815, 1819, 1820, 1821, 1823, 1829, 1830, and 1831.

CAUSE FOR DIVORCE Cause Number of Petitions Per Cent Desertion to live with another 50 18.8 Desertion 49 18.4 Cohabitation with a Negro 20 7.5 Adultery 13 4.9 Separation 13 4.9 Not stated 12 4.5 Cruelty 11 4.1 Prostitution 10 3.8 Wasting property 10 3.8 Bigamy 9 3.4 Bringing another into the house 8 3.0 Drunkenness 6 2.3 Impotence 5 1.9 Incompatibility 5 1.9 Attempt on petitioner's life 4 1.5 Married while drunk 4 1.5 Non-support and cruelty 4 1.5 Ill temper 3 1.1 Indecent conduct 3 1.1 Partner is fugitive from justice 3 1.1 Refused to Cohabit 3 1.1 Miscellaneous 21 7.9 Total 266 100.0

Of the causes listed, more than a third, or 37.2 per cent, were for desertion, and a little more than half of the desertion cases were desertions to live with another partner. A large number of the deserters were cited as having gone to “the western country.” Some went expecting to return, while others went openly declaring their intention of being rid of the worries of a burdensome family. Still others “eloped to the Louisiana country,” carrying with them the objects of their illicit love. Some, however, were bold enough to live with another in the same neighborhood as the lawful mate. The law against bigamy recognized the frequency of desertions by declaring that it was “not to be applied to a person whose husband or wife shall have been absent seven years, without knowledge of his or her existence.”130

130 Revised Statutes, 1837, Vol. I, Chap. XXXIV, sec. 14.

Those listed as charging the partner with adultery stated in most instances that they were still living with their mates but that the petitioners found the condition insufferable under the circumstances.

The charge of cohabitation with a Negro was made by 7.5 per cent of the petitioners. In 1832 Judge Ruffin held in Scroggins v. Scroggins that the birth of a mulatto was not always sufficient cause for a divorce under the act of 1827. His opinion was as follows:

Fraud in the contract of marriage, to entitle a party to a divorce, must consist of .something more than mere concealment of defects—there must be such misrepresentations as would deceive a person of ordinary prudence; and where the husband, at the marriage, might have known that this intended wife was pregnant, and five months afterwards she had a mulatto child, it was held that he was not entitled to a divorce.131

131 Scroggins v. Scroggins, 14 N. C., 535; see also Barden v. Barden, 14 N. C., 548.

The causes listed as miscellaneous contain fifteen categories, among which were the following charges: husband charged petitioner with adultery, each has had children by another, separation with division of property, incest, wife lives with another while petitioner is away on business, wife cursed petitioner and called him an “amaffarrodite,” wife in love with another, family feud, petitioner had obtained her property rights by legislative enactment and thought she had a right to remarry, wife pregnant by another man when he married her. It is surprising that the last cause named was listed by only two petitioners especially since an attempt was made in the Legislature in 1834 and again in 1852 to specify this as another cause for divorce.132

132 MSS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, December 30, 1834; ibid., engrossed in House, November 3, 1852.

Aware of the difficulty of obtaining a divorce by legislative enactment, many women often closed their petitions with the request that, if the divorce was not granted, a law might be passed to secure to them such property as they might thereafter acquire. Two hundred and thirty-eight such petitions, not included in the list of petitions for divorce, have been preserved in the Legislative Manuscripts.133

133 The period covered is from 1800 to 1832.

An enumeration of the causes given for carrying into effect the prayer of the petitioner would closely parallel the causes listed for divorce. Desertion leads the list, with non-support, cruelty, and drunkenness closely following. A section of the divorce act of 1814, as has already been stated, provided for relief in such cases by granting a divorce from bed and board for the following causes: “if any person shall either abandon his family or maliciously turn his wife out of doors, or by cruel or barbarous treatment endanger her life, or offer such indignities to her person as to render her condition intolerable or life burthensome.”134

134 Sessional Laws, 1814, Chap. V, sec. 5.

 In 1828 the Legislature afforded additional relief to injured wives by making it lawful for superior courts to decree alimony “when a man shall become an habitual drunkard or spendthrift, wasting his substance to the impoverishment of his family.”135

135 Ibid., 1828, Chap. XLIV, sec. 3.

 Both acts, however, declared that they should not be construed “in any wise to affect the rights of any creditor . . . of the husband.”

Despite the fact that many each year sought to break their marriage vows, the family was “the most lasting cement of the political permanency” of ante-bellum North Carolina. Courtship among the gentry was conducted with formalities which have since been sloughed off, but courtship itself was essentially the same then as now. Illegitimacy was probably greater, but family ties were nevertheless compelling. Although the household revolved around the father as the legal head, the strong emotional appeal of wife and children greatly modified the asperity of the law.

 CHAPTER VIII FAMILY LIFE THE FAMILY DWELLING

THE HOUSE to which the average bridegroom in North Carolina took his bride was a humble abode even in 1860. When Thomas Henderson, editor of the Raleigh Star, attempted in 1810 to obtain information about the general state of society in North Carolina, he found that the prevailing style of architecture then, as in colonial times, was the log cabin. William Dickson wrote of Duplin County:

The first Inhabitants of Duplin and Sampson Counties, built and lived in log Cabins, and as they became more Wealthy, some of them Built framed Clapboard Houses with Clay Chimneys, at Present there are not many good Houses, well Constructed, with Brick Chimneys, and Glass lights, there are no Stone or Brick walled Houses, nor any that can be called Edifices in the County—The greatest Number of Citizens yet build in the old Stile.1

1 MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book, “Duplin County”; Newsome, “Twelve North Carolina Counties,” NCHR, V, 440.

Dr. Jeremiah Battle said of Edgecombe County: “There are a few well built private houses, some of which have lately been finished. The ‘style of building’ [in Tarboro] is as it is in the country, generally plain & cheap.”2

2 Ibid., VI, 82.

Henry Barnard of Connecticut, who visited the South Atlantic states in 1833, said of his trip from Virginia to Raleigh, “The whole aspect of the country is mean—not a decent, painted house, or a neat village the whole way.” Later from Salisbury he wrote, “I have visited all the intelligent familys here—and rode 8 or 10 miles into the country in every direction to see the sovereign people in their homes—their log huts, which is the prevading style of building.”3

3 Op. cit., pp. 321, 338.

 In 1837 a North Carolinian, William Henry Wills of Tarboro, found the houses along the road from Edgecombe County to Fayetteville “few and poor.”4

4 Op. cit., p. 437. For a description of the houses from Virginia to Fayetteville in the fifties see Olmsted, op. cit., p. 321.

A common type of log house of the better sort was that which had four rooms, two rooms separated by a partition, with a loft above which was reached by a narrow stairway or a ladder, and a small lean-to at the end of the back porch. The chimney, which was usually built of field stone, was frequently ten feet wide and high enough for an ordinary man to stand in it.

In 1851 the Southern Weekly Post of Raleigh declared that the average house in North Carolina was neither attractive nor comfortable, and that the people of the State had not improved in their ways of living upon the examples of their ancestors. “How often do we see houses set on the brow of a sandy hill, with not a tree or shrub, or patch of green grass to relieve the eye or refresh the imagination; . . .” In summer they look “like places of penance, bake-ovens whose inmates are suffering all the tortures awarded to the martyred Saints.” In the winter, fires “large enough to burn a brick kiln” roared in the immense chimneys, “and the family will be crowding round, scorching and sweating on one side, while the other is shivering with the keen blasts that sweep through open doors and a thousand yawning crevices.” “Why do you not,” impatiently asked the Post, “make” your houses tight, “and in winter close the doors and keep the windows full of glass?”5

5 December 13.

Two years later, Professor William H. Owen of Wake Forest College declared through the columns of the Weekly Post, “It is admitted that there are few things in which we are more deficient than in Architecture. The State is covered with huge squares and parallelograms of painted weather boards, which might have been built up into sightly and comfortable dwellings for one half of what they originally cost.”6

6 Ibid., October 1, 1853.

He wished that North Carolinians would take more to the cottage style which was “becoming fashionable.”7

7 Ibid., October 15, 1853; see also Fayetteville Observer, September 1, 1856.

There were, however, stately homes in North Carolina.8

8 See in North Carolina Booklet: A. C. Avery, “Historic Homes in North Carolina—Pleasant Gardens and Quaker Meadows, in Burke County,” IV, No. 3; Thomas Blount, “Buncombe Hall,” II, No. 8; Col. Burgwyn, “The Groves,” II, No. 9; A. L. Devereux, “Historic Homes: Welcome,” XI, No. 2; Richard Dillard, “Hayes and Its Builder,” II, No. 8; M. H. Hinton, “Ingleside, Home of John Ingles,” XV, No. 3; L. T. Rodman, “Historic Homes and People of Old Bath Town,” II, No. 8, and “Residence of John Gray Blount, Esq.,” XXII, 46-52; A. M. Waddell, “Historic Homes in the Cape Fear Country,” II, No. 9.

In 1807 Joseph A. Brown of Bertie County, described his plantation house situated on the west bank of the Chowan River as “a large comfortable brick Dwelling House, with 6 rooms on the first floor, surrounded with piazzas, situated 200 yards from the river, a court yard surrounded with handsome railed fencing, near two acres of garden, also enclosed by paling, a two story Kitchen, brick store-House, large Barn Stable, Corn Cribs, &c. &c.”9

9 Edenton Gazette, December 2, 1807.

The most extravagant type of “mansion house” in the ante-bellum days was usually approached by a broad avenue flanked with tall elms. The avenue, some four hundred yards long, gradually led up to the house on the crest of a knoll or terrace. About the house were noble forest trees with comfortable seats at their bases. The plantation house at “Rich Lands” in Chowan County where James Battle Avirett grew to manhood is typical of “the big house” of the coastal plain region.10

10 J. B. Avirett, The Old Plantation, pp. 35-42.

Including the piazzas, it was sixty feet square and three stories high, built of North Carolina pine and weatherboarded with yellow poplar. It stood on brick pillars about five feet above the ground to avoid dampness. The broad piazzas on the first and second stories extended all around the house. The windows were wide and deep, reaching to the bottom of the floor. On the first floor two broad halls, cutting each other at right angles, ran the whole length of the house. Along the walls were rows of bookshelves and hammock hooks, suggesting lazy comfort on a hot summer day. On the right was the large parlor with its piano, mahogany furniture, oil portraits, and heavy carpets. Back of the parlor was the master's bedroom; across the hall, the nursery; and opposite the parlor, the family sitting room. The two stories above were for the older children and guests, while the attic was the family storeroom. To reach the dining room and kitchen one had to pass through the large central hall and cross a piazza, for, as in most ante-bellum mansions, the kitchen was an establishment separate from the living quarters. In the kitchen the wide fire-place was equipped with a crane for swinging the large pots and with hooks for roasting, for here the family cooking was done.

From the kitchen porch could be seen the pump, sheltered by a covered arbor situated in the center of a broad quadrangle. To the right were three smoke houses where pork was cured, also a “flour house,” “coffee house,” and a storehouse for groceries. Back of these in a two-acre enclosure were the poultry houses where there were chickens, turkeys, guineas, and ducks and geese, kept especially for making feather beds. To the left as one looked from the kitchen porch was the vegetable garden and below that the weaving room where most of the “negro cloth” was manufactured. Still farther beyond were the “quarters,” the houses of the slaves, and not far off the stables.

The type of house intermediate between the mansion and the log cabin was the frame cottage of four or five rooms. The architecture was simple. Usually a wide hall, running the length of the house, separated two groups of rooms; or two rooms and a piazza sprawled out in the rear from two rooms at the front of the house, forming together an enormous L or T. The furnishings were simple. The unpainted floors, often kept scrupulously clean by scrubbing with ashes, were covered, if at all, by hand woven rag rugs. The walls were white washed or, less frequently, papered or plastered. The furniture was made from native wood either by the head of the family or by a mechanic in a local cabinet shop. The dutch oven and frying pan were the chief kitchen utensils even after the stove came into general use in the fifties.

The number of free persons per dwelling in North Carolina in 1790, 1850, and 1860 as reported by the census is shown in the following table:

NUMBER OF FREE PERSONS PER DWELLING11 Year Free Population Number Dwellings Average Number of Persons to Dwelling 1790 292,554 40,018 7.3 1850 580,363 104,996 5.5 1860 661,563 129,585 5.1

11 U. S. Census Office, A Century of Population Growth, p. 102; Population of the United States in 1860, p. xxvii.

The average number of persons to the dwelling in North Carolina was less than in the more thickly settled states, such as New York and Pennsylvania, and even slightly less than in Virginia, but the extent of overcrowding can be estimated only roughtly, for the number of rooms to the dwelling is not available from the census reports.

 THE ANTE-BELLUM WOMAN

The qualities often thought of as being peculiar to the Victorian lady were characteristics of the genteel lady long before 1837. Delicacy, innocence, modesty, simplicity, and good nature, “are jewels of inestimable value, in the character of a man or woman,” wrote Dr. James Norcom of Edenton in 1810 to his young fiancée, “but in a woman they are everything!”12

12 MS in James A. Norcom Papers, February 4, 1810.

Also in 1810 President Caldwell of the University of North Carolina, addressing the young ladies of the female department of the Raleigh Academy, solemnly assured them that “maidenly delicacy” was the foundation of the social structure. “In the improvement of that delicacy and superior sensibility which it belongs to your nature to possess,” said the President, “is found the firmest security for the best state of society which virtue alone can insure and perpetuate.”13

13 Star, November 28, 1810.

The ideal woman of ante-bellum days was modest and innocent, graceful in person and gracious in manners. She had a flattering timidity and “modest softness.” She was cultivated in the “polite arts” of dancing, music, drawing, and embroidery. She was fond of reading; but, whenever she commenced a work “without having previously been directed by some judicious and thoughtful friend,” she would “lay the book aside forever” the moment her eyes fell “upon an impure thought, . . .”14

14 Leisure Hour, November 18, 1858.

Such a ban upon the reading habits of the sex automatically restricted the education of woman to the three R's and a cursory view of a few cultural studies.15

15 Infra, pp. 302-8.

 The well-bred woman did not care to pursue her studies to such an extent that she might be called masculine, for “all those studies and pursuits that qualify women to shine in the society of the learned,” tended “essentially to rob them of the attractions” which made them “most fascinating in the eyes of men.” The elderly Dr. James Norcom, criticizing a manuscript which a young lady of Virginia had sent him to read, thought the essay would be unexceptionable “were it not . . . a little too masculine,” warning her that “estimable female authors” sought to retain their feminine charm in their writings.16

16 MS in James A. Norcom Papers: James Norcom, Sr., to Mary B. Harvey, April 24, 1848.

Religion was woman's greatest comfort in life. Indeed, females needed “the hopes, and the prospects of religion, more, . . . than the other sex.” It softened “the pains of living . . . by the hope of dying” and made woman able to bear with “patience and submission” the “trials of disobedience,” the “weakness of a feeble constitution,” and “a husband of acid temper.”17

17 “Beauties in Female Piety,” D. A. Clark, Sermons quoted in Western Carolinian, September 19, 1820.

Having a greater need for religion than men, women also had greater religious responsibility. “How solemn and how awful . . . is their responsibility,” wrote a correspondent of the Western Carolinian in 1822, praising Miss Fanny Badger who spent her time reading Dwight's System of Theology instead of devoting it to “the foolish vanities and licentious practices of the world.” Would the female sex “become truly and unaffectedly pious;—the whole moral face of the world would be changed; . . . drunkards, duellists, gamblers, and infidels, would no longer be found in respectable society; and good sons, good brothers, good husbands, good neighbors, good friends and good Christians would every where abound.”18

18 Quoted in Hillsborough Recorder, November 6, 1822.

In addition to her church work, the well-bred ante-bellum woman might also engage in charity. It was becoming of her to take baskets of food and clothing to the poor, for she should always be a “ministering angel.” Above all, however, she should have a regard for “the duties and enjoyments of domestic life.” “God in his inscrutable wisdom,” wrote Dr. Norcom in 1848, “has appointed a place & a duty for females, out of which they can neither accomplish their destiny, nor secure their happiness!!”19

19 MS in James A. Norcom Papers: James Norcom, Sr., to Mary B. Harvey, May 25, 1848.

“The truth is, Miss Mary,” he wrote to an aspiring literary female, “that woman, in her proper sphere & office, is the grace, the ornament, the bliss of life. Out of it, she may shine and dazzle,” but “she will soon cease to command attention and admiration, if she lack those characteristics of feminine softness & delicacy & modesty which so eminently distinguish her from our rougher sex. If these divine & love inspiring attributes be wanting, the woman disappears, & we behold in her place, . . . an hermaphrodite, a creature acknowledged by neither sex, & a terror & reproach to both. . . .”20

20 Ibid.; see also letter of April 24, 1848.

Upon the death in 1845 of Mrs. Ann Sellers, wife of Colonel John Sellers of Sampson County, the North Carolina Standard declared her to have been “a rare assemblage of all those amiable qualities which adorn” woman. Her “deportment” was that of an “exemplary Christian.” “She was kind to her friends, hospitable to strangers, charitable to the poor and afflicted of her neighborhood, forbearing to her domestics and ever ready to do good to all, . . .”21

21 July 23.

Travelers in the South often commented upon the differences between southern and northern women. In 1852 the Weekly Post of Raleigh mentioned one such traveler who was “particularly struck” with the beauty of form of the southern woman, “their symmetrical and harmonious figures,” their “exquisite taste” in dress, their “proverbial affability and urbanity.” “The southern lady is naturally easy, unembarrassed and polite—You may go into the country, where you please—you may go as far as you please from town, village and post office—you may call at the poorest house you can find, provided you don't get among ‘Crackers,’ and whether you accost maid or matron, you will always be answered with the same politeness and treated with the same spontaneous courtesy.”22

22 February 28; see also Barnard, op. cit., p. 342. Captain Marryat of Great Britain (op. cit., p. 100) did not confine his remarks on beauty to southern women, but said, “In my former remarks upon the women of America I have said, that they are the prettiest in the world, and I have put the word prettiest in italics, as I considered it a term peculiarly appropriate to the American women.”

Writers both at home and abroad also commented on the “physical delicacy” of the southern female. Most critics, overlooking malaria, typhoid, and the general languor of a sub-tropical climate, saw in it the curse of slavery. Southern women, wrote the Weekly Post of Raleigh, “are brought up to be dependent for every little object upon servants, and never acquire the habit and faculty of waiting on themselves. There are many exceptions to this, but it is generally true of those whose circumstances permit the indulgence. This fact has also made an impression upon the minds of the poorer classes, that much muscular exercise is indelicate and ungenteel, and they, too, make as little exertion in the open air as possible.”23

23 July 9, 1853.

Certainly by the thirties, it had become definitely unfashionable for a lady to exert herself physically, and she had become what Dr. Norcom thought to be her proper sphere, “the grace, the ornament, the bliss of life.” There were many, however, who regretted that the industrious housewife had given place to the “hot-house flower.” In 1852 the Weekly Post wrote in protest:

There was a time, when industry and good housewifery were reckoned indispensable qualifications among women; and when a young gentleman happened to step in where girls were at work, his presence seemed to “set a keener edge on female industry.” . . . But now the thing is greatly changed. A girl must by no means be seen making a shirt, or sewing on a pair of pantaloons;- . . . the only appearance of work that can be at all allowed in company now, is a slip of fine muslin, with a half-finished flower, which the young lady must by all means declare was begun six weeks ago; or a similar slip of cambric, concerning which we must be informed that three inches were hemmed in a week; or, what is at present bearing away the palm of time-murder,—crotcheting a lady's collar or a spangled purse, concerning the completion of which no definite time can be fixed upon!24

24 March 27.

 HOUSEWIFERY

However much the ante-bellum woman chose to appear as a lady of ease, few in North Carolina could actually assume this role. In any successful family whose fortune was built largely upon agriculture, regardless of the number of slaves at their command, “the feeble wife” was no less industrious or economical than “the strong husband.” Many a North Carolina husband might have written to his wife as William Atson of Virginia did late in the fifties, “I know that, accustomed to luxury, and capable of shining in society, you have cheerfully worked, economized, and shunned the world.”25

25 Heart Whispers; or a Peep Behind the Family Curtain, p. 251.

The household duties of a wife, mother to a “numerous offspring,” gave her little time for fashionable embroidery, novel reading, and long afternoon naps until she was well passed middle age. Not even the wife of a wealthy planter, with her cook, butler, maid, nurse, and laundress could entirely escape the drudgery. She might not have much of the actual labor to perform, but it was hers to plan and superintend many household industries which today have been taken out of the home.

The housewife's day usually began a little after six if she had servants, at four-thirty or five if she was a yeoman's wife. The efficient housewife was always in the kitchen soon after the cook had arrived and had started a fire in the fireplace or, after the late forties, in the stove. She looked first to the appearance of the cook to see that she was “properly and neatly attired,” “bright and glossy in complexion” with hair “combed, braided, or turbaned.” She was on hand at the setting of the table, especially if she had recently “installed a new servant.” She saw that the butler had a clean napkin to cover the food which he bore across the open passage-way from kitchen to dining room, not only to keep it warm but to protect it from air and flies. She lighted her spirit-lamp to keep tea and coffee hot at the table and then made sure that each person was ready to take his seat before ordering that muffins and batter bread be placed on the table.

After breakfast, “Virginia ladies, who are proverbially good managers,” wrote Mrs. Mary Randolph in her Virginia Housewife of 1831, “employ themselves, while their servants are eating, in washing the cups, glasses, &c; arranging the cruets, the mustard, salt-sellers, pickle vases, and all the apparatus for the dinner table. . . . When the kitchen breakfast is over, and the cook has put all things in their proper places, the mistress should go in to give her orders. Let all the articles intended for the dinner, pass in review before her: have the butter, sugar, flour, meal, lard, given out in proper quantities; the catsup, spice, wine, whatever may be wanted for each dish, measured to the cook. The mistress must tax her own memory with all this: we have no right to expect slaves or hired servants to be more attentive to our interest than we ourselves are: they will never recollect these little articles until they are going to use them; the mistress must then be called out, and thus have the horrible drudgery of keeping house all day, . . .”26

26 Pp. xi-xii.

One of the imperious chores of the housewife's day was to make ready the lighting equipment before dark should fall. If the household burned candles and the wife was a tidy housekeeper, the candlesticks must be cleaned of drippings and polished; the candles replenished. If lamps were used, the wicks must be trimmed, the bowls filled, and, if the lamps had chimneys, they must be polished. Mrs. Cornelia Phillips Spencer of Chapel Hill, godmother of the University of North Carolina after Reconstruction and writer of much spirited comment on her times, in contrasting housekeeping chores of ante-bellum days with those of 1890, was impressed most greatly with the difference in the lighting equipment. “In summer,” she wrote, “we had to go across the yard to the kitchen for a chunk to light up with. And what blowing and puffing to coax a blue flame to catch upon the candle wick, what dripping of tallow and sperm before this could be accomplished.”26a

26a H. S. Chamberlain, Old Days in Chapel Hill, Being the Life and Letters of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, p. 45.

When Janet Schaw visited North Carolina on the eve of the Revolution, she found Wilmington housewives of fashion using in the kitchen the beautiful green bayberry candles made from the native wax-myrtle. They preferred spermaceti candles for the parlor. “The poorer sort burn pieces of lightwood, which they find without trouble, . . .” wrote Miss Schaw.26b

26b E. W. and C. M. Andrews, op. cit., p. 203.

Lightwood and tallow and sperm candles continued to be used throughout the ante-bellum period. An advertisement in the Fayetteville Observer of August 4, 1846, declared that the North Carolina Soap and Candle Factory of Fayetteville made from forty to seventy thousand pounds of tallow candles a year and largely supplied Wilmington, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and Hillsboro with light.

