State of Carolina
Carolina is one of the largest states of the ASB and has always exerted a large influence on its history, culture, and politics. More enslaved laborers came to Carolina than to any other mainland colony, and for that reason it has set the pace of race relations and civil rights for the entire confederation. Its multiethnic society - the three largest groups being the Black English, the white Piedmonters, and the white Lowland Carolians, plus smaller groups of Catawbas, some Virginias, and some Spanish speakers toward the south - has given Carolina a complex, often contentious history.
Politics
Thanks to Gwen "Turquoise Blue" of AH.com for this like so many other political systems within the ASB.
Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDL): A minor party that in most cases fusions with the PP. It affiliates with the federal SP. Led by Brad Miller in the House.
People's Party: A liberal party that in the end threw its hat in with the Progressives, it is distinctly republican (having abolished the monarchy via referendum in the early 1900s over Tory objections) and distrustful of the elite. Populist, it could be argued to be more Green than Progressive. Led by Sanford Bishop in the House.
Tory Party: The party of the elite, it adjusted to middle-class politics remarkably well, despite opposing black rights as much as the "Blue Dog" Populists until it had to change due to their stance being increasingly unpopular. Affiliated with the Democratic Party. Led by Premier George Holding and House Speaker John Coble.
Libertarian Party: The party of the aspiring middle class and of the right who are turned off by the hard-right direction of the Tories on social issues, it stands for individual liberty, contrasting it with the Tories' paternalistic tendency. However, they still fusion with the Tories in presidential elections. Led by John Monds in the House.
Your Movement: A national experiment in centrist populism, it adopted a centre-right tendency when it first was elected to the Carolinian House of Delegates in 2011, but is not the far-right populist party many view it as. Expected to gain seats and votes next election. Led by Austin Sheheen in the House.
Now, here's the list of Premiers of Carolina...
Royalty Period
01: Henry Middleton (Nonpartisan) 1761-1774
02: Samuel Johnston (Whig majority) 1774-1794
03: Richard Spaight (Whig majority) 1794-1799
04: Thomas Sumter (Tory majority) 1799-1810
05: George M. Troup (Tory majority) 1810-1835
06: John C. Caldwell (Tory majority) 1835-1854
07: David S. Reid (Tory majority) 1854-1855
08: Richard Spaight, Jr. (Whig-People's coalition) 1855-1856
09: David S. Reid (People's-Whig coalition, then People's majority) 1856-1864
10: Matthew Butler (People's majority) 1864-1875
11: Zebulon Vance (Tory majority) 1875-1889
12: Lindsay Russell (People's majority) 1889-1903
Republican Period
01: Lindsay Russell (People's (+Republican)) 1903-1911
02: Ryan Tillman (People's (+Republican)) 1911-1915
03: William Hardwick (Tory) 1915-1923
04: Cameron Morrison (Tory (+Industrial)) 1923-1931
05: Francis Byrnes (People's (+Labor)) 1931-1943
06: Robert Cherry (People's (+Labor)) 1943-1947
07: Brevard Russell (Tory (+Conservative People's)) 1947-1955
08: Burnet Maybank (Tory (+Conservative People's)) 1955-1959
09: Hartwell Hodges (Tory (+Conservative People's)) 1959-1967
10: James Sanford (People's (+Labor & Social Democracy)) 1967-1971
11: John Thurmond, Jr. (Tory (+Conservative People's)) 1971-1975
12: James Sanford (People's (+Social Democratic and Labor)) 1975-1983
13: August Nunn (People's (+Social Democratic and Labor)) 1983-1991
14: Fritz Hollings (Tory) 1991-1995
15: Joe Cleland (People's (+Social Democratic and Labor & Conservative People's)) 1995-2003
16: Pat McCrory (Tory (+Libertarian)) 2003-2011
17: George Holding (Tory (+Libertarian)) 2011-present
Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDL): A minor party that in most cases fusions with the PP. It affiliates with the federal SP. Led by Brad Miller in the House.
People's Party: A liberal party that in the end threw its hat in with the Progressives, it is distinctly republican (having abolished the monarchy via referendum in the early 1900s over Tory objections) and distrustful of the elite. Populist, it could be argued to be more Green than Progressive. Led by Sanford Bishop in the House.
Tory Party: The party of the elite, it adjusted to middle-class politics remarkably well, despite opposing black rights as much as the "Blue Dog" Populists until it had to change due to their stance being increasingly unpopular. Affiliated with the Democratic Party. Led by Premier George Holding and House Speaker John Coble.
Libertarian Party: The party of the aspiring middle class and of the right who are turned off by the hard-right direction of the Tories on social issues, it stands for individual liberty, contrasting it with the Tories' paternalistic tendency. However, they still fusion with the Tories in presidential elections. Led by John Monds in the House.
Your Movement: A national experiment in centrist populism, it adopted a centre-right tendency when it first was elected to the Carolinian House of Delegates in 2011, but is not the far-right populist party many view it as. Expected to gain seats and votes next election. Led by Austin Sheheen in the House.
Now, here's the list of Premiers of Carolina...
