What Up, Nerds?
So. In 1729 the British Empire partitioned North and South Carolina into separate crown colonies. From that point on North Carolina really began to take off. There was only one little and pretty strange issue.
Back in 1729 when the eight original owners were asked to sell their shares of the Carolina Colony back to the king, one of the eight refused. Owning seven eighths of Carolina was good enough for the king though, so the government went ahead and divided North and South Carolina and started to rule them as royal colonies.
But that eighth owner who didn't sell the land back still wanted his share. For quite a while this man, the Earl of Granville couldn't do anything about the issue. He was too tied up in England where Granville's chief rival had become Prime Minister and was busily attacking him. Until in 1742 he finally freed himself up to claim his share. The British government agreed to let him take his share out of northern North Carolina. North Carolina was a sizable and populous place, but it lacked the ports and infrastructure to substantively and directly trade with anybody but nearby colonies. Because its trade with England wasn't as important as Virginia's or South Carolina's, the Brits figured they wouldn't miss it too much. Two years later Granville had surveyed his land.
And he took the whole northern part of North Carolina.
That was a damn big chunk of the colony to just up and take. But that didn't exactly bother Granville. The government of the rest of the colony was unhappy about Granville's aquisition. The setup of Granville's grant was such that the Earl got all the revenue from taxes and tariffs from the District. But the government of the rest of the state still had to pay for the upkeep and the security of the district, because it was the government. The southern half of the colony was being forced to pay for the business of the whole thing. This made people pretty upset.
Things weren't much better in the north. As time went on the officials the British sent to the District became corrupt and ineffective. Sometimes they'd collect a tax twice and pocket the proceeds, sometime's they wouldn't collect any tax at all from their friends.
When Granville died in 1763 things only got worse. The people were ready to do something about this corrupt government of overseas Englishmen. The storm that had been brewing for the last twenty years was about to break.
But trouble in the District was only half of the foul political weather that was converging over North Carolina.
Since the early 1700's a lot of people had started immigrating to North Carolina. In the beginning they all settled along the coast. Most of these immigrants were English and Scots-Irish. Lots of them were religiously Quaker. Most of them were small farmers. But the richest of them set up plantations. The demands of both groups meant that a significant number of enslaved people got brought in to work on both the small farms and plantations. Slave labor based farming would expand so much that around mid century about a quarter of the population was enslaved black people.
This early American slavery was not as you might imagine it. The image of a large plantation with dozens of enslaved people living in shanties who are forced to labor in the fields all day is, in fact, mostly wrong. There were a few large plantations. But for quite a while during the youth of the colonies the more common experience for slaves and for slavers was the small farm with perhaps one slave on it.
In both North and South Carolina slaves were bought by masters with small holdings. They'd live lives on the rough and tumble frontier. The enslaved man and the master would cohabit. They would be each other's primary companion. They'd cooperate to get the food they needed to survive. And they had to cooperate on any number of physical tasks, too.
For instance a frontier sawhorse only works with the skilled cooperation of both men on either end. The necessary cooperation and proximity improved the lives of many enslaved people in the period. This "sawhorse equality" did not amount to equality over the law. But it did transform the master and slave into two men alone together in the woods and struggling to survive.
But over time the number of plantations grew. And with that growth, so too grew chattel slavery. Conditions worsened.
By mid-century and later the eastern part of North Carolina acquired a slave holding elite population. Perhaps because of the relative importance of those elites, the east maintained a fairly efficient and prosperous government.
The settlers in the east weren't all British though. The very important city at New Bern was founded and settled by Germans and Swiss-Germans. Soon this little frontier German burg gre to be North Carolina's biggest and most important town.
And then in the west settlement was a different story too. There were indeed many English settlers of the region. But these were tempered with the addition of Scots-Irish and many more German immigrants who came from Europe via Pennsylvania. They settled mostly small farms. And though slavery sometimes happened there was no real plantation economy. These immigrants soon started to fill the west of the state. By 1752, the population of North Carolina reached 100,000. By 1765 the population was 200,000.
Remember the east of the state, by virtue of its elite position, had secured for themselves a government relatively free of corruption. But the royal and British officials sent into the west had no such elite population to deal with. They abused their powers and made themselves the new elites.
They started to exploit their power in the west in much the same way that the Granville District officials abused their power. They'd extract taxes multiple times. They'd refuse to barter goods as taxes when the west suffered from an acute cash shortage. And then they'd import lawyers to sue and confiscate the farms of those who couldn't pull together the hard cash. The most prominent of them was a man named Edmund Fanning who was caught embezzling but was part of the courts system and so was only fined one penny per guilty charge.
The westerners couldn't change the tax laws because the eastern elites denied them equal representation in the assembly. When extended droughts hit, the situation worsened and more people still began to lose their farms.
And then the Governor built himself a new mansion at the Capital at New Bern this looked like just one more sign of eastern decadence and exploitation of the west. So many of the westerners refused to pay the tax that would pay for the building. They were itching for a fight, and another political storm started to brew in the west of the state.
In 1768 the poor westerners who opposed the corrupt officials and wanted to lower taxes met in Hillsborough, NC.
And so the storm broke.
