Tar Talk – Page 7 – NC Miscellany

Carol Folt will join other important women on the Hill

Portrait of Katherine Kennedy Carmichael — Katherine Kennedy Carmichael served as Dean of Women from 1946-1972.

The expected naming of Carol Folt as the next chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill will mark the first time in the university’s 224-year history that a woman has held the top post. But Folt follows on the heels (pardon the pun) of several other women who have held significant positions with the University. Katherine “Kitty” Carmichael, pictured above, served as Dean of Women until her office was combined with Student Affairs in 1972. During Carmichael’s tenure the percentage of females in the student body increased from 16 percent to 37 percent. Author and UNC English professor recalled Carmichael’s strong example for women during the dedication of a dormitory named for the former women’s dean in 1987, noting that Carmichael was fond of saying “If God were satisfied with Adam, why did he make Eve so different?”

Women were first admitted to UNC as graduate students in 1897. In 1917, Clara S. Lingle was appointed Adviser to Women. She was succeeded in 1919 by Inez Koonce Stacy, who held the office until 1946 and during whose tenure (1942) the title of the office became Dean of Women. Stacy was married to Marvin Hendrix Stacy, who was Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at UNC and served as interim president of the University upon the death of Edward Kidder Graham during the flu epidemic of 1918 (President Stacy, himself, died from the flu a year later). Inez Stacy led efforts to build the first housing for women. Spencer Dormitory opened in 1925. Three other dorms for women were built during Stacy’s tenure—Kenan, McIver and Alderman. Stacy’s job title was changed to Dean of Women in 1941, one year before her retirement.

Other female leaders at UNC have included Sallie B. Marks, appointed a professor of elementary education in 1927 and the first woman to join the regular faculty; Mary Turner Lane, who founded the Women’s Studies program; and Gillian T. Cell, the first woman to be appointed to a tenure-track position in the UNC history department and, later, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Historian Pamela Dean wrote about these women and more inWomen on the Hill, a pamphlet distributed at the dedication of Carmichael Dorm.

Connecticut lays claims to N.C. first

License plates in North Carolina may be forced to undergo redesign if new research gains ground suggesting that the Wright Brothers weren’t the first in flight. An article published last week in Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft advances a claim that Gustave Whitehead, a German immigrant to Connecticut, made the first powered and controlled flight on August 14, 1901, two years prior to Orville Wright’s taking to the air at Kitty Hawk. According to Jane’s, Whitehead built an aircraft with two acetylene-fueled engines. The Condor, as his plane was named, had a 10 horsepower motor for the wheels and a 20 horsepower engine as the main source of forward flight. (unfortunately the full article is behind a paywall):

In the early hours of 14 August 1901, the Condor propelled itself along the darkened streets of Bridgeport, Connecticut, with Whitehead, his staff and an invited guest in attendance. In the still air of dawn, the Condor’s wings were unfolded and it took off from open land at Fairfield, 15 miles from the city, and performed two demonstration sorties. The second was estimated as having covered 1 1/2 miles at a height of 50 feet, during which slight turns in both directions were demonstrated.

Historians have long known about an account of Whitehead’s flight in the Bridgeport Herald. But photographic evidence didn’t exist until recently, when a Bavarian amateur historian discovered a photograph of a 1906 exhibition on flight that included a picture of what appears to be Whitehead’s Condor in flight.

A top official at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum says he’ll wait for further evidence before changing his–and the institution’s–stance that Orville and Wilbur Wright are responsible for the first powered flight.

Perhaps Bridgeport mayor Bill Finch is showing the true skills of a politician. He told NPR that Connecticut’s license plate could read “Firster in Flight.” That seems to leave room for “First in Flight” to remain on N.C. plates.

Remembering NC Wildflower Expert C. Ritchie Bell

C. Ritchie Bell at N.C. Botanical Gardens in 1978. Photo by Hugh Morton.

The beauty and abundance of the native flowers of eastern America was impressive even to the earliest explorers and colonists, and the early reports and letters sent back to Europe often made reference to the variety of plants in the New World and to their uses. Although land was cleared for crops, trees were cut for fuel and shelter, and many plants were gathered by the settlers for food, medicine, and dye, with such vast lands and so few inhabitants, there was probably little change in the native flora for more than two centuries after colonization began…..During the past century, however, the tremendous increase in the population and the more rapid and extensive clearing of the forests and other changes of the surface of the earth by man has had a profound effect on our native vegetation. This is especially true in the case of many of the more showy species collectively known as “Wild Flowers.” Because of their delicately balanced adaptation to very specific natural environments, many wild flowers cannot grow in habitats that have been altered or disturbed, nor can they compete with the plants of the more weedy introduced species that rapidly invade the vast areas of land opened or altered by the machines of man for roads, farms, dwellings, and industrial complexes. Thus the balance continues to shift so that today many of our most attractive native plants are near extinction except within the boundaries of parks, natural areas, and gardens set aside for preservation of interesting natural habitats and their associated plant and animal species….

