North Carolina

Carved from the Carolina grant of 1663 and governed separately from South Carolina by 1712, North Carolina was a colony of scattered small farms rather than great plantations, with a reputation for resisting authority — seen in the backcountry Regulator movement of the 1760s.

North Carolina militiamen helped turn the Southern campaign of the Revolution, and the colony pointedly withheld ratification of the Constitution until a Bill of Rights was promised, finally joining as the twelfth state in November 1789.