Native Americans and Lost Colony
North Carolina was originally inhabited by many different native peoples, including the Cherokee, Tuscarora, Cheraw, Pamlico, Meherrin, Coree, Machapunga, Cape Fear Indians, Waxhaw, Saponi, Tutelo, Waccamaw, Coharie, and Catawba. North Carolina was the second American territory the British attempted to colonize. Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, chartered two colonies on the North Carolina (then Virginia) coast in the late 1580s, both ending in failure. The demise of one, the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island, remains one of the great mysteries of American history. Virginia Dare, the first English child to be born in North America, was born in North Carolina. Dare County is named for her.
Colonial period and Revolutionary War
The first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were British colonists who migrated south from Virginia, following a rapid growth of the colony and the subsequent shortage of available farmland. Nathaniel Batts was documented as one of the first of these Virginian immigrants. He settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655.[4] By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was experiencing full-scale British settlement.[5]
During the same period, the English monarch Charles II gave the province to the Lords Proprietors, a group of noblemen who had helped restore Charles to the throne in 1670. The new province of "Carolina" was named in honor and memory of King Charles I (Latin: Carolus). In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony. With the exception of the Earl Granville's holdings, it became a royal colony seventeen years later.[6] On May 20, 1775 Mecklenburg County became the first North Carolina county to publicly declare its independence from Great Britain. It did so by issuing the Mecklenburg Declaration. (Because of its similarity to the more well-known United States Declaration of Independence, which would appear 18 months later, the document is thought by some to be spurious.)[6] On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British crown. The dates of both of these independence-related events are memorialized on the state flag and state seal.[7] The road to Yorktown and America's independence from England led through North Carolina. As the British army moved north from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, Southern Commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from Cornwallis's base of supply in Charleston, South Carolina. This campaign is known as "The Race to the Dan" or "The Race for the River Crossings."
Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781. Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior American Army were crippling. Following this "victory", Cornwallis chose to move to the Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the British Navy to protect his battered army. This decision would result in Cornwallis's eventual defeat at Yorktown, Virginia later in 1781, a victory which guaranteed American independence.
On November 21, 1789, North Carolina ratified the Constitution to become the twelfth state in the Union. The North Carolina delegation's reluctance to sign the Constitution was instrumental in creating the United States Bill of Rights. The state refused to ratify the constitution until some sort of declaration of the people's rights was added. The North Carolina Government received a letter from Continental Army General George Washington stating that this was a wonderful idea. Thus, the Bill of Rights was added to the United States Constitution. North Carolina worked to establish its state and local governments. In 1840, it completed the state capitol building in Raleigh, still standing today. In mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by construction of a 129 mile (208 km) wooden plank road, known as a "farmer's railroad," from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem).
Civil War
In 1860, North Carolina was a slave state. However, it refused to join the Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its sister-state, South Carolina. The state was the site of few battles, but in the Civil War it provided at least 125,000 troops to the Confederacy— more than any other Confederate state. Approximately 40,000 of those troops never returned home, dead of battlefield wounds, disease and privation. Governor Zebulon Baird Vance, elected in 1862, tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. Even after secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy; this was particularly true of non-slaveowning farmers in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region. Some of these farmers remained neutral during the war, while others covertly supported the Union cause during the conflict. Even so, Confederate troops from North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's largest and most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. In March 1865, Sherman was able to capture his chief North Carolina objective when he took Goldsboro; at the time it was the main railroad junction in North Carolina. Johnston surrendered one of the largest Confederate armies at Bennett Place, a farm house in what is now Durham, in late April 1865, weeks after General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. A small, integrated guerrilla force of white and Cherokee Confederates under William Holland Thomas continued fighting in the mountains until May 10. This unit, called the "Thomas Legion," was North Carolina's sole legion and was never actually defeated by Union troops. On May 6, 1865, Thomas' Legion fired "The Last Shot" of the Civil War east of the Mississippi River in White Sulphur Springs, North Carolina. It had the distinction of capturing a city (Waynesville) then voluntarily ceasing from hostilities. North Carolina's port city of Wilmington was the last Confederate port to fall to the Union. It fell in the spring of 1865 after the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher. The first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was a North Carolinian, Private Henry Wyatt, at the Battle of Big Bethel in 1861. At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and advanced the farthest into the Northern lines of any Confederate regiment. At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. For many years, North Carolinians proudly boasted that they had been "First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg, and Last at Appomattox."
You could get more information from the link below...
2006-12-15 19:10:38
·
answer #5
·
answered by catzpaw 6
·
0⤊
0⤋