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North Carolina Through Four Centuries
This successor to the classic Lefler-Newsome North The History of a Southern State , published in 1954, presents a fresh survey history that includes the contemporary scene. Drawing upon recent scholarship, the advice of specialists, and his own knowledge, Powell has created a splendid narrative that makes North Carolina history accessible to both students and general readers. For years to come, this will be the standard college text and an essential reference for home and office.
- GenresHistory
670 pages, Hardcover
First published January 28, 1989
About the author
William S. Powell
53 books1 followerWilliam S. Powell (born April 28, 1919) is an American historian, writer and academic. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, having retired in 1986.
He received the North Carolina Award for literature in 2000. He is the author or editor of several books on North Carolina history, including the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, The North Carolina Gazetteer and the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography.
He received the North Carolina Award for literature in 2000. He is the author or editor of several books on North Carolina history, including the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, The North Carolina Gazetteer and the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 9, 2025
I was acutely aware while reading this book that it was published in 1989. One of its primary shortcomings (for me, a casual reader) is its inability to efficiently communicate a glut of information. There are only a couple of maps in the entire 559 pages, mostly towards the beginning and very limited in information. The state and county boundaries of North Carolina changed a lot over the centuries, and I wouldn’t expect even a knowledgeable resident to know by heart the political geography of the state well enough to follow the numerous written descriptions of events in this book. Let alone rivers, sounds, inlets, outlets, individual mountains, trails, roads, forests, etc, etc. Similarly, my eyes glazed over many times - particularly in the period from 1820-1920 - as I read pages and pages of names and titles of people I had never heard of and would never hear about again. Also particularly egregious in this section but present throughout was the tendency to jump back and forth between dates. You’ll read ten pages summarizing certain events from e.g. 1822-1855 and then the next page you’ll be back in 1826 and then you’ll jump back to 1850 and then to 1785 and so on and so forth. All fairly inoffensive attributes of a very broad history book, but all of these problems would have been very easily solved by a few high quality contextualized maps, timelines, graphs, and charts. The absence of which I charitably assume is due to the lack of computer processing available to edit this book in 1989.
This is the first pure “history” book which I have ever read cover to cover, so I’m not sure how to rate its contents. I found it excellent for the most part, but there were some conspicuously absent historical threads. There is little information about colonial relations with Native Americans except every now and then he will note “their population and territory had declined 50% in 30 years” which always stunned me. Like what the hell, something is clearly going on with the indians but what it is I’m not really sure. One of the most shocking moments in the book was in 1860 when all of a sudden almost one in three residents of North Carolina were slaves. It took me weeks to wrap my head around that revelation after he had barely written about slavery or black people at all in the preceding ~350 pages (assuredly, he writes much about black people thereafter). But I also recognize that this book is already 559 pages long and maybe the author chose to leave these complicated, fraught, and much deliberated topics to other works. There was also a lack of non-political history in the last third of the book. Everything from the point of reconstruction is about voting rights, government departments and initiatives, wars, etc. The everyday citizen fades into the background, sublimated into the political body.
I grew up in NC, and it was fascinating to read an eagle eye view of the history I learned about my family as a kid. They are from one of the smallest and least populous counties in the state, and benefitted greatly from state funded initiatives to pave roads in and electrify rural areas. They learned self-sufficient living like canning goods and drying meats through state programs, and my great grandfather benefitted from public work programs building railroads. My grandmother had the opportunity to go to school because of generations of North Carolinians who thanklessly worked toward public educational opportunities - she was born more or less just in time to reap the benefits. Growing up I always wondered why there was such a great public library system in my tiny town in the middle of nowhere, and why the roads were so nice. Where did the historical society I learned from come from, and the folk singers and story tellers? I have traveled through remote country regions of West Virginia, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, and after reading this book it seems clear to me that the place I come from in North Carolina is the product of a long state tradition of uncommon pride and stewardship.
