North Carolina State Normal & Industrial College Historical Publications Number 1 Race Elements in the White Population of North Carolina By R. D. W. CONNOR Secketary of the North Carolina Historical Commission Issued under the Direction of the Department of History W. C. JACKSON, Editor PUBLISHED BY THE COLLEGE 1920 North Carolina State Normal & Industrial College Historical Publications PRICE $1.00 EACH Number 1 — Race Elements in the White Population of North Carolina R. D. W. Connor Number 2 — Revolutionary Leaders of North Carolina R. D. W. Connor Number 3 — Ante-Bellum Builders of North Carolina R. D. W. Connor lOWAKDS & BROUQHTON PRINTINQ 00., RALEIQH, N. 0. North Carolina State Normal & Industrial College Historical Publications Number 1 Rage Elements in the White Population of North Carolina Bt R.^dVw. CONNOR Secretary of the North Carolina Historical Commission Issued under the Direction of the Department of History W. C. JACKSON, Editor PUBLISHED BY THI C0LLE6E 1920 Moiiojiruiih JAN 12 1921 EDITOR'S PREFACE In an effort to promote' historical investigation and study among its own students, and do its part in pre- serving and putting in usable shape the rich and valu- able material relating to the history of North Carolina, the Department of History of this College announces the establishment of the North Carolina State Normal and Industrial College Historical Publications. There are unlimited opportunities in our State's history for special monographic studies, and this will be the particular though not exclusive field of work for these Publications. Studies relating to the contri- butions of women to the State's history will be empha- sized. The Publications have an auspicious beginning in being able to have the first three numbers contributed by R. D. W. Connor, Secretary of the North Carolina Historical Commission, and Lecturer on North Caro- lina History at this College during 1912, 1913, 1914. Number 3 of the Publications was published in 1914; number 2 appeared in 1916, and number 1, after much unavoidable delay, is now ready for the press. The Editor. PREFATORY NOTE These five lectures were delivered at the [Forth Caro- lina State Normal and Industrial College for Women in the winter of 1912. They are printed here just as they were delivered. The purpose for which they were prepared did not admit of a full and elaborate discussion of the subject; designed to stimulate inter- est which might lead to further study, the treatment is purposely "sketchy" and general, rather than detailed. As an aid to any who may care to go further into the subject, a brief, but by no means complete bibliogra- phy is added composed of books easily accessible to any person into whose hands these lectures may chance to fall. R. D. W. Connor. Raleigh, N". C. December 10, 1919. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introductory 7 The English in North Carolina 20 The Highland Scotch in North Carolina 44 The Scotch-Irish in North Carolina 69 The Germans in North Carolina 91 Bibliography 113 Race Elements in the White Population of North Carolina INTRODUCTORY The history of North Carolina during the past de- cade has been characterized by a remarkable develop- ment along two parallel lines, one leading to a wide- spread material prosperity, the other to a popular inteUectual renaissance. Neither would haye been possible without the other. One manifests itself m the hum of mills, the shriek of whistles, the rush and roar of trains, personifying the power and energy ot an awakening people. The other, no less a personifi- cation of power, is nevertheless a silent movement, the energy of which is generated in the quiet of the school room and the closet of the student. Both move- ments are the results of forces that for two and a half centuries have been shaping our history and controll- iBg our destiny, and because we are just beginning to recognize this fact, we are turning more and more to the past to seek therein an explanation of the present and a forecast of the future. ^ ^ „ ^ i One of the most striking features of this intellectual awakening is the recent rapid development of our his- torical consciousness. Out of it ^^-\ .^P;^!^^ /^^^ activities as the creation of ---7^^^^^ and patriotic societies, the preservation of battlefields and historic houses, the marking of historic sites, the 8 Race Elements of ISTorth Carolina celebration of historical anniversaries, and the numer- ous other methods by which mankind has always preserved the history of the race. In the past decade alone we have erected in North Carolina more monu- ments and written more books than in all the previous two hundred and fifty years of our history. The development of the inward spirit, of which these activities are but the outward manifestations, means much in the life of our people. "The spirit of a peo- ple," says Captain Mason, "is the history of a people impersonated in the life of a people. If there is no history of a people there is no spirit of a people".^ Without such a spirit the people perish. It seems to me, therefore, that nothing can be more important to a democratic people than the cultivation of such a spirit. Great and rapid material development may prove anything but an unmixed blessing if it be not accomj)anied by a corresponding development of the mental and moral resources of the State, and there is no better way to develop such resources and to strengthen this side of our life than by the study of history. Such study broadens the intelligence, strength- ens the character, and confirms the patriotism of the people, and when the day of trial and stress comes, as such days do come to all people, these qualities become the chief assets of a democratic State. "A democracy," said Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, "can not afford to be ungrateful. Built as it is on loyal service and patriotic sacrifice, the day of its forgetting will be the day of its undermining. Other nations trace their origin back through a long series of suc- 1. The Value of Historical Memorials in a Democratic State {Publications of the No7-th Carolina Historical Commission, Bulletin No. 7, i). 90). Introductory 9 cessful and unsuccessful wars. We find our national genesis in a single war; and the measure of our great- ness and stability will be the measure of our gratitude to the men who made Yorktown possible JSTatioual unity and stability must be built upon a foundation of common sympathies, sacrifices and triumphs. Every battlefield of the Revolution, where American valor was tested and not found wanting, will yet become a link in the golden chain of national brotherhood. The men who fought here and the men who have since wrought here are nation builders. Slowly but surely the truth of history is widening its domain, and a heroic past is returning to make a heroic and united present."" The State of JSTorth Carolina has erected this college and her other institutions of learning for the purpose of training her young men and young women in the duties of citizenship in a democracy. Every function which we are called upon to perform as citizens comes to us out of the past moulded into shape by its influ- ence and charged with its spirit. This influence we must understand, this spirit we must appreciate if we are to perform the duties and meet the responsibilities of citizenship intelligently and effectively. It follows, therefore, that a knowledge of the history of the peo- ple among whom we are to live and work is a very necessary part of our equipment for citizenship. "Elnow thyself" is a wise injunction that applies to a commonwealth and its people with no less force than to an individual. What are the chief geographical features of the State in which we are to work ? Whence The Significance of History in a Democracy (Publica- tions of the North Carolina Historical Commission, Bulletin No. 6.) 10 Race Elements of N^okth Carolina came its people? What are their characteristics? Their needs? Their capabilities? Wherein are they strong? Wherein weak? In what virtues do they need to be strengthened? In what vices do they need to be curbed? How have they borne themselves in the great crises of the Republic's history? Bravely? Openly? Effectively? Or have they been cowardly in battle ? Secretive in council ? Sloven in work ? What have they wrought that is worthy the admiration of mankind? Have they contributed aught to the science of human government? To the well-being of society? To the industrial development of the world? What are their ideals? Their aspirations? Their hopes and desires? Have they made any contribution to litera- ture? To art? To knowledge? Finally, and above all, what spirit has animated them as they have gone about their tasks, faced their responsibilities, and done their work? In the course of these lectures which your President has asked me to deliver here, I cannot hope to do more than suggest answers to these inquiries. But if they shall help to stimulate in any of you a greater interest in the history of North Carolina and her people, to develop in your hearts and minds a larger and more intelligent State pride, and to confirm in you the con- victions already implanted in you by the influence and teaching of this college that North Carolina is worthy of your very best thoughts and most earnest endeavors, — if I can contribute even in but a small degree to these ends, I shall have accomplished all that I hope to do. It is a common statement frequently heard in public addresses and seen in public print that the population of North Carolina is composed of almost pure English stock and contains but a negligible percentage of for- Introductory 11 eign elements. If by foreign elements is meant persons born in other countries than the United States, the percentage contained in the population of Worth Caro- lina is indeed negligible; but if the phrase means other stock than English — and this indeed is the sense in which it is generally used in this connection — the state- ment is not correct. Speaking now with reference only to the white race, the population of ISTorth Carolina of today is a composite population made up of a mixture of four racial elements, — first, the commercially- minded, law-abiding, self-reliant Anglo-Saxon; second, the Celtic Scotch-Highlander, picturesque, proud and sensitive; third, the democratic, liberty-loving, religi- ously-minded Scotch-Irishman; and finally, the Ger- man, shrewd, economical, conservative, a lover of learning and of religion. By these peoples, and their descendants, the history of Worth Carolina has been made and her destiny has been shaped ; and the typical North Carolinian of the twentieth century is neither Saxon, nor Celt, nor Teuton, but is the off-spring of the three. It is my purpose, in these lectures to discuss the origin and characteristics of these races in North Caro- lina during the colonial period and to suggest very briefly the contributions of each to the history of the State, The history of North Carolina begins with the com- ing of the English. Driven on by the Anglo-Saxon's keen, insatiable hunger for land, Englishmen about the middle of the seventeenth century crossed the Virginia boundary line, sought out the rich bottom lands along the shores of Albemarle Sound, and there laid the foundations of the State. In all parts of the world wherever the Englishman has gone in any considerable 12 Race Elements of North Carolina numbers, whether in India, in South Africa, in Austra- lia, or in America, he has carried with him the social, industrial, political and intellectual customs of his na- tive island. The English ideal of home life, the English industrial system, the English principles of politics and government, the English language and literature sooner or later become the dominant forces wheresoever the Englishman sets up his household gods. North Carolina has been no exception to this rule. Although the first English settlers were speedily followed by the Scotch and the Germans in large num- bers, who spread out over many of the choicest por- tions of the country, yet the customs, the government, and the language of North Carolina from the first have been those of the English settlers on the Albemarle. A study of this English settler reveals to us a prosy, commonplace individual, possessed of an immeasurable amount of hard, commonsense, whose chapter in our history has been more instructive than romantic. In him we find all the qualities essential for the conquest of the wilderness and the founding of a commonwealth. He had courage, foresight, determination, and he possessed, too, the instincts of the home-maker and an intense devotion to liberty, law, and justice according to English conceptions and English standards. To him we owe it that these standards were firmly planted in the soil of North Carolina. His struggles to preserve in the wild woods of Carolina the great principles of liberty which his forefathers had wrung from the mailed hands of tyrant kings in the wild woods of Britain, no doubt frequently led him into excesses and violences. But what of it ! Shall we not pardon some- thing to the spirit of liberty? Truly does an eloquent Carolinian exclaim : "If, in their remoteness and isola- Introdttctory 13 tion, our ancestors ever strayed into lawlessness, it was the light struck from violated law by the mailed hand of oppression that led them astray Their conduct was simply a pure and priceless demon- stration of the political genius and self-governing pas- sion of the Anglo-Saxon race."^ During the early years of our history these English settlers took up arms and went forth to battle more than once in defense of their ideals of constitutional liberty and achieving suc- cess at last, they wrote them imperishably into the Constitution of 1776 whence they have been handed down to us as our most precious legacy. But if we find the English settler on the Albemarle prosaic and unromantic, we shall find his Scotch neigh- bor on the upper Cape Fear picturesque and interest- ing enough. The genius of Sir Walter Scott has thrown a halo of romance about the Scotch-Highlander as he appears on his native heath which he does not lose even amid the forests of America. The Highland- ers were a strong and active race, large in stature, well developed in body, robust in health. Their wild life among their native highlands imposed upon them occu- pations that developed strength and courage and activity both of mind and body. Following the chase over pathless mountains, waging constant warfare arflong themselves and with their neighbors of the low- lands, had trained them to a keenness of sight and swift- ness of limbs that rivalled those characteristics in the American Indian. Their wild romantic life developed in them "firmness of decision, fertility in resources, ardor in friendship, love of country, and generous en- 3. Alderman, E. A.: William Hooper, "The Prophet of American Independence," pp. 13-15. 14 Kace Elements of !N"orth Carolina thusiasm." Brought up to the use of arms in the midst of perpetual violence, accustomed to occupations re- quiring great physical endurance and courage, the Highlanders were taught to admire to excess physical strength and prowess, to bear without complaint the severest hardships, and to despise the comforts and luxuries of civilized society as fit only for effeminate cowards. It was during the decade from 1730 to 1740 that the Highlanders began to come to North Carolina. Op- pressed by both political and economic tyranny in their native land, many thousands of them sought relief by turning their faces to the setting sun. Shipload after shipload reached the shores of the 'New World, and most of them found their way to the Cape Fear in North Carolina. Bringing with them their picturesque costumes and their peculiar customs which in Europe had made them a race apart, they attempted to repro- duce on the Cape Fear the life which they had lived on the Clyde. In their new homes comfort and plenty, if not luxury and wealth, awaited them, and they soon attained in North Carolina to a degree of prosperity that in their Highland homes would have been counted wealth. And yet they did not soon forget their native land. In the forests of the New World, as far as possi- ble, they kept up their native customs and spoke the language of their fathers. They still wore their picr--^^'*C^ turesque costumes, and when they met the English at Moore's Creek Bridge in 1776 many of them were armed with the weapons their fathers had worn to battle at Culloden. The Revolution wrought great changes in their lives. A new nation was born and the Highlanders were forced to adapt themselves to the new order. Grad- Introductory 15 ually they changed their costumes to suit their new conditions, their language to suit their new associates, and their customs to suit their new country. As the older leaders died out, others who had not known the beauties and the glories of the Highlands, come to fill their places. Thus the life of the Old World passed away and that of the New "World took its place. To this New World, whose history has been so enriched and colored by this splendid race, the descendants of the Highlanders have brought the same abiding love and loyalty which their fathers so faithfully gave to the old. To the west of the Highlanders we find another ele- ment of Scotch population, which differed in many important particulars from their brethren of the upper Cape Fear and bore a closer resemblance to their English cousins of the east. These were the Scotch- Irish who began to find their way to the New World about the beginning of the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Landing for the most part at Philadelphia, they followed the course marked out by the foothills of the Alleghany Mountains, until they had dispersed themselves in small settlements through- out the Piedmont regions of Virginia and North Caro- lina. Piling their furniture in creaking wagons and on pack-horses, with the women and children inse- curely and uncomfortably seated on top, while the men walked or rode horseback alongside, they followed the rivers and valleys until they found lands that suited them and then pitched their tents and began to build their log cabins. During a single winter more than a thousand of their wagons passed through the little village of Salisbury. Another stream of these settlers, landing at Charleston, moved up the banks of 16 Race Elements of North Carolina the Yadkin, the Catawba and the Broad rivers until they met the stream from Pennsylvania. Before the outbreak of the Revolution the Scotch-Irish had scat- tered all through the hills and valleys and along the river banks of Central North Carolina, adding to our population an element that has written many of the best chapters in our history. Sensitive about his rights, he was ever ready in the fear of God to defend them with a calm, cool, unflinching courage. "Kings and governors were kings and governors to him only so long as they obeyed the law and were faithful to the rights of the people His liberty consisted in laws made by the consent of the people, and the due execution of those laws. He was free not from the law, but by the law." With this love of liberty, the Scotch-Irishman joined in close union a stern relig- ious faith and an intense love of learning. The "church and the schoolhouse followed them as shadows follow the sun." Among no other element of our population have the minister and the teacher exercised so general an influence, or held so conspicuous a place in leadership. Of the Scotch-Irish, therefore, we may say that he brought with him a love of liberty as intense as that of the Englishman, but carrying with it less reverence for constitutional forms and legal precedents. Less ardent in his nature than the Highlander, he displayed in the early crisis of our history a sounder political judgment and a calmer temperament; he had a religious faith as deep but not so emotional; though not so picturesque and interesting, he has been a more conservative force in our history and has added a greater stability to our character as a people. From Pennsylvania, following the same route as the Scotch-Irish, came a fourth element in our population Introductoby 17 who became near neighbors of the Scotch. These were industrious and thrifty Germans who settled along the waters of the Yadkin and Catawba rivers. A few of these came as adventurers to follow careers as hunters and trappers. Others came in search of cheap land. Still others came for religious reasons, cheerfully brav- ing the dangers of the sea and the hardships of the wilderness in their search for religious freedom. Side by side with their cabins, went up their schoolhouses and churches. Like the Highlanders they brought the language and customs of the Old World to their homes in the New World. The German was the language of their church services. Their teachers taught it in their schools, and their children's textbooks were written in it. The older people clung tenaciously to it. It was the language of their cradles, of their altars, and of their firesides. Their ministers used it when they baptised them. They were married by a German service. They had heard the funeral sermons of their mothers and fathers preached in the German. All their sacred memories were connected with it. But they too had to face the same hard experience as the Scotch-Highland- ers, for their descendants gradually dropped their fathers' tongue for that of their new home. The Ger- mans were thrifty, industrious and intelligent. They practiced an unbounded hospitality, and in their homes were open-hearted, simple, conscientious and indepen- dent. Though always law-abiding, they took but little active interest in politics. But in their industrial affairs they set an example that their Scotch and Eng- lish countrymen might well have imitated. All the early travelers praise them for their neat and tidy homes, their clean and well cultivated farms, their fat, sleek cattle, and their bountiful barns and pantries. 