Royalty Period
01: Henry Middleton (Nonpartisan) 1761-1774
02: Samuel Johnston (Whig majority) 1774-1794
03: Richard Spaight (Whig majority) 1794-1799
04: Thomas Sumter (Tory majority) 1799-1810
05: George M. Troup (Tory majority) 1810-1835
06: John C. Caldwell (Tory majority) 1835-1854
07: David S. Reid (Tory majority) 1854-1855
08: Richard Spaight, Jr. (Whig-People's coalition) 1855-1856
09: David S. Reid (People's-Whig coalition, then People's majority) 1856-1864
10: Matthew Butler (People's majority) 1864-1875
11: Zebulon Vance (Tory majority) 1875-1889
12: Lindsay Russell (People's majority) 1889-1903
Republican Period
01: Lindsay Russell (People's (+Republican)) 1903-1911
02: Ryan Tillman (People's (+Republican)) 1911-1915
03: William Hardwick (Tory) 1915-1923
04: Cameron Morrison (Tory (+Industrial)) 1923-1931
05: Francis Byrnes (People's (+Labor)) 1931-1943
06: Robert Cherry (People's (+Labor)) 1943-1947
07: Brevard Russell (Tory (+Conservative People's)) 1947-1955
08: Burnet Maybank (Tory (+Conservative People's)) 1955-1959
09: Hartwell Hodges (Tory (+Conservative People's)) 1959-1967
10: James Sanford (People's (+Labor & Social Democracy)) 1967-1971
11: John Thurmond, Jr. (Tory (+Conservative People's)) 1971-1975
12: James Sanford (People's (+Social Democratic and Labor)) 1975-1983
13: August Nunn (People's (+Social Democratic and Labor)) 1983-1991
14: Fritz Hollings (Tory) 1991-1995
15: Joe Cleland (People's (+Social Democratic and Labor & Conservative People's)) 1995-2003
16: Pat McCrory (Tory (+Libertarian)) 2003-2011
17: George Holding (Tory (+Libertarian)) 2011-present
History
Background
Carolina's history arises from its rather convoluted social and ethnic makeup. Historically, it was one of the most slave-heavy states in the ASB. And unlike the Bahamas and West Dominica, democratization was not a simple matter of handing over power to an overwhelming Black majority. There was a big White settler population, too, and this mix of slaves, slave owners, and White settlers shaped the state's entire history, as well as its present in a lot of ways. Carolina's White population has traditionally been divided by ethnicity and class. Lowland Carolians were English, relatively well off, and the higher-ups had family and business ties to the sugar islands of the Caribbean. The much poorer Piedmonters had a lot of Scots-Irish ancestry, with some regular Scots thrown in ... some very isolated communities still speak Gaelic today. In the far north there are also Virginians, and there are Indians as well. The Catawba live here, relatively small but not small enough to simply ignore.
Carolina's relationship with Cherokee was also very important throughout its history. In the late 18th and first part of the 19th centuries Cherokee was recognized as a Carolian sphere of influence. Carolina's Governor was considered "Father" of the alliance before the modern ASB in the 1860s and 70s enforced the principle of equality and brotherhood, not suzerainty and fatherhood. Carolian cultural influence was also strong in Cherokee. More than the other southern Indian states, Cherokee adopted a slave system that was more similar to the Whites and drew less on indigenous traditions. In Cherokee's neighbors, for example, the children of slaves were often simply adopted. Not so in Cherokee - and certainly not in Carolina. Overlaying this mix was Carolina's religious makeup - Anglican officially, but with Evangelical undercurrents growing steadily through the 18th and 19th centuries.
Proprietary colony
Carolina was founded as a proprietary colony in the 1660s. Eight noblemen were the Lords Proprietor; Lordships of the Manor were available to planters who bought enough land. Two distinct regions emerged almost immediately: the Albemarle region was settled by Virginians, and the south by Barbadian planters.
The period from 1689 into the 1690s saw chaos in Britain and all the colonies following the contentious overthrow of King James II and VII, and the subsequent Jacobite counter-revolt. Virginia launched an attack against Jacobite Maryland, and while it was at it de facto annexed the Albemarle region to the approval of the residents. The Crown ratified the cession of Albemarle in 1701, in the minds of Carolians giving the stamp of legitimacy to baldfaced theft. Much bad blood remained between Virginia and Carolina for a long time.
The dawn of responsible government
The next crisis to sweep the colonies occurred in the 1760s and 70s when Virginia's planter elite, together with the colonies of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, declared independence from the Crown. Carolina's planters showed some movement in that direction, but the province remained loyal. Anti-Virginia sentiment surely played a part in Carolina’s remaining with England, but so did a coalition of Tory planters and class-conscious Piedmonters who saw the Crown as a counterweight to the power of the Charleston establishment.
England sent some military aid to attempt to rein in Virginia, but it was unable to pacify the countryside. Carolina's militia successfully occupied much of the land in the northeast that had been taken 70 years earlier. The war was not resolved quickly. Though most of the English troops went home, fighting lingered on, and neither England nor Carolina would recognize Virginia's separation for many years.
The revolution also affected Carolina's constitutional form. As a concession to would-be Republicans, England finally put an end to the vestiges of proprietary government. By then the descendants of five of the original Lords Proprietor had sold their shares to the Crown. In control of 5/8 of the colony, the Crown was more or less in control, but many of the forms of proprietary rule remained. By act of Parliament, the remaining Lords Proprietor (Lord Grenville, Lord Carteret, and the Earl of Shaftesbury) were required to relinquish power, and Carolina became a self-governing Crown Colony.