If given adequate light, water, and soil conditions, many of the native plants that once formed the “Natural Gardens of North Carolina” are equally as colorful and interesting, or even more so, than related horticultural varieties. The purpose of this book is to make easier the recognition of some of these flowers and thereby to stimulate a greater interest in this beautiful natural resource and accent the need for its preservation.

—from Wild Flowers of North Carolina by William S. Justice and C. Ritchie Bell. The book, first published in 1968, has served for more than four decades as one of the standard reference guides for those walking the woods of the Tar Heel state. Bell, who was instrumental in the founding of the North Carolina Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill and its first director, died on March 6, 2013. His longtime colleagues have assembled a web page recognizing his contributions to the understanding of North Carolina’s native flora.

The Tar Heel celebrates its 120th birthday

The UNC-Chapel Hill student newspaper printed its first issue on February 23, 1893. The Tar Heel‘s editors explained that the paper, issued every Thursday morning, would include “a summary of all occurrences in the University and village of Chapel Hill.” The paper vowed to cover UNC sports, “all society news, personals and every subject of interest to both the students and citizens of the village.” The Tar Heel was published by the University Athletic Association. Charles Baskerville, a Mississippi native and star student at UNC, served as both head of the Athletic Association and editor-in-chief of the paper. The Tar Heel was available by subscription, charging $1.50 per session.

Baskerville and his five sub-editors seemed to realize the weightiness of their endeavor, writing:

This new venture is necessarily entered upon by the present board with no little trepidation, nevertheless with a determination, to make a success which can only be done through the indulgence and assistance of our faculty and fellow-students. Therefore we invite honest criticism and any aid in the advancement of this new project will be thoroughly appreciated.

Indeed, many a fellow student has contributed to the success and longevity of this noted form of Tar Heel Ink. Happy birthday and many thanks to each and every one of them.

The State Legislative Building Opened 50 Years Ago Today

“In late 1959, Thomas J. White, a former state representative of North Carolina and a powerful figure in the state’s political circles, was appointed chairman of the commission to build the new North Carolina State Legislative Building. The commission had already heard from a number of North Carolina architects who had expressed a strong interest in the project. Ralph B. Reeves, Jr., of Holloway & Reeves in Raleigh, one of the larger firms in the southeast at the time and one of eleven firms that made presentations to the commission for the project, had sought [Edward Durell] Stone out as a design consultant and associated architect. Stone traveled to Raleigh to meet the members of the commission in late October, and the Stone and Holloway & Reeves firms were awarded the contract for the building in early December. Almost immediately, there were objections to Stone’s selection.

Henry L. Kamphoefner, who was dean of the North Carolina State College School of Design (later the north Carolina State University College of Design), wrote in an article for the Raleigh News & Observer in early January 1960:

If the award had to leave North Carolina, why did not the building commission appoint one of the half dozen or more great men of architecture. Why not France’s Le Corbusier? Or why not Mies van der Rohe of Chicago? Or why not Walter Gropius of Boston? Or why not Richard Neutra of Los Angeles?

True, Edward Stone is a good architect, but in critical circles he does not rank with the world’s greatest men who are practicing architecture today. He appears as the man who is getting the greatest amount of current publicity because he did a building very much in the world news, the American Pavilion at the Brussels Fair, and a fine embassy for the United States at New Delhi, where he introduced an indigenous device, the grille. Since the New Delhi embassy, he has parlayed the grille into a gimmick for indiscriminate use in California, South Carolina, or where have you.

Kamphoefner’s view of ‘great men’ clearly meant ‘modern men,’ or more precisely, ‘European modern men.’ Overlaying this critique was the fact that Stone and Kamphoefner had a history of antagonism dating back many years. At a cocktail party given by Douglas Haskell, early in his tenure as editor of Architectural Forum (from 1949 to 1964), Stone, likely intoxicated, had insulted Kamphoefner by loudly announcing upon entering the room, ‘There are three things that are overrated, home cooking, home *^%!$#!, and Henry Kamphoefner.’ Haskel had added wryly, ‘Well Henry, at least you’re in good company.’ Outwardly, until Stone’s later work, Kamphoefner and Stone would have been in alignment: both of them were admirers of Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller, and both were adherents of modernism. What had turned them against one another is unclear. The News & Observer article was not the last time that Kamphoefner would publicly attack Stone.”