2 18 Race Elements of North Carolina The center of the German settlement was the church and schoolhouse; their chief book was the Bible of Luther. They were a gentle lovable people, domestic in their habits, peaceful in their deportment, frank and open in their speech and manner, shrewd but honest in their business dealings. Estimates of the population of North Carolina at different periods prior to the census of 1790 vary- widely; there are, however, sufficient data to justify us in estimating the total population in 1760 at 130,- 000. The same data lead to the conclusion that at that time the English formed a little more than a third, the Scotch about one-third, the Germans less than one- ninth, and negro-slaves about one-fourth of the total. Rejecting all other elements of European origin, — i. e., French, Swiss and Welsh — as too small to be taken into account, and also rejecting the Indians, we arrive at the following analysis of the population of North Carolina in 1760: English 45,000 Scotch (Highlanders and Scotch-Irish) 40,000 Germans 15,000 Negroes 30,000 Total 130,000 The English and Scotch were born subjects of the British Crown; the Germans, therefore, were the only important foreign element in the white population. To place them, and those who claimed titles to prop- erty derived from them, upon an equality with the English and Scotch, the Assembly, in 1764, enacted "that all Foreign Protestants heretofore inhabiting within this Province, and dying seized of any Lands, Introductory 19 Tenements, or Hereditaments, shall, forever hereafter, be deemed, taken, and esteemed to have been natural- ized, and entitled to all the Rights, Privileges, and Advantages of natural Born Subjects." Such are the people who have made the history of JSTorth Carolina and from whom the modern North Carolinian has sprung. You cannot understand him unless you understand his origin and the influences that have shaped his life. JHe possesses the English- man's love of home, hatred of tyranny, and respect for constitutional forms and precedents; the Highland- er's unflinching loyalty to a cause or a leader, high sense of personal dignity and honor, and intense pas- sions usually well under control but fierce and terri- ble when aroused ; the Scotch-Irishman's deep spiritual nature, stern, uncompromising religious faith, and de- votion to religious liberty ; and the German's simplicity of manner, frankness of speech, and honest shrewdness in business. It is with the hope that we may get an insight into the character of this modern !N"orth Caro- linian in whose hands lies the future of this Common- wealth that I shall present to you in my subsequent lectures a study of each of the races from which he has sprung. II The English in North CaroHna Sometime between the years 1653 and 1660 pioneers of English blood began to find their way from Virginia to the shores of Albemarle Sound where they laid the foundations of North Carolina. A glance at the map will show why North Carolina received its first permanent settlers from Virginia. The dangerous character of the Carolina coast and the absence of good harborage made the approach too difficult and uncertain to admit of colonization directly from Europe. This became apparent from Sir Walter Raleigh's failure in his first attempt to plant a colony on Eoanoke Island, and in 1587 Raleigh himself di- rected John White in command of the second colony to seek a site on Chesapeake Bay. His commands, through no fault of White's, were not obeyed, and the colony failed. Twenty-two years later the London Company, guided by Raleigh's experience, directed the Jamestown colony towards the Chesapeake. The first settlers, for obvious reasons, sought lands lying along navigable streams; consequently the water courses to a large extent determined the direction of the colony's growth. Many of the streams of Southeastern Vir- ginia flow toward Currituck and Albemarle sounds in North Carolina ; and the sources of the most important rivers of Eastern North Carolina are in Virginia. Furthermore the soil, the climate, the vegetation, and the animal life of the Albemarle region are of the same character as those of Southeastern Virginia. It should be remembered, too, that until 1663 this region was an organic part of Virginia. Nothing, therefore, was English 21 more natural than that the planters of Virginia search- ing for good bottom lands, should gradually extend their plantations southward along the shores of Albe- marle Sound and the rivers that flow into it. The Virginians early manifested a lively interest in the Albemarle region. Nansemond county, Virginia, which adjoins North Carolina, was settled as early as 1609, and during the following years many an adven- turous hunter, trader, and explorer made himself familiar with the waters that pour into Albemarle and Currituck sounds. During the next thirty years the Virginia authorities sent numerous expeditions into what is now Eastern ISTorth Carolina, ^ and the sons of Governor Yeardley boasted in 1654 that the northern country of Carolina was explored by "two Virginians born."^ These expeditions were naturally followed by a southward movement of settlers, but just when this movement began cannot be stated with accuracy. In 1653 Roger Green, a clergyman of !N"ansemond county, who had become interested in the Albemarle section, obtained a grant of ten thousand acres for the first one hundred persons who should settle on Roanoke River, south of Chowan, and one hundred acres for himself "as a reward for his own first discovery and for his encouragement of the settlemeiit."^ Whether he followed this grant with an actual settlement is not known, but certain it is that by the year 1660 George Durant, John Battle, Thomas Relfe, Roger 1. Reports of these expeditions may be found In Colonial Records of North Carolina, Vol. I., W. L. Saunders, editor, and in Narratives of Early Carolina, 1650- 1708, S. A. Salley, editor. 2. Salley, S. A.— Narratives of Early Carolina, 25-29. 3. Colonial Records of North Carolina, I., 17. 22 Race Elements of IS'orth Carolina Williams, Thomas Jarvis, and others, had purchased lauds from the ludiaus who dwelt along the waters of Albemarle Sound and had settled there.* Many others encouraged by their example followed these ad- venturous leaders, and in 1665 the surveyor of Albe- marle declared that a county "fortie miles square will not comprehend the Inhabitants there already seated."^ These settlers for the most part, came from Virginia; but others came also and at the close of tha first decade of its history the Albemarle colony contained fourteen hundred inhabitants between sixteen and sixty years of age, and the settlements extended from Chowan River to Currituck Sound. It is worthy of note, as illustrative of the character of these early settlers, that they came not as conquer- ors driving the natives from their hunting-grounds and seizing their lands by force, but that in every instance they came with peaceful purpose to purchase for valu- able considerations the land which the native popula- tion willingly sold. Indeed, so universal was this practice that in 1662 the English government, which wished all land titles to be derived from the Crown, ordered that titles purchased from the Indians should be disregarded and that no grants should be held valid unless taken out according to the law of Virginia. The oldest grant for land now extant in North Carolina is that from the Indian Chief Kilcocanen to George Durant, dated March 1, 1661, and now on file in the courthouse of Perquimans county. This grant recites the fact that, "for a valeiable consideration," and "with the consent of my people," Kilcocanen had sold to 4. C. R., I., 59-67, 5. Ibid, I., 99. English 23 George Durant "a parcel of land lying and being on Roanoke Sound and on a river called by the name of Perquimans."*^ Thus more than twenty years before William Penn's celebrated treaty, George Durant pur- chased for a valuable consideration the lands which he might have seized by force and laid the foundations of North Carolina in peace and goodwill rather than in bloodshed and hatred. From Albemarle population moved slowly south- ward. The stages of its progress may be marked by the four principal river systems of Eastern Carolina — the Roanoke, the Pamlico, the Neuse, and the Cape Pear. JSTo definite record of the progress of the settle- ments is found until they reached Pamlico River, where in 1691 a small party of French Huguenots from Virginia planted a colony. A few years later a pestilence among the Indians opened the way for other settlers, who continued to drift southward from Albe- marle. By 1696 the settlement was considered of suffi- cient importance to be erected into a county called Archdale, afterwards Bath, extending from the Albe- marle to the Neuse, and to be allowed two representa- tives in the General Assembly. In 1704 a site for a town was selected, and the next year the town was incorporated under the name of Bath. At the close of its first five years Bath could boast of a public library and a dozen houses. Though at times the home of wealth and culture, Bath never became more than a sleepy little village, and derives its chief distinction from the unimportant fact that it was the first town in the province. The settlers on the Pamlico, however, prospered and their good reports induced others to 6. C. R., I., 19. 24 Race Elements of North Carolina join them. Two years after tlie founding o£ Bath, another body of Huguenots from Virginia, "consider- able in numbers," passed the Pamlico and occupied lands on the Neuse and Trent rivers. Here in 1710 they were joined by a colony of German palatines, who had been driven from their native land on account of their religious faith. The settlements on the Pamlico and the iN'euse do not concern us here since they were not made by an English-speaking people. They were rather a small wedge of foreign population driven in between the two English settlements which during the early history of North Carolina controlled and dominated the aifairs of the colony, — viz : the settlement on the Albemarle and the settlement on the Cape Fear. x\n attempt had been made to plant an English colony on the Cape Fear River as early as 1665, but after two years of hardship the settlement was abandoned. Thereafter the Cape Fear section fell into disrepute, and more than half a century passed before another attempt was made to plant a settlement there. Four causes contributed to this delay: first, the dangerous charac- ter of the coast ; second, the hostility of the Cape Fear Indians; third, the pirates who sought refuge in large numbers behind the sand bars at the mouth of the Cape Fear River; and finally an order of the Lords Proprietors forbidding settlers to take up lands in that section. The character of the coast, of course, could not be changed, and to this day, in spite of all that modern engineering skill can do, remains a serious obstacle to the development of a splendid section. The Cape Fear Indians "were reckoned the most barbarous of any in the colony," and stood for many years a menac- English 25 ing barrier to those who cast longing eyes upon the fertile lands along the Cape Fear River and its tribu- taries. But finally in 1715 their power was broken and they were overthrown. Three years later through the exertions of the Governor of South Carolina the last of the pirates, after a desperate battle, was cap- tured, carried to Charleston, and hanged at "the tail of ae tow." But the struggles of the Carolina settlers with the forces of nature, the savages of the wilderness, and the freebooters of the sea, to recover this splendid region for civilization, were to avail nothing if they were to yield obedience to the orders of the Lords Proprietors. Fortunately, there were men in ISTorth Carolina who would not consent for a few wealthy landowners be- yond the sea to prevent their clearing and settling this inviting region in the name of civilization, and about the year 1723 the ring of their axes began to break the long silence of the Cape Fear. They laid off their claims, cleared their fields, and built their cabins with- out regard to the formalities of law, and when the colonial authorities saw that the people were deter- mined to take up land without either acquiring titles or paying rents, they decided that their own interests would be served by giving the one and receiving the other. Accordingly the orders were rescinded, and good titles thus assured, settlers were not wanting. Governor Burrington himself, Maurice Moore and his brother Roger, led the way, followed by the Moseleys, the Howes, the Porters, the Lillingtons, the Ashes, the Harnetts, and many others whose names are closely identified with the history of North Carolina. On the west bank of the Cape Fear, about fourteen miles 26 Race Elements of North Carolina above its moutli, Maurice Moore laid off a town, and donated sites for a graveyard, a cliureh, a courthouse, a markethouse, and other public buildings, and a com- mons "for the use of the inhabitants of the town." With an eye to royal favor he named the place Bruns- wick, in honor of the reigning family of Great Britain. But Burnswick, like Bath, did not flourish, and in the course of a few years after a strenuous and stormy struggle for existence, it yielded with no good grace to a younger and more vigorous rival sixteen miles farther up the river, which had been named in honor of Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington. The popu- lation of the Cape Fear settlement increased rapidly, and by the close of the first decade a number of fine estates were scattered up and down the banks of the Cape Fear and its tributaries. Large tracts of forest lands had been converted into beautiful meadows and cultivated plantations ; comfortable, if not elegant farm houses dotted the river banks; and two towns had sprung into existence. The forest offered tribute to the lumberman and the turpentine distiller ; a number of sawmills had been erected; many of the planters were engaged in the production of lumber and naval stores; and a brisk trade had been established with the other colonies and even with the mother country. When the settlement was less than ten years old, Gov- ernor Johnston declared that the inhabitants were a "sober and industrious set of people," that they had made "an amazing progress in their improvement," and that the Cape Fear had become the "place of the greatest trade in the whole province."'^ 7. For a more detailed account of the settlement of the Cape Fear see the author's "Cornelius Harnett: An Essay in North Carolina History," Ch, I. English 27 As already pointed out most of the settlers on the Albemarle and many of those on the Cape Fear came from Virginia. But many others came also, attracted by the cheap and fertile lands, hailing from South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and the New England colonies. From beyond the Atlantic came hardy adventurers from England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as from Barbadoes, Jamaica, and other islands of the sea. It is not with- out interest to note that many of those from England hailed from localities whose names are now found scattered all over the map of North Carolina. This one describes himself as "late of Southwark Parish in the County of Surry;" that one is from Dover in ye County of Kent;" another is "from Halifax, in ye County of York;" while still another tells us that he was "late of Droughton near Skipton in Craven in the County of York in Great Britain."^ During the first three quarters of a century, i. e., 1660-1730, the popu- lation of North Carolina, with the unimportant excep- tions of a few French on the Pamlico and a few Ger- mans on the Neuse, was almost entirely English. It was these English settlers then who led the way into the Carolina wilderness, drove back the forces of barbar- ism, and laid the foundations of the Commonwealth. Historians do not agree in their delineation of the character of these founders of our State and civiliza- tion. There are those, of whom perhaps George Davis, the historian of the Cape Fear, was the most eminent, who would have us believe that the settlers of the colony "were no needy adventurers, driven by neces- 8. For further illustrations see Grimes, J. Bryan (editor) : Abstracts of North Carolina Wills. 28 Race Elements of North Carolina sity — no unlettered boors, ill at ease in the haunts of civilization, and seeking their proper sphere amidst the barbarism of the savage," but that 'they were gentle- men of birth and education, bred in the refinements of polished society, and bringing with them ample for- tunes, gentle manners, and cultivated minds."^ On the other hand there are William Byrd, John Fiske, and others of their school who could see in Colonial North Carolina nothing more than "a kiiid of back- woods for Virginia," "an Alsatia for insolvent debtors," "mean white trash," and "outlaws," from the northern colony. John Fiske divided the early settlers of North Carolina into two classes : first, the thrift- less, improvident white servant class who could not maintain a respectable existence for themselves in Vir- ginia; second, the "outlaws who fled [from Virginia] into North Carolina to escape the hangman. "^^ Neither picture is true, for if Davis insists that the shield is all gold, none the less does Fiske insist that it is all of a baser metal. The truth lies between. Un- doubtedly there were enough well-born educated lead- ers among the population to give a cultured atmos- phere to the best society in the colony; and undoubt- edly there were also enough escaped outlaws to keep the officers of the criminal law ever vigilant. But both together constituted no larger percentage of the population of North Carolina than of the other colonies and in none of them were they more than a very small minority. Between the two extremes, constituting then as now the bone and sinew of the population, were those sturdy, enterprising, law-abiding, and deeply 9. University Address, 1855. 10. Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, II, 316. English 29 moral middle-class Englishmen who have always from Crecy and Agincourt to Yorktown and Gettysburg formed the strength and character of English-speaking nations. The best contemporary account of the social and in- dustrial life of the colony during the first seventy-five years of its existence is that found in Brickell's "Nat- ural History of North Carolina," published in 1737.1 ^ The author was a physician and scientist of marked ability whose residence for several years in the colony gave him ample opportunity for observation. Says he : "The Europeans or Christians of North Carolina are a straight, well-limbed and active people .... The men who frequent the woods, and labour out of doors, or use the waters, the vicinity of the sun makes impressions on them ; but as for the women who do not expose themselves to the weather, they are often very fair, and well-featured, as you shall meet with any- where, and have very brisk and charming eyes; and as well and finely shaped as any women in the world. . . . . The children . . . are very docile and apt to learn anything as any children in Europe, and those that have the advantage to be educated write good hands and prove good accountants . . . The young men are generally of a bashful, sober behaviour, few proving prodigals, to spend what the parents with care and industry have left them, but commonly im- prove it . . . The girls are not only bred to the needle and spinning, but to the dairy and domestic affairs, which many of them manage with a great deal of prudence and conduct, though they are very young. 11. References are to Grimes' edition published by the Board of Trustees of the State Library, 1910. 30 Race Elements of North Carolina . . . Both sexes are very dextrous in paddling and managing their canoes, both men, women, boys, and girls, being bred to it from infancy. . . . The men are very ingenious in several handicraft businesses, and in building their canoes and houses. . . . There are throughout this settlement as good bricks as any I ever met with in Europe. All sorts of handi- crafts, such as carpenters, coopers, bricklayers, plaster- ers, shoemakers, tanners, tailors, weavers, and most other sorts of tradesmen, may with small beginnings, and good industry, soon thrive well in this place and provide good estates and all manner of necessaries for their families. . . . Their furniture, as with us, consists of pewter, brass, tables, chairs, which are im- ported here commonly from England. The better sort have tolerable quantities of plate, with other conven- ient, ornamental and valuable furniture." Land and slaves were then, as they continued to be throughout the South until 1865, the chief form of wealth in North Carolina. Consequently the growth of towns was very slow and life in the colony was seen at its best on the great estates of the planters scattered along the banks of the rivers and their tributaries. Many of these planters counted from five to ten thous- and acres in their estates, while not a few were lords of princely domains embracing from fifty to seventy- five thousand acres, and were masters of as many as two hundred and fifty slaves. The river courses af- forded the best sites for plantations not only because of the greater fertility of the bottom lands, but also because transportation was carried on chiefly by water. At the planter's wharf sloops, schooners, and brigan- tines were loaded with cargoes of skins, salt pork and beef, tallow, staves, naval stores, lumber, tobacco, rice, English 31 and other produce of the plantation to he carried away to the West Indies and exchanged for rum, molasses, sugar and coffee, or to Boston where the proceeds were invested in clothing, household furniture, books and negroes. On an elevated site overlooking the river and gener- ally approached through a long avenue of oaks or cedars, was the "Manor House," or as the negroes called it the "Big House." As a rule these mansions were wooden buildings without any pretense to archi- tectural beauty, though a few of the wealthier planters, during the years preceding the Eevolution, erected brick structures after the style now known as "colon- ial." These colonial residences were characterized by huge white columns, broad verandas, wide halls, large and spacious rooms. Whether of wood or brick all were the seats of unbounded hospitality. "The plant- ers," says Brickell, "[are] the most hospitable people that are to be met with," while John Lawson, who wrote nearly thirty years earlier than Brickell, tells us that "the planters [are] hospitable to all that come to visit them; there being very few housekeepers but what live very nobly and give away more provisions to coasters and guests who come to see them than they expend among their own families." Hospitality to strangers and travelers was regarded as a patriotic duty which the wealthy planters, owing to the absence of inns and comfortable taverns, felt impelled to exer- cise for the honor of the province. Indeed, in their isolated situation, a garrulous traveler or a genial sea-captain who brought news of the outside world, was ever an honored and a welcome guest, for whom the housekeeper brought out her finest silver and china ware, her best linen and her most tempting morsels, 32 Race Elements of North Carolina while the planters regaled him with the choicest liquid refreshments which his cellar afforded, for as Brickell assures us, "the better sort, or those of good economy" kept "plenty of wine, rum, and other liquors at their own houses, which they generally make use of amongst their friends and acquaintances, after a most decent and discreet manner." Every great plantation was almost a complete com- munity in itself. Each had its own shops, mills, dis- tillery, tannery, spinning wheels and looms, and among the slaves were to be found excellent blacksmiths, car- penters, millers, shoemakers, spinners, and weavers, and other artisans. "The clothing used by men," Brickell tells us, "are English cloaths, druggets, durois, green linen, etc. The women have their silks, calicoes, stamp-linen, calimanchoes, and all kinds of stuffs some whereof are manufactured in the Province. They make few hats, though they have the best furs in plenty, but with this article, they are commonly sup- plied from New England, and sometimes from Europe." In their homes the planters and their fami- lies were supplied not only with all the necessities of a pioneer community, but enjoyed many of the comforts and luxuries usually found only in a long established society. An examination of their wills, inventories, and other documents shows among their household furniture an ample supply of those fine old mahogany tables, bed- steads, couches, chairs, and desks which excite the envy of modern housekeepers and deplete the purses of modern husbands. That the Carolina housekeeper was prepared at any time to play the hospitable hostess to the most particular guest or the most pompous colonial potentate who might chance to honor her board, is English 33 well attested by the excellent silver, china, and glass- ware which adorned her sideboard. The diamond rings, earrings, necklaces, and other jewelry which the colonial dame passed down as heirlooms to her chil- dren and grandchildren show clearly enough from whom the twentieth century dame inherited her love of finery and personal ornaments; while a goodly sprinkl- ing of silver and gold kneebuckles, shoebuckles, and other such trinkets betrays the vanity with which the colonial planter displayed his silk-stockinged calf and shapely foot.i^ Though there were practically no schools in the pro- vince it would be a gross error to infer from that fact that the planters were either ignorant or illiterate themselves or indifferent to the education of their children. In infancy the children were taught at home, but for their higher education they were sent to Virginia, New England, and to" the universities of Scotland and England. "My principle desire," de- clared Wyriot Ormond, in his will, "is that of the education of my daughters . . . and that no ex- pense be thought too great." William Standin desired that his son be taught "to read, rite and cifer as far as the rule of three." Stephen Lee directed that his son should be educated either in Philadelphia or Bos- ton, while John Skinner provided for the education of his son in North Carolina, "or other parts." Edward Moseley directed that his sons should be sent elsewhere when it became necessary to give them "other educa- tion that is to be had from the Common Masters in this Province, for," he declared, "I would have my 12. See Grimes (editor): Abstracts of North Carolina Wills and also his North Carolina Wills and Inven- tories. 