1669. "Here," says Bancroft, "was a colony of men scattered among
forests, hermits with wives and children resting on the bosom of
nature, in perfect harmony with the wilderness of their gentle clime.
The planters of Albemarle were men led to the choice of their
residence from a hatred of restraint. Are there any who doubt man's
capacity for self-government? Let them study the history of North
Carolina. Its inhabitants were restless and turbulent in their
imperfect submission to a government imposed from abroad; the
administration of the colony was firm, humane, and tranquil when they
were left to take care of themselves. Any government but one of their
own institution was oppressive. North Carolina was settled by the
freest of the free. The settlers were gentle in their tempers, of
serene minds, enemies to violence and bloodshed. Not all the
successive revolutions had kindled vindictive passions; freedom,
entire freedom was enjoyed without anxiety as without guarantees. The
charities of life were scattered at their feet like the flowers of
their meadows."[B] No freer country was ever organized by man. Freedom
of conscience, exemption from taxation, except by their own consent;
gratuities in land to every emigrant, and other wholesome regulations
claimed the prompt legislative action of the infant colony. "These
simple laws suited a simple people, who were as free as the air of
their mountains; and when oppressed, were as rough as the billows of
the ocean."[C]

In 1707, a company of Huguenots, as the French Protestants were
called, settled on the Trent. In 1709, the Lords Proprietors granted
to Baron de Graffenreidt ten thousand acres of land on the Neuse and
Cape Fear rivers for colonizing purposes. In a short time afterward, a
great number of Palatines (Germans) and fifteen hundred Swiss followed
the Baron, and settled at the confluence of the Trent and the Neuse.