Various kinds of lamps were also in general use in the ante-bellum period. The small, vessel-shaped lard or sperm-oil lamp, usually made of iron, was a familiar object on the colonial table. The Argand lamp with circular wick and chimney was manufactured in England in 1782 and immediately met with success. It was devised to burn sperm-oil, but a variant of the lamp was manufactured to burn lard. With the manufacture of camphine from turpentine, special lamps were made to burn this fuel, and after 1845 public buildings in North Carolina and the parlors of the wealthy were brightly illuminated. Some kerosene had been sold as an illuminant as early as 1848, but it was not distilled on a large scale until 1854, and it was not until 1859 that it began to be advertised in North Carolina as “the cleanest, most economical, and best light to be obtained except from gas.” By 1860 Raleigh, Wilmington, Charlotte, and New Bern had gas lights. At the close of the period, however, the average family in comfortable circumstances still had one tallow candle on the supper table, two sperm candles or a camphine lamp in the parlor for evening, and a tallow candle to carry about the house.26c

26c Sprunt, Chronicles of the Cape Fear River, pp. 162-63; Chamberlain, op. cit., p. 45.

Mrs. Mary Mason of Raleigh, writing on “the duties of wife and mother . . . expressly for the benefit of residents of the Southern States, before emancipation, . . .” thought that a mistress should inspect every apartment daily to see that “the whole is swept, dusted, aired, and divested of cobwebs.”27

27 Mason, op. cit., p. 20. See also House and Home; or, The Carolina Housewife; Randolph, op. cit.; S. A. Elliott, Mrs. Elliott's Housewife; Cotesworth Pinckney (ed.), The Lady's Token, pp. 119-20.

Bedrooms should be aired daily and beds sunned twice a month. All kitchen utensils should be taken out doors once a week and scrubbed. Chimneys should be swept down every day in the winter before the fires were made and burned out once a month on a rainy day. Closet, cupboard, and pantry doors should be kept shut and locked to keep out cats, mice, and rats, and the mistress herself should carry the keys. If possible, she should strain the milk herself and see that the churns were scalded and aired daily. She should be on hand once or twice a month when the clothes were being sorted in the laundry, when starch was being made, and when bluing was being added to the rinsing water, for “servants have little idea of proportion” and quickly become careless. The mistress should grease the flat irons and later attend to the airing of the ironed clothes unless she had “a careful person in this department.” Clothes should be sorted before being placed in the wardrobe and those needing repair mended at once or taken to the seamstress. “Especially your husband's shirts,” wrote Mrs. Mason, “should never be put away without buttons, his drawers without strings, or his stockings with holes.” This is “one of the greatest annoyances a man can be subjected to.”28

28 Mason, op. cit., p. 36.

The mistress should begin housecleaning in February, “as vermin begin to lose their torpor about this time, and bestir themselves to prepare for a progeny.” “On some bright day, have all your beds moved out into the sun, shaken, dusted, and searched well,” advised Mrs. Mason. “While the beds are sunning, search over all your bedsteads. Wipe them over with cold soapsuds, and carefully stop every crack, seam, and screw-hole with hard turpentine soap.”29

29 Ibid., p. 27.

General housecleaning did not begin until the first of May, when the prudent housewife removed all furniture from the house, took up carpets, whitewashed all walls and ceilings, washed windows, and scrubbed all the woodwork. A bushel of unslacked lime, slacked in a barrel with boiling water and then whitened with a gallon of flour-paste and a little bluing, was sufficient to whitewash an entire house. One began with the upstairs, doing one room at a time, taking a week or more to finish the job.

Although with servants to do most of the actual labor, the mistress should supervise the soap-making, the poultry yard, and the garden. “Insist on all your wood-ashes being saved to make the family soap,” wrote Mrs. Mason. “Let your servants understand at once that you will not buy soap when there are abundant materials at home for its manufacture.”30

30 Ibid., pp. 28-29.

The fowl-house should be swept clean once a week and fumigated every three weeks with sulphur and tobacco. “Have a hole cut in your hen-house door just large enough for the hens to enter; but keep the door locked that the eggs may be safe.” The mistress should also know when to have her garden plowed or spaded, when to add manure, what seeds to choose and how to dry them, how to rotate her little crops of vegetables.31

31 Ibid., pp. 48-59.

But the most exacting duties which filled the faithful housewife's day had to do with the nursery. She turned over the fatiguing work of “minding child” to a Negro nurse, but she supervised the nursery routine, made a great many of the little garments herself, although with a seamstress at her command, and did much of the actual nursing when a child was sick, as was frequently the case. The nursery itself should be “a moderately large room, high-pitched, and well ventilated, with an open fire-place, in preference to either a stove or grate.” It should be aired and swept every morning, have a fender for the fire too high for the little ones to climb over, have scanty furniture to give ample room for the children to play, and be covered with “a good thick carpet” to “save their little heads when they fall.”

Children should be dressed warmly in winter and play out in the open air as much as possible. Mrs. Mason strongly advised mothers against “the prevailing custom of extravagant dressing.” In winter, children are “arrayed in embroidery and furs, save that the legs, arms, and neck” are “unmercifully exposed to the weather.” In summer, infants, “arrayed in an extravagant profusion of laces, ribbons, flowers, and feathers, most uncomfortably placed in a reclining posture, in a beautiful baby's barouche, with the top thrown back, so as to exhibit the beauty as well as the finery of the inmate as much as possible,” are sent out with “a thoughtless and foolishly fond, ambitious nurse,” to vie with others in the heat of mid-afternoon.32

32 Ibid., p. 73.

The mother should supervise the children's diet herself, leaving the actual feeding, however, to the nurse if she chose. Milk and well-baked light bread or crackers made an excellent breakfast. A young child should not have green corn or new potatoes in summer or be given cake or preserves at night, but “a little salt herring or ham will sometimes give tone to the weak stomach of a child, when suffering especially with diarrhoea.”33

33 Ibid., p. 66.

The mother should also administer all medicines herself, “however you may think you may confide in your nurse.” “If it should happen,” wrote Mrs. Mason, “that you wish to attend a party at night, and your babe is not inclined to sleep, never administer opiates; forego the party rather, if you have not sufficient confidence in your nurse to leave it in her care while awake.”34

34 Ibid., p. 61.

A southern housewife, in addition to her other duties, had to know how to manage her servants. All lady's books of this period, written by southerners, and even agricultural magazines and newspapers gave hints on this subject. Mrs. Mason thought that a good nurse was one of the greatest blessings which could befall a southern housewife. The nurse should be a healthy, honest, well-tempered middle-aged woman, fond of children, not too self-sufficient, free from drinking, snuff-taking, and the baneful influence of superstition. Some housewives were always more or less in the power of their servants. “It is, therefore, wise to get on the right side of them,” wrote Mrs. Mason, “so that they will be less inclined to take undue advantage of you.”35

35 Ibid., p. 11.

The cook, who was the real power among the servants, should be healthy, brisk, honest, and not too amiable, “for your very amiable cook” is apt to be “over-indulgent to her fellow-servants. . . .”36

36 Ibid., p. 18.

In the management of servants, praise was far more effective than censure. “Trust them if you would have them honest,” but keep provisions locked up in order not to tempt them to do wrong. “Counsel and encourage, reprove and condemn them, as you would your own erring children, . . . Feed your servants bountifully, not forgetting to include a portion of the dainties with which their ready hands are constantly supplying you. In this way you will always be rewarded by the agreeable appearance of a cheerful, happy, and contented countenance, and a ready alacrity in your service.”37

37 Ibid., p. 17.

Hard was the lot of a young wife who had not been trained in household management. “Do not fancy it unrefined for young ladies to enter the culinary domain,” cautioned Mrs. Mason. “No duty is unrefined. . . . Accustom your daughters while growing up, to aid you in culinary matters. . . . Otherwise they may be unhappy, unprofitable wives, and more of a burden than a pleasure and comfort to their husbands.”38

38 Ibid., p. 120.

After a visit to his daughter, Mrs. John W. Brodnax, in 1850, Judge Thomas Ruffin wrote of her: “. . . Polly is getting on very well towards establishing a high reputation not only as a good wife and mother, but a choice house-keeper in all branches, house, kitchen, yard, garden, poultry, and the rest; and, withall, keeps her amiable manners, cheerful smiles, and social qualities, and genteel appearance.”39

39 Papers of Thomas Ruffin, II, 294.

It was not easy to keep cheerful smiles when one had a daily round of nursing, cooking, washing, sewing, knitting, weaving, preserving fruits, and canning vegetables in the summer and curing fresh pork in the winter. As Dr. Norcom wrote to his daughter, after he had taken charge of his household a few days because of his wife's illness:

if it is not managed with great ability, sobriety, & good sense, the duty of house-keeping is dirty, demoralizing & debasing in a high degree. . . . It confines one to a series of low pursuits, a course of filthy drudgery, & disgusting slovenliness, that have but little time for study or quiet meditation, & very little for improving conversation or refined society; & it is altogether unsuited to moral & religious enjoyment. It keeps one in perpetual agitation, anxiety, & apprehension; & has no pleasure equal to the pains, the toil, the privations & the suffering, which it is almost sure to impose.40

40 MS in James A. Norcom Papers, August 19, 1846.

Perhaps Mary Sawyer had in mind this very thing when she wrote to her young friend, Mary Shepard, later Mrs. John H. Bryan, “One does not always have a great deal of good humour to spare after marriage.”41

41 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, November 22, 1821.

Not many years later, Mrs. Bryan complained to her husband, who was then in Washington attending Congress, “You have no idea of the trouble of our numerous offspring, they require such unremitted attention & care, I cannot like many mothers neglect them.”42

42 Ibid., January 23, 1828.

 Her sister, Mrs. Ebenezer Pettigrew, was having the same difficulty. Although not interrupted by fashionable visitors at her plantation home, Phelps Lake in Washington County, her days were so full of household duties that she found time only on Sundays for relaxation and a little reading. “We have not yet procured another Teacher and I am obliged to bestow some attention on the children, but I find the duties of housekeeping, nursing and teaching are not compatable therefore one of them must be neglected, which is the school, the others being indispensable, my time is always usefully employed.”43

43 Ibid., October 20, 1828.

Some mothers, as in the case of Mrs. Pettigrew, tutored their children in addition to their other duties. The Carolina Observer in 1826 thought this number to be few. “It is to be regretted,” wrote the Observer, “that few mothers are either capable or willing to perform so arduous a task.”44

44 February 8; see also Andrews, op. cit., pp. 154-55, for Miss Janet Schaw's observation on the mothers' instruction of their daughters in colonial North Carolina.

After the establishment of public schools in 1840, some mothers were relieved of tutoring; but many still clung to the old custom, too proud to have their children educated at public expense. In 1852 Mrs. Rebecca McDowell wrote to her relative, Alexander F. Brevard, concerning her young son, “I have never sent him to school and from his progress I am satisfied to teach him a year longer myself.”45

45 MS in Brevard Papers, March 22, 1852.

Wives of the yeomanry class not only did the work associated with the maintenance of the household, but sometimes assisted with the work in the field. They and their children did the lighter tasks of farm work, dropping seeds, chopping cotton, hoeing corn, worming and curing tobacco, picking cotton, and they even helped with the more strenuous work of pulling fodder.

 WOMAN'S LEGAL STATUS

Legally, the personality of the wife was merged in that of the husband. She could not sue or be sued alone.46

46 But see Revised Code, 1855, Chap. XXXIX, sec. 13.

She could not hold property separate from her husband even in her savings unless her husband by some clear and distinct act divested himself of the property and thus gave her permission to claim it as her own.47

47 Croker v. Vasser, 37 N. C., 553.

 She could not make a will disposing of her land unless her husband specifically authorized her to do so, setting forth his authorization in a will, deed, or marriage contract. In 1841 the Supreme Court handed down the decision that “a married woman can only make an appointment in the nature of a will of real estate under a power of appointment specially given in some deed, . . . But a married woman, by her husband's consent, can make a will of her personal property.”48

48 Newlin v. Freeman, 23 N. C., 514.

 In 1844 the Legislature passed an act providing that a will made by a married woman under such conditions might be probated in the court of pleas and quarter-sessions or in a court of equity,49

49 Revised Code, Chap. CXIX, sec. 3.

 a great concession, some thought, to the property rights of the married woman.

Marriage was itself an unqualified gift to the husband of all the wife was in possession of at the time and all that she should thereafter acquire during coverture whether he should survive her or not. As Chief Justice Taylor wrote in 1827 in his decision of Bryan v. Bryan: “It may be a hardship for a married woman who brings a fortune to her husband, to find herself and her children reduced to poverty; but she knew when she married him, that the law gave him an absolute property in all her personal estate. . . . The hardship might have been guarded against by a settlement, and the not making one, is an evidence that she agreed to share his fortune, be it prosperous or adverse.”50

50 Bryan v. Bryan, 16 N. C., 47; see also Ruffin's opinion in Lassiter v. Dawson, 17 N. C., 348.

The property which a woman possessed at the time of her marriage might be secured to her through a marriage settlement, or contract, entered into prior to marriage and registered as any other deed. The contract, however, could secure to the intended wife only such property as she or the bridegroom actually possessed at the time of making the deed.51

51 Sessional Laws, 1785, Chap. XII; Revised Code, 1855, Chap. XXXVII, sec. 25.

In such instances, it was customary to place the bride's estate in trust for her “sole and separate use.”52

52 See Rutherford v. Craik, 3 N. C., 262.

 Property settled upon the wife after marriage, by a special wording of the instrument conveying the property, might be secured against the claims of her husband. For instance, William Cain of Orange County bequeathed money and slaves to William Cain, Jr., Willie P. Mangum, and Polly Sutherland in trust for the sole and separate use of his daughter, Mrs. Edward Davis, in order to secure the property against the rights of her husband, and the Supreme Court upheld the grant.53

53 Davis v. Cain, 36 N. C., 304; see also Ponton v. McLemore, 22 N. C., 285.

 The bequest was given for the daughter's use during life and after her death in trust for her children. A third means by which a married woman might obtain control over property was the passage of a private act for her benefit by the Legislature. Such an act secured to her “such property as she might thereafter acquire” by her own efforts.54

54 Supra, pp. 219, 222-30.

Several attempts were made in the General Assembly during the early days of the ante-bellum period to enlarge the property rights of married women. In 1804, for instance, Reuben Small of Chowan County presented a bill to secure to married women money arising from the sale of certain household articles.55

55 House Journal, December 11, 1804, p. 39; see also report of John Stanly in House Journal, December 4, 1821, p. 38.

All attempts to alter the status of women in regard to their control of property were resisted, however, until 1848 when an act was passed making it illegal for a husband to sell or lease real estate belonging to the wife at the time of marriage without her consent.56

56 Revised Code, 1855, Chap. LVI.

 This act at once brought up the question of whether it was intended to deprive the husband of his wife's estate by courtesy, but it was not until 1859 that the Supreme Court decided this important question. In Houston v. Brown, Chief Justice Pearson gave a blow to property rights which married women thought they had obtained in 1848:

In the absence of an express provision to that effect, we should be slow in adopting the conclusion that it was the intention of the law-makers to enact so radical a change in the law; because, if such was the intention, it is reasonable to presume it would have been declared in direct terms. . . . The purpose was to adopt, to a partial extent, the principle of a “homestead law,” and to provide a home for the wife during her life, leaving the rights of the husband unimpaired and unrestricted after her death . . . and after her death there is no intimation of an intention to interfere with his rights according to the common law. . . . The sole object is to provide a home for her, of which she could not be deprived either by the husband or by his creditors.57

57 Houston v. Brown, 52 N. C., 161.

 The first significant change in the property and contract rights of married women did not come until the Constitution of 1868, and it was not until the Martin Act of 1911 that the wife was emancipated “absolutely as to all contracts, except with her husband.”58

58 For the present legal status of married women see M. P. Smith, Special Legal Relations of Married Women in North Carolina as to Property, Contracts, and Guardianship, University of North Carolina Extension Bulletin, VII, No. 9.

Although in most cases the husband had complete control over his wife's property, the common law permitted the married woman to claim dower. If her husband died intestate or did not make a provision in his will fully satisfactory to her, she might signify her dissent before the county court and be allotted a third part of the real estate including the dwelling house.59

59 Revised Code, 1855, Chap. CXVIII, sec. 1. Before the act of 1848 (Chap. 101, secs. 1-2), a widow could not dissent from her husband's will by attorney although she was too ill to travel to court to dissent in person.

Nor could the husband defeat his wife of dower by a secret conveyance of property.60

60 Ibid., Chap. CXVIII, sec. 1.

 If the husband chose, he might make his wife executrix or administratrix of his estate and she had the privilege of making affidavit to her inventory before a justice of the peace instead of in open court.61

61 Ibid., Chap. XLVI, sec. 65.

The ante-bellum husband not only had control over his wife's property but he was also the master of her person. “The wife must be subject to the husband. Every man must govern his household,” said Chief Justice Pearson in his decision of Joyner v. Joyner in 1862. It was for this reason, he pointed out, that the law gave the husband authority over his wife and, in turn, had adopted proper safeguards to prevent an abuse of this power.62

62 Joyner v. Joyner, 59 N. C., 322.

According to common law, if a wife should slander or assault a neighbor, the husband was made to pay for it. If the wife should commit a criminal offense, less than felony, in the presence of her husband, he, not she, was held responsible. The husband was subject to the payment of his wife's debts even after she had deserted him unless it could be proved that she wilfully deserted.

But the law also gave the husband “power to use such a degree of force as is necessary to make the wife behave herself and know her place.”63

63 Ibid.

In 1825 the Raleigh Register declared that the general idea was “that a man may chastise his wife, provided the weapon be not thicker than his little finger.”64

64 August 26; see also Hillsborough Recorder, August 24, 1825.

 Two years later in the case of the State against one Forkner for whipping his wife, tried in Warren County Superior Court, Judge Ruffin held “that altho' in civilized society it was universally considered as dishonorable and disgraceful for persons in elevated situations to lift their hands against their wives, yet the law was made for the great bulk of mankind . . . the only question for the Jury was whether the whipping was excessive, barbarous and unreasonable.”65

65 Star, May 3, 1827; Raleigh Register, May 4, 1827.

 In several cases which reached the Supreme Court, the judges discussed the relationship existing between husband and wife. In State v. Pendergrass66

66 S. v. Pendergrass, 19 N. C., 365.

 the Court set forth the amount of chastisement which a husband might inflict upon his wife, and in State v. Hussey declared that “the wife is not a competent witness against her husband, to prove a battery on her person by him, except in cases where a lasting injury is inflicted, or threatened to be inflicted upon her.”67

67 S. v. Hussey, 44 N. C., 123.

 In Joyner v. Joyner, Chief Justice Pearson reviewed several circumstances in which a husband might be justified in striking his wife “with a horse-whip on one occasion and with a switch on another, leaving several bruises on the person.”68

68 Joyner v. Joyner, 59 N. C., 322.

 He held these circumstances to be: abuse in the strongest term and repeated use of the word liar.

In 1845 a native of Connecticut, signing himself W. J. F., wrote an essay which went the rounds of the national press, pointing out that there was “no essential difference between the legal condition of the married woman and that of the slave.” In publishing the essay, the North Carolina Standard said that the writer “fixes upon the mind the undeniable fact, that the wives of Christian husbands are as much slaves, so far as privation of rights is concerned, as the negroes of the utmost South. We have always regarded many of the provisions in our laws in regard to the rights of the married women, as unjust and harsh—as illiberal and tyrannical. . . . The parallel he draws between what the slave is and what the wife might be, is both striking and complete, . . . We have only to add the hope that the article . . . may not cause a ‘rebellion’ among the married ladies.”69

69 October 22. For Judge Ruffin's statement as to the similarity of the status of wives and slaves see Waddill v. Martin, 38 N. C., 562. In this connection, it is interesting to note that travelers from abroad when commenting upon the status of woman in the New World, sometimes observed that “the Americans have, in the treatment of women, fallen below, not only their own democratic principles, but the practice of some parts of the Old World.” See, for example, Marryat, op. cit., p. 106.

The wife actually occupied a far higher status than that assigned to her by law. Nor can the extent of her control over family affairs be ascertained by a mere glance at her legal status. In 1820 John Y. Mason wrote to his friend John H. Bryan warning him that if he should embark in matrimony he must “be prepared to have his nose occasionally ground, that he must be fond of servant-whipping, and that he must not drink or play cards.”70

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

Husbands frequently depended upon their wives to carry on business in their absence; indeed, the law recognized the wife as the business agent of her husband under certain circumstances.71

71 Cox v. Hoffman, 20 N. C., 319. “A femme covert may become an agent for her husband, and such an appointment as agent may be inferred from his acts and conduct respecting her.”

In 1828 John H. Bryan, writing to his wife from Washington where he was attending Congress, said to her after discussing the political situation, “You see I am disposed to make you somewhat of a politician but every wife ought to know something about and take an interest in her husbands business & concerns.”72

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

 A year later he wrote, “You had better endeavor to collect the notes of Wood & Bob Lisbon for the hire of the negroes, particularly the later.— . . . I am very well satisfied with your disposition of the negroes—you are my smartest as well as most trusted agent.”73

73 Ibid., January 7, 1829.

There also existed between some husbands and wives a companionship which arose from mutual interests in things other than domestic affairs. Mrs. Henry W. Conner went fishing with her husband,74

74 MS Diary of Juliana Conner.

and Mrs. Rebecca McDowell studied Roman history with hers. “We have spent this winters long nights in the study of Rome,” wrote Mrs. McDowell, “And I am engaged in writing down the most interesting events that have occurred and the lives of the principal persons who figured while she was a commonwealth.”75

75 MS in Brevard Papers, December 15, 1851.

In North Carolina as elsewhere in the South wives in genteel families often followed the custom once prevalent among the gentry in England of addressing their husbands formally even in private conversation and correspondence. It is not strange that the custom should have continued in slaveholding areas, where the wife often spoke to her husband in the presence of domestics. Mrs. Ebenezer Pettigrew addressed her husband as Mr. Pettigrew and even in correspondence saluted him as “My dear Mr. Pettigrew” and subscribed herself, “Your dutiful wife, Ann B. Pettigrew.”76

76 MS in Pettigrew Papers: Ann B. Pettigrew to Ebenezer Pettigrew, February 1, 1818 (UNC). Rev. Henry Pattillo always referred to his wife as “the old woman.” —Ibid.: Henry Pattillo to Dr. Andrew Knox, n. d.

Less frequently a husband addressed his wife formally, but almost invariably he began a letter to her with “Dear Madam” or “Dear Wife.” This custom was not so much an indication of the abasement of woman as it was a matter of expediency and a reflection of the formality of the upper classes in the ante-bellum South.

The meekness of a wife depended more upon individual temperament than upon repressive customs. Although Judge John H. Bryan thought that “a woman who abuses her husband to strangers, ought to have her tongue cut out, or slit at least,”77

77 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, February 20, 1828.

examples are not lacking of women who saw fit even to advertise their husbands publicly if they considered themselves as having been grievously injured. As early as 1806 the North Carolina Journal of Halifax carried the following advertisement:78

78 August 18. For other advertisements see Fayetteville Observer, March 18, 1830; Carolina Watchman, September 20, 1845; Tarborough Press, November 2, 1850.

 Notice

WHEREAS my husband James Taylor has behaved towards me in the most dishonorable manner; and did, on Saturday night last, take himself from me, with a certain Pattey Norton, who is of a light complexion, black under the eyes, and extremely homely; his treatment to the subscriber, in various instances has been so infamous, as to induce her to give this caution to the public, that the innocent may beware of the imposter.—It is expected the said Taylor was persuaded to go off by one Clem. Reed, an infamous character, who has acknowledged himself a liar, in as many as four or five different places.