3 34 Race Elements of JSTorth Carolina children well educated," These quotations from the wills of the period are typical and might be continued almost indefinitely. Not so common, however, were such provisions as that found in the will of John Baptista Ashe, in 1734, which would do credi^ to the most modern professor of pedagogy. "I will," said he, "that my slaves be kept at work on my lands and that my estate be managed to the best advantage so as my sons m.ay have as liberal an education as the profits thereof will af- ford; and in their education I pray my executors to observe this method: Let them be taught to read and write and be introduced into the practical part of Arithmetick, not too hastily hurrying them to Latin or Grammar; but after they are pretty well versed in these, let them be taught Latin and Greek, I propose this may be done in Virginia; after which let them learn French; perhaps some Frenchman at San- tee will undertake this. When they are arrived to years of discretion let them study the Mathematicks, To my sons when they arrive at age I recommend the pursuit and study of some profession or business (I could wish the one to ye Law, the other to Merchan- dize), in which let them follow their own inclinations. I will that my daughter be taught to write and read and some feminine accomplishment which may render her agreeable; and that she be not kept ignorant of what appertains to a good housewife in the manage- ment of household affairs." ^^ There were of course no free public schools in the province and while the planters as a rule provided only 13. Grimes (editor) : North Carolina Wills and Inven- tories, 16-17. English 35 for tlie education of those of their own households, it was not an unknown thing for one to devote his wealth to the education of the less fortunate. Thus as early as 1710 John Bennett, of Currituck county, left a portion of his estate for the use of "poor old men and women who have heen honest and laborious," and another por- tion to "be for ye use & benefit of poor children to pay for their schooling." i* Better known is the benefaction of James Winright, of Carteret county, who in 1744 set aside the rents and profits of his lands and houses in Beaufort "for the encouragement of a sober discreet Qualified Man to teach school at Least Reading, Writing, Vulgar and Decimal Arithmetick in the aforesaid town of Beaufort." ^^ Other evidences of the education, culture and intelligence of the planters are found in the books they read. Edward Moseley, as is well known, established a free public library at Bath in 1728, to which he donated £100 for the purchase of books, most of which were in the Latin, Greek, and HebreAv languages; while at his death he devised more than four hundred volumes then in his private library.i^ In the home of nearly every planter a few good books were to be found, generally treatises on theology, moral philosophy, law, history, and medicine. Among them were the works of Sir Edward Coke, John Bunyan, Increase Mathers, Bichard Blome, Archbishop Tillot- son, and other jurists, preachers, and theologians fa- mous in their day and generation.!"^ If further evidence is needed of the character and social standing of the planters of colonial Carolina it 14. Grimes (editor): North Carolina Wills and Inventories 16-17. 15. Ibid, 455. 16. Ibid, 313. 17. See especially the inventories printed in Grimes' Wills and Inventories, p. 469 et seq. 36 Kace Elements of North Carolina is found in the general application to them of the term "gentleman," then used as a class distinction, and in their general use of such insignia as family crests and coats-of-arms. Says a scholarly Virginia historian: "There is no reason to think that armorial bearings were as freely and loosely assumed in those early times as they are so often now, under Republican institu- tions; such bearings were then a right of property, as clearly defined as any other, and continue to be in modern England, what they were in colonial Virginia. In the seventeenth century, when so large a proportion of the persons occupying the highest position in the society of the Colony were natives of England, the un- warranted assumption of a coat-of-arms would proba- bly have been as soon noticed, and perhaps as quickly resented, as in England itself. The prominent families in Virginia were as well acquainted with the social antecedents of each other in the Mother Country as families of the same rank in England were with the social antecedents of the leading families in the sur- rounding shires; they were, therefore, thoroughly com- petent to pass upon a claim of this nature; and the fact that they were, must have had a distinct influence in preventing a false claim from being put forward. In a general way, it may be said it was quite as natural for Virginians of those times to be as slow and care- ful as contemporary Englishmen in advancing a claim of this kind without a legal right on which to base it, and, therefore, when they did advance it, that it was likely to stand the test of examination by the numerous persons in the colony who must have been familiar with English coats-of-arms, in general. . . . The possession of coats-of-arms by the leading Virginian families in the seventeenth century is disclosed in va- English 37 rioiis incidental ways. Insignia of this kind are fre- quently included among the personal property ap- praised in inventories. And they were also stampt on pieces of fine silver plate." !» A more frequent use was as seals for letters and valuable papers. What Mr. Bruce says of coats-of-arms in Virginia applies with equal force in North Carolina. The great colo- nial families invariably sealed valuable papers with seals bearing impression of their coats-of-arms.^^ They prided themselves on their gentle blood and were ex- tremely solicitous of the social position and dignity of their families. They were men of culture and refine- ment, thoroughly imbued with the political doctrines of Hampden, Pym, and Eliot ; and in the wild woods of Carolina they became the political leaders of the people, developing in their early struggles for self-gov- ernment such leaders as George Durant, Thomas Pol- lock, Edward Moseley, and Samuel Swann, the fore- runners of the Harveys, the Harnetts, the Ashes, and the Caswells of the Revolution. The most important contributions made to our his- tory and civilization by the English settlers in l^^orth Carolina were political. To them we owe the form and character of our government, and those great principles of constitutional liberty upon which depend our peace, prosperity, and happiness. They demanded that the fundamental principles of the British Constitution in its full vigor should follow them into their new home, and they insisted that their charters should guaran- tee to them "all liberties, franchises and privileges" en- joyed by their fellow subjects in England. Without 18. Bruce: Social Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Cen- 19. SerGrimes' Abstract of North Carolina Wills, passim. 38 Race Elements of North Carolina this guarantee we may be sure they would not have stirred an inch from the coast of Britain, and to it we owe all those safe-guards of our liberty, — representa- tive government, the right of trial by jury, the privi- lege of the writ of habeas corpus, the principle that taxation without representation is tyranny, and all those other great constitutional principles which have for centuries characterized the governments of English- speaking peoples. But though these principles were guaranteed by their charters the people of North Caro- lina were not permitted to enjoy them without a struggle. In 1663, you will remember, the King granted Caro- lina to eight Lords Proprietors upon whom he con- ferred power to institute a government. ^^ Under this government the laws of the province were made by an Assembly chosen by the people, but they were adminis- tered by governors appointed by the Proprietors with- out the consent of the people. The Proprietors were not always fortunate in their selection of the governors. Some were weak, some bad men, and but few cared anything for the people over whom they were sent to rule. Indeed they were not the people's governors; they were the Proprietors' agents, and their first duty was to look out for the interests of their masters ; when these interests conflicted with the welfare of the people,, the latter and not the former was made to suffer. Fre- quently, too, the governors were men of small abilities, puffed up with their importance, and inclined to run things with a high hand. The result of course was continual clashing between the people and their rulers. 20. For the charters of 1663 and 1665 see Colonial Records of North Carolina, I, 20 and 102. English 39 The former considering themselves entitled, hy the terms of their charters, to "all the liberties, privileges and franchises" possessed by the people of England, and being too high-spirited to submit to the tyranny and insolence of the latter, more than once rose in revolt in defense of their liberties. Six Governors — Jenkins, Miller, Eastchurch, Sothel, Gary and Glover, — each in his turn, were either driven out or kept out of office by dominant factions of the irate people, who refused to see the charters of their liberties trampled under the feet of petty provincial officials. Indeed, in 1711 Governor Spotswood of Virginia declared that the people of Carolina were so used to turning their gov- ernors out of office that they had come to think they had a right to do so. Three times, too, with arms in their hands the stern, liberty-loving English farmers of Carolina rose in rebellion against violations of their constitutional rights : in the Culpepper Rebellion they resisted the enforcement of the navigation laws which they believed unconstitutionally interferred with their trade; in the Cary Rebellion they resisted the imposi- tion of an oath of office which limited the right to sit in the Colonial Assembly to members of the Church of England because it restricted their political and re- ligious freedom; in the Rent Riots they resisted the collection of illegal rents. Historians taking a superficial view of these strug- gles and contests in the history of colonial Carolina have condemned those early Carolinians as a lawless and contentious people; but those who pronounce this judgment little understand the spirit which actuated them. When governed according to the terms of its charter no colony on the continent was more orderly or more law-abiding ; on the other hand no people were 40 Race Elements of North Carolina ever more jealous of their coustitutioual rights or quicker to resent the encroachments of power. Adher- ence to their charter and resistance to its perversion were cardinal principles with North Carolinians throughout their colonial history; and their records are full of assertions of those principles on which the American Revolution was fought. As early as 1678 "when a few families were struggling into a conscious- ness of statehood along the wide waters of our eastern sounds," they declared that "the doctrine of non- resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish and destructive to the good and happi- ness of mankind." In 1716 when the colony was but fifty years old and the population all told was less than ten thousand souls, the Assembly entered on its journal the declaration "that the impressing of the inhabitants, or their property, under pretence of its being for pub- lic service, without authority from the Assembly, was unwarrantable and a great infringement upon the liberty of the subject." Governor Burrington who spoke from the experience of ten years of residence among them wrote that the early Carolinians were "subtle and crafty to admiration." "The people," he declared, "are neither to be cajoled or outwitted; whenever a governor attempts to effect anything by these means he will lose his labour and show his ignor- ance. . . . They insist that no public money can or ought to be paid but by a claim given to and allowed by the house of burgesses." And John Urmstone, a missionary among them, declared that the people re- spected no authority that did not emanate from them- selves. In a word, as Dr. Alderman has said : "The key to North Carolina character in this inchoate period is the subordination of everything — material prosper- English 41 ity, personal ease, financial development, — to tlie re- morseless assertion of the sacredness of chartered rights" against the encroachments of the proprietary- government. ^i The government of the Lords Proprietors was too weak to afford any protection to the people or to pre- serve order in the province, yet it was strong enough to be a source of constant irritation. When the great war with the Indians, which nearly destroyed the colony at a single blow, broke out in September 1711, and when the pirates on the coast became so numerous, so daring and so insolent as to threaten the colony with ruin, it was not to the Lords Proprietors that the people looked for aid, but to their sister colony of South Carolina : nor did the Proprietors offer any as- sistance or protection. Yet the danger once past, and peace restored, the hands of these rapacious overlords fell heavily upon the exhausted resources of the prov- ince. The people of course were extremely restive under a system which exacted much and yielded noth- ing, and the result was that neither they nor the Lords Proprietors were satisfied with the experiment. Then, too. King George regretted the prodigality with which King Charles had given away such vast possessions and conferred such extensive political power upon his subjects. After sixty-five years of experimenting, therefore, all parties were eager for a change, and when the King in 1728, proposed to purchase the rights of the Lords Proprietors, the suggestion found a hearty welcome from both rulers and subjects. By this pur- chase N^orth Carolina passed under the direct authority of the Crown and the rule of the Lords Proprietors 21. William Hooper, p. 13. 42 Eace Elements of JS^orth Carolina came to an end. In JN^orth Carolina the change was celebrated with great public rejoicings. The people had cause for their joy. Neglected by their rulers in time of danger, and nursed too atten- tively in time of peace and safety, what those early Carolinians had obtained they got through their own unassisted efforts and without favor from anybody. IN'one of the colonies had passed through a more des- perate struggle for existence, and none had had a more severe test of character and capacity. And can we not say too with all truth that none had borne the test better? What a gloomy picture of the condition of the people do we gather from the literature of the period immediately following the great Indian War of 1711-1715. The people have "scarcely corn to last them until wheat time, many not having any at all;" "the country miserably reduced by Indian cruelty;" "the inhabitants brought to so low an ebb that large numbers fled the province," "a country preserved which everybody that was but the least acquainted with our situation gave over for lost," — these are typical ex- pressions with which the letters of the period abound. That the colony survived these conditions is better evidence of the character and spirit of the people than the sneers and jibes of hostile critics, either contem- porary or modern. Had the greater part of the popu- lation of North Carolina, or even a considerable minor- ity of it, been composed of "the shiftless people who could not make a place for themselves in Virginia so- ciety," or "outlaws who fled [from Virginia] to escape the hangman," all the aristocracy of Virginia and South Carolina combined could not have saved the colony from anarchy and ruin. Yet between the years 1663 and 1728 somebody laid here in North Carolina English 43 the foundation of a great State. The foundation upon which great states are built is the character of their people, and the "mean whites" of Virginia are not now, nor were they then, the sort of people who found and build states. No colony composed to any extent of such a people could have rallied from such disasters as those from which ITorth Carolina rallied between 1718 and 1728. Those years were years of growth and ex- pansion. The population increased threefold; the Cape Fear was opened to settlers; new plantations were cleared; better methods of husbandry introduced; mills were erected ; roads surveyed ; ferries established ; trade was increased; towns were incorporated; better houses built; better furniture installed; parishes were created; churches erected; ministers supplied; the schoolmaster found his way thither; and the colony was fairly started on that course of development which brought it by the outbreak of the Revolution to the rank of fourth in population and importance among the thirteen English-speaking colonies in America. Ill The Highland-Scotch in North Carohna A range of mountains beginning in the county of Aberdeen and running in a southwesterly direction, divides Scotland into two distinct parts. The part ly- ing to the south of the range is called the Lowlands; that to the north, the Highlands. The coastline of the Highlands is broken by long arms of the sea and bor- dered with groups of islands. The surface of the coun- try, as its name implies, is mountainous. There is found some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. Tall rugged mountain peaks lifting their bare heads above soft green valleys, and sparkling streams hurry- ing to mingle their cool waters with the waters of in- numerable glassy lakes, give a variety to the view that is never tiresome. Poets and musicians have cele- brated the glories of the Highland in song and verse; and thousands of tourists, from the four corners of the world, annually pay tribute to its charm. The Highlanders themselves are no less interesting than their country. Shut off for many ages from com- munication with the outside world by the rugged face of their mountains on the one side, and by their bold, rocky, and stormy coast on the other, they lived for one generation after another a life peculiar to them- selves. The Highlanders knew but little of the Low- landers, whom they thoroughly despised ; and the Low- landers knew but little of the Highlanders, whom they thoroughly feared. The former lived an outdoor life and engaged in occupations which required strength and courage and activity of mind and body. Following the chase over pathless mountains, waging constant Highland Scotch 45 war with their neighbors, and raiding the rich plains of the Lowlands were their principal pursuits. In this state of existence there was no place for the coward or the sluggard. Hardships and dangers were their daily portions, while the comforts, the luxuries, and the pleasures of civilized society were associated in their minds with cowardice and effeminacy. A natural con- sequence of this kind of life and these ideals was an enthusiastic admiration for physical beauty, strength and courage. As among all barbarous or semi-civilized people the weak and the puny perished ; only the strong and the vigorous survived. Legally and nominally the Highlanders were sub- jects of the King of Scotland, but in reality they paid to the royal authority such respect and yielded to it such obedience as suited their fancy. That loyalty which the people of other countries gave to their na- tion and to their king, the Highlanders gave to their clans and to their chiefs. The clan was composed of families tracing their descent from the same common ancestor, and bearing the same name. To guard the safety and the honor of the clan was the first duty of the clansman. An insult even to the humblest clans- man by a member of another tribe was regarded as an insult to the whole clan. It was never forgotten nor forgiven, and if not avenged by one generation, it was handed down as a precious legacy to the next. Hence came that state of continuous warfare which existed in the Highlands. At the head of each clan stood the chief, with whom every member of the clan claimed kinship. It was his duty to support his clansmen with his wealth and pro- tect them with his power. Although theoretically sub- ordinate to the will of the clan, he generally ruled over 46 Race Elements of North Carolina it with "absolute and irresistible sway," and his com- mauds were readily obeyed, "not from motives of fear, but with the ready alacrity of confidence and affec- tion." His clansmen obeyed his voice in their dealings with each other; they rallied around him in his feuds with neighboring chieftains; they followed his stand- ard when he marched away to battle for the king. When the chief called his clan to arms, the clansman who failed to respond or lingered behind was branded with infamy forever. The Highland chief counted his wealth by the number of his followers. "How much is your income?" an Englishman once asked the chief of the MacDonalds. "I can raise five hundred men," was the proud chief's laconic reply. The chief's pride in his clan was equaled only by the clansman's devotion to the person of his chief. For the safety, glory and honor of his chief the true Highlander ever stood ready to sacrifice all that he possessed. His own life he counted as a worthless trifle when weighed in the balance with that of his hereditary chieftain. Especial emphasis is laid upon these facts because they were the origin of the most striking and one of the most admirable characteristics of the Highlander, — his un- failing loyalty to his chief, his clan, and his cause. To the isolation of their mountain homes and the peculiarity of their social organization, we may add a third potent influence which tended to keep the High- landers a race apart, — their peculiar costume. The Highlander's costume, as you well know, was as pic- turesque as his native hills. In a general way it con- sisted of a short coat, a vest, and a kilt, or "philabeg," which is a kind of petticoat reaching not quite to the knees. The knees themselves were left bare, but the lower part of the leg was covered with a short hose. A Highland Scotch 47 belt encircled the waist and from it hung the "sporan," or pocket-purse, made of the skin of a goat or of a badger with the fur left on it. From the left shoulder, fastened by a brooch, hung the plaid or scarf, a piece of tartan two yards in breadth and four in length. The right, or sword arm, was left uncovered and at full liberty, and when both arms were needed the plaid was fastened across the breast by a large bodkin or brooch. In wet weather it was thrown loose so as to cover both the shoulders and the body. Each clan had a plaid of its own, differing in the combination of its colors from all others, so that a Campbell, or a MacDonald, or a MacLean could be known by his plaid. The costume was well adapted to the Highlander's mode of life.