After much additional debate and political posturing in the General Assembly, it finally accepted the Wake County recommendation and appointed a nine-member commission to locate and purchase a tract of land suitable for a four-hundred-acre—or more—capital city. The commission visited more than a dozen farms before accepting an invitation to dine with Colonel Joel Lane, who owned one of the sites under consideration: “Legend has it that they were so wined and dined by Colonel Joel Lane, who conducted a tavern in a portion of his home, that after several days of consideration and conviviality—enlivened by a concoction called ‘cherry bounce'—they recommended the purchase of a thousand acres of his land.”34 Lane's land was purchased by the state in 1792, and Raleigh—named after Sir Walter Raleigh, who established the first, although unsuccessful, settlement in North Carolina—was born.
This highly political and, if legend be true, well-lubricated process of selecting a site for the state capital had several long-lasting ramifications for the development of the region, and for the city of Raleigh. First, the chosen site had none of the advantages associated with major cities in terms of its location. It was not, for example, on a navigable waterway. In fact, it was not even at a major crossroads, although a north-south road did transverse the site. The site was also peripheral to the cotton-producing and naval stores businesses to its east as well as the tobacco-producing areas to its north.35 From its beginning Raleigh was thus destined to struggle to become more than the home of state government.
Second, the decision to eschew the existing towns, particularly Hillsborough and Fayetteville, meant that the region could not develop a city of combined political and commercial power that could dominate the surrounding communities. Since the turn of the 1800s Raleigh has always been one of the largest cities in this part of the Piedmont, but its lack of commercial appeal has kept it from growing large enough to dominate the area. It is simply a city in the Triangle—not the city. Third, having the state capital as one of the cities in the Triangle has benefited the area in many ways, which will soon become evident.
RALEIGH TAKES SHAPE
Anxious to have a permanent capital, as soon as the site was acquired, the General Assembly hired William Christmas to plan a four-hundred-acre capital city. A state senator with experience planning several new towns in other states, Christmas organized his plan for the city around five squares: one six-acre square for the Capitol and four four-acre squares located one diagonal block from the main square. In addition to these squares, the plan showed a rectangular grid ten blocks by eleven blocks containing a total of 276 one-acre parcels, 20 of which were designated for state use. Note the relatively large size of the building lots. From the earliest days, large lots and low densities were the prevailing patterns of land development in Triangle communities.
Upon the completion of this plan, the legislature authorized the auction of lots to raise funds to construct the Capitol, hiring Massachusetts architect Rhoddam Atkins to design and oversee its construction. The building, with offices for state officials and meeting rooms for the General Assembly, was begun in late 1792 and completed in 1796. This much-reviled “misshapened pile”36 was extensively renovated in 1819, before being destroyed by fire in 1831. With the statehouse opening, inns and other commercial enterprises gravitated to the area, particularly along Fayetteville Street, which headed south from the Capitol. In 1795, the General Assembly established a Raleigh city government to repair the streets, maintain order, and provide other essential services to the fledgling city.
Figure 5. Plan of Raleigh developed by William Christmas. Two of the four public squares shown on this map have been usurped by the state government: one for the governor's mansion, the other for state office buildings (courtesy of the N.C. State Archives).
A UNIVERSITY IS FOUNDED ON NEW HOPE CHAPEL HILL
On a cold, drizzling day in January 1795, a delegation of dignitaries, headed by Governor Richard Dobbs, set out from Raleigh to hold opening ceremonies for the first state university in the nation. The delegation “braved the discomforts of twenty-eight miles of red mud and pipe clay and aged rocks stretching from Chapel Hill to Raleigh (the new state capital).”37 What they saw when they arrived was “a two-storied brick building [Old East], the unpainted wooden house of the Presiding Professor, the avenue between them filled with stumps of recently felled trees, a pile of yellowish red clay, dug out for the foundation of the Chapel, or Person Hall, a pile of lumber collected for building Steward's Hall, a Scotch-Irish preacher-professor in whose mind were fermenting ideas of infidelity, destined soon to cost him his place, and not one student.”38
Despite this state of affairs, the delegation reported to the board of trustees that “youth disposed to enter the University may come forward with assurance of being received.”39 The first student, Hinton James who walked from his home in faraway New Hanover County, did not arrive for another two weeks after the official opening.
Initial support for creating a state university came from strange bedfellows: the Scots-Irish population in the state's Piedmont area and the landed gentry of mostly English descent in the state's Coastal Plain. The Scots-Irish were predominantly Presbyterians, who believed in the importance of education for their ministers and clergy, while the eastern gentry wanted options other than faraway places like London or Boston for their sons' educations.
Support for a state-chartered university coalesced within the eighteen-person committee charged with drafting North Carolina's first constitution in 1776. Drawing heavily on a similar act included in the recently passed state constitution of Pennsylvania, Article 41 of the North Carolina constitution stated: “That a School or Schools shall be established by the Legislature, for the convenient Instruction of Youth, with such Salaries to the Masters, paid by the Public, as may enable them to instruct at low Prices: and all useful Learning shall be duly encouraged and promoted in one or more Universities.”40
Article 41 authorized state-supported schools, but eight years were to pass before the General Assembly would take up a bill to actually create a state-sponsored university.
Although many individuals worked to create the University of North Carolina, the title of “Father of the University” goes to William Richardson Davie, who played a leading role in introducing and lobbying for a General Assembly bill in 1789 to create it. Davie, who was “dynamic in appearance and personality and eloquent in speech,” had developed a solid reputation among the state's leaders based on his Revolutionary War service. He'd been General Nathanael Greene's chief of cavalry in his battle with Cornwallis, and a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.41 Passing the bill to create a university was not easy. It became a lightning rod for the General Assembly's anti-Federalist factions, who feared the university would become “an—engine of political propaganda and as a bulwark of aristocratic privilege.”42
Yet on December 11, 1789 a bill creating a university was approved by the General Assembly. Important to the subsequent choice of the New Hope Chapel Hill site was a provision in the bill that stipulated that the university could not be within five miles of a seat of government or any place holding court. This stipulation, which was likely included to avoid disruptions due to rowdy students, ruled out many of the state's major cities.43
A follow-up bill passed eleven days later provided funding for the university from the sale of escheats—unclaimed land grants that revert to the state—and from arrearages due the state. The problem was that this funding mechanism provided no immediate funds to create the university. So Davie and members of the forty-member Board of Trustees