BASHEBA TAYLOR Halifax county, August 8, 1806 The pattern for this advertisement is to be found, of course, in the custom of advertising runaway wives. After 1810, when the Edenton Gazette raised the price of an advertisement for a runaway wife from ten shillings to “five dollars for the first insertion, and two and a half dollars for each continuance” the frequency of such insertions abated considerably although the practice was by no means discontinued.79

79 Infra, p. 793.

 WOMAN AS A WAGE EARNER

Many women, even of the upper classes, by frugality and management were able to add something to the family income. Miss Janet Schaw, who visited Wilmington shortly before the Revolution, found Mrs. Cornelius Harnett, the wife of that indefatigable leader of the Sons of Liberty, “a pattern of industry.” “They tell me,” wrote Miss Schaw, “that the house and every thing in it was the produce of her labours. She has (it seems) a garden, from which she supplies the town with what vegetables they use, also with mellon and other fruits. She even descends to make minced pies, cheese-cakes, tarts, and little biskets, which she sends to town once or twice a day, besides her eggs, poultry and butter, . . . all her little commodities are contrived so, as not to exceed one penny a piece, and her customers know she will not run tick.”80

80 Andrews, op. cit., pp. 178-79.

Prior to 1840, thrifty housewives could by their weaving alone keep the family supplied with many necessities, but after that date, as one woman complained in a petition to the Tennessee Legislature, the existing improvements in carding, spinning, and weaving by machinery reduced “the labor of females in those branches of domestic industry . . . so low, that there is but little inducement to follow them, except to make clothing for ourselves and our household.” As she pointed out:

In by gone days we could, by industry, not only provide clothing for our household, but we could make a sufficiency of domestic manufacture to spare to sell to the merchants to procure other necessaries for our families. This is not the case now; when we manufacture those articles now, and take them to the merchant, we find them supplied with domestic manufactures from Northern and Eastern manufactories of the Union and at so low a price that ours cannot bear a competition with them.81

81 Raleigh Register, February 1, 1842.

When this condition arose, some women turned their attention to the culture of the silkworm. As early as 1831 the daughters of Harrison Smith of Wake Forest sold $60 of sewing silk in a few months.82

82 Ibid., October 6, 1831, November 3, 1831, December 31, 1838; Star, June 16, 1831.

Like Mrs. Cornelius Harnett, many women sold little articles related to domestic industry and their husbands would often permit them to retain for their own use the profits made in consideration of their supplying the family with certain necessary articles. For instance, John Croker, a planter of large estate in Northampton County, gave his wife for her separate use “what money she could make by the use of her needle (she being a good tailoress), the sale of fowls, eggs, butter, and vegetables from their garden.”83

83 Croker v. Vasser, 37 N. C., 553.

They kept separate accounts at the stores; she lent her money on bond and took the notes in her own name, and her husband even borrowed from her.

Women innkeepers were frequently to be found, and the operation of a boarding house was considered one of the most respectable ways in which a widow might earn a livelihood.84

84 See Raleigh Register, October 10, 1803, November 11, 1805; Edenton Gazette, December 9, 1807; Star, October 1, 1819.

In 1849 the Fayetteville Observer was of the opinion that the Fayetteville Hotel, operated by a certain Mrs. Brown, was the handsomest hotel in the State.85

85 May 8.

 Women frequently owned shops, especially those offering articles of feminine wear. In 1818 a Miss Raley opened a shop in Raleigh with the following announcement:

She has Silk and Sattin Bonnets of the newest fashion; plain and open work Straw Bonnets; Ruffs & Turbans; Ladies Kid Gloves; Band boxes by the dozen, or single ones—also a good assortment of Perfumery. She flatters herself she will be able to give general satisfaction, as her Millinery and Dresses will be made in the newest fashions, having weekly correspondence from New-York, and by keeping up a good and general assortment.86

86 Raleigh Register, January 9, 1818.

 Miss Jane Henderson had a millinery shop in Raleigh for several years and then sold it to the Misses M. A. and S. Pulliam who were patronized by all the surrounding neighborhood. In New Bern, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Charlotte, and Salisbury women owned and operated their own shops.

When factories began to be established in North Carolina, some women found employment as “hands.” The Lincoln Cotton Factory near Lincolnton was mentioned in 1849 as employing white girls exclusively.87

87 North Carolina Standard, October 31, 1849.

School teaching was another position open to women. In 1853 Calvin H. Wiley, superintendent of common schools, urged examining committees to “encourage as much as possible the very poor, and especially poor females to become teachers.”88

88 Ibid., August 13, 1853.

 Long before this, however, women were tutoring in private families and teaching in the female departments of the local academies. In 1810 Mrs. Falkner's Boarding School at Warrenton was prosperous and well patronized.89

89 Raleigh Register, January 4, 1810.

The work most often resorted to by “destitute females” was domestic service, laundering, and sewing. When Mrs. Stephen A. Norfleet, wife of a wealthy planter of Bertie County, became too ill in 1858 to manage her household, her husband employed a Miss Virginia Vaughan whom he paid $4 a month “for Housekeeping,” a total of $24 for six months work. In 1859 he paid Miss Renny Wooten a slightly higher wage, $60 for the year.90

90 MS in Stephen A. Norfleet Farm Record Book, December, 1858, December, 1860.

Laundry work and sewing were little better. A “Sewing Girl” described her situation in a letter to the Southern Weekly Post in 1851. She was “the elder of five sisters, with somewhat better advantages than generally falls [sic] to the lot of girls of my class, owing to the exertions of a kind father, who died ere the others were old enough to profit by his labor.” Her father dead, her mother feeble, how was this young girl to feed six hungry mouths?

Tailors were applied to, and to work I went; pantaloons at seventy-five cents, vests at one dollar; three of the former, one of the latter, were the most I could do in a week; thus making seventeen dollars per month; no allowance made for sickness, &c five dollars of this must go for house rent, leaving twelve dollars for fuel, lights, food and clothing for a family of six.91

91 December 13.

 It was clearly too much for the young girl, and now she was appealing through the Weekly Post for a larger field of activity for intelligent young women who were reduced to the sad necessity of supporting their families: “Will our gentlemen merchants take our daughters as clerks? Will you, Mr. Post, and your brother editors, let our sisters set type at your stands, or must the next generation still be doomed to Stitch—stitch—stitchIn poverty, hunger, and dirtSewing at once with a double threadA Shroud as well as a shirt! To this appeal “Mr. Post” was silent, but a year later he stated his position with an air of gallantry: “We doubt not our lady readers will pardon us for the opinion that their proper position is not in the full glare of public observation—not in the general practice of what are called the learned professions, nor in any employment which would compel them to violate the delicate modesty in which their virtue is enshrined.”92

92 Ibid., December 11, 1852.

But the movement for “the emancipation of women” was under way even in the South. Free-thinking articles, such as that by the “Sewing Girl,” were creeping into the State papers. In 1850 the Carolina Watchman published a story called “The Father,” which declared that “all young females should possess some employment by which they might obtain a livelihood in case they should be reduced to the necessity of supporting themselves.”93

93 May 16.

The work of Mary Wolstonecraft, Hannah More, Harriet Newell, Isabella Graham, even the activity of “those bold hussies,” Anne Royall, author of the Black Book, Susan B. Anthony, leader in the advocacy of women's rights, Lucy Stone, who wanted married women to retain their maiden names, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, advocates of the equality of the sexes, was leaven in the region where “modest softness” and “flattering timidity” were a fetish.

There are rare instances of women in North Carolina taking an active part in politics long before Miss Anthony's day. In 1795, for instance, Elkanah Watson of Boston arrived in Warrenton while an election was in progress and found the mother of Benjamin Hawkins, formerly a member of the Continental Congress, active at the polls. “I never met with a more sensible, spirited old lady,” Watson wrote. “She was a great politician; and I was assured, that she has more political influence, and exercised it with greater effect, than any man in her county.”94

94 Op. cit., p. 251.

It was not until the Harrison campaign of 1840 that both political parties made a direct appeal to women to use their influence in behalf of politics. The North Carolina Standard loudly objected to “dragging women into politics”: “. . . we can scarcely read an exchange paper containing an account of a political assemblage, which does not inform us that it was cheered by ‘the approving smiles of the fair.’ . . . It is natural that intellectual ladies by reading or conversation, should form some opinions on political topics, it is natural, and it is right.—But our laws confer on them no political power, and therefore, apart from all considerations of social propriety, they should take no political action.” Declaring that “the empire of woman is the fireside: her dominion is that of the affections,” the Standard continued:

For the vulgar strife of politics, her sensibilities are too refined, and for its fierce contention, her nerves are too delicate. Her weakness is her surest protection, and her softness is her best ornament. We have been pained therefore, during the pending struggle for the Presidency, which has been distinguished for its bitterness, to see our fair country-women unsex themselves, and stepping across the threshold to mingle in the fight.95

95 October 28, 1840; see also ibid., January 22, 1841; Raleigh Register, January 31, 1841. Michael Francis of Haywood County, after having attempted repeatedly to defeat a bill in the Legislature of 1842-1843 to incorporate the town of Shelby, moved as a last resort to amend the bill so “that the ladies of the town of Shelby shall have the right to vote in all elections for town officers.” See House Journal, 1842-1843, p. 979.

The next presidential campaign saw almost the same enthusiasm as four years earlier. The “Whig Ladies” of Raleigh had a local artist paint a Whig banner “on fine gray silk” and they worked ardently for Clay.96

96 Star, April 10, 1844.

But women's rights had been launched under anti-slavery auspices, and in 1850 when abolitionists joined with advocates of women's rights in the famous Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, the North Carolina press unanimously condemned the movement. “Woman's sphere is about the domestic altar, and within the tranquil precincts of the social circle,” the Raleigh Register declared. “When she transgresses that sphere and mingles in the miserable brawlings and the insane agitations of the day, she descends from her lofty elevation, and becomes an object of disgust and contempt, . . .”97

97 November 2, 1850.

 To the North Carolina Standard the convention was a huge joke: “Women made speeches—women acted on committees—and women claimed the right to vote, and in fact, to be men.”98

98 November 2, 1850.

 As the movement gained strength at the North, claiming more and more support from the radical abolition element, it came to be condemned more and more in the southern press. “The most ridiculous escapade of this century, is the unwise, foolish, and incomprehensible position assumed by certain trous-a-loon women at the North,” declared the Oxford Leisure Hour in 1858. “All this originates in a false state of society—in a society that at the South would not be countenanced for one day.”99

99 June 10.

 Nevertheless, southern women in their writings, their church activities,100

100 Infra, p. 426.

 their education,101

101 Infra, pp. 304-5.

 and their daily work, were beginning also to cry, “Equality!”

 THE STATUS OF CHILDREN

The ante-bellum tradition was one of large families. John Bernard, celebrated English comedian who visited North Carolina about 1800, observed that there were never less than a dozen children in a family, adding that “the women seem to bear them in a litter in these regions.”102

102 Op. cit., p. 204.

William White, for many years Secretary of State, son-in-law of Richard Caswell, the Revolutionary patriot, had ten children. Judge Thomas Ruffin had fourteen children, only one of whom died before maturity. Judge John H. Bryan also had fourteen children. In 1828 after Mrs. Bryan had given birth to another child, her sister, Mrs. Ebenezer Pettigrew, wrote: “I take this opportunity of congratulating you on the birth of a fine son. I have no doubt but the stock will be increased every eighteen months, very fortunate for us, the breed is so good, so smart.”103

103 MS in John H. Bryan Papers, February 18, 1828.

 Mrs. Pettigrew was herself bearing one child after another.

Undoubtedly many children died in infancy. The census of 1860, however, lists the number of deaths of children under one for the year ending June 1, 1860, at only 56 in every 1,000 free children.104

104 U. S. Census Office, Statistics of the United States, 1860, p. 44. This estimate is open to question, for in 1890 the infant death rate in Richmond was 186.9 per 1,000 and in Charleston, 200.4.

Among the causes of death given, croup, whooping cough, scarlatina, infantile fever, worms, teething, and measles headed the list.

The size of free families in North Carolina as given by the census of 1790 is indicated in the following table:

SIZE OF FAMILIES IN 1790105 Size Number Per Cent 1 person 3,519 7.2 2 and under 4 9,237 19.0 4 and under 6 12,973 26.6 6 and under 8 11,245 23.1 8 and under 10 7,460 15.3 10 and over 4,267 8.8 Total 48,701 100.0

105 U. S. Census Office, A Century of Population Growth, p. 98.

In 1790 almost half the families in the State, or 47.2 per cent, contained six or more members. Almost a tenth, or 8.8 per cent, contained ten or more members; while a little more than a fourth or 26.2 per cent, contained less than four members. The tendency toward large families was in keeping with the general trend throughout the United States.106

106 The average size of white slaveholding families was slightly larger in 1790 than the average for white nonslaveholding families, as is shown in the following table taken from A Century of Population Growth, p. 100:

The average size of all free families in North Carolina at three different periods, 1790, 1850, and 1860, as given by the census reports, is indicated in the following table:

AVERAGE SIZE OF FREE FAMILIES Period Total Free Population Number of Families Average per Family 1790 292,554 52,613107 5.6 1850 580,363 105,451 5.5 1860 661,563 125,090 5.3

107 Estimated for Caswell, Granville, and Orange counties.

COMPARISON OF SLAVEHOLDING AND NONSLAVEHOLDING FAMILIES   Number of families Number of members Average per family Slaveholding 14,945 87,121 5.8 Nonslaveholding 33,076 178,077 5.4

The average size of free families in North Carolina decreased less from 1790 to 1850, six decades, than in the one decade from 1850 to 1860. By 1900 the average size of families had decreased to 5.1 members.

A midwife functioned far more frequently at the birth of a child than did a doctor, not only because the doctor's fee was higher, but also because doctors were less plentiful. Each community usually had its midwife, and a skilful midwife sometimes practiced in several counties. In 1813 William Hayne wrote to his father-in-law, Alexander F. Brevard, that a friend of theirs was much pleased with the midwife in Columbia, S. C., although she “has not been very long engaged in that business—the former one here being dead.”108

108 MS in Brevard Papers, April 27, 1813.

Newspapers usually announced a baby as having been born to the father, as, for instance, “May 18—a son to Peter Warren, Town.”109

109 Carolina Watchman, May 23, 1850.

A law requiring registration of births was advocated at various times during the ante-bellum period. In 1829 the Raleigh Register, on observing the passage of such a law in Georgia, asked, “Is not such a regulation desirable in this State?”110

110 January 23.

In 1850 a bill requiring the registration of births, marriages, and deaths submitted in the Senate by Thomas N. Cameron was finally defeated by a vote of 25 to 17.111

111 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, December 20, 1850; Senate Journal, January 14, 1851.

Most genteel and middle-class families turned over the care of the children to Negro nurses. In cases requiring the expedient as a means of saving life, Negro nurses even suckled their little charges.112

112 Lyell, op. cit., p. 222.

In 1825 the Hillsborough Recorder protested against the custom of “delivering a child over into the hands of a nurse . . . where it may first learn to lisp vulgarity and obscenity, and from whom it inevitably acquires a pronunciation and accent, such as may never be fully corrected. . . . Many parents are ashamed to introduce their children into society, and well may they,” for the child is often “unfit for society; and in the parlour words might be heard from its mouth to put to shame these faithless guardians of its youth.” Among the other evils of Negro nurses the writer listed “the propensity to frighten children” and the fondness for telling tales of ghosts and genii. Indeed, he had known of children in whom foolish superstitions had been aroused “which education and even religion have sometimes been found unable to counteract.”113

113 July 27.

 Mrs. Mary Mason of Raleigh, writing in her Young Housewife's Counseller and Friend, declared, “The nursery is the hotbed of superstition. Who does not know that from the very first . . . the inmates of the nursery are controlled by superstitious fear? . . . how often does the nursery-maid still the restless little prattler by calling upon ‘the bugaboo to come and catch naughty little Charley!’ And further than this the memory of ghost-stories is among the most vivid of early impressions, . . .”114

114 Pp. 61-62.

 In 1847 “Phil,” writing a series of articles on children for the Star, thought that “one of the greatest evils now in existence, is that of trusting our children to wicked and ignorant nurses.”115

115 September 29.

 In nonslaveholding families, the babies were usually left to the care of the older children.

Family discipline seems to have been as varied in ante-bellum days as at present. Parents desired obedient children, but many were too indulgent or too absorbed with other matters to give them the necessary training. A newspaper correspondent in 1809 was of the opinion that family government “in spite of the modern whims about liberty and equality . . . must be absolute; mild, not tyrannical.”116

116 Raleigh Register, September 14, 1809.

In 1810 a writer lamented, “There are no more children.”117

117 Star, October 4.

 They “now treat parents, their relatives, their masters, with contempt. . . . Licentiousness, pride and boldness, have superceded mildness, timidity and innocence.” In 1832 William Hooper, professor of Ancient Languages in the University of North Carolina, in a lecture before the North Carolina Institute of Education, regretted that parents were “generally so injudiciously indulgent.” Some children were allowed to “indulge a violent temper without punishment, to domineer over slaves, to struggle with, and even fight their mothers, when they attempted to control them.”118

118 Raleigh Register, May 30, 1833.

In 1841 a citizen of the town rejoiced that “we have a School in Raleigh at last,” because at last a man had been found who could keep the students in check. For the first time in many years boys “who have never been under control at home or elsewhere,” sons “of our first citizens,” were being taught a little self-restraint. The boys of Raleigh seem not to have been abashed long by the new teacher. In 1845 the Register declared, “It is distressing to see so little restraint imposed upon the Youths of our city,”119

119 Quoted in Carolina Watchman, October 11, 1845.

to which the Carolina Watchman replied: “We know of no place where the exercise of Parental Authority is more needed, than in Salisbury. . . . We have on many occasions had to be put on public duty after night, and were astonished at the number of boys running to and fro through the streets, (children of those whom we thought knew better how to control them) swearing like sailors, and blackguarding to such a degree, that we know would utterly astonish their parents if they knew.” The Watchman thought that every father should know “the whereabouts of his Son after sundown. He ought to know whether he is frequenting the grogshops, the card-table, or any other place where immorality and vice is carried on.”120

120 Ibid.

Town ordinances, such as the curfew and the regulation of children's games, passed for the purpose of aiding parents in controlling their children, often fell short of the aim.121

121 Ibid., April 26, 1845.

“Is Nash-Square the public property in such a sense, that it may be taken possession of by groups of rude and noisy lads, during the afternoon of the Sabbath, for their sports;—such as dog-fighting—wrestling—marble playing, &c, to the great annoyance of those who dwell in the neighborhood?” asked “A Parent” of Raleigh in 1853. “If such lads are beyond the reach of parental restraint,—or if these are [children of] parents who do not care to control them, lest it should curb their high spirits, is there no other authority that can and will restrain them?” The writer called on the town commission for a special police for juvenile delinquents who should be confined to the guard-house and released only after their parents had paid a fine.122

122 Southern Weekly Post, August 20, 1853.

 In much the same vein the Weekly Post had written in 1851: “. . . the worst thing we know of about some villages is the manner in which the children are raised; and on this subject we feel that a great reform is needed. Parents . . . often look on it as evidence of spirit and smartness to see their children rudely insulting the quiet and often humble citizens of the Country, gibing them on the streets, doing mischief to their horses and vehicles, and making sport of their plain equipments.”123

123 December 13.

In a few instances, the “spirit and boldness” of the ante-bellum youth took extreme forms. In 1805 “a large family of children” attempted to kill their mother because she was too strict with them,124

124 Raleigh Register, September 16, 1805.

and in 1854 a Cabarrus County father, over-wrought by his son's misconduct, hanged the boy for his disobedience.125

125 Fayetteville Observer, September 4, 1854.

There were parents who demanded that their children treat them with deference, and they seemed to have had no great amount of trouble in exacting it. The letters of Dr. James Norcom of Edenton to his children are an excellent example of the parental attitude which placed, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” and especially thy father, above all other commandments. When he sent his young daughter to a boarding school in Philadelphia, he instructed her to begin her letters to him “with any of the following addresses—viz—Dear & honored Father—my dearest Father—my beloved Father, or my best of Fathers.”126

126 MS in James A. Norcom Papers, July 5, 1836.

He was constantly reminding his children of their duty; nor did he cease to exact this duty after they were married and had children of their own.

According to common law, the child owed the father certain services which the parent had a right to demand. A child's wages belonged to the father and the father had the right to require certain labor of him in return for his support. In 1815 a father brought action for an injury done to him in the loss of his daughter's services in consequence of her seduction, illness, and death in childbirth.127

127 M'Farland v. Shaw, 4 N. C., 200; in McAulay v. Birkland, 35 N. C., 28, it was assumed that the father could recover damages.

Children of the yeomanry were put to work in the fields at an early age. Some were hired out at specific wages for short periods of time,128

128 York, op. cit., pp. 13-18.

 and others were apprenticed until they arrived at maturity, the apprenticeship usually continuing from five to seven years. With the establishment of factories, children were also employed as factory hands at a rate as low, in some instances, as 12½ cents a week.

The dissenting opinion of Judge Daniel delivered in 1832 in the case of Williams v. Barnes foreshadowed the modern attitude toward the relation of parent and child:

There is a natural and legal obligation on the parent to maintain his child during infancy. The law has fixed the time during which the child shall be considered an infant, to the period of twenty-one years. The parent, during this period, has a right to the services of the child to enable him to fulfil his obligation. But after the period of twenty-one years the parent is released from his obligation, . . . and the law likewise releases the child from the obligation of giving his labor and services to the parent, . . . Therefore when he labors for the parent after the time he arrives at age of twenty-one years, the law raises a promise by the parent to pay as much as the labor of the child is reasonably worth.129

129 Williams v. Barnes, 14 N. C., 348.

Judge Ruffin and Chief Justice Henderson held that such a position would tend to “change the character of our people, cool domestic regard, and in the place of confidence sow jealousies in families.”

Upon the father's death, the child was thrown upon the mercy of the orphans' court. By the act of 1762 and the interpretation of this act by several Supreme Court decisions, no one had a right to the guardianship of a child under twenty-one “except as testamentary guardian or as appointed by the father by deed or by the County or Superior Court.”130

130 Long v. Rhymes, 6 N. C., 122; Payton v. Smith, 22 N. C., 325; Revised Code, 1855, Chap. LIV, sec. 1.

The appointment of a guardian was a matter of discretion by the court and the court usually would not rescind an appointment,131

131 For examples of removals of guardians, see Edgecombe County Court Minutes, August term, 1802; Cumberland County Court Minutes, August term, 1802.

 once made, unless it seemed that injury was likely to result to the orphan's estate. In some counties it was customary for the orphan, on arriving at the age of fourteen, to be permitted to come into court and make choice of a guardian if his father had not appointed one by will or deed,132

132 Cumberland County Court Minutes, August term, 1802.

 but the choice of the orphan was not binding upon the court.133

133 Mills v. McAllister, 2 N. C., 303; Grant v. Whitaker, 5 N. C., 231.

 The court was required to take bonds from guardians appointed and the justices of the peace forming the court were held liable for taking insufficient security.

