Category: 03 – March

This Month in North Carolina History

In a clearing in the woods in Guilford County, North Carolina, in 1781, British soldiers led by General Charles, the Lord Cornwallis, clashed with Whig troops led by General Nathanael Greene in a battle that changed the course of the American Revolution in the southern colonies and contributed to the ultimate defeat of the British at Yorktown, Virginia.

In 1780 the British, stalemated in their attempt to subdue the northern and middle colonies, turned their attention to the south. Relying on their command of the sea, they quickly gained control of the coastal areas of Georgia and North Carolina. Whig forces responded by an attack on the British advance base at Camden, South Carolina, but were defeated and scattered. George Washington, disturbed by the deteriorating military situation in the south, entrusted command of Whig forces there to General Nathanael Greene, his quartermaster general. Faced immediately with a severe supply problem, Greene divided his army into several independent units which could supply themselves more easily. They were also rallying points for Whig militia.

From his base in Camden Cornwallis struck at Greene’s independent units, hoping to destroy them or drive them from the Carolina back country. British troops and loyalist militia were themselves defeated, however, at the battle of King’s Mountain in October, 1780, and the British Legion, sent to find and destroy a detachment of troops led by General Daniel Morgan, came to disaster at the battle of Cowpens in January, 1781.

Spurred on by the defeat at Cowpens and the capture or more than six hundred British soldiers, roughly a quarter of his troops, Cornwallis led his whole army into North Carolina in pursuit of Morgan and his prisoners. Cornwallis failed to take into account, however, the extreme difficulty of moving an army in the backcountry in winter, and Morgan stayed well ahead of him. On January 25th, at Ramsour’s Mill, North Carolina, Cornwallis burned his wagon train with all his supplies in an attempt to speed up his men.

Watching Cornwallis push on recklessly into North Carolina, Nathanael Greene saw a great opportunity to catch the British far from their base. He summoned the scattered units of his command to unite with Morgan, at the same time maintaining the withdrawal northward. In the end Greene withdrew all the way into Virginia, exhausting his pursuers. By early March 1781 Greene had pulled together more than four thousand of his men including 1500 troops of the continental line and was ready to offer battle. Greene prepared for Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, organizing his forces in three lines. The first two comprised militia troops who were expected to fire only a couple of rounds before retiring. Greene’s continental regulars filled the third line. On the 15th of March, 1781, Cornwallis arrived at Guilford Courthouse. Although he was outnumbered two to one, Cornwallis attacked head on, pushing aside the militia lines and ultimately forcing the retreat of the third line as well. Left in possession of the field, Cornwallis claimed victory. The “victory,” however, had cost him more than 25 percent of his army, which was no longer fit to keep the field. Cornwallis began a slow and exhausting march to Wilmington, North Carolina, where he could be resupplied by the British navy. Greene, on the other hand turned south into South Carolina and Georgia where he began attacking the troops left behind when his opponent marched north.

Greene’s decision to move south proved a wise one as he gradually drove the inland British garrisons back to the coast. Cornwallis on the other hand elected to move north into Virginia. There, as in North Carolina, his regulars were the masters of the ground on which they stood, but their supply lines were constantly disrupted by Whig regulars and militia. Cornwallis again had to retreat to the sea at Yorktown and the protection of the navy. There he found that the navy had been driven off by the French fleet, and he was soon besieged and forced to surrender by the combined armies of Washington and Rochambeau.

Sources
Babits, Lawrence E. and Joshua B. Howard. Long, Obstinate, and Bloody: the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Davis, Burke. The Cowpens-Guilford Courthouse Campaign. Raleigh, NC: Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.

This Month in North Carolina History

On March 16, 1916, North Carolina shore-based whalers caught and killed their last whale in the shallows off Cape Lookout. The last shore-based crew in the area disbanded the next year, after their gear was destroyed by a fire. These events marked the end of more than 250 years of tradition. Although whaling was never a major operation in North Carolina, the unique geography of the state and the tenacity of its residents allowed a small whaling industry to operate from colonial times through the early 20th century.

