Stateside With Rosalea: North Carolina

North Carolina gets a video, just because.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5HZErPiOZM

Each year, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians holds a Festival of Native Peoples, and most of the costumed people in the video are from other tribes. There’s an official website for the EBCI and unofficial ones, where the hot topic for the moment is how the people in charge of its fund for providing scholarships to students managed to lose nearly $60 million on stock market investments, reported here in the Smoky Mountain News.

North Carolina is usually divided into three regions: the Coastal Plain (sometimes subdivided into an Inner Coastal Plain and Tidewater region), the Piedmont Plateau, and the Blue Ridge/Appalachian Mountains. The sharp differences in climate and terrain in those three areas have played a pivotal role in much of the state’s history—even in the split of Carolina into two different colonies. Put simply, the area that became South Carolina had a seaport, enabling it to trade with Europe and the Northeast; North Carolina did not.

The original charter granted by King Charles II to eight royalist loyalists in 1663 covered all the land south of Virginia to the border with Spanish Florida and westward to “the South Seas”. On March 1, 1669, the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina came into effect and its 120 parts make interesting reading, providing as they do for a palatine—always the eldest of the eight proprietors—baronies, signories, manors, councilors, landgraves and caziques.

The split-off of South Carolina was complete by 1719, but North Carolina was to face another loss of territory after the War of Independence involving land in the west. It’s a great story, involving the little republic of Frankland (land of free men) appealing to Congress to create a fourteenth state, which would be called Franklin. There’s an informative blog about it here, though I can’t vouch for its historical accuracy any more than I can vouch for the accuracy of anything I write in these columns.

This disturbance was taking place around the same time as the various states were ratifying the US Constitution. North Carolina finally did so in November of 1789, after the election of Washington as President but not before the US Constitution was amended by the addition of what is now called the Bill of Rights. There were originally twelve amendments—the first to do with the number of Representatives there should be in proportion to the population, and the second barring Representatives and Senators from upping their compensation effective the current term of the House.

Which brings me to the Great Seal of North Carolina, which features the Goddess of Plenty with a cornucopia at her side, and standing opposite her what appears to be a charlady who has picked up a piece of litter. The paper in the woman’s hand is the Constitution, and the object I though was a mop with a red head is in fact the Staff of Maintenance topped by a Phrygian cap. The two together are known as a Liberty Pole, and such poles were a potent symbol during the Revolutionary War.

You can see one here in Hogarth’s scathing cartoon of John Wilkes, the English parliamentarian who came to be a populist hero on both sides of the Atlantic after he was thrown in jail for printing anti-establishment materials. After he made a deal and was released, Wilkes then turned around and sued the government for wrongful imprisonment, as much on behalf of the printers who had also been rounded up and imprisoned as for himself.

The theme I see running through all the material I’ve been reading about North Carolina is one of fierce opposition to being ruled by anyone in any way, shape, or form—not surprising, I should think given that ghastly document the original proprietors foisted on the place. Even the state flag emphasizes that singularity by incorporating two dates: the first is the date of the Mecklenberg Declaration of Independence and the second marks the Halifax Resolves, which is, according to the official North Carolina encyclopedia:

“a document that places the Old North State in the very front rank, both in point of time and in spirit, among those that demanded unconditional freedom and absolute independence from any foreign power. This document stands out as one of the great landmarks in the annals of North Carolina history.”

Too bad they couldn’t have seen things that way for the native population. The reason there is an Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians at all is that one of their tribe exchanged his life for the freedom of about 1000 others, who were thus spared from being rounded up and marched to Oklahoma along the infamous Trail of Tears in the late 1830s.

But it wasn’t only Indians who were expendable in the US in the nineteenth century. A documentary about Appalachia, currently airing on PBS, shows how the mountain folks who had settled there were ruthlessly moved off their land by shady sales of mineral rights in the rush by Northeastern magnates to plunder the area’s rich coal resources.

The Appalachian mountain range is at its widest and highest in North Carolina, and it is one of the most ecologically diverse places on Earth for certain species, as well as being the oldest mountain range in the world. The trailer on the series’ website is worth viewing not just for the sense it gives you of the beauty of the place, but for its music track. (The Applachian mountains stretch from Newfoundland to Georgia, so the documentary isn’t all about North Carolina.)

It’s sad to me that here in the twenty-first century, North Carolina is not so much at the receiving end of greed, but the very heart of it. For it is in Charlotte, NC, that the Bank of America has its headquarters. Last week, the bank’s shareholders ousted the Chairman Ken Lewis from his position on the board, but kept him on as CEO. Were they mad that the bank partook in the financial madness of the last few years or was foreclosing properties? No. They were angry at him for buying Merrill Lynch, thereby reducing the value of their shares.

And so I leave you with this link to a YouTube video. It was posted in 2006 and concerns an experience that took place in another state, but it pretty much sums up the distaste people feel for North Carolina’s most famous corporation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqu9dBbqnm0&NR=1

Perhaps the BoA should consider taking seriously the motto on the state’s seal: Esse Quam Videri—To be, rather than to seem to be.

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE--

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