During the early years of the 1800’s the vast majority of North Carolinians lived in rural areas of the state. Most were farmers called Yemen who lived on and worked their own small farms. It seemed their lives were centered around the seasons of the year, the weather, family, farm work, and in a lot of cases church.
After the American Revolution, as in any war on our soil, times were tough. The state’s economy was weakened due to in a lot of cases limited immigration and the emigration of folks seeking land and a better opportunity out west. Hard cash, outside the large eastern cities or towns, was hard to come by. Sometimes only by means of trade you might acquire what you might need.
Travel and the ability to trade were challenging due to limited forms of transportation. This made getting your goods to the eastern part of the state or to the new state capital very difficult. Sometimes resulting in losses of goods or even your life. Herdsmen would drive their animals or birds for many miles of rough terrain just to get them to market.
Many farm families were isolated from one another due to geography and lacked the proper means of transportation. In the rural areas the only means to get around was to walk or ride an animal. Due to no roads or bad roads, a stagecoach was limited to where they could travel.
The panic of 1819 and what followed saw plummeting land values. This combined with falling cotton prices made it very hard for a farm family to get out of poverty.
During these rough times in our state’s history there were no good farming practices, and a lot of the soil in central and western parts of the state was depleted from most of its nutrients. You also must realize that the small farmers had limited labor to clear new fields as the plantation owners down east used a lot of slave labor. Most of these small farmers of our state didn’t believe in slavery. They believed a man should prosper only from his own labor.
As the farm fields around Piedmont, Sandhills, and Western parts of our state began to play out, a lot of farm folks picked up their belongings and families and moved to western territories or to the deep south. My own ancestors, some of both sides of my family moved to Mississippi to start a new life. This great migration of people drained the state’s population and economic potential.
It seems Americans have always had a deep-seated public and political resistance to pay taxes. The withholding or non-payment really hindered the government’s ability to fund
public services and infrastructure. But at this time of our state’s history I’m wondering if most of the funds were not funded to special interest groups like it is in some cases today.
In the early 1800’s N.C. political and economic power was concentrated mostly among the state’s eastern planters. It seems they felt they would benefit less from allocating money to be used to build roads and bridges in our central and western parts of our state than in theirs. This also kept their taxes lower.
This type of politics went on for decades with very little funds going to fund education, transportation or other services to promote economic growth in the rural areas of our state.
It didn’t take but a few decades of these withholding funds that our state became known as “The Rip Van Winkle State.” This perceived economic and social, for lack of a better word, backwardness would last until the 1830s. This was about the time political reform started to take hold in our state’s capital.
It was during this reform, under Whig leadership, that the state began investing in river canals, plank roads, and in 1840’s railroads. This type of reform stimulated both industries and agriculture in all our counties of the state. Also, with the rise of industries came textile mills that could use our own cotton. These improvements lasted until the early 1860’s when the American Civil War found our state.
Our great state has had its ups and downs over the years. Just like farmers have their good year and their lean years. But history tells us if we are not willing to invest in all parts of the state and sectors of our great state things will go stagnant in a short while and a lot of good folks will up and leave for greener pastures somewhere else.