The earliest North Carolina whaling was not about catching whales, but rather was about processing whales that had already beached themselves or otherwise became stranded near the shore. Later, fishermen all along the East Coast developed shore-based systems of capturing and killing whales using teams of small boats. New England and New York fishermen—the main American whalers—gradually evolved their technique into a famous and extremely profitable ship-based industry. Whaling ships left from ports like New Bedford and Nantucket and hunted on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans until the industry’s demise in the mid-1920s. North Carolinians, however, held to the older tradition, and after 1800 it was the only state south of New York truly participating in a shore-based whaling industry.

North Carolina whaling activities centered on Beaufort, with the most active crews operating off Cape Lookout and Shackleford Banks. These particular locations were ideal because they were very close to both the Gulf Stream and the regular migration paths of several types of whales. The season generally ran from late December to early June, with the peak coming sometime between February and May, when the whales migrated northward for the summer. Whalers spent the rest of the year in other endeavors, such as mullet or porpoise fishing. The number of men and the profitability of their whaling varied greatly from year-to-year. For example, R. Edward Earll reported that in 1879 there were four camps with a total of 72 men on the North Carolina coast. They took five whales and sold their products for $4,000. The next year, however, they missed the main migration and 108 men only caught one small whale for a sales total of $408.46. Because whale hunting was a cooperative endeavor, the profit made was divided among the men on a share basis, with about 30 to 45 shares for an 18-man crew. Each man received one share, gunners drew an extra share, and steersmen received an extra half share. In addition, for each gun he provided a man would get an extra two shares. A boat entitled a man to one additional share, and a full set of harpoons and lances was worth about 2/3 of a share.

A relatively detailed description of the North Carolina system of whaling was written by R. Edward Earll in the early 1880s for a federal document about the nation’s fishing industries. At the beginning of the season the whalers would build a camp on the shore that included huts or shelters from the weather and a “crow’s nest” or other type of lookout station on a hill. The station would be constantly manned. When the lookout spotted a whale, he would signal the camp and men would set out in their row boats in pursuit. Upon catching up with the animal, the men would harpoon it, usually with a wooden weight attached to the harpoon. The whale generally attempted to flee, but the drag from the weight would tire it. When it slowed or turned to fight the boats, a gunner would shoot it. In many cases, the men would initially target a calf, knowing that they were slower than the adults and that its mother would stay behind to help it. Early whalers used lances and harpoons to kill their prey, but the post-Civil War years also saw the use of specially-designed whale guns that shot explosive cartridges filled with a quarter pound of gunpowder. After it was killed, the whale’s carcass would be towed to shore. It was then cut apart and the blubber was processed or “tried out.”

There were generally two types of whales targeted by North Carolina crews: right whales—so-called because they were considered the “right” type of whales to hunt—and sperm whales. Both types yielded blubber, as well as fat from tongue, tail, skin, and flukes. These portions of the whale were processed into oil used as a fuel and a lubricant. The flexible baleens of right whales (which they used to filter food from the water) were utilized in a wide variety of products, including women’s corsets and umbrella ribs. Sperm whales produced two unique and very expensive materials. From their heads, whalers collected a very high quality wax/oil called spermaceti which was used in high-quality candles. In their digestive systems sperm whales created ambergris, a natural by-product that was used as a fragrance and fixative in perfumes. After the harvest of these parts, the bulk of the whale was discarded.

Whaling was serious and dangerous business, but Shackleford had one particularly unique and whimsical tradition: the residents named many of the animals they caught. “George Washington Whale” was captured on the president’s birthday, “Little Children Whale” was chased and killed by boys from the community when the adults were otherwise occupied, and “Cold Sunday” was taken on a day that was reportedly cold enough to freeze ducks in mid-flight. Perhaps the most famous of the state’s whales is “Mayflower,” a fifty-foot right whale killed in 1874. The whale is notorious for its final fight; it capsized one boat and dragged another between six and eight miles out to sea before it died. Its fame continued to spread after its death when its skeleton was put on display in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in the 1880s. (You can still visit Mayflower today in the Raleigh museum.)

