[00:01:38.040] [music] [00:01:38.600] North Carolina's story as an independent state began two centuries ago. [00:01:41.560] Searching out the exact beginning [00:01:44.000] is a hard thing to do. [00:01:45.680] There's no one place or event you can point to and say, "this is where it started." [00:01:55.440] It's easier to say where the old government ended and where the new one began. [00:01:59.960] That's because there's a visible symbol of the old, a palace in fact, [00:02:06.240] the royal governor's palace in New Bern. [00:02:07.171] [music] [00:02:51.640] Governor William Tryon built it [00:02:53.960] and it was ever afterwards known as Tryon Palace. [00:02:57.240] It was the seat of royal government in North Carolina [00:03:00.240] and the symbol of the authority and prestige of Great Britain, [00:03:04.080] a world power. [00:03:10.960] It's an impressive building today, [00:03:13.320] restored as nearly like the original as possible, [00:03:16.240] but it must have been absolutely awe-inspiring [00:03:19.120] in 18th century rural, provincial North Carolina. [00:03:22.871] [music] [00:03:54.760] The governor presided over sessions [00:03:56.800] of the royal council from this chair. [00:03:58.700] Tryon didn't occupy it long [00:04:01.840] because he was transferred to New York a year after the palace was built. [00:04:05.871] [music] [00:04:12.120] James [?] succeeded him briefly and then a man fated for a leading role in the [00:04:16.760] change from the old order to the new, Josiah Martin, the last royal governor. [00:04:22.520] Relations between Martin and his restless [00:04:25.440] subjects reached a boiling point in the hot summer of 1774. [00:04:31.120] Martin refused to call the colonial legislature into session so the members [00:04:35.600] could elect delegates to the First Continental Congress. [00:04:39.080] So the legislators organized their own [00:04:42.000] provincial assembly and rode off to meet anyway in New Bern. [00:04:45.600] The same men sipped tea with the royal authorities, while across town [00:04:49.880] they sampled the stronger drafts of liberty. [00:04:53.120] While declaring loyalty to the king [00:04:55.560] they also declared an economic boycott of Great Britain. [00:04:59.010] And although they still thought [00:05:00.760] of themselves as Englishmen, they elected three delegates to America's [00:05:05.280] revolutionary First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. [00:05:09.320] They were William Cooper of New Hanover, [00:05:12.240] who hung up his shingle in Wilmington after graduation from Harvard Law School. [00:05:17.880] Joseph Hughes of Edenton, [00:05:20.320] a Quaker who left the church because his strong belief that revolutionary war was [00:05:24.640] inevitable was inconsistent with the Quaker teachings. [00:05:29.160] And Richard Caswell of Dobbs, a soldier and politician [00:05:33.840] who had become the first governor of independent North Carolina. [00:05:37.800] The First Provincial Congress was the first elected assembly in America [00:05:42.400] to be called and held in defiance of royal authority. [00:05:45.780] It was a step toward independence, [00:05:47.680] still two years away, and launched North Carolina into the revolutionary movement. [00:05:54.200] One of the weapons America used [00:05:56.400] in the Revolutionary War against Great Britain was female artillery. [00:06:00.920] This is what one British citizen called colonial America's Women Patriots. [00:06:05.600] The first barrage of the female artillery [00:06:07.880] was fired from here in Edenton, North Carolina. [00:06:12.640] The First Provincial Congress [00:06:14.960] had met in New Bern in August of 1774 to set North Carolina on the road to revolution. [00:06:20.470] That Congress, which was made up entirely [00:06:22.720] of men, declared an economic boycott of Great Britain. [00:06:26.890] The women of the time backed up [00:06:28.640] the Congress by refusing to drink tea or to wear British made cloth. [00:06:34.040] The most publicized anti-British boycott by women [00:06:37.800] was carried out by fifty-one ladies of eastern North Carolina. [00:06:42.520] The women met in Edenton, here, October the 25th, 1774, [00:06:48.040] and declared their intentions