USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1584 1783, Volume I > Part 23
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The Board of Trade displayed remarkable consistency in
1 Andrews, Charles McLean : The Colonial Period, p. 136.
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its colonial program and held tenaciously to certain principles of imperial government. It sought to make the governments of the colonies, as far as possible, conform to a single adminis- trative type and by retaining control of the executive and judiciary to preserve and strengthen their dependence upon the home government. North Carolina felt the influence of these policies even before the purchase by the Crown. We have already seen how the Board of Trade sought to bring North Carolina under its administrative control, first through action by Parliament, then through quo warranto proceedings ; and how, when both of these methods failed, through gradual encroachments upon the chartered rights and privileges of the Lords Proprietors, it finally forced them to surrender their charter. Similar proceedings, at times even more arbitrary ones, were taken with other proprietary colonies. Closely allied with this policy were the efforts of the board to strengthen its authority over the colonies through undivided control over their executive and judiciary officers. Even in the proprietary governments, an act of Parliament required nominees of the Proprietors for governor to be approved by the king before they could qualify. In the royal colonies the board undertook to establish permanent civil lists in order that the governors, judges and other officials might be independent of the assemblies for their salaries and hence be free to carry out imperial policies unhampered by local inter- ests. With the same object in view it required judges to be commissioned during the king's pleasure only.
These policies met with intense opposition in the colonies. In North Carolina Burrington and Johnston, in obedience to their instructions, called upon the Assembly to provide per- manently "a competent salary" for the governor, but the Assembly replied that if the king wished the governor's salary to be so fixed, he could pay it out of his quit rents. The Board of Trade accordingly adopted the suggestion, but the col- lection of quit rents depended upon legislation by the Assem- bly, and the Assembly, as we have seen, refused to obey in- structions relating to them. Quit rents, therefore, were so seldom collected in North Carolina that Burrington's salary was never paid, while Johnston's, at the time of his death, was thirteen years in arrears. In its instructions to Dobbs, the Board of Trade introduced an additional clause, common to its instructions to governors of other colonies, that the Assem- bly should fix a civil list "without limitation in point of time." But the Assembly steadfastly refused. "I can see no prospect
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of getting a fixed salary to the Governor or his successors," wrote Dobbs to the Board of Trade. " *
* * There seems to be an established maxim fixed in the several Assemblies of the colonies to keep the Governors and Government as muchi in their power as they can." Like his predecessors, Dobbs was compelled to look elsewhere for his compensation.
Control of the judiciary in the imperial interests turned less upon the question of salary than upon the tenure of the judges. The colonies insisted that judges be commissioned during good behavior, but the Board of Trade instructed the governors to issue no commissions except during the king's pleasure. In 1754 Governor Dobbs was compelled to break through his instructions on this point and consent to an act which provided for judges during good behavior, but the king, upon the advice of the Board of Trade, promptly repudiated his action. In 1761 the Board of Trade assumed an inflexible attitude on this point. It removed the governor of New Jersey from office for failure to enforce this policy. In the same year it reported adversely upon two judiciary acts of the North Carolina Assembly largely because they provided for judges during good behavior, for it confessed that in other respects, the acts were "not only regular and uniform" in themselves, but were also "consonant to the principles and Constitution of the Mother Country" and "properly adapted to the situa- tion and circumstances" of the colony. Thus in one colony after another the judiciary was brought under the control of the Crown and after 1762 all judges held office during pleasure only. The colonies never became reconciled to this policy and when they came in 1776 to declare their independence of the mother country, they listed it among those things which justified their action.
The Board of Trade kept constantly in view not only the relations of the colonies to the empire, but their relations to each other and to the savage nations with which they came in contact. Many of its most important activities concerned inter-colonial relations and Indian affairs. Under its supervision came such problems as boundary line contro- versies, inter-colonial trade policies, and the relations of the several Indian nations to each other as well as to the whites.