The general downfall of whaling was caused by a combination of factors including the over-hunting of whales and the change in women’s fashions that nearly eliminated the need for whale-bone corsets. North Carolina’s whaling industry was also greatly damaged by particularly bad weather on the Outer Banks. Several large storms on Shackleford in the 1890s followed by a hurricane in 1899 prompted the population to abandon the area for safer locations on the mainland or more sheltered islands.

After the last whale was caught and the last crew disbanded, the occasional beached whale would be processed on North Carolina beaches. New England whaling ships also continued to hunt their quarry in North Carolina waters. In fact, they sent ships to the Hatteras Grounds, far off the northeast corner of North Carolina’s coast, until 1925.

Sources
H. H. Brimley. “Whale Fishing in North Carolina,” in Bulletin of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, 14 (April 1894).

“North Carolina and its Fisheries” in George Brown Goode. The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1887.

Marcus B. Simpson, Jr. and Sallie W. Simpson. Whaling on the North Carolina Coast. Raleigh: Division of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1990.

David Stick. The North Carolina Outer Banks 1584-1958. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958.

William Henry Tripp. There Goes Flukes. New Bedford: Reynolds Printing, 1938.

Image Source:
H. H. Brimley. “Whale Fishing in North Carolina,” in Bulletin of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, 14 (April 1894).

This Month in North Carolina History

Late on the night of March 10, 1948, a fire started in a kitchen of the main building of Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Spreading rapidly through a dumbwaiter shaft, flames reached every floor, and, in spite of efforts by hospital staff and local fire fighters to evacuate everyone from the building, nine patients died. Among the victims of the fire, identified only by her slipper, was Zelda Fitzgerald, who with her husband, the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, represented for many the talent, sophistication, glamour and excess of American life of the 1920s.

Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama state supreme court justice, met Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald in 1918. She was a Montgomery, Alabama, belle, pretty, vivacious, and independent, and he was a former Princeton student from the midwest with a burning ambition to make his name as an author. Their marriage in 1920 was followed almost immediately by Scott’s emergence as one of the most popular writers in America. With the substantial income from Fitzgerald’s short stories and novels Scott and Zelda lived a life of excitement and sophistication in Europe and America.

Beneath the surface of their marriage, however, Scott and Zelda were an increasingly unhappy couple. Their personalities clashed in an environment made stressful by their extravagant lifestyle. In 1930 Zelda suffered a breakdown and was diagnosed (perhaps incorrectly) with schizophrenia. From then until 1940 her life was spent mainly in mental institutions in Europe and America, except for short periods living with her family. At the same time Scott’s popularity waned and his income fell. Looking for a less expensive place to relax and recover, he began visiting the area around Asheville, North Carolina. In 1936 he moved Zelda from an institution in Maryland to Highland Hospital in Asheville.

Zelda remained for four years at Highland under the care of Dr. Robert S. Carroll, who has been described as “something of an original in American psychiatry.” Carroll believed in treating mental illness in part with a regime of diet and exercise although he also used other standard therapies of the day. Zelda, who saw her husband, daughter, and other family infrequently, was often lonely at Highland, but she made progress there. She participated in activities such as hiking and playing tennis, and she continued to write and paint, pursuits she had begun in the 1920s. Zelda’s painting reproduced on this page was purchased from a collector for the North Carolina Collection Gallery in 1991. It is identified on the back as depicting a Highland Hospital scene.

In 1940 Carroll agreed to release Zelda to live with her widowed mother in Montgomery. Over the next decade Zelda returned several times to Highland for brief periods of treatment, including the visit which ended in her death in the fire of March 10.