The government that England granted was semi-parliamentary in form. The royal governor kept considerable power, but he was required to have a Council (later Cabinet) that the elected Assembly had approved. At this point, Councilors were not always Assembly members, but gradually this changed. An informal premiership began to emerge around the person of Henry Middleton, the “Wise Old Man of Charleston.” The last of the old-style political leaders and the first of the new, Middleton dominated the Assembly and the Council through the sheer force of his personality. The position of Premier started largely as a matter of filling his shoes, but it gradually evolved into something closer to a modern head of government.
Carolina's first party system, like England’s, was made up of more-or-less formal Whig and Tory factions. The Tories were a broad coalition of royalist planters and the backwoods Piedmonters who had fought together to keep Carolina loyal. Ironically, the Tories' broad support among Piedmonters led them to become a more egalitarian party than the Whigs, who tended to be the voice of intellectuals and independently minded wealthy planters. The Tories dominated government in the early years thanks to a surge of wartime loyalism, but land requirements for voting gave a natural advantage to the Whigs, who gained a majority of Assembly seats before too long and held that majority for many years. Constitutional matters, namely the balance of power between Crown (via the Governor) and Assembly, dominated political life in these years.
External affairs and the Southern Settlement
The next few decades saw a new diplomatic order emerge in the southern tier of the continent. The region was a contentious one; Carolina's English stood in the northeast corner, the Spanish of Florida in the southeast, and the French in Louisiana in the southwest, all facing one another to compete for influence over the interior. In that interior were four powerful chiefdoms gradually developing the institutions of state government and money economies.
Already in the 1770s, a new player, Watauga, appeared on the scene. When the Watauga settlers first formed their government they were ambiguous about whether they still considered themselves subjects of the King. As time went on it became clear that they were pursuing an independent, Republican course. Carolina did not recognize Watauga's separation at first, since it sat on its own claimed territory and was made up largely of its own citizens. Needless to say, Virginia was happy to lend support to the small upstart.
The two decades after 1800 were a time of sorting out these regional matters. The Cherokee developed their written language and used it to write a modern constitution. They came into direct conflict with Virginian settlers who were coming over the mountains into present-day Upper Virginia. Carolina, determined to safeguard its interests in Cherokee country, posted regular troops to posts all over the area. England sent reinforcements. All-out war broke out between Cherokee and Virginia, and Carolina militia joined the fight. The regular army was marching on Williamsburg when Virginian officials came to negotiate. While Virginians knew they could resist English occupation in the long term, they also knew they could not afford to live in the constant threat of war. In the Treaty of Bath, Virginia sued for peace, recognition of its independence, and uninhibited access to its lands west of the mountains. In exchange Carolina got strong provisions recognizing its role as Cherokee’s protector. Any Virginian charged with a crime against a Cherokee, for example, could be tried in Carolina. This practice became so common in subsequent years that “Carolina court” in Virginian parlance came to mean anyone operating outside their jurisdiction. But the settlement brought peace and secured independence for the Cherokee and, ultimately, the other “civilized tribes” of the region, because the Bath provisions became the basis for similar treaties regarding the Muscogi, Choctaw, and Chicasaw nations.
Another controversy concerned West Florida. That region was considered an underdeveloped no-man’s-land between French and Spanish territory, and around 1810 Carolina decided to have a go at founding English settlements there. The newcomers upset the balance of power in Florida, and fighting soon erupted. As in Cherokee, few of the combatants had a taste for a long-term conflict, and so the three sides agreed to three-way joint suzerainty for 30 years.
It was also during this time that Carolina finally normalized its relations with Watauga. These three treaties together – over Cherokee, West Florida, and Watauga – transformed the region and formed some of the core building blocks of the ASB.
The Slave Question
By the 1840s, a growing global movement against slavery began to isolate Carolina. Most of Carolina’s allies – the nascent ASB – had either already abolished the institution, or were taking measures to abolish it slowly through gradual or compensated emancipation. England also applied pressure, having already abolished the practice in its other dominions. In 1850 even Cherokee embarked on an anti-slavery path. A law that year banned the importation of new slaves from other states. The Cherokee slave trade had been a major source of income for Carolina.
The coalitions in Carolina’s First Party System solidified around the Slavery Question. The Whigs and Tories remained the only major parties, but much more than before, they were defined by region, class, ethnicity, and opinion on slavery. Political system of rich lowland Whigs vs. poor backwoods Tories solidifies. Essentially the entire planter class became solid Whigs, while Tory politics and culture tightened their hold on the mountainous west. An expanding voting franchise helped the Tories control government for half a century.
Class and cultural resentment, and pressure from the Crown, fuelled anti-slavery views among the Tories. They began pursuing policies to limit the institution. Most consequentially, the assembly, with the backing of Premier John Caldwell, 1854 severely weakened Carolina’s fugitive slave law in 1854. This shook the foundations of power of the slaveholding establishment. Planters encouraged pro-slavery citizens to form militias whose stated purpose was the apprehension of fugitives. Anti-slavery partisans soon formed armed groups of their own, and before long it seemed the entire countryside was at war. The subsequent premier, David Reed, urged his fellow Tories to roll back some of the reforms they had just passed. When they refused, Reed resigned and left the party. Replacing Reed was Richard Spraight, the first Whig premier in over half a century. He managed to restore the fugitive slave law, but not achieve the full pro-slavery agenda. The violence subsided a little, but the militias remained in place and sporadic fighting would continue for years. And the views of anti-slavery Carolians were hardened.
