The Settlement of North Carolina [By John W. Moore.]
The earliest attempts of the English colonization of what we now call the State of North Carolina were full of romance, agony and tears. The story of Raleigh's attempts at settlement is one of the world's tragedies. For many years it seemed to men of Queen Elizabeth and King James' reign that a curse like that which so long hung over the doomed house of Atreus, also clung to all who participated in the heroic efforts of Sir Walter Raleigh. His noble and generous kinsman, Sir Humphry Gilbert was his chief assistant in procuring from the Queen the necessary license for his project; and was the first victim to suffer. Cruising with his little fleet off the coast of Maine he was beset at midnight in the midst of a furious storm by a vast extent of floating ice bergs. His last recorded words were addressed to the men of the sister ship: telling to be still of good courage; for they were as near heaven on that raging sea as were wives and children around their firesides at home. Raleigh too died in consequence of his efforts to extend the limits of England's power and glory. Then too there was Sir Richard Grenville, one of the bravest of the English admirals, who just after his visit of aid and comfort to the settlers on Roanoke Island died as a prisoner in the hands of the Spaniards. After a battle of many hours against fearful odds he was forced to yeild up his sinking ship. The little band of heroes who volunteered to abide in Fort Raleigh until succor could reach them from England were soon murdered by the Indians. Now, in our day, after three centuries have passed away we have probably discovered the fate of the lost colony of Gov. White. The chain of facts lately published, amount to almost positive proof that the people living in Robeson County and so notorious just after the [War between the States are the] true descendants of the men and women left on Roanoke Island and so mysteriously disappeared. From these statements it appears that they joined some tribe of Indians and left the coast for homes in the interior, where by long intermarriage with the Indians they have all become of mixed blood.
It seems strange to men and women of our day that people could have been induced to leave the comforts of civilization for a life in a region, which at that day was only a "waste-howling wilderness." In all the great region now dominated by our flag there was not at that time even so much as a cart path. Except in the prairie region a vast forest stretched across the continent. Not a horse, cattle beast, sheep or hog was to be anywhere found in land that now exports every year so many hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food products. Roving bands of Indians wandered over the land in search of game. With no agriculture beyond the lit[t]le patches cleared by fire and the patient labor of the Indian women, the support of their lives depended mainly upon the success of their hunters and fishermen. As the Indians had no knowledge as to the use of iron their implements were of little avail for any useful purpose beyond the preparation of their armory for war and the chase. The squaws cultivated little patches of corn and beans but the supply was so meager that it amounted to very little in the general support o[f] their families. They were of great skill in their use of the bow and also in sc[h]emes for the capture of fish. But all such things were of small moment to the Indian men. They held that war upon everybody except their friends was their natural duty and occupation and felt themselves degraded when called upon to do anything else.
To leave the comforts of England and undertake living in a wilderness infested by such a race of human beings was the lot of our brave ancestors. While they enjoyed and appreciated the good things God had permitted the British people to accumulate, still there were grievous drawbacks to all the smiling plenty and warmth of their English homes. Many thousands of the best men and women in the land were tormented and pursued on account of their religious belief. England had long boasted herself as the home of personal liberty and wise Queen Elizabeth had allowed her people to go unvexed by any jealous scouting of their faith and practices as christians. But the Kinds of the Stuart line, though all of them save Charles [I]. were notorious for their sinful and licentious lives were still constantly endangering their hold upon the crown by their overweening anxiety to force everybody into a church whose teachings they themselves scorned to practice. Charles II, could imprison and harass such saints as Richard Baxter and John Bunyan but at the same violate his coronation oath by his secret baptism in the Romish church. The filthy jail swarmed with the purest and most innocent men in the realm and multitudes died of fever produced by overcrowding those fearful receptacles. No dissenting church was allowed [t]o be built or to hold public worship within five miles of any city or town and no preaching or celebration of church ordinances allowed therein. Royal debauchers and adulterers were disgracing the throne by open and notorious vice and were yet hounding down the true saints of the Lord. No man out of the pale of the English church had a momen[t]'s assurance of life or liberty. Spies and informers were everywhere using the basest schemes to entrap and drag to punishment the little bands that crept in the silence of midnight to worship God contrary to the orders of a new Nebuchanazza.
