The Influence of Geography Upon Early North Carolina

Chapter III

The Piedmont Plateau

SETTLEMENT AND EARLY LIFE

During the latter part of the first century of North Carolina’s political existence, the east increased in population. Some improvement was made in agriculture and better houses were built, including some fine plantation homes. Considering the state as a whole, however, this period was characterized by the settlement of the Piedmont Plateau. By the close of the century in 1763, as we have noted, the settlements extended westward to the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Because of its geographical features, this newly settled region had little connection with the eastern Coastal Plain. Since the rivers that water the east are at most navigable only to the fall line, while those of the Piedmont rise on the slopes of the western mountains and flow swiftly through narrow channels through South Carolina to the sea, there is no natural communication between these two regions. Thus geography decreed that the Piedmont, like the east, should be settled by people coming overland from the north.

About 1735 two great streams of population began flowing into the province from the north and spreading out over the plains and valleys of the Piedmont section. Though flowing side by side, these streams of settlers originated in separate sources and throughout their courses had kept entirely distant from one another. One was composed of socalled Scotch-Irish immigrants, the other was of German descent. The name Scotch-Irish is a geographical, not an ethnic, term. They were in reality Scottish people or the descendants of Scots who had resided in Ireland for over a hundred years. Beginning in 1610, King James I of England, in a plan to stop the Irish rebellions against the throne of England, replaced the natives of northern Ireland with Lowland Scots. These Lowlanders succeeded so well economically in their new home during the first century that they aroused the jealousy of the English merchants of that day. These merchants prevailed upon the English Parliament to pass laws restricting the manufacture and trade of the Scottish settlers, and curtailing their religious liberty. As a result, thousands of them left Ireland and emigrated to America, large numbers of them finding their way to North Carolina. Of those who poured into the Piedmont from 1735 to 1775, a few landed at Charleston and moved up the banks of the Pee Dee and Catawba Rivers into the hill country of the two Carolinas. But the great majority landed at Philadelphia, whence they moved into North Carolina, following the Wilderness Road to the headwaters of the Yadkin, and gradually spread over the region drained by the Neuse, Cape Fear, Yadkin and Catawba, and their tributaries.

Moving over the same route as the Scotch-Irish, and also coming from Pennsylvania, flowed a stream of German immigrants, who came into North Carolina from 1745 to 1775. Various reasons prompted their migration into the colony, but search for good lands was their prime motive. They found land plentiful in North Carolina, and cheaper than in Pennsylvania. These Germans were somewhat inclined to settle in groups or villages for protection and for social contacts. Many towns and villages which dot North Carolina’s Piedmont today had their origin in these German settlements. Some of these immigrants became hunters and trappers, and in the vast forests extending along the foothills and covering the mountainsides they chased the fox and the deer, hunted the buffalo and the bear, and trapped the otter and the beaver. When spring came, they gathered up their furs and skins and, in obedience to the dictates of geography, took them to some market in Fayetteville, Charleston or Philadelphia. Another class of Germans came to the colony in search of religious freedom and fields for religious activity. These were divided into three religious groups—the Lutherans, the German Reformed, and the Moravians. The last group planted a distinctive settlement at Wachovia in what is now Forsyth County.

While the settlements of the Scotch-Irish and Germans over-lapped in the Piedmont area, the Germans predominated in the present-day North Carolina counties of Orange, Alamance, Stokes, Forsyth, Davie, Davidson, Randolph, Rowan, Cabarrus, Stanly, Burke and Lincoln. Much of the industry which developed in the Piedmont in later decades can be traced back to the German element for its beginning. Likewise, the Scotch-Irish element has had a lasting effect on the state. They established schools and churches wherever they went and their descendants through the centuries have exerted a great influence on the history of the state.

These immigrants into the Piedmont region entered a vast forest composed of hardwood trees—the oak, hickory, walnut, and maple. Pine also was abundant. While the hardwood forests had an undergrowth of berries and grapes, the species differed somewhat from the undergrowth of the eastern part of the colony. That there was a great variety of medicinal plants in the general region is evidenced by the fact that in later decades there grew up at Statesville the largest crude drug industry in the nation. The hardwood forests of the Piedmont sheltered a great variety of wild animals and fowl.