From Edward Durell Stone: A son’s untold story of a legendary architect by Hicks Stone. Legislators moved into the Stone-designed building on Jones Street on February 6, 1963.

Working with Holloway & Reeves, Stone and his firm also designed the East Building of the North Carolina Museum of Art. The East Building opened in 1983 and was Stone’s last work before his death. The building underwent major transformation as part of a three-year project by the N.C. Museum of Art in the mid-2000s. Stone and his firm also served as architects for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and National Geographic Building in Washington, D.C. and the Huntington Hartford Gallery of Modern Art in New York City.

In Edward Durell Stone, Hicks Stone quotes his father’s colleague Ernie Jacks describing the scheme behind the Legislative Building design.

“For the State House, we produced what I still believe was a beautiful piece of intricate planning—one of those examples which the Boss referred to as an ‘inevitable plan.’ We couldn’t imagine it being arranged any other way. All the innumerable spaces seemed to fit together perfectly, both two- and three-dimensionality…I always have thought of it as an apt response to those who criticized our symmetrical designs as being ‘forced,’ and also as an illustration of Nietzche’s observation,’To welcome difficulty then to overlay it with the appearance of simplicity—that is a work of art.”

Something to fill the time between inaugurations

Loyal blog readers and sundry others know that the North Carolina Collection collects political ephemera, including those annoying post cards and letters that fill our mailboxes in election season. During the 2008 presidential election cycle, friends of the Collection sent us more than 700 pieces of campaign ephemera. During the 2012 campaign season we received approximately 1,400 pieces. Thank you! The collection doesn’t span Murphy to Manteo, but it is darn close—Yancey County to Manteo, and points in between: Carrboro, Cary, Elizabeth City, Fayetteville, Gastonia, High Point, Mayodan, Mebane, and Wilmington, to name a few.

We’ll organize these postcards and flyers by office being contested and have them ready for researchers this spring. In the meantime, I’d like to share some observations—and a few sample images—with you. Watch for postings on Wednesday and Friday of this week, and on Inauguration Day. Please keep in mind this selection is subjective in the extreme. These are items that caught my eye based on the image, or how an issue was framed, or the humor. Don’t read politics into my choices. This is more a popular culture exercise than a political one.

What if N.C. farmers chose opium poppies instead of tobacco?

This what if began with a question found in the December 6, 1877 edition of The Farmer and Mechanic, a weekly paper published in Raleigh. Dr. W. Haw, an “analytical chemist” of Oswego, N.Y., wanted to know whether the poppy species that yields opium could be planted in the South.

I resided a long time in the East Indies, and cultivated opium near Patva, and I should think the Southern States favorable therefor (sic). I should like to engage in the business, if possible. The question is—is the opium of the South strong enough, has it proper medical qualifications, and is the yield favorable.

A search of subsequent editions of The Farmer and Mechanic yielded no answer to Haw’s inquiry. The question remained. These days North Carolina is home to numerous experiments with “specialty crops.” Tar Heels are growing truffles, hops, edamame and wasabi. Did anyone ever try growing papiver somniferum, the Latin name for the poppy species that yields opium and its medicinal derivatives as well as the seeds that coat a popular type of bagel?

A search of the North Carolina Collection stacks produced a paper written by Thomas Williams Kendrick to fulfill requirements toward his graduate degree in pharmacy from UNC in 1899. His paper, with the simple title “Opium,” details the history of opium use and poppy cultivation through time, leading the reader through Moghul India, royal courts in Europe and 19th-century China. Kendrick, who, upon leaving UNC, worked as a pharmacist in the southwest Piedmont of N.C., then notes:

During the last two years of the Civil War, R.W. Price, M.D. (Cleveland County, N.C.) cultivated the poppy and gathered enough to supply the needs of his patients until some time after the close of the war. He considered the opium superior to that obtained from the markets. The drug was collected in the usual way by making several incisions in the capsule and collecting the concrete juice on the following morning.

