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North Carolina is a Southern U.S. state in the United States, also considered a Mid-Atlantic state in some cases. It is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The state was originally named for King Charles I of England. North Carolina has 3 metropolitan combined statistical areas with a population of over 1 million. As of July 1, 2004:

North Carolina was originally inhabited by a number of native tribes, including the Cherokee, Creek, Tuscarora, Lumbee, and Catawba. North Carolina was the first American territory the English attempted to colonize. Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, chartered two colonies on the North Carolina (then Virginia) coast in the late 1580s, both ending in failure. The demise of one, the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island, remains one of the great mysteries of American history. Virginia Dare, the first English child to be born stateside, was born in North Carolina. Dare County is named for her.

The first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were English colonists migrating south from Virginia, following a sharp decline in this colony's mortality rate and the subsequent shortage of available farmland. The earliest documented of these Virginians was Nathaniel Batts, who settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655.span By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina was experiencing full-scale English settlement.span

During the same period, the English monarch Charles II gifted the province to the Lords Proprietors, a group of noblemen who had helped restore Charles to the throne in 1660. In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony. With the exception of the Earl Granville's holdings, it became a royal colony seventeen years later. According to legend, on May 20, 1775, Mecklenburg County became the first North Carolina county to declare its independence from Great Britain. On April 12 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British crown. The dates of both of these independence-related events are memorialized on the state flag and state seal.

On November 21, 1789, North Carolina ratified the Constitution to become the twelfth state in the Union. North Carolina worked to establish its state and local governments. In 1840, it completed the state capitol building in Raleigh, still standing today. In mid-century the state's rural and commercial areas were further connected by construction of a 129 mile (208km) wooden plank road, known as a "farmer's railroad," from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem).

In 1860 North Carolina was a slave state. It refused to join the Confederacy until Lincoln called on it for troops to invade South Carolina. The state was the site of few battles but in the Civil War it provided 125,000 troops to the Confederacy, more than any other Confederate state. Approximately 40,000 of those troops never returned home, dead of battlefield wounds, disease and privation. Zebulon Baird Vance elected in 1862, tried to maintain state autonomy against president Jefferson Davis in Richmond. Her troops served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia. The largest battle in the state was at Bentonville, a futile attempt by Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston to slow Union Gen. Sherman's advance into the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. Gen. Johnston surrendered one of the largest Confederate armies at Bennett Place, a farm house in what is now Durham, in late April 1865, weeks after Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Reconstruction was a traumatic episode for the state.

Today, North Carolina is home to Fort Bragg, near Fayetteville; it is the largest and most comprehensive military base in the United States and is the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Next to Fort Bragg is Pope Air Force Base. North Carolina is also home to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune which, when combined with nearby Marine bases MCAS Cherry Point, Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Stone Bay and Courthouse Bay, makes up the largest concentration of Marines and sailors in the world.

Over the past century, North Carolina has grown to become a national leader in agriculture, financial services, and industry. The state's industrial output—mainly textiles, chemicals, electrical equipment, paper and paper products—ranked eighth in the nation in the early 1990s. Tobacco, one of North Carolina's earliest sources of revenue, remains vital to the local economy. Recently, technology, research, and banking has become a driving force in the state, especially with the creation of the Research Triangle Park between Raleigh and Durham in the 1950's, along with Charlotte's newfound international status as the second largest banking center in the entire United States. The state is also a center of American motorsports with many NASCAR racing teams and related industries located near Charlotte.

In 2005, the state Legislature voted to implement a state lottery, killing North Carolina's reputation as the "anti-lottery" state, where owning a lottery ticket, even from another state, was once a felony. North Carolina remains an Alcoholic beverage control state.

The USS 1776: This one was ratified December 18, 1776, as the first constitution of the independent state. The Declaration of Rights was ratified the preceding day.1868: This was framed in accordance with the Reconstruction Acts after North Carolina was readmitted into the Union. It was a major reorganization and modification of the original into fourteen articles. It also introduced townships which each county was required to create, the only Southern state to do so.

The governor, lieutenant governor, and eight elected department heads form the North Carolina Council of State. Ten other department heads appointed by the Governor form the North Carolina Cabinet. The state's current governor is Democrat Mike Easley. The governor's office is located on the first floor of the North Carolina State Capitol.

The North Carolina General Assembly consists of two houses, a 50-member Senate and a 120-member House of Representatives. For the 2005–2006 session, the current President Pro Tempore of the Senate is Democrat Marc Basnight (the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina is the President of the Senate); The House Speaker is Democrat James B. Black. The prior term's power sharing Co-Speaker arrangement is no longer in effect, as the House Democrats won a decided victory and majority of the seats in the 2004 election.

The Supreme Court of North Carolina is the state's highest appellate court; it numbers seven justices. The North Carolina Court of Appeals is the only intermediate appellate court in the state; it consists of fifteen judges who rule in rotating panels of three. Together, the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals constitute the Appellate division of the court system.

The Trial division includes the Superior Court and the District Court. All felony criminal cases, civil cases involving more than $10,000 and misdemeanor and infraction appeals from District Court are tried in Superior Court. A jury of 12 hears the criminal cases. In the civil cases, juries are often waived.