Thus it was that America with all all its hardships and dangers was still in God's providence to become the refuge and home of his persecuted people. The dissenters [were ...] liberty should be the boon of all who would leave their comfortable homes and undergo the hardships and dangers of a life in America. It must have seemed passing strange to our sorrowing ancestors as they looked back for the last time on the land of their birth and realized that while their religion was good enough in the eyes of the rulers to build up new empires for England; was yet not to be tolerated at home. On the same principal they began [a]t an early date in colonizing America to send over ship loads of convicts to be sold into temporary servitude here. But the colonies manifested such little desire for such immigrants that Botany Bay and Australia were substituted.
Queen Elizabeth granted the first charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, by which his agents came to Roanoke Island. At that time she ruled over England, Wales, Ireland and the Channel Islands[.] Scotland was still an independant and too often hostile neighbor. Long ages of warfare and diplomacy left the Scots as free of all foreign control, as they had been in the time of the Roman rule in Britain. Thus this young hero was the first of English statesman to direct the attention of his countrymen to the policy of expansion. Following bravely and well this proposition the little Island Kingdom that had not more than five millions of people now girdle the globe with her possessions, and her drum beats are heard each day around the world.
When English emigration to America began there was no place in the civilized world if we except the Dutch Republic where religious liberty could be found
The great Reformation, under the lead of Martin Luther had broken the ancient fetters of the Roman Catholics only to transfer the matter to other State churches which replaced them. The long settled habits and prejudices of the European people disabled them from seeing and putting into practice the noble polity of William the Silent who was first to proclaim religious toleration in Holland. But thus step great and beneficient as it was, still lacked much of realizing the lesson yet to be taught the world by America in her practice of complete religious liberty. Men who dared even in our country to first propose this were denounced as atheists and Thomas Jefferson was denounced as an enemy of all religion for daring to protect all men alike in whatever they honestly believed was their duty in such matters. For more than a thousand years men calling themselves Christians had been waging bloody wars upon each other on no other grounds than mere differences of faith and practice in their interpretation of the H[o]ly Scriptures. Catholics would proclaim a crusade and put to the sword whole kingdoms wherever they found any departure fr[o]m the standards of their own errors as to orthodoxy. Even John Calvin with all his learning, zeal and beneficence of life could find it in his heart to burn at the stake the learned Servetas on a charge of what we now call agnosticism.
North Carolina has been all along in its history as a civilized community bearing to America the same blessed relations America has borne to Europe. She has been the refuge and the asylum of the unfortunate people, who coming to America with the hope of escaping oppression of [s]oul found in Massachusetts and Virginia the very ills they had endured in their old homes. Any Baptist or Quaker who landed in Boston or Jamestown was soon questioned as to his faith and told [t]hat people of their belief could have no homes there. Fines and imprisonments supplemented with cruel scourging were the penalties of all who dared to believe and practice otherwise than ordered by the Stat[e]. The pious and learned Roger Williams was driven in the midst of a terrible New England winter from the settlements in Massachusetts to find [r]efuge among the Naragansett Indians of Rhode Island. In Virginia after Jefferson and Madison had become leaders of public opinion we are told in the correspond[e]nce of the latter that five Baptist preachers were found confined in one jail, for no other offense than [p]reaching the gospe[l.] The law passed a century before [in] the reign of William and Mary had declared full toleration to all people of the English empire but Episcopal magistrates would incite evil men to disturb the little gatherings and then have the innocent preacher arrested on a charge of disturbing the public peace. The next step was to demand heavy bond of them for keeping the peace, and as some would not comply and others could not these servants of the Lord were put in jail. Such men not infrequently were thus kept immured for months and kept up their dauntless m[i]nistry by preaching through the jail windows to eager crowds flocking to [h]ear the martyrs in spite of e[v]ery [t]hreat on the part of the vendictive authorities.
To all such men North Carolina we are proud to say, has ever been a sure refuge and asylum. From its earliest days it has been the nursery of freedom and patriotism[.] The royal governors all testified that they would tolerate no infringement of their rights and from the day when they deposed and drove in ignominy from their borders the sordid Seth Sothel until Gov Martin's midnight flight from New Bern they all found men who knew their rights and dared maintain them. It was all in vain that they procured crooked legislation to establish a State church, the vestry web fell still-born from the fact that the people though required to elect vestrymen select[e]d such as would be sure to do nothing desired by the Governor. When Gov. Tryon attempted to force them into use of the stamps they did not go in disguise and in the secrecy and concealment of the night season to tell him their resolution. But in broad light of day with arms in their hands forced both him and the stamp agent to such promises as forever barred any future hope of their sales in North Carolina. Again when the same Governor Tryon and his wicked agent began to plunder the people o[f] their hard earnings by exacting grossly unlawful fees, they found the same men with arms in their hands on the bloody fields of Alamance. Well might Mr. Bancroft the great historian exclaim: "North Carolina was settled by the freest of the free[.]" "Roanoke-Chowan Times", Andrew J. Conner, ed., Rich Square, Northampton County, N.C.
