The Orange County and Mecklenburg County Instructions: the Development of Political Individualism in Backcountry North Carolina, 1740-1776. (Volumes I and II).

State constitutions written in 1776 were heavily indebted to the dominant Whig theories of politics. Though they enlarged the role of "the people," the new constitutions assumed an organic, hierarchical society and attempted to incorporate the social values of the different layers into government. The ideals of deferential politics remained powerful. In North Carolina, the two backcountry counties of Orange and Mecklenburg called for a new system of government. The government designed by the two counties was democratic, limited, and instrumental. It was democratic in that all citizens were politically equal and the government was operated by a majority of them; limited in that it was invested only with certain powers by the sovereign citizenry and those were few; instrumental in that it was a neutral mechanism for the use of majorities, with representatives acting as agents for their constituents. This essay explains how the two counties came to embrace the new ideas by examining the history of settlement in the piedmont and the development of the community there. Numerous social, political, and economic factors undermined the legitimacy of the colonial government and broke the social bonds that undergirt it. The pace and pattern of settlement in the West led to strains on existing political and governmental institutions. Local government repeatedly failed in its fundamental obligations to provide stability and security. Corruption and abuses by government officials proliferated and the institutions of government were unable to restrain them. Other circumstances combined to erode the government's claims to allegiance. The settlers of the backcountry responded to a series of these failures by associating to solve particular problems themselves. The pattern of problems and ad hoc associations to meet them climaxed in the Regulation, which featured a massive failure of government and widespread organized resistance to it. The inappropriateness of existing institutions was acknowledged and alternatives explored. The political ideas of the backcountry emerged from the concrete struggles of a dispersed, socially isolated population to solve specific political problems.PhDAmerican historyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159899/1/8412104.pd