The act of 1762 required the holding of orphans' courts in every county once a year. The court was held for the purpose of examining guardians' accounts, but occasionally the court might discipline an unruly orphan. The Orphans' Court of Edgecombe County, for instance, has on its record for 1800 the following entry:

“William Robertson being brought before the Court for misbehaviour—it is the sentence of the Court that he be committed to Jaol, there to remain til tomorrow morning 12 o'clock—Ordered that the Sheriff execute the said sentence.”134

134 Edgecombe County Court Minutes, February, 1800.

The large number of orphans' accounts consumed much of the time of a county court and leads to the conclusion that the percentage of orphans in the State was high. In six counties,135

135 Carteret, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Orange, Pasquotank, Rutherford.

selected at random from different sections of the State, the average number of accounts proved each year was well over a hundred. In Edgecombe County, for instance, the orphans' court proved from 110 to 126 accounts every year between 1831 and 1835.

The fact that there was mismanagement of orphans' estates and even ill treatment of orphans is indicated by the numerous bills and petitions to the Legislature on that subject.136

136 MSS in Legislative Papers. See, for instance, bill for establishing a court for the protection of orphans in each county, 1803; bill to ameliorate condition of orphans cruelly treated, 1812; bill to point out the duty of guardians, 1820; numerous resolutions calling for investigation of laws regulating orphans' estates, 1822; report of Judiciary Committee, 1829.

Governor Benjamin Williams in his address to the General Assembly in 1800 urged that an act be passed compelling guardians to return lists of orphans' lands in order to protect orphans against dishonesty.137

137 House Journal, November 20, 1800, p. 6.

But the role of a guardian was not always an easy one, and in some instances courts had difficulty in finding persons who would undertake the responsibility. A bill before the Legislature of 1806 declared that “It often happens, that orphans are entitled to considerable estates in woody land, young negroes . . . the income of which will not support them and their sickly constitution will not admit of their being bound out, nor their property allow them to be put on the Parish.”138

138 MS in Legislative Papers, 1806.

In such an instance the guardian had either to support the child himself or sell a part of the orphan's estate. But the procedure to be followed in selling a part of an orphan's estate was subject to complication and delays. The county court had first to determine whether the sale was expedient and then to select the part of the property which could be disposed of with least injury to the ward.139

139 Leary v. Fletcher, 23 N. C., 259.

 Orphans with insufficient property to support them were bound out by the county court to earn their “board and keep.”140

140 Infra, pp. 703, et seq.

 Orphans of this class were usually illegitimate children, and children whose fathers had deserted their families or whose mothers had obtained from the Legislature the right to such property as they might thereafter acquire.

The ante-bellum conception of the family and the laws upon which it was based were built around the husband as the head and ruler of the household. But this ideal was seriously overcast and the laws themselves gradually modified by the extra-legal position of woman. Women engaged in business, and married women found ways of holding and disposing of property long before the Constitution of 1868. Intellectual women had from colonial times taken an interest in politics, and after 1840 it became fashionable to attend political gatherings. Votes for women were being agitated in other parts of the United States and North Carolina did not escape the woman's movement. While the law gave the father unlimited power over his children, he was often prevented from exercising it by the children themselves. The ante-bellum boy was often referred to as “a bold, spirited youth, whose dominion over slaves made him impatient of restraint.”

 CHAPTER IX PUBLIC SCHOOLS

NORTH CAROLINA approached the subject of public education slowly and reluctantly, but, once having adopted it, developed by the close of the ante-bellum period a creditable state system supported by public taxation. Although in colonial North Carolina1

1 See Knight, op. cit., pp. 1-41; Connor, North Carolina, I, 177-81; C. L. Raper, Church and Private Schools in North Carolina, pp. 3-71; C. L. Smith, History of Education in North Carolina, pp. 9-50; M. C. S. Noble, A History of the Public Schools of North Carolina, pp. 3-24.

education was largely associated in the minds of the people with the functions of the church, the idea of education as a public duty was expressed before the middle of the eighteenth century. A bill for the establishment of free schools was introduced in the colonial Assembly as early as 1749 and again in 1752, only to be defeated. In 1754 the Assembly actually appropriated £6,000 for building and endowing a school, but later used the money for military purposes.

When the time came to frame the State Constitution in 1776, sentiment for free schools was sufficiently strong to write into it a section on education providing “That a school or schools be established by the Legislature, for the convenient instruction of youth, with such Salaries to the Masters, paid by the Public as may enable them to instruct at low prices; and all useful Learning shall be duly encouraged and promoted in one or more Universities.”

But in the crucial periods of the Revolution and of the Confederation, men were more concerned with establishing order out of confusion than they were in the education of youths at the public expense. In 1800 a correspondent of the Raleigh Register wrote regretfully that nine-tenths of the people in North Carolina were buried in “brutish ignorance.”2

2 March 25.

Eleven years later Dr. Jeremiah Battle estimated that in Edgecombe County “about two thirds of the people generally ‘can read’; & one half of the males ‘write’ their names: but not more than one third of the women can write.” The progress of learning, he thought, had been slow “for ‘25 years back’.”3

3 MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book; Newsome, “Twelve North Carolina Counties,” NCHR, VI, 91.

AGITATION

The battle smoke of the Revolution had scarcely cleared when a few public men, zealous for education, began to agitate for free schools. A judge in his charge, such as that of Judge Taylor to the Superior Court at Edenton in 1801,4

4 Raleigh Register, November 3, 1801.

might present the establishment of schools as a duty of first importance for the consideration of the grand jury; a newspaper correspondent, such as “Cervantes” in the Raleigh Register, might plead in behalf of “public seminaries of learning”;5

5 Ibid., March 25, 1800.

 a governor in his message to the Legislature, such as Benjamin Williams' in 1802, might recommend “the provision of means for the general diffusion of learning”; but the public in general showed little interest in the subject. Nevertheless, these few advocates kept the question alive. In their eagerness for public education, they exaggerated its benefits and thus gave rise to the legend that education is a guaranty of happiness and goodness.

Although the agitation for public education was intimately associated with politics, it was never a political issue.6

6 In 1854 the Democratic platform pledged the party to continue the development of common schools “until the blessings of education shall have been afforded to all children of the State,” and the party repeated the pledge in subsequent platforms.

Federalists might differ on the subject as much among themselves as they did with Anti-Federalists; and Whigs with other Whigs as much as with Democrats. The subject, however, was closely related to political theory. Out of the crisis of the Revolution new philosophies arose. Some argued that the functions of the government were purely political. It was unwise, therefore, for a State to assume the education of its youth, for the State thus would be encroaching upon the personal liberties of the individual, one of the inalienable rights of man. Moreover, public education was unrepublican, for it taxed all for the benefit of some.

This was the reason which the Senate Committee on Education in 1829 gave for reporting unfavorably on a “bill for the education of poor children.”7

7 This was not the McFarland Bill which was approved by the Committee, of which Tryam McFarland of Richmond, the author, was chairman.

“It would from the vast expenditure required in its practical operation require a proportional imposition of taxes upon the people which at this period they would but little sustain and to which they would never submit without a murmur,” wrote Tryam McFarland, chairman of the Committee, “and more than all would from equal contribution of all for the benefit of some be equally irreconcilable with strict justice and the sentiments of the Community at large.”8

8 MS in Legislative Papers. In Senate December 24, 1829. Mr. Coon stated that he was unable to find this report in the Legislative MSS (see his Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 447 n).

As McFarland stated, many in the State opposed public education, not only because they considered taxation for its support incompatible with their theory of a free government, but also because they had, since colonial times, been opposed to increased taxation on any ground. “Should schools be established by law, in all parts of the State, as in the North,” wrote “X” in the Raleigh Register in 1829, “our taxes must be considerably increased, possibly to the amount of one per cent, and six pence on a poll; and I will ask any prudent, sane, saving man if the desires his taxes to be higher? . . . You will doubtless be told that our State is far behind her sister in things of this sort,—and what does this prove? . . . We shall always have reason enough to crow over them, while we have power to say, as I hope we may have, that our taxes are lighter than theirs.”9

9 November 9; Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 432-33.

Many who were bitterly opposed to an increase in taxes, would have been glad to see public schools if any other means for their establishment could have been devised. They frequently argued, however, that the whole scheme was impracticable and unfair. For instance, McFarland's committee in 1829 objected to establishing public schools in each county, because such a plan “would fail to assist the children of the poorest classes.” “These could not be educated on this system,” the committee argued, “because their labor a great portion of their time is indispensible to the support of their parents and themselves.”10

10 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, December 24, 1829.

There were others who would go a step further and say that poor children need have no education at all. “Would it not redound as much to the advantage of young persons, and to the honour of the State, if they should pass their days in the cotton patch, or at the plow, or in the cornfield, instead of being mewed up in a school house, where they are earning nothing?” asked a correspondent of the Register. “Gentlemen,” he continued, “I hope you do not conceive it at all necessary, that everybody should be able to read, write and cipher. If one is to keep a store or a school, or to be a lawyer or physician, such branches may, perhaps, be taught him; though I do not look upon them as by any means indispensable: but if he is to be a plain farmer, or a mechanic, they are of no manner of use, rather a determent.”11

11 November 9, 1829; Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 432.

Those in the “lower sphere of life” were better suited to their work when left uneducated, for education made the laborer discontented.12

12 See North Carolina Grand Lodge of Freemasons, Circular on the Subject of Education, December 28, 1847, p. 2, for an argument against this theory.

The poorer classes themselves frequently opposed public schools on the ground that education led to aristocracy, and many, rich and poor alike, objected because they did not wish their children to be educated at the public expense.13

13 See Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, xi.

Those who could afford to have their children educated would do so; those who could not would not humble themselves by making their children objects of charity.

The friends of education had an answer for all these objections. Those who held that public education was an encroachment upon man's personal liberties were confronted with the theory that it is the duty of a republican form of government to educate its voters. Accepting Thomas Jefferson's theory that popular intelligence is the basis of successful popular government, the friends of education argued that the diffusion of knowledge among the masses was one of the foremost duties of the state. “The more ignorant the people are, the more they are subject to be led astray by erroneous opinions, to be deluded by misrepresentations, and imposed upon by artifice,” wrote “P. S.” from Lincolnton in 1824. The failure of North Carolina to establish public schools had reacted against the State. North Carolina was everywhere held in ill repute. “The character and honor of our state imperiously demand increased intelligence in the mass of our population,” he declared. “It is humiliating in the highest degree, to behold the gigantic strides by which our sister states have surpassed us in the march of improvement. . . . Our agriculture is nearly what it was in the days of our fathers; enterprise, of every kind, seems to have taken wings, and fled to some congenial abode; our political existence has been but barely acknowledged; and, with very few exceptions, our representation at Washington has been such as to corroborate the degrading opinions entertained of our state. It is now high time to retrieve our lost honor, and establish our character for intelligence, patriotism and enterprize.” If the state will improve the intelligence of the “lower classes” by the establishment of public schools, agriculture will prosper; “commerce will wave its flag; talents and ability will mark our representatives; . . . and our state assume that rank to which its resources and its political duration so eminently entitle it.”14

14 Ibid., I, 254-55. For further support of this theory see Caldwell's “Letters on Popular Education,” in ibid., II, 599; Address of Joseph A. Hill before the North Carolina Institute of Education, printed in Raleigh Register, February 25, 1843; and Fayetteville Observer, October 25, 1827.

Not only is education necessary for the success of popular government, but it is necessary for a well ordered social structure. The public school is a training school for life.15

15 Raleigh Register, March 25, 1800.

Ignorance debases man's faculties and hurries him into “gambling and drunkenness and lewd debauchery”;16

16 Hillsborough Recorder, February 13, 1822.

 education brings with it an “attendant train of morality, honesty, temperance and happiness.”17

17 Catawba Journal, December 7, 1824.

 Governor Owen used this argument as one of the main points in his message on education to the Legislature of 1830. “If then it be true,” he asked the Legislature, “that the vice, irreligion, and consequent poverty and misery of a large portion of our fellow citizens are to be attributed to their intellectual condition, are these not indispensable considerations to the virtuous legislator?”18

18 House Journal, 1830-1831, p. 157; Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 456.

Following the argument of Gray's “Elegy,” the friends of education warned their adversaries that they might be sending “some mute inglorious Milton” to his grave. “Who of us can tell but that in the bosom of some obscure little cottager there lives a spark which once kindled into a flame, might enlighten and warm the universe?” asked President Caldwell of the State University in his “Letters on Popular Education Addressed to the People of North Carolina.”19

19 Ibid., II, 605.

Joseph B. Hinton and thirty-seven others from Beaufort County lamented in a petition for free schools the great waste of genius in North Carolina and spoke of “the immensity of talent and usefulness, now dormant, which would anon, blaze in the State” if public schools were only established.20

20 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, December 12, 1825.

Those who were crusading for public schools sought to meet the opposition of the poor classes by telling them that an education would elevate their social status. “To the poor talented youth . . . who might otherwise be bred up in ignorance and vice,” public education would be “a stepping stone to honor and preferment.”21

21 Raleigh Register, April 6, 1839; Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, II, 899.

Education refines the sensibilities and elevates conversation, and “instead of the rawness, the awkwardness and the uncouth manners which give offence, and repress sociability,” the poor would be able to “participate in the advantages which result from a refined and reciprocal interchange of the courtesies of life.”22

22 Raleigh Register, December 3, 1824; Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 248.

As the years passed by and still North Carolina did not adopt a system of public schools, the claims for education became more extravagant. Education was the “breath of life.” Only facilitate the spread of “useful learning” and you will animate “The People . . . our husbandmen, our mechanics, and our militia,” wrote an advocate from Edgecombe County in 1824. “You will infuse into this great body a SOUL.”23

23 Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 247.

Only adopt public education and it “will work a vast revolution in the intellectual, moral and physical conditions of North Carolina.” It will “resuscitate the sinking energies of the State, and ultimately elevate her to that proud and eminent station among the members of this Confederacy to which she is justly entitled.”24

24 B. L. Beall and C. Brummell in Raleigh Register, July 13, 1839; Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, II, 903.

 It will bring a millennium in which there is no poverty, no evil, and no strife. “Our wildernesses and solitary places will then blossom like the rose.”25

25 Ibid., I, 247. See especially the articles written during the educational campaign of 1839, ibid., II, 893-912.

 In time, education was to become in this State, as in all others of the Union, the greatest dogma of salvation next to Christianity.

 EARLY FREE SCHOOLS

Since colonial times, a few children in North Carolina had received a little schooling free. The apprenticeship system of binding out poor orphans was a practice which the settlers brought with them from England. As early as February, 1695, the General Court for Albemarle County bound “Wm ye son of Timothy Pead . . . Decd being left destitute” to “Thomas Harvey esqr and Sarah his wife until he be at ye age of twenty one years and the said Thomas Harvey to teach him to read.”26

26 CRNC, I, 448.

In 1715 the Colony passed its first law regulating the system of apprenticeship, and this law, with a few subsequent alterations, was the basis of the antebellum practice.27

27 Infra, p. 703.

Other poor children on rare occasions also received a little free schooling. The teacher might offer to give his services without cost to a “select number” of poor children, or some prosperous planter or merchant might contribute funds for this purpose. In 1744 James Winwright of Carteret County left a small legacy for the establishment of a free school in Beaufort, and in 1769 James Innes left £100 sterling and other property “For the Use of a Free School for the benefite of the Youth of North Carolina.” Out of this legacy the trustees established Innes Academy in Wilmington. In 1766 the General Assembly incorporated the “Society for promoting and establishing a Public School in Newbern,” which it had previously aided in 1764 by a grant of certain town lots. The act of incorporation allowed the trustees funds arising from a tax of one penny a gallon on all spirituous liquors brought into the Neuse River for seven years. These funds were to be applied in part to the free education of at least ten poor children annually. In 1813 an act to establish free schools in Wayne County, the funds for which were to be raised by lottery, actually passed the Legislature, but the school was never established. The following year Alexander Dixon of Duplin County left $12,000 for a charity school in the county, from which the county is still receiving interest.

Early in the ante-bellum period, groups of women in various towns in the State began to organize societies for the education of “poor female children.”28

28 Supra, pp. 162-64; infra, pp. 425, 702.

The first of these societies was the Newbern Female Charitable Society incorporated in 1812. Later there followed the Female Orphan Asylum Society of Fayetteville, the Raleigh Female Benevolent Society, the Wilmington Female Benevolent Society, the Ladies of the Congregation of St. John's Church, Fayetteville, and others. The societies usually rented a house which they turned over to a woman teacher. Since most of the girls were illegitimate children born of mothers who haunted the village brothels, the societies frequently converted the school building into an orphanage. Here the teacher was also housemother and counselor. The children were taught an elementary education, “neatness, correct deportment,” and “those useful branches of home industry.” At one time the Raleigh school had as many as thirty or forty pupils.29

29 Raleigh Register, August 2, 1822, April 18, 1849; Fayetteville Observer, April 22, 1830.

The men's clubs also occasionally contributed to the education of the poor. The theatrical societies occasionally gave the proceeds from one of their performances for this purpose. On July 24, 1800, Mr. and Mrs. Hardinge, assisted by some gentlemen of the town, gave a performance at the theater in Fayetteville “for the benevolent and humane purpose of extending to poor children, and such as are deserted by their parents, the benefits of Education.”30

30 Raleigh Register, August 19, 1800.

Almost every incorporated academy gave instruction free to a few poor children. Sometimes their charters made this requirement of them in consideration of the privileges granted.

About 1814 the Joseph Lancaster system of teaching was hailed in the State as a means of educating the poor. It was thought that by this system one teacher could instruct great numbers in half the time ordinarily required. In 1814 Governor David Stone established a Lancaster school where those who were unable to pay tuition were taught “without reward.”31

31 Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 516.

A few other Lancaster schools opened in the State, but they did not achieve the marvelous results their friends expected.

 THE PUBLIC SCHOOL MOVEMENT

North Carolina still retained its reputation for ignorance and unprogressiveness as the nineteenth century wore on. In 1824 an Edgecombe correspondent of the Raleigh Register wrote regretfully, “It is a melancholy fact, that many of our farmers of wealth and character, nay, even many of our instructors and clergy, are notoriously deficient in Orthography, and Reading and Writing, and the commonest rules of vulgar Arithmetick.”32

32 December 3; Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 246.

In 1829 President Joseph Caldwell of the University of North Carolina declared that the State was three centuries behind in public improvements and education.33

33 Raleigh Register, February 4, 1830; Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 434.

 Several years later, the Reverend A. J. Leavenworth, a Presbyterian minister of Charlotte, estimated that “we have probably 120 thousand children between the ages of 5 and 15 years, who are destitute of a common school education.” In some parts of the State, many large families might be found, “not one of whom, parents or children, can read their alphabet; and in others, whole neighborhoods of forty and fifty families exist, among whom but few individuals can read their Bible.”34

34 Ibid., II, 813.

 So many in the State were without education that politicians often found it profitable to declare on the stump that they had never spent a penny on an education and to call those who had been to school the “ruffled-shirted gentry.”35

35 Raleigh Register, September 3, 1838.

So far, the opponents of education had won. The same forces which had retarded the progress of the State in its program for internal improvements and in the agitation for constitutional reform were now preventing the adoption of a public school system: the low per capita wealth, a narrow theory of the functions of state government, the dread of taxation, and sectional jealousies.36

36 Supra, pp. 36-38.

But the friends of education were not content to let the subject rest. The Journal of the House of Commons for 1802 records that “Mr. Calvin Jones moved for leave and presented a bill to establish schools; which was read the first time and rejected.”37

37 House Journal, 1802, p. 46.

From 1802 until the establishment of public schools in 1839 scarcely a year passed without some mention of the subject in the Legislature. Every governor except two from 1802 until 1838 recommended the establishment of public schools. In 1805 the Joint Committee replied to Governor Turner's message on education that the “Committee have duly considered” the subject “and are of opinion that although the situation of the State requires legislative aid; yet for the want of sufficient funds, your committee are of opinion, that an interference at this time would be inexpedient.”38

38 Senate Journal, 1805, p. 24.

 Invariably legislators expressed sympathy for the cause of education, but invariably pleaded insufficient funds as the reason for ignoring it.

By 1815, however, the cause had gained sufficient friends to enable both the House and Senate to appoint special committees on education, the first in the history of the State. The following year Governor Miller's recommendations on education to the Legislature were referred to a committee of which Archibald D. Murphey, senator from Orange County, was chairman, and he prepared a report, expressing vigorously the Jeffersonian theory of public education and recommending that the speakers of the two houses appoint a committee to digest “a judicious system of public education” based upon the principles which his report outlined.39

39 For the report see Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 105-13.

Although others had expressed these views earlier than he, it was left to Murphey to popularize them and to win for himself the title of “father of the common schools” in North Carolina.

Born near Milton about 1777, Archibald DeBow Murphey,40

40 See R. D. W. Connor, Ante-Bellum Builders of North Carolina, Chaps. I-II; S. A. Ashe, Biographical History of North Carolina, IV, 340-49; and The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey.

son of Colonel Archibald Murphey, of local fame in the Revolution, was easily the most distinguished socially-minded statesman in ante-bellum North Carolina even when compared with such distinguished men as William Gaston, Joseph Caldwell, Charles Fisher, John M. Morehead, Edward B. Dudley, and William A. Graham. He was graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1799, and, after having taught there two years, was admitted to the bar and shortly afterward began practice in Hillsboro. From 1812 to 1818 he represented Orange County in the Senate. In these few years he constantly astonished conservative senators with his revolutionary views. He outlined a program of internal improvements which would tie the various sections of the State together by a system of navigable rivers and macadamized roads obtained through taxation. He drew up a system of public schools whereby every county in the State would have adequate schools maintained by public taxation. He favored amending the State Constitution to make it conform to “the first Principles of a Republican System of Government.”41

41 The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey, II, 58.

 He did not live to see any of these measures adopted, but he set in motion forces which were later to jar the State out of its lethargy.

In 1817 John M. Walker of Warren County presented a report42

42 Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 147-64.

on teacher-training as a member of the Joint Committee appointed by Murphey's resolution of the previous year, and Murphey himself presented his famous report on education as a member of the Senate Committee on Education. This report crystallized the thinking on public education and was the basis of the act of 1839 which established the public school system in the State. It called for the creation of a school fund, the appointment of a state school board, the organization of schools, and the establishment of “an asylum for the deaf and dumb.” Murphey based the school system upon primary schools, academies, and the University of North Carolina. He outlined “the course of studies to be prescribed” for each of these three divisions in the system. He went a step further and gave his views on teaching methods and discipline. His plan called for the free education of poor children in the primary schools and the maintenance, as well as education, of a select number in the academies and the University.43

43 Ibid., I, 123-46; also in The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey, II, 63-83.

The Legislature ordered Murphey's report printed, but promptly killed his bill to carry the report into effect. The following year William Martin of Pasquotank presented a bill “to establish and regulate schools in the several counties of this State,” and in 1819 the Education Committee started a movement which was later to culminate in the creation of the Literary Fund. The Senate Education Committee, of which Emanuel Shober of Stokes County was chairman, recommended the creation of a “School Fund” which might be raised “either by drawing it from the lands lately acquired from the Cherokee Indians or by appropriating a part of the stock holden by the state in the bank.”44

44 Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 186.

But it was not until 1825 that the school fund was actually created. In this year the friends of education were able for the first time to push a bill through the Legislature. The bill, drawn by Bartlett Yancey, speaker of the Senate, and introduced by Charles A. Hill, created a fund, known as the Literary Fund, from special sources45

45 Sessional Laws, 1825-1826, Chap. I; Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 280-82. The fund was to consist of “the dividends arising from the stock now held, and which may hereafter be acquired by the State in the Banks of New-bern and Cape Fear, and which have not heretofore been pledged and set apart for internal improvements; the dividends arising from stock which is owned by the State in the Cape Fear Navigation Company, the Roanoke Navigation Company, and the Clubfoot and Harlow Creek Canal Company; the tax imposed by law on licenses to the retailers of spirituous liquors and auctioneers; the unexpended balance of the Agriculture Fund, which by the Act of the Legislature, is directed to be paid into the public Treasury; all monies paid to the State for the entries of vacant lands, (except the Cherokee Lands;) the sum of twenty-one thousand and ninety dollars, which was paid by this State to certain Cherokee Indians, for reservations to lands secured by them by treaty, when the said sums shall be received from the United States by this State; and all the vacant and unappropriated swamp lands in this State, together with such sums of money as the Legislature may hereafter find it convenient to appropriate from time to time.”

 which was to be used to establish common schools when it had grown sufficiently large. For the management of the fund, the bill created a board composed of the governor, the chief justice, the speakers of the two Houses of the Legislature, and the State treasurer.