Thursday, November 30, 1899 [Vol. 8, No. 4]
The Settlement of North Carolina Part 2 (By John W. Moore.)
We have seen in a former article on this subject, how the men of England failed in their first effort to colonize North Carolina. A half century went by after the [l]ast efforts of Raleigh proved futile before any white people again appeared on the tragic scene. It will be recollected by the reader that it was in the last years of the sixteenth century that these disastrous efforts were made; but the expedition which came with Gov. White to the relief of the perishing colony on Roanoke Island in A. D. 1590 though failing of its purpose, still was fortunate in its discovery of the fine harbor, now known as Hampton Roads[.] Th[i]s noble refuge of distressed mariners was but a short distance North of the narrow, shallow and dangerous inlet, which had been found by Amadas and Barlow, in 1584 and could only admit their smal[l]est vessels to the saftest anchorage of the Albemarle Sound. Their larger and more valuable ships were then compelled at every signal of coming storms to put to sea for safety.
It was very different when in 1607 in the reign of King James 1st, Capt John Smith led a colony from England and sailing in between the widely sundered Capes Charles and Henry, dropped his anchor in the noble roadstead above mentioned, Here not only the ships of one expedition could lie in safety in the greatest storm but probably the whole fleet of the Europe of that day could at the same time also find shelter. Thus the colony at Jamestown in fifty years afterwards had grown to such proportions that being numerous enough for safety against any attack from the Indians the jealous soul of Sir William Berkley, its governor, led him to persecute the Baptists and Quaker people. It had happened by some strange oversight that in making out the two patents, under which the Crown had granted in 1584 to Raleigh and later in 1663 to Lords Proprietors of Carolina, there was left ungranted a belt of territory between the present Virginia line and that of Carolina[.] This being for the period no man's land, the oppreseed people of Virginia made it a city of refuge, and it was in this way that white settlements were first permanently effected. The first settler whose name has come down to our day was one George Durant, who it is said was a man of some wealth and a Baptist preacher. He bought of the Indians lands lying on the North bank of the Albemarle Sound which are still [kn]own as Durant's Neck. He became of man of much importance [i]n our early history and along with his Quaker neighbors wa[s] a watchful and vigorous defender of the people's rights. As the story of the liberty to be found in this beautiful and fertile region went out to the world men and women came flocking down from Virginia and the grea[t] county of Albemarle grew daily in population, wea[l]th and influence.
There was another abortive attempt at settlement made on the lower waters of Cape Fear River in 1663 by Sir John Yeamans. He with about one hundred more people came from Barb[a]does Is[l]and but they soon removed to Charleston in what is now the State of South Carolina. T[h]is removal was quite a misfortune to our commonwealth, for Sir John and many of his companions in venture were Englishmen of much culture. His father was the Lord Mayor of the city of B[r]istol in England and defended it so long and nobly against the siege of Cr[o]mwell's army, that enraged at the length and obstinacy of the defense made, he was hanged by the victors when the city was at length captured. But whatever was lost in the departure of these men was soon to be supplied by the merits of their successors. Within a few years one Maurice Moore came from Charleston with a consi[de]rable company of his friends and South Carolina neighbors and built a new town very near the site of the first built by his grandfather Yeamans. This was on the right bank of Cape Fear River and but a few miles below the present city of Wilmington.
It was not until the administration of Gov. Gabriel Johnson, that many white people could be found living in our State beyond the counties on the Atlantic coast[.] Until the Indian war of 1711, the Tuscaroras had been so jealous of intrusion on their hunting grounds that all immigrants had as a rule forborne entry upon the beautiful hill country that lay so inviting in the West. But when a bl[o]ody def[e]at had broken t[h]e power and spirits of these bold Iroquois warriors and the bulk of those surviving defeat had been compelled to return to their old homes in the State of New York, then white men found they could safely carry the[i]r families to be the denizens of the paradise now known as the piedmont region of North Caro[l]ina.
