North Carolina admitted as 12th state in the union

Jamestown, Virginia, established 1607, is remembered as the first English settlement in America. The first permanent one, anyway. Twenty years before Sir Walter Raleigh, a British aristocrat, chartered two colonies in North Carolina, both surviving only briefly (one was the famous “Lost Colony” of Roanoke Island). By the early 17th century, the first permanent settlements arrived, and by 1729 North Carolina, now split from South Carolina, became an official royal colony. After the Revolutionary War, the North Carolinians met in two decisive sessions to decide the ratification of the constitution.

On this day, November 21, 1789, after the Fayetteville Convention, the second of these decisive meetings, North Carolina ratified the Constitution to become the twelfth state in the Union.

The refusal to ratify the constitution that concluded the first meeting in Hillsborough lay in the Antifederalist concerns of the colony’s lawmakers. The antifederalists preferred strict limits on the powers of the national government, and for the states to govern most of their own affairs. The Hillsborough group objected specifically to Article III of the constitution that gave the federal government power over matters of the constitution. Once that and other similar objections were overcome, North Carolina joined the union.