The Literary Fund grew slowly. In 1827 it amounted to little more than $36,000. By 1836 it had grown to $243,162, all of which the Board had invested in bank stock except $3,845 in cash. During these years the fund had suffered losses through dishonesty, bad investments, and misappropriations. Unwilling to use the money for schools because of the insufficiency of the fund, the Legislature did not hesitate to apply it to other purposes, including the payment of their own salaries. The Legislature was always conscientious about repaying the amount borrowed as soon as the taxes “afforded the means,” but never conscientious to the extent of paying interest on the loans.46

46 See W. K. Boyd, “Finances of the North Carolina Literary Fund,” South Atlantic Quarterly, XIII, 270-79.

Nevertheless, the cause in behalf of public education was growing in popular favor. Newspapers offered their space to all who would write on the subject. No Fourth of July speech was complete without reference to “a system of general instruction” as one of “the cardinal objects of North Carolina.”47

47 From Fourth of July Toast of William Gaston in 1825, in Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 256.

In 1830 a writer in the Raleigh Register proposed a state teacher's association and in 1831 a convention of teachers met in Chapel Hill to organize the North Carolina Institute of Education.48

48 Ibid., pp. 452-543; 510-21.

 In 1832 Joseph Caldwell of the University of North Carolina addressed his Letters on Education to the people of the State.49

49 Ibid., II, 545-613.

In the Legislature the friends of education would not let the subject rest. Not a session passed without their introducing a bill, making a report, or inquiring into the state of the Literary Fund. Beginning in 1829, Tryam McFarland introduced a bill for three successive years calling for the education of poor children. In 1829 Charles R. Kinney submitted a plan for primary schools to Governor Owen which the governor in turn submitted to the Legislature. In 1834 Hugh McQueen, senator from Chatham County, introduced a bill calling for the collection of educational statistics and the increase of the Literary Fund through certain taxes. In 1836-1837, the first session of the Legislature after the change in representation50

50 Supra, pp. 34-35.

by the Constitutional Convention of 1835, the friends of education won their first real victory since 1825. In this year the Legislature passed a bill vesting certain swamp lands in the literary board and appropriating $200,000 for their drainage and improvement; it instructed the literary board “to digest a plan for Common Schools, suited to the conditions and resources of this State, and report the same to the next General Assembly”; and it greatly increased the Literary Fund by the addition of a large portion of the surplus revenue received from the Federal Government.

It is doubtful whether the Legislature would have adopted a system of public schools for another decade had not Congress in 1836 voted to distribute the surplus revenue in the United States Treasury among the States on the basis of their representation in Congress. North Carolina received $1,433,757.39 of this fund. The distribution which the Legislature of 1836-1837 made of the money received was a victory for education and a tribute to North Carolina statesmanship. All but $100,000, which was used for contingent expenses, went eventually to the Literary Fund;51

51 See Boyd, History of North Carolina, pp. 227-28. The distribution of the fund was as follows: $300,000 for the State's subscription to stock in the Bank of North Carolina; $300,000 for the debt of the Literary Fund on stock taken in the Bank of Cape Fear; $200,000 to drain swamp lands appropriated to the Literary Fund; $100,000 for contingent expenses; and $533,757.39 to the Board of Internal Improvements for investment in stock of the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad Company. The State's holdings in the two banks and in the railroad company were assigned to the Literary Board.

so that in 1840 the fund for popular education amounted to more than two million dollars.

The plan for a system of public schools which the Literary Board submitted to the Legislature of 1838-1839 followed closely Murphey's plan of 1817. Governor Dudley approved the bill in his message to the Legislature and William W. Cherry, senator from Bertie, and Frederick J. Hill, representative from Brunswick, introduced bills in their respective houses to carry the plan into effect. The bill which finally passed the Legislature January 7, 1839, provided for the division of the State into school districts, the establishment of a primary school in each district through county taxes supplemented by appropriations from the Literary Fund, and the creation of county and district school boards to put the schools into operation.52

52 Sessional Laws, 1838-1839, Chap. VIII; Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, II, 886-90.

But schools were to be established only in those counties which approved the bill by a vote to be cast in August, 1839. Those who had supported the cause of education from the beginning conducted a feverish campaign during the summer, but the people as a whole were only mildly interested. The vote for schools carried in all but seven of the sixty-eight counties, and the public school system went into operation the following year. These counties, Edgecombe, Wayne, Columbus, Rowan, Lincoln, Yancey, and Davidson, later voted in favor of public schools.

 PUBLIC SCHOOLS AT LAST

The act of 1839 outlined a public school system in broad details. It did not fix responsibility for the operation of the system; it did not even make the erection of school houses or the support of the schools by county taxation mandatory. It did not require the local school committees to make reports on the number and progress of the schools within their districts. The school system thus established was a bitter disappointment to those who had expected so much of it.

When the act passed, its friends hoped that every district in the State, out of public spirit, would at once erect a schoolhouse “sufficient to accommodate at least fifty scholars,” as the bill suggested.53

53 Star, May 8, 1839.

But schoolhouses which had to be built by private subscription of money and labor were built slowly. In 1840 there were only 632 primary schools of any kind in the State.54

54 “Extracts from the Third Annual Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools,” NCJE, I, 63.

 Lacking public schoolhouses, the district committees might use their allotment from the State fund in various ways. They might honestly spend it on schools, distributing it, perhaps, as the Lincolnton Committee did, among the academies and private schools in the community. W. H. Abernethy of Lincolnton wrote to Calvin H. Wiley in 1856:

At our last Superior Court I was appointed one of the District School Committee [.] Before this I never had paid any attention to free Schools . . . I found it a disjointed business [.] in the first place it has been customary here to get up a School in the Academies (we have two, male and female) for five months, on subscription (these schools were controlled by Trustees), and there was generally one or two petty schools in town (besides, taught by female teachers on subscription) [.] the District School Com. would distribute the Free School fund among all these Schools and the teachers would divide it as they pleased. . . .55

55 MS in Wiley Papers: W. H. Abernethy to Calvin H. Wiley, Lincolnton, May 30, 1856.

Being less honest than the Lincolnton Committee, the officers might decide to use the fund for private purposes. In 1850 Governor Manly thought that it might “be safely stated that thousands of dollars remain from year to year in the hands of the [county] Superintendents; and if a rigid settlement were enforced, the public would be astonished at the aggregate sum thus withheld from its legitimate destination.”56

56 House Journal, 1850-1851, p. 478.

The act of 1852 which created the office of state superintendent also gave the superintendent authority “to see that moneys distributed for the purposes of education are not misapplied.”57

57 Sessional Laws, 1852-1853, Chap. XVIII, secs. 7, 16.

 In 1854 Wiley obtained a more definite law on this subject whereby misapplication of educational funds was made a misdemeanor; county superintendents, district committeemen, and clerks of county courts might be fined $50 for neglect of duty; and chairmen of county boards of superintendents might be fined $500, to be recovered by the state superintendent in Wake County Superior Court, for failure to make a report on the disbursement of educational funds.58

58 Ibid., 1854-1855, Chap. XXVI, secs. 46-49, 57.

While the counties were eager to accept the $40 for each school district due them from the Literary Fund by the act of 1839, they were not always willing to raise by taxation the $20 per district required by law. In 1840 the Legislature modified the school tax law so that county courts were merely “authorized and empowered” to levy a tax which should “not exceed one half of the estimated amount to be received” from the Literary Fund. Four years later the Legislature permitted county courts “in their discretion” to levy a school tax.59

59 Ibid., 1840-1841, Chap. VII, sec. 6; ibid., 1844-1845, Chap. XXXVI, sec. 6.

As early as 1848 Governor Graham had suggested that the counties be required to raise a sum equal to one half the amount received from the Literary Fund, and William B. Shepard introduced a bill in the Senate authorizing the Literary Board to withhold the State fund from counties which did not submit yearly a statement showing that they had raised a sum equal at least to a third of the amount due them from the Literary Fund,60

60 MS in Legislative Papers, in Senate, December 23, 1848.

 but the bill failed to pass, and no other Legislature sought to remedy this defect during the ante-bellum period.61

61 The Legislature of 1854-1855 passed a meaningless section of the common school bill (Sessional Laws, Chap. XXVII, sec. 28), stating that county courts “shall levy a tax . . . which shall not be less than one-half of the estimated amount to be received . . . from the literary fund.”

There was no way to penalize a county for resolving, as the Cumberland County Court did in 1855, that “the school tax is for the present dispensed with.”62

62 MS in Cumberland County Court Minutes, 1849-1852, March term, 1855.

The Edgecombe County Court, although the county had voted for schools under the act of 1841, did not consider levying a school tax until 1853. In that year the Court decided to take a vote at the next election of congressmen “whether [a] county tax should be levied to aid the present fund received semi-annually from the State,” but, it was not until 1855 that the county collected its first school tax.63

63 MS in Edgecombe County Court Minutes, 1853-1857, May term, 1854, February term, 1855.

 In those counties which actually levied a tax, the tax itself frequently varied from year to year. For instance, the tax in Pasquotank County in 1851 was 34¼ cents on the $100 valuation of property and 31¼ cents on the poll, but in 1852 the tax dropped to 5 cents on property and 10 cents on the poll. In Orange County the school tax varied over a period of five years from 6 cents to 7½ cents on property and from 8 cents to 22¾ cents on the poll.64

64 MSS in Orange County Court Minutes, 1851-1855, February terms of court in 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855.

The chief reason for the fluctuation of the county school taxes and for the failure of some counties to levy a tax was that the county superintendents frequently found that the funds which they had on hand were sufficient to meet their school requirements. It did not occur to some county officials that they might use the surplus to improve the schoolhouses and equipment or to lengthen the school term. Even had some counties desired to lengthen the school term to six months instead of three they probably could not have found children to attend or teachers to conduct the schools, for, at least in the first decade of the operation of free schools, there were not enough teachers in the State for each of the 1,250 school districts created.

The public school system was further handicapped by the inefficiency of the county boards of superintendents and the district committeemen. Since the State exercised no administrative control over the county boards, they were left to their own devices. Few county boards took the trouble to make reports to the Literary Board on the number and condition of the schools as required by the act of 1846. It was often difficult to find capable men who were willing to serve on the school boards. Sometimes a county court appointed “one of the most illiterate of our citizens” chairman of the board of superintendents, as R. W. Millard of Sampson County complained in 1856.65

65 MS in Wiley Papers: R. W. Millard to C. H. Wiley, April 11, 1856.

It was even more difficult to obtain efficient committeemen. “Men who are the most capable will not serve as committeemen and the consequence is the people Elect men who are totally unfitted for this office [.] some men have been Elected for this office who could neither Read nor write,”66

66 Ibid.: A. W. Brandon to C. H. Wiley, 1854.

 wrote A. W. Brandon of Rowan County in 1854. Sometimes “a popular, noisy fellow” would engineer the election of the district committee so that his favorite would be employed to teach.67

67 Ibid.: R. H. Ballard to C. H. Wiley, 1854.

In 1841 the Legislature unfortunately passed an act which retarded the development of public schools. The act made federal population instead of white population the basis of distributing the Literary Fund. It clearly discriminated against the West with its small amount of Negro population.68

68 See Zebulon B. Vance on this subject in Raleigh Register, December 20, 1854. Governor Manly said in his message to the Legislature in 1850 (House Journal, 1850-1851, p. 476): “. . . those counties in the State containing a sparse white population, and but few white children to educate, yet containing many slaves and free negroes, receive the larger proportion of this public bounty; while those counties having a large white population and many children to educate, yet having few slaves and free negroes, receive the smaller share. This arrangement I hold to be wrong.”

Sectional strife which had so long prevented the adoption of a public school now appeared to handicap the operation of the system.

Moreover, the school districts were too large to make the location of the schoolhouses convenient to all in the districts. The act of 1839 had advised the county boards of superintendents to lay off districts “containing not more than six miles square, but having regard to the number of white children in each.”69

69 Revised Code, 1855, Chap. LXVI, sec. 34, inserted a provision that boards of superintendents lay off “school districts, (and number the same,) of such form and size for one school, as they think most convenient for the inhabitants of the county.” See Wiley on this point in his digest of school laws, NCJE, IV, 147-49.

“Our districts are generally quite large or extend over a considerable extent of county,” wrote a committeemen from Hyde County in 1854, “& it seems that now we are obliged to have them large to get anything like a decent sized school [.] when a school commences in a good sized district the scholars will number perhaps 55 or 50 or even more for 4 or 5 weeks & then a falling off takes place until the end of the quarter when the number is hardly 10.”70

70 MS in Wiley Papers, December 3, 1854.

 He overlooked the fact that some families in the district lived so far from the school that their children could not possibly make the trip every day.

The defects in the public school system itself probably would not have been so apparent had there been a general sentiment in the State in favor of public schools. “I do not think the Public Schools will ever prosper and work well until a new generation arises,” wrote A. W. Brandon, chairman of the Rowan Board of Superintendents, in 1854. “The people take but little Interest in the schools in this County.”71

71 Ibid.: A. W. Brandon to C. H. Wiley, 1854.

James Avery of Burke County thought that “the greatest difficulty in the way of success in our Common Schools . . . is the apathy and indifference manifested by the Upper Classes who do not send their children much to Common Schools.”72

72 Ibid.: James Avery to C. H. Wiley, 1854.

 On this same subject S. D. Wallace wrote, “I am sorry to say that in Wilmington our common schools are not patronized except by those who have not the means to send to other schools & hence the numbers that attend are limited & their character not very flattering.”73

73 Ibid.: S. D. Wallace to C. H. Wiley, January 22, 1856.

 Others objected to the public schools because they were coeducational. In Washington there were more than 450 children of school age in 1857 but not more than 60 ever went to the “Free Schools in their mixed character,” for many parents would not “send Females where males go.”74

74 Ibid.: Joseph Potts to C. H. Wiley, April 20, 1857; see also Raleigh Register, April 18, 1849.

 Accordingly, the committeemen in 1857 were “about to have a male & Female School separate [sic].”

In addition to this lack of public support, the common schools were further handicapped by the opposition which they encountered from the old-field schools and academies and by the scarcity of good teachers.75

75 Infra, pp. 318-23.

Committeemen quarreled and neglected their duties; county chairmen misapplied school funds; prosperous families patronized private schools for fear of contamination from the poor; poor families kept their children out of school to work on the farm; schoolhouses went without repairs and finally fell in ruins.

 CALVIN H. WILEY AND THE COMMON SCHOOLS

At last the Legislature, after refusing in 1839 to provide for a state superintendent of public schools, saw the necessity of one. Calvin H. Wiley of Greensboro had introduced a bill in the Legislature of 1850-1851 providing for a state superintendent but the measure failed. At the next meeting of the Legislature he was more successful. The act of 1852 created the office of superintendent and defined the duties. The superintendent was to codify the educational laws of the State, to enforce these laws, to see that the school funds were properly applied, to obtain annual reports from county boards, to collect full information concerning the condition and operation of schools in each county, to find the causes which promoted and those which retarded the schools, to consult and advise with teachers, to instruct the examining committees concerning the proper qualifications of teachers, to attend meetings of the State Literary Board, to deliver educational addresses, to make an annual report to the governor on the progress of the public school system, and otherwise to promote the cause of public education.76

76 Sessional Laws, 1852-1853, Chap. XVIII.

This new officer was to receive only $1,500 for such an undertaking, but Calvin H. Wiley, state superintendent of public instruction from 1853 to 1865, was equal to the task.

If Murphey was the father of public education Wiley was the savior. Born in Guilford County in 1819 of Scotch-Irish descent, a student at Caldwell Institute in Greensboro and a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Wiley was already popular in the State as a lawyer, author, editor, and politician before his appointment as state superintendent of public instruction.77

77 For brief sketches of Wiley's life see Connor, Ante-Bellum Builders of North Carolina, pp. 93-115; Ashe, Biographical History of North Carolina, II, 427-41; S. B. Weeks, Beginnings of the Common School System in the South, Chap. XXIX; H. C. Renegar, “Problems, Policies and Achievements of Calvin Henderson Wiley” (unpublished typescript).

He took to his office an enthusiasm for his work and a genuine devotion to North Carolina. His theory of education was the old Jeffersonian doctrine which had been expressed in the State since the time of the Revolution: popular education is the basis of a republican form of government. It was Wiley, however, who sought to popularize the theory in North Carolina. From Cherokee to Currituck, in his speeches, letters, and reports, he constantly preached the doctrine that a “system of common schools for a great and growing state is a vast and sublime moral obligation.”

When Wiley began his work as state superintendent in 1853 he found the public school system “obscured in darkness.” After spending the most of his first year in office traveling over the State, visiting schools, inquiring into conditions, sounding out public opinion, he said in his first report to the governor, “I feel bound to say that money is not our greatest want— . . . We want more efficient management—a constant embodiment and expression of public opinion—a watchful supervision—a liberal course of legislation, good officers, and patience and energy in all having an official position in the system.”78

78 Legislative Documents, No. 12, Session 1854-1855, p. 36.

During the twelve years that he was state superintendent, he made the accomplishment of these objectives the chief duties of his office. He seldom had difficulty in obtaining legislation for improving the machinery of the school system. He gradually won the coöperation of the county and district committees, and in the end made the public schools a credit to the State. It was no idle boast when he declared in 1860, “North-Carolina has the start of all her Southern sisters in educational matters.”79

79 Ibid., No. 10, Session 1860-1861: “Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools,” pt. II, p. 9.

In his second report to the governor, Wiley pointed out three serious defects in the school system: the failure of the county boards of education to make annual reports as required by law, the difficulty of obtaining good teachers, and the lack of organization in the schools.80

80 Ibid., Session 1854-1855: “Second Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Common Schools,” pp. 8-23.

By constantly reminding the county boards of their duties and bringing suit in cases of extreme misconduct or neglect, Wiley was able to report in 1858 that “the spirit of chairmen of county boards has now undergone a complete revolution.”81

81 Ibid., No. 9, Session 1858-1859, pp. 13-17.

 The character of the teachers had also greatly improved, and with the improvement in teachers there came also an improvement in the organization of the schools.

In 1860 Wiley had been in office only seven years; yet in that short period he had revolutionized the public school system of North Carolina.82

82 The following questionnaire which Wiley sent to the counties shows his method of work and at the same time presents valuable information concerning the status of the common schools (MS in Calvin H. Wiley Papers, Returns from Counties):

Question 1. What is the number of Common School Districts in your county?

Answer—Thirty nine

2. How are the Districts laid off? are they generally intended for one school, or for several.

Ans. Surveyed regularly about 3¼ miles squ—intended for only one school

3. What is the size of the Districts generally?

Ans. About 3¼ miles square

4. Could your county, in your judgment, be so laid off in Districts, that no one District would be too large for one school, and few Districts so very small that a distribution of the Fund, according to Districts, would not be unjust?

not too large, but too populous. the size near equal

5. Were the Districts laid off by actual survey?

Yes,—varied in size to suit water courses

6. Can your county be so Districted as to bring each child, or a very large portion of the children within reach of a school?

Yes, in the way it is now laid off

7. When did the Common School System go into practical operation in your county?

On May 1850

8. When did you begin to have Examining Committees?

from the beginning or shortly after

9. What is your observation of the effect of Examining Committees, good or bad?

has a good effect

10. Has there been complaint of the want of capacity and fidelity in teachers?

at first there was but some improvement

11. Do the people generally elect Committee men? do many vote in each election?

the people Elect. do not many attend & vote

12. What is the general opinion as to the best method of choosing Committee-men?

By County Superintendant

13. Is it difficult to get good men to act as Committee-men?

verry difficult

14. Do you lay a school tax? if so when did you begin, and what is the amount levied on each poll, and on each hundred dollars' worth of land?

Yes. commencement, 8 cts on Poll 6 on land present amt about 700 $ from the county

15. Have you school houses in all your Districts?

Yes. One with 3—5 with 2 schools

16. How many Common Schools are there in your county?

forty-six-46

17. Is there a supply of teachers moderately qualified?

not in the county

18. What is the probable cause of the want of more teachers?

the want of proper information

19. Are your schools gradually improving?

They are

20. Do you know how many Academies, Classical and Select schools there are in your county?

One Male— (no) Female

21. What is the average character of the school houses in your county, comfortable or otherwise?

largest number comfortable.

22. How do you divide your portion of the Common School Fund?

By the number of children in each District of proper age

23. Does this method give general satisfaction?

It does. was adopted by bord of county superintendants

24. Have you ever divided on any other plan?

none

25. Do the people generally build the school houses, furnish wood &c., at their own expense?

About 4/5 do balance do not

26. At what seasons are the schools generally taught?

Too much in winter

27. Do your teachers ever have public examination?

But a few cases yet but increasing

28. How will the wages of school teachers compare with the general prices for labor, clerking, &c., &c., favorably or otherwise?

reasonably favorable ranging from $12 to $20 per month—prices and qualification increasing

29. Are your teachers native, or from other places?

Two thirds natives one third from abrod

30. Has the Chairman of your county been often changed?

No change

31. Is there complaint of want of uniformity in books? or of the use of bad books, or of frequent changes?

Verry great need of uniformity of Books, at least one third lost for want of such . . . Make such suggestions as may occur to you, in regard to the deficiencies of the Law, the difficulties in the way of greater success of the Common Schools, and the want of proper attention or management on the part of all concerned.

It would be of Great benefit for som one qualified to visit all the schools and impart som more interest and attention to duties of the committeemen som of whom are very inatten to there duties also to see how the Teachers fullfiled there duties I would also recommend that female schools be taught in the warm season of the year.

The number of school districts had increased from about 3,000 in 1853 to 3,471 in 1860; the number of schools from 2,500 to 3,082; the number of children in school from 95,000 to 118,852; the number of licensed teachers from 800 to 2,752; the expenditures from $150,000 in 1854 to $278,000 in 1860.83

83 Legislative Documents, No. 12, Session 1854-1855, pp. 32-34; No. 10, Session 1860-1861, pp. 3-6. These figures are Wiley's estimates based upon actual returns from most of the counties.

 He had been unable, however, to lengthen the school term; it remained at about four months until the close of the ante-bellum period.

The establishment of common schools in North Carolina was an achievement of North Carolina statesmanship. The ante-bellum period opened and closed with the majority of the people in the State indifferent to education; some, yeomen and gentry alike, were actually opposed to the principle of public education. A few farseeing men had always been in favor of a general instruction of the masses; others were converted to the theory by the Revolution. These few, the articulate members of the State community, advocated the subject constantly in the pulpit, the press, and the legislative hall. They slowly won converts; finally achieved their goal. After 1840 the State boasted of its system of common schools as proudly as it previously had boasted of its State University and its statue of Washington. A few men in their devotion to a cause had forced a State, ridiculed by its neighbors as backward and ignorant, into a step as progressive as any taken by its scorners.

