Abrogation of the Constitutions. Government Officers imprisoned. Governor Sothel banished. John Archdale. that men so wise and sagacious should have attempted such a solemn farce. Albemarle, the chief settlement, had only about fourteen hundred "working hands," and the habitations in Carolina were chiefly log huts. The whole population was hardly four thousand in number. Where were the landgraves, and caciques, and lords of manors to be found among them? and where were mansions for the nobility and aristocracy? The error was soon perceived, yet the proprietaries insisted upon commencing the system with a view to its further accomplishment. But the spirit of the whole thing was adverse to the feelings of the people; and, after a contest of twenty years, these Constitutions were abrogated, and the people were allowed to be governed by their earlier and more simple and appropriate code under Stevens, the successor of Drummond-a governor with his council of twelve, six appointed by the proprietaries, and six chosen by the Assembly; and a House of Delegates chosen by the freeholders. While the contest was going on between the proprietaries and the people, temporary laws were established. The harmony which prevailed before the magnificent scheme of government was proposed, was disturbed, and both counties were shaken by internal commotions. Disorders prevailed most extensively in the Albemarle or Northern colony, the population of which was far more numerous than the Clarendon or Southern colony. Excessive taxation and commercial restrictions occasioned discontent, while the influence of refugees from Virginia, the participators in Bacon's rebellion there, who were sheltered in Carolina, ripened the people for resistance to monarchical schemes to enslave or oppress them. A year after the death of Bacon, a revolt occurred in Albemarle. Miller, the secretary of the colony, acting governor before Eastchurch arrived, and the collector of customs, attempted to enforce the revenue laws against a vessel from New England. Led by John Culpepper, a refugee from Clarendon, the people seized Miller and the public funds, imprisoned him and six of his council, appointed new magistrates and judges, called a Parliament, and took all the functions of government into their own hands. Thus matters remained for two years.1 Culpepper went to England to plead the cause of the people. He was arrested for treason, a but, through Shaftesbury, he was acquitted, that statesman justly pleading that in Albemarle there had been no regular government; that the disorders were but feuds among the people. Thus early, that feeble colony of North Carolina asserted the same political rights for which our fathers so successfully contended a hundred years later. a 1680. b 1689. Seth Sothel, one of the corporators, an avaricious and dishonest man, arrived in the Albemarle province in 1683, as governor. He plundered the people, and prostituted his office to purposes of private gain. According to Chalmers, "the annals of delegated authority include no name so infamous" as Sothel. The people, after enduring him for six years, seized him, and were about sending him to England to answer their accusations before the proprietors, when he asked to be tried by the Colonial Assembly. Such trial was granted, and he was sentenced to banishment for one year, and was forever deprived of the privilege of holding the office of governor. He withdrew to South Carolina, where we shall meet him again. The proprietors acquiesced in the proceedings of the colonists, and sent over Philip Ludwell as their representative, who, by wisdom and justice, soon restored order. He was succeeded by Thomas Harvey in 1692, and, two years later, Henderson Walker succeeded Harvey. C € 1693. In 1695, two years after the splendid Fundamental Constitutions of Locke and Shaftesbury were abrogated, and landgraves and caciques, and lords of manors, were scattered to the winds, John Archdale, a Quaker, and one of the proprietors, arrived as governor of both Carolinas. From that period until the partition of the provinces in 1729, it is difficult to separate their histories, although governed by distinct magistrates. In 1698 the first settlement was made on the Pamlico or Tar River, the Pamlico Indians having been nearly all destroyed two years previously by a pestilence. Population rapidly increased under the liberal administration of Archdale. The first church in Carolina was built in Chowan county in 1705, and religion began to be respected. Settlements in the Interior. Indian Hostilities. Flight of the Tuscaroras. Pirates. First Royal Governor. In 1707, a company The colonists now began to turn their attention to the interior. of French Protestants came from Virginia and settled in Carolina; and in 1709, one hundred German families, driven from their home on the Rhine by fierce persecutions and devastating war, sought a refuge in the free, tolerant, and peaceful soil of North Carolina. Already the Huguenots were settling in South Carolina, and were planting the principles of civil liberty there. The French immigrants were not favorably received by the