Civil cases such as divorce, custody, child support and cases involving less than $10,000 are heard in District Court, along with criminal cases involving misdemeanors and infractions. The trial of a criminal case in District Court is always without a jury. The District Court also hears juvenile cases involving children under the age of 16 who are delinquent and children under the age of 18 who are undisciplined, dependent, neglected or abused. Magistrates accept guilty pleas for minor misdemeanors, accept guilty pleas for traffic violations, and accept waivers of trial for worthless-check cases among other things. In civil cases, the magistrate is authorized to try small claims involving up to $4,000 including landlord eviction cases.

Source: North Carolina Court System official site

North Carolina consists of three distinct geographic sections: the coastal plain, which occupies the eastern forty percent of the state; the Piedmont region, which contains the middle 35%; and the Appalachian Mountains and foothills, which take up the remaining 25% of the state in the west. The coastal plain begins in the east as a chain of narrow, sandy barrier islands known as the "Outer Banks". The Outer Banks encompass two sounds - Albemarle Sound in the north and Pamlico Sound in the south; they are the two largest landlocked sounds in the United States. Inland the coastal plain is relatively flat, with rich soils which grow tobacco, soybeans, and cotton. The major rivers of this section, such as the Tar and Cape Fear, tend to be slow-moving and wide. Farther inland is the "fall line", a series of hills which mark the end of the coastal plain and the beginning of the Piedmont. The Piedmont region of central North Carolina is North Carolina's most urbanized and densely-populated region. It consists of gently rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low isolated mountain ridges. A number of small, deeply eroded mountain ranges and peaks are located in the Piedmont, including the Sauratown Mountains, Pilot Mountain, the Uwharrie Mountains, Crowders and Kings Mountains, the Brushy Mountains, and the South Mountains. The Piedmont ranges from about 300-400 feet elevation in the east to over 1,000 feet in the west. The major rivers of the Piedmont, such as the Yadkin and Catawba, tend to be fast-flowing, shallow, and narrow. The western section of the state contains the Appalachian Mountains. Among the subranges of the Appalachians located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains, Blue Ridge Mountains, Balsams, Pisgahs, and the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest mountains in the Eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell (6,684 feet, 2,037 meters). It is the highest point east of the Mississippi River.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the state's 2003 total gross state product was $314 billion. Its 2003 Per Capita Personal Income was $28,071, 38sup in the nation. North Carolina's agricultural outputs are poultry and eggs, tobacco, hogs, milk, nursery stock, cattle, and soybeans. Its industrial outputs are tobacco products, textile goods, chemical products, electric equipment, machinery, and tourism. Charlotte, the largest city in the state, is also the nation's largest banking presence outside of New York City. North Carolina is also the largest film making state outside of California. Movie studios are located in Shelby, Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, and the most popular, EUE Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington. Some of the films and television shows filmed there include:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2005, North Carolina has an estimated population of 8,683,242, which is an increase of 142,774, or 1.7%, from the prior year and an increase of 636,751, or 7.9%, since the year 2000. This exceeds the rate of growth for the United States as a whole. The growth comprises a natural increase since the last census of 248,097 people (that is 627,309 births minus 379,212 deaths) and an increase due to net migration of 390,672 people into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 158,224 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 232,448 people.

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The five largest ancestry groups in North Carolina are: African American (21.6%), American (13.9%), English (9.5%), German (9.5%), Irish (7.4%). It is probable that most of those claiming "American" descent are descended from the early Scots-Irish settlers who settled primarily in the Piedmont and the mountains.

African-Americans are concentrated in the state's eastern Coastal Plain and in parts of the Piedmont Plateau where plantation agriculture was most dominant (See "History"). Until the mid 1860s, North Carolina had more small farms and fewer plantations than adjacent South Carolina and Virginia. These farmers were called "Yeoman" farmers who were non-slave owning, private land owners of tracts of approximately 500 acres (2 km²).

North Carolinians of British ancestry are concentrated in the western mountains, coastal areas, and Piedmont areas. Residents who claim American descent are most prevalent in the rural areas of the central Piedmont and most of the mountains. The Lumbee Indians, live primarily in Robeson County, and the Cherokee Indians live in western Swain County. The state has one of the fastest growing Latino and Asian populations in the country; these populations have nearly quintupled and tripled respectively between 1990 and 2002.

6.7% of North Carolina's population were reported as under 5, 24.4% under 18, and 12.0% were 65 or older. Females made up approximately 51% of the population.

North Carolina, like other Southern states, is overwhelmingly Protestant, with the largest Protestant denomination being the Baptists. The current religious affiliations of the people of North Carolina are shown below:

Despite having over eight million people, the disbursement of North Carolina's population over three major metropolitan areas left the state unable to attract any major professional sports league teams until recently. North Carolina remains without a Major League Baseball team despite numerous efforts to attract a team to the state (including a current push to relocate the Florida Marlins to Charlotte). Although more populous New Jersey also does not have an MLB team, North Carolina is the most populous state without a team from each of the major leagues either within or very close to the state's borders.

Poor Whites of the Antebellum South: Tenants and Laborers in Central North Carolina and Northeast MississippiBlack Business in the New South: A Social History of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company (University of North Carolina Press, 1984), essays by historians and selected related primary sources.North Carolina History Told by Contemporaries (University of North Carolina Press, numerous editions since 1934)