1776: FIRST CONSTITUTION

To reinforce their poor standing with the British government and to began the process of self-government, on December 18, 1776, the delegates of the Fifth North Carolina Provincial Congress established a state constitution. After forty-two days of wrangling, debate and hand wringing, the delegates resolved to pursue the following course:

•The power of government would be in the hands of the voting public and their elected officials, who served in either the House of Commons or the Senate.

•The voting public would consist of twenty-one-year-old white men who owned at least fifty acres (required for Senate voting) and twenty-one-year-old non-slaves who had paid the previous year’s county taxes (required for House of Commons voting).

•One Senate delegate and two House of Commons delegates would be elected annually per county. This group of distinguished gentleman, required to own at least three hundred acres of property to be elected, would be called the General Assembly.

•The General Assembly would elect judges and officials to maintain justice, appoint generals and officers of the state militia and elect a governor (with limited authority) for a term of three years.

•No elected official could deny the existence of God or the truth of the Bible and the Protestant religion.

The constitution ensured that a wealthy, landowning aristocracy of men governed the state—a carryover of British ideals and sentiments—and similarly British, the state would not dictate the religion of elected officials, as long as said officials agreed to be religious in some Protestant fashion (which sounded strangely contradictory). And if one were Catholic, one might as well forget politics.

North Carolina’s constitution, although democratic in its intent (endorsing a voting public), created one large, undemocratic provision: three hundred acres of man land. This policy ensured two conditions for North Carolina’s future: 1) political power would be reserved for men who were wealthy—conditions most likely met in the eastern part of the state—and 2) North Carolina would NOT be a true democratic society until a new constitution was formulated, ninety-two years later.