Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/612

562 N O R N O R Carolina came very near being the last. The southern bound ary of the colony of Virginia was the parallel of 36 30 N. lat., although the whole continent was still called by that name, and all the country south of this limit to the Gulf was granted by Charles II. in 1663 and 1665 to a company of English noblemen styled the lords proprietors, with full powers of colonization and government. In this territory, called Carolina in compliment to the royal grantor, the colony of Carolina was planted by them under a new form of colonial government called the proprietary government, consist ing of a governor appointed by themselves, a legislative assembly elected by the freeholders, and a council of twelve, six appointed by the governor and six by the assembly, Colonists were eagerly solicited for the new plantations " by liberal grants of lands, and by a guarantee of full religious liberty and of exemption from taxa tion except with the consent of the legislature. These favourable terms were so much in contrast with the state of things in some of the other colonies, especially in Virginia, where tithes were rigor ously exacted for the support of the Established Church, dissent punished as a crime, and laws enacted which allowed only the alternatives of conformity or enforced exile, that the new colony soon received a large accession of Quakers and other Dissenters, In 1669 the first legislative assembly met, and a new and remarkably liberal government was successfully organized. The next year an attempt was made to introduce a new system of government and form of social order called the Fundamental Constitutions, drawn up by the celebrated philosopher John Locke at the request of the lords pro prietors ; but this and several subsequent attempts were so stoutly resisted by the colonists that the absurd and tyrannous scheme was formally abandoned in 1693. And so strong was the spirit of liberty that one of the lords proprietors who had been sent over as governor was deposed and exiled for extortion, and another governor with his council was imprisoned for misgovernment and infringement of the guaranteed rights of the colony, a new governor and legislature elected, and the government carried on for two years by the colonists themselves. In 1729 the proprietary was replaced by the royal authority, the form of government remaining unchanged. At this date also the territory of Carolina was formally divided into the two colonies of North and South Carolina. The population at this time, estimated at 13,000, was mostly limited to the seaboard region, within 50 miles of the coast. Ten years later a great tide of emigra tion set in upon the interior and midland country, both from the older settlements to the north, especially from Virginia and Pennsyl vania, and from the British Islands and the continent of Europe ; so that in less than forty years the population wanted little of 300,000, and at the beginning of the revolution of 1776 a continuous chain of settlements extended from the sea-coast to the mountains. The new-comers were generally of the best class of immigrants, Scotch, Scotch- Irish, English, Swiss, Germans, and Dutch. They were Presbyterians, Moravians, Lutherans, Huguenots, and Quakers. Devoted to liberty and impatient of tyranny and of privilege, these people were attracted to the colony not alone or chiefly by the fame of its broad and fertile " mesopotamias " and its salubrious climate, but above all else by the liberal and popular form of its govern ment, especially by its freedom of religion. When attempts were made, as they frequently were, in violation of guaranteed rights, to establish the English Church and collect church rates, they were everywhere met with stubborn and not always passive resistance. The execution of the famous Stamp Act in 1766 was forcibly re sisted, and the royal vessel bringing the obnoxious papers was not even allowed to enter port. Extortion practised by the officers of the crown in some of the interior counties led to repeated remon strances and appeals for redress to the governor and afterwards to parliament, and finally ended in 1771 in insurrection and open war. The controversy culminated in the battle of Alamance, in which the recusants were defeated by Governor Tryon. And thus, in one way and another, a spirit of suspicion or resentment, of irri tation or open hostility, was constantly kept alive in the colony. This spirit found expression in the famous Mecklenburg resolu tions adopted by the Scotch- Irish settlers about Charlotte in May 1775, in which " all laws and commissions by authority of king and parliament " are declared to be annulled and vacated, and a new government was organized for the county recognizing only the authority of the provincial congress. Thus North Carolina was fully ripe for measures of open and combined resistance when move ments were begun towards a union of the colonies for this purpose, and was the first of all the colonies to instruct its delegates to the continental congress to vote for formal independence of the British