English, and disputes occurred. Archdale managed with prudence for a year, and then left affairs in the hands of Joseph Blake, afterward governor of South Carolina. The difficulties between the English and French were settled, and the latter were admitted to all the rights of citizenship. The Indians along the sea-coast were melting away like frost in the sunbeams. The powerful tribe of the Hatteras, which numbered three thousand warriors in Raleigh's time, were reduced to fifteen bowmen; another tribe had entirely disappeared; and of all the aborigines, but a small remnant remained. They had sold their lands, or had been cheated out of them, and were driven back to the deep wildnerness. Strong drink and other vices of civilization had decimated them, and their beautiful land, all the way to the Yadkin and Catawba, was speedily opened to the almost unopposed encroachments of the white man. Yet, before their power was utterly broken, the Indians made an effort to redeem their losses. The Tuscaroras of the inland region, and the Corees southward, upon whom their countrymen of the coasts had retreated, resolved to strike a blow that should exterminate the intruders. Upon the scattered German settlements along the Roanoke and Pamlico Sound, they fell like lightning from the clouds. In one night one hundred and thirty persons perished by the hatchet.a The savages also scoured the country on Albemarle Sound, burning dwellings and massacring the inhabitants for three days, until disabled by drunkenness and fatigue. To the Southern colony the people of Albemarle looked for aid. Nor was it withheld. Captain Barnwell, with six hundred white men, and three hundred and sixty Indians of the tribes of the Cherokees, Creeks, Catawbas, and Yamasees,' as allies, marched against the Tuscaroras,b and, driving them back to their fortified town near the Neuse, a little above Edenton, in the upper part of Craven county, forced them to make a treaty of peace. Both parties soon violated this treaty, and the Indians commenced hostilities. Colonel Moore, of South Carolina, with forty white men, and eight hundred friendly Indians, arrived in December, 1713, besieged the savages in their fort, and took eight hundred of them prisoners. The hostile Tuscaroras soon afterward migrated northward, and joining the Five Nations on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, formed a part of the powerful confederacy of the Six Nations in New York. In 1715 peace was concluded with the Corees, and Indian wars ceased. a Sept. 22, 1711. b 1712. From this period until 1729, when the two provinces were surrendered to the crown, and were permanently separated, the colonists enjoyed comparative prosperity. The people had some difficulties with the Indians; were troubled with a swarm of pirates on the coast, under Teach, the famous "Black Beard;" and disputed, with the vehemence of men determined to remain free, with all unwise and aristocratic governors sent to rule them. Perceiving that the expenses which had attended the settlement of the Carolinas were hardly productive of any advantage, the lords proprietors offered to surrender the provinces to the crown. This was effected, and each proprietor received twelve thousand five hundred c 1729. dollars, as the consideration of the surrender. Their charter had been in existence sixty-six years. The population of both provinces, including negroes, did not exceed twentyfive thousand persons, ten thousand in North Carolina, and fifteen thousand in South Carolina. The last proprietary governor was Sir Richard Everard, successor to Charles Eden. George Burrington was the first royal governor of North Carolina, and took his seat without difficulty, in February, 1730. His first important act was to announce a remission of 1 These tribes, and others from Cape Fear to the Gulf of Mexico, numbering about six thousand warriors, soon afterward confederated, with the design of exterminating the white people on the Atlantic coast. This event will be noticed hereafter. 2 The general form of the Colonial government was not materially changed. The governor could do Removal of the Seat of Government to Wilmington. First Legislative Assembly. The Governor and People at Variance. This was highly satisfactory. arrears of quit-rent. a April 13. His second, under instructions, was to send a deputation into the interior to conciliate the Indians, particularly the Cherokees. The first Legislative Assembly was convened at Edenton in April, 1731,a where the future policy of the royal government was unfolded by Burrington. The representatives of the people were dissatisfied with its aspect, and when, in the king's name, the governor demanded of them a sufficient revenue for defraying the expenses of the local government, and a sufficient salary for the governor, his council, and the officers employed in the administration of justice, they murmured. In these requisitions they could not recognize the promised advantages of a change in ownership, and they early showed a disposition to pay very little attention to these demands of the chief magistrate. Three years afterward, commercial