in a resolution that all fifty-one of them signed. [00:06:53.080] The Edenton ladies thus took their place in American Revolutionary history [00:06:56.800] in an event that has become known as the Edenton Tea Party. [00:07:00.720] Tea was big business. [00:07:02.960] It was as popular and important in colonial America as coffee is today. [00:07:09.240] As well as the standard drink with meals, [00:07:12.000] tea was the center of social life. [00:07:14.520] The tea party was the cocktail party of its day, [00:07:17.760] a day when almost all entertainment was in the home. [00:07:21.430] When the British levied a tax on tea [00:07:23.480] the Americans bought their tea from Dutch smugglers. [00:07:26.520] The British countered by warding a [00:07:28.240] monopoly on the American tea business to the East India Company. [00:07:32.280] The Americans were infuriated. [00:07:35.280] Their anger exploded in an outburst of so-called "tea parties," [00:07:40.240] the most famous at Boston, December 16, 1773. [00:07:41.886] Boston Patriots disguised as [00:07:45.800] Indians boarded British tea ships and dumped one hundred thousand dollars [00:07:49.600] worth of tea into the harbor. [00:07:51.880] To punish the Americans for the Boston Tea Party [00:07:54.960] the British closed the port. [00:07:57.320] North Carolina and other colonies sent aid. [00:08:00.600] The ship Penelope sailed from Wilmington to Salem with food to be shipped overland to Boston. [00:08:06.400] In a quick succession of events, [00:08:08.920] the men met in their Congress at New Bern and declared economic war on Britain. [00:08:13.880] It was two months later, in October, [00:08:15.920] that Edenton women helped turn the words into action. [00:08:19.800] Their leader was Penelope Barker, a strong willed and resourceful woman [00:08:24.480] who outlived three well-to-do husbands and inherited all their property. [00:08:29.240] One of her husbands was Thomas Barker. [00:08:31.460] He later built for her the Penelope Barker House, [00:08:34.000] which is still used in Edenton as a historical museum and visitor's center. [00:08:39.120] Barker, detained in England during the war, [00:08:41.960] sent his wife a coach and four black horses. [00:08:46.480] Once during the war, British soldiers tried to steal the valuable animals. [00:08:49.920] Mrs. Barker drew a sword, cut the lead rope from the thieving soldier's hands, [00:08:55.000] and returned her horses to their stable. [00:08:58.440] She showed the same spirit earlier when [00:09:01.000] she called fifty-one women together to support the boycott [00:09:04.440] the men had declared at New Bern. [00:09:06.840] The women probably met in the home of Elizabeth Keen. [00:09:10.560] That house no longer stands, [00:09:12.040] but its site is marked in Edenton [?] [00:09:14.080] by this monument with a brass teapot on the top. [00:09:17.640] The women declared in a written document [00:09:19.760] they could not be indifferent to the boycott. [00:09:23.040] All fifty-one women signed their names on October the 25th, 1774. [00:09:28.800] Two days later, [00:09:30.040] they mailed a copy of the signed resolution in a letter to Great Britain. [00:09:33.710] The Morning Chronicle [00:09:34.960] and London Advertiser published the letter January 16th, 1775. [00:09:40.760] One Englishman who read the letter in the newspaper was Arthur Iredell [00:09:44.920] He commented on it in a letter to his brother, James Iredell, [00:09:48.920] the Edenton customs collector whose house still stands in Edenton. [00:09:54.320] "I see by the newspapers the Edenton [00:09:56.720] ladies have signalized themselves by the protest against tea drinking," he wrote his brother. [00:10:04.680] "Is there a female Congress at Edenton, too? [00:10:05.720] I hope not, for we Englishmen are afraid of the male Congress." [00:10:10.550] Arthur Iredell went on to say he hoped for Britain's sake [00:10:13.400] there were few places in America [00:10:15.160] which possess so much female artillery as Edenton. [00:10:19.190] The Resolution of the Edenton Ladies [00:10:21.240] fired the imagination of an English political cartoonist. [00:10:25.200] His engraving, entitled, "A Society of Patriotic Ladies at Edenton," [00:10:29.360] was published in