WEBVTT NOTE 21. Royal Government in North Carolina 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.160 Volume 2, Chapter 21, Royal Government in North Carolina 2 00:00:06.160 --> 00:00:12.120 As a royal colony, North Carolina government did not change greatly, but much of the confusion 3 00:00:12.120 --> 00:00:18.240 and many of the land restrictions imposed by the proprietary disappeared. Immigration 4 00:00:18.240 --> 00:00:24.660 now greatly increased and settlement expanded in the south and middle of the coastal areas. 5 00:00:24.660 --> 00:00:31.060 These new settlers included groups of Highland Scots in the Cape Fear area, who started 6 00:00:31.060 --> 00:00:38.940 emigrating from Scotland in force after the Jacobite rebellion was crushed in 1745. 7 00:00:38.940 --> 00:00:47.460 Royal Governor of North Carolina, for nearly two decades, 1734 through 1752, Gabriel Johnston 8 00:00:47.460 --> 00:00:53.980 soon found himself in two basic quarrels with the Assembly. One quarrel over the perennial 9 00:00:53.980 --> 00:01:06.980 The federal land question began at the opening of his administration. In the course of imposing land reform against the blank patents, Johnston decided to employ the quit-rent weapon. 10 00:01:06.980 --> 00:01:16.980 As a corollary, he demanded that all quit-rents be paid in sterling or in paper money, of which the value would be fixed by governor and council. 11 00:01:16.980 --> 00:01:20.980 He also demanded payment of the backlog of arrears. 12 00:01:20.980 --> 00:01:30.980 This policy managed to alienate all the landowners in the colony, large and small, and the assembly refused to agree to the change. 13 00:01:30.980 --> 00:01:42.980 The aroused settlers of Bertie and Edgecomb districts protested to the governor that their poor estates had been honestly purchased and settled with difficulty, 14 00:01:42.980 --> 00:01:48.980 and that they had believed the lands were their own, with the exception of a small quitterent. 15 00:01:48.980 --> 00:01:54.980 But now Johnston proposed to increase the quitterents and speedily collect the arrears. 16 00:01:54.980 --> 00:02:01.980 If he persisted, the settlers would go elsewhere, where they could own the fruits of their own labor. 17 00:02:01.980 --> 00:02:08.980 Indeed, in 1737, some five hundred people from Bertie and Edgecombe rose up in arms 18 00:02:08.980 --> 00:02:25.980 The assembly tried to arrest Johnston's officials for seizing lands and property for payment of quit rents, whereupon Johnston dissolved the assembly. 19 00:02:25.980 --> 00:02:37.980 Finally, the Crown in 1741 decided largely in favor of the landowners, upholding the principle of the blank patents and previous usage regarding paying quit rents in depreciation terms. 20 00:02:37.980 --> 00:02:47.180 and so, Governor Johnston finally met complete defeat in his attempt to burden the province 21 00:02:47.180 --> 00:02:53.980 with heavy quit rents. Whereas in the first few years of his rule, he had collected over 22 00:02:53.980 --> 00:03:01.320 4,000 pounds of back quit rents, payments were increasingly in arrears and little was 23 00:03:01.320 --> 00:03:07.520 was collected thereafter. As a result, the salaries of the government officials paid from 24 00:03:07.520 --> 00:03:15.520 quit rents went also in arrears. In 1746, Johnston complained that his salary was eight 25 00:03:15.520 --> 00:03:24.560 years overdue. At the governor's death in 1752, arrears of his salary totaled over 13,000 26 00:03:24.560 --> 00:03:30.960 pounds. The other important dispute of the Johnston administration stemmed from an inherent 27 00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:37.960 Flaw of Democracy, Unequal Representation as the Distribution of Population Changes 28 00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:44.880 In 1715, representation in the North Carolina Assembly was established at four for each 29 00:03:44.880 --> 00:03:52.800 county in Albemarle and two for each of the other counties. At that time, this allocation 30 00:03:52.800 --> 00:03:59.360 reflected the distribution of population in the province. But as time went on, the population 31 00:03:59.360 --> 00:04:04.360 Johnston expanded in the southern part of the colony and the fixed quota became more 32 00:04:04.360 --> 00:04:07.460 and more inequitable. 33 00:04:07.460 --> 00:04:14.340 Johnston tried to rectify this condition but, at the same time, moved against democratic 34 00:04:14.340 --> 00:04:21.520 aspects of the 1715 structure, which gave the vote to all freemen of the colony and 35 00:04:21.520 --> 00:04:26.640 which provided for the election of a new assembly every two years. 36 00:04:26.640 --> 00:04:33.800 In 1735, Johnston, under royal instruction, induced the assembly to impose a freehold 37 00:04:33.800 --> 00:04:37.000 property requirement for voting. 38 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:43.900 In addition, the Crown in 1737 disallowed the Biennial Act, leaving the governor free 39 00:04:43.900 --> 00:04:48.040 to call or to dissolve the assembly at will. 40 00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:54.600 As part of his campaign against the assembly and its overweighting of Albemarle representatives, 41 00:04:54.600 --> 00:04:59.880 Johnston moved the seat of government, haphazard as it was since public records were kept in 42 00:04:59.880 --> 00:05:06.980 private houses, from Eddington in the north to New Bern in the south. The geographical 43 00:05:06.980 --> 00:05:12.700 struggle culminated in 1746 when Johnston called an assembly to meet in the extreme 44 00:05:12.700 --> 00:05:19.620 south at Wilmington on the Cape Fear River. The Albemarle representatives, a majority 45 00:05:19.620 --> 00:05:25.180 Three of the assembly boycotted the meeting, robbing it of a quorum according to the old 46 00:05:25.180 --> 00:05:33.020 Act of 1715, but the Rump Assembly equalized the representation to two members per county 47 00:05:33.020 --> 00:05:36.780 and established the capital at New Bern. 48 00:05:36.780 --> 00:05:42.900 This trick threw down a direct challenge to Albemarle, which responded by refusing to send 49 00:05:42.900 --> 00:05:48.180 representatives or to recognize any act of the New Bern government. 50 00:05:48.180 --> 00:05:53.580 Moreover, the people of Albemarle refused to pay taxes, refused to accept the new central 51 00:05:53.580 --> 00:05:59.480 government's money, and refused to serve as jurors or recognize the decisions of the 52 00:05:59.480 --> 00:06:01.380 general court. 53 00:06:01.380 --> 00:06:04.780 Anyone in prison was set free by the public. 54 00:06:04.780 --> 00:06:10.340 The approach to anarchism was not quite complete, however, since the local county courts continued 55 00:06:10.340 --> 00:06:11.700 to function. 56 00:06:11.700 --> 00:06:17.180 In the meanwhile, the burden of supporting the government was declared too heavy for 57 00:06:17.180 --> 00:06:23.500 for the South, and taxes ceased to be paid throughout the province of North Carolina. 58 00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:29.740 In this way, an approach to anarchism came again to North Carolina, and especially to 59 00:06:29.740 --> 00:06:33.780 ever individualistic Albemarle. 60 00:06:33.780 --> 00:06:39.940 Government only fully returned in 1754, when the Crown finally decided in favor of the 61 00:06:39.940 --> 00:06:44.700 Northern counties and the old form of representation. 62 00:06:44.700 --> 00:06:53.060 The 1740s and 1750s also saw the Ulster-Scott influx into and settlement of the western 63 00:06:53.060 --> 00:06:59.780 Piedmont area of North Carolina, many of the Scots settling on the Granville claim. Generally, 64 00:06:59.780 --> 00:07:04.580 The Scots were settler farmers rather than slave-owning plantation holders.