 CHAPTER X PRIVATE SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES

WHILE theories were being propounded and sentiment in favor of public schools was slowly taking shape, the educational needs of the State were being met inadequately by private means. As in colonial times, families who lived in isolated regions employed a tutor for their children if they could afford to do so; or the mother, if she had sufficient leisure and education, taught the children herself.1

1 Supra, p. 238.

In 1808 Samuel Ashe of Rocky Point advertised in the Raleigh Register for a “Decent, sober and discreet Person, that can teach the Latin and Greek Languages, and the Mathematics, willing to engage in a private family to teach three or four Youths only.”2

2 January 21; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 803. See also advertisement in Catawba Journal, January 25, 1825.

SUBSCRIPTION SCHOOLS

In the more populous areas, families during the colonial period had combined to pay the salary of the minister or some lay reader sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to instruct their children for several months during the year. Out of this custom arose the subscription school, so widely known in antebellum North Carolina as the “old-field school.” A parent, wishing to obtain instruction for his own children, might employ a teacher, provide a room or a building for the school, and take it upon himself to solicit pupils from other families to help defray the expense. In 1838 A. J. N. Hall of Oxford advertised in the Raleigh Register as follows: “The Subscriber, having engaged a Teacher to instruct his own children, begs leave to inform the public that he is ready to take in a select number of boarders at the moderate price of $6 per month, the Tuition fees being very moderate.”3

3 July 9; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 553.

More often the teacher himself solicited pupils and started a school on his own account. The usual procedure was to draw up “articles” and circulate the paper through the community, obtaining the signatures of all who desired to send their children. In 1857 Mary A. Gash circulated the following “article” in the Burn's Creek community in Western North Carolina:

Mary A. Gash proposes to teach a school at Burn's Creek schoolhouse for the term of 3 months or 12 weeks commencing May 1857

Spelling Reading Writing and Arithmetic $2.40 Geography English Grammar Philosophy & Composition 3.60 Astronomy, Chemistry and Rhetoric 4.20

She obligates herself to preserve good order so far as is within her power, and those who are not willing to be governed by the rules of the school may expect to be expelled.

Twenty scholars are desired though she will commence with sixteen. The subscribers are expected to pay their tuition at the close of the school.4

4 MS in Gash Papers, 1857.

Almost every village and every rural community in the State had a subscription school at some time or other during the antebellum period, although some places might not have a teacher more often than once in every two or three years. In 1853 Calvin H. Wiley, recently appointed state superintendent of public schools, declared that prior to 1840 “there was not a schoolhouse for every twenty miles square of territory in the State” and that even in “the most enlightened country neighborhoods the leading heads of families could not succeed oftener than once in two years in getting up a subscription school for the three winter months.”5

5 North Carolina Standard, August 3, 1853.

 ACADEMIES

Sometimes a prosperous farmer in the neighborhood built the community schoolhouse if he had several children of his own to educate, but more often the schoolhouse, like the school, was obtained through subscription. If the subscription was large and a commodious house erected, the school very frequently blossomed into an academy. An academy was frequently nothing more than a subscription school on a sounder financial basis, chartered by the Legislature, and governed by a board of trustees. It did, however, seek to give a more thorough education than the subscription school, laying chief emphasis upon the Greek and Latin languages.

The Germans, Quakers, and especially the Scotch-Irish were responsible for the erection of the first academies in North Carolina.6

6 See Knight, op. cit., pp. 36-41; Zora Klain, Quaker Contributions to Education in North Carolina; Fries, Records of the Moravians in North Carolina.

One of the first classical schools in the State was Tate's Academy, which the Reverend James Tate, a Presbyterian minister, opened in Wilmington in 1760.7

7 Connor, North Carolina, I, 180.

 In the same year Crowfield Academy in Mecklenburg County opened its doors. The Revolution put an end to this early academy movement, but the war had scarcely closed before the movement started anew. Before 1800 the Legislature had chartered forty-one academies. Perhaps the most celebrated of these early academies was David Caldwell's “log college” which he opened near the present site of Greensboro in 1767. Many a man, later prominent in the State, received the most of his education at one of these schools.

With the passing of the eighteenth century, the academy movement got well under way. From 1800 to 1860 the Legislature chartered 287 academies. Practically every county in the State had at least one academy during the period, and Wake County had as many as twelve. Not all, however, were in existence at the same time. Despite the special privileges which academies received, exemption from taxation, the privilege before 1809 of issuing due bills under certain conditions, and permission to raise funds by lotteries,8

8 House Journal, 1810-1811, p. 29; see also Petition of Trustees of Wilmington Academy, a MS in Legislative Papers, 1812. Lotteries for academies had been refused on moral grounds as early as 1816, but the Legislature permitted a lottery for the benefit of Salisbury Academy as late as 1837.

they seldom prospered for many years at a time. In 1804 Maurice Moore, in a debate in the House of Commons on a bill concerning the University of North Carolina, pointed out that the support of an academy involved “expences far too great to be met by any neighbourhood in the present state of our country.” “From the frequent attempts which have been made in various parts of the state to establish Academies, their imbecility is too clearly evinced to be farther trusted,” he declared. “Salisbury, Warrenton, Hillsboro,' Pittsboro' and Fayetteville have each had its Academy to boast of— . . . they have each flourished for a day, on the first effusions of generosity, . . . What are they now?”9

9 Raleigh Register, December 10, 1804.

 They have either been abandoned entirely or have degenerated to the precarious existence of an old-field school.

The Raleigh Academy was one of the few schools in the State which prospered for several decades. Incorporated in 1801 in the name of John Craven, Joseph Gales, and others, the building was started on Burke Square in 1803 after failure to raise by lottery sufficient funds to complete the work.10

10 Ibid., February 8, 1803. A school which has been called the Raleigh Academy was taught in Raleigh in 1800 by German Guthrie and Mrs. Langley. See Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 388.

In 1804 the building was completed at a cost of $600 and the trustees were “desirous of engaging a fit Person to superintend the Institution. If they could meet with a Clergyman of liberal Education and Principles, who would take charge of the Academy and give the citizens a weekly Discourse, such an one would be preferred, and for such a Character, it is believed, a handsome Salary would be provided.”11

11 Raleigh Register, March 12, 1804; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 390.

 The Reverend Martin Detargny, “late of Princeton College,” was the first principal of the Academy; he was followed by various others until in 1810 the Reverend William McPheeters of Virginia took charge of the school and successfully guided its affairs for seventeen years. In 1807 the trustees erected another building “for the Female Department,” and in the same year the Thespian Society, a group of men interested in theatrics and education, assumed patronage of the school.

But the best days of the Academy were over by 1827. In that year the Reverend Mr. McPheeters resigned the principalship and attempted to establish in Raleigh a Female Boarding School which he finally discontinued after six years of unsuccessful effort.12

12 Ibid., pp. 555-56.

Also in 1827, Timothy E. Dwight, a graduate of Yale, opened his Select School “in the House lately occupied by Robert H. Wynne.”13

13 Ibid., p. 554.

 Previously, Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Lumsden had opened in 1823 a private school which they taught at their residence, and in 1828 Mr. Lumsden was teaching a night school to “young men who are engaged in business during the day.”14

14 Ibid., pp. 534-35.

 By 1839, however, the Lumsden school was confined to “the instruction of Girls and small Boys—say 10 years of age and under.” In 1823 George W. Freeman opened the Episcopal Classical School in Raleigh which was continued under various teachers until 1840.15

15 Ibid., p. 538. In 1834 a “spacious stone building” had been built for the Episcopal school.

Competition with these private schools was so great that the trustees of the Raleigh Academy were forced to sell the buildings in 1830 to pay their debts incurred by the employment of teachers, necessary repairs, and the general overhead. William Peace, who, as treasurer, had already advanced the Academy $900 from his own funds, bought the buildings for $600 and until 1855 rented them to teachers to carry on the school. In that year the State took over the buildings, then valued at $2,800, which had been erected in the beginning on public land.16

16 MS in Legislative Papers, 1855-1856.

After an existence of more than fifty years the Raleigh Academy finally closed its doors.

An academy usually attracted students from neighboring communities, but it was seldom that the trustees provided accommodations for the “boarding scholars” within the academy buildings. Instead, they made arrangements with private families to give the students room and board at fixed rates. The first principal of the Raleigh Academy, upon arriving, advertised that he and his wife were “desirous of meeting with Boarding in some regular Family in the city.”17

17 Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 391.

Later, the trustees obtained board for the students “in several respectable Families, on very low Terms.”18

18 Ibid., p. 393.

 At the same time other academies in the State were announcing, as did the Springfield Academy in upper Caswell County, that students might obtain “Boarding, Washing and Lodging (notwithstanding the bad prospect of Crops) within one mile and a half of the School, at Forty-five dollars each, per annum.”19

19 Ibid., p. 29.

 In 1831 James Grant, principal of the Raleigh Academy, offered students board in his father's family at $8 a month. When an academy did provide board and lodging for its students the rate was about the same as that charged by private families. In 1823 Fayetteville Academy charged $35 a quarter for board and tuition in every branch of study except Music, for which the tuition alone was $20 a quarter. The students were taxed “25 cents each . . for wood, water, etc.” but were provided pens and ink without charge.20

20 Ibid., p. 70.

The academy fees, like those of the subscription school, were usually based upon the course of instruction followed by the student. The Raleigh Academy opened its doors in 1804, charging $3 a quarter for reading and writing, $4 for the more advanced branches of an English education, and $5 for the classics.21

21 Ibid., p. 390.

Twenty years later the price of tuition had scarcely been changed, but by the thirties there was a noticeable rise. In 1834 Hyco Academy in Caswell County was charging $8 a session for “some of the elementary branches of English education,” $10 for “other branches of English education,” and “$15 for Latin or Greek Languages or Mathematics.”22

22 Ibid., p. 28.

 SPECIAL SCHOOLS

Throughout the ante-bellum period various schools devoted to the study of special subjects flourished for a while in the State. There were law schools, medical schools, agricultural schools, military schools, music schools, dancing schools, shorthand schools, and even kindergartens, or “infant schools,” as they were called.

Perhaps the most distinguished of these special schools were the law schools taught by prominent lawyers and judges of the State. In 1822 John Louis Taylor, chief justice from 1809 to 1820, who had for a number of years been instructing a few in the legal profession, “at the request of some of his old friends and pupils,” threw open his school to the public in order to afford “the youth of the country an opportunity of acquiring a scientific knowledge of their own Laws without the inconvenience and expense of seeking it in other States.” His textbooks were Blackstone's Commentaries and the Revised Statutes of North Carolina. The “solid advantages” which his school offered students were “frequent examinations and conversations on legal and literary topics, an extensive Law Library, the practice of drawing pleadings and discussing law questions.”23

23 Raleigh Register, February 15, 1822, August 2, 1822; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 531.

In 1831 Archibald D. Murphey opened a law school in Hillsboro.24

24 Star, December 12, 1831; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 314.

 For a number of years Chief Justice Leonard Henderson taught law, instructing by “familiar conversation,” and in 1840 Richmond M. Pearson, at that time a superior court judge, later associate justice and still later chief justice of the Supreme Court, opened his school in Mocksville, charging $100 for his course.25

25 Raleigh Register, June 16, 1840.

 In 1841 James Iredell and William H. Battle began their law school in Raleigh, adopting “the most improved course of Studies,” showing by oral and written instruction “the alteration of the law as laid down by Blackstone, arising from our Acts of Assembly and the decision of our courts.”26

26 Ibid., March 3, 1841.

Most of the prominent ante-bellum physicians obtained their education in the North, a great many going to Philadelphia for their instruction. There were doctors in the State, however, who undertook to instruct students in medicine. In 1811 Dr. James H. Keys, who lived eight miles from Warrenton, announced that he “would willingly take two or three Medical Students.”27

27 Ibid., March 14, 1811; see also infra, p. 749.

The military schools, a number of which flourished for short periods, ordinarily were academies which included some military training. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Archibald Murphey taught military schools in Stokes and adjacent counties and a Mr. Wren taught in Northampton County. In 1812 Murphey advertised that he would teach military discipline during the summer at Hillsboro, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Louisburg, Warrenton, Granville, Chatham, and Rockingham.28

28 Star, May 15, 1812; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 243.

In 1813 Colonel Simon Burton was president of a society organized in Lenoir County to establish a military school at Kinston.29

29 Star, September 3, 1813; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, pp. 243-44.

 In 1826 D. H. Bingham opened his military school at Williamsboro “on the plan of the West Point Seminary and of Capt. Partridge's Academy” in Connecticut. Besides the usual academy courses, he offered “Military Law, permanent and Field Fortifications, Artillery and Field Engineering generally, with a complete view of Military Tactics.”30

30 Raleigh Register, August 22, 1826; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 244.

 From Williamsboro, he moved his school to Littleton and then to Oxford and to Raleigh, finally giving up the academy in 1833 when he became an engineer for an Alabama railroad.31

31 Ibid., pp. 245-61.

 In 1830 Captain Ransom opened a military academy at Fayetteville patterned after Bingham's school. When Bingham left Raleigh, Colonel Carter Jones began a so-called military school, giving a day of drills once every eight weeks “in the Infantry and Light Infantry Tactics, together with the Broad Sword Exercises and Calvary movements to Troopers.” Three years later he was teaching a similar school in Wilmington. After 1840 North Carolinians seem to have been content to confine their knowledge of military tactics to that learned at the regular militia musters and in the volunteer corps. Two military academies, Hillsboro and Oak Hill in Granville County, were chartered in 1860, and Major D. H. Hill was conducting his North Carolina Military Institute.32

32 D. H. Hill, “Essay on Military Education,” NCJE, IV, 107-22.

While most farmers in the State thought that it was unnecessary to have an education to know how to raise a good crop, a few early in the century began to speak of the need for training in agriculture. In 1820 a correspondent of the Hillsborough Recorder referred with regret to the contempt with which most planters considered “book farming.”33

33 November 1.

In 1837 Elijah Graves began his Farmers' School at Rock House, nine miles west of Chapel Hill, for “such gentlemen as do not wish to give their sons a classical education; but who would be pleased to have them taught to read and write correctly, and also the English Grammar and Geography, with some knowledge of Astronomy, Mathematics, Rhetoric, and Chemistry, which is intimately connected with Agriculture.”34

34 North Carolina Standard, January 18, 1837. In 1860 Wiley published a reprint from the New York Teacher on “Agriculture in Our Common Schools,” NCJE, III, 119-22.

 In response to the increased demand for scientific farming which arose in the State after 1840 the University of North Carolina included in its courses on geology and industrial chemistry practical information concerning soil analysis and the use of fertilizers.

In practically every village where there was an academy there was also a music teacher, an art teacher, and sometimes a dancing teacher. In some of the towns, such as New Bern, Raleigh, Greensboro, and Wilmington, there were music teachers independent of academy patronage. In 1823 James Aykroyd of New Bern “respectfully informed the citizens of Hillsboro and its vicinity that he intended giving lessons in music there during the summer months.” His terms were “for the Piano, twelve dollars a quarter, for lessons every other week; and three dollars for vocal music, two lessons every other week.”35

35 Hillsborough Recorder, June 25, 1823.

The first kindergarten in the State seems to have been opened in Fayetteville in 1832 “under the superintendence of a Lady who has been instructed in the Infant Schools in the City of N. York, under the patronage of Mrs. Bethune.” This northern woman taught children of both sexes from two to eight years of age at 12½ cents a week with the assistance of an “Instructress” and “a Servant to take care of the children.”36

36 Fayetteville Observer, January 4, 1832.

In 1842 Mrs. Peat's Infant School in Raleigh gave a public examination at the City Hall before “a crowded and intelligent auditory.” Yet, notwithstanding “the incalculable service” Mrs. Peat rendered the children in her care, the receipts from the school were insufficient to support herself and her family.37

37 North Carolina Standard, January 12, 1842.

The schools for teaching penmanship, shorthand, and book-keeping were usually temporary, being taught by men who drifted into town for a few weeks or months, staying as long as patronage was good. In 1813 “those Ladies and Gentlemen” who wished “to be instructed in the elegant and improved art of penmanship,” were “respectfully invited to call on B. Nichols at the Eagle Hotel, Raleigh.”38

38 Star, July 16, 1813; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, pp. 516-17.

In 1820 T. McQueen taught “a highly improved System of Stenography” for two weeks at the Eagle Hotel, and in 1831 Charles Berkeley promised to teach a knowledge of shorthand characters and the mode of using them in four lessons.39

39 Raleigh Register, July 14, 1820, April 21, 1831; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, pp. 517, 518.

 In 1834 L. B. Johnson and Thomas B. Haywood added “Book-keeping, the Statement of Accounts, the drawings of common Instruments of Business, &c.” to their regular courses offered by the Raleigh Academy.40

40 Star, July 24, 1834; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 502.

 THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA

The first step which the Legislature of North Carolina took to carry out the instructions of the Constitution of 1776 to promote the education of youths was to charter the University of North Carolina in 1789. William R. Davie, a cavalry officer in the Revolution, a representative to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, grand master of Masons, introduced the bill which chartered the University and later obtained $10,000 from an unwilling Legislature with which to erect the first building at New Hope Chapel Hill in Orange County fourteen miles from Hillsboro, an isolated spot, chosen no doubt because of an offer from the citizens of the community to donate 1,380 acres of land to the new school and because of a provision in the charter that the University should not be located within five miles of the state capital or of any court town. On October 12, 1793, in the presence of a distinguished company, Davie laid the cornerstone of the first building, the oldest state university building now standing in the United States. The first session opened January 15, 1795, with the Reverend David Ker, formerly pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville and principal of the Fayetteville Academy, as “Presiding Professor.” Before the close of June the trustees had elected a tutor in mathematics, Charles Wilson Harris, recent honor-graduate of Princeton, and the students, numbering forty-one, had organized two debating societies, later to be known as the Dialectic and Philanthropic societies.

From the first, the trustees had a struggle to keep the institution alive. Having chartered the University, the Legislature left it to prosper as it might. It was not until 1881 that the University received a small cash appropriation for maintenance from the State treasury. When the Legislature chartered the University, however, it did pass an act conferring on the school certain claims which the officers of the State had been unable to collect and such property as had escheated or should thereafter escheat to the State. From the first source, the University eventually obtained a little more than seven thousand dollars; from the latter, considerably more.41

41 See K. P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, I, 9-11, 16-17, 136-40, 150-52, 319-21.

By a provision of the act, only the interest on these monies could be used. In 1857, therefore, the University had an endowment of $150,000.42

42 MS in Legislative Papers: David L. Swain to E. E. Avery, January 9, 1857.

 But money from these sources came in slowly, and the demands on the young institution were great. It was not until after 1835, when gifts from Smith, Gerrard, and others had swelled the treasury, that the University was free from heavy debts.

In 1796 Joseph Caldwell, a native of New Jersey and graduate of Princeton, came to the University at the age of twenty-three to be professor of mathematics. From that time until his death in 1835, as professor, presiding professor, or president, he successfully guided the affairs of the University and in time became the acknowledged educational leader in the State. Governor David L. Swain was appointed president of the University at President Caldwell's death, and continued in office until his removal by the Reconstruction government in 1868. At the close of his administration, he could point with pride to the fact that the students had numbered almost five hundred at the outbreak of the Civil War and that he had added to the number of buildings and to the endowment.43

43 Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, I, 799.

The year following the opening of the University, Professor Harris wrote to Caldwell, then at Princeton, “We imitate Nassau Hall44

44 The name of the first college building erected at Princeton.

in the conduct of our affairs, as much as circumstances will admit.”45

45 Quoted by Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, I, 109.

 The students numbered about one hundred, sixty of whom were in the preparatory department. In the college department there were classes in moral philosophy, mathematics, geography, arithmetic, Latin, and Greek. In the issue of February 18, 1800, the Raleigh Register observed:

It cannot be otherwise than interesting and agreeable to the Citizens of the State at large, and it may be useful to those among them who have Sons to educate that due subordination and a proper and regular attention to the business now happily mark the conduct of every class at the University of North Carolina:—The proper demeanor and industry of the Students at present there, and their increasing number authorize the flattering presage, that the most sanguine hopes of the people of the State at large, and of the friends of Literature and Science in general, with respect to this institution, will ultimately be fully and completely realized.

By 1819 the school had grown into a creditable college. Joseph Caldwell was president and held the chair of moral philosophy and metaphysics. Denison Olmsted, a graduate of Yale, held the chair of chemistry; Elisha Mitchell, also a graduate of Yale, the chair of mathematics; and the Reverend Shepard K. Kollock, a graduate of Princeton, the chair of rhetoric and logic. For admission into the freshman class, the students must have studied certain specified works in Latin, including seven books of Caesar and six books of Virgil, and Greek including St. John's Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles, and Graeca Minora to Lucian's Dialogues. The studies in the freshman and sophomore classes included Latin and Greek, geography, mathematics, English composition, and declamation. Junior Sophisters and Senior Sophisters, as the upper classmen were called, dropped their study of Latin and Greek and spent their time on conic sections and fluxions (calculus), “applied mathematics,” natural philosophy, chemistry, mineralogy, geology, philosophy of natural history, astronomy, metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, the English classics, composition, and declamation.46

46 Ibid., pp. 255-56.

By 1855 the University had added the study of law, history, the modern languages, civil engineering, and industrial chemistry to the curriculum, and the faculty numbered fourteen.47

47 Ibid., pp. 661-66.

The University had scarcely opened when a few friends came forward with books for a library and the two debating societies began to make small book collections of their own. In 1812 the University library consisted of 1,500 volumes and the society libraries had between 800 and 1,000 volumes. In 1824 President Caldwell urged the trustees to spend $6,000 for “Philosophical Apparatus” and books, and he paid his own expenses to Europe to make the purchases. After President Caldwell's death, the trustees neglected the library. In fact, B. F. Moore, a trustee, reported near the close of the ante-bellum period that the board had not purchased a single volume for twenty-five years. Although in 1850 a building, Smith Hall, now the Playmakers' Theater, was erected for the library, “the College Library was never open to the students; on two occasions only, . . . consulted by persons from abroad; and almost never . . . used by members of the Faculty.”48

48 Ibid., p. 408.

But on one occasion, at least, during the college year the library building shown with bright lights, for here the students held their annual commencement ball.

The early by-laws for the regulation of the students show the influence of Revolutionary political theory. The first set of rules which the trustees drew up contained a “Declaration of Rights,” and declared that “the students charged shall have timely notice, and testimony taken on the most solemn assurance shall be deemed valid without calling on a magistrate to administer an oath in legal form.”49

49 Ibid., p. 57.

Trustees and faculty were inclined to enforce discipline with a firmness which the students occasionally felt impinged upon their “natural rights.” In 1799, for instance, the students openly rebelled against the laws and the faculty. They “beat Mr. Gillaspie personally, waylaid and stoned Mr. Webb,” and uttered “violent threats” against the others.50

50 Ibid., p. 155.

 In 1805 twenty students left the University, “having conceived disgust at the Monitorial law, imposing an oath on all by turns to act the part of spies on each other's conduct.”51

51 Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 90; and see statement made to the public by the trustees who were “anxious to acquit themselves,” Raleigh Register, September 16, 1805.

 In 1816 the faculty suspended and the trustees expelled William B. Shepard of New Bern, a senior, because he insisted upon delivering in public a political speech contrary to the President's instructions.52

52 MS in Pettigrew Papers: Wm. Shepard to E. Pettigrew, October 14, 1816; Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, I, 236-37.

 Forty-five others were suspended because they encouraged Shepard's defiance with repeated cheers, but were permitted to return to the University upon solemnly promising to submit to the laws of the school.