This was a worthwhile read. I am proud of the story of NC, and better understand the modern state. I learned a lot about the history of the US in general, and it left me hungry for more. I’m very curious about the origin stories of other states, and how they compare to North Carolina’s history. Here is a brief summary of some of the things I learned which I felt were important:
“Carolana” (NC and SC were originally one colony) was initially established as a proprietary colony (financed by private funds of English noblemen), rather than a corporate colony like Virginia. This was due to a number of factors: it was the closest English colony to Spanish land holdings in Florida, its inhospitable and unnavigable coastline made travel difficult, and consequently England couldn’t justify royal financing. The English tradition of private colonial enterprise sanctioned by the crown and undergirded by common law was really fascinating to learn about - it was the basis of most of the British Empire in its prime. Due to the same factors and other aspects of geography, the colonial government in Carolana was ineffectual and untrustworthy, prone to abuse and selective enforcement. Often, written laws weren’t able to be evenly distributed around the colony, so different regions would be following different laws. This all led to a broad disaffection of the population. It was very common for settlers to simply refuse to pay their taxes, “steal” unclaimed land, and refuse to cooperate with government officials. This state of affairs persisted all the way up to the American Revolution and formed the basis for many claims of the illegitimacy of the authority of the British royal government in the Americas. Through this period there was a decent amount of violent conflict between settlers and officials attempting to enforce royal law. Settlers to the region were exclusively protestant Christian Europeans, mostly from Britain and Scotland, often political prisoners/exiles from Britain or indentured servants but also many English gentlemen (rich guys) seeking to capitalize on new world profits. There were some French Huguenot and German Moravian settlements. For a long time there were laws prohibiting any non-Christian (and Roman Catholics) from holding public office.
Rooted in their long history of dysfunctional proprietorship and royal government, NC originally rejected the US Constitution along with the only other state to do so, Rhode Island. They were worried about the degree of power the national government would exercise over state affairs, and that the constitution did not guarantee personal and property rights like their state constitution did. Property at the time included slaves, and this initial rejection foreshadowed a long period of sectionalism with disastrous consequences. Through this period there were various attempts to ban the importation of slaves at the state level, mostly unsuccessful until the federal ban in 1807.
Colonial independence marked an immediate long outward spiral of rights and privileges. Having resisted many forms of taxation for decades, the relentless pull of progressivism quickly proved irresistible; taxes multiplied rapidly, as taxes increased so did the push to expand suffrage. Sectionalism and remnants of British class politics initially dampened these efforts. Older and established eastern colonies enjoyed an excess of political power over western counties for decades, stonewalling any attempts to amend the constitution for the purposes of changing representation, taxation (mainly of property i.e. slaves), or any progressive policy. Over many years a small number of defectors, some key alliances, and a great deal of pragmatic debate eventually eroded the status quo. The Whig era began after the constitution was finally amended to reapportion representation, and was markedly progressive. Railroads and schools expanded rapidly with state funding, and the more money the state spent, the more ideas people had for spending that money. Democrats beat Whigs for the governorship for the first time in 1850 by running on a platform of expanded suffrage, and immediately greatly increased taxes, expenditures, and appropriations.
An aside to make an important point: For most of NC's history until the 17th amendment to the US Constitution, voting rights were skewed towards property owners or taxpayers. Until 1857 there were property holding requirements to vote for state Senate, and until Reconstruction in 1868
you had to be a taxpayer to vote for House representatives (which included a "prohibitive" poll tax). A peculiar facet of American history is that slaves and plantations generally were only financially feasible near navigable waterways which allowed goods to be transported for trade easily. And the only navigable rivers in NC were in the east of the state, near the coast. This is why wealthy slaveowners dominated state government from the east for a long period, and resisted attempts at reforms (including the prohibition of slavery) which they rightly saw as reducing their wealth and political power. Also, most residents of NC couldn't tend large acreages without slaves and so people who didn't own slaves generally didn't own much land, and consequently had little political power. This unhappy pattern of politics carried the south into the Civil War.
Based on the narrative of this book, politics after reconstruction and for the rest of NC history up until 1989 were governed exclusively by who promised the most stuff. Until the 1920s and the 19th amendment, this was largely about suffrage and to a lesser extent about the benefit of government programs like building railroads and schools. After the 19th amendment the size and scope of government ballooned to cartoonish proportions. Every year there were new departments and initiatives and taxes until finally in 1971 the state voted to constitutionally limit the executive to 10 principal departments (12 today). The primary achievements of state government through this period were one of the best state highway systems in the country and an excellent primary school and university system. Due to infrastructure and education, NC played an outsized role in the national efforts of WW1 and WW2, and today is a prominent technological innovator thanks to the longstanding and storied investment in the "research triangle" - UNC Chapel Hill is the oldest public university in the country! Good education was recognized as one of the most important investments throughout NC's history.