Although red clay predominates in the Piedmont, many types of soil are found in the region, thus making possible a variety of crops. Corn was planted on the bottom lands and on the more humus soil. Tobacco, which formed the principal money crop, grew best on the light, more siliceous types of soil. In time, experimentation with the soil best suited to this crop, and with better means of cultivating the plant, enabled the farmers in those counties best suited to tobacco-growing to develop a high quality of the weed. This in turn contributed to the growth of North Carolina’s modern great tobacco industry. Farming in the area was influenced by the climate as well as by the soil. The climate of the Piedmont is mild, but the winters are more severe than in the Coastal Plain and the growing seasons are shorter.

The streams of the region are narrow, shallow, and swift. They are not adapted to navigation and commerce, but are excellent for the development of water power. Almost from the start, then, this region developed a diversified economy despite its lack of means of transportation, and it is no accident that during the nineteenth century the leading manufacturing towns of North Carolina grew up in the Piedmont. Manufacturing, which started on a small scale fairly early, developed steadily. By 1840 there were twenty-five cotton mills located in twelve different counties of the region. Today approximately eighty-five per cent of the state’s industry is located within this area.

TROUBLE WITH THE INDIANS

Like the early English settlers in the east, the Piedmont people had to grapple with Indian problems. The people of this region had been living in North Carolina less than two decades when they were called upon to defend their homes from Indian raids.

During the French and Indian War, 1754-1763, the Cherokee Indians, who lived in the mountains of North Carolina, allied themselves with the French, fighting against Great Britain and the American Colonies. After the defeat of British General Braddock in July, 1755, Cherokee bands raided settlements in the North Carolina Piedmont, killing, scalping, burning, and stealing. For more than four years they kept the area of Morganton, Hickory, and Statesville in turmoil. To protect the area, Major Hugh Waddell of Wilmington built Fort Dobbs near Statesville in 1755. Some of the settlers took refuge within the fort; others went to the Moravians at Bethabara; while some fled to South Carolina. In 1760, the Cherokees defeated a large army led by Colonel Archibald Montgomery near the present town of Franklin. The next year Lieutenant Colonel James Grant, a British officers, led a large force into the Cherokee country and defeated the Indians in June, 1761. After their defeat, the Indians asked for peace. This defeat broke the power of the Cherokees. The Catawba Indians, whose lands lay in the Piedmont, fought on the side of the British. At the close of the war they were settled on a reservation in South Carolina, south of Mecklenburg County.

Hugh Waddell from a Miniature in the Hall of History, Raleigh, N.C.

TRADE AND SECTIONALISM

The settlement of the Indian problem removed a menace and brought safety to the Piedmont settlers, but it could not change the geographical factors which hindered their progress. With no natural outlet on the east or south, and with the mountains as a barrier on the west, the people of the Piedmont were virtually cut off from the rest of the state and from the outside world. Yet they cleared the land, built better log houses, erected grist mills and saw mills on the swift streams. Roads characteristic of that period were constructed throughout the region. The main ones followed the river valleys or Indian trails. The roads were laid off and maintained by County Commissioners, who appointed a road overseer in each township. All able bodied men were required to work the roads, usually four to six days a year. Big mudholes were drained and smaller ones were filled with pine brush covered with a few shovels of dirt. In winter such roads were often impassable. This red land was easily eroded, and after it was cleared, erosion took place very rapidly to the detriment of the region.

The people living in the northern part of the region carried on trade necessary for a meager life with towns in Virginia or Pennsylvania, while those in the southern part traded at Fayetteville or in the South Carolina towns. Considering the long distance to markets and the conditions of the roads, there was little incentive to grow more than was necessary for domestic purposes. Livestock, such as cattle and hogs and turkeys, were driven to market on foot. The average farmer made two trips to market a year to buy coffee, salt, sugar, and other necessaries. These conditions continued with but little improvement far down into the nineteenth century.