Carolina’s party dynamic was also shifting. The People’s Party emerged on the scene, representing democratization and enlightened reform, ideas not well represented in either the Tory or Whig agendas. In contrast to the regionalized parties, People’s drew support from across the state, from small landholding farmers seeking expanded rights, and from the growing educated middle classes. Ambivalent on the Slave Question, People’s rejected the Tories’ often-authoritarian belief in royal power, favoring stronger limits or even abolition of the monarchy. This led them to ally with the Whigs, who now saw the Crown as the main threat to the slave system. With the Whigs in serious decline, People’s gradually absorbed most of their old base of support, building up a formidable coalition that dominated government in the 1860s and 70s.
By then, Carolina, Lower Virginia, and Cuba were the last states in the ASB still clinging to slavery. Everywhere else it was either gone or on its way out. Tensions rose again in this period. The militias reappeared. Pro- and anti-slavery gangs caused even more bloodshed than the flare-up of the 50s. In Charleston, in New Amsterdam, in London, talk was all about what to do with Carolina. Amid this chaos, the Tories returned to power in 1875. Under the premiership of Zebulon Vance, the Tories, with the full support of England, moved to resolve the Slave Question once and for all. Vance repressed the militias, calling out the army for the first time and requesting support from the Confederal government. In 1880, the Carolina Assembly made the most fateful decision in its history when it voted to abolish slavery in the state. Carolina’s millions of Black subjects were free. There was no going back.
After Emancipation, toward the Republic
At the time of Emancipation in 1880, it was already clear that Carolina's antiquated slave economy would have to change if it was to enter the modern world with the commercial (and, increasingly, industrial) states of the north. Some reformist members of the People's Party had been arguing for some kind of gradual emancipation to avoid a shock to the system, but years of gridlock over the issue meant that it was basically too late. Slavery had to end. And the system was shocked. Workers left plantations by the thousands, causing agricultural productivity to plummet. The exodus was not just to Carolian cities: the Vance government had granted emancipation with the barest minimum of political and civil rights, so many freedmen set out for places where they at least had a chance at equality. Carolina faced an absolute demographic catastrophe.
The Vance government had anticipated many of the problems and taken some steps to stave them off. A land reform bill compensated planters who gave up land to freedmen, but it was not enough to stem the tide. The People's Party swept into power in 1889 in full reform mode. They strengthened land reform, requiring certain failed estates to be split up and given to freedmen, with the owners being compensated for the land at its now rock-bottom market price. The Russell government also founded a system of agricultural schools to introduce more efficient comemrcial farming methods to the state. The schools were of course segregated by race, but they did much to help former slaves achieve self-sufficiency. Russell also was effective in attracting investment from northern industrial firms, which helped provide employment to the thousands of workers streaming into the cities. This ambitious reform program was effected through large loans from England and from other states, hopefully to be repaid out of the bounty of a growing modern economy. Freed of its ancient manorial restrictions, Carolina's economy did indeed begin to grow quickly.
This time of political instability, called Carolina's “Third Party Syatem,” was really a time of constant shifting. The Assembly was dominated by the reform-minded wings of both the Tory and People's Parties, who cooperated with each other almost as often with the conservative wings of their own parties. They broadly agreed on the need to improve the material condition of freedmen without extending political rights. What kept the parties from splitting up was the perenniel constitutional question of royal and gubernatorial power.
The Electoral Reform Law of 1897, passed at the Confederal level after a rare nationwide referendum, brought to a head Carolina's issues over civil rights and the role of the Crown. The law mandated universal male suffrage throughout the confederation, for Black as well as White. The royal Governor, the Earl of Kent, chose to use whatever gubernatorial prerogative he had to carry out the law to the fullest extent possible. White voters' reactions against the Earl gave the People's Party a huge majority in the election of 1901. The government held a statewide referendum on the monarchy, and Carolians voted to toss the Crown by a considerable margin. Carolina's connection to England was broken after nearly 250 years.
The Slow, Steady Rise of Civil Rights
The shifting landscape of the “Third Party System” had gone through another major change in 1895 with the appearance of so many new Black voters. Rebuffed by the Tories they had assumed to be allies, Black leaders soon formed the Freedmen's Party to promote their interests. The FP was kept out of government for the entirety of its existence, but it made an impact on the Carolian political landscape and ensured that it would not settle down any time soon.
The two main parties continued their transition into modern ideological organizations. The “left” wing of People's, more sympathetic to civil rights, had been ascendent since the 1890s. Now, freed from the need to ally with the old forces of planter anti-monarchism, the progressives took complete control of the party. Conservatives defected to the Tories, and for the first time in its 150-year history, it too became a party based on ideology more than on ethnicity and region. The reallignment was complete by the late 1920s. People's and Freedmen's officially cooperated in the Opposition to the conservative Tory government of Cameron Morrison. The parties merged not long after.
By then, the rise of socialism as a political force was drastically changing the conversation over civil rights and completed the transition into Carolina's Fourth Party System. Socialism in Carolina had different strains, some emphasizing working class solidarity between Black and White, others emphasizing White anxiety over Black competition. The Labor Party that entered government with People's in 1931 accepted the proposition that workers of both races shared the same struggles.
Carolina was also now under more and more pressure from its neighbors to extend civil rights, end segregated racial policies, and move toward a more integrated society. People's/Labor governments throughout the 30s and 40s enacted sweeping reforms that put Blacks and Whites on a more equal footing, along with other changes like female suffrage. After the mid-40s this provoked a sizable backlash and an era of Tory governments that did what they could to put the brakes on change.
