North Carolina

BEFORE THE ARRIVAL of Europeans, North Carolina was occupied by a many of Native American tribes, including the Cherokee and the Tuscarora. It was the second territory in North America that the British tried to colonize, with its state capital Raleigh taking its name from Sir Walter Raleigh, the Elizabethan English adventurer who established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s. The name of the state was given in 1712 in memory of the late King Charles I of England, using the Latin word for Charles.

In 1776, North Carolina was the first of the colonies to instruct its delegates to vote for independence from the British Crown, with Richard Caswell elected as the first governor of the state. He wrote the first North Carolina Constitution and was re-elected in April 1777, stepping down in 1780, as the constitution allowed only three non-consecutive terms. He was later speaker of the senate in North Carolina. Abner Nash, the second governor, was elected by the legislature at a time when North Carolina was a battlefield in the Revolutionary War. The third governor, also appointed, was Thomas Burke, a doctor who had originally been born in Ireland. The fourth governor, Alexander Martin, was elected by the North Carolina general assembly in 1782, and after he stood down as governor in 1784, he returned to the North Carolina Senate where he served until 1788, and was then elected to the U.S. Senate 1793–99.

Richard Caswell then returned to the position of governor, followed by Samuel Johnston, a Federalist, the first governor who had a political party affiliation. Alexander Martin succeeded him as an Anti-Federalist, returning to the governorship for a second term. His successor was Richard Dobbs Spaight, the first governor to be born in North Carolina, and the only one to be killed from injuries sustained in a duel.

Federalists and Anti-Federalists battled in successive elections until 1802, when James Turner, a longtime politician, was elected as a Democratic-Republican. Turner served for three one-year terms, the constitutional limit, before being elected to a seat in the U.S. Senate, with the Democratic-Republicans dominating the North Carolina political scene until 1828. This period was characterized by many of the governors serving the maximum three years in office, with Benjamin Williams doing so on two occasions.

Gabriel Holmes, who was governor 1821–24, was effectively an Independent, although he is generally regarded as affiliated with the Democratic-Republican Party; his successor Hutching Gordon Burton was also an Independent, but was associated with the Federalist Party, and later with the National Republican Party. In December 1828, John Owen became the first Democratic Party governor of North Carolina, after narrowly defeating Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr., with the vote being 96 to 92.

In 1830, David Lowry Swain of the National Republican Party was elected at the age of 29—at that time the youngest governor in state history, and the first to become affiliated with the Whig Party. One of his tasks was to push through the ratification of the North Carolina Constitution. In 1835, Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr., was elected for the Democrats, the first governor who was the son of a previous governor. Spaight was the last governor to be elected by the state legislature; the new constitution called for the governor to be elected by the people.

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