SECTIONALISM AND THE REGULATOR MOVEMENT

While two sections as divergent as the Coastal Plain and the Piedmont Plateau lived under the same political government, so great were their differences that the government brought little unity. In the east the plantation with slavery dominated the social and political society. In the Piedmont the small farm with an average of one or two slaves to a farm was the chief unit in the economic structure. Social classes followed the same pattern. The more aristocratic-minded colonists were found in the east. Ethnic factors and religion also played a part in the differences. The planters in the east had an English background, while the population in the Piedmont was composed largely of Scotch-Irish and Germans. The Anglican Church prevailed in the east, while in the Piedmont the Presbyterian and different branches of the German Reformed Church were predominant. Thus the two peoples had little in common in their backgrounds and traditions.

The seat of government was in the east and the governor and high officials lived there; here, too, the Assembly met. The east controlled the Assembly, since representation in the House was based on the county, not on population, and the east had more counties than the Piedmont or western territory. Counties could be created only by act of the Assembly and, since that body was controlled by eastern factions, it refused to create counties in the west as fast as population increases justified.

The east not only ruled the Assembly, but through its power to appoint the leading county officers it also dominated the local government. Moreover, the Assembly levied the taxes for the colony and fixed the fees for public services rendered by the local officers. Under the poor economic conditions existing in the Piedmont area, the payment of taxes and fees often provoked hardship there. Then, too, the people were somewhat loath to pay taxes to help finance any projects in the section of the state of which they had little knowledge or interest. When, in 1768, Governor William Tryon succeeded in getting a tax levied for building a state capitol—“Tryon’s Palace,” a Mecklenburg County citizen, in protesting against the tax, said, “Not one man in twenty of the four most populous counties will ever see the famous house when built, as their connections of trade do, and ever will, center in South Carolina.”

Under these conditions a spirit of divisive sectionalism was bound to flourish. For a number of years the people in the back country nursed their grievances or suffered the ills they considered inflicted upon them by the east. About 1766, however, an organization was developed with the purpose of ameliorating the existing economic and political conditions. The growth of this organization, known as the Regulator movement, resulted in the Battle of Alamance, which was fought between the Regulators and Governor Tryon’s militia in 1771. In this action the Regulators were defeated. The east-west sectional conflict quieted down for a while, but the grievances of the Piedmont people were not permanently cured. Following the American Revolution and its aftermath, the earlier conflict was renewed. It would not reach its political climax until the Convention of 1835.

After the Battle of Alamance, many of the Regulators joined the settlement which had begun across the mountains in the valleys of the Holston and Watauga Rivers in what is now Tennessee. In 1772, feeling that they were so removed from their native state, both by distance and by mountain barriers, these settlers organized a new and independent government, calling their new region Watauga. This independent area carried on for a period of six years, when the North Carolina Assembly interposed its authority and established a new county there.

However, geography continued to have its influence in the region. The feeling of the mountain settlers that the Appalachian Mountains formed an insuperable barrier between the two sections which would always prevent the development of common interests was undoubtedly reflected in North Carolina’s cession of the western territory to the United States in 1789.

The American Revolution brought independence to North Carolina early in the second decade of its historical development. The necessity of unifying the people for participation in the cause for freedom tended to break down the pronounced sectionalism in the colony.

During the Revolution a phenomenon of geography which had heretofore been a hindrance to progress proved beneficial to carrying on the war. Small vessels used the inlets and inland waters of the coast for carrying on an extensive trade with the French, Spanish, and Dutch West Indies, and even with France and the Netherlands. Soon after the war began, the harbors of Ocracoke, Edenton, Beaufort, New Bern, and Wilmington became white with the sails of merchantmen and privateers. British patrols found it difficult to capture these small, fleet vessels, which ran in and out of the narrow inlets. They slipped through these inlets, ran down to the West Indies, or crossed the Atlantic to France or other countries, sold their cargoes, and brought back salt, rum, clothes, and articles of military value. General Washington received considerable supplies through this channel during his hard winter at Valley Forge. In January, 1778, former Governor Martin wrote:

The contemptible port of Ocracoke has become a great channel of supply to the Rebels. They have received through it and continue to receive at that inlet very considerable importations of the necessities they most want for the purpose of carrying on their warfare from the ports of France and the French West Indian Islands.

This trade was a great stimulus to shipbuilding. Shipyards sprang up at all the seaport towns, which were busy throughout the war, building and launching almost every kind of river craft and seagoing vessel.