However, this time of political rollback was also a time of cultural ferment across racial lines. It was a golden age for Carolian music as numerous artists – Lowlander, Piedmonter, Black, and Catawba – found fame throughout Boreoamerica. Boreal pop music today still owes a debt to the Carolian folk music that swept the continent in this era. Carlolina in general was adjusting to a new identity that acknowledged the state's unity in diversity. Racial divisions remained, and still do, but in a modern state where Blacks and Whites are roughly equal in numbers, civic identity has to be broad enough to encompass both races.
Recent past
Nowadays, anxiety over a secularizing society and the welfare state have replaced race as the issues at the top of political discussion. Many people in rural parts of the Appalachians have slowly drifted back to the Tories over religious issues. (The Catawba never left; for 200 years they have been the Tories' most reliable constituency.) In this environment the socialists dwindled, giving rise to a Fifth Party System that may shift to a Sixth if some of the new up-and-coming minor parties have their say.
Carolina's history arises from its rather convoluted social and ethnic makeup. Historically, it was one of the most slave-heavy states in the ASB. And unlike the Bahamas and West Dominica, democratization was not a simple matter of handing over power to an overwhelming Black majority. There was a big White settler population, too, and this mix of slaves, slave owners, and White settlers shaped the state's entire history, as well as its present in a lot of ways. Carolina's White population has traditionally been divided by ethnicity and class. Lowland Carolians were English, relatively well off, and the higher-ups had family and business ties to the sugar islands of the Caribbean. The much poorer Piedmonters had a lot of Scots-Irish ancestry, with some regular Scots thrown in ... some very isolated communities still speak Gaelic today. In the far north there are also Virginians, and there are Indians as well. The Catawba live here, relatively small but not small enough to simply ignore.
Carolina's relationship with Cherokee was also very important throughout its history. In the late 18th and first part of the 19th centuries Cherokee was recognized as a Carolian sphere of influence. Carolina's Governor was considered "Father" of the alliance before the modern ASB in the 1860s and 70s enforced the principle of equality and brotherhood, not suzerainty and fatherhood. Carolian cultural influence was also strong in Cherokee. More than the other southern Indian states, Cherokee adopted a slave system that was more similar to the Whites and drew less on indigenous traditions. In Cherokee's neighbors, for example, the children of slaves were often simply adopted. Not so in Cherokee - and certainly not in Carolina. Overlaying this mix was Carolina's religious makeup - Anglican officially, but with Evangelical undercurrents growing steadily through the 18th and 19th centuries.
Proprietary colony
Carolina was founded as a proprietary colony in the 1660s. Eight noblemen were the Lords Proprietor; Lordships of the Manor were available to planters who bought enough land. Two distinct regions emerged almost immediately: the Albemarle region was settled by Virginians, and the south by Barbadian planters.
The period from 1689 into the 1690s saw chaos in Britain and all the colonies following the contentious overthrow of King James II and VII, and the subsequent Jacobite counter-revolt. Virginia launched an attack against Jacobite Maryland, and while it was at it de facto annexed the Albemarle region to the approval of the residents. The Crown ratified the cession of Albemarle in 1701, in the minds of Carolians giving the stamp of legitimacy to baldfaced theft. Much bad blood remained between Virginia and Carolina for a long time.
The dawn of responsible government
The next crisis to sweep the colonies occurred in the 1760s and 70s when Virginia's planter elite, together with the colonies of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, declared independence from the Crown. Carolina's planters showed some movement in that direction, but the province remained loyal. Anti-Virginia sentiment surely played a part in Carolina’s remaining with England, but so did a coalition of Tory planters and class-conscious Piedmonters who saw the Crown as a counterweight to the power of the Charleston establishment.
England sent some military aid to attempt to rein in Virginia, but it was unable to pacify the countryside. Carolina's militia successfully occupied much of the land in the northeast that had been taken 70 years earlier. The war was not resolved quickly. Though most of the English troops went home, fighting lingered on, and neither England nor Carolina would recognize Virginia's separation for many years.
The revolution also affected Carolina's constitutional form. As a concession to would-be Republicans, England finally put an end to the vestiges of proprietary government. By then the descendants of five of the original Lords Proprietor had sold their shares to the Crown. In control of 5/8 of the colony, the Crown was more or less in control, but many of the forms of proprietary rule remained. By act of Parliament, the remaining Lords Proprietor (Lord Grenville, Lord Carteret, and the Earl of Shaftesbury) were required to relinquish power, and Carolina became a self-governing Crown Colony.
The government that England granted was semi-parliamentary in form. The royal governor kept considerable power, but he was required to have a Council (later Cabinet) that the elected Assembly had approved. At this point, Councilors were not always Assembly members, but gradually this changed. An informal premiership began to emerge around the person of Henry Middleton, the “Wise Old Man of Charleston.” The last of the old-style political leaders and the first of the new, Middleton dominated the Assembly and the Council through the sheer force of his personality. The position of Premier started largely as a matter of filling his shoes, but it gradually evolved into something closer to a modern head of government.
Carolina's first party system, like England’s, was made up of more-or-less formal Whig and Tory factions. The Tories were a broad coalition of royalist planters and the backwoods Piedmonters who had fought together to keep Carolina loyal. Ironically, the Tories' broad support among Piedmonters led them to become a more egalitarian party than the Whigs, who tended to be the voice of intellectuals and independently minded wealthy planters. The Tories dominated government in the early years thanks to a surge of wartime loyalism, but land requirements for voting gave a natural advantage to the Whigs, who gained a majority of Assembly seats before too long and held that majority for many years. Constitutional matters, namely the balance of power between Crown (via the Governor) and Assembly, dominated political life in these years.
