The U.S. state of North Carolina is divided into 1,035 townships in 100 counties. [1]
North Carolina's 1868 constitution adopted a "Township and County Commissioner Plan" for structuring local government, largely inspired by provisions in Pennsylvania's constitution. Townships were created under the county unit of government, with every county divided into them, and each given their own township board. The boards comprised two justices of the peace and a clerk each elected to a two-year term, and together they were responsible for roads, township finances, and property tax assessments. Townships also elected constables and three-person local school committees. [2] The creation of townships was designed to disrupt the control of political life planter elites exercised over counties in the antebellum period and give citizens an opportunity to participate more in government. [3]
While disliked by white supremacists and opponents of Reconstruction policies from their onset, the creation of townships initially met little public resistance. As more blacks began to be elected to local offices, white supremacists became more determined to eliminate the townships. After "Redeemers" took control of state government in 1874, they turned their focus to eliminating local centers of black political influence. The Redeemers convened a constitutional convention in 1875 to repeal Reconstruction policies. Originally seeking to totally eliminate townships, they were forced to compromise due to stiff opposition and added provisions to the constitution which allowed the North Carolina General Assembly to void townships' powers. [4] By 1880, townships' authority had been largely stripped at the benefit of county governments. [5]
In the 1890s, a Fusionist coalition comprising Republicans and Populists briefly took control of state government. The Republicans wanted to restore townships' powers but were unable to do so due to a lack of support from the Populists. [6] By the early 20th century, townships were mostly reduced to administrative divisions with minimal political significance. [2]
North Carolina's townships were never legally appealed and thus continue to persist, mostly as geographic divisions without much legal significance. [7] They are presently used for administrative purposes such as categorizing land deeds, organizing tax collection and voting precincts, and informing the creation of fire and school districts. [8]
The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history following the American Civil War, dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of abolishing slavery and reintegrating the former Confederate States of America into the United States. During this period, three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. Despite this, former Confederate states often used poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation to control people of color.
The North Carolina General Assembly is the bicameral legislature of the state government of North Carolina. The legislature consists of two chambers: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The General Assembly meets in the North Carolina State Legislative Building in Raleigh.
In the history of the United States, carpetbagger is a largely historical pejorative used by Southerners to describe allegedly opportunistic or disruptive Northerners who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War, and were perceived to be exploiting the local populace for their own financial, political, and/or social gain. The term broadly included both individuals who sought to promote Republican politics, and individuals who saw business and political opportunities because of the chaotic state of the local economies following the war. In practice, the term carpetbagger often was applied to any Northerners who were present in the South during the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877). The word is closely associated with scalawag, a similarly pejorative word used to describe native white Southerners who supported the Republican Party-led Reconstruction.
Daniel Lindsay Russell Jr. was an American politician who served as the 49th governor of North Carolina, from 1897 to 1901. An attorney and judge, he had also been elected as state representative and to the United States Congress, serving from 1879 to 1881. Although he fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War, Russell and his father were both Unionists. After the war, Russell joined the Republican Party in North Carolina, which was an unusual affiliation for one of the planter class. In the postwar period he served as a state judge, as well as in the state and national legislatures.
Thomas Jordan Jarvis was the 44th governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1879 to 1885. Jarvis later served as a U.S. Senator from 1894 to 1895, and helped establish East Carolina Teachers Training School, now known as East Carolina University, in 1907.
The Solid South or the Southern bloc was the electoral voting bloc of the states of the Southern United States for issues that were regarded as particularly important to the interests of Democrats in those states. The Southern bloc existed between the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. During this period, the Democratic Party overwhelmingly controlled southern state legislatures, and most local, state and federal officeholders in the South were Democrats. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Southern Democrats disenfranchised blacks in all Southern states, along with a few non-Southern states doing the same as well. This resulted essentially in a one-party system, in which a candidate's victory in Democratic primary elections was tantamount to election to the office itself. White primaries were another means that the Democrats used to consolidate their political power, excluding blacks from voting in primaries.
The Redeemers were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era that followed the American Civil War. Redeemers were the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. They sought to regain their political power and enforce White supremacy. Their policy of Redemption was intended to oust the Radical Republicans, a coalition of freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags". They were typically led by White yeomen and dominated Southern politics in most areas from the 1870s to 1910.