London in 1775 [00:10:32.600] and it became the symbol of revolutionary American women. [00:10:36.400] Drawing from his imagination, [00:10:38.640] the artist showed the pretty Penelope Barker as a stern chairwoman, [00:10:43.200] wielding the gavel of authority. [00:10:46.400] Beneath the table, a dog takes advantage of the women's [00:10:48.280] preoccupation and steals cookies from an unattended child. [00:10:51.614] At the rear, a woman drinks from a bowl. [00:10:55.840] Perhaps yaupon tea was tradition says they served. [00:11:00.000] At the left, two ladies dump tea from their [00:11:01.560] canisters, apparently to be burned in symbolic protest. [00:11:05.200] In far off Philadelphia, [00:11:08.680] the First Continental Congress completed [00:11:10.960] its business the day after the Edenton Tea Party. [00:11:14.960] Its main business was to declare economic war on Britain. [00:11:19.120] The response of the British colonial authorities was to get tough, [00:11:22.880] to force their unpopular policies, like their tea, down unwilling throats. [00:11:27.480] The opposing sides hardened through a winter of discontent. [00:11:31.840] 1776 brought an angry spring. [00:11:34.800] The Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts [00:11:38.440] turned the economic war into a shooting war. [00:11:42.080] Messengers who whipped their horses night and day spread news of those battles. [00:11:47.520] The news reached North Carolina, 9:00 a.m., May 4th. [00:11:55.960] Governor Martin rolled out six cannon to protect the palace, only to see his guns hauled [00:12:00.800] off by, what he called, a motley mob inflamed with liquor. [00:12:07.520] On May 24th, the Harris royal governor fled [00:12:11.080] New Bern at night for the comparative safety of a British stronghold, Fort Johnston, [00:12:16.240] at the mouth of the Cape Fear River near Wilmington. [00:12:19.040] Adding to the humiliation of slipping away at night was the governor's worry over his [00:12:23.880] pregnant wife, who went to New York on a small boat. [00:12:28.680] The Americans jubilantly claimed Martin had deserted his duties without cause. [00:12:34.240] The Mecklenburg Committee of Safety issued [00:12:36.800] its ringing resolve declaring that all laws and commissions confirmed by or [00:12:42.640] derived from the authority of the King and Parliament are annulled and vacated, [00:12:47.760] and the former civil constitution of these colonies for the present wholly suspended. [00:12:54.320] Martin reached Fort Johnston June 2nd, [00:12:57.760] but found he had moved from one prison to another. [00:13:02.040] The Wilmington Committee of Safety, the most radical in the state, [00:13:05.960] declared him an enemy of liberty. [00:13:08.100] With the blessing of the Provincial Congress, [00:13:11.440] local firebrands plotted to storm the fort. [00:13:14.840] Martin slipped out in the nick of time [00:13:16.880] to the refuge of the British warship, Cruiser. [00:13:20.720] The Cruiser's log July 19th reports, [00:13:24.600] "Fort Johnson set a fire at 2:00 a.m." [00:13:28.440] Burning the British fort was a calculated outrage. [00:13:30.960] The royal governor denounced John Ashe and Cornelius Harnett [00:13:34.800] as ringleaders of what he called a "savage and audacious mob." [00:13:39.320] Ashe, Harnett, and the other radical leaders, were a minority, [00:13:43.000] but they were a determined and able [00:13:45.000] minority, which pushed royal authority to the edge of collapse. [00:13:49.730] The majority of people probably had not [00:13:51.880] taken sides and wished mostly to be left alone. [00:13:55.560] Those loyal to the crown were temporarily without leadership. [00:14:00.200] The faction most able and best organized [00:14:03.400] to fill the vacuum was the radical leadership of the Provincial Congress. [00:14:08.600] They were merchants and planters concentrated in the Cape Fear Valley [00:14:13.120] and here in the Albermarle Peninsula around Edenton, [00:14:17.400] the most established center of wealth and influence in the state. [00:14:21.760] Leaders like Samuel Johnson, a wealthy Edenton planter, who would [00:14:26.280] sit as chairman of the next Provincial Congress. [00:14:29.520] Johnson, who built this house after