External affairs and the Southern Settlement
The next few decades saw a new diplomatic order emerge in the southern tier of the continent. The region was a contentious one; Carolina's English stood in the northeast corner, the Spanish of Florida in the southeast, and the French in Louisiana in the southwest, all facing one another to compete for influence over the interior. In that interior were four powerful chiefdoms gradually developing the institutions of state government and money economies.
Already in the 1770s, a new player, Watauga, appeared on the scene. When the Watauga settlers first formed their government they were ambiguous about whether they still considered themselves subjects of the King. As time went on it became clear that they were pursuing an independent, Republican course. Carolina did not recognize Watauga's separation at first, since it sat on its own claimed territory and was made up largely of its own citizens. Needless to say, Virginia was happy to lend support to the small upstart.
The two decades after 1800 were a time of sorting out these regional matters. The Cherokee developed their written language and used it to write a modern constitution. They came into direct conflict with Virginian settlers who were coming over the mountains into present-day Upper Virginia. Carolina, determined to safeguard its interests in Cherokee country, posted regular troops to posts all over the area. England sent reinforcements. All-out war broke out between Cherokee and Virginia, and Carolina militia joined the fight. The regular army was marching on Williamsburg when Virginian officials came to negotiate. While Virginians knew they could resist English occupation in the long term, they also knew they could not afford to live in the constant threat of war. In the Treaty of Bath, Virginia sued for peace, recognition of its independence, and uninhibited access to its lands west of the mountains. In exchange Carolina got strong provisions recognizing its role as Cherokee’s protector. Any Virginian charged with a crime against a Cherokee, for example, could be tried in Carolina. This practice became so common in subsequent years that “Carolina court” in Virginian parlance came to mean anyone operating outside their jurisdiction. But the settlement brought peace and secured independence for the Cherokee and, ultimately, the other “civilized tribes” of the region, because the Bath provisions became the basis for similar treaties regarding the Muscogi, Choctaw, and Chicasaw nations.
Another controversy concerned West Florida. That region was considered an underdeveloped no-man’s-land between French and Spanish territory, and around 1810 Carolina decided to have a go at founding English settlements there. The newcomers upset the balance of power in Florida, and fighting soon erupted. As in Cherokee, few of the combatants had a taste for a long-term conflict, and so the three sides agreed to three-way joint suzerainty for 30 years.
It was also during this time that Carolina finally normalized its relations with Watauga. These three treaties together – over Cherokee, West Florida, and Watauga – transformed the region and formed some of the core building blocks of the ASB.
The Slave Question
By the 1840s, a growing global movement against slavery began to isolate Carolina. Most of Carolina’s allies – the nascent ASB – had either already abolished the institution, or were taking measures to abolish it slowly through gradual or compensated emancipation. England also applied pressure, having already abolished the practice in its other dominions. In 1850 even Cherokee embarked on an anti-slavery path. A law that year banned the importation of new slaves from other states. The Cherokee slave trade had been a major source of income for Carolina.
The coalitions in Carolina’s First Party System solidified around the Slavery Question. The Whigs and Tories remained the only major parties, but much more than before, they were defined by region, class, ethnicity, and opinion on slavery. Political system of rich lowland Whigs vs. poor backwoods Tories solidifies. Essentially the entire planter class became solid Whigs, while Tory politics and culture tightened their hold on the mountainous west. An expanding voting franchise helped the Tories control government for half a century.
Class and cultural resentment, and pressure from the Crown, fuelled anti-slavery views among the Tories. They began pursuing policies to limit the institution. Most consequentially, the assembly, with the backing of Premier John Caldwell, 1854 severely weakened Carolina’s fugitive slave law in 1854. This shook the foundations of power of the slaveholding establishment. Planters encouraged pro-slavery citizens to form militias whose stated purpose was the apprehension of fugitives. Anti-slavery partisans soon formed armed groups of their own, and before long it seemed the entire countryside was at war. The subsequent premier, David Reed, urged his fellow Tories to roll back some of the reforms they had just passed. When they refused, Reed resigned and left the party. Replacing Reed was Richard Spraight, the first Whig premier in over half a century. He managed to restore the fugitive slave law, but not achieve the full pro-slavery agenda. The violence subsided a little, but the militias remained in place and sporadic fighting would continue for years. And the views of anti-slavery Carolians were hardened.
Carolina’s party dynamic was also shifting. The People’s Party emerged on the scene, representing democratization and enlightened reform, ideas not well represented in either the Tory or Whig agendas. In contrast to the regionalized parties, People’s drew support from across the state, from small landholding farmers seeking expanded rights, and from the growing educated middle classes. Ambivalent on the Slave Question, People’s rejected the Tories’ often-authoritarian belief in royal power, favoring stronger limits or even abolition of the monarchy. This led them to ally with the Whigs, who now saw the Crown as the main threat to the slave system. With the Whigs in serious decline, People’s gradually absorbed most of their old base of support, building up a formidable coalition that dominated government in the 1860s and 70s.