Settlers in North Carolina had been almost wholly of English blood until the coming of the Swiss under the leadership [o]f Baron de Graffenreid just previour to the outbreak of the Indian w[a]r of 1711, but later on when the floodgates had been lifted in Gov. Johnston[']s time different races of men were found coming in la[r]ge bands and seeking homes in our limits. Germans from the Pa[l]atinate, Rhenish province lately ravaged by the French armies sent many. These as a rule would land at Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, live in that province for a short while and then find homes in the foot hills of North Carolina. The gallant Philip de Richeburg also headed a company of French Hugonots, who to escape the despotism of Louis XIV, made their homes principally about New Bern.
There was another band of foreign exiles, who made their appearance in our Western limits. These were Moravians, who made purchase of a large tract of land from the Earl of Granville and made Salem the nucleus of their settlement. A much greater addition to our population was made in the advent of the Scotch Highlanders in the upper Cape Fear region. These unfortunate pe[o]ple had made a brave effort to r[e]store the dethroned Stuarts to the British crown and had suffered a fearful defeat in 1745 at Culloden Moore in Scotland. The romantic episode in the life of Flora MacDonald, wherein she was the principal agent in enab[l]ing the Pretender to compass his escape, made her the chief figure among a[l]l the many unfortunates who thus sought new hom[e]s in a strange land.
It will be thus seen that Nort[h] Carolina has a population springing from many sources. But th[e] [t]alisman of freedom was suffi[c]e[nt] in 1775 to unify the great body of our people into heroic resolutions for independence. This work of assimilation has not ceased with our growth as a State but has gone on until today North Caro[l]ino is perhaps the most conserva[t]ive and united of all the forty-five sov[e]reign commonwealths , which constitute the Great Republic. A state thus crad[l]ed in the storms of adversity is still true to her ancient uses. Having been the refuge of the oppressed was her original claim to the world's good will and we may well trust will ever be true to [h]er older precedents. Liberty, fraternity and justice have been found as the ruling traits of our civil po[l]ity and absolute liberty in all matters of religious belief. No epidemic of religious frenzy has disgraced us into burning innocent people at the stake on cha[r]ges of witchcraft, nor hav[e] we [s]owed crops of dragon's tee[th] by our pa[r]ticipation in any such unholy traffic as was the A[f]rican slave trade. Nor have we whi[le] thus content with the story of our past been overwhelmingly anxious to thrust our practices and opinions on other communi[t]ies. In our simple modesty we have left the mat[t]er [e]ntirely [open] as to [w]hether o[t]her p]eopl[e sho]uld do and think as we [d]o. We pr[ea]ch no new crusades an[d] [...] to God and __me the grea[t] work of the World's reaching the same high plane of justice and forbearance. When North Carolina and her sister colonies had won an empire by t[heir] valor in war, they did not buil[d C]hinese walls around it and say to the world ["]Keep off," but with [a] cl[ar]ity never seen before they mad[e] it a refuge and hospital for mankind. Such success had always before resulted in making kings and nobles of the leaders, but George Washington rec[e]ived as his highest guerdon, the title of "PATER PATRIAE" and the confession that he was "first in peace, first in war and first in the hearts of his countrymen.["]
The fact of so many different breeds of men mixing their blood and traits of character has resulted in great good to us as a State. It would seem that in the cru[c]ible which still so wonderfully connects men of all nationalities into the patriotic, self respecting, liberty-loving American citizens these Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Scotchm[e]n and Irish have been all assimilated and transformed into ideal republicans. In both peace and war they have won the love and trust of all good people, the world over. Peaceful and modest they are content with the things God in H[i]s providence allows them to possess and are never found disturbing the greater tranquility by the restless discontent that marks and marrs too often the action of some of our sister States. North Carolina was among the last to abandon the Union in 1861, yet she sent more men to the field than any Southern State and one half the dead and wounded at Chancellorsville were our fellow citizens. She had twenty eight full regiments among the ninety thousand heroes, that drove McClellan from the swamps of Chiccahominy to find refuge under the guns of a fleet.
Well may we thank God for such ancestors and strive to emulate their virtues. The story of their struggles and privations should be taught our children in every school and tall monuments should be erected to perpetuate their memories. As long as we emulate and pattern after their ways we shall be safe and respected and only by our own weakness and folly can we forfeit the great heritage they have bequeathed to our keeping. "Roanoke-Chowan Times", Andrew J. Conner, ed., Rich Square, Northampton County, N.C.
Thursday, January 18, 1900 [Vol. 9, No. [3]]
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