Kendrick offers no other details on Price or his poppy cultivation. He attributes the information to correspondence with someone in Grover, N.C., a town in Cleveland County, in November 1898. A search of Cleveland County histories and records suggests that the Price to whom Kendrick referred may have in fact been Reynolds Bascomb Price (that’s R.B. Price, rather than R.W. Price), a man born in 1826 who practiced as a physician in Grover for many years. Price was an 1844 graduate of Davidson College and died in 1907. But, alas, he appears to have left no account of his life, particularly his experiments with poppy cultivation and opium production.

Kendrick also cites information from Resources of the southern fields and forests, medical, economical, and agricultural, a volume by Francis Peyre Porcher, a South Carolina physician. Porcher taught at the Medical College of South Carolina for many years during the second half of the 19th century. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the Confederate Army as a surgeon and served mostly at hospitals in Norfolk and Petersburg, Virginia. Midway through his Confederate service, Porcher was released from his hospital duties to work on a handbook about local plants with therapeutic qualities that could be used by Confederate doctors as well as Southern planters and farmers in place of manufactured drugs that were unobtainable because of the Union blockade. Resources of the southern fields and forests,…. was initially published in 1863 and subsequently republished several times because of its valuable information.

Porcher devotes 5 1/2 pages to papaver somniferum. He quotes from several European authors describing poppy cultivation as well as a U.S. Patent Office report for 1855, which notes that cultivation of poppies for opium is “an object worthy of public encouragement, as the annual amount of opium imported into the United States is valued at upward of $407,000.” Porcher writes that his own experiments on “specimens of the red poppy found growing in a garden near Stateburgh, S.C.” yielded more than “an ounce of gum opium, apparently of very excellent quality, having all the smell and taste of opium (which I have administered to the sick)….” He adds:

I have little doubt that all we required could be gathered by ladies and children within the Confederate States, if only the slightest attention was paid to cultivating the plants in our gardens. It thrives well, and bears abundantly. It is not generally known that the gum which hardens after incising the capsules is then ready for use, and may be prescribed as gum opium, or laudanum and paregoric may be made from it, with alcohol or whisky.

Some 40 years after Porcher’s experiments, Edward Vernon Howell began cultivating poppies. Howell was a Raleigh native whom UNC president Edwin A. Alderman hired in 1897 to revive the moribund School of Pharmacy at the University. During his 30 year association with the pharmacy school, he spearheaded its growth from a program with 17 students and one professor (Howell himself) to a professional school with 148 students occupying an entire classroom building, now known as Howell Hall, in his honor.

Howell was active in state and national professional organizations. And he discussed his research on poppies and opium production at several meetings of the American Pharmaceutical Association. The proceedings of the 1908 annual meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association report:

Mr. Howell, of North Carolina, said he was particularly interested in opium at one time—that most everybody has an ‘opium spell’ at one time or another. He had between five and ten thousand poppy-plants in cultivation last year, and he got opium running 6 per cent, of morphine. The young plants he ate with mayonnaise dressing, ‘and they were all right!’ He described a number of personal experiences, some of them rather amusing, along this line. Most of his efforts came to nothing.

Howell formally shared his research in an article in the June 1925 issue of the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association. He writes that poppies are well-suited to North Carolina. “To successfully plant and harvest an acre of poppies would be no more tedious, for instance, than to complete an acre of tobacco,” Howell suggests. He records various efforts to produce opium from the plants.

Every possible effort to express, crush, or extract the juice after crushing and thus obtain opium, avoiding the tedious and expensive labor of bleeding the capsules, was tried without success. The addition of ferments and the use of oxidizing agents was fruitless. Nature’s mystic method, retaliation for man’s wounding the plant, was the only way I found of producing opium—scarifying with knives padded to incise very slightly, a white milk juice exudes, which remaining on the capsule hardens and turns brown; this can be scraped off after twenty-four hours. In this time twelve to eighteen alkaloids and an acid or two are developed by the plant.

Howell considers poppy cultivation not just for the production of opium, but also for potential revenue from poppyseed oil.

In the study of the uses and abuses of plants, we see this useful plant—furnishing the best of drying oils, one that has preserved for us, in the realm of art, the wonderful work of master painters—stung, by the inhumanity of man, to the production of morphine. The subsequent introduction of the evils of our opium situation is strictly the work of man. That opium can be produced in North Carolina is certain; that also the seed will mature after incising the capsules has been demonstrated. Just what is the effect on the oil content of the seed, after bleeding, I haven’t had time to ascertain.