So. In 1729 the British Empire partitioned North and South Carolina into separate crown colonies. From that point on North Carolina really began to take off. There was only one little and pretty strange issue.
Back in 1729 when the eight original owners were asked to sell their shares of the Carolina Colony back to the king, one of the eight refused. Owning seven eighths of Carolina was good enough for the king though, so the government went ahead and divided North and South Carolina and started to rule them as royal colonies.
But that eighth owner who didn't sell the land back still wanted his share. For quite a while this man, the Earl of Granville couldn't do anything about the issue. He was too tied up in England where Granville's chief rival had become Prime Minister and was busily attacking him. Until in 1742 he finally freed himself up to claim his share. The British government agreed to let him take his share out of northern North Carolina. North Carolina was a sizable and populous place, but it lacked the ports and infrastructure to substantively and directly trade with anybody but nearby colonies. Because its trade with England wasn't as important as Virginia's or South Carolina's, the Brits figured they wouldn't miss it too much. Two years later Granville had surveyed his land.
And he took the whole northern part of North Carolina.
 |
| This goddamn much. |
That was a damn big chunk of the colony to just up and take. But that didn't exactly bother Granville. The government of the rest of the colony was unhappy about Granville's aquisition. The setup of Granville's grant was such that the Earl got all the revenue from taxes and tariffs from the District. But the government of the rest of the state still had to pay for the upkeep and the security of the district, because it was the government. The southern half of the colony was being forced to pay for the business of the whole thing. This made people pretty upset.
Things weren't much better in the north. As time went on the officials the British sent to the District became corrupt and ineffective. Sometimes they'd collect a tax twice and pocket the proceeds, sometime's they wouldn't collect any tax at all from their friends.
When Granville died in 1763 things only got worse. The people were ready to do something about this corrupt government of overseas Englishmen. The storm that had been brewing for the last twenty years was about to break.
But trouble in the District was only half of the foul political weather that was converging over North Carolina.
Since the early 1700's a lot of people had started immigrating to North Carolina. In the beginning they all settled along the coast. Most of these immigrants were English and Scots-Irish. Lots of them were religiously Quaker. Most of them were small farmers. But the richest of them set up plantations. The demands of both groups meant that a significant number of enslaved people got brought in to work on both the small farms and plantations. Slave labor based farming would expand so much that around mid century about a quarter of the population was enslaved black people.
This early American slavery was not as you might imagine it. The image of a large plantation with dozens of enslaved people living in shanties who are forced to labor in the fields all day is, in fact, mostly wrong. There were a few large plantations. But for quite a while during the youth of the colonies the more common experience for slaves and for slavers was the small farm with perhaps one slave on it.
In both North and South Carolina slaves were bought by masters with small holdings. They'd live lives on the rough and tumble frontier. The enslaved man and the master would cohabit. They would be each other's primary companion. They'd cooperate to get the food they needed to survive. And they had to cooperate on any number of physical tasks, too.
For instance a frontier sawhorse only works with the skilled cooperation of both men on either end. The necessary cooperation and proximity improved the lives of many enslaved people in the period. This "sawhorse equality" did not amount to equality over the law. But it did transform the master and slave into two men alone together in the woods and struggling to survive.
 |
| See if YOU can do it on your own. |
But over time the number of plantations grew. And with that growth, so too grew chattel slavery. Conditions worsened.
By mid-century and later the eastern part of North Carolina acquired a slave holding elite population. Perhaps because of the relative importance of those elites, the east maintained a fairly efficient and prosperous government.
The settlers in the east weren't all British though. The very important city at New Bern was founded and settled by Germans and Swiss-Germans. Soon this little frontier German burg gre to be North Carolina's biggest and most important town.
And then in the west settlement was a different story too. There were indeed many English settlers of the region. But these were tempered with the addition of Scots-Irish and many more German immigrants who came from Europe via Pennsylvania. They settled mostly small farms. And though slavery sometimes happened there was no real plantation economy. These immigrants soon started to fill the west of the state. By 1752, the population of North Carolina reached 100,000. By 1765 the population was 200,000.
Remember the east of the state, by virtue of its elite position, had secured for themselves a government relatively free of corruption. But the royal and British officials sent into the west had no such elite population to deal with. They abused their powers and made themselves the new elites.
They started to exploit their power in the west in much the same way that the Granville District officials abused their power. They'd extract taxes multiple times. They'd refuse to barter goods as taxes when the west suffered from an acute cash shortage. And then they'd import lawyers to sue and confiscate the farms of those who couldn't pull together the hard cash. The most prominent of them was a man named Edmund Fanning who was caught embezzling but was part of the courts system and so was only fined one penny per guilty charge.
 |
| You have to follow laws? How quaint! (Pic from Wiki) |
The westerners couldn't change the tax laws because the eastern elites denied them equal representation in the assembly. When extended droughts hit, the situation worsened and more people still began to lose their farms.
And then the Governor built himself a new mansion at the Capital at New Bern this looked like just one more sign of eastern decadence and exploitation of the west. So many of the westerners refused to pay the tax that would pay for the building. They were itching for a fight, and another political storm started to brew in the west of the state.
In 1768 the poor westerners who opposed the corrupt officials and wanted to lower taxes met in Hillsborough, NC.
And so the storm broke.
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