For those who may be surprised that North Carolina should have been so prominent in these first steps in Revolutionary history and these primary developments of the great movement that led to the freedom of the Colonies, for we are accustomed to think of North Carolina as one of the backward, unimportant portions of the country, it may be well to say that at the time of the Revolution she was the third State in the Union in population, following Virginia and Pennsylvania in the number of inhabitants, exceeding New York in population by the total census of New York City and Long Island, and ahead of Massachusetts, which immediately followed it in the list by almost as many. The sturdy {442} inhabitants of the northern of the Carolinas had been for a decade before the Revolution constantly a thorn in the side of the British government and had been recognized as leaders in the great movement that was gradually being organized to bring all the colonies together for mutual help against the encroachments of the British government on their rights. Our school children fail almost entirely to know this because they have been absorbed by Massachusetts history--but then North Carolina did not have the good fortune to have writers of history. New England had them and to spare, and with a patriotic zeal for their native heath beyond even their numbers. Of course it may be said that these are old-time historical traditions which have found their way into history and are difficult to get out, though most of those who know any history realize their absurdity, and the modern historian, even though he may be from New England, holds the balance much more equitably between the different portions of the country. Apparently this is just what is not true, for New England professors of history and writers of history still continue to write in the same old strain of such surpassing admiration for New Englanders that every other portion of the country is cast into shadow. It was a distinguished professor of history at Harvard who, within five years, in an important historical work, [Footnote 28] said: "Whatever the social mixture {443} of the future, one thing is certain; the standards, aspirations and moral and political ideas of the original English settlers not only dominate their own descendants, but permeate the body of immigrants of other races--the Puritans have furnished the little leaven that leavens the whole lump." [Footnote 28: "The American Nation," 27 vols.]