the war, [00:14:32.000] typified the membership of the Congress. [00:14:34.600] All white, all male, all men of property and influence— [00:14:40.530] men like William Hooper, a delegate to the First Continental Congress [00:14:44.000] who had later signed the Declaration of Independence. [00:14:47.320] The British burned Hooper's home in New Hanover County in 1781. [00:14:52.200] He and his wife later settled here in Hillsborough in this house. [00:14:57.560] These men, Johnson, Hooper, and others like [00:15:00.280] them, led, or pushed, North Carolina to a decisive step toward independence, [00:15:05.840] the creation of a provisional government. [00:15:08.320] The new government was born here in Hillsborough. [00:15:11.240] The work of the Third Provincial Congress, which met August the 20th, 1775. [00:15:17.120] Hooper's house is only a short walk from where they met at the [00:15:20.880] old St. Matthew's Anglican Church, where the Presbyterian Church now stands. [00:15:26.120] Johnson called the first session to order [00:15:28.960] by the time of this English clock, [00:15:31.640] which is now in the tower of the old Orange County courthouse. [00:15:35.920] At the time of the Third Provincial Congress, [00:15:38.320] the clock looked down from the belfry of the church where they met. [00:15:43.800] As the clock ticked off the last minutes of the old order, [00:15:48.240] the hour for taking sides arrived. [00:15:50.240] The senators were hauled before the assembly, forced to publicly confess [00:15:53.760] their error and swear allegiance to the new government. [00:15:58.840] The journal of the Congress records the decrees of these loyalty trials [00:16:03.520] along with a stream of orders issuing commissions and to purchase cook [00:16:07.800] kettles, carts and horses, salt, barrels, pork, saltpetre, gunpowder, and pig iron [00:16:14.880] for the art of casting cannon. [00:16:18.720] The minutes of August 23rd record the names of a committee of secrecy for the purpose [00:16:23.360] of procuring arms and ammunition, and to report to this Congress what sums [00:16:27.960] of money will be necessary for that purpose. [00:16:31.440] The committee returned its report Tuesday, September the 5th. [00:16:35.000] It recommended that sixty thousand pounds be emitted in paper bills of credit [00:16:40.080] to be applied to a defraying the expense of the militia and minutemen, [00:16:44.600] for purchasing arms and ammunition, and paying bounties for the encouragement [00:16:49.400] of manufacturers, expresses, and other contingencies. [00:16:53.480] This sum, to be [?] by a tax of two [00:16:55.880] shillings every year on each taxable person in this province to commence [00:17:00.440] the year 1777 and continue for seven years after its commencement. [00:17:06.160] Thus, in the matter of fact [00:17:07.560] language of the journal, two basic functions of a government take form: [00:17:11.520] the issuing of money and the levying of taxes. [00:17:15.760] While the new North Carolina government [00:17:17.880] called its revolutionary tune in Hillsborough, the old Royal Authority marched [00:17:23.520] to a different drummer. [00:17:26.720] Across the state, in the discomfort [00:17:26.920] of a crowded warship off Brunswick, the royal governor made plans for war. [00:17:32.680] He sent off an appeal to Britain for troops and ships, [00:17:35.600] and he called for loyal North Carolinians to rally to arms under the king's banner. [00:17:45.680] Armed conflict was now inevitable [00:17:48.680] and this is where it came, on the old post road from Halifax [00:17:52.560] to Wilmington on a bridge over Whitmore Creek. [00:17:59.320] The bridge is long gone. [00:18:01.200] It was only a little wooden span over a backwater creek [00:18:04.480] on a back road to a provincial town, [00:18:07.000] but the significance of the battle fought here was enormous. [00:18:10.120] To understand that, one must understand the plans of both sides. [00:18:15.040] Governor Martin proposed not only to subjugate North Carolina, [00:18:19.560] but to conquer the neighboring southern colonies as well. [00:18:23.600] At Whitehall in London, [00:18:25.240] the colonial secretary, Lord Dartmouth, approved Martin's plan. [00:18:29.960] Dartmouth