Howell proceeds to describe planting methods that will yield the highest number of poppy seeds. European seed, he writes, sells for 10 cents per pound. At such a price, Howell suggests, Tar Heel farmers could earn from $45 to $175 per acre.

Howell concludes his paper by restating papiver somniferum‘s potential value to North Carolina both for the production of opium and for poppyseed.

Lest you conclude that it’s worth planting papiver somniferum in your yard or field, you should know that the Opium Poppy Control Act of 1942 makes it a crime to “produce or attempt to produce the opium poppy, or to permit the production of the opium poppy.” Botany writer Michael Pollan conducted his own experiment and offers words of warning. And for those who’ve noticed poppies growing in highway medians across the state, as the N.C. Department of Transportation is careful to point out, those poppies are a different species and don’t produce opium.

McCrory took oath of office on one of state’s oldest Bibles

The stack of Bibles on which Governor Pat McCrory took the oath of office earlier today included one believed to be the oldest associated with a North Carolina family in the state. The Durant Bible, as the volume is commonly known, was with George Durant, a 25-year-old Englishman, when he arrived on American shores about 1658. The volume was passed down through generations of Durant’s descendants before it was donated to the North Carolina Historical Society, the predecessor to the North Carolina Collection, in the mid-1800s.

McCrory’s use of the Durant Bible marks the third time the volume has been used for an official function in the past 25 years. In 1988 Paul Hardin III was sworn in as chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with his left hand placed on the volume. Hardin’s successor, Michael Hooker, also used the Durant Bible during his installation in 1995.

Little is known of the early history of the Durant Bible. Its provenance is derived mostly from the biography of George Durant and the few pages of births and dates listed within the volume. George Durant settled first in an area now known as the Northern Neck of Virginia. From there he moved south into Virginia’s Tidewater region. By 1661 Durant was married and had bought land from the Indians in what is now Perquimans County. He built a plantation near the Albemarle Sound in an area now known as Durants Neck. Although Durant identified himself as a mariner, he appears to have spent most of his time developing his plantation and participating in the region’s government. Durant’s first wife, Ann Marwood Durant, also helped run the plantation and lead other of her husband’s business interests. Her occasional representation of George Durant in court earned her a place in North Carolina’s history as the first woman known to act as an attorney in North Carolina courts.

The Bible passed through the Durant family until the mid-1700s when it reached Mary Durant, George’s great-granddaughter. Mary married Christian Reed, whose father, William, served briefly as governor of the colony. Mary Reed’s descendants held onto the Bible until sometime between 1844 and 1851, when Rebekah Reed, who lived in Perquimans County, donated it to North Carolina Historical Society.

During its 414-year history, the Durant Bible has suffered some wear and tear. Some pages are missing from the volume and others are torn or stained.In 1995 Wilson Library’s conservator spent more than 100 hours cleaning the Bible and repairing the binding and some of the damaged pages. The volume, bound in leather (likely its second binding) is 6 inches wide and 8 1/2 inches high. The Bible is about 3 inches thick.

This morning the Durant Bible was driven and carried by hand to the old House chambers of the state Capitol building in the specially-made box in which it is stored. After the swearing-in, the Bible was returned to one of Wilson Library’s vaults. It awaits its next call to duty, or, just as importantly, your request for a viewing.

Jesse Helms on Compromise in Politics–Don’t Do It!

A reference request today led me to this editorial that Jesse Helms penned for the January 1959 issue of the Tar Heel Banker. The magazine was a monthly publication from the North Carolina Bankers Association. Helms served as executive director of the group for much of the 1950s and, in that capacity, also served as editor of the publication. Some of the lines from this Helms editorial, titled “Compromise into Oblivion” are often quoted. But the full context and source are rarely cited.

As Congress and the President renew their efforts to avert the “fiscal cliff,” let’s hope compromise is little more appealing than Helms suggests.

If you happen to be a devotee of U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey, you’ll just have to forgive us. We want no part of the Humphrey way of doing things, and, frankly, all this recent effort to picture the Minnesota Senator as some sort of international statesman gives us a pain.

We’ll acknowledge one thing about the man and then we’ll retreat no further. He is a talking machine of considerable persistence and energy. But any citizen entertaining the barest idea that the Senator has any strong leanings towards free enterprise, anti-socialism or fundamental Constitutional government had better beware.

There is one valuable lesson to learn from observing Senator Humphrey’s record, however. And it is a lesson that today’s faint-hearted leaders in the so-called right wing might well study. The lesson: don’t give up just because you’re in the minority.

When Humphrey went to the Senate in 1948, he was in the minority. Not only that, he was considered by his fellow Senators to be a sort of eloquent joke. But Humphrey wasn’t joking. He was a left-winger and he didn’t mind playing the role. He talked and he screamed; he raved and he ranted. Though his fellow Senators chalked him up as a publicity-seeking ineffectuality—which he was—Humphrey was betting that the trend was moving his way. It was.

So, today Senator Humphrey has achieved a degree of success that not even he expected ten years ago. His plea for bigger, more powerful government has been answered. His so-called civil rights program has been thrust, almost entirely, upon the South. The liberals are in the saddle everywhere and complete socialism is just around the corner.

Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? But if you doubt it, just look around you. Measure the prospects for 1959 and the years beyond. Point if you can to the slightest glimmer of hope for those who believe in less government control, less government expenditures, less taxation.

But even these are not the worst signs of the times. Worse than the trend itself is the attitude of those holding public office who privately do not like or agree with the trend. But are they doing anything about it? Don’t be silly!

The only men in a position to do something about it are faint-hearted!

At a time when this nation needs men of courage, what do we hear? We hear statements that the South “may be able to compromise” with those who would destroy the very fundamentals that made this country great.

Compromise, hell! That’s what has happened to us all down the line—and that’s the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at the time?

There are worse things in this world than to be in the minority. Indeed, the majority may be a myth feeding on the timidity of those who mistakenly believe they are in the minority.

Hubert Humphrey was not afraid of being in the minority ten years ago. Today he is trotting secrets between Kruschev and Eisenhower. Tomorrow he may be president.

All he needs is a few more compromises. Given them, he has the persistence and energy to talk his way into the White House.

North Carolina’s faithless elector in 1968

Following the Constitutional mandate that they gather on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of the month, the state’s 15 electors met at the old state Capitol building earlier today and cast their votes. The outcome of their balloting was as expected. Reflecting the Republican ticket’s victory in the popular vote here, the electors unanimously backed Mitt Romney for President and Paul Ryan for vice president.

Although tradition holds that North Carolina electors select the slate that won the popular vote, there is no law requiring them to do so. Lloyd W. Bailey made that point clear—and earned the title of faithless elector—on December 16, 1968 when he voted for the American Independent Party slate of George Wallace and Curtis LeMay. The Republican ticket of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew won the state’s popular vote in November. But Bailey, a Rocky Mount ophthalmologist and John Birch Society member, told his fellow electors that he believed Nixon would not produce change in Washington. He defended his stance further by noting that some Nixon appointees are “members of the un-American and infamous Council on Foreign Relations.” Bailey cited Henry Kissinger, diplomats Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and Robert D. Murphy, and economist Paul W. McCracken as members of the group. “This organization, called The Invisible Government by Dan Smoot in his book by this title, is one which seeks to undermine our national sovereignty and merge us with the other nations under a world government, perhaps like the United Nations,” he said. Bailey also pointed out that the Wallace-LeMay ticket had carried the district he represented.

Bailey’s protest vote is one of several facts that distinguish the 1968 electoral college gathering in North Carolina. The meeting was the first for Republican electors in 40 years. And, as reported in Dec. 17, 1968 edition of The News and Observer, the session was delayed for about 75 minutes by “the absence of anyone acquainted with the procedures involved, the absence of a judge to administer the electors’ oaths and by an error in the minutes, which had been prepared in advance.”

State GOP chairman Jim Holshouser, who, in 1972, would become the first Republican elected governor of N.C. in the 20th century, served as the temporary chairman of the meeting. Electors should have received instruction in the process from Secretary of State Thad Eure, but he was sick with the flu. Holshouser enlisted Chief Judge Raymond Mallard of the N.C. Court of Appeals to administer the oath. Twelve of the 13 electors placed their hands on a single Bible brought by Mallard and took the oath. The 13th elector, Mrs. R. Curtis Ratliff, was a stand-in for her husband, who, as clerk of Buncombe County Superior Court, stood to violate a state law prohibiting double office holding if he voted as an elector. The meeting’s minutes required altering because they had been prepared in advance by the state Attorney General’s office on the assumption that all electors would vote for Nixon and Agnew.

At the conclusion of the much-delayed session, the vote tally of 12 for Nixon-Agnew and 1 for Wallace-LeMay was sealed and sent to Washington, D.C., where it was tabulated by Congress on January 6.