Early America
The Antifederalists: North Carolina’s Other Founders
1776-1835
It is tempting to dismiss the Anti-Federalists, for the U.S. Constitution that they opposed is practically a sacred document to most modern Americans. Under that Constitution, the United States increased in population, wealth, and territory to become, by the late twentieth century, the world’s only superpower. The Anti-Federalists contributed to what now seems to be a preordained drama. Their story, however, suggests that history might have taken another, and not unthinkable, path.
Speaker Ban Law
Enacted in 1963, the Speaker Ban was a North Carolina state law that restricted the appearance of Communists and other radical speakers at state-supported campuses, including the University of North Carolina. The Speaker Ban sparked a major controversy over Communism, academic freedom, and the First Amendment.
“Is Anything Free?” Debates Regarding Internal Improvements in Antebellum North Carolina
Some things never change. The particulars may do so, yet the essence remains. Modern-day political ideas in North Carolina, for example, are rooted in the state’s past. One example is public-funded roads.
Graham Brothers
The Graham brothers, James and William, were leaders of the state and national Whig parties during the antebellum era. A Senator and Governor, the younger William, once described as the handsomest man in all of North Carolina, influenced politics more than his older brother. The political biographies of both, however, reveal the history of the Whig Party in the Tar Heel State and explore what issues Whigs deemed most important.
Works Progress Administration (WPA): One Failure to End the Great Depression
This major public works program represented one failure of the New Deal to end the Great Depression. The WPA spent over $60 million in North Carolina, but critics charged that relief weakened the work ethic. North Carolina farmers and industrialists resented the competition for labor; the unemployed could work for the WPA rather than in the fields and factories. Conservatives also fought power shifting from the state and local levels to Washington, D.C. Despite the WPA's existence, the Great Depression worsened by the late 1930s. But by the early 1940s, market forces and wartime demand had rejuvenated the economy.
When Wilmington Threw a Tea Party: Women and Political Awareness in Revolution-Era North Carolina
Most readers are familiar with the details of the Boston Tea Party of 1773, and properly identify it as a key event in the radical movement that triggered the American Revolution. Many North Carolinians have also heard of the Edenton Tea Party of October 1774, when the leading women of that Eastern North Carolina town did not actually dump tea in a nearby sound but did stage one of the nation’s earliest acts of political theater by women. But how many are familiar with the far more incendiary Wilmington Tea Party of 1775, also led by women?
Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different
On March 27, 2007, Pulitzer Prize winner Gordon Wood dicussed his recent book, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, at a North Carolina History Project Headliner Luncheon.
Gordon Wood: Revolutionary Characters
On March 27, 2007, Pulitzer Prize winner Gordon Wood discussed his recent book, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, at a North Carolina History Project Headliner Luncheon. His entire lecture can be viewed here.
Toward an Inclusive History of the Civil War: Society and the Home Front
The Civil War has been one of the most studied events of United States history. But with the advent of social history, scholars have asked many new questions concerning the history of race, class, and gender--to name three examples. By exploring the role of women during the Civil War, historian Victoria E. Ott provides an example of social historians' concerns and argues that the "conflict was more than just great battles and great men."
The Antifederalists: North Carolina’s Other Founders
It is tempting to dismiss the Anti-Federalists, for the U.S. Constitution that they opposed is practically a sacred document to most modern Americans. Under that Constitution, the United States increased in population, wealth, and territory to become, by the late twentieth century, the world’s only superpower. The Anti-Federalists contributed to what now seems to be a preordained drama. Their story, however, suggests that history might have taken another, and not unthinkable, path.
Senator Robert Rice Reynolds: An Atypical Tar Heel Politician and Isolationist
A most atypical southern politician and U. S. Senator from 1933 to 1945, Robert Rice Reynolds was an unabashed isolationist and Anglophobe, whose foreign policy positions, not economic ones, alienated him from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Reynolds’s notorious womanizing and five marriages, opposition to Prohibition, flamboyant actions, and non-racist demagoguery set him apart from the straight-laced, Tar Heel politicians, who supported FDR’s aid-to-Britain policies.
A Tar Heel in Cloak: George Watts Hill, Interventionism, and the Shadow War Against Hitler
Scion of a distinguished North Carolina family (“Durham’s first family”), George Watts Hill played a key role in the secret war against Hitler. For his effective work and efficient administration, the Italian and French governments respectively awarded him the Cross of War Merit and the Legion of Merit.
Josiah Bailey and the Creation of a Post-World War II Conservatism
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had many fans, but North Carolina Senator Josiah Bailey, an author of the Conservative Manifesto of 1937, was not one. In a letter to anti-New Dealer Senator Peter G. Gerry of Rhode Island, Bailey wrote, “Our President is not actuated by principle, but by fears. He will try to head off anything in order that he may stay at the head.”