North Carolina Awakens1830 - 1860

• By 1850 – the population of North Carolina was almost 900,000• Slaves made up about 1/5th of the population

• Wilmington and New Bern were the largest towns

•Some believe that Edgar Allen Poe wrote his most famous poem, “The Raven”, after visiting the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina.

•In the 1840’s, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote about escaped slaves who hid in the Great Dismal Swamp.

1835 Constitutional Convention

After much debate, the legislature allowed the people of North Carolina to decide if a change in the constitution would lead to better government

This change improved the constitution and lead to increased government spending that helped produce a boom to the state’s standard of living

1831 – a fire destroyed the capitol building in Raleigh including almost of the contents of the 1795 building – even George Washington’s statue!

Many people thought the capitol should move to busy Fayetteville but in 1831 much of Fayetteville burned down. The “Great Fire of Fayetteville” burned 600 homes, 125 businesses, several churches and the state house.

1833 – 1840 saw the current “old” capitol building built including a copper dome and granite walls.

1776 Constitution for NC

Representation was by county – and the east had more counties so more votes in the legislature

Only men who owned at least 50 acres of land could vote for candidates in the state senate

The governor was elected – not by the people – but by the legislature

The governor had little power and little to do!

The census of 1830 showed that the east had fewer people than the west!

Rip Van Winkle State

Coined by Governor David L. Swain of Asheville who compared North Carolina to the character in a popular story of that time, who went hunting, fell asleep for twenty years, and woke up to find out all around him had changed!

Charles Fisher of Salisbury threatened that the people of western North Carolina would follow the example of the state of Franklin and create another state! By 1835 voters in the west beat out the voters from the east to hold a Constitutional Convention to amend the 1776 constitution. Nathaniel Macon was made chairman but the leaders were really David Swain from the west and William Gaston from the east.

ChangesThe greatest need was to make representation fair across the state. A compromise was reached where each county would still have at least one representative but the more populous counties would have multiple representatives. This cheered the west.

The west agreed that the state senate would be apportioned by wealth – in other words, the wealthier the county, the more senators it got. The east contained most of the expensive land and the majority of the slaves.

This compromise set up a balance of power between the two sections of the state for the first time.

New amendments allowed voters to elect the governor instead of the legislature. He was to serve a two year term and could be reelected once every six years.

Before this convention, the free black men were able to vote – this changed with an amendment to the 1835 constitution. Suffrage (the right to vote) was also taken away from Native Americans such as the Lumbee.

William Gaston, a Roman Catholic, fought to end religious test for office holding. The 1776 Constitution had allowed only Protestant Christians to hold office. The new amendments removed the restriction from Catholics but still denied Jews and atheists (those who do not believe in God) the right to hold office.

The amendments pasted by only 600 votes, tipped heavily by the larger western population.

Cherokee RemovalAbout 4,000 Cherokee lived in the deepest part of the North Carolina Mountains.

North Carolina native, Andrew Jackson, was President from 1829 – 1837. He strongly supported families who moved west to farm.

To increase the amount of federal land available to whites, Jackson forced almost all the Native Americans who lived between the Blue Ridge and the Mississippi River to move to Indian Territory (what is today the state of Oklahoma).

This caused a crisis in North Carolina where white families pressured the Cherokee for their land.

Many Cherokee in Georgia farmed, lived in farm houses, and the wealthiest even owned slaves.

Many Cherokee became educated to read in their own language – when Sequoyah invented a syllabary (alphabet) that imitated their spoken sounds.

By 1830, over 90% of the Cherokee could read and write

Starting in 1838 after Jackson left office, many Cherokee were forcibly removed from their homes and fields. Some Cherokee were taken with only the clothes on their backs and no provisions to help them on the journey west.

Because many Cherokee lived deep in the North Carolina mountains, they hid in caves and eluded the soldiers.

The wife and children of Chief Yonaguska (Drowning Bear) starved to death on the Nantahala mountainside.

A Cherokee , Tsali, and his sons escaped from the removal and hid in the mountains. While escaping, they killed a soldier and mortally wounded another. The General in charge of the removal decided that continuing to search for so many Cherokee was not working. Instead, he proposed a compromise – the soldiers would stop looking for hiding Cherokee if Tsali and his sons would surrender and admit to committing murder.

Some say other Cherokee who wanted to stay in the mountains brought Tsali and his sons in – others say the Tsali surrendered. The end result was that all but the youngest son were executed by their fellow Cherokee.

Between 1838 and 1839 more than 15,000 Cherokee were forced to move to the west. There was not enough food or shelter along the way.Some Cherokee were forced to sleep outside in the snow with no cover.No one is exactly sure how many of the Cherokee died, but estimates go as high as 8,000.

Eastern Band of the Cherokee

With the help of William H. Thomas, a white who had been adopted into the Cherokee nation, about 1,000 Cherokee were allowed to remain in North Carolina.

North Carolina refused to recognize the Cherokee as citizens, therefore, Thomas had to hold the property in his name to protect the Native Americans from whites who wanted the land.

The principal Cherokee community along the Oconaluftee River was called Qualla village – this later became the reservation of the Eastern Cherokee Nation.

Political Development•President, Andrew Jackson built up the Democratic Party and made it a powerful part of the nation.

•The opposing party, the Whig Party, disliked Jackson and often called him “King Andrew” because he was so assertive as president.

•In North Carolina, Nathaniel Macon and his allies were strong supporters of Jackson

•They wanted farm families to be left alone to make their own opportunities.

•Macon had the support of the east – that section voted Democratic in the 1830’s and 1840’s

•The Whigs wanted to use government money and other financial resources to build up the state.

•The leader of the Whig Party in North Carolina was Archibald Murphey.

•The first Whig leader in North Carolina was Governor John Motley Morehead.

•Morehead and other Whigs pushed forward 2 parts of Murphey’s plan: public education & internal improvements

•In 1839, the Whigs created the state’s first public school system

•Each county was to hold an election to decide if it wanted to tax itself to build common schools that any white child – girl or boy – could attend free

•If local taxes were raised, the state would supplement the plan with money from a Literary Fund. – This meant each neighborhood would get a school.

•Rockingham County opened the first common school in 1840 – in Governor Morehead’s home county.

•Within 5 years, every county had at least one school and more than 2,000 were in operation by 1850.

•Children aged 6 – 26 could attend the common schools.

•School terms were held after fall harvest and generally lasted two months.

•The terrain of North Carolina was too rough for canals – thus NC had fewer canals than any other state.

•By the 1830’s, a new form of transportation was beginning

•Engineers had connected a steam engine to the gears and wheels of what they called a locomotive – an apparatus that could propel itself on a rail.

•The invention of the railroad was one of the most important things ever to happen to the state.

•The largest town not to get a railroad, Fayetteville, resorted to cheaper innovation – the plank road, often called “farmer railroads”, made out of planks laid out like a deck across a roadbed.

•The plank road enabled farmers to keep their wagons above the mud and ruts that had slowed travel in the past.

•Often these road were operated as toll roads. They worked well for a few years but soon the high maintenance costs due to rain rot led to their abandonment.

Next ….. A state of Yeomen farmers!!

Masters and Slaves

War!