Independence, a hard-fought war, and a new state deciding what kind of union it would join.
On November 10, 1775, Congress voted to raise two battalions of marines for a navy that barely existed. Congress authorized two full battalions, but no formal battalions were ever established; provisional units were formed as needed.
Read the storySummary: A date on North Carolina's flag says Charlotte declared independence on May 20, 1775. Jefferson called the document spurious. The documents tell a more complicated tale.
Dug by hand through a Virginia–North Carolina swamp, the Dismal Swamp Canal opened in 1805. Enslaved workers built it, and fugitives hid in the swamp around it.
In April 1776, delegates in a small Roanoke River town told North Carolina's men in Philadelphia they could vote for independence. The wording was careful.
In a few minutes before dawn on February 27, 1776, a Loyalist army met musket fire at a stripped bridge near Wilmington. North Carolina's royal government never recovered.
A boy found a yellow rock in a North Carolina creek, and his family used it as a doorstop for years. It was gold, and it started the country's first gold rush.
In the autumn of 1780, a thousand frontier riflemen crossed the Blue Ridge and destroyed a Loyalist army in about an hour, upending British plans in the South.
Lord Cornwallis won the field at Guilford Courthouse and lost a quarter of his army. Seven months later he surrendered at Yorktown. Here is how one led to the other.
Three months before the Declaration, delegates in a small Roanoke River town told North Carolina's men in Philadelphia they could vote to break with Britain.
After a threat from a British major, frontier riflemen crossed the Blue Ridge and wiped out his Loyalist force in about an hour, reviving the Patriot cause in the Carolinas.