Prior to 1700 few of the colonies had such well defined boundaries as to be free from boundary disputes which always involved questions that could not be settled by those directly interested in them. In those between crown colonies and pro- prietary colonies, as illustrated in the North Carolina-Vir- Vol. I-16
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ginia boundary dispute, both king and proprietors had inter- ests to be considered. The colonies themselves were deeply concerned as the controversies frequently involved the en- forcement of criminal laws, the execution of judicial processes, the collection of taxes, service in the militia, Indian affairs, and other governmental problems. Private interests too were numerous and complicated. Titles to land along the contested lines rested upon the right of the government under which they were claimed to issue the grants, and conflicting claims often led to disorders, riots, and bloodshed.
No better illustration of conditions growing out of a dis- puted boundary can be found than those which arose along the North Carolina-South Carolina border from 1753 to 1764. As early as 1735 commissioners representing the two prov- inces had agreed upon the thirty-fifth parallel of latitude as the boundary but many years passed before it was located by survey. In 1753 complaint was made to the North Carolina Council that South Carolina surveyors had entered the Wax- haw settlement north of the thirty-fifth parallel and were surveying under grants from South Carolina tracts of land which were "the property of several persons with- in this Province to the great Disturbance of their Peace and Quiet." The Council thereupon advised the governor to issue orders to both the civil and military authorities to arrest all such surveyors and bring them to trial. Two years later Governor Dobbs charged that Governor Glen of South Caro- lina had "spirited up some of the settlers" on his lands, which had been patented under the laws of North Carolina in 1746, "to take out warrants of survey from him and he would sup- port them," adding, "When Mr. Glen would begin with me, it may be presumed no private person could escape him." But the chief sufferer in these disputes was Henry McCulloh whose grants lay along the border. In 1756 it was charged that Governor Glen was "daily granting warrants of survey" within McCulloh's tract. Conflicts between rival survey- ors, and between those claiming under their surveys, were often attended with fatal results. Anarchy and lawlessness prevailed in many border communities for the region in dis- pute became "a kind of sanctuary to Criminals and Vagabonds by their pretending as it served their purpose that they be- longed to either Province."
But there were other actions of the South Carolina authori- ties which were even more irritating to North Carolina officials than the surveys. The governor of South Carolina, for in-
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stance, required settlers north of the thirty-fifth parallel to attend his militia musters and undertook to impose fines upon those who refused to obey his summons, commissioned justices of the peace north of that line, encouraged settlers there to refuse to pay taxes to the North Carolina govern- ment, and warned Governor Dobbs himself "not to molest them." Encouraged by his support, a band of settlers in An- son County fell upon the sheriff while he was collecting taxes and imprisoned him, and Dobbs, "to prevent further con- fusion, was obliged to overlook it." At times officials of the two provinces actually came into armed conflict. In 1755, in a letter to Dobbs, Glen denounced "several outrages" by citizens of North Carolina upon inhabitants of South Carolina, "which," he added, "having been committed under the colour of authority by persons pretending to be officers of your Government, the offense was the more intolerable." To which Dobbs replied that the North Carolina officials had "only re- pelled an invasive force" sent from South Carolina to sur- vey land, collect taxes, and impose fines within the jurisdic- tion of North Carolina.
These charges and counter-charges finally led to an open breach between the two governors. They were in truth too much alike to get along together harmoniously. What Dobbs said of Glen applies with equal truth to himself, that he was "too opinionated and self-sufficient to have any dealings with him." Glen's air of superiority and condescension ruffled his adversary's sense of dignity. Your letter, wrote Dobbs, in reply to a letter just received from Glen, was written "in a very extraordinary style, I may say dictatorial, not as one Governor to another having equal powers from his Majesty, and independent of each other, but as if I was dependent upon you, and obliged to give you an account of my behaviour in transacting affairs of this Government." Throwing aside all pretense of diplomacy Dobbs wrote to the Board of Trade that he would have no further dealings with Glen, and in this position the board seems to have sustained him for, greatly to Dobbs' satisfaction, it removed Glen from office.
