Why North Carolinians downsized governors

There are many critters designated by law to symbolize North Carolina. For example, we have an official state bird (red cardinal), reptile (eastern box turtle), horse (colonial Spanish mustang), mollusk (Scotch bonnet), dog (Plott Hound), and mammal (eastern gray squirrel), as well as two state amphibians (the marbled salamander and Pine Barrens tree frog).

Although some might call it cheating, a fitting addition to this menagerie would be a non-native species, Loxodonta africana — because an elephant never forgets. Neither do North Carolinians, it seems. That’s why our governors are so weak.

Our story begins 250 years ago. Back then, many North Carolinians were hopping mad (also a longstanding tradition). The Parliament in London, backed by King George III and his appointed governors, had repeatedly imposed their will on Americans through internal taxes, trade barriers, and other restrictions. The colonists repeatedly fought back with protests and boycotts.

Although by the spring of 1775 it had been more than a year since the Boston Tea Party, its consequences lingered. The British decried the destruction of property and resented the broader implications. Americans detested the resulting Intolerable Acts that closed the port of Boston, revoked the charter of Massachusetts, stripped its courts of the power to adjudicate claims against royal officials, and confiscated buildings for use as troop quarters.

Even North Carolinians, whose opinions of New Englanders ranged from indifference to disdain, were angry. If the British government could do this to Boston, it might do the same to Edenton, Wilmington, or Halifax.

On Aug. 25, 1774, delegates representing nearly every North Carolina county and town convened in the capital, New Bern, as the First Provincial Congress. As far as I can determine, it was the first time any such body in North America called itself a “congress.” Presided over by the longtime speaker of the colonial assembly, John Harvey of Perquimans County, that first Congress approved a resolution supporting Massachusetts and insisting that only colonial legislatures, not governors or Parliament, could levy taxes and appropriate the proceeds.

The royal governor, Josiah Martin, fumed about what he deemed an illegal legislative session, since most of the delegates to Congress were also members of the North Carolina House of Burgesses. But resolutions were toothless. He bided his time.

Precisely 250 years ago this week, however, John Harvey convened a Second Provincial Congress. The delegates arrived in New Bern on April 3, 1775, and met for five days. Their main act was to approve the Continental Association. Devised by the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, it was a sweeping boycott of imports from Britain.

This Josiah Martin couldn’t tolerate. On April 8 he exercised his prerogative to dismiss the legislature and refused to call another.

The governor’s defiance proved ill-timed. About the same time North Carolina leaders learned their representative body was dissolved, news of new British provocations in Massachusetts (which brought on the battles of Lexington and Concord) arrived in the colony. Outraged, a group of local patriots attacked Martin’s New Bern residence (the “Tryon Palace”) on April 24, 1775. He dispatched his family to New York and fled the capital, sailing down the coast on the HMS Cruzer to what is now Southport, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. There Martin attempted to retain control of the province.

Spoiler alert: he failed.

When a subsequent Provincial Congress drafted a constitution for the new state, its grant of executive power to North Carolina’s governor was highly circumscribed — and governors would be selected by the legislature for one-year terms. North Carolinians have since rewritten their constitution a couple of times and amended it many more. They’ve strengthened the office of the governor a bit, allowing for popular election and then, within the past half-century, giving governors a limited veto power and the ability to run for more than one term in office.

Still, it’s a short leash. In formal power, North Carolina’s governor remains the weakest in the nation. Long memories, indeed.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.