The Mississippi Plan of 1874 was developed by white Southern Democrats as part of the white insurgency during the Reconstruction Era in the Southern United States. It was devised by the Democratic Party in that state to overthrow the Republican Party in Mississippi by means of organized threats of violence and suppression or purchase of the black vote. Democrats wanted to regain political control of the legislature and governor's office. Their success in doing so led to similar plans being adopted by white Democrats in South Carolina and other majority-black states.
Most U.S. states and territories have at least two tiers of local government: counties and municipalities. Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the term borough for what the U.S. Census Bureau terms county equivalents in those states. Civil townships or towns are used as subdivisions of a county in 20 states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.
The Constitution of the State of North Carolina governs the structure and function of the state government of North Carolina, one of the United States; it is the highest legal document for the state and subjugates North Carolina law.
The Constitution of the State of South Carolina is the governing document of the U.S. state of South Carolina. It describes the structure and function of the state's government. The current constitution took effect on December 4, 1895. South Carolina has had six other constitutions, which were adopted in 1669, 1776, 1778, 1790, 1865 and 1868.
The Constitution of Mississippi is the primary organizing law for the U.S. state of Mississippi delineating the duties, powers, structures, and functions of the state government. Mississippi's original constitution was adopted at a constitutional convention held at Washington, Mississippi in advance of the western portion of the territory's admission to the Union in 1817. The current state constitution was adopted in 1890 following the reconstruction period. It has been amended and updated 100 times in since its adoption in 1890, with some sections being changed or repealed altogether. The most recent modification to the constitution occurred in November 2020, when Section 140 was amended, and Sections 141-143 were repealed.
The Wilmington insurrection of 1898, also known as the Wilmington massacre of 1898 or the Wilmington coup of 1898, was a coup d'état and a massacre which was carried out by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, on Thursday, November 10, 1898. The white press in Wilmington originally described the event as a race riot caused by black people. Since the late 20th century and further study, the event has been characterized as a violent overthrow of a duly elected government by a group of white supremacists.
The Red Shirts or Redshirts of the Southern United States were white supremacist paramilitary terrorist groups that were active in the late 19th century in the last years of, and after the end of, the Reconstruction era of the United States. Red Shirt groups originated in Mississippi in 1875, when anti-Reconstruction private terror units adopted red shirts to make themselves more visible and threatening to Southern Republicans, both whites and freedmen. Similar groups in the Carolinas also adopted red shirts.
Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era in the United States, especially in the Southern United States, was based on a series of laws, new constitutions, and practices in the South that were deliberately used to prevent black citizens from registering to vote and voting. These measures were enacted by the former Confederate states at the turn of the 20th century. Efforts were also made in Maryland, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Their actions were designed to thwart the objective of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, which prohibited states from depriving voters of their voting rights based on race. The laws were frequently written in ways to be ostensibly non-racial on paper, but were implemented in ways that selectively suppressed black voters apart from other voters.
The Election Massacre of 1874, or Coup of 1874, took place on election day, November 3, 1874, near Eufaula, Alabama in Barbour County. Freedmen comprised a majority of the population and had been electing Republican candidates to office. Members of an Alabama chapter of the White League, a paramilitary group supporting the Democratic Party's drive to regain political power in the county and state, used firearms to ambush black Republicans at the polls.
Like most U.S. states, North Carolina is politically dominated by the Democratic and Republican political parties. North Carolina has 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and two seats in the U.S. Senate. North Carolina has voted for the Republican candidate in all but one presidential election since 1980; the one exception was in 2008, when a plurality of North Carolinians voted for Barack Obama. However, since that election, the state has remained closely contested with Republicans winning by no more than four points and obtaining a majority of the vote only in 2012. This stands in contrast to the post-Civil War era, as the state was a strongly Democratic Solid South state from 1880 to 1964, only voting Republican in 1928.
The Phoenix election riot occurred on November 8, 1898, near Greenwood County, South Carolina, when a group of local white Democrats attempted to stop a Republican election official from taking the affidavits of African Americans who had been denied the ability to vote. The race-based riot was part of numerous efforts by white conservative Democrats to suppress voting by blacks, as they had largely supported the Republican Party since the Reconstruction era. Beginning with Mississippi in 1890, and South Carolina in 1895, southern states were passing new constitutions and laws designed to disenfranchise blacks by making voter registration and voting more difficult.
Elections in Alabama are authorized under the Alabama State Constitution, which establishes elections for the state level officers, cabinet, and legislature, and the election of county-level officers, including members of school boards.
The 1884 United States presidential election in Georgia took place on November 4, 1884, as part of the wider United States presidential election. Voters chose twelve representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.