It is little wonder that professors and tutors frequently complained that the students were impertinent, fond of fighting and playing bandy, and fonder still of bedeviling the faculty. They had few other diversions. As late as 1852 students were required to attend morning prayers at sunrise and to devote the hours from nine to twelve and from two until five to study, “and the bell shall be rung for summoning the Students to their rooms at 8 o'clock in the evening.” During study hours every student was expected to be either in his room or in class; nor could he receive visitors in his room without permission from a member of the faculty. On Sunday the student was required “to be present at the reading or delivery of a sermon in the Chapel” and to attend any other instruction in morals or religion that his professors might appoint. Students were to “refrain from their ordinary diversions and exercises”; they could not hunt, fish, swim, or walk far abroad, but throughout the day must “observe a quiet and orderly behavior.”53

53 Acts of the General Assembly and Ordinances of the Trustees for the Organization and Government of the University of North Carolina, pp. 13-20. For the comment of a traveler on these rules, see Anne Royall, op. cit., I, 140-41.

For the first quarter of a century after its establishment, the University had to face bitter opposition. It was criticized as a hotbed of infidelity, as the fountainhead of Federalism, as the matrix of high-toned aristocracy. Its rebellious student body won it ill fame, and its efforts to collect through the courts its claim to confiscated property and escheats made many an enemy. But in time the University offset much of this criticism by the role of leadership its graduates assumed in the State. Between 1824 and 1827 Professors Denison Olmsted and Elisha Mitchell made a geological survey of North Carolina for the State Board of Agriculture. Their published reports are the first geological publication made by any State in the Union.54

54 Boyd, History of North Carolina, pp. 100-1.

President Caldwell's Numbers of Carlton, in which he strongly urged the State to undertake a system of internal improvements, and his Letters on Education helped to convince the people that the chief concern of the University was its ideal of public service. In 1845 President Swain organized at Chapel Hill the North Carolina Historical Society and began the collection of documents bearing on the history of the State. In 1860 the University could point to a long list of alumni who had been public officials in the State and the Union: one President of the United States, one Vice-President, seven Cabinet officials, ten United States senators, forty-one representatives in Congress, fifteen state governors, and numerous state legislators and judges.55

55 Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, I, 783-85; Connor, North Carolina, I, 594.

 DENOMINATIONAL COLLEGES

The Presbyterians were the first of the religious denominations to attempt the establishment of a college. For almost seventy years before the founding of Davidson in 1837, Presbyterians had sought to build a college in North Carolina. The provincial Legislature chartered Queen's Museum of Charlotte in 1770, and despite the royal disallowance of this act the school existed under that name until about 1777.55a

55a M. deL. Haywood, “The Story of Queen's College or Liberty Hall in the Province of North Carolina,” North Carolina Booklet, XI, 173-74.

In that year the school was incorporated as an academy bearing the name of Liberty Hall; but before many years Liberty Hall had also fallen into “an entire state of decay,” and the trustees obtained a new charter in 1784, moved the school to Salisbury, and called it Salisbury Academy.

The impetus for the establishment of Davidson College was an outgrowth of the agitation started in 1820 for a college in Western North Carolina.56

56 Western Carolinian, August 22, 1820; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, 641-90.

The movement for Western College was not entirely a Presbyterian agitation, although more than half of the trustees who met in Lincolnton on May 7, 1821, were Presbyterians.

When Presbyterians next turned their efforts toward building a college, they kept the movement within the Presbytery. In March, 1835, Concord Presbytery, meeting at Prospect Church in Rowan County, passed a memorial to “undertake (in humble reliance upon the blessing of God) the establishment of a Manual Labor School.”57

57 Quoted by C. R. Shaw, Davidson College, p. 12.

By the fall meeting of the Presbytery, the college was assured. The Reverend P. J. Sparrow and the Reverend R. H. Morrison, who had been a trustee of Western College, had obtained $30,000 for beginning the college; the committee on site had chosen “a granite belt ranging from Beattie's Ford on the Catawba to Trading Ford on the Yadkin” as the seat of the college, and the sub-committee on building had already contracted for 250,000 bricks to be made on Major John Caldwell's plantation.

There was little left for the Presbytery to do except choose a name for the new school; whereupon it resolved “that the Manual Labor Institution which we are about to build be called Davidson College as a tribute to the memory of that distinguished and excellent man, General William Davidson, who . . . fell . . . in the Battle of Cowan's Ford.”58

58 Ibid., p. 16.

On March 1, 1837, the college opened with Morrison as president and with students to the number of sixty-five. The following year the Legislature granted the school a charter.

The very feature of Davidson College which had made its founders so hopeful of its success, retarded its development.59

59 Davidson College was not the first manual labor school opened in North Carolina based upon the Pestalozzi-Fellenburg theory which Theodore D. Weld popularized in the United States. In 1833 the Legislature chartered Wake Forest Institute, Donaldson Academy and Manual Labor School of Fayetteville, and Greensboro Manual Labor School.

According to the “Constitution” of the school:

Each student who enters this institution shall perform manual labor, either agricultural or mechanical, in the manner and to the extent determined by the Board of Trustees. There shall be a steward whose duty it shall be to manage the farm and boarding houses and direct the students during the labor hours.

Mechanics shall be introduced into the institution to such extent and in such way as the Board of Trustees shall judge proper.60

60 Shaw, op. cit., p. 38.

 The trustees paid the best workers $15 a session for three hours of work a day; the next best, $12; and the least efficient, $9. Some boys worked conscientiously, but most of them took the labor system as a huge joke. They hung new plow stocks high up in pine trees; they hid plow shovels in the woods; after work they raced the horses to the stables and frequently rode them at night.61

61 Ibid., p. 39 n.

 In 1841 the trustees abandoned the idea of manual training and Davidson became a classical school fashioned after Princeton. In 1860 the college had 6 professors and 112 students. It had just spent $1,000 for laboratory apparatus, and classes were meeting for the first time in Chambers Building, the most imposing college building in the State, erected from funds received from the Maxwell Chambers legacy of $200,000.62

62 For a brief history of this legacy see ibid., pp. 86-93.

The Baptists were slow to enter the field of education, but, once having committed themselves to the policy, erected the first denominational college in the State.63

63 G. W. Paschal, History of Wake Forest College, I; Raper, Church and Private Schools of North Carolina, pp. 132-47; C. L. Smith, op. cit., pp. 101-9.

The split in the denomination which occurred between 1821 and 1830 was due partly to the controversy over the need of schools and an educated ministry. The first session of the Baptist State Convention reported an educational fund of more than $11,000 and authorized the education of young ministerial students in private schools. The next meeting of the Convention sanctioned the establishment of Baptist Literary Institute, called “The Wake Forest Institution” by the Board of Managers. The school, which was in Wake County on lands bought from Calvin Jones, was to be conducted on the manual labor plan “to enable young Ministers to obtain an education on moderate terms, and to train up youth in general to a knowledge of Science and practical Agriculture.” The total expense of the academic year was not to exceed $60; the trustees agreed to make an allowance “to each student according to the value of his work”; and required each to “furnish himself with an axe and a hoe, a pair of sheets and a pair of towels.”64

64 Raleigh Register, November 23, 1833; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, pp. 694-95.

In 1833 the Legislature chartered the school, not, however, without bitter opposition from the Primitive Baptists led by Joshua Lawrence and from others who thought that the incorporation of a body chosen by a religious denomination was a violation of an article of the constitution providing that no religious body should be established in the State in preference to another.65

65 Boyd, History of North Carolina, p. 367.

In February, 1834, the school opened in the carriage house and cabins of the Jones plantation with sixteen students present and with the Reverend Samuel Waite as principal and teacher. Before the close of the year the students had increased to forty and the trustees had employed the Reverend John Armstrong as professor of languages. Classwork began at sunrise, even before breakfast, and continued until three o'clock in the afternoon when the bell rang “long and loud for the toils of the field.” The students, “some with axes, some with grubbing hoes, some with weeding hoes,” led by their professors, worked until dusk when a bell called them to prayers and to supper.66

66 Raleigh Register, May 5, 1835; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, pp. 708-9.

But students came to college to escape labor, not to engage in it. “A Visitor” in September, 1838, thought that it was “a mortifying fact” that the college was “almost neglected by the public.”67

67 Raleigh Register, September 3, 1838; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 717.

Later in the year the Legislature granted the school a new charter under the name of Wake Forest College with the privilege of conferring degrees, holding property to the value of $200,000, and claiming exemption from taxation. The trustees dropped the manual labor plan and increased the faculty by adding professors who were from the North, graduates of Brown University or of Columbian College. Also in 1838 the first college building was ready for occupation. Three years later the trustees obtained a loan of $10,000 from the State Literary Fund, which helped temporarily to tide them over the financial burdens which had handicapped the college from the beginning. In 1849 they started a movement for an endowment which by 1860 had grown to $47,500. In 1854 they elected Washington Manly Wingate president and he began a distinguished administration which lasted until 1879.

It was not until 1859 that the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church had the vested rights in a college of its own. In 1837 a group of Methodists in Randolph County persuaded the Reverend Brantley York to begin a subscription school in the spring of 1838 at Brown's Schoolhouse, an “inferior building,” scarcely habitable.68

68 York, op. cit., p. 45.

So popular was the school that the farmers, as soon as they had “laid by their crops,” erected a small log building into which York moved with his sixty-five pupils. He had already conceived of establishing “a permanent institution of learning of high grade at this place,” and had no difficulty in communicating his enthusiasm to the neighboring farmers. They organized Union Institute Educational Society and in July, 1839, laid the cornerstone of a clapboard building which they called Union Institute.

In 1842 York, finding his eyesight failing, resigned to become principal of Clemonsville High School, and Braxton Craven, the assistant teacher who had recently attended school at New Garden, was elected in his place.69

69 Ibid., pp. 42, 44-49.

Craven, hoping to increase the popularity of his school and at the same time to render a service to the common schools of the State, determined to make of Union Institute a normal school for training teachers. In 1857 the trustees obtained a charter naming the school Normal College70

70 In 1840 the Legislature chartered the school as Union Institute.

 and providing that students holding certificates from the college should be licensed to teach in the common schools without an examination by the county examining committee. The following year the Literary Fund lent the school $10,000 for building purposes and the Legislature amended the charter, making the governor president and the state superintendent of common schools secretary of the board of trustees, and permitted the school to grant degrees.

The good which Craven sought to render both the State and his school by converting the Institute into a normal college was “to some extent realized.” “But the influence upon the institution was exceedingly injurious,” President Craven wrote years later in a sketch of Trinity College. “Young men with a mere elementary education, with little mental development or discipline, and often without those social influences that are the best foundation for elegant culture, went forth bearing a Normal certificate. . . . Coming from an institution having the name of a college, they were unjustly compared with the regularly educated students of other colleges.” These “crude young teachers” generally had “no higher ambition than to teach a few terms of a country primary school.”71

71 Quoted by Dowd, op. cit., pp. 52-53.

In 1851 the North Carolina Conference, of which President Craven was an ordained minister, endorsed Normal College and the school agreed to educate ministerial students without charge. Five years later the Conference took over the school, and in 1859 obtained a charter which changed its name to Trinity College, severed its connection with the State, and vested the property in the Conference. Trinity, Duke University since 1924, had become a liberal arts college.

Although the Society of Friends founded New Garden Boarding School, later Guilford College, during the ante-bellum period, the school did not attain collegiate rank until after the Civil War. The Quakers, like the Scotch-Irish, were zealous in behalf of education from their first settlement in colonial North Carolina, but, unlike the Scotch-Irish, they did not direct their efforts toward the foundation of academies and colleges. In 1829 the North Carolina Yearly Meeting adopted a plan of establishing primary schools under Quaker control and of placing books within the hands of every member of the Society.72

72 Klain, op. cit., pp. 60-65.

As a result of a report in 1831 that “there is not one school in the limits of this Yearly Meeting that is under the care of a committee either of a Monthly or preparative meeting, and the teachers of schools where Friends children go are mostly not Friends, and all the schools amongst Friends are in a mixed condition,” the Yearly Meeting was “brought . . . under concern for a better plan of education.”73

73 Quoted in ibid., p. 70.

 The result was the founding of New Garden Boarding School at New Garden in Guilford County which the Legislature chartered in 1833.

Unlike the University of North Carolina, Wake Forest, and Davidson, New Garden was coeducational from the first, although the boys and girls recited in separate classrooms. The school opened August 6, 1837, in an imposing brick building “40 ft wide and 120 ft long, 2 stories high with a basement story in the center 50 ft. long to 40 ft. wide.”74

74 Ibid., p. 78.

Fifty “scholars, 25 of each sex,” were present at the opening, with Jonathan L. Slocum, Miss Harriet Peck, and Miss Catherine Cornell, all of New England Yearly Meeting, in charge. In common with other schools of this period, New Garden Boarding School was burdened with overwhelming financial obligations despite the loyal support of the denomination.

 EDUCATION OF WOMEN

All of the ante-bellum colleges in the State except New Garden had excluded women from their classrooms because the prevailing theory of woman's role75

75 Supra, pp. 228-36.

in life placed her in a sphere of activity apart from man. Woman's place was “in the seclusion of the fireside”; man's “in the public glare” of business, the professions, and politics. Boys and girls should not be taught in the same classroom;76

76 Supra, p. 277; but see an article signed “E,” entitled “The Education of Males and Females in the Same School,” NCJE, I, 282-83.

 each sex should be educated according to its necessities, the education of boys being far more advanced and intricate than that of girls.77

77 See Thomas Woody, A History of Women's Education in the United States.

 Restrain my daughters “from all places and persons Dangerous to their virtue and Innocence,” instructed the Reverend John Alexander of Bertie County in his will, dated April 4, 1795. Give them “an Education to their rank in life suitable and becoming—let their books, and their needles be their principal companions and employ.”78

78 Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, I, 12.

 In subscription schools, boys and girls were usually taught in the same room and even in the same classes, but in the academies mixed groups were not permitted except in beginners' classes in which the children were under ten years of age.

The nineteenth century opened with two conceptions of the education of women fairly well developed in North Carolina. The one held that “skill in household matters and a certain degree of cunning in culinary dispositions” was the chief education that woman needed; the other contended that woman should add the elementary branches of an English education to her knowledge of the household arts. As the ante-bellum period advanced and more schools for women were established, the idea gradually arose that the schoolroom should teach girls more of books and less of needlework. Some even rejected the household arts altogether and maintained that only those courses “which bestowed grace upon the person and manner were worthy of attention,” novel reading, piano playing, and dancing. In 1859 a writer lamented that this conception of the education of women had taken such a hold upon North Carolina. “I regret to say,” observed this commentator on female education, “it is too often considered as denoting poverty, or ignoble origin for a woman to be conversant with the details of home management, plain work, and cooking.”79

79 Mrs. D. W. Jones, “The Manner of Educating Females,” NCJE, II, 236. See also an article signed “Steel Pen” and entitled “Defects in the Education of Children,” in ibid., p. 37.

In 1840 James B. Shepard, prominent in the State as legislator, politician, and a friend of education, speaking to the young ladies of Wake Forest Female Seminary, urged the schools for women to hold to a middle ground. He rejected the idea that women should be educated only in the household arts on the ground that such an attitude degraded woman to the condition of a brute. “The idea . . . that your only station is that of ministering to the physical necessities of man—his luxury and ease—is rapidly yielding to the lights of civilization and refinement,” he told the young ladies. But the idea that woman should be taught only the “gay accomplishments” was “equally erroneous.” The schoolroom should teach girls to become “serviceable and pleasant companions.” “To be economical as the head of a family—diligent in the employment of time—tasteful in the recreations of leisure hours—devoted wives—kind daughters—to render yourselves pleasant friends, and benevolent in all the relations of life, are clearly the true interest and should be the sole object of your sex.” To that end he recommended that they give special attention to novel reading, dancing, drawing, painting, and needlework, in addition to the elementary branches of an English education.80

80 North Carolina Standard, August 26, 1840.

As early as 1807 “A Traveller,” writing in the Raleigh Register of May 7, insisted that the ideal course for the education of women included “Grammar, Geography, and Natural and Moral Philosophy . . . French, Music, and Painting, . . . especially if they can be obtained on moderate terms . . . [and] the various branches of needle work.” At this time the course of study in the “Female Department” of Fayetteville Academy consisted of spelling, reading, grammar, geography, letter writing, copy-writing, cyphering, marking, Dresden work, Tambour work, and embroidery. In the “Male Department” the studies were exactly the same except that Latin and Greek took the place of needlework. In 1823 the course of study for the Male Department of Newbern Academy was outlined according to the language studied, Latin, Greek, or English, but for the Female Department it was outlined according to classes81

81 Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, pp. 57-58.

and corresponded in every detail to the English course for the Male Department except for surveying and declamation. A young lady, if she were sufficiently ambitious, might even be taught Latin and Greek in this progressive academy; she might complete in two years the regular course of study if she were “a Young Lady of ordinary talents and studious habits,” and receive “an Honorary Certificate, and a Golden Medal with an appropriate Inscription.”

Newbern Academy announced courses in Latin and Greek for girls in 1823 in answer to the boast which Joseph Andrews and Thomas P. Jones made the previous year that their school at Oxford offered “the highest branches of science ever taught in Female Seminaries, including Grammar and Parsing, Belles Lettres, Geography, Chemistry, Botany, Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, . . . Music, Drawing, Painting, and the Latin and Greek Languages.”82

82 Raleigh Register, November 1, 1822; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, pp. 150-51.

Throughout the period, girls were required to take part in public examinations just as the boys did. Occasionally, a newspaper announced after such an examination: “In justice to the Young Ladies and their Teachers, the Trustees with pleasure, remark, that, notwithstanding their attention and progress in needlework, which increases the variety of their exercises and the objects of their attention, they generally excelled the young Gentlemen, particularly in reading, spelling and English Grammar.”83

83 Raleigh Register, August 19, 1800; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 60.

In 1859 Mrs. Delia W. Jones, in an essay read before the Education Association of North Carolina, complained of “the want of suitableness in the studies” and the “inadequate proportion of time for completing them.” Although the course of study for boys and girls was practically the same in the elementary branches, the educational standard for women was far below that for men. Custom forced girls out of their colleges into society and matrimony at sixteen, the very age at which boys were entering college for four more years of education. Girls who were graduated at fifteen or sixteen usually had spent not more than three or four years on their entire education. For example:

. . . a girl with poor home advantages—perhaps an occasional attendance at the common school, or what is as bad, a school with frequent change of teachers, is sent to a Seminary, Institute, College, or some high-titled school, with the information to the principal that she is to “go” one or two sessions and finish there. If rather “old”—say fifteen—the parents think she ought to “graduate.” Her knowledge of the basis of an education may be imperfect, amounting in fact to nothing, since there has been no system in her previous study.

For the glory of that particular Institution, the teacher feels compelled to do something, and as the something must inevitably be humbug, it may as well be on a brilliant scale, and the scholastic forcing pump is put in requisition. She dips into books she has not the capacity to understand, gains a few disconnected, misplaced ideas, and as she draws near that almost fabulous period in girl-life “years of discretion”—. . . she goes out into the world—her manners perhaps cultivated, but her mind only prepared for cultivation.84

84 Jones, op. cit., p. 229.

She is completely unfitted for after life. She cannot even count change for a dozen and a half eggs at 12½ cents a dozen or write a short letter correctly. Nor is she acquainted with the mysteries of knitting stockings or making bread.

Calvin H. Wiley objected to the manner of educating women for still another reason. “Nearly every female school of high grade is expensive, the tuition being high, board high, and the state of things in the institution requiring a rather fashionable outlay of money in other matters. Many poor girls of delicate sensibilities and high spirit would not attend a fashionable female school if they could go free of cost; and this is said without any reflection on such institutions.”85

85 Legislative Documents, No. 9, Session 1858-1859, p. 35.

In 1805 Mrs. Sarah Falkner of Warrenton charged $105 a year for board and tuition in her Young Ladies' Boarding School and Francis Maurice, the music teacher, charged $25 a quarter for “Music, vocal and instrumental, treble, tenor, counter bass and thorough bass for the Piano Forte, and Dancing.”86

86 Raleigh Register, December 30, 1805, January 6, 1806; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 590.

 In 1825 the Reverend Thomas Cottrell “and Lady” who conducted the Charlotte Female Academy charged $10 a session for “the literary branches,” $5 for muslin work and marking, $10 for embroidery and marking, $10 for drawing and painting on paper, $10 for drawing and painting on velvet, and $20 for music on the piano. Pupils could obtain board “in respectable families in town” at $40 a session.87

87 Catawba Journal, December 13, 1825; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 232.

 In 1839 the tuition in LaVallee Female Seminary in Halifax County, which was “under the care of two Ladies from the North,” was $10 a session for the literary branches, $7.50 for French, $5 for Latin, $15 for Music on the piano forte, $30 for music on the harp, $10 for music on the guitar, $5 for drawing and painting in water colors, $15 for mezzo-tinting wax flowers and fruits, and $40 for board.88

88 Star, January 1839; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 185.

The nineteenth century opened without much emphasis being placed on the education of girls. In 1802, however, the Wachovia Provincial Conference of the Moravian Congregation in the South resolved to enlarge its day school for girls, which had been started in 1772, into a female boarding school, and in 1804 Salem Academy opened its doors. It was conducted upon the same traditions as the Moravian school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As early as 1814 the Seminary was “much crowded” and had a “sufficient number of candidates in the list, for the vacancies which may take place in the course of at least eight months.”89

89 Raleigh Register, April 1, 1814; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 80.

It soon became one of the most influential schools for women in the South, drawing students from the Lower South as well as from neighboring states.90

90 See Reichel, op. cit., pp. 113-31; I. M. E. Blandin, History of Higher Education of Women in the South, pp. 31-36.

In 1802 Mrs. Sarah Falkner, a native of England, was conducting her Young Ladies Boarding School in Warrenton which she and her husband continued with few intermissions until their death in 1819. The Raleigh Register referred to Mr. Falkner as “the Founder of the Seminaries for the education of young ladies in this section of the country,” and declared that “many accomplished wives and mothers” in the State owed Mrs. Falkner grateful acknowledgment for her maternal care and unwearied attention.91

91 March 26, 1819, December 10, 1819; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, pp. 594-95.

Gradually other schools for girls were opened. In 1807 Mrs. Milligan, “having taught with success for many years in Charleston,” began her Young Ladies School in Charlotte. A year later Jacob Mordecai opened the Warrenton Female Academy and Mrs. Gregory, “late from Danville, Virginia,” began her Boarding School for Young Ladies in Hillsboro. In 1811 Charlotte B. Brodie opened the Williamsborough Female Academy, and in 1812 Mrs. E. Bevens started a School for Young Ladies in Charlotte. In 1815 Judith Mendenhall, Jr., opened Jamestown Female Seminary in Guilford County. Schools for girls now began to be founded more rapidly. By 1840 Shocco, Hannah More, Louisburg, Milton, Charlotte, Salisbury, Randolph, Lincolnton, Northampton, Nashville, Hillsboro, Asheville, and Greenville female academies had been chartered, and Governor John M. Morehead had just founded Edgeworth Seminary in Greensboro. Many of these schools flourished for a few years and then ceased to exist. In 1860 Governor Ellis stated that there were thirteen female colleges in the State. After 1840 schools for women began to adopt the ambitious title of college although their courses of study were little more advanced than those offered in the female academies and boarding schools prior to that date. In 1836 a group of Methodists founded Greensboro Female College which first opened its doors to students in 1846; in 1842 St. Mary's School was founded under private ownership but under Episcopal influences; Chowan Baptist Female Institute was founded in 1848; Oxford Female College, sponsored by Baptists, in 1851; Statesville Female College, a Presbyterian school, in 1857; Davenport Female College, a Methodist school, in 1858; and Peace Female Institute, under Presbyterian influences, in 1857, although it did not begin instruction until 1872.

