7, Battle of King's Mountain.

1781 January 17, Battle of the Cowpens.

1781 March 15, Battle of Guilford Court House.

1781 September 8, Battle of Eutaw.

1781 October 19, Battle of Yorktown.

1783 January 20, Treaty of peace at Versailles.

1783 September 3, England recognizes the Independence of the United
States.

1787 May, Constitution of the United States formed.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

ORIGINAL SETTLEMENTS IN NORTH CAROLINA AND CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE.

North Carolina, in the days of her colonial existence, was the asylum
and the refuge of the poor and the oppressed of all nations. In her
borders the emigrant, the fugitive, and the exile found a home and
safe retreat. Whatever may have been the impelling cause of their
emigration--whether political servitude, religious persecution, or
poverty of means, with the hope of improving their condition, the
descendants of these enterprising, suffering, yet prospered people,
have just reason to bless the kind Providence that guided their
fathers, in their wanderings, to such a place of comparative rest.

On the sandy banks of North Carolina the flag of England was first
displayed in the United States. Roanoke Island, between Pamlico and
Albemarle Sounds, afforded the landing place to the first expedition
sent out under the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1584. "The
fragrance, as they drew near the land, says Amadas in his report, was
as if they had been in the midst of some delicate garden, abounding in
all manner of odoriferous flowers." Such, no doubt, it seemed to them
during the first summer of their residence in 1584; and,
notwithstanding the disastrous termination of that, and several
succeeding expeditions, the same maritime section of North Carolina
has presented its peculiar features of attractiveness to many
generations which have since arisen there, and passed away. In the
same report, we have the first notice of the celebrated Scuppernong
grape, yielding its most abundant crops under the saline atmospheric
influence, and semi-tropical climate of eastern Carolina.

From the glowing description of the country, in its primitive
abundance, transmitted to Elizabeth and her court, they gave it the
name _Virginia_, being discovered in the reign of a _virgin Queen_.
But having failed in this and several other attempts of a similar
kind, Sir Walter Raleigh surrendered his patent, and nothing more was