^ Its lightness and freedom permitted him to use his limbs and handle his arms with perfect ease. His arms, too, it may be said, formed part of his costume, for the Highlander was never without them. His weapons were a broad-sword, or "claymore," a dirk, and his trusty rifle. Before the introduction of fire-arms he wore a round shield on his left arm. The claymore had a long straight blade, a basket hilt, and was worn on the left side attached to a broad band which passed over the right shoulder. The dirk was a stouter and shorter weapon, intended for use in close quarters, and was worn on the right side. The sheath of the dirk was also provided with a hunting knife. When a chief wished to summon his clansmen upon a sudden danger or for a sudden foray, he sent through- out his territory the Fiery Cross, or the "Cross of Shame." It was made by tying together two pieces of lightwood in the form of a cross. The ends of the cross were set on fire and after burning a little while, the burning ends were dipped in the blood of a goat slam 48 Race Elements of North Carolina for the purpose. The burnt ends signified to the clans- men that the homes of all who failed to obey the call of the chief would be given to the flames, the blood, that he and all his family would be put to the sword. It was sometimes called the "Cross of Shame," be- cause disgrace forever followed the clansman who failed or even hesitated to obey its message. The mak- ing of the cross was accomplished by elaborate cere- monies, which closed when the old gray seer, or priest of the clan, uttered his curse against . . . "the wretch who fails to rear At this dread sign the ready spear. Tor, as the flames this symbol sear. His home — the refuge of his fear — A kindred fate shall know; Far o'er its roof the volumed flame Clan-Alpine's vengeance shall proclaim, While maids and matrons on his name Shall call down wretchedness and shame. And infamy and woe." A swift and trusty messenger then snatched the "dread sign" from the feeble hands of the seer, dashed away over the mountains and across the streams, show- ing it to every clansman, naming the time and the meeting-place. At the sight of the Fiery Cross every man in the clan must instantly snatch his weapons and hasten with all the speed possible to obey the call of his chief. N^o excuse answered for delay: the son must leave his dying father; the bridegroom his weeping bride, for before all other duties came the duty to the clan and loyalty to the chief. One messenger after another took charge of the fatal sign, until with great speed it had gone througliout the territory of the clan. Highland Scotch 49 In war the chief led his clansmen in person. Every clan had its battle-cry and its war-song. At the battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, where members of several clans fought nnder MacDonald, their battle-cry was, ''King George and broadswords !" His great physical strength, his long training, his daring impetuosity, and his scorn of death, made the Highlander terrible in battle; but his habits of life made him a poor soldier for an extended campaign. When a battle was over, the campaign, in his opinion, was ended ; if it was lost, he sought safety in his mountains; if won, he re- turned thither to secure his booty. In either case he was ready to go home, and this habit often rendered the most complete victory fruitless, and made the Highlander a troublesome ally on an extended cam- paign; the general never knew when he might sud- denly find himself without an army. Such were the Highlanders in their native country. When they came to North Carolina to live they brought many of their customs and peculiar habits and beliefs with them. Their emigration to this country began about the middle of the eighteenth century, and from that time until the outbreak of the Revolution the flow from the Highlands of Scotland to North Carolina continued in an almost unbroken stream. There was something very extraordinary about this movement, for the Highlander, deeply devoted to his own country, seldom stirred abroad and never under- took the conquest of foreign territory with a view to permanent occupancy. His natural home was in the Highlands and his devotion to it was strengthened by his intense loyalty to his clan and to his chief. Death was much to be preferred to exile and for the true Highlander death itself lost half its terrors if he felt 4 50 Race Elements of North Carolina assured that his body was to rest beneath his native sod. It is interesting, therefore, to seek an explanation of their remarkable emigration to America during the eighteenth century. The explanation is found in two closely related causes, both the outgrowth of their peculiar industrial and social systems : first, agricul- tural conditions in the Highlands; secondly, their political misfortunes. The structure of Highland society rested upon a military basis. In the dealings of one clan with an- other "Might made right," and accordingly the impor- tance of any clan depended upon the number of armed men that it could rally to the standard of its chief. The natural result of this system, of course, was that the Highlander was trained to the use of the clay- more and the dirk rather than the plow and the sickle. Tilling and reaping were no proper employment for warriors, and agricultural labor fell upon the shoulders of the women and the weaklings of the clan. Their country, naturally rocky and barren, would yield but a meagre support even when in a high state of cultiva- tion, but their agriculture was on the most limited scale and their fields were cultivated in the simplest manner and with the rudest tools. ISTor was their trade any better: except the occasional sale of a drove of cattle, too frequently driven from the pasture of some Lowland laird without so much as a "by your leave," they had no trade. It follows of course that there were no manufactures and no commerce. That genius and energy which the people of other countries had learned to devote to the arts and the sciences of peace, the Highlanders were still devoting, even as late as the eighteenth century, to the arts of war and the chase. The inevitable result of this system was that many of Highland Scotch 51 the clans counted more clansmen than their lands could possibly support. To add further to the suffer- ing caused by these conditions, the British Government, after the battle of Culloden in 1746, determined to break up the clan system, confiscated the hereditary estates of the chiefs, and distributed their lands to British soldiers. These new landlords, caring nothing for the welfare of the Highlanders, and finding sheep- raising more profitable than farming, turned into pas- ture-lands thousands of acres which theretofore had always been under cultivation. This change, as it re- quired fewer people to raise sheep than to cultivate the land, inevitably added to the general distress. Rents increased, hundreds of families were deprived of their means of livelihood, and the complete overthrow of their social and industrial systems left them help- less. The other cause of their emigration to America was their political misfortunes. As head of the royal family of Scotland, the reigning prince of the House of Stuart was regarded by many of the Highland clans as their common chief. However much they might quarrel among themselves most of the clans owned allegiance to the Stuarts and when the members of that unhappy family, after years of misrule in England, were finally expelled from that kingdom by the long-suffering Eng- lish people, they appealed to the loyalty of their High- land clans for support in their efforts to regain the throne. To such an appeal from their hereditary chieftains, whatever their faults and vices might be, the Scottish clansmen had but one answer, and for more than half a century they clung to the fortunes of the fallen Stuarts with a loyalty and devotion deserving of a better cause. Their last attempt to recover the throne 52 Race Elements of iN'oKXH Carolina for that unhappy family was made in 1746. In the early part of the winter Prince Charles Stuart, the "Young Pretender," who had been raised an exile in France, landed on the shores of Scotland and called upon the Highlanders to join him in an invasion of England. The Fiery Cross was dispatched throughout the Highlands, the clansmen responded with true High- land enthusiasm, and soon every hall and vale in the Highlands was resounding with the clash of arms and echoing with the popular chorus. We'll o'er the water, we'll o'er the sea, "We'll o'er the water to Charlie! Come weal, come woe, we'll gather and go, And live and die wi' Charlie! At first the impetus of their enthusiasm swept every- thing before them, and Charles Stuart saw visions of a crown dangling within his grasp. But from that un- speakable calamity the English nation was saved, on April 16, 1746, when with great slaughter the High- landers were swept from the field of Culloden, and Charles Stuart, glad to exchange the royal ermine for the petticoat of an Irish waiting maid, was saved from the block by the devoted loyalty and romantic daring of Flora MacDonald. The British Government now determined to visit the Highlanders with such severity as to make future re- bellion impossible. The authority of the chiefs over their clansmen was abolished, their estates were con- fiscated, and the carrying of arms and the wearing of the tribal costumes were made crimes punishable with great severity. An English army under the Duke of Cumberland, forever afterwards known in Highland history as "Butcher Cumberland," established head- Highland Scotch 53 quarters at the town of Inverness, and from this hase, his soldiers fell upon the helpless inhabitants through- out the Highlands and laid waste their country for miles in every direction. Their cattle were driven away or slaughtered ; the mansions of the chiefs and the huts of the clansmen were laid in ashes ; captured Highland soldiers were put to death with brutal ferocity; women and children, without food, without homes, without husbands and fathers, wandered helplessly among the hills and valleys to die of cold and hunger. It became the boast of the English soldiery that neither house nor cottage, man nor beast could be found within fifty miles of Inverness: all was silence, ruin, and desola- tion unparalleled in modern warfare until Sherman marched through Georgia. Driven from their ancient estates, subjected to the wanton insults and cruelties of a brutal soldiery, and forbidden to observe the social customs of their ances- tors, thousands of the Highlanders turned their eyes toward America as their only haven of freedom, pros- perity, and happiness. As early as 1729 a few families of Highlanders had settled on the Cape Fear River in ISTorth Carolina. There they found a genial climate, a fertile soil, and a mild and liberal government. Every- thing contributed to their happiness and contentment, and their letters to friends and relatives in Scotland glowed with praise of their new home. Five years later, 1734, Gabriel Johnston, a Scotchman inordi- nately fond of his countrymen, became governor of the colony, and throughout his long administration exerted himself to spread the fame of ISTorth Carolina through- out the Highlands. Consequently when Weal McN'eal, one of the earliest of the Scotch settlers on the Cape Fear, visited Scotland in 1739, carrying tidings of the 54 Race Elements of North Carolina new land beyond tlie Atlantic, he found a fertile soil in which to sow his seed, and upon his return to N^orth Carolina in the autumn, brought a ship-load of 350 Highlanders. They landed at Wilmington where ac- cording to tradition their peculiar costume and out- landish language so frightened the town officials that they attempted to make the strangers take an oath to keep the peace, but from this indignity MclSTeal man- aged to save them, and taking his countrymen up the river to the Highland settlement, found for them there a hearty welcome. At the session of the Assembly in February, 1740, Dugal McN"eal and McAllister, pre- sented a petition in behalf of these immigrants in which they stated "if proper encouragement be given them, that they'l invite the rest of their friends and acquaintances over;" and the House of Commons passed a series of resolutions exempting the petitioners from taxation for ten years; appropriating £1,000 for their subsistence; exempting all such immigrants, who came in companies numbering as many as forty each, from taxation for ten years after their arrival ; and requesting the governor to use his influence to encour- age others to come. The Council, however, deferred action on these resolutions till the next Assembly but failed then to take them up for consideration.^ The action of the House is of interest chiefly as showing the favorable attitude of the colony toward these High- land-Scotch settlers. On the heels of this liberal action came the disaster of CuUoden, the rise in rents, and the harsh enactments of the British Parliament, and immediately a flow of population from the Highlands 1. Colonial Records, IV, 489-490. Highland Scotch 55 to the New World set in so strong and steady that the refrain of one of the popular songs of the day was, "Going to seek a fortune in North Carolina. "^ Shipload after shipload of sturdy Highland settlers reached the shores of America, and most of them land- ing at Charleston and Wilmington found their way to their kinsmen on the Cape Fear. Here in a few years their settlements were thickly scattered throughout the territory now embraced in the counties of Anson, Bladen, Cumberland, Harnett, Moore, Richmond, Robeson, Sampson, Scotland, and Hoke. With a keen appreciation of its commercial advantages they selected a point of land at the head of navigation on the Cape Fear where they laid out a town, first called Camp- bellton, then Cross Creek, and finally Fayetteville. The Highlanders continued to pour into North Caro- lina right up to the outbreak of the Revolution, but as no official record of their numbers was kept it is impossible to say how numerous they were. Perhaps, however, from reports in the periodicals, letters, and other documents of the day, we may arrive at some idea of their numerical importance. In 1755 it was estimated that there were in Bladen county about 500 white persons, most of whom were Highlanders, capa- ble of bearing arms, from which it is reasonable to infer that the total population was not less than 2,500, The Scots Magazine, in September 1769, records that the ship Molly had recently sailed from Islay filled with passengers for North Carolina, and that this was the third emigration from that county within six years. 2. The Gaelic is: Dol a ah 'iarruidh an fhortain do North Carolina. 56 Race Elements of I^orth Carolina The same journal in a later issue tells us that between April and July, 1770, fifty-four vessels sailed from the Western Isles laden with 1,200 Highlanders all bound for North Carolina. Two years later the ship Adven- ture bore a cargo of 200 emigrants from the High- lands to the Cape Fear, and in March of the same year Governor Martin wrote to Lord Hillsborough, Secretary of State for the Colonies ; "ISTear a thousand people have arrived in Cape Fear River from the Scottish Isles since the month of J^ovember with a view to settling in this province whose prosperity and strength will receive great augmentation by the ac- cession of such a number of hardy, laborious and thrifty people." In 1773 the Courant, another Scot- tish paper, declared that 800 people from Skye had already engaged a vessel to take them to their kinsmen in North Carolina. The ship Jupiter sailed in 1775 with 200 emigrants bound for the same colony, and as late as October of that year, after the Revolution w^as well under way. Governor Martin notes the arrival at Wilmington of a shipload of 172 Highlanders. From 1769 to 1775 the Scotch journals mention as many as sixteen different emigrations besides "several others." Not all of these emigrants came to North Carolina. Georgia, New York, Canada, and other colonies re- ceived a small share, but "the earliest, largest and most important settlement of Highlanders in America, prior to the Peace of 1783, was in North Carolina along Cape Fear River."^ Governor Martin wrote to the King in 1775, that he could raise in this colony an array of 3,000 Highlanders, from which it is a reason- 3. MacLean: The Highlanders in America, p. 102. See also Hanna: The Scotch-Irish in America. Highland Scotch 57 able conclusion that at that time the Highland-Scotch population of North Carolina was not less than 15,000. Several of the clans were represented, but at the out- break of the Revolution the MacDonalds so largely pre- dominated in numbers and in leadership that the campaign of 1776, which ended at Moore's Creek Bridge, was spoken of at the time as the "insurrection of the Clan MacDonald." Though unfortunate economic conditions lay behind this Highland emigration, it is not therefore to be supposed that those who left their native land to seek homes in America belonged to an improvident and thriftless class, or that they arrived in Carolina empty- handed. Such people, as was pointed out in the lecture on the English, are not the kind of people who volun- tarily take upon their shoulders the task of conquering the wilderness and laying the foundations of great states and governments. The Highland emigrants were among the most substantial and energetic people of Scotland and they left the land of their nativity because it did not offer them an outlet for their activities. The Scots Magazine in 1771 tells us that a band of 500 of these emigrants had recently sailed for America "un- der the conduct of a gentleman of wealth and merit, whose ancestors had resided in Islay for many cen- turies past." Another colony, according to the same journal, was composed of "the most wealthy and sub- stantial people in Skye," while the Courant, in 1773, declared that a colony of nearly 500 emigrants who had just sailed were, "the finest set of fellows in the High- lands," and that they carried "at least £6,000 sterling in ready cash with them." From the single county of Sunderland, in 1772 and 1773, about 1,500 emigrants sailed for America, who, according to the Courant, 58 Race Elements of North Carolina carried with them an average of £4 sterling to the man. "This," says that journal, "amounts to £7,500 which exceeds a year's rent of the whole county." It is not so easy to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion as to the financial condition of the Highlanders after their arrival in North Carolina. On the whole they were poor Avhen compared with their English neigh- bors, but their condition was undoubtedly a great improvement over what it had been in Scotland. From both the Governor and the Assembly as well as the people generally, the Highlanders received num- erous evidences of welcome to their adopted country. As early as 1740 the Governor commissioned several of their leading men justices of the peace. In 1758 Hector McNeill was appointed sheriff of Cumberland county, but the services of a sheriff seem not to have been greatly in demand, for McNeill's fees for the whole year amounted to only ten pounds. By 1754 the Highland settlement around Campbellton had grown so important that the General Assembly erected it into a county which, with curious irony, was called in honor of "Butcher Cumberland," and gave it the privi- lege of sending two representatives to the Assembly. A few years later the Assembly passed an act providing for the building of a road from the river Dan on the Virginia line through the counties of Guilford, Chat- ham and Cumberland to Cross Creek on the Cape Fear, and another leading to it from Shallow Ford in Surry county. Thus Cross Creek became the trading point for all the back country as far inland as the Moravian settlement around Salem, and soon grew into one of of the principal towns in the province. The Highlanders desired to reproduce in Carolina the life they had lived in Scotland, but changed condi- Highland Scotch 59 tions, as they soon found, made this impossible. True no law made it illegal for the clans to maintain their tribal organizations, or forbade the chiefs to exercise their hereditary authority, or made it a crime for the clansmen to bear arms, or to wear the tartan. But as the basis of the clan system was military necessity, in the absence of such necessity the system could not flourish. In Scotland the clansmen had obeyed their chief in return for his protection against hostile neigh- bors; in Carolina there were no hostile neighbors. Law reigned supreme, and under its benign sway the hum- blest clansman was assured of far more effective pro- tection of life and property than the most powerful chief in the Highlands could possibly have given him. As soon as the clan system became unnecessary it be- came irksome and irritating, and rapidly disappeared. With its passing passed also the meaning, and there- fore the usefulness, of the Highland costume, which was soon laid aside for the less picturesque but more serviceable dress of their English fellow countrymen. Their language was destined to a similar fate. When preaching in English to the Highlanders at Cross Creek in 1756 Hugh McAden found that many of them "scarcely knew one word" he spoke. The Gaelic made a brave struggle against the all-conquering English tongue, but a vain and useless one. Entrenched in an impregnable stronghold as the language of all legal, social, political and commercial transactions, English effected an easy conquest, and the Gaelic speech disap- peared as a common medium of expression, surviving only among a few ancient fathers who, lingering beyond the alloted time, found it a convenient language in which to glorify the splendors of the past and bemourn the degeneracy of their own day. Under these circum- 60 Race Elements of ISTorth Carolina stances tlie peculiar political and social institutions of the Highlanders gave way before those of their adopted country, and after the second generation of Highland settlers had followed their fathers to the grave nothing remained to distinguish their descendants from their English countrymen save only their Highland names. The Highlanders were peculiarly unfortunate in the time at which they came to America. Nothing could have been more essential to their welfare than peace and quiet, freedom from political agitation and from the calamities of war. But for them there seemed to be no peace, and in exchanging Scotland for Carolina they seemed but to have exchanged the character of their troubles. From 1768 to 1771, the period during which the greater part of them reached our shores, civil war raged in ISTorth Carolina between the colonial govern- ment and the Regulators. In this much misunderstood event the sympathies of the Highlanders seem to have been wholly on the side of law and order, and when Governor Tryon marched against the rebels in 1771 a company of Highlanders under Captain Earquard Campbell fought bravely under his command at Ala- mance. The outbreak of the Revolution presented to the Highlanders a far more momentous question. Should they array themselves under the royal standard and support the cause of established government, or should they again risk all upon the uncertain venture of re- bellion and revolution? If we find that the Highland- ers, when brought face to face with so important a problem, rendered the wrong decision, let us recall their recent experience in Scotland and the circum- stances under which they emigrated to the Wew World before we presume to pronounce judgment. At the HiGHLANB Scotch 61 beginning of the disputes witli the mother country, when nobody dreamed of any other action on the part of the colonists than the presentation of legal and peaceful petitions and protests, the sympathies of the Highlanders on the whole were with their fellow colon- ists. Hardly had they become settled on the Cape Fear when those peaceful waters were disturbed by the outbreaks at Brunswick and Wihnington which speedily followed the passage of the Stamp Act. It was not to be expected of course that the Highlanders should take any part in this resistance, but so far as they showed any interest at all it was against the Min- istry. At Cross Creek Lord Bute, the favorite of George III, who was supposed to be the moving spirit behind the passage of the Stamp Act, was burned m effigy, and a letter written from that place to the pa- triots of Wilmington called upon them in the name of "dear liberty" to resist any attempt to land the stamps in North Carolina. In 1775 and 1776 the Highlanders sent Farquard Campbell, Thomas Rutherford Alex- ander McKay, and Alexander MacAlister, all good Highland names, to represent them in the provincial congresses and they also had their committees of safety. But when they saw that these congresses and com- mittees were drifting toward open rebelhon and war, they refused to follow. Thereupon the Provincial Con- gress appointed a committee made up principally ot Highlanders who had long been residents of the colony "to confer with the gentlemen who have lately arrived from the Highlands in Scotland to settle m this Prov- ince and to explain to them the nature of our unhappy controversy with Great Britain, and to advise and urge them to unite with the other inhabitants of America m 62 Race Elements of North Carolina defense of those rights which they derive from God and the Constitution. "^ But this mission was in vain : the Highlanders were willing to petition the King and Parliament for a redress of their grievances, hut they would not take up arms against the Crown ; the truth is they had had enough of rehellion in Scotland and they showed no inclination to repeat the experiment in America. Consequently w^hen the appeal to arms came the Highlanders withdrew their support from the Rev- olutionary party and indicated to the Governor their willingness to support the royal cause. The most influential of the Highland leaders was Allan MacDonald, husband of the famous Flora Mac- Donald, a man of great dignity, stately hearing, and noble, impressive countenance. Him and his son-in- law, Alexander McLeod, the royal governor, Martin, recommended to the King for appointment as major and captain, respectively, saying of them, "besides be- ing men of great worth and good character, [they] have most extensive influence over the Highlanders here, a great part of whom are of their own names and families." MacDonald, so lately in rebellion against the House of Hanover, was now eager to make a dis- play of his loyalty, and in July, 1775, he paid a secret visit to Governor Martin to perfect with him plans for organizing and arming his countrymen. Their plans met with the hearty concurrence of the King and Min- istry, and had a most important bearing on the fate of the American cause in the South. Briefly, they were as follows : MacDonald was to organize and arm the Highlanders and march them to Wilmington, where 4. Colonial Records, X, 173. Highland Scotch 63 they were to be joined by Lord Cornwallis with seven regiments of British regulars, escorted by a powerful fleet of fifty-two sails under the command of Sir Peter Parker. Sir Henry Clinton with a force of 2,000 troops from the British army at Boston was to sail for Wilmington and take command of the expedition. It was fully expected that before such a combined force North Carolina would fall an easy victim, and then could be used as a base for operations against South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia, thus cutting off the entire South from the middle and northern colonies and crushing the rebellion at its very inception. That this scheme did not succeed was due to the splendid victory of the Whigs at Moore's Creek Bridge in the early morning hours of February 27, 1776. Here was an event of far greater significance than is usually accorded to it in our histories, and the histor- ian Frothingham is guilty of no exaggeration when he calls it the "Lexington and Concord" of the South. The first day of February, 1776, was set as the date for the gathering of the clans, and on that day the royal standard was unfurled at Cross Creek. The Fiery Cross had been sent abroad, and soon the clans- men gathered from far and near, "from the wide plantations on the river bottoms, and from the rude cabins in the depths of the lonely pine forests, with broadswords at their sides, in tartan garments and feathered bonnets, and keeping step to the shrill music of the bag-pipe. There came, first of all. Clan Mac- Donald with Clan MacLeod near at hand, with lesser numbers of Clan MacKensie, Clan MacEae, Clan Mac- Lean, Clan MacKay, Clan MacLachlan, and still others — variously estimated at from fifteen hundred to three 64 Race Elements of North Carolina thousand."^ Drawn up in battle array, this Highland host presented a martial spectacle that might have stirred the sluggish blood of King George himself ; and cheer after cheer broke from the throats of the loyal clansmen as their beloved Flora MacDonald, the pride of every true Highlander, gracefully seated on a milk- white horse,^ rode down their line and called upon them to do battle loyally for their sovereign and his crown. On February 18th the Highlanders, 1,600 strong, singing the songs of their native hills and keeping step to the music of the bag-pipes, marched out of Cross Creek and took the road to Wilmington. After some marching and counter-marching, they reached the bridge over Moore's Creek late in the evening of Feb- ruary 26, and there encamped for the night. Beyond the bridge 1,100 sturdy Whigs, under Colonel Richard Caswell and Colonel Alexander Lillington, slept upon their arms, waiting the command to dispute the pas- sage with the MacDonalds. The sun had not yet risen behind the dark and sombre pines on the morning of the twenty-seventh, when the Scots broke camp and prepared for battle. Their signal for attack was to be three cheers, the drums to beat and the pipes to play; their battle cry was "King George and broadswords." Leading the way Donald MacLeod stepped upon the bridge and called on his men to follow. From out of the dark beyond a voice rang out in the cold, crisp air : ''Who goes there?" "A friend," replied MacLeod. "A friend to whom?" demanded the other. "To the King," answered the Scot. Then fell a deathly silence. 5. MacLean: The Highlanders in America, p. 127. 6. Tradition. Highland Scotch 65 suddenly broken by the loud report of a gun, as Mac- Leod shouted the signal for attack, and dashed upon the bridge, followed by his men. The American mus- kets laid the brave Highlander low, and swept the bridge clear of his followers. Others rushed into the breach, but in vain. Thirty of the foremost fell dead, the rest lost heart, turned and fled. No victory could be more complete. The patriots had but one man killed and one wounded; the total killed among the Highlanders was about seventy, and their army was completely scattered. Three hundred and fifty guns, 150 swords and dirks, 1,500 excellent rifles, a box con- taining £15,000 in gold, thirteen wagons of supplies, 850 soldiers and many officers including Allan Mac- Donald, fell into the hands of the victors. A few days later Clinton and Cornwallis sailed into the Cape Fear with their powerful fleet and army, but no loyalist force was ther?? to welcome them. Abandoning an enterprise so desperately begun they sailed away to Charleston to knock in vain against the palmetto logs of Fort Moultrie. The victory at Moore's Creek Bridge saved JSTorth Carolina from conquest, and in all probability saved Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia to the Ameri- can cause. Of this victory Bancroft writes: "In less than a fortnight, more than nine thousand four hun- dred men of North Carolina rose against the enemy; and the coming of Clinton inspired no terror. . . . Virginia offered assistance, and South Carolina would gladly have contributed relief ; but North Carolina had men enough of her own to crush insurrection and guard against invasion; and as they marched in triumph through their piney forests, they were per- suaded that in their own woods they could win an easy 5 66 Race Elements of N'orth Carolina victory over Britisli regulars. The terrors of a fate like that of I^orfolk could not dismay the patriots of Wilmington; the people spoke more and more of inde- pendence; and the Provincial Congress, at its im- pending session, was expected to give an authoritative form to the prevailing desire."'^ The Provincial Con- gress met at Halifax Aj)ril 4, 1776, and eight days later, April 12, "Resolved, that the delegates for this Colony in the Continental Congress be impowered to concur with the delegates of the other Colonies in de- claring Independency, and forming foreign alliances." Thvis as a result of their brilliant victory over the Highlanders, "the patriot party" in the words of Richard Frothingham, "carried North Carolina as a unit in favor of independence, when the colonies from New England to Virginia were in solid array against it."8 The fate of the Highlanders was a hard one. In 1777, the General Assembly determined that the safety of the State demanded the expulsion from its borders of all who would not take the oath of allegiance. Ac- cordingly an act was passed which held out to all Loyalists the alternative of allegiance or banishment. True to their principles, most of those who were Loyal- ists from conviction accepted the latter choice. Chief among them were the Scotch-Highlanders who de- parted in large numbers. "Two-thirds of Cumberland county intend leaving this State," reported the colonel of the militia of that county in July, 1777. "Great Numbers of these infatuated and over-loyal People," said the North Carolina Gazette, in October, 1777, 7. History of the United States, (edition of 1860), VIII., 289-290. 8. Rise of the Republic of the United States, p. 504. Highland Scotch 67 "returned from America to their own Country," among wliom was Flora MacDonald. Others found new homes in Nova Scotia, Among the prominent High- landers who left North Carolina in 1777 was John Hamilton, "a merchant of considerable note," who sailed from ISTew Bern on a "Scotch transport, having on Board a ISTumber of Gentlemen of that Nation." Hamilton afterwards organized these Highlanders into a Loyalist regiment w^hich on numerous battlefields in the South worthily maintained the high reputation of their race for its fighting qualities. This exodus of the Highlanders from North Carolina in 1777 was comparable to their exodus from Scotland after Cullo- den. The policy which was responsible for it was per- haps the only course open to the new State ; neverthe- less one may be permitted to regret that circumstances compelled North Carolina to drive from her borders so many men and women of this strong, virile race. It was the peculiar misfortune of the Highlanders to suffer defeat in Scotland fighting against the House of Hanover, and again to suffer defeat in America fight- ing for the House of Hanover. In either case, how- ever much we may lament their error of judgment, we cannot fail to applaud their sense of loyalty to duty as they understood it. That same sense of loyalty led those who remained after the Revolution to pledge their allegiance to their new country in whose service their descendants have always manifested an equal readiness to labor and to sacrifice. In every depart- ment of our government descendants of the Highland- ers have rendered distinguished service, and in every crisis of our history they have been conspicuous for prompt and ready response to the call of duty. To estimate correctly how much North Carolina is in- 68 Race Elements of North Carolina debted to this race, let us recall in military history the names of Charles and Joseph McDowell, whose daring deeds on the very crest of King's Mountain turned the tide of the Revolution and led the way to Yorktown; in constitutional history the names of Samuel John- ston and Archibald Maclaine, whose ability and learn- ing contributed so largely to the formation of the State Constitution of 1776 and to the ratification of the Fed- eral Constitution by North Carolina; in politics the names of James J. McKay, for many years the leader of his party in the National Congress; in jurispru- dence James C. McRae and Robert M. Douglas, succes- sors of Gaston and Ruffin on the Supreme Court Bench ; in industry Paul C. Cameron; in literature John Charles McNeill ; in education Charles Duncan Mclver — Highland names all, which remind us that in their contributions to the history and fame of North Caro- lina the Highlanders have been second to no element in our population. IV The Scotch-Irish in North CaroUna During the four decades from 1735 to 1775 two streams of population flowing mostly from Penn- sylvania poured into the central part of I*Torth Caro- lina and spread far and wide over the fertile plains and valleys of that section. Though flowing side by side these streams originated in separate sources and throughout their courses kept themselves entirely dis- tinct. One was composed of immigrants of German descent, the other of immigrants of Scotch-Irish de- scent. Today we are concerned only with the latter. The term Scotch-Irish is a misnomer, and does not, as one would naturally suppose, signify a mixed race of Scotch and Irish ancestry. It is a geographical, not a racial term. Those who proudly claim this name reject with ill-founded disdain the implication con- veyed by the latter half of the compound, and point with justifiable pride to their pure Scottish descent. The so-called Scotch-Irish are in reality Scotch peo- ple, or descendants of Scotch people who once resided in Ireland. Into that country they came as invaders and lived as conquerors, hated as such by the natives, and feeling for them the contempt which conquerors always feel for subjugated races. From one generation to another the two races dwelt side by side separated by an immense chasm of religious, political, social, and racial hostility, each intent upon preserving its blood pure and uncontaminated by any mixture with the other. Thus the Scotch in Ireland remained Scotch, and the term "Irish" as applied to them is nothing more than a geographical term used to distinguish the 70 Race Elements of North Carolina Scotch immigrants who came to America from Ireland from those who came hither directly from Scotland. In fact the term "Scotch-Irish" is American in its origin and use, and is not known or used in Ireland. In that country, whose Irish population is almost entirely Roman Catholic in religion, the descendants of the Scotch settlers are generally known as "Irish Protes- tants" or "Irish Presbyterians." This is a far more significant term than our "Scotch-Irish," It raises the natural and inevitable inquiry. Whence came they? It recalls their long and bitter struggle for existence against the native population. It points to the ardor, the depth, the sincerity of their religious faith. It testifies to their force of character and their intellec- tual vigor. They are, as the name tells us, Protestants in Ireland; hence their presence there must be ex- plained. They are the representatives of Presbyter- ianism in the very stronghold of Catholicism; hence we may infer a long and bitter struggle for the right to exist with its ultimate victory. They are distin- guished from the general population by a religious term, hence we may know that they are earnest, im- movable, sincere in their religious convictions. They have in the face of intense religious and racial antag- onism remained firm, fearless, triumphant over over- whelming numbers ; hence we deduce their strength of character and keenness of intellect. A people possess- ing such marked characteristics are evidently well worthy of serious study. The Scotch settlers of Ireland came principally from the Lowlands of Scotland. This region lies to the south and west of the river Clyde and in area is about one-tenth the size of North Carolina. It is perhaps not too much to say that no other region of the same Scotch-Irish 71 size in the modern world has produced a larger number of eminent men. "It is only necessary," says Dr. McKelway, "to mention the names of William Wallace, Robert Bruce, John Knox, and Robert Burns to show that the race that inhabited these western Lowlands was a virile race. Here arose the royal line of the Stuarts; the family of which William Ewart Glad- stone was the most illustrious scion; and the ancestors of our own Washington. Here lived the Lollards, Re- formers before the Reformation, and here were mar- shalled the leaders and armies of the Reformation it- self. Here was the chief home of the Covenanters. Here has been built the great manufacturing city of the modern world, Glasgow, a model city in many re- spects. And from these seven counties flowed the main stream of immigrants into the province of Ulster, Ire- land, from which they emigrated in turn to the Ameri- can colonies, to be known henceforth as Scotch-Irish." ^ A fine description of the Lowland Scotch has been drawn by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Says he: "It is a remarkable history, that of Scotland, one of the most remarkable in the annals of men. Shut up in that narrow region of mountain and of lake, a land of storm and cold and mist, with no natural resources except a meager soil and a tempestuous sea to yield a hard-earned living; poor in this world's goods, few in number, for six hundred years these hardy people maintained their independence against their powerful foe to the southward, and only united at last upon equal terms. For six hundred years they kept their place among the nations, were the allies of France, 1. McKelway: The Scotch-Irish in North Carolina (N. C. Booklet, Vol. IV, No. 11). 72 Race Elements of North Carolina were distinguished for their military virtues on the continent of Europe, and cherished a pride of race and country to which their deeds gave them an un- clouded title. They did all these things, this little peo- ple, by hard fighting. Eor six hundred years they fought, sometimes in armies, sometimes in bands, al- ways along the border, frequently among themselves. It was a terrible training. It did not tend to promote the amenities of life, but it gave slight chance to the timid or the weak. Those six centuries of bitter strug- gle for life and independence, waged continuously against nature and man, not only made the Scotch formidable in battle, renowned in every camp in Europe, but they developed qualities of mind and char- acter which became inseparable from the race. For it was not merely by changing blows that the Scotch maintained their national existence. Under the stress of all these centuries of trial they learned to be patient and persistent, with a fixity of purpose which never weakened, a tenacity which never slackened, and a de- termination which never wavered. The Scotch intel- lect, passing through the same severe ordeal, as it was quickened, tempered, and sharpened, so it acquired a certain relentlessness in reasoning which it never lost. It emerged at last complete, vigorous, acute, and pene- trating. With these strong qualities of mind and char- acter was joined an intensity of conviction which burned beneath the cool and calculating manner of which the stern and unmoved exterior gave no sign, like the fire of a furnace, rarely flaming, but giving forth a fierce and lasting heat."