By then, Carolina, Lower Virginia, and Cuba were the last states in the ASB still clinging to slavery. Everywhere else it was either gone or on its way out. Tensions rose again in this period. The militias reappeared. Pro- and anti-slavery gangs caused even more bloodshed than the flare-up of the 50s. In Charleston, in New Amsterdam, in London, talk was all about what to do with Carolina. Amid this chaos, the Tories returned to power in 1875. Under the premiership of Zebulon Vance, the Tories, with the full support of England, moved to resolve the Slave Question once and for all. Vance repressed the militias, calling out the army for the first time and requesting support from the Confederal government. In 1880, the Carolina Assembly made the most fateful decision in its history when it voted to abolish slavery in the state. Carolina’s millions of Black subjects were free. There was no going back.
After Emancipation, toward the Republic
At the time of Emancipation in 1880, it was already clear that Carolina's antiquated slave economy would have to change if it was to enter the modern world with the commercial (and, increasingly, industrial) states of the north. Some reformist members of the People's Party had been arguing for some kind of gradual emancipation to avoid a shock to the system, but years of gridlock over the issue meant that it was basically too late. Slavery had to end. And the system was shocked. Workers left plantations by the thousands, causing agricultural productivity to plummet. The exodus was not just to Carolian cities: the Vance government had granted emancipation with the barest minimum of political and civil rights, so many freedmen set out for places where they at least had a chance at equality. Carolina faced an absolute demographic catastrophe.
The Vance government had anticipated many of the problems and taken some steps to stave them off. A land reform bill compensated planters who gave up land to freedmen, but it was not enough to stem the tide. The People's Party swept into power in 1889 in full reform mode. They strengthened land reform, requiring certain failed estates to be split up and given to freedmen, with the owners being compensated for the land at its now rock-bottom market price. The Russell government also founded a system of agricultural schools to introduce more efficient comemrcial farming methods to the state. The schools were of course segregated by race, but they did much to help former slaves achieve self-sufficiency. Russell also was effective in attracting investment from northern industrial firms, which helped provide employment to the thousands of workers streaming into the cities. This ambitious reform program was effected through large loans from England and from other states, hopefully to be repaid out of the bounty of a growing modern economy. Freed of its ancient manorial restrictions, Carolina's economy did indeed begin to grow quickly.
This time of political instability, called Carolina's “Third Party Syatem,” was really a time of constant shifting. The Assembly was dominated by the reform-minded wings of both the Tory and People's Parties, who cooperated with each other almost as often with the conservative wings of their own parties. They broadly agreed on the need to improve the material condition of freedmen without extending political rights. What kept the parties from splitting up was the perenniel constitutional question of royal and gubernatorial power.
The Electoral Reform Law of 1897, passed at the Confederal level after a rare nationwide referendum, brought to a head Carolina's issues over civil rights and the role of the Crown. The law mandated universal male suffrage throughout the confederation, for Black as well as White. The royal Governor, the Earl of Kent, chose to use whatever gubernatorial prerogative he had to carry out the law to the fullest extent possible. White voters' reactions against the Earl gave the People's Party a huge majority in the election of 1901. The government held a statewide referendum on the monarchy, and Carolians voted to toss the Crown by a considerable margin. Carolina's connection to England was broken after nearly 250 years.
The Slow, Steady Rise of Civil Rights
The shifting landscape of the “Third Party System” had gone through another major change in 1895 with the appearance of so many new Black voters. Rebuffed by the Tories they had assumed to be allies, Black leaders soon formed the Freedmen's Party to promote their interests. The FP was kept out of government for the entirety of its existence, but it made an impact on the Carolian political landscape and ensured that it would not settle down any time soon.
The two main parties continued their transition into modern ideological organizations. The “left” wing of People's, more sympathetic to civil rights, had been ascendent since the 1890s. Now, freed from the need to ally with the old forces of planter anti-monarchism, the progressives took complete control of the party. Conservatives defected to the Tories, and for the first time in its 150-year history, it too became a party based on ideology more than on ethnicity and region. The reallignment was complete by the late 1920s. People's and Freedmen's officially cooperated in the Opposition to the conservative Tory government of Cameron Morrison. The parties merged not long after.
By then, the rise of socialism as a political force was drastically changing the conversation over civil rights and completed the transition into Carolina's Fourth Party System. Socialism in Carolina had different strains, some emphasizing working class solidarity between Black and White, others emphasizing White anxiety over Black competition. The Labor Party that entered government with People's in 1931 accepted the proposition that workers of both races shared the same struggles.
Carolina was also now under more and more pressure from its neighbors to extend civil rights, end segregated racial policies, and move toward a more integrated society. People's/Labor governments throughout the 30s and 40s enacted sweeping reforms that put Blacks and Whites on a more equal footing, along with other changes like female suffrage. After the mid-40s this provoked a sizable backlash and an era of Tory governments that did what they could to put the brakes on change.
However, this time of political rollback was also a time of cultural ferment across racial lines. It was a golden age for Carolian music as numerous artists – Lowlander, Piedmonter, Black, and Catawba – found fame throughout Boreoamerica. Boreal pop music today still owes a debt to the Carolian folk music that swept the continent in this era. Carlolina in general was adjusting to a new identity that acknowledged the state's unity in diversity. Racial divisions remained, and still do, but in a modern state where Blacks and Whites are roughly equal in numbers, civic identity has to be broad enough to encompass both races.
Recent past
Nowadays, anxiety over a secularizing society and the welfare state have replaced race as the issues at the top of political discussion. Many people in rural parts of the Appalachians have slowly drifted back to the Tories over religious issues. (The Catawba never left; for 200 years they have been the Tories' most reliable constituency.) In this environment the socialists dwindled, giving rise to a Fifth Party System that may shift to a Sixth if some of the new up-and-coming minor parties have their say.