agreed to arm the loyalist [00:18:31.960] troops, which Martin confidently expected to raise in North Carolina. [00:18:36.600] He issued an order that ten thousand stand of arms [00:18:39.920] and other supplies be sent to Martin. [00:18:43.200] It was a powerful force, [00:18:45.320] England's greatest effort in the war so far. [00:18:48.720] A famous soldier, Lord Charles Cornwallis, would command, and England confidently [00:18:54.160] expected, would soon slap the upstart colonists back into line. [00:18:58.700] Cornwallis and his army would sail from Ireland [00:19:01.520] in a fleet of seventy-two ships commanded by Sir Peter Parker. [00:19:06.120] Furthermore, [00:19:07.080] Dartmouth ordered Sir Henry Clinton, commanding the British forces [00:19:10.760] in New England, to sail from Boston with two thousand men [00:19:15.400] and rendezvous with Parker and Cornwallis at Brunswick. [00:19:20.320] Scottish emigrants, like Alan Macdonald [00:19:23.880] helped Martin recruit a royalist force of sixteen hundred men in North Carolina. [00:19:29.800] Thousands of Scotsman like Macdonald had [00:19:32.200] emigrated from their native highlands to the Cape Fear Valley. [00:19:35.960] The recruits gathered at Cross Creek near the present city of Fayetteville. [00:19:40.880] Some were armed militia with loyalist sentiments, [00:19:44.000] most were raw recruits, unarmed and untrained. [00:19:48.720] The plan was to march them to Brunswick to meet English Bleadon army. [00:19:53.600] There they would be trained and armed. [00:19:56.000] Macdonald, who farmed in Anson County, [00:19:59.200] was husband of the beautiful Flora Macdonald, who wrote to a friend, [00:20:03.271] "Alan leaves [00:20:04.080] tomorrow to join Donald Macdonald [00:20:06.320] [?] at Cross Creek and I shall be alone with my three [?]. [00:20:10.000] Can you come and stay with me awhile? [00:20:11.480] There are troublest times ahead [?]." [00:20:15.314] [music] [00:20:18.600] The commander of the opposing American forces [00:20:21.040] was Colonel James Moore, who got the job over John Ashe. [00:20:25.080] Moore was a man of such impressive [00:20:26.960] abilities that British loyalist openly hoped Ashe would get the command. [00:20:33.280] Moore's army, while certainly not a crack outfit, [00:20:36.480] was the better equipped and trained of the two. [00:20:39.360] He commanded the first North Carolina Continentals, [00:20:42.170] regular troops paid [00:20:43.320] by the Continental Congress, minutemen, and ordinary North Carolina militia. [00:20:49.240] The minutemen were the pick of the militia, [00:20:51.560] tough men in buckskins. [00:20:53.040] Many of them veteran Indian fighters. [00:20:55.454] [music] [00:21:09.760] Moore's job was to keep the Tory Army [00:21:12.520] from joining the invasion force at Brunswick or nearby Wilmington. [00:21:16.840] The Tory Army broke camp February 18th, 1776. [00:21:21.480] They wanted to avoid a fight [00:21:23.440] and marched on a back route on the left bank of the Cape Fear. [00:21:27.600] Moore sent Alexander Lillington and two hundred minutemen to seize [00:21:31.760] the bridge over Moores Creek. [00:21:34.240] He called for support from New Bern, which sent Richard Caswell and [00:21:38.520] eight hundred Craven County minuteman, on a forced march to join Lillington. [00:21:43.000] They fortified the bridge, which the Tories would have to cross. [00:21:53.120] They threw up earthworks along here. [00:21:55.440] This is what's left of them. [00:22:00.600] They were shoulder high then. The men could stand behind them [00:22:04.360] and aim their muskets at the bridge where the Highlanders would try to cross. [00:22:10.520] The Highlanders camped six miles across the bridge, held a council of war, [00:22:15.280] and decided to attack. The eight hundred men who were armed [00:22:18.680] set out at 1:00 a.m., the morning of February 27, 1776. [00:22:25.000] The Americans removed the planks from the bridge and greased the supporting timbers. [00:22:30.560] They threw up a dirt entrenchment on high [00:22:32.600] ground and aimed nearly a thousand muskets and rifles at the bridge. [00:22:37.520] A picked force of eighty Highland swordsman wearing kilts, stormed the bridge, [00:22:42.000] crying, "King George and broadswords," bagpipe [?]