Such incidents showed the necessity for an impartial tri- bunal with power to settle controversies between colonies. This tribunal was found in the Board of Trade. One of its first problems concerning the Carolinas after their transfer to the Crown was the settlement of their boundary. At the time the transfer was completed both George Burrington and Robert Johnson, the newly appointed royal governors, were in Lon-
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don awaiting their instructions, and since both had been offi- cials under the Lords Proprietors and were supposed to be familiar with colonial conditions, the Board of Trade directed them to agree on a boundary line between their provinces. After a conference, in which they were joined by "some other gentlemen belonging to those provinces," they reached an agreement which the Board of Trade approved. Accordingly it issued instructions directing the two governors to appoint commissioners to run a line to begin at the sea thirty miles southwest of the mouth of Cape Fear River, and keeping that distance from the river, to run parallel with it to its source, thence due west as far as the South Sea. Afterwards at the suggestion of Governor Johnson, and without consulting Bur- rington, the board added as an alternative, that if the Wac- camaw River lay within thirty miles of Cape Fear River, then it should be the line from the sea to its source; from which the line should continue parallel with the Cape Fear River at a distance of thirty miles to its source, thence due west to the South Sea.
Disputes of course arose over the meaning of these instruc- tions. The source of the Waccamaw was found to be within thirty miles of the Cape Fear and this fact gave Burrington basis for claiming the Waccamaw as the boundary; its mouth, on the contrary, was at least ninety miles from Cape Fear, and Johnson insisted that the word "mouth" should be read into the instructions as its omission "was only a Mistake in the wording of it." Burrington in a public proclamation warned all persons against taking out warrants from the South Car- olina authorities for land north of Waccamaw River, and Johnson in a similar proclamation replied to him. The two governors could not agree and were compelled to call in the Board of Trade to decide between them. Governor Johnson declared that Burrington's interpretation "would bring his boundary into the bowels of our present settlements," and urged a "speedy running" of the line according to the claims of South Carolina. But North Carolina was not satisfied with the Cape Fear River as her western boundary, as such a line would cut her off from any westward development. Bur- rington, therefore, urged upon the board reasons for changing the line from the Cape Fear River to the Pee Dee River, saying that the former line was "intricate and difficult," and that the expense of running it would be £2,000 sterling, while the Pee Dee was a natural boundary open to neither of these objec- tions. If the whole region between the Cape Fear and the
1
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Pee Dee were sold, he added, probably with a sardonic grin, "it would not prove sufficient to pay commissioners, chains, carriers, and labourers," necessary to run the Cape Fear line. The North Carolina Council endorsed Burrington's sugges- tion and advised him not to appoint commissioners until the Board of Trade had passed upon it. But the board promptly rejected it, saying that it would not think of altering its instruc- tion "upon hearing one party only" and directed Burrington to "put that instruction in execution. " But George Burrington was determined that the line should not be so run and he never lacked expedients for carrying his purposes into effect. By prolonging the debate on the advantages of the Pee Dee line, and when defeated in that, by referring to the Board of Trade the problem of paying for the survey, he managed to postpone the running of the line for three years, so that when he was recalled in 1734, nothing had been done. Whatever one may think of the ethics of his tactics, their success is not open to criticism for they saved to North Carolina that vast region west of Cape Fear River and between the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth parallels of north latitude, now the richest section of the commonwealth.