^ 2. Address in the U. S. Senate, March 12, 1910, at the pre- sentation to the United States by the State of South Carolina of a statue of John C. Calhoun. Scotch-Irish 73 The three characteristics which have most distin- guished the Scotch-Irish are: (1) The earnestness of their religious convictions; (2) their democracy; (3) their interest in education. (1) In estimating the character of the LowLand Scotch, the most important fact to be considered is their religion. To it we may trace in a large measure that intensity of conviction, that tenacity of purpose, that vigor of intellect of which Senator Lodge so elo- quently speaks. The Scotch Lowlander was an intel- lectual, not an emotional being, and his religious faith was founded on intellectual convictions rather than on spiritual emotions. To his type of intellect, penetrat- ing, logical, delighting in abstractions, the theology of Calvin and Knox appealed with especial force, and having once embraced their doctrines he was prepared to follow the Calvinistic logic to its ultimate conclu- sions. Forced to battle for existence not only against Roman Catholicism, but also against the Protestant Church of England, the Scotch Calvinists became the Protestants of Protestantism. Their system of Pres- byteriauism grew up at the outset without direct recog- nition from the law. It bound Scotland together as it had never been bound before, by its administrative or- ganization, its Church synods and general assemblies, and by the power which it gave the lay elders in each congregation. It summoned the laymen in an over- whelming majority to the earlier assemblies, and thus called the people at large to a decisive voice in the administration of affairs. "JN'o Church constitution," says John Richard Greene, "has proved in practice so democratic as that of Scotland." Its influence raised the nation at large to a consciousness of its own power, for the sphere of action to which it called the people 74 Race Elements of ISTorth Carolina was in fact not a mere ecclesiastical but a national sphere ; and the power of the Church was felt more and more in the political aifairs of the nation. Indeed, the Scottish people rose into power under the guise of the Scottish Kirk. (2) Their democracy not only in ecclesiastical but in political affairs as well. Calvinism exalted the in- dividual man, and accordingly the Church which grew out of it was a democratic institution, resting upon the individual. Each congregation sent representatives to the synods and to the assemblies. The Church, there- fore, legislated for itself, not through bishops and clergy, but through the laymen, that is, the people, and this is the very essence of democracy. Now, in a coun- try where Church and State are so closely allied as they were in Scotland in the sixteenth century, it is but a short step from ecclesiastical to political affairs. The same democratic principles, therefore, which prevailed in the Church might easily be made to prevail in the State. Thus the Scottish Presbytery became a training school for democracy. No one understood this better than King James. "A Scottish Presbytery," he de- clared, "as well fitteth with monarchy as God and the Devil. No bishop, no king!" And James, you will remember, was known as "the wisest fool in Christen- dom." (3) Their interest in education. The Roman Cath-^ olie Church of the sixteenth century, forbade the read- * ing of the Bible by the people. The Church of England, while it did not forbid it, certainly did not encourage it. But the study of the Bible by laymen was the very corner-stone of Calvinism. It followed, therefore, that Calvinism could not flourish unless the people could read and understand the Scriptures. Hence Scotch-Irish 75 John Knox was perfectly logical when he exclaimed, "Let the people be taught !" Education, therefore, be- came, under that system, the handmaid of religion, for the Presbyterian Church of Scotland thoroughly un- derstood that if it was to stand and grow it must link hands with the school. These characteristics the Scotch Lowlanders carried with them to Ireland. Ireland, as you know, has al- ways been a thorn in the side of England, and even today the government of Ireland is perhaps the most difficult and serious of England's domestic problems. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the problem was vastly more difficult. Ireland was simply a con- quered country whose people, highly excitable, deeply patriotic, and serairbarbarousin civilization, were ever ready upon the slightest pretext to break out into re- bellion. The problem was intensified by the fact that their rulers were representatives not only of an alien race but also of a hateful religion. With the Irishman, as with the Scotchman, religion is the prime factor in his life, but between the two there is a vast difference. They represent types as far apart as the poles. Where- as, as I have already pointed out, religion with the Scotchman is the result of intellectual convictions, with ^ a the Irishman it is an emotional sejijiimentvlj The typi- ^fHr^n cal Irishman is perhaps the most emotional being on t^-*-**^ "fr*'^ earth, and in no respects are his sentiments more in- tense than in his devotion to his Church and his love of country. In fact with the Irishman religion and pa- triotism are synonymous terms. For century after century he has seen his Church attacked, oppressed, and outlawed by the same powerful enemy which has conquered his country, and as a result he has come to identify the cause of each as the cause of the other. 76 Race Elements of North Carolina Thus in her relatious with Ireland, for generation after generation, England has assumed an attitude of hostility to the two most powerful national sentiments of the Irish race — patriotism and religion — and for more than three hundred years the history of Ireland has been an almost continuous history of tyranny on the part of her rulers, and rebellion on the part of her people. Such was the history of Ireland, particularly in the great province of Ulster, in the ]^orth, throughout the reign of Queen Elizabeth, So when James VI of Scotland, upon the death of Elizabeth, ascended the throne of England as James I, he found the province of Ulster in a deplorable condition. The English gov- ernment there was scarcely recognized by the people at all, and was a pure military despotism. The province was divided into ten districts, over each of which was a military commander in civil affairs and a bishop of the Church of England in ecclesiastical matters. It would be difficult to say which of the two was the more hateful to the natives. Ireland, like the Scotch High- lands, was inhabited by clansmen, who obeyed the laws and usages of the clan, and were loyal to their native chieftains. Like the chiefs of the Highlanders these Irish chiefs kept the country in a state of continuous rebellion against the English government. After the suppression of each rebellion, the British government confiscated the lands of the conquered, until finally practically all of the great province of Ulster, embrac- ing six large counties, containing four million acres of land, passed into the hands of the King. Soon after coming to the throne, King James determined on a plan of far-reaching importance with regard to Ulster. This plan was to take possession of the finest portions Scotch-Irish 77 of this great tract of country, and to transfer tlie own- ersliip of the land from Irish Catholics to Scotch Pres- byterians, thus introducing a Scottish population in place of an Irish one, and Scotch Protestantism in place of Irish Catholicism. To secure settlers for this purpose, King James nat- urally looked to that portion of Scotland nearest to Ireland. If you will examine the map of the British Isles you will observe that the Western Lowlands of Scotland, where dwelt the Scotch Presbyterians whom I have described, are separated from the N'orth of Ireland by the I^orth Channel which is there only about twenty miles wide. Here James found the peo- ple who, of all his subjects, were best suited to his pur- pose. They possessed an intense racial pride and, therefore, could be depended upon not to intermarry with the Irish. They were the most intense of Pro- testants and, therefore, could be depended upon to re- sist the attacks of Catholicism. They were firm even to obstinacy in character, and as they would owe their lands in Ireland to the generosity of the King they could be depended upon to uphold, support, and main- tain his Crown against all opposition. Accordingly in 1609 the lands of Ulster were surveyed, and the next year the settlers began to arrive. During the next ten years from 30,000 to 40,000 Scotch Lowlanders were settled in Ulster. They represented one of the most industrious, law-abiding and intelligent races in Europe. In Ulster, "they drained the swamps, felled the forests, sowed wheat and flax, raised cattle and sheep, began the manufacture of linen and woolen cloth, and not only made their own goods ... but began the exportation of linen and woolen cloth to 78 Race Elements of North Carolina England."^ As Greene says: "In its material result tlie Plantation of Ulster was undoubtedly a brilliant success. Earms and homesteads, churches and mills, rose fast amid the desolate wilds of Tyrone. . . . The foundations of the economic prosperity which has raised Ulster high above the rest of Ireland in wealth and intelligence were undoubtedly laid in the confisca- tion of 1610." The history of the Scotch in Ireland is one of the most interesting stories in human annals, but I can dAvell on it here only long enough to note the influence which their residence in Ireland had on their charac- ter. As a minority in the midst of an overwhelming majority, as aliens surrounded by a bitterly hostile native population, but two courses were open to the Scotch in Ireland, — they must either succumb to the force of the majority, sink their own identity in that of the natives, and become themselves Irish; or they must hold themselves absolutely apart from the native population, and develop more and more the social, re- ligious, and racial differences between the two peoples. If you have followed the description I have given of the Scotch character, you will have no doubt as to which of these alternatives the Scotch in Ireland adojited. In the midst of Irish Catholicism their Protes- tantism became more and more intensely Protestant. Seeing among the poverty-stricken Irish population the results of shiftlessness and improvidence in in- dustrial affairs, the Scotch laid yet greater emphasis upon industry and frugality, and became remarkable for their comfortable homes and appearances, their 3. McKelway: The Scotch-Irish in North Carolina {Book- let, IV, 11). Scotch-Irish 79 regular conduct and perseverance in business. Sur- rounded by a population which they regarded as much their inferior, the racial pride of the Scotch, already deep and strong, became yet deeper and stronger, until the Scotchman in Ireland became a more intense Scotchman than the Scotchman in Scotland, In some respects the effects of his residence in Ireland, under the peculiar circumstances which I have described, were anything else but admirable. If it confirmed and strengthened his religious convictions, it tended at the same time to make him a bigot ; if it developed indus- trial and frugal habits, it tended at the same time to develop greed and penuriousness ; if it strengthened racial instincts, it tended at the same time to encourage pride and vaingloriousness. "The fact that he was the royal colonist wrought in him the pride, the contempt, the hauteur and swaggering daring of a victorious race planted among a despised race." "The scorn of the Scot was met by the curse of the Celt," and intermar- riages between members of the two races were so rare and uncommon as to be anomalous. The Scotch people kept to the Scotch people, so that the Scotch-Irish, as has been so forcibly said, are in reality "Scotch through and through, they are Scottish out and out, and they are Irish because, in the Providence of God, they were sent for some generations" to dwell in the Emerald Isle. From Ireland descendants of these Scotch settlers came to America. Anomalous as it may seem, it is yet true that the immediate cause of this second emi- gration arose out of the fact that the Scotch settlement in Ireland had succeeded too well. Planted there by King James in 1610 to develop the country industri- ally and establish a strong Protestant civilization, a 80 Race Elements of North Carolina century later the success of their industrial enterprises was exciting the envy of their competitors in England, while the tenacity with which they held to their reli- gion gave offense to the hishops and clergy of the Established Church. In these two sources the one economic, the other religious, originated the emigra- tion to America. I have already mentioned the fact that the early Scotch settlers in Ulster laid the foundation of the woolen and linen manufactures for which that district has become famous. During the next century these enterprises developed rapidly. Out of the swamps of Ulster arose the cities of Belfast, Londonderry, and other manufacturing cities which became strong com- petitors of the manufacturing districts of England. At the close of the seventeenth century the industrial con- ditions in England were exceedingly unprosperous, and the English manufacturers imagined that they were be- ing ruined by the competition of Ireland in the woolen trade. In 1698 accordingly the British Parliament petitioned the King for protection, and at his command the Irish Parliament, which was totally subservient to the King, passed an act forbidding the exporting of woolen goods from that country. This was later fol- lowed by a second act forbidding the exportation of such goods to any country except to England. Thus the Irish wool growers and manufacturers were placed absolutely at the mercy of their English rivals who were able to fix their own prices for the Irish products. About the same time severe penal laws were enacted against the Roman Catholics and all dissenters from the Established Church. The reign of Queen Anne was essentially "a High Church regime" and the High Church party, led by the bishops, ruled supreme in the Scotch-Ibish 81 Irisli Parliament. They could see but little choice between the Roman Catholicism which King James wished to stamp out, and the Presbyterianism which he had used for his purpose. Under their leadership, therefore, the Irish Parliament passed a series of sta- tutes forbidding the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, and greatly restricting the worship of the Presbyterians. A test act was passed which required all persons who held any office under the government, all persons acting in town councils, and all persons practicing law, to take the communion according to the forms prescribed by the Church of England. This, of course, Presbyterians refused to do, and as practi- cally all such places in Ulster were filled by Presbyter- ians they were all immediately driven out of their of- fices. The political persecution was followed by a series of fines and imprisonments for those exercising the Presbyterian form of worship, and by social ostra- cism. Presbyterian school-masters, guilty of discharg- ing their duties, were liable to imprisonment. The doors of Presbyterian churches were nailed up, and an effort was made in the Irish Parliament to have an act passed declaring marriages performed by Presby- terian clergymen illegal and void. As one historian has expressed it, "All over Ulster there was an outburst of Episcopal tyranny." Of course no high-spirited, liberty-loving, energetic people would for an instant think of enduring such a situation. Finding reform impossible in Ireland, the Scotch-Irish, as we may now call them, looked to America for relief, and for fifty years before the be- ginning of the American Revolution left Ireland in crowds, taking with them their families, never to re- turn. In 1718, there is mention of "both ministers and 6 82 Kace Elements of North Carolina people going off." In 1728 Archbishop Boulter stated that "above 4,200 men, women and children have been shipped off from hence for the West Indies within three years." In 1740, a famine in Ulster "gave an immense impulse" to emigration, and it was estimated that during the next several years the annual flow to America amounted to 12,000 persons. From 1771 to 1773 "the whole emigration from Ulster is estimated at 30,000, of whom 10,000 were weavers."* Of this emigration, Froude says : "And now commenced the Protestant emigration, which robbed Ireland of the bravest defenders of the English interests, and peopled the American seaboard with fresh flights of Puritans. Twenty thousand left Ulster on the destruction of the woolen trade. Many more were driven away by the first passing of the Test Act. . . . Men of spirit and energy refused to remain in a country where they were held as unfit to receive the rights of citizens; and thenceforward, until the spell of tyranny was broken in 1782, annual shiploads of families poured themselves out from Belfast and Londonderry. The resentment which they carried with them continued to burn in their new homes; and in the War of Inde- pendence, England had no fiercer enemies than the grandsons and great-grandsons of the Presbyterians who had held Ulster against Tyrconnell." ^ Though a few of these settlers landed at Charleston and moved up the banks of the Pee Dee, the Catawba, and the Broad rivers, to the hill country of North Carolina and South Carolina, the great majority of them landed at Philadelphia. Many of these bought lands and settled in Pennsylvania, others moved south- 4. Hanna: The Scotch-Irish, I, 621-22. 5. The English in Ireland, I, 392. Scotch-Irish 83 ward into the western parts of Virginia and North Carolina. The reason for this is stated by our early governors to be the high price of lands in Pennsyl- vania, which, declared Governor Johnston in 1751, was already "overstocked with people," In 1752 Bishop Spangenberg, the leader of the Moravians in N'orth Carolina, declared that many settlers came here from England, Scotland, and the northern colonies, "on account of poverty, as they wished to own lands and were too poor to buy in Pennsylvania or JSTew Jersey." To the same effect wrote Governor Dobbs in 1755. He declared that as many as ten thousand immigrants from Holland, Britain, and Ireland had landed at Philadelphia in a single season, and conse- quently many were "obliged to remove to the south- ward for want of lands to take up" in Pennsylvania. There was still another very important reason for the large immigration of Scotch-Irish settlers into N'orth Carolina. During the thirty years from 1734 to 1765 the chief executives of ISTorth Carolina were Gabriel Johnston, who came here from Scotland, and Matthew Eowan and Arthur Dobbs, who were both Scotch-Irish- men from Ulster. All three of these governors were active in their efforts to induce Scotch and Scotch- Irish immigrants to settle in North Carolina. "Through these three men, their relatives, friends, con- nections and acquaintances in the north of Ireland and the south of Scotland, North Carolina was, perhaps, better known there than in any other part of the old world." 6 The route which these settlers followed from Penn- sylvania to North Carolina is plainly laid down on the 6. Saunders, W. L.: Prefatory Notes to Colonial Records of North Carolina, V, xl. 84 Race Elements of ]S]'orth Carolina maps of that day. It is called "The Great Road from the Yadkin River through Virginia to Philadelphia," and ran from Philadelphia through Lancaster and York in Pennsylvania, to Winchester in Virginia, up the Shenandoah Valley, thence southward across the Dan River to the Moravian settlements on the Yadkin River. The distance was 435 miles. On this route Colonel William L. Saunders, in his Prefatory N^otes to the Colonial Records of JSTorth Carolina, makes the following interesting comment: "Rememhering the route General Lee took when he went into Pennsyl- vania on that memorable Gettysburg campaign, it will be seen that very many of the North Carolina boys, both of German and of Scotch-Irish descent, in fol- lowing their great leader, visited the homes of their ancestors and went hither by the very route by which they came away. To Lancaster and York counties, in Pennsylvania, North Carolina owes more of her popu- lation than to any other known part of the world, and surely there never was a better population than they and their descendants — never better citizens, and cer- tainly never better soldiers."''' The date of the first Scotch-Irish settlers in North Carolina is 1735. At a meeting of the Governor's Council, November 29th of that year. Governor Johns- ton informed the members that he had received a let- ter from Arthur Dobbs, "and some other gentlemen of distinction in Ireland," and Mr. Henry McCulloch, a merchant of London, "respecting their intention of sending over to this province several poor Protestant families with design of raising flax and hemp." They accordingly asked for a grant of 60,000 acres of land 7. Saunders, W. L.: Prefatory Notes to Colonial Records of North Carolina. Scotch-Irish 85 in New Hanover county on Black Kiver; and their request was granted. The following year the settlers arrived and organized themselves into two congrega- tions, known as Goshen and the Grove. But the tide of Scotch-Irish immigrants which followed a few years later flowed farther to the westward into what are now the counties of Guilford, Orange, Alamance, Cas- well Rowan, Iredell, Cabarrus, Mecklenburg, Lincoln, and' Gaston. In 1751 Governor Johnston wrote: "Inhabitants flock in here daily, mostly from Pennsyl- vania and other parts of America, and some directly from Europe. They commonly seat themselves toward the west and have got near the mountains." Bishop Spangenberg in 1752 declared that "there are many people coming here because they are informed that stock does not require to be fed in the winter season. Numbers of [Scotch-] Irish have therefore moved m, but they will find themselves deceived because it they do not feed their stock in winter they will find to their cost that they will perish." How rapidly these immi- grants poured into North Carolina is shown by a letter from Matthew Rowan, acting-governor, m 1753. He writes: "In the year 1746 I was up in the country that is now Anson, Orange, and Rowan counties. There were not then above one hundred fighting men [*. e., a total population of less than 500] ; there is now at least three thousand, for the most part Irish Protest- ants and Germans, and daily increasing." This means that within six years the population of five hundred had grown to at least fifteen thousand. Another indi- cation of the rapid increase of population on the west- ern frontier is the dates of the formation of new coun- ties in that section. You should bear in mmd that these counties as they now exist, though still retaining 86 Race Elements of !N"orth Carolina their old names, have not retained their original boundary lines: the frontier county, in colonial days, had no western boundary, but extended as far west- ward as white population extended. Accordingly every time a county was formed from the western end of an existing county, we know that white population had moved farther westward. In 1746 Edgecombe,, Craven, and Bladen had such far-reaching boundaries. But so rapidly had population increased in the west that in that year Granville was cut off from the western part of Edgecombe, Johnston from Craven, and three years later, Anson from Bladen. The boundaries of these counties extended to the mountains and beyond. In 1752 Orange, still farther westward, was taken from Granville, Johnston and Bladen, and in 1753 Rowan was cut off from Anson. Nine years later another part of Anson, still farther to the westward, was taken to form Mecklenburg, which had become the center of Scotch-Irish settlements. Thus within six- teen years, as a result of the influx of Scotch-Irish and German immigrants into Piedmont Carolina, it was necessary to erect six new counties for their con- venience. About the only professions represented among these early Scotch-Irish settlers were the ministry, teaching, and surveying, and frequently these three were repre- sented by a single individual. Later, after the settle- ment became well established, lawyers found their way thither. Among the settlers the trades were well repre- sented. There were weavers, joiners, coopers, wheel- wrights, wagon-makers, tailors, blacksmiths, hatters, merchants, laborers, wine-makers, rope-makers, and fullers. Practically all were farmers, occupying small tracts of land, and doing their own work. Accord- Scotch-Irish 87 ingly children were regarded as an industrial asset, and large families prevailed. In 1755 Governor Dobbs declared that the Scotch-Irish family usually num- bered from five to ten children. But, as Dr. McKel- way says, their chief wealth was "in their own capacity to manufacture what they needed. When the goods brought with them began to wear out, the blacksmith built his forge, the weaver set up his loom, and the tailor brought out his goose. A tannery was built on the nearest stream and mills for grinding the wheat and corn were erected on the swift water courses. Saw mills were set up, and logs were turned into plank. The women not only made their own dresses, but the material as well, spinning the wool and afterwards the cotton into lindsey and checks and dyeing it according to the individual taste. ... In other words, the people were an industrial as well as an industrious people." ^ It is a rather difficult task to arrive at a just esti- mate of the character of the Scotch-Irish. There is perhaps no virtue in the whole catalogue of human virtues which has not been ascribed to them; no great principle of human liberty in our political and social system which has not been placed to their credit; no great event in our history which they are not said to have caused. Eulogy has exhausted the English tongue in their praise. Today, however, we are dealing with history, not with eulogy. We know that the Scotch- Irishman was domestic in his habits and loved his home and family; but we know also that he was an unemotional being, seldom giving expression to his affections and accordingly presenting to the world the 8. Booklet, IV, No. 11. 