crown. Early in 1776 the militia of the colony met and defeated on the lower Cape Fear river a body of 1500 British troops under skilful officers, directed by the royal governor and supported by a British fleet of thirty sail off the port of Wilmington. The colony furnished its full quota of troops to the continental armies north and south, and lost most heavily in the fall of Charleston. But beyond this, situated far from the seat of war and weakened by the pressure of several recent settlements of adherents of the British crown, the colony did not bear a conspicuous part in the revolution until in the later campaigns, during the closing years of the war, its territory became the theatre of the conflict. The defeat and capture of an important detachment of Cornwallis s army under Ferguson at King s Mountain in 1780 by a sudden gathering of untrained backwoodsmen and hunters, chiefly from the mountain settlements, checked the victorious march of the British ; and a similar volunteer gathering of her yeomanry from all the surrounding region at the battle of Guilford Court House in 1781 contributed largely to give the victory of Cornwallis the character of a defeat, and forced his speedy retreat to the coast and ultimately to Yorktown for the final catastrophe. On the formation of the Federal Union, North Carolina, having had abundant and long experience of usurpation and misgovern ment, did not make haste to enter the new compact, but moved with slow and cautious steps, and was one of the last of the colonies to adopt the constitution. At the breaking out of the war between the States in 1861, North Carolina, strongly averse to secession, sought by every means to avert the conflict, remaining unmoved after all the surrounding States had seceded, and was forced into the struggle last of all the Southern States, and when there remained only the alternative of a choice of sides. Being near the seat of war and yet for the most part outside of it, the State contributed more largely to the commissary supplies of the Confederacy, and also sent into the field a larger number of troops and lost more men in battle than any other State, her soldiers having a conspicuous share in all the great battles from Bull Run to Petersburg. Since the close of the war, which left her utterly bankrupt, North Carolina has entered on a career of prosperity unexampled in her previous history. Population has increased far more rapidly than at any previous period, the number of miles of railroad has been doubled, the area of land under cultivation enlarged, agriculture improved in its methods and results, and industries diversified to an extent and with a. rapidity never known before. (W. C. K. ) NORTHCOTE, JAMES (1746-1831), historical and por trait painter, was born at Plymouth on the 22d October 1746. Though he early showed an inclination for art, his father, a poor watchmaker of the town, insisted that he should be bound with himself for an apprenticeship of seven years. During his spare hours the boy was dili gent with brush and pencil, and on the expiry of the term, in 1769, he started as a portrait painter. Four years later he went to London, and was admitted as a pupil into the studio and house of Reynolds, who had been the object of his warmest admiration from early boyhood. At the same time he studied from the round and the life in the Academy schools, making, it would seem, rather slow pro gress in the technical processes of art. In 1775 he left Reynolds, and about two years later, having acquired the requisite funds by portrait- painting in Devonshire, he set out for Italy. There he remained for three years, study ing the portraits of Titian, looking, as he tells us, twice at Michelangelo for every time he looked at Raphael, and forming the resolution that in the future he would paint portraits for bread and historical subjects for fame. On his return to England he revisited his native county, and then settled in London, where Opie and Fuseli were his rivals. He was elected associate of the Academy in 1786, and full academician in the following spring. The Young Princes murdered in the Tower, his first important histori cal work, dates from 1786, and it was followed by the Burial of the Princes in the Tower, both paintings, along with seven others, being executed for the Shakespeare gallery of Alderman Boydell. The Death of Wat Tyler, now in the Guildhall, was exhibited in 1787 ; and shortly afterwards Northcote began a set of ten subjects, entitled the Modest Girl and the Wanton, which were completed and engraved in 1796. They were suggested by the Pamela of Richardson and the Idle and Industrious Apprentices of Hogarth, a painter for whom Northcote professed little admiration. The series was popular at the time, but neither in truth of dramatic conception nor in technical qualities does it approach the parallel works of the older master. Among the productions of Northcote s later years are the Entombment and the Agony in the Garden, besides many portraits, and several animal sub jects, like the Leopards, the Dog and Heron, and the Lion, which were more successful than the artist s efforts