In 1734 Gabriel Johnston succeeded Burrington. Upon his arrival at Cape Fear, he was asked by Governor Johnson whether he "had not brought over a more plain instruction about the dividing line," to which he replied in the negative, at the same time stating his intention of carrying the old instruc- tion into execution. Further interchange of views led to an agreement to appoint commissioners to adjust the differences between the two governments. In 1735, therefore, Governor Johnson appointed Alexander Skene, James Abercrombie, and William Walters to represent South Carolina, and Gov- ernor Johnston appointed Robert Halton, Eleazer Allen, Matthew Rowan, Edward Moseley, and Roger Moore to rep- resent North Carolina. The commissioners met at Lilliput, the home of Eleazer Allen on the Cape Fear, in March, 1735, and remained in session six weeks. A spirit of compromise pervaded their deliberations. The South Carolina commis- sioners, wrote Governor Johnston, "desired that without ad- hering with too much rigour to the words of the instruction, which favoured our pretensions very much, we would agree to such reasonable propositions as they designed to make us, and then join our endeavours to get this agreement ratified at home." The North Carolina commissioners met this sug- gestion in the spirit in which it was offered, the governor
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himself setting the example. "After many conferences held during the space of six weeks," wrote the South Carolina com- missioners, "by the kindly interposition of Gabriel Johnston * * [we] had the happiness to remove a difference which had long subsisted between the two provinces and finally to settle and adjust the limits to the mutual satisfaction of both."
The line agreed upon was to begin at the sea, thirty miles southwest of the mouth of Cape Fear River, to run thence in a northwest course to the thirty-fifth parallel of north lati- tude, thence due west to the South Sea; if before reaching the thirty-fifth parallel, it came within five miles of the Pee Dee River, it should then run parallel with the Pee Dee at a dis- tance of five miles to the thirty-fifth degree, thence due west to the South Sea; provided that at no point should it approach nearer than thirty miles to the Cape Fear River; and pro- vided, further, that when it reached the reservation of the Catawba Indians, it should be so run as to throw those Indi- ans into South Carolina. This agreement, which the South Carolinians "consented to with great joy," was signed by all the commissioners, April 23, 1735, and later was approved by the Board of Trade which wrote, "We shall always have a proper regard to so solemn a determination agreed to by persons properly empowered by each of the Provinces." The commissioners hastened to carry their agreement into effect. They began their survey May 1, 1735, and during the summer and fall ran the line something over 100 miles from the coast. A deputy surveyor afterwards took the latitude of Pee Dee River at the thirty-fifth parallel and set up a marker there which for several years was considered to be the boundary at that place. In their work, the commissioners "endured vast fatigue." Most of the line ran through uninhabited woods in many places impassable until they had cleared the way. There were, too, several large and rapid rivers which were crossed only with great danger and difficulty. In spite of these hardships and difficulties, testified Governor Johnston, they "performed their business with great diligence and exactness." Although their work did not put an end to the controversies between the two provinces, it fixed the line from which no substantial deviations were afterwards made. Surveys in 1737, in 1764, and in 1772 carried it as far west as Tryon Mountain where it stopped until after North Caro- lina and South Carolina had ceased to be British colonies.
The boundary dispute between the two provinces was in- timately connected with their trade relations. For commercial
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reasons the settlers along the upper waters of the Pee Dee and Catawba rivers wanted the line to be so run as either to throw them into South Carolina, or to leave the Pee Dee River wholly in North Carolina. The explanation of their wishes is found in the fact that Charleston was their chief market. An inhabitant of Mecklenburg County, writing in 1768 about the building of a palace for the governor at New Bern, declared that "not one man in twenty of the four most populous coun- ties will ever see this famous house when built, as their con- nections and trade do, and ever will, more naturally centre in South Carolina." It was much easier for them to float their produce down the Pee Dee and Catawba rivers to Charleston ·than to carry them overland to Wilmington and New Bern.