88 Race Elements of N^orth Carolina appearance of great reserve, coldness, and austerity. He was loyal to his own kith and kin, but stern and unrelenting with his enemies. He was deeply and earnestly religious, but the very depth and earnestness of his convictions tended to make him narrow-minded and bigotted. He was law-abiding so long as the laws were to his liking, but when they ceased to be he dis- regarded them, quietly if possible, forcibly if necessary. Independent and self-reliant, he was somewhat opin- ionated and inclined to lord it over any who would submit to his aggressions. He was brave, and he loved the stir of battle. He came of a fighting race; the blood of the old Covenanters, of the Ironsides of Cromwell, flowed in his veins, and the beat of the drum, the music of the fife, the call of the bugle aroused his fighting instincts. His whole history shows that he would fight, he would die, but he could never be sub- dued. In short, in both his admirable and his unad- mirable traits, he possessed just the qualities which were needed on the Carolina frontier in the middle of the eighteenth century ; and if you have listened closely to my story of his career in Scotland and in Ireland, you will not be surprised that it was he who conquered the great wilderness of the Piedmont Plateau, drove back the savages, and became, as Mr. Poosevelt has said, "the pioneers of our people in their march west- ward, the vanguard of the army of fighting settlers, who with axe and rifle won their way from the Alle- ghanies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific."^ When the tide of Revolution rolled upon the back- country, the Scotch-Irish were to a man the staunchest of American patriots. They had from the first strenu- 9. Winning of the West, I, 134. Scotch-Irish 89 ously opposed tlie policy of the Britisli Ministry, and as early as May, 1775, as perhaps some of you have heard, the Scotch-Irish of Mecklenburg county met at Charlotte and on the last day of that month formed a new county government, organized the militia, and elected county officers, "who shall hold and exercise their several powers by virtue of this choice and in- dependent of the Crown of Great Britain and former constitution of this Province." Some estimate of their contribution to our constitutional history may be formed when we remember that to them we are in- debted for the separation of Church and State in our government; for the clause requiring the establish- ment of public schools, and for the most democratic features of our Constitution, particularly the division of power into three branches, executive, legislative and judicial. In the military history of the Revolution they gave to N'orth Carolina Major-General Robert Howe, Brigadier-Generals William Lee Davidson, Griffith Rutherford, James Hogan; Colonels Benjamin Cleveland, Isaac Shelby, and John Sevier. It was the Scotch-Irish, under Colonel Francis Locke, who, in 1780, crushed the uprising of the Tories at Ramsauer's Mill and prepared the way for the overthrow of Corn- wallis in North Carolina. It was the Scotch-Irish under Colonel William R. Davie who so harassed the British army in its invasion of Western !N"orth Caro- lina that its officers baptized Charlotte, the center of the Scotch-Irish settlements, as the "Hornets' I^est" of the Revolution. It was the Scotch-Irish under Cleveland, Sevier, and Shelby who, on the very crest of King's Mountain, won the most brilliant victory of the Revolution. And it was largely a Scotch-Irish army which under General Greene stopped the tri- 90 Race Elements of North Carolina umphant march of Lord Cornwallis at Guilford Court House, compelled him to abandon North Carolina, and sent him flying into the arms of Washington at York- town. Time does not permit me to follow the contribu- tions of this race to our history subsequent to the Revo- lution. In politics, in religion, in commerce, in indus- try, and in education it has furnished a long line of leaders, around whose names cluster many of the great- est events in our history. We meet them in legislative chambers, on the bench, in the chief executive's chair. More than one-fourth of our governors since the Revo- lution claimed descent from Scotch-Irish ancestors. The first president of the University, and the first Superintendent of Public Instruction, were of this virile race. In national affairs the Scotch-Irish of North Carolina have been represented by senators, congressmen, cabinet ofiicials, and presidents. From the Scotch-Irish of Mecklenburg county alone sprung two Presidents of the United States, Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, while Andrew Johnson was also of this race. You see, therefore, that I cannot tell the story of the Scotch-Irish in North Carolina since the Revolution, without telling in a large measure, the his- tory of the State, and to do that would require more time and more patience than you have available. V The Germans in North CaroHna In the year 1773, while North Carolina was yet a colony of Great Britain, an English traveler set out on a journey of exploration from Hillsboro across the Blue Ridge Mountains. No well-marked highways directed him unerringly toward his destination, but innumerable trails and winding paths, zigzagging in all directions and crossing each other at a dozen dif- ferent points, led him hither and thither through the gloomy forests, seemingly beginning nowhere and lead- ing nowhere. Hunters and trappers might have fol- lowed them easily enough, but the traveler, having no such keen eyes as theirs, found it difficult to distinguish their faint outlines. The prospect before him, unprom- ising as it was, was not relieved by the following inter- esting fact, which he records in his account of his journey. "It was also unlucky for me," he declares, "that the greater number of the inhabitants on the plantations where I called to inquire my way, being Germans, neither understood my questions nor could render themselves intelligible to me." ^ Let us inquire who were these people here in North Carolina who could neither speak nor understand English, where they came from, and what they came for. Had the English traveler made his journey from Hillsboro a few years earlier he would now and then have met queer processions moving slowly along the 1. Smyth, J. F. D.: A Tour in the United States of Amer- ica, I, 236. 92 Race Elements of J^orth Carolina great wilderness road which led southward from Penn- sylvania to the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina. First would come a drove of cows, pigs and sheep trot- ting complaisantly toward him, followed closely by red-faced men and boys in the plain work-a-day clothes of the pioneer farmer. A canvas-covered wagon, stuffed with household goods, feather beds, and farm- ing implements, drawn by a pair or perhaps four stout horses, rumbling over roots and rocks and into holes and gulKes, would have brought up the rear. The traveler would have observed that the bed of this wagon was very low, but that it ran up high in the rear, under which feed troughs, pots, kettles, and water buckets dangled outside. From beneath the heavy canvas cover bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked children would have popped out their frowsy white heads to stare at the stranger or at the sights of the new country. From underneath the wagon the dogs, faithful sentinels of the camp, would have growled at the intruder and dis- played their long white teeth. Had the stranger stopped this odd procession and asked who these trav- elers were, whence they came, and whither they were going, he would have received an answer in the same unknown tongue which he heard in 1773. These patient movers were German immigrants coming into North Carolina from Pennsylvania. Vari- ous motives prompted their migrations. Some came in search of adventure and good hunting grounds. Others were looking for good lands. Still others were in- spired by religious motives. The first and smallest of these three groups became hunters and trappers, and in the vast unknown forests that extended along the foothills of the Alleghanies and covered the mountain sides, they chased the fox and the deer, hunted the German 93 buffalo and the bear, sbot the wolf and the panther, and trapped the beaver and the otter. With the open- ing of the spring they would gather up their store of skins and furs, and turning their backs upon the wilderness seek the settlements, frequently going as far northward as Philadelphia, to dispose of their winter's harvests. Those who came in search of land of course found it plentiful, cheap, and fertile. The only capital needed on the Carolina frontier was thrift, energy, and commonsense, and these characteristics the Germans possessed in a marked degree. Accordingly many thousands of them, driven from the Fatherland by unfavorable conditions, carved handsome estates for themselves and their children out of the American wilderness; and at the outbreak of the Revolution the banks of the Yadkin and the Catawba rivers were dotted with their neat, pleasant farms and their plain but comfortable cabins. A third class of Germans came to Carolina in search of religious freedom and of fields for missionary activity. Like their neighbors, the Scotch-Irish, they were moved by a fervent re- ligious zeal. In the unsettled political conditions of Germany they had frequently been disturbed and some- times persecuted because of their religious faith, and those terrible civil wars of that period, waged in the personal interests of their rulers, often swept away at a single blow the savings of years. Looking beyond the Atlantic they beheld a vast continent where men were free from the burdens of constant civil war, and where they worshipped God as they pleased. To America, therefore, despite the discomforts and dan- gers of an eighteenth century sea voyage, thousands of them turned as to a haven of refuge and a land of promise, many of whom, however, were inspired less 94 Race Elements of ISTorth Carolina by a desire to seek religious freedom for themselves than by a purpose to carry the gospel to the Indians. They found their first American homes in Pennsyl- vania, but from the years 1740 to 1775 a stream poured into the Piedmont section of North Carolina, settling in the territory then embraced in Anson and Granville counties, but now included in the counties of Orange, Rowan, Guilford, Burke, Lincoln, Randolph, Iredell, Stokes, Cabarrus, Davidson, Stanly, Catawba, Alamance, and Forsyth. These immigrants repre- sented three branches of the Protestant Church — the Lutheran, the German Reformed, and the Unitas Fratrum, or Moravian. The German settlers, though thoroughly law-abiding and patriotic, took but little interest in politics. The isolation of their situation on the extreme western frontier, their ignorance of the English language, and their lack of political experience made their participa- tion in the political affairs of the colony extremely difficult. They were willing to leave the management of the public business to the English and the Scotch, to whom politics came as second nature, while they devoted their energies to their religious, industrial and social affairs. In another very important respect the Germans differed from their English fellow-coun- trymen. The English in North Carolina following a strong bent toward individualism, settled on large and widely scattered plantations and developed an agricul- tural civilization based upon negro slave labor; the Germans, on the other hand, manifested a decided tendency toward communism, which led them to settle in compact communities, with the church and school as the center, and resulted in the development of an industrial civilization based on free white labor. German 9 5 There were several such communities among the Ger- man settlements in North Carolina, hut the one hest adapted to our study is, of course, Wachovia. This is true not only because the development of the Wa- chovia settlement as an industrial community has been more complete than any other, but also because its rec- ords from the beginning of the settlement to the pres- ent day have been perfectly preserved and afford an opportunity for an historical study not found in any other community in North Carolina. To Wachovia as a typical German community in North Carolina I shall, accordingly, direct your attention. The history of Wachovia begins in the year 17§3- In that year a company of Moravians, moved by a desire to find a home free from religious persecution, by a purpose to preach the gospel to the Indians, and by a wish to develop a community on their own pecu- liar principles without let or hindrance from outside influences, determined to plant a settlement in North Carolina. With that thoroughness which is one of the most marked characteristics of the German people, they sent out an exploring party under the leadership of Bishop Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg, to view the land and select the site for the colony. Spangenberg's party set out on their tour from Edenton and crossed the entire length of North Carolina to the very summit of the Blue Kidge Mountains where they viewed the headwaters of streams that rise in North Carolina and flow into the Mississippi River. A diary^ in Avhich the good Bishop recorded the minutest details of their expedition tells us in simple and impressive lan- 2. An English translation is printed in Colonial Records of North Carolina, V, 1-14. 96 Race Elements of North Carolina guage the story of tlie dangers and hardships which they encountered. Sickness, cold, and hunger were among the least of their sufferings. After a thorough and painstaking survey, the party selected a tract of land in what is now Forsyth county containing ahout 100,000 acres. "As regards this land," wrote the Bishop, "I regard it as a corner which the Lord has reserved for the Brethren. . . . The situation of this land is quite peculiar. It has countless springs and many creeks; so that as many mills can be built as may be desirable. These streams make many and fine meadow lands. . . . The stock would have excellent pasturage and might be kept for a number of winters among the reeds on the creeks. . . . The most of this land is level and plain; the air fresh and healthy, and the water is good, especially the springs, which are said not to fail in summer. . . . In the beginning a good forester and hunter will be indispensable. The wolves and bears must be extir- pated as soon as possible, or stock raising will be pur- sued under difficulties. The game in this region may also be very useful to the Brethren in the first years of the colony." Thus we see that the Bishop was im- pressed with the advantages which the country offered for the development of just such an industrial commu- nity as Wachovia afterwards became. It was Bishop Spangenberg who called the settle- ment Wachovia. The word is derived from two Ger- man words, "wach," a meadow, and "aue," a stream. Wachovia lay within the possessions of Lord Granville and from him the Moravian Brethren purchased it in August 1753. Two months later their plans were com- pleted, and October 8, 1753, twelve unmarried men set out from the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, Penn- German 97 sylvania, to break ground for the settlement of Wacho- via in North Carolina. No better evidence is needed of the shrewd, commonsense of these German settlers than the simple fact that this small band, whose mis- sion was to lay the foundation of civilization in the wilderness, consisted of a minister of the gospel, a warden, a physician, a tailor, a baker, a shoemaker and tanner, a gardener, three farmers, and two carpenters. In the industrial community which they went out to found there was to be no place for drones. It is also interesting to note that they were fully conscious of the significance of their undertaking. Looking far into the future with rare vision they foresaw the growth and development of their community and the intense interest with which posterity would inquire into its beginnings. Accordingly from the very first they re- corded their daily doings to the minutest and most trivial details. There is but one other instance in our history of such foresight, i. e. the colony which Baron de Graffenreid planted at the confluence of the Neuse and Trent rivers, and of which he himself left for posterity a most interesting account. The little band of Moravian Brethren made their journey from Pennsylvania to Carolina in a large covered wagon drawn by six horses. Their route car- ried them over mountains wild and rugged, into forests dense and dark, and across rivers whose banks were so steep that frequently the travelers had to grade them before their wagon could enter the streams. Nearly six weeks were required for the trip. When they left Pennsylvania they were oppressed with heat; when they reached North Carolina the ground was covered with snow. At 3 o'clock Saturday afternoon, Novem- ber 17, they reached the spot where now stands the 7 98 Race Elements of North Carolina town of Bethabara, better known in its immediate neighborhood as "Old Town." There they found shel- ter in a log cabin which had been built but afterwards abandoned by a German adventurer named Hans "Wago- ner. It was an humble abode, without a floor and with a roof full of cracks and holes, but in it the Brethren held their first divine service and had their first love feast. Sunday was observed as a day of real rest, but was followed by weeks of earnest, manly toil. One of their first cares was to enlarge their cabin and to lay in a supply of provisions for the winter. Their rifles supplied them with game in abundance. Salt was procured from Virginia, flour and corn from the Scotch-Irish settlements on the Yadkin, and beef from those on the Dan. In December they sowed their first wheat. A few days later came the Christmas sea- son, and on Christmas Eve they gathered around the great open fire in their log cabin to hear again the wonderful story of Bethlehem. "We had a little love feast," says their faithful journal; "then near the Christ Child we had our first Christmas Eve in North Carolina, and rested in peace in this hope and faith. . . . All this while the volves and panthers howled and screamed in the forests near by." Throughout their first year the Moravian Brethren kept steadily at their tasks, and before the year had gone they had in operation a carpenter shop, a tailor- ing establishment, a pottery, a blacksmith shop, a shoe shop, a tannery and a cooper shop; had harvested wheat, corn, tobacco, flax, millet, barley, oats, buck- wheat, turnips, cotton, garden vegetables; had cleared and cultivated fields, cut roads through the forests, built a mill and erected several cabins. They made long journeys, going as far north as Philadelphia and German 99 as far south as Wilmington. The physician, Dr, Lash, made trips twenty, fifty and even a hundred miles through the forests to visit the sick and relieve the suffering. The Brethren had many visitors who came long distances to consult the physician or to secure the services of the shoemaker or the tailor. There was but little money in the backwoods, and sometimes these visitors paid for the purchases in ways that were odd and amusing. A stranger passing through Wachovia wanted to buy a pair of shoes, but having no money, he agreed in payment for them to cut down and trim one hundred trees! Within three months, during the year 1754, 103 visitors came to Wachovia. The next year the number was 426. Visitors became so numer- ous that the Brethren decided to build a "strangers' house." This was the second building in Wachovia. Four days after it was finished it was occupied by a man and his invalid wife who came to consult the phy- sician. Travel between Wachovia and Pennsylvania was frequent and the little colony continued to grow. More unmarried men and later a few married couples came from Pennsylvania, and by 1756 the Bethabara colony numbered sixty-five souls. Until the outbreak of the French and Indian War, the Moravians were on friendly terms with the Indians. Indeed, one of their purposes in coming to North Carolina was to preach the gospel to them. They treated the Indians kindly, and the Indians spoke of the fort at Bethabara as "the Dutch fort, where there are good people and much bread." But with the breaking out of the w^ar the sav- ages became hostile, and their enmity gave the Mora- vian Brethren much trouble. The Brethren were com- pelled to build a fort, to arm every man in the colony, and to place sentinels around the settlement. Many 100 Race Elements of North Carolina thrilling incidents occurred during the war, and the Moravians were frequently called on to render services to their white neighbors. From thirty and forty miles around families sought refuge at Bethabara where all learned to love and respect the Moravian Brethren, some even applying for membership in the Moravian Church. After the close of the war the settlement grew more rapidly. Two towns, Bethabara and Bethania, were founded before 1760, but from the first the Brethren intended that the chief town should be in the center of Wachovia, and they thought the closing of the Indian War and the reestablishment of peace a favorable time to begin it. The first act in the founding of this new town, which received the name of Salem, took place January 6, 1766. During the singing of a hymn the work was be- gun by clearing a site for the first house, and on Feb- ruary 19th eight young men moved into it. Other houses were then erected in quick succession, and dur- ing the next year many of the Bethabara community moved to Salem, where they were joined by more Brethren from Bethlehem, and even by a goodly num- ber directly from Germany. Salem soon became the principal settlement of the Moravians in North Caro- lina. The same man whose adventure in the Carolina wilderness I described in the beginning of this lecture, visited Salem in 1773 and left an interesting descrip- tion of the town and its people as it appeared just upon the eve of the Bevolution. Leaving Salisbury he went first to Bethania and then to Bethabara. "This town," he said, "is ten miles from the other; but being in- formed that Salem was the principal, I immediately proceeded on after breakfast, and arrived there about Geeman 101 noon. . . . This society, sect, or fraternity of The Moravians have everything in common, and are pos- sessed of a very large and extensive property. . . . From their infancy they are instructed in every branch of useful and common literature, as well as in mechani- cal knowledge and labour. . . . The Moravians have many excellent and very valuable farms, on which they make large quantities of butter, flour, and provi- sions, for exportation. They also possess a number of useful and lucrative manufactures, particularly a very extensive one of earthen ware, which they have brought to great perfection, and supply the whole coun- try with it for some hundred miles around. In short, . . . they certainly are valuable subjects, and by their unremitting industry and labor have brought a large extent of wild, rugged country into a high state of population and improvement."