Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/807

 favourable to the East, voted strongly for it and carried the election with a total majority in the state of 5856 votes. Again, however, the advantage was with the East, for the delegates were chosen by counties, two from each; but in the convention, which was in session at Raleigh from the 4th of June to the 11th of July, the East made some concessions: such as the popular election of the governor (who had previously been elected by the two houses of the legislature), the disfranchisement of free negroes, and the abolition of representation from 6 boroughs, 4 of which were in the East. The number of senators was reduced to 50, the number of commoners to 120, and the manner of choosing senators and commoners was changed as directed in the act providing for the convention. The electorate gave its approval to the revision by a vote of 26,771 to 21,606, and with this the agitation over representation ceased.

The fundamental points of difference between North Carolina and South Carolina were exemplified in the slavery conflict. South Carolina led the extreme radical element in the South and was the first state to secede. North Carolina held back, worked for a compromise, sent delegates to the Washington Peace Convention in February 1861, and did not secede until the 20th of May 1861, after President Lincoln’s call for troops to preserve the Union. Liberal support was given to the Confederacy, both in men and supplies, but Governor Vance, one of the ablest of the Southern war governors, engaged in acrimonious controversies with President Jefferson Davis, contending that the general government of the Confederacy was encroaching upon the prerogatives of the separate states. Owing to its distance from the border, the state escaped serious invasion until near the close of the war. Wilmington was captured by the Federals in February 1865; General Sherman’s army crossed the southern boundary in March; a battle was fought at Bentonville, March 19-21; Raleigh was entered on April 13; and the Confederates under General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered near Durham Station, in Durham county, on the 26th.

Reconstruction was a costly experience here as in other Southern states. Jonathan Worth (1802–1869), elected governor under the presidential plan in 1865, was an honest and capable official, but the government established in accordance with the views of Congress in 1868 was corrupt, inefficient and tyrannical. Carpet-baggers, negroes and unscrupulous native whites, known as scalawags, were in control of affairs, while the people of wealth, refinement and education were disfranchised Governor William Woods Holden (1818–1892; governor 1868–1870) was so weak and tyrannical that he was impeached by the legislature in December 1870. Under his successor, Tod R. Caldwell (1818–1874), there was some improvement in the condition of affairs, and in 1875 a constitutional convention, in session at Raleigh, with the Democrats slightly in the majority, amended the constitution, their work being ratified by the people at the state election in 1876. The native white element completely regained possession of the government in the following year, when the Democrats came into office under Governor Zebulon B. Vance. Since that time the most interesting feature in the political history has been the rise and fall of the People’s party. The hard times which followed the financial panic of 1893 made it possible for them, in alliance with the Republicans, to carry the state in the election of 1894. Afterwards their strength declined, because the people became more prosperous, because the national Democratic party in 1896 and 1900 adopted their views on the money question, and because of the unpopularity of a coalition with Republicans, which made it necessary to give the coloured people a share of the offices. The race question was the chief issue in the election of 1898, the Democrats were successful, and what amounted to a negro-disfranchising amendment to the constitution was adopted in August 1900. In 1907 there was a serious clash between the state authorities and the Federal judiciary, arising from an act of the legislature of that year which fixed the maximum railway fare at 2 cents a mile and imposed enormous fines for its violation. The two principal railway corporations, the Southern and the Seaboard

Air Line, contended that the act was clearly contrary to the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution in that it denied the equal protection of law. The promise of the railways to give to every purchaser of a ticket a rebate check until the question of the validity of the act should be decided by the courts was not satisfactory to the state authorities, who arrested a ticket agent of the Southern railway, convicted him of violating the law, and sentenced him to the chain-gang for thirty days. Thereupon the attorneys for the railway applied to judge Jeter Connelly Pritchard (b. 1857) of the United States Circuit Court for a writ of habeas corpus; this was granted and the prisoner was released. The governor of the state, Robert Brodnax Glenn (b. 1854), nevertheless urged the state courts and attorneys to proceed with the prosecution of other ticket agents, and threatened to resist with the force of the state any further interference of Federal judiciary; but in March 1908 the Supreme Court of the United States declared the North Carolina rate law unconstitutional on the ground that it was confiscatory.