Perhaps more girls in North Carolina were educated in the regular village academies than in the “schools for young ladies.” In 1801 almost half of the 110 students in Fayetteville Academy were girls. Some academies, beginning with the chartering of Newbern Academy in 1766, which opened first as schools for boys, later added female departments. Other academies, such as those of Raleigh and Salisbury, opened with both male and female departments, and as the schools grew the trustees erected separate buildings for the use of the girls. In Raleigh, the two buildings were erected on the same lot. In other towns, they were occasionally in different parts of the village. The trustees usually employed a man as principal of the academy and teacher in the male department and a woman to take charge of the girls.

A few parents sent their daughters to school outside the State, to South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D. C., and Philadelphia. In 1841 Mary S. Bryan, daughter of Judge John H. Bryan, and her cousin, Mary Pettigrew, attended Miss Breshard's school in Washington. Mary Bryan wrote her mother that she and her cousin were the only girls in school there from North Carolina. She spoke of having just begun Combe's Physiology and of having to make her bed every day.92

92 MS in John H. Bryan Papers: Mary B. Bryan to Mrs. John H. Bryan, September 25, 1841.

Judge Bryan sent his daughter Isabel to Reisterstown, Maryland, and Charlotte to Miss Carpenter's School in Philadelphia.

Since the opening of the century, subscription schools had given way to the more progressive academies and academies to the more progressive colleges. Subscription schools there were and a great many academies still, but the colleges gave tone to the educational atmosphere of the State. Instead of one college, the University of North Carolina, still catering as many thought to “the rich and high-born,” there were now four others, denominational all, bidding for the humble student who would go out among the people and breathe into them the Soul of Education.93

93 Cf. supra, p. 264; Paschal, History of Wake Forest College, I, 14-15.

The education of women still lagged far behind, although a few spirited females were beginning to demand that their daughters have a place in the schoolroom beside their sons, and female seminaries, institutes, and colleges were beginning to spring up everywhere.

 CHAPTER XI EDUCATIONAL METHODS

MORE influential upon the daily lives of the people of antebellum North Carolina than the theory, the laws, and the reforms of education were the conditions under which children learned to read, write, and cipher; the teachers they had; the textbooks they used; the schoolhouses they attended. “We can never forget . . . the rude cabins in which we studied our lessons,” said a North Carolina newspaper editor in 1857, recalling the school days of his youth, “the long and weary walks to school; the books we thumbed, . . . the pothooks and hangers we constructed, . . . the rivalry in spelling, . . . the master's looks, . . . the rustic play-ground, and the mossy spring, by which, in the thick shade, we took our meals at noon; the ghosts we thought we saw, returning home late in the biting or the mellow eve.”1

1 W. W. Holden, Address delivered before the State Educational Association of North Carolina, p. 13.

THE SCHOOLHOUSE

Some of the best school buildings in the State housed the academies. When the first building of the Raleigh Academy was erected in 1803 at an expense of $600 it compared favorably with the best academy buildings in the State. It was “two stories high, pillared on Brick . . . 2½ feet from the Ground, 40 feet long, 24 feet wide, . . . with a Brick Chimney at each end, two Doors and eight Windows below, . . . and 10 Windows in the second story, . . .” The first floor was one large room, but the second floor was divided into three rooms. The timbers were “of the best kind,” and the building was “ceiled with Plank throughout, painted Inside and Outside, and finished in a workmanly manner.”2

2 Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, pp. 338, 389.

The Fayetteville Academy, which also offered room and board to “the scholars,” was a more pretentious institution. In 1825 the Raleigh Register described it as follows:

The Academy lot and buildings are situated in a very pleasant part of the town, on one of the principal streets, and in the neighborhood of the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches. The lot is large, and well shaded in the front yard, which communicates with the street over a stile: The main building and wing are three stories high, with a double Portico in front, and is surmounted with a beautiful Belfry—the length and breadth of the main building is about 65 by 45 feet, divided into large apartments, separated by large halls or passages through the centre.

They are sufficiently capacious to accommodate a School of 200 scholars and a family, and the lot is supplied from a Hydrant in the front yard with good and wholesome water.3

3 August 16; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 71.

A few academy buildings were of brick. In 1812 the trustees of Hyco Academy in Caswell County completed “an elegant Brick House Building” for their school.4

4 Ibid., p. 24.

In 1821 the trustees of the Hillsboro Academy advertised for bids for the erection of a brick building “large enough to contain about 150 students,” and in 1824 the trustees of Lincolnton Female Academy “resolved unanimously that the building be brick.”5

5 Ibid., pp. 283, 201.

The rural academies were often simple frame buildings set in “quiet groves . . . where our boys can read or play under a canopy of oaks . . . skirted with a shrubbery of chinquepins and birches,” the academies being more fortunate in their location than in the construction and furniture of their buildings.6

6 Ibid., p. 744.

The first building which the Union Institute Educational Society erected for Union Institute, later Normal College and still later Trinity College and Duke University, was a log house, thirty by twenty feet. The next year the society “resolved to erect a frame building fifty feet by twenty-five, one-story, with an eight feet passage through the center, dividing the building into two rooms of equal size, each room to have two fireplaces.” The society then turned over the log house to the use of Brantley York, the principal.7

7 York, op. cit., pp. 45, 46-47.

Brantley York had come to that neighborhood in the spring of 1838 to teach a subscription school in Brown's Schoolhouse. It was “a very inferior building, built of round logs, and covered with common boards. The floor was laid with puncheons and slabs. The chimney was made of wood with little or no clay in it, tapering up in the form of a partridge trap. The hearth was dirt, and the whole in bad repair; for, when it rained, it was with difficulty that the books and paper could be kept dry.”8

8 Ibid., p. 45. See also Legislative Documents, Session 1854-1855: “Second Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Common Schools,” p. 18 and n.

The house was too small to accommodate all the students; consequently York built a bush arbor in front of the south door and seated some there. The little red schoolhouses of ante-bellum days received their names from the fact that the cracks between the hewn logs were chinked with split timber and red clay. The buildings which housed the subscription schools were, for the most part, rude cabins, poorly lighted and ill equipped.

The public schoolhouses9

9 School committees were authorized by law (Sessional Laws, 1840-1841, Chap. VII, sec. 11, 1844-1845, Chap. XXXVI, sec. 11; Revised Code, 1855, Chap. LXVII, sec. 37) to “designate and purchase or lease, or receive by donation, a suitable site for a schoolhouse as near the central part of the district as may be convenient; . . . hire, purchase, build or received by donation a schoolhouse of such form and dimensions as they may deem suitable.”

were little better. In 1851 Thomas H. Williams, author of the first law on examining committees, described them as being either “Calcutta holes” where a large number of scholars are “huddled together in a small, pent-up, contracted schoolhouse, built so from mistaken notions of economy,” or loosely constructed buildings, “enabling not only the cold winds of winter to whistle through the crevices to the manifest coldness and shivering of the little urchins as they sit with chattering teeth and benumbed bodies around the embers and smoking chunks of the fireplace, but actually permitting the boys to go in and out through the large spaces between the logs.”10

10 North Carolina Standard, November 8, 1851.

 In 1859 the school visitor of Craven County reported that the county had in its forty-nine districts twelve frame houses, sixteen which were “poor specimens of architecture,” and ten which were good. But at least two of the ten houses which the visitor listed as good were “unfit for civilized persons to inhabit,” so a correspondent of the North Carolina Journal of Education declared. In fact, one of the houses looked more like “a boy's deadfall than a district schoolhouse. From the props around it one would think it a bear trap.”11

11 J. E. Rheim, “Address to the Teachers of Craven County,” NCJE, II, 321.

 “Calamus,” writing in the Journal of Education in 1860, regretted that many public schoolhouses which had been started had never been finished. Many more were “utterly unfit for workshops.” Some had too few windows; others had smoky chimneys; while nearly all were “deficient as to blackboards, seats, maps, &c.”12

12 “Our School Houses,” NCJE, III, 371.

 SCHOOL EQUIPMENT

The school equipment was usually of the meagerest sort. Few schools had playgrounds13

13 Some educators realized the necessity of play in the routine of the school child. “Long Creek” (Thomas H. Williams) writing in the North Carolina Standard, November 8, 1851, said “It is obvious . . . that every schoolhouse should have a playground attached—ample scope for the pupils to take full exercise regularly and this should be as well attended to and insisted on by the teacher as the getting of their daily lessons.”

and many did not even have outhouses for the accommodation of the children. The desks were “small, narrow benches, without backs,” of such a height that the children's feet could scarcely touch the puncheon floor. The writing desks were rude planks erected in an inclined position in front of the benches.14

14 See North Carolina Standard, November 8, 1851; “Extract from the Report of the General Superintendent of Common Schools for 1858,” NCJE, II, 58, and Rheim's address in ibid., p. 321.

 John C. Wharton, a farmer who lived near Greensboro, has described the interior of the ante-bellum log schoolhouse in which he received his education:

At one end was a chimney, with a large open fireplace; at the other end a window . . . and beneath its light were a writing desk and the bench of the same length, upon which were seated pupils when taking practice lessons in penmanship. In one corner of the room . . . near the fireplace were the teacher's chair, desk, and only other window in the house. The benches were of sawed timber . . . about 12 inches in width, with auger holes into which rude legs were inserted. These benches were without backs and the feet of the small children dangled beneath, but could not touch the floor.15

15 Quoted by Caldwell, op. cit., p. 208.

 The teacher had three pieces of apparatus with which to conduct his school: a switch, a ferule, and a pocket knife. The ferule served a double purpose, the flat side for inflicting blows upon the palm of the hand and the straight edge for marking lines upon unruled copy books. The knife was for cutting pens from goose quills.

Fortunate was the subscription or public school which had globes and maps or even blackboards. In 1854 Wiley thought that it was not impossible for the common schools to have “blackboards for mathematical recitations,”16

16 Legislative Documents, Session 1854-1855: “Second Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Common Schools,” p. 20. See also a note on school apparatus in the resident editor's department, NCJE, III, 377.

and in 1859 Professor W. H. Owen, writing from Hillsboro, urged “ye sinewy farmers, fathers, with ample means, and frame barns which cost more than the schoolhouses,” to equip the district schools with a few essential articles. “Let there be an ample blackboard in front, or on the side of the teacher—globes upon a centre table—a planetarium pendant from the floor overhead—the walls covered with gay colored, but innocent and thought-causing prints and paintings.”17

17 “Marks of a Good Neighborhood,” NCJE, II, 15.

 But this was an ideal not to be achieved in the public schools of North Carolina until the twentieth century.

The academies were usually better equipped. Indeed, William Hooper of the University of North Carolina considered that the Newbern Academy and the celebrated Round Hill School of Massachusetts approached nearest his “beau ideal of a school room.” Hooper insisted that “every pupil should have before him all accommodations for reading and writing, a separate desk under lock and key, where he may secure all his books and his stationary, which, in our schools now, is anything but stationary; his pens, ink, ruler and pencil having to travel all around the room for the accommodation of his fellows.” Hooper thought it the duty of the parents to provide their children with chairs and desks when the trustees of the academy failed to do so.18

18 “Imperfections of our Primary Schools,” Raleigh Register, June 4, 1833; Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, pp. 744-45.

Trustees sometimes equipped their academies with a few maps, globes, and a blackboard or two. In 1803 the trustees of Caswell Academy announced with emphasis: “A pair of Globes and a complete Set of Maps have just come to hand.”19

19 Ibid., p. 19.

Two years later the Academy had bought “some Geometrical apparatus.” Before 1817 the Raleigh Academy had some chemical apparatus, and in 1819 the trustees spent $500 for a “Philosophical Apparatus,” which Professor Mitchell of the University of North Carolina selected in the North. The Raleigh Register, much pleased with the purchase, pointed out that the teachers would be able “to illustrate the principles of Natural Science, by many useful pleasing experiments, all tending to facilitate the progress of the students in this important branch of Education.”20

20 Ibid., pp. 455-56.

In 1824 the trustees of Oxford Academy spoke of having provided the school “with globes, maps, and other usual apparatus,”21

21 MS in Legislative Papers, 1824, in Senate, December 1, 1824.

but in 1839 a correspondent of the Raleigh Register declared that there were only two institutions in the State, one of which was the University, “possessed of philosophical and chemical apparatus; . . . There are not probably a dozen Academies prepared to give instruction in the use of Maps and Globes, or half of this number furnished with Libraries.”22

22 January 21.

 As late as 1860 Wiley declared:

In some of our Colleges and a few of the high schools,23

23 Academies were beginning to be called high schools at this time.

may be found a pretty good supply of apparatus; while in others, claiming to impart thorough instruction, we venture to assert that Chemistry is taught without a single illustration, Geography, without a globe and perhaps without a map, except those found in the text books; and the various other sciences in which illustrations are almost indispensable, are treated in the same manner.24

24 A note on school apparatus, NCJE, III, 377.

 THE CURRICULUM

If the son of a middle-class farmer wished to “get educated” he attended several terms of a subscription school to learn his three R's, attended several more terms of a near-by academy for a smattering of Greek and Latin, and finally reached the University or one of the denominational colleges where he might spend three or four years on the classics, philosophy, and higher mathematics.25

25 The University offered such professional courses as industrial chemistry, law, and engineering.

The subscription schools made no pretense at offering more than “the rudiments” of an “English Education”: spelling, reading, writing, and arithmetic. The favorite textbooks of the old-field teachers were Webster's Speller and Primer, Dilworth's Speller and The School-Master's Assistant, and Pike's Arithmetic.26

26 For other books used, see Knight, op. cit., pp. 194, 199.

 In 1857 William W. Holden recalled that he had studied at a subscription school as a boy: “Pike, Webster, the Columbian Orator—all, besides the Bible, that we had.”27

27 Address delivered before the State Educational Association of North Carolina, p. 13.

By Act of 1840-1841 common schools were to teach “any branch of English education; and all white persons over the age of four years28

28 Later changed to six years: Revised Code, 1855, Chap. LXVI, sec. 41.

shall be permitted to attend . . . as scholars, and receive instruction therein.”29

29 Sessional Laws, 1840-1841, Chap. XXXVI, sec. 14.

 Superintendent Wiley interpreted the law to mean that the first duty of the common school system was to furnish an elementary English education to the white children of the State, excluding Latin and Greek “unless by the general consent of the parents in districts concerned”; yet he constantly urged the schools to widen “the range of practical studies.”30

30 “Digest of the Laws in Force in Relation to Common Schools in North Carolina,” NCJE, IV, 149.

 He encouraged teachers to include grammar and geography in the subjects taught and obtained a special edition of Mitchell's Intermediate Geography for use in North Carolina.

“The subject of Text Books,” wrote Wiley in 1853, “has caused more complaints than perhaps any other.” Each year he urged teachers to use “one uniform system of good books.” In 1851, before his appointment as head of the public schools, he had written The North-Carolina Reader “to sow in the young minds of North-Carolina the seeds of a true, healthy, and vigorous North-Carolina spirit; and that it may effect its end, it is designed for universal use in the State, to go, with the Bible and the Almanac, into every home.”31

31 The North-Carolina Reader: containing a history and description of North-Carolina, selections in prose and verse, many of them by eminent citizens of the State, historical and chronological tables, and a variety of miscellaneous information and statistics, p. 4.

Concerning history as a study in the public schools, he wrote as late as 1858 to the county examining committees, “As yet it has not been deemed proper to issue certificates containing History as a branch of study on which Common School teachers are to be generally examined.”32

32 From a circular to examining committees, NCJE, I, 158.

At his suggestion, some of the county boards of superintendents appointed “Committees on Common School Books” and recommended that the teachers adopt the list of books which the committees approved. The list of books which Wiley himself advised the committees to recommend was as follows: Webster's Speller, Wiley's North-Carolina Reader, Parker's First and Second Readers; Davies's Arithmetic, Emerson's Arithmetic, Mitchell's Intermediate Geography; Bullion's Grammar; Worcester's Comprehensive Dictionary; and Wiley's Common School Catechism.33

33 Legislative Documents, No. 9, Session 1858-1859, p. 32.

Yet until the close of the ante-bellum period, many schools were still using Murray's English Grammar, fifty years out of date, and Morse's Geography, which did not give even the state capitals correctly.34

34 Rheim, op. cit., p. 322. In 1795 William Barry Grove (see Letters of William Barry Grove, James Sprunt Historical Publications, IX, No. 2, p. 58) had declared, “Morse's Book has injured the reputation of our State extremely, by his false, infamous account of the Country and its inhabitants.”

The course of study offered by the academies placed emphasis on a classical education even at the sacrifice of teaching the students to read and write English correctly. Newspaper correspondents frequently criticised the “rage” of choosing “classical scholars” as teachers in the academies, but the rage continued throughout the ante-bellum period.35

35 See, for example, Raleigh Register, April 6, 1807, and August 22, 1845.

Classical scholars were “above” teaching English grammar to “brats.” “Cervantes,” writing in the Raleigh Register in 1800, criticised the course of study offered in most of the academies of the State at the opening of the century: “Neglecting everything that appears necessary to form the active citizen, all it aspires to is a smattering of the Greek or Latin, the demonstration of a proposition in Euclid, or the solution of a case in Plane Trigonometry. Geography, history and philosophy, those main pillars of science are passed by with contempt, from the erroneous opinion that they are improper subjects of scholastic erudition.”36

36 Ibid., March 25, 1800.

Academy teachers usually divided their students into classes. In 1793 the Reverend Thomas P. Irving, principal of Newbern Academy, was teaching three classes. The first class studied reading, writing, and arithmetic; the second, “Mathematics, in the various branches of that science”; the third, “the dead languages.”37

37 Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, p. 50.

In 1807 teachers of Raleigh Academy examined the following classes in the “Male Department” before the trustees, at the State House: a class “on Euclid, Logic, Rhetoric, Moral and Natural Philosophy and Astronomy”; a class in Virgil, two classes in Caesar, a class in Selectate Profanis, a class in Erasmus and Selectae Veteri, two classes in Corderii, a class in Virgil and Horace, a class in Latin grammar, a class in Greek Testament, a class in Morse's Geography, a class in Murray's English Grammar, and classes in arithmetic, English, reading, spelling and copy writing.38

38 Ibid., pp. 404-5.

As the ante-bellum period advanced, the academies developed more definite ideas of the organization of classes and the course of study for each. In 1834 the teachers of Raleigh Academy were grouping students into four classes.

Academies sometimes advertised that they followed “the system of courses” pursued at the State University. For instance, in 1820 the trustees of Hyco Academy announced that “the Academy has been rendered strictly preparatory to the University; the Board having ratified this adoption of the course of studies requisite for entering the three lower classes at the College.”39

39 Ibid., p. 809.

Nearly every academy board of trustees in the State considered that some instruction in religious training was one of the foremost duties of the school. Those schools which did not actually teach regular classes in Bible study required their students to attend a Sunday lecture or recite “Bible Questions . . . as a Sunday exercise.”40

40 Ibid., pp. xxxvi-xxxvii.

In 1807 Salisbury Academy examined a class of pupils on the Assembly Catechism and another on the Church Catechism. Sampson's Beauties of the Bible was a textbook in the preparatory department of the Raleigh Academy in 1813. At various times during the life of the academy, classes were examined at the close of the session on Westminster Catechism, the Methodist Catechism, Bible questions, and Scripture History. In 1831, however, James Grant, Jr., the principal, announced that, while he would pay the strictest regard to teaching the morality and truths of the Christian religion, he would keep in mind “that this is a literary, and not a theological school.”41

41 Ibid., p. 497; Star, December 16, 1831.

 When Caldwell Institute opened in Greensboro in 1837 the board of trustees announced that “the Bible will occupy its proper place, and the paramount claims of a Christian Education be duly and fully recognized.”42

42 Raleigh Register, October 23, 1837.

The courses offered by the high schools, which Wiley described in 1854 as “a very useful kind of Seminary intermediate between Colleges and Academies,” were practically the same as those offered in the academies. High schools began to be established in the State about 1840 upon the same plan of organization as academies. In 1842 Brantley York was principal of Clemonsville High School, teaching elementary courses, organizing a debating club and a temperance society.43

43 York, op. cit., pp. 49, 51, 53.

 GRAMMAR SCHOOL TEACHERS

The lack of good teachers was one of the chief causes that retarded the progress of education in North Carolina throughout the ante-bellum period. Old-field teachers, common school teachers, and frequently even academy teachers were unfitted for the positions which they held. There were, of course, notable exceptions; as, for example, Presbyterian ministers, graduates of Princeton, who conducted schools to supplement their salaries as ministers. Fortunate, indeed, was the academy or neighborhood who could obtain the services of such a man.

Few persons considered teaching a respectable profession. “Our teacher has fallen out in some measure with his employers, and is about to leave us,” wrote Joseph Brevard to his brother in 1803. “He is a young man of good education & morals; but . . . not as attentive as he ought to be, . . . He has views beyond his present employment: & therefore is not very solicitous to acquire a reputation as a schoolmaster; regarding the present business only as a means of advancing himself to some other.”44

44 MS in Brevard Papers: Joseph Brevard to Capt. Alexander Brevard, December 22, 1803.

But such a teacher as this was far superior to the drunken profligate who frequently offered his services as village schoolmaster. “Persons that generally have the care of our common schools, are not qualified for that important office, either as to morals or capacity,” wrote “A Recluse” in the Catawba Journal in 1824. Frequently, they could not even write their own school “articles,” and their habits had “a blighting influence” on the character of their pupils. Why did parents entrust their children to the care of such a master? Because they were too poor to raise a sufficient salary for a competent teacher. They had either to accept teachers “who are too lazy to follow any other occupation, and too ignorant to teach, but who have acquired sense enough to deceive the . . . yeomanry; or . . . suffer their children to grow up in ignorance.”45

45 December 7.

The act which created the office of state superintendent of common schools also gave the superintendent authority to issue annually a circular letter of instructions and suggestions to examining committees as to the qualifications of teachers. In 1846 Thomas H. Williams, representative of New Hanover County, asked for a law creating county committees “whose duty it shall be to examine into the qualifications, both moral and literary, of applicants for schools.”46

46 House Journal, 1846-1847, p. 314.

The act of 1846-1847, passed through his influence, “authorized and empowered” county boards of superintendents to appoint examining committees. An act of 1852-1853 made it the duty of the board to appoint examining committees and the duty of the committees to examine teachers every year.47

47 Sessional Laws, 1846-1847, Chap. CVI, 1852-1853, Chap. XVIII, secs. 3-5.

 In Wiley's first letter of instruction to examining committees, he said:

I would suggest to you to encourage good teachers to locate permanently in the neighborhoods, as they can thus be more useful in creating and fostering a spirit of education, can have their salaries, in time increased by private subscriptions, and can also, in other respects make their vocation more profitable by cultivating farms or carrying on, or having carried on, other industrial or commercial occupations.

Encourage as much as possible the very poor, and especially poor females to become teachers.48

48 “Common Schools,” North Carolina Standard, August 13, 1853.

When Wiley was appointed superintendent “any one who could get employment from a district committee was allowed to teach—not ten counties in the State had examining committees, and in those which had, teachers were examined but once in a lifetime—very few teachers ever improved from one year to another—still fewer felt that they owed any responsibilities to the public, and fewer still ever conceived of a uniform Common School system, operating by fixed and certain rules all over the State, of which system every teacher was an integral and essential part.”49

49 Legislative Documents, No. 9, Session 1858-1859, p. 21.

One of Wiley's first tasks in 1853 was to issue letters of instruction to examining committees insisting that they enforce the act of 1852 which provided that no person should teach in the public schools without a certificate from the examining committee and that no certificate was valid for more than one year or beyond the county which issued it. By 1857 Wiley estimated that less than fifty of the 2,500 teachers employed in the public schools were teaching without certificates.

Wiley also conceived the idea of licensing teachers. He prepare