!" [00:22:48.320] only to be drowned out by the sudden hail of American gunfire. [00:22:52.640] The Scots had little chance. [00:22:54.360] They suffered about fifty casualties and fled. [00:22:57.080] Panic spread back through the woods [00:22:58.840] to the camp of waiting recruits, and the whole army disintegrated. [00:23:02.760] The victorious Americans lost [00:23:04.600] only one man killed and one wounded. [00:23:07.600] It was a complete and total victory. [00:23:10.520] The battle doomed Martin's hope to subdue [00:23:13.160] North Carolina, as well as his larger plan to conquer the South. [00:23:17.400] Clinton and Cornwallis arrived off Wilmington two months late [00:23:21.710] and sailed away when they learned of the disaster at Moores Creek. [00:23:25.160] The battle marked the end of any attempts [00:23:27.800] at conciliation between the Loyalist and the American Patriots. [00:23:32.400] It gave the Patriots the victory they sorely needed to rally Americans. [00:23:37.160] It set off a chain of events leading [00:23:39.160] directly to the Declaration of Independence. [00:23:42.000] That declaration was still five months away, [00:23:44.680] but North Carolina was committed. [00:23:47.520] The next step was here in Halifax. [00:23:51.760] The event? The Fourth Provincial Congress. [00:23:56.760] Congress met in a spirit of commitment [00:23:56.960] with a feeling that Moores Creek had burned all bridges. [00:24:02.720] Samuel Johnson [?] the presiding officer, [00:24:05.840] voiced that feeling when he said, "all our people here are up for independence." [00:24:11.520] This is the Boyden's house, built in 1760. [00:24:22.320] It was about two blocks from the old Halifax courthouse where the Congress met. [00:24:27.400] The courthouse itself was torn down and replaced in the 19th century. [00:24:36.320] The Congress named a committee of seven [00:24:38.760] to write a resolution proposing the next step. [00:24:41.880] The chairman was the wealthy, Cornelius Harnett. [00:24:45.800] Congress adopted Harnett's report unanimously on April 12th, 1776. [00:24:52.480] The report is known to history as the Halifax Resolves. [00:24:56.920] North Carolina was the first colony to adopt an official action of independence. [00:25:02.440] The Continental Congress adopted and approved the final draft [00:25:06.800] of the Declaration of Independence July 4th, 1776. [00:25:12.680] The long and bitter trial of war was still [00:25:15.640] to come, and North Carolina was to suffer a military invasion. [00:25:20.200] But only military defeat could now turn the state from the path it had chosen [00:25:25.040] that path led here—to independence and two hundred years of self-government. [00:25:31.120] That last Provincial Congress appointed as [00:25:33.480] governor Richard Caswell, one of the victors of Moores Creek. [00:25:37.760] He was the first of the line [00:25:39.280] of North Carolina governors who still sit in Raleigh. [00:25:43.520] The Congress also established the General Assembly, [00:25:46.720] which two centuries later, makes laws in this magnificent marble building. [00:25:54.440] State government in 1975 is built [00:25:58.040] on the foundations laid at Hillsborough and Halifax in 1775, [00:26:04.000] but it provides services for its citizens beyond the wildest dreams of its founders. [00:26:09.880] It also costs more than they could have possibly imagined. [00:26:13.880] And two hundred years later, we still have troublest times. [00:26:18.380] Everyone has not benefited equally [00:26:20.280] from independence and we have poverty and injustice alongside wealth and liberty. [00:26:27.400] The challenge two hundred years ago was to win independence from foreign rule. [00:26:32.760] The challenge we face now is to share the benefits of freedom in our own country [00:26:38.480] and hang on to as much individual liberty as we can [00:26:41.960] in an increasingly difficult world. [00:26:46.680] Two hundred years from now, another generation will look back on us. [00:26:51.900] [music] [00:27:02.720] They will be looking to see if we met our challenge [00:27:06.080] as well as the men and women who launched the American Revolution. [00:27:11.100] [music]