Instead of encouraging this trade, South Carolina in the supposed interest of her own merchants, laid heavy duties on products imported from North Carolina. In 1762 the Council petitioned the king to order the southern boundary of the province to be carried farther south to Winyaw where the Pee Dee River enters the Atlantic Ocean "as by our having one side of Winyaw we should have a free navigation to the Sea and enjoy the Benefit of the inland Navigation of the Yadkin, Rocky, Great and Little Pee Dee Rivers, which though they all run through the Heart of this province enter the Sea at Winyaw, and as there are heavy Dutys laid in South Carolina upon the produce of this province we [they] are from that reason rendered totally useless to both provinces as the Boundary now stands." Thus the North Carolina settlers were caught between the devil of geographical obstacles to trade on the one side and the deep blue sea of artificial restrictions on the other. The Board of Trade to which they appealed, admitted that South Carolina's policy "must in its consequence destruct the Commerce of His Maj- esty's subjects in North Carolina," and promised relief. But nothing came of this promise, and North Carolina began to seek measures of retaliation and relief on her own account. In 1751 the Assembly levied heavy duties on spirituous liquors imported into Anson County from South Carolina, and later forbade the ranging of South Carolina cattle within the bounds of North Carolina.
But retaliatory measures and vain petitions to the Crown were less effective than the constructive measures which ac- companied them. Such a measure was the act, passed in 1762, for the incorporation of a market town called Campbellton at the head of navigation of the Cape Fear River. One of the
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reasons cited for the passage of this act was the hope that "the trade of the counties of Anson and Rowan which at present centers in Charlestown, South Carolina, to the great prejudice of this Province, will be drawn down to the said town." To promote this result acts were also passed for the building of roads from the Dan River on the Virginia line and from Shallow Ford on the Yadkin to Campbellton. These wise measures ultimately turned much of the trade of the back country from Charleston to Campbellton, thence down the Cape Fear to Wilmington, brought the West into closer rela- tions with the East, and checked the tendency of the western counties of North Carolina to become mere outlying districts of South Carolina.
Between the Albemarle section of North Carolina and Vir- ginia existed trade relations similar to those between the back country and South Carolina. Those relations and Virginia's hostile policy based on them have already been discussed. But while North Carolina remained a proprietary colony no trib- bunal existed sufficiently interested in its welfare with power to grant relief. Its transfer to the Crown, however, placed it in a much more favorable position with respect to its more power- ful northern neighbor. The Albemarle planters were quick to understand their new status, and in 1731 sought relief by appealing to the Board of Trade to repeal the Virginia statute of 1726, originally passed in 1679, which prohibited the ship- ment of North Carolina tobacco through Virginia ports. The petitioners declared that tobacco was the chief product by which they "subsisted and provided their families with all kinds of European goods," that they could not export it through their own ports because of the shallow inlets along the North Carolina coast, and that unless the relief they sought was granted they would either be reduced to poverty or be compelled to "fall upon such usefull Manufactorys" as would render unnecessary the importation of European goods "and consequently be prejudicial to the Trade of Great Britain." Suggestions that the colonies might establish manufacturing enterprises always frightened British statesmen, and the hint of the Albemarle planters had the desired effect. The Board of Trade adopted their view of the Virginia statute, and upon its recommendation the king repealed the obnoxious act, No- vember 25, 1731.
The repeal of this statute and the settlement of their boun- dary line removed the chief causes of controversy between the two colonies. Another source of ill feeling was removed
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when North Carolina assumed the dignity of a crown colony, a change which made necessary the adoption by the Virginia government of a more respectful official attitude toward the younger colony. But perhaps the most important element in drawing the two colonies together was the influence of the German and Scotch-Irish settlers who, after 1735, poured into the back country of both provinces. Coming in search of good land, these settlers cared little whether they found it on the headwaters of the James or on the headwaters of the Yadkin. They brought with them none of the ancient preju- dices that existed in the older communities of both provinces. Members of the same family setting out together from Phil- adelphia would often separate, some finding the object of their search in Virginia, others passing on into North Caro- lina. Their church organizations, too, Presbyterian, Lutheran, German Reformed, and Moravian, existing independently of vestry laws, took no account of provincial boundary lines. Finally, the presence on their frontier of powerful savage na- tions which struggled desperately to stay their advance, was an ever-present common danger which drew them into the bonds of a common defence. Under the stimulus of these influences ancient prejudices and feelings of hostility between the two colonies gradually gave way to sentiments of genuine respect and mutual good will.
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