This is the first pure “history” book which I have ever read cover to cover, so I’m not sure how to rate its contents. I found it excellent for the most part, but there were some conspicuously absent historical threads. There is little information about colonial relations with Native Americans except every now and then he will note “their population and territory had declined 50% in 30 years” which always stunned me. Like what the hell, something is clearly going on with the indians but what it is I’m not really sure. One of the most shocking moments in the book was in 1860 when all of a sudden almost one in three residents of North Carolina were slaves. It took me weeks to wrap my head around that revelation after he had barely written about slavery or black people at all in the preceding ~350 pages (assuredly, he writes much about black people thereafter). But I also recognize that this book is already 559 pages long and maybe the author chose to leave these complicated, fraught, and much deliberated topics to other works. There was also a lack of non-political history in the last third of the book. Everything from the point of reconstruction is about voting rights, government departments and initiatives, wars, etc. The everyday citizen fades into the background, sublimated into the political body.
I grew up in NC, and it was fascinating to read an eagle eye view of the history I learned about my family as a kid. They are from one of the smallest and least populous counties in the state, and benefitted greatly from state funded initiatives to pave roads in and electrify rural areas. They learned self-sufficient living like canning goods and drying meats through state programs, and my great grandfather benefitted from public work programs building railroads. My grandmother had the opportunity to go to school because of generations of North Carolinians who thanklessly worked toward public educational opportunities - she was born more or less just in time to reap the benefits. Growing up I always wondered why there was such a great public library system in my tiny town in the middle of nowhere, and why the roads were so nice. Where did the historical society I learned from come from, and the folk singers and story tellers? I have traveled through remote country regions of West Virginia, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, and after reading this book it seems clear to me that the place I come from in North Carolina is the product of a long state tradition of uncommon pride and stewardship.
This was a worthwhile read. I am proud of the story of NC, and better understand the modern state. I learned a lot about the history of the US in general, and it left me hungry for more. I’m very curious about the origin stories of other states, and how they compare to North Carolina’s history. Here is a brief summary of some of the things I learned which I felt were important:
“Carolana” (NC and SC were originally one colony) was initially established as a proprietary colony (financed by private funds of English noblemen), rather than a corporate colony like Virginia. This was due to a number of factors: it was the closest English colony to Spanish land holdings in Florida, its inhospitable and unnavigable coastline made travel difficult, and consequently England couldn’t justify royal financing. The English tradition of private colonial enterprise sanctioned by the crown and undergirded by common law was really fascinating to learn about - it was the basis of most of the British Empire in its prime. Due to the same factors and other aspects of geography, the colonial government in Carolana was ineffectual and untrustworthy, prone to abuse and selective enforcement. Often, written laws weren’t able to be evenly distributed around the colony, so different regions would be following different laws. This all led to a broad disaffection of the population. It was very common for settlers to simply refuse to pay their taxes, “steal” unclaimed land, and refuse to cooperate with government officials. This state of affairs persisted all the way up to the American Revolution and formed the basis for many claims of the illegitimacy of the authority of the British royal government in the Americas. Through this period there was a decent amount of violent conflict between settlers and officials attempting to enforce royal law. Settlers to the region were exclusively protestant Christian Europeans, mostly from Britain and Scotland, often political prisoners/exiles from Britain or indentured servants but also many English gentlemen (rich guys) seeking to capitalize on new world profits. There were some French Huguenot and German Moravian settlements. For a long time there were laws prohibiting any non-Christian (and Roman Catholics) from holding public office.
Rooted in their long history of dysfunctional proprietorship and royal government, NC originally rejected the US Constitution along with the only other state to do so, Rhode Island. They were worried about the degree of power the national government would exercise over state affairs, and that the constitution did not guarantee personal and property rights like their state constitution did. Property at the time included slaves, and this initial rejection foreshadowed a long period of sectionalism with disastrous consequences. Through this period there were various attempts to ban the importation of slaves at the state level, mostly unsuccessful until the federal ban in 1807.
Colonial independence marked an immediate long outward spiral of rights and privileges. Having resisted many forms of taxation for decades, the relentless pull of progressivism quickly proved irresistible; taxes multiplied rapidly, as taxes increased so did the push to expand suffrage. Sectionalism and remnants of British class politics initially dampened these efforts. Older and established eastern colonies enjoyed an excess of political power over western counties for decades, stonewalling any attempts to amend the constitution for the purposes of changing representation, taxation (mainly of property i.e. slaves), or any progressive policy. Over many years a small number of defectors, some key alliances, and a great deal of pragmatic debate eventually eroded the status quo. The Whig era began after the constitution was finally amended to reapportion representation, and was markedly progressive. Railroads and schools expanded rapidly with state funding, and the more money the state spent, the more ideas people had for spending that money. Democrats beat Whigs for the governorship for the first time in 1850 by running on a platform of expanded suffrage, and immediately greatly increased taxes, expenditures, and appropriations.