By the time of the tragic fire, Highland Hospital had become part of the Duke University medical system. Duke sold the hospital to a private psychiatric business in the early 1980s. The hospital closed for good in 1993 and today the property includes an office park and shopping plaza.

Sources
Milford, Nancy. Zelda: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman’s Life. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2004.

Image Source:
North Carolina Collection Gallery

This Month in North Carolina History

On the seventh of March, 1840, the last spike was driven to complete the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad. As well as being the pride and joy of Wilmington, North Carolina, at 161½ miles the Wilmington & Weldon was the longest railroad in the world.

Chartered originally in January 1834 as the Wilmington & Raleigh, the line was organized in the Fall of 1835 and construction began in October 1836. The idea of the railroad grew out of the concern of Wilmington’s leaders that, while the port city had excellent communication by sea, overland connections were poor at best. In 1834 only two stage lines served the city going north, one through New Bern and the other through Fayetteville. Although still in its early years, the railroad seemed a promising alternative. The initial plan was to build the line to Raleigh, but people in the capital were slow to support the railroad while folks in Edgecombe County showed much more enthusiasm. The company decided, therefore, to turn the line north through Edgecombe to Weldon on the Roanoke River near the North Carolina/Virginia border. This would allow the Wilmington & Weldon access to the produce of the Roanoke Valley and bring it near to Virginia railroads which had reached the Roanoke River from the north.

In Wilmington the official celebration of the completion of the railroad was marked by the firing of cannon and ringing of church bells. A large group comprising the officers and employees of the Wilmington & Weldon and invited guests from Virginia and South Carolina as well as all sections of North Carolina paraded down Front Street, accompanied by a military band, to a banquet at the railroad depot. The Wilmington & Weldon operated successfully for the rest of the nineteenth century, ultimately forming part of a major north-south railroad network. In 1900 it became part of the Atlantic Coast Line railroad system which merged into the Seaboard Coast Line in 1967 and finally into CSX Transportation.

Sources
James Sprunt. Chronicles of the Cape Fear River. Raleigh, NC: Edwards & Broughton Printing Company, 1914.

John Gilbert and Grady Jefferys. Crossties Through Carolina: The Story of North Carolina’s Early Day Railroads. Raleigh, NC: Helios Press, 1969.

Image Source:
Wilmington Advertiser, February 1, 1839

This Month in North Carolina History

On the 18th of March, 1863, the streets of Salisbury, North Carolina, were invaded by a group of about 50 determined local women, identified only as wives and mothers of Confederate soldiers. The women believed that local merchants had been profiteering by raising the prices of necessary foods and demanded that the merchants sell these goods at government prices. When the merchants refused the women broke down one shop door with hatchets and threatened other storekeepers. What a local newspaper described as the “Female Raid” netted the women twenty three barrels of flour as well as quantities of molasses, salt, and even twenty dollars in cash.

The Salisbury “Bread Riot,” and the more widely known food riot in Richmond, Virginia, also in 1863, are dramatic evidence of the stresses on local life brought on by the Civil War. Volunteers for the Confederate army from Salisbury and surrounding Rowan County at the beginning of the war were by and large young, unmarried men. In 1862 demand for fresh troops brought about the increasing enlistment of older men with wives and families. In a county such as Rowan, with a large number of small farms, the absence of a husband and father was a serious economic loss. The failure of the county’s attempt to provide for soldiers’ families also contributed to the hardship. The fact that the women involved in the incident were never prosecuted is evidence of the understanding and sympathy of their neighbors. The Carolina Watchman, which reported the incident, extended its most scathing criticism not to the women, but to the county commissioners who failed to provide adequate aid for soldiers’ families and who should “go, all blushing with shame for the scene enacted in our streets on Wednesday last.”

Sources
Graham, Christopher A. “Women’s Revolt in Rowan County,” Columbiad: a quarterly review of the War Between the States, vol. 3:1 (Spring 1999); pp. 131-147.

Brawley, James S. Rowan County: a brief history. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1974.