restrictions, hitherto unknown, increased the discontents of the people,' and the seeds of revolution were planted in a generous soil. The Assembly uttered the old complaint of exorbitant fees on the part of public officers; the governor rejected their remonstrance with contempt. The former refused to vote a revenue or to pass any acts, and sent a complaint to England of Burrington's "violence and tyranny in the administration of government." The Board of Trade reprimanded and deposed him, and then appointed. in his place Gabriel Johnston,b late steward of Lord Wilmington, a prudent and cunning Scotchman. b Nov., 1734. c March, 1737. The new governor encountered quite as much trouble as his predecessor. The Assembly were refractory, and Johnston attempted to collect the rents on his own authority. Payment was resisted, and the Assembly not only denied the legality of the governor's proceedings, but imprisoned the officers who had distrained for quit-rents. Johnston made concessions to the people, but his arrangements were rejected by the home government, as yielding too much to the popular will. For nearly ten years the quarrel concerning rents continued between the governor and the Assembly, and, in the mean while, the salaries of government officials remained in arrears, for the rents, which produced the sole fund for the payment of the royal officers, were inadequate. The governor now resorted to cunning management as a last effort to sustain his authority. The province had been divided into several counties. The southern counties, lately settled, were more tractable than the northern ones, but they had only two members each in the Assembly, while the others had five. The governor, at a time when several of the northern members were absent, procured the passage of an act, placing all the counties upon an equal footing as to representation, and also for the removal of the seat of government from Edenton to Wilmington, a new town, lately established at the head of ship navigation, on the Cape Fear River, and named in honor of Lord Wilmington, Johnston's patron. The six northern counties refused to acknowledge the newly-organized Assembly as legal, and carried their complaint to England. They were obliged to submit, and at last the governor procured the passage of an act,d by which the expenses of government were provided for. d 1748. It was during the administration of Governor Johnston that two important occurrences nothing legally without the assent of his council. With them, he was authorized to establish courts of justice, and to hold a Court of Error. The governor, members of the council, commander of the king's ships in the province, chief-justices, judges of the Vice-admiralty, secretary, and receiver-general, were constituted a court for the trial of pirates. 1 The settlers procured furs from the Indians with great facility, and the manufacture of hats from this material was becoming a source of considerable revenue to several of the colonists. They exported hats to the West India Islands, Spain, and Portugal. The jealousy of England was awakened, and to secure those markets for her home manufactures, Parliament forbade the exportation of hats from the American colonies. They were not allowed to send them from one colony to another. None but persons who had served seven years apprenticeship to the trade were allowed to make hats, and no master was permitted to have more than two apprentices at a time. The business was soon confined within narrow limits, for severe penalties accompanied these enactments. Obstacles were also thrown in the way of the manufacture of ropes and cordage in America, and other kinds of business soon felt the checks of a narrow and unjust commercial policy. 2 The whole soil belonged to the crown. The people were required, by the governor, to pay the expenses of the government, in addition to the stipulated rents. Immigration of Scotch Highlanders. The Rebellion of '45. Peril and Flight of The Pretender. Extinction of his Family. took place, which, though separate and dissimilar, tended, in a remarkable degree, toward a union of the provinces in political and social interest, and in fostering that spirit of civil and religious freedom which prevailed in the South, and particularly in North Carolina, where the oppressive measures of the first ten years of the reign of George the Third produced rebellion in America. I allude to the commencement of hostilities between France and England in 1745; and the immigration hither of a large number of Presbyterians from Scotland and the north of Ireland, the former on account of their participation in the famous rebellion of that year.1 1 The Scottish insurrection, known as The Rebellion of '45, was in favor of Charles Edward, the son of James II., who shared his father's exile in France. Claiming the throne of England as his right, and regarding George of Hanover as a usurper, he determined to make an effort for the crown. In June, 1745, he embarked in an eighteen-gun frigate, and landed at Borodale, in the southwest part of Scotland, with a few Scotch and Irish followers. His arms were