^ Thirteen years later, just at the close of the Kevolu- tion, another traveler visited Wachovia, and left us his impression of the Moravian settlement.'* After visiting the Guilford Battle Ground, he says: "I pursued the route of Cornwallis in his advance, and entered the possessions of the happy Moravians, so justly distinguished for their piety, industry, and ad- mirable police. The road from Guilford to Salem was good, and the country pleasant. ... In the gen- eral face of the country. . . . this region closely resembles the South of France. . . . "The moment I touched the boundary of the Mora- vians, I noticed a marked and most favorable change in 3. Smyth: Vol. 1, Chapter XXIX. 4. Watson, Elkanah: Men and Times of the Revolution, 292-94. 102 Race Elements of North Carolina the appearance of buildings and farms; and even the cattle seemed larger, and in better condition. Here, in combined and well-directed effort, all put shoulders to the wheel, which apparently moves on oily springs. We passed, in our ride, 'New Garden, a settlement of Quakers from Nantucket. They too, were exemplary and industrious. The generality of the planters in this State depend upon negro labor, and live scantily in a region of affluence. In the possessions of the Mo- ravians and Quakers, all labor is performed by whites. Every farm looks neat and cheerful; the dwellings are tidy and well furnished, abounding in plenty. "In the evening, I attended service at the Moravian chapel. This 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. On our first entrance, only two or three persons were visible; but, the moment the organ sounded, several doors were simultaneously opened. The men were ushered in on one side, and the women on the other; and in one minute the seats were filled, and the devotees arranged for worship. The devotions, on that occasion, were merely chanting a melodious German anthem, accompanied by an organ. "In the morning, I was introduced to Mr. Bargee, their principal. He conducted me through all their manufactories, and communicated to me, with much intelligence, many facts in relation to the tenets and habits of this devout and laborious sect. Salem com- prehended about forty dwellings, and occupies a pleas- ant situation. . . . Every house in Salem was supplied with water, brought in conduits a mile and a half." German 1^3 In 1791 tlie Moravian Bretliren liad the liouor of entertaining at Salem George Washington, President of the United States. In taking his leave after a round of festivities, Washington addressed a letter to "The United Brethren of Wachovia" in which he said: "From a society whose governing principles are indus- try and love of order much may he expected toward the improvement and prosperity of the country m which their settlements are formed, and experience authorizes the helief that such will he obtained." Wash- ington's words were prophetic. The influence of the Moravian Brethren, although exerted so unostenta- tiously as to pass abnost unnoticed, has heen altogether out of proportion to their numerical strength, ihe thousands of visitors who have been attracted to Wachovia by the peculiarity of their customs have re- turned to their homes profoundly impressed by the sin- cerity of their religious devotions, their zeal for edu- cation, and their remarkable skill in the development of large industrial enterprises. It is surely no acci- dent thart the oldest college for young women m the Southern States is located in their midst; nor was it a freak of chance that the most important manufactur- ing city in North CaroHna should be the twin sister ot ^^xTese customs and characteristics of tliej^^^^^/^ settlers were, perhaps, more accentuated m Wachovia than anywhere else in ^rth Carohna, but they we e by no means confined to the Moravians. Had we paid a visit, let us say one hundred years ago, to Lmcolnton, Salisbury, Concord, and their neighboring commun- des we Luld have found that Salem was but a well- sloped type of the several German — n^^^^^^^^^^ the State. Everywhere the people would have greeted 104 Race Elements of North Carolina us in the German language, or a corrupted form of it known as "Pennsylvania Deutsch," At this time, too, the names of the people retained not only their German pronunciation, hut also their German spelling. Our modern Coon was then Kuhn, Barringer was Behrin- ger, Smith was Schmidt, Williams was "Wilhelm. Thus it happens that many persons in our history whose names would indicate an English ancestry were really of German descent. The houses of the German settlers, usually construct- ed of logs, were far less pretentious than the manor houses on the broad plantations of their English coun- trymen in the East; but they had in a much more marked degree the charm of simplicity and orderli- ness ; and their farms though smaller were better culti- vated, their cattle fatter and sleeker. The superiority of the German farmer in these respects over the Eng- lish planter was due not only to his greater industry and thrift, but also to the difference in his system of labor. It was the difference between the skilled, care- ful and energetic labor of the free white man working under the impetus of self-interest, and the inefficient, wasteful, compulsory labor of the enslaved negro Avork- ing under the impulse of the lash. In the German household everybody worked, including father. They not only raised their own food, but also made their own clothes. The women were expert weavers, and knew how to dye and combine colors into beautiful fab- rics. Their markets were Cross Creek [Fayetteville], Columbia and Charleston, and a trip to market was a very serious and sometimes a dangerous undertaking. It took four or five weeks to carry a wagonload of produce to Charleston and bring back supplies for the farm. Such trips were not made often, and as a con- German ^^'^ sequence tlie German settlers learned to depend on their own industry and skill for most o£ their necessi- The center of tlie German settlement was the church and the schoolhouse. Generally the same huildings served for both, and the same man as minister and teacher Their churches at first were built of logs, but as they increased in prosperity these log churches were replaced with frame buildings and sometimes with brick and even stone structures. The principal book in the German home was the Bible. Among the Ger- mans as among the Scotch-Irish the leader of the peo- ple was usually the minister. He had need to be not only a scholar, but a man of great physical power and endurance for his office was no sinecure. The people of his congregations were scattered over a large terri- tory, sometimes forty and fifty miles from their churches, and the minister was compelled to take long and lonely rides to visit them. These rides were no child's play. They led him over rough roads, running through dark forests, crossing rivers and creeks with- out bridges, and took him out in snow as well as m sunshine He often met danger, too, from wild beasts, for there were still plenty of panthers and wild cats m the woods, and bears frequently crossed Ihb P^th. One of these ministers, who came directly from Ger- many, has left us an interesting account oil^'^^'^'^ among the German settlers. Landing at Charleston he rode three hundred miles on horseback to Lincoln- ton He was fourteen days on the journey, sometimes spending the nights at the homes of settlers and some- times cLping in the woods. But when he reaped Lincolnton, he says, the warm welcome 1- -.un- paid him for all the troubles and discomfoits ol his 106 Race Elements of N^orth Carolina long trij). The people came many miles to welcome him.. He found them open and frank in their manner and speech. They knew nothing of compliments, and did not know how to flatter, but they spoke in a way that showed they knew how to think. So many of them invited him to go to their homes that he hardly knew how to choose. "They helped us to buy a fine plantation of 200 acres," he said, "and as soon as we were settled the people from all parts of the country brought us flour, corn, hams, sausages, dried fruit, chickens, turkeys, geese, butter, cheese and other things in such quantities that for many weeks we had no necessity for spending one penny for housekeeping." We learn from his story many of the interesting so- cial customs of the Grerman settlers. One incident that he relates shows their law-abiding character. "One day," he said, "I passed the courthouse in Lincolnton at the moment when a man was standing in the pillory. A German settler called to me to stop a while and see how Americans punish rogues and thieves. I asked him: 'This criminal certainly is not a Grerman?' He replied : 'JSTever has a German stood in pillory in Lin- colnton, nor has a German been hung in this place." Another characteristic of the Germans was their humor. They believed thoroughly in the philosophy of the old rhyme so frequently on their lips, "A little nonsense now and then Is relished by the best of men." While at work they worked earnestly, but when holi- days came they indulged to the fullest degree in their fun and sports. They loved their Easter celebrations and their Kris Kringle frolics. Then, too, they had their quilting parties, their spinning matches, corn German 107 shuckings, log rollings, house raisings, and other amusements that not only afforded fun and frolic for the young, but combined utility with sport. Box- ing, wrestling, racing, swimming, and other outdoor sports were favorite pastimes. In the development of their religious and social life the German settlers had one very decided advantage over the other early settlers in North Carolina. As I have already pointed out they came to the colony in congregations, and settled as communities. This fact of course enabled them to organize churches and schools much more readily than those who settled on widely scattered plantations. Those pioneer schools were ex- ceedingly crude institutions. The schoolhouses were of logs; the cracks were stopped up with red clay; they had no floor except mother earth; the desks were logs trimmed flat on the upper side, with no backs and no rests for the books or the arms. There were no black- boards, maps or pictures. About the only decoration of which such a school could boast was the long hickory rod over the teacher's chair, which, like the sceptre of the king, "shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of . . . ." the pedagogue. Of course, as the settlements grew and prospered, those first schoolhouses gave way to better ones. But even the best were unattractive enough. Pennsylvania and Germany supplied the teachers, many of whom were men of ability and profound scholarship. As a rule they combined the two ofiices of teacher and preacher in the same person. The text-books used in 108 Race Elements of North Carolina the schools for many years were all written in the Ger- man language, and English was not used at all. It was not until some years after the Revolution that English found its way into these German schools, and even then it had to take a secondary place. The first Eng- lish school was opened in 1798 in Cabarrus county by John Yeoman. This reform won its way slowly against the opposition of the older settlers who clung tenaciously to the language of their cradles. But their children finding themselves in a State in which all social, commercial and legal transactions were carried on in the English tongue, naturally and properly were unwilling to go through life under the handicap of being ignorant of the very language in which they must transact all of their affairs. Of course English won the day and in time not only ousted the German from the schools, but took its place in the daily affairs of the Germans themselves until their very surnames, as I have said, became Anglicized. Many of these German schools have interesting his- tories, a typical one being the Pleasant Retreat Acad- emy of Lincolnton, founded in 1813. "The older stu- dents delighted to speak of its refreshing shades — the oak and hickory, interspersed with chestnuts and chin- quepins — and the spring at the foot of the hill." Many distinguished men were numbered among its trustees, and its teachers, we are told, were men of ability. But a school, like a tree, is to be judged by its fruits. What kind of students does it have, and what does it do for them? Some of the students of Pleasant Retreat Academy wrote their names high in our annals. How largely the Germans have influenced, and still influence the educational thought of North Carolina you may infer from the fact that Sidney M. Finger, German 109 for eight years state superintendent of public instruc- tion, was of this race; that the president of Salem College and of the State ]N"ormal and Industrial Col- lege, are both of German descent ; and that the superin- tendents of i^ublic schools in at least seven of our coun- ties at this time are men of German ancestry. It is certainly not without significance that the same year, 1813, which saw the founding of Pleasant Retreat Academy, also saw the erection at Lincolnton of the first cotton mill in l^orth Carolina. The mill, the work of a German, Michael Schenck, was the fore- runner of that remarkable industrial development which has placed North Carolina second among the States of the American Union in the manufacture of cotton. How largely this State is indebted to her Ger- man population for her industrial development will be readily seen by pointing out the geographical center of the manufacturing industries of North Carolina, and by studying the names of the men behind these enterprises. In 1910 the sixteen counties which I mentioned as having been settled largely by Gemians, contained 162 of the 402 cotton, woolen, silk and knit- ting mills then in the State, or more than 40 per cent. That this industrial development is due primarily to the Germans is shown not only by the names of the pioneers in manufacturing industries in this State — the Schencks, the Frieses, the Holts, the Reinhardts, the Hokes, and many others — but also by an examina- tion of the officials in those manufacturing corporations even of today. These manufacturing enterprises are largely owned or controlled by men of German descent. This industrial development, indeed, is the most strik- ing and important of the contributions of the Germans to our civilization. 110 Race Elements of North Carolina But in many other spheres of activity the Germans have contributed leaders, — in war, in politics, in law, in literature, and in religion. To war they gave Gen- eral Stephen D. Eamseur and General Robert F. Hoke; to politics, Thomas L. Clingman and P. M. Simmons, United States senators; to law, Charles Price, David Schenck, and William A. Hoke;; to litera- ture, John H. Boner and Frances Fisher Tiernan, bet- ter known to her readers as Christian Reid. In the religious life of the State the Germans have played a part all out of proportion to their numerical strength. Of course in the Lutheran, the German Reformed, and the Moravian Churches the leaders are almost entirely, if not entirely, German. But that their influence is not limited to these religious organizations was strikingly pointed out to me a few days ago, when my attention was called to the fact that at the last session of the Western Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the names of five out of eleven presiding eld- ers chosen, and of sixty-seven, or 29 per cent of the pas- tors assigned to congregations, indicated that they were of German ancestry. Throughout our history, the Germans have been the most conservative force in the life of the State. In every crisis they have acted as a steadying influence upon their more volatile countrymen, and when the Englishman, at some fancied trespass upon his prop- erty rights, or the Highlander, at some imaginary affront to his personal dignity, or the Scotch-Irishman, at some supposed attack upon his political or religious liberty, has been ready to fly into a passion and upset the whole plan of creation rather than submit to wrong, real or imaginary, the German has moved con- servatively, advised caution and patience, and always German HI stood for the established order and for peace. Thus in 1776 he held hack when his English and Scotch coun- trymen were ready to plunge the country into rebellion and revolution; in 1860 he opposed slavery and seces- sion. Though he could not prevent revolution in 1776, nor secession in 1860, his influence undoubtedly went' far toward making both those movements more orderly and less noisy in ITorth Carolina than in some of her sister states; and so today, he continues to exer- cise a similar conservative, silent, and unostentatious, but a most potent and salutary influence, which will not, indeed, prevent our people from joining in the progressive tendencies and movements of the age, but will influence them to do so with cautious thoughtful- ness and quiet dignity. It is worth much to North Carolina— much more than will ever be generally real- ized—that she has in her population the thoughtful, steadying, conservative influence which is so distinc- tive of her German citizenship. BIBLIOGRAPHY Sources : Clark, Walter (ed.) : State Records of North Carolina, Vols. XI-XXVI. 1895-1906. (Continuation of Saun- ders: Colonial Records.) Grimes, J. Bryan: Abstracts of North Carolina Wills. 1910. Grimes, J. Bryan: North Carolina Wills and Inven- tories. 1912. Salley, Alexander S., Jr.: Narratives of Early Carolina, 1650-1708. (Original Narratives of Early American History, J. F. Jameson, Editor.) 1911. Saunders, William L. (ed.) : The Colonial Records of North Carolina, Vols. I-X. 1886-1890. Autobiographies, Travels, and Memoirs: Brickell, John: The Natural History of North Caro- lina. 1737. (J. Bryan Grimes, ed., 1910.) Catesby, Mark: Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. 1731. Smyth, J. F. D.: A Tour of the United States of America, 1784. Watson, Elkanah: Mea and Times of the Revolution. 1856. Biographies: Alderman, E. A.: William Hooper. Ashe, Samuel A'Court (ed.) : Biographical History of North Carolina from Colonial Times to the Present. 1905-1917. Caruthers, E. W.: Life and Character of Rev. David Caldwell. 1842. MacLean, J. P.: Flora MacDonald in America. 1909. County and Local History: Arthur, John Preston: Western North Carolina: A His- tory from 1730 to 1913. 1914. Nash, Francis: Hillsboro, Colonial and Revolutionary. 1903. _,, Rumple, Jethro: A History of Rowan County. 1881. (Reprinted 1916.) 114 E.ACE Elements of North Carolina Tompkins, D. A.: History of Mecklenburg County. 1903. Brinson, S. M.: The Early History of Craven County. (North Carolina Booklet, X-4.) McNeely, Robert Ney: Union County and the Old Wax- haw Settlement. (North Carolina Booklet, XII-1.) Nash, Francis: The History of Orange County. (North Carolina Booklet, IX-3.) General Histories: Ashe, Samuel A'Court: History of North Carolina, Vol. I, 1908. Bancroft, George: History of the United States. Connor, R. D. W.: History of North Carolina, 1584-1783. 1919. Wheeler, John H.: Historical Sketches of North Caro- lina from 1584 to 1851. 1851. Histories of Special Topics and Periods: Bassett, John S.: Landholding in Colonial North Caro- lina. (Trinity College Historical Papers, Series II.) 1898. Bernheim, G. D., and Cox, George A.: History of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod and Ministerium of North Carolina. 1902. Cheshire, Joseph B.: How^ Our Church Came to North Carolina. (The 8pi7-it of Missions, LXXXIII-5.) Clewell, John Henry: History of Wachovia in North Carolina. 1902. Draper, Lyman C: King's Mountain and Its Heroes. 188L Faust, Albert Bernhardt: The German Element in the United States. 1909. Fiske, John: Old Virginia and Her Neighbours. 1897. Foote. William Henry: Sketches of North Carolina: Historical and Biographical. 1846. Hanna, Charles A.: The Scotch-Irish. 1902. Historic Sketch of the Reformed Church in North Caro- lina. 1907. Bibliography 115 Knight, Edgar W,: Public School Education in North Carolina. 1916. MacLean, J. P.: Scotch-Highlanders in America. 1900. Nixon, Joseph R.: German Settlers in Lincoln County and Western North Carolina. (James Sprunt His- torical Publications, II-2.) Roosevelt, Theodore: The Winning of the West. 1903. Smith, Charles Lee: The History of Education in North Carolina. 1888. North Carolina Booklet: MacRae, James C: The High- land-Scotch Settlement in North Carolina (IV-10) ; McKelway, A. J.: The Scotch-Irish of North Carolina (IV-11); Graham, William A.: Battle of Ramsaur's Mill (IV-2); Raper, Charles Lee: Social Life in Co- lonial North Carolina (111-5) ; Pittman, Thomas M.: Industrial Life in Colonial Carolina (VII-1) ; Hollo- day, Alexander Q.: Social Conditions in Colonial North Carolina (III-IO); Grimes, J. Bryan: Some Notes on Colonial North Carolina, 1700-1750 (V-2); Smith, Charles Lee: Schools in Colonial Times (VJI-4) ; Haywood, Marshall DeLancey: The Story of Queen's College, or Liberty Hall in the Province of North Carolina (XI-3). North Carolina Day Program: (Scotch-Highlanders, 1905); (Scotch-Irish, 1907); (Germans, 1908). LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 014 496 106 n