They had made North Carolina the first home of freedom in the New World, issued the first Declaration of Independence in Mecklenburg, and lifted the first banner of rebellion against the tyranny of the Crown.
They grew to the soil wherever they stopped, always home-lovers and home-builders, loyal to their own people, instinctive clan leaders and clan followers. A sturdy, honest, covenant-keeping, God-fearing, fighting people, above all things they hated sham and pretence. They never boasted of their families, though some of them might have quartered the royal arms of Scotland on their shields.
To these sturdy qualities had been added a strain of Huguenot tenderness and vivacity.
The culture of cotton as the sole industry had fixed African slavery as their economic system. With the heritage of the Old World had been blended forces inherent in the earth and air of the new Southland, something of the breath of its unbroken forests, the freedom of its untrod mountains, the temper of its sun, and the sweetness of its tropic perfumes.
When Mrs. Cameron received Elsie's letter, asking her to secure for them six good rooms at the "Palmetto" hotel, she laughed. The big rambling hostelry had been burned by roving negroes, pigs were wallowing in the sulphur springs, and along its walks, where lovers of olden days had strolled, the cows were browsing on the shrubbery.
But she laughed for a more important reason. They had asked for a six-room cottage if accommodations could not be had in the hotel.
She could put them in the Lenoir place. The cotton