chiefly on board another vessel, which had been obliged to put back to France. The Highlanders in the vicinity arose in his favor, and in a few days fifteen hundred strong men surrounded his standard-a piece of taffeta which he brought from France. The Pretender (as he was called) marched to Perth, where he was joined by some Scotch lords and their retainers. With his increasing army, he entered Edinburgh in triumph, though the castle held out for King George. All England trembled with alarm. The premier (the king was in Hanover) offered a reward of $750,000 for the person of the PRETENDER. From Edinburgh the insurgents marched toward the border, and were every where successful, until encountered by the Duke of Cumberland, at Culloden, where, on the sixteenth of April, 1745, they were defeated and dispersed. The jails of England were soon filled with the prisoners. Lords Balmerino and Lovat, and Mr. Radcliffe, a brother of the Earl of Derwentwater, were beheaded, the last who suffered death, in that way, in England. Many others were executed, and a large number of the Highlanders were transported to America, and became settlers in North Carolina. The PRETENDER Was the last to leave the field at Culloden. For almost five months he was a fugitive among the Highlands, closely scented by the officers of government. After various concealments by the people, he escaped to the Isle of Skye, in the character and disguise of Betty Bourke, an Irish servant to Miss Flora M'Donald, daughter of a Highlander. After several perilous adventures, he reached the Continent in September, 1746. He died at Rome in 1784. His brother, Cardinal York, the last representative of the house of Stuart, died in 1807 and the family became extinct. The Scotch-Irish and their Principles. Their Emigration to Carolina. Moravian Settlements. CHAPTER XXII. "Carolina! Carolina! Heaven's blessings attend her; Though she envies not others this merited glory, Hurrah! hurrah! the Old North State forever! a 1776. HE settlement of the Scotch refugees at Cross Creek (now Fayetteville), at the head of navigation on the Cape Fear River, is an important point to be observed, in considering the history of the progress of free principles in North Carolina. These settlers formed a nucleus of more extensive immigrations subsequently. They brought with them the sturdy sentiments of the Covenanters, and planted deeply in the interior of that province the acorns of civil freedom, which had grown to unyielding oaks, strong and defiant, when the Revolution broke out. The sentiment of loyalty, kindred to that of patriotism, was an inherent principle in their character, and this was first displayed when Donald M.Donald called upon his countrymen to remember their oath of allegiance to King George and his successors, and to assist the royal governor in quelling rebellion.a But as that rebellion assumed the phase of righteous resistance to tyranny, many of those who followed their chief to Moore's Creek, under the banner of the house of Hanover, afterward fought nobly in defense of the principles of the Covenanters under the stars and stripes of the Continental Congress. Other immigrants, allied to them by ties of consanguinity and religious faith, had already planted settlements along the Cape Fear and its tributaries, and in the fertile domain between the Yadkin and Catawba; and in those isolated regions, far removed from the petty tyrannies of royal instruments, they inhaled the life of freedom from the pure mountain air, and learned lessons of independence from the works and creatures of God around them. These were chiefly Presbyterians from the north of Ireland, commonly called Scotch-Irish, or the descendants of that people already in Virginia. Their principles bore the same fruit in Carolina, as in Ulster two centuries earlier; and long before the Stamp Act, aroused the Northern colonies to resistance, the people of Granville, Orange, Mecklenburg and vicinity, had boldly told the governor upon the coast that he must not expect subservience to unjust laws upon the banks of the rivers in the upper country.' was another class of emigrants whose religious principles tended to civil freedom. were the Unitas Fratrum—the Moravians-who planted settlements in North Carolina in the middle of the last century.b These, with other German Protestants, were firmly attached, from the commencement, to the principles which gave vitality to our There These b 1749. 1 In the upper part of the state, in the vicinity of the route traversed by the armies of Cornwallis and Greene during the memorable retreat of the latter, there were above twenty organized churches, with large congregations, and a great many preaching places. All of these congregations, where the principles of the Gospel independence had been faithfully preached by M'Aden, Patillo, Caldwell, M'Corkle, Hall, Craighead, Balch, M'Caule, Alexander, and Richardson, were famous during the struggle of the Revolution, for skirmishes, battles, loss of libraries, personal prowess, individual courage, and heroic women. no part of our republic was purer patriotism displayed, than there. In |