This Month in North Carolina History

Early 19th-century North Carolina was not a place that international celebrities were likely to visit. Lacking large and cosmopolitan cities and with a primarily agricultural economy, North Carolina was well on its way to earning the nickname, “the Rip Van Winkle state.” So it was no small thing when North Carolinians learned, in November 1824, about the impending visit of an aging Frenchman with the impressive name of Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

Lafayette’s story would have been known to most Americans in 1824. Lafayette was a young officer in the French Royal Army when he first learned of the American Revolution in 1775. He was so inspired by the rebellion of the colonists against what he saw as the tyrannical oppression of the British that he left France to join the Continental Army. Lafayette began as a volunteer on George Washington’s staff and soon developed a close friendship with the American General. With Washington’s help and counsel, Lafayette rose to the rank of Major-General, leading Continental forces in the successful battle at Yorktown in 1781.

For the remainder of his life, Lafayette continued to fight and argue for the principles of freedom and liberty that were behind the American Revolution. When Lafayette accepted President James Monroe’s invitation to return to the United States for the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution, he was the oldest living Revolutionary War Major-General.

After spending time in New England and Washington, D.C., Lafayette began his long tour through the states, bringing him south through Virginia and eventually to North Carolina. He stopped in Halifax, where the North Carolina delegation that endorsed a declaration of independence from England met in 1776, and then went to Raleigh, where he was received by Governor Hutchins Gordon Burton and attended several dinners and balls in his honor. But by far the largest reception for Lafayette awaited him in Fayetteville.

At the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, the citizens of Campbellton, in Cumberland County, decided to show their appreciation to General Lafayette by changing the name of their town to Fayetteville. It was the first of many American towns to do so. There are now towns or cities named Fayetteville in eight states, ten Lafayettes, and still others named LaGrange in honor of Lafayette’s home in France (including LaGrange, North Carolina, in Lenoir County). The weather was horrible when Lafayette and his entourage neared Fayetteville in early March 1825, but the rain did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowds. Lafayette’s secretary remembered the scene:

“On the 4th of March, we reached the pleasant little town of Fayetteville, situated on the western shore of Cape Fear river. The weather was excessively bad; the rain fell in torrents, yet the road for several miles before we reached the place was crowded with men and boys on horseback, and militia on foot; the streets of the town were filled with a throng of ladies, in full dress, hastening across the little streams of water, to approach the General’s carriage, and so much occupied with the pleasure of seeing him that they appeared almost insensible of the deluge which threatened almost to swallow them up. This enthusiasm may be more readily imagined, when it is recollected that it was expressed by the inhabitants of a town founded, about forty years ago, to perpetuate the remembrance of the services rendered by him whom they honored on that day.”

Although he stayed in Fayetteville for only about 24 hours, Lafayette was honored by several banquets and receptions, reviewed countless militia and state troops, and had time to inspect the brand new Lafayette Hotel, hurried to completion in time for his visit. As he prepared to depart for South Carolina, Lafayette offered a toast to the town: “Fayetteville. – May it receive all the encouragements and attain all the prosperity which are anticipated by the fond and grateful wishes of its affectionate and respectful namesake.”

Sources
Stanley J. Idzerda, “Marquis de Lafayette.” In American National Biography, edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. Volume 13. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Marian Klamkin, The Return of Lafayette, 1824-1825. New York: Scribner’s, 1975.

Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825; or, Journal of Travels, in the United States. New York: White, Gallaher & White, 1829, vol. 2, p. 44. Levasseur was Lafayette’s secretary during his American trip.

Marshall DeLancey Haywood, “The Visit of General Lafayette to North Carolina in 1825.” The American Historical Register, May 1897.

Image Source:
John MacRae, “This Plate of the Town of Fayetteville North Carolina so called in honor of that distinguished Patriot and Philanthropist Genl. La Fayette is respectfully dedicated to him by the Publisher.” Fayetteville, N.C.: [1825]. Detail. North Carolina Collection.