Carolina's Aristocracy
Carolina's founding documents envisioned a model feudal society with a docile population of White serfs ruled over by a graded hierarchy of titled landowners. Anyone possessing 3,000 acres was entitled to call himself Lord of the Manor, while the Lords Proprietors would grant the top landowners the new noble titles of Landgrave and Cazique. The full feudal system never came close to being implemented, but after 1700 the noble titles were revived as ways to reward great planters who had rendered service to the colony. The hereditary chiefs of the Catawba and other Indian peoples living within Carolina's borders were also eventually honored with the title of Cazique, the lesser of the two titles; this helped integrate them into the planter class. By the 1760s Carolina's aristocracy was a well-recognized class that effectively had total control over the colony's government.
From the start, titled landowners had guaranteed seats in the colonial assembly. The reforms of the 1760s placed them into a separate House of Lords modeled on that of England.
The Lords were the leading house during the rest of the 18th century, but a rising population of small landholding settlers with the right to vote and fairly radical democratic views meant that the Lords' days of dominating the government were numbered. In a series of reforms made by Tory governments in the first half of the 19th century, the Lords lost their ability to introduce legislation, pass bills of attainder or try members of their class, and ultimately to block the Assembly's legislation at all (the Lords' veto could be overturned with a 3/5 vote in the Commons). Great planters by 1850 continued to dominate Carolina's economy, and therefore had plenty of means to get their way, but their formal political power was no more.
Emancipation shattered the nobility's economic power. Many estates were forcibly broken up and parceled out to former slaves. The very foundation of planter power, Carolina's agrarian economy geared toward exports, quickly began to melt away during the same time. Understandably, the state's Landgraves and Caziques became even more jealous of their titles, which were all that remained of their former greatness.
The end of the monarchy in 1903 obviously raised the question of what would become of the House of Lords. The great old families, their power on the decline, still had some political sway in their communities, where they continued to play the role of benevolent local patricians as best they could. They had historically opposed the monarchy and so could be persuaded to help abolish it as long as their titles were not threatened. In a tacit agreement with the People's Party, they agreed to expel the Episcopal bishops who still sat in their house, and to agree to further limit their power to the ability to delay legislation for one session of the legislature. In return, the republican state government would allow their house and their titles to survive.
In the 1940s, the Commons and the President passed bills naming several new Caziques, largely from among elderly leaders of the civil rights movement, in order to end the all-white nature of the House of Lords. It was feared that this would begin a tradition of "life lords" crassly named by the sitting government from among their supporters, but so far no other government has continued the practice.
And that's more or less where things stand today. Many of the titled aristocrats of Carolina have no wealth to speak of at all anymore, but they do have their pedigrees, their traditions, their coats of arms, and their seats in their vestigial House. The system means that many have stayed politically active, and many prominent political leaders, both conservative and progressive, have come from their ranks. Together with chiefs and aristocrats from other states that have them, they form part of the group that occasionally meets in New Amsterdam in one of the ASB's more obscure constitutional bodies, the powerless Chiefly Council.
From the start, titled landowners had guaranteed seats in the colonial assembly. The reforms of the 1760s placed them into a separate House of Lords modeled on that of England.
The Lords were the leading house during the rest of the 18th century, but a rising population of small landholding settlers with the right to vote and fairly radical democratic views meant that the Lords' days of dominating the government were numbered. In a series of reforms made by Tory governments in the first half of the 19th century, the Lords lost their ability to introduce legislation, pass bills of attainder or try members of their class, and ultimately to block the Assembly's legislation at all (the Lords' veto could be overturned with a 3/5 vote in the Commons). Great planters by 1850 continued to dominate Carolina's economy, and therefore had plenty of means to get their way, but their formal political power was no more.
Emancipation shattered the nobility's economic power. Many estates were forcibly broken up and parceled out to former slaves. The very foundation of planter power, Carolina's agrarian economy geared toward exports, quickly began to melt away during the same time. Understandably, the state's Landgraves and Caziques became even more jealous of their titles, which were all that remained of their former greatness.
The end of the monarchy in 1903 obviously raised the question of what would become of the House of Lords. The great old families, their power on the decline, still had some political sway in their communities, where they continued to play the role of benevolent local patricians as best they could. They had historically opposed the monarchy and so could be persuaded to help abolish it as long as their titles were not threatened. In a tacit agreement with the People's Party, they agreed to expel the Episcopal bishops who still sat in their house, and to agree to further limit their power to the ability to delay legislation for one session of the legislature. In return, the republican state government would allow their house and their titles to survive.
In the 1940s, the Commons and the President passed bills naming several new Caziques, largely from among elderly leaders of the civil rights movement, in order to end the all-white nature of the House of Lords. It was feared that this would begin a tradition of "life lords" crassly named by the sitting government from among their supporters, but so far no other government has continued the practice.
And that's more or less where things stand today. Many of the titled aristocrats of Carolina have no wealth to speak of at all anymore, but they do have their pedigrees, their traditions, their coats of arms, and their seats in their vestigial House. The system means that many have stayed politically active, and many prominent political leaders, both conservative and progressive, have come from their ranks. Together with chiefs and aristocrats from other states that have them, they form part of the group that occasionally meets in New Amsterdam in one of the ASB's more obscure constitutional bodies, the powerless Chiefly Council.