In 1663 Charles II. granted the territory between the 31st and 36th parallel and extending from sea to sea, to the earl of Claren don (1609-74), the duke of Albemarle (1608-70), and six other favourites. By a second charter issued in 1665 the limits were extended to 25° and 36° 31'. The first permanent English colony in North Carolina was established at Albemarle on the Chowan river about 1660 by people from Virginia. Other settlers, chiefly Scotch, Scotch-Irish and Germans, followed down the valleys from Pennsylvania. The colony grew rapidly, and at the close of the colonial period (1776) the population numbered approximately 300,000, including about 40,000 negroes. Economic advantages seem to have been the chief motives of colonization. The pro prietary period (1663-1729) was a turbulent one. Six out of 16 governors or deputy governors were driven from office be tween 1674 and 1712, and there were two uprisings which have been deemed worthy of the term rebellion. A war with the Tuscarora Indians, in 1711-13, resulted in the defeat of the Indians and the removal of the greater part of the tribe to New York, where they became the sixth nation of the Iroquois con federacy.
In 1729 an act was passed by parliament establishing an agree ment with seven of the proprietors for the surrender of their claims to both provinces. They were allowed Li 7,500 for their rights and .15,000 for arrears of quit rents. Lord Carteret, the eighth proprietor, refused to sell, but in 1744 he gave up his claim in return for a strip of land in North Carolina lying be tween lat. 34' and the Virginia line (36° 30'). The political history during the royal period is, like that of other colonies, the story of a constant struggle between representatives of the people and the representatives of the Crown. There were disputes over questions of Government, of commerce, of finance and of religion. In the "back country" extortionate fees, excessive taxes, and the oppressive manner of collecting them brought about a popular uprising, known as the Regulation. Violence followed the refusal to pay taxes, and in Sept. 1768 Governor Tryon was forced to lead a military expedition against the Regulators. They, however, were not prepared to withstand the governor's forces and submitted without bloodshed. New outbreaks in the fall of 1770 provoked the second military expedition of the governor, and on May 16, 1771, with a force of about i,000 men and officers, he met about twice that number of Regulators on the banks of the Alamance, where, after two hours of fighting, with losses on each side nearly equal, the ammunition of the Regulators was exhausted and they were routed. About 15 were taken prisoners, and of these seven were executed.
and elected delegates to the Continental Congress. A second Provincial Congress met in April 1775, and in the next month Gov. Martin sought safety in flight. A committee representing the militia companies of Mecklenburg county, on May 31, 1775, passed a series of resolutions which declared that the royal com missions in the several colonies were null and void, that the Con stitution of each colony was wholly suspended, and that the legislative and executive powers of each colony were vested in its Provincial Congress subject to the direction of the Continental Congress; and the resolutions requested the inhabitants of the county to form a military and civil organization independent of the Crown of Great Britain which should operate until the Provincial Congress should otherwise provide or the British Par liament should "resign its unjust and arbitrary pretensions with respect to America." The Mecklenburg Declaration of Inde pendence, which it is alleged was passed on May 20 by the same committee, abounds in phrases which closely resemble phrases in the great Declaration of July 4, 1776.
The first sanction of independence by any body representing the whole province was given by the fourth Provincial Congress on April 12, 1776, and the same body immediately proceeded to the consideration of a new and permanent form of government. Their labours ended, however, in another provincial Government by a council of safety, and the drafting of North Carolina's first State Constitution was left to a Constitutional convention which assembled on Nov. 12, at Halifax.
North Carolinians fought under Washington at Brandywine and Monmouth and played a still more important part in the Southern campaigns of 1778-81. The State was twice invaded, in 1776 and in 1780-81, and two battles were fought upon her soil, Moore's Creek Feb. 27, 1776 and Guilford Court House March 15, 1781.
North Carolina sent delegates t.,) the Philadelphia Constitutional convention of 1787, but the State convention, at Hillsboro, called to ratify the Constitution for North Carolina, did not meet until July 21, I 788, when ten States had already ratified. The document was most strongly opposed because it contained no bill of rights and on the ground that it would provide for such a strong central Government that the State Governments would ultimately be sacrificed. At the conclusion of the debate the convention by a vote of 184 to 84 declared itself unwilling to ratify the Con stitution until a bill of rights had been added and it had been amended in several other particulars so as to guarantee certain powers to the States. But a second convention met at Fayette ville in Nov. 1789 and the Constitution was speedily ratified (on the 13th) by a vote of 195 to 77.