Posted in From the Stacks, History, Tar Heelia on March 15, 2011 | 6 Comments »
The devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan sent us into the annals of North Caroliniana searching for tales of tremors in the Tar Heel state. There we found the story of Rumbling Bald Mountain, a series of tremors in 1874 that led locals to fear a volcano and drew the attention (and skepticism) of the [...]
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged chain gangs, good roads movement, joseph hyde pratt, nc prisons, robert perkinson, texas tough on March 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“For [antebellum] Southern critics the notion of locking up white men and making them toil amounted to an intolerable inversion of a divinely ordained social hierarchy. ‘Under the Penitentiary system, the free-born citizen is made to labor directly under the lash as a slave,’ fulminated a North Carolina commentator in 1846. ‘Is this not worse [...]