An aside to make an important point: For most of NC's history until the 17th amendment to the US Constitution, voting rights were skewed towards property owners or taxpayers. Until 1857 there were property holding requirements to vote for state Senate, and until Reconstruction in 1868
you had to be a taxpayer to vote for House representatives (which included a "prohibitive" poll tax). A peculiar facet of American history is that slaves and plantations generally were only financially feasible near navigable waterways which allowed goods to be transported for trade easily. And the only navigable rivers in NC were in the east of the state, near the coast. This is why wealthy slaveowners dominated state government from the east for a long period, and resisted attempts at reforms (including the prohibition of slavery) which they rightly saw as reducing their wealth and political power. Also, most residents of NC couldn't tend large acreages without slaves and so people who didn't own slaves generally didn't own much land, and consequently had little political power. This unhappy pattern of politics carried the south into the Civil War.
Based on the narrative of this book, politics after reconstruction and for the rest of NC history up until 1989 were governed exclusively by who promised the most stuff. Until the 1920s and the 19th amendment, this was largely about suffrage and to a lesser extent about the benefit of government programs like building railroads and schools. After the 19th amendment the size and scope of government ballooned to cartoonish proportions. Every year there were new departments and initiatives and taxes until finally in 1971 the state voted to constitutionally limit the executive to 10 principal departments (12 today). The primary achievements of state government through this period were one of the best state highway systems in the country and an excellent primary school and university system. Due to infrastructure and education, NC played an outsized role in the national efforts of WW1 and WW2, and today is a prominent technological innovator thanks to the longstanding and storied investment in the "research triangle" - UNC Chapel Hill is the oldest public university in the country! Good education was recognized as one of the most important investments throughout NC's history.
February 16, 2015
Old-school history of the ancient commonwealth of North Carolina. Top down, political history of great white men doing great white deeds. Still, Powell is one of the foremost colonial era historians and he shows the breadth and depth of that knowledge in this work.
October 1, 2015
A perfectly serviceable survey of North Carolina history. Powell covers the high points well, but do not expect much depth. However, this is not surprising for a book that covers over 400 years of history in about 550 pages.
Powell seems to have a consistent narrative throughout the book that most people in North Carolina are satisfied with the status quo and want to remain dumb and ignorant but occasionally a visionary leader will come along and implement some government action or program to make North Carolina a better place. This process was accelerated in the 1920s and from then on North Carolina was able to become the moderate, progressive Southern state of the late 20th century. It seems nice and tidy when you read the book and it very well be true. People are mostly idiots, but it seems a little forced.
However, what was really lacking was a little style, a little romance, some state pride. I am not saying that Powell should be uncritical, but his work needed a little more literary flair to make it more readable. I love North Carolina but it was hard to tell if Powell loves North Carolina. For this reason it does not rise to the level of Walter Edgar's South Carolina history which is the kind of book I was hoping it would be.
Powell seems to have a consistent narrative throughout the book that most people in North Carolina are satisfied with the status quo and want to remain dumb and ignorant but occasionally a visionary leader will come along and implement some government action or program to make North Carolina a better place. This process was accelerated in the 1920s and from then on North Carolina was able to become the moderate, progressive Southern state of the late 20th century. It seems nice and tidy when you read the book and it very well be true. People are mostly idiots, but it seems a little forced.
However, what was really lacking was a little style, a little romance, some state pride. I am not saying that Powell should be uncritical, but his work needed a little more literary flair to make it more readable. I love North Carolina but it was hard to tell if Powell loves North Carolina. For this reason it does not rise to the level of Walter Edgar's South Carolina history which is the kind of book I was hoping it would be.
January 25, 2025
Surprising, thorough, and engaging. Powell does exhaustive work putting together everything about NC from dinosaurs to modern history. and his style of story telling through history makes even the most boring sounding topics like the furniture industry interesting to follow. I never thought I'd care so much about one state's history but not only did he make me care, I actively got to see meaningful strands of the nation's history resound through a largely backwoods area of the east coast.
August 6, 2014
Covers a LOT of ground - a pretty comprehensive, broad history of North Carolina. Very readable
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews