While the contest was going on between the proprietaries and the people, temporary laws were established. The harmony which prevailed before the magnificent scheme of government was proposed, was disturbed, and both counties were shaken by internal commotions. Disorders prevailed most extensively in the Albemarle or Northern colony, the population of which was far more numerous than the Clarendon or Southern colony. Excessive taxation and commercial restrictions occasioned discontent, while the influence of refugees from Virginia, the participators in Bacon's rebellion there, who were sheltered in Carolina, ripened the people for resistance to monarchical schemes to enslave or oppress them. A year after the death of Bacon, a revolt occurred in Albemarle. Miller, the secretary of the colony, acting governor before Eastchurch arrived, and the collector of customs, attempted to enforce the revenue laws against a vessel from New England. Led by John Culpepper, a refugee from Clarendon, the people seized Miller and the public funds, imprisoned him and six of his council, appointed new magistrates and judges, called a Parliament, and took all the functions of government into their own hands. Thus matters remained for two years. * Culpepper went to England to plead the cause of the people. He was arrested for treason,1680 but, through Shaftesbury, he was acquitted, that statesman justly pleading that in Albemarle there had been no regular government; that the disorders were but feuds among the people. Thus early, that feeble colony of North Carolina asserted the same political rights for which our fathers so successfully contended a hundred years later.
Seth Sothel, one of the corporators, an avaricious and dishonest man, arrived in the Albemarle province in 1683, as governor. He plundered the people, and prostituted his office to purposes of private gain. According to Chalmers, "the annals of delegated authority include no name so infamous" as Sothel. The people, after enduring him for six years, seized him, and were about sending him to England1689 to answer their accusations before the proprietors, when he asked to be tried by the Colonial Assembly. Such trial was granted, and he was sentenced to banishment for one year, and was forever deprived of the privilege of holding the office of governor. He withdrew to South Carolina, where we shall meet him again. The proprietors acquiesced in the proceedings of the colonists, and sent over Philip Ludwell as their representative,1693 who, by wisdom and justice, soon restored order. He was succeeded by Thomas Harvey in 1692, and, two years later, Henderson Walker succeeded Harvey.
In 1695, two years after the splendid Fundamental Constitutions of Locke and Shaftesbury were abrogated, and landgraves and caciques, and lords of manors, were scattered to the winds, John Archdale, a Quaker, and one of the proprietors, arrived as governor of both Carolinas. From that period until the partition of the provinces in 1729, it is difficult to separate their histories, although governed by distinct magistrates. In 1698 the first settlement was made on the Pamlico or Tar River, the Pamlico Indians having been nearly all destroyed two years previously by a pestilence. Population rapidly increased under the liberal administration of Archdale. The first church in Carolina was built in Chowan county in 1705, and religion began to be respected.
* Williamson, i.. 132.
Settlements in the Interior.—Indian Hostilities.—Flight of the Tuscaroras.—Pirates.—First Royal Governor.
The colonists now began to turn their attention to the interior. In 1707, a company of French Protestants came from Virginia and settled in Carolina; and in 1709, one hundred German families, driven from their home on the Rhine by fierce persecutions and devastating war, sought a refuge in the free, tolerant, and peaceful soil of North Carolina. Already the Huguenots were settling in South Carolina, and were planting the principles of civil liberty there. The French immigrants were not favorably received by the English, and disputes occurred. Archdale managed with prudence for a year, and then left affairs in the hands of Joseph Blake, afterward governor of South Carolina. The difficulties between the English and French were settled, and the latter were admitted to all the rights of citizenship. The Indians along the sea-coast were melting away like frost in the sunbeams. The powerful tribe of the Hatteras, which numbered three thousand warriors in Raleigh's time, were reduced to fifteen bowmen; another tribe had entirely disappeared; and of all the aborigines, but a small remnant remained. They had sold their lands, or had been cheated out of them, and were driven back to the deep wildnerness. Strong drink and other vices of civilization had decimated them, and their beautiful land, all the way to the Yadkin and Catawba, was speedily opened to the almost unopposed encroachments of the white man. Yet, before their power was utterly broken, the Indians made an effort to redeem their losses. The Tuscaroras of the inland region, and the Corees southward, upon whom their countrymen of the coasts had retreated, resolved to strike a blow that should exterminate the intruders. Upon the scattered German settlements along the Roanoke and Pamlico Sound, they fell like lightning from the clouds. In one night one hundred and thirty persons perished by the hatchet.Sept. 22, 1711 The savages also scoured the country on Albemarle Sound, burning dwellings and massacring the inhabitants for three days, until disabled by drunkenness and fatigue. To the Southern colony the people of Albemarle looked for aid. Nor was it withheld. Captain Barnwell, with six hundred white men, and three hundred and sixty Indians of the tribes of the Cherokees, Creeks, Catawbas, and Yamasees, * as allies, marched against the Tuscaroras,1712 and, driving them back to their fortified town near the Neuse, a little above Edenton, in the upper part of Craven county, forced them to make a treaty of peaee. Both parties soon violated this treaty, and the Indians commenced hostilities. Colonel Moore, of South Carolina, with forty white men, and eight hundred friendly Indians, arrived in December, 1713, besieged the savages in their fort, and took eight hundred of them prisoners. The hostile Tuscaroras soon afterward migrated northward, and joining the Five Nations on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, formed a part of the powerful confederacy of the Six Nations in New York. In 1715 peaee was concluded with the Corees, and Indian wars ceased.
From this period until 1729, when the two provinces were surrendered to the crown, and were permanently separated, the colonists enjoyed comparative prosperity. The people had some difficulties with the Indians; were troubled with a swarm of pirates on the coast, under Teach, the famous "Black Beard;" and disputed, with the vehemence of men determined to remain free, with all unwise and aristocratic governors sent to rule them. Perceiving that the expenses which had attended the settlement of the Carolinas were hardly productive of any advantage, the lords proprietors offered to surrender the provinces to the crown. This was effected,1729 and each proprietor received twelve thousand five hundred dollars, as the consideration of the surrender. Their charter had been in existence sixty-six years. The population of both provinces, including negroes, did not exceed twenty-five thousand persons, ten thousand in North Carolina, and fifteen thousand in South Carolina. The last proprietary governor was Sir Richard Everard, successor to Charles Eden.
George Burrington was the first royal governor of North Carolina, and took his seat without difficulty, in February, 1730. *** His first important act was to announce a remission of
* These tribes, and others from Cape Fear to the Gulf of Mexico, numbering about six thousand warriors, soon afterward confederated, with the design of exterminating the white people on the Atlantic coast. This event will be noticed hereafter.
** The general form of the Colonial government was not materially changed. The governor could do nothing legally without the assent of his council. With them, he was authorized to establish courts of justice, and to hold a Court of Error. The governor, members of the council, commander of the king's ships in the province, chief-justices, judges of the Vice-admiralty, secretary, and receiver-general, were constituted a court for the trial of pirates.