Ratifying the amendments - North Carolina Digital History

This map shows North Carolina counties as they were drawn in 1840. A few counties were added between 1835 and 1840, you can use it to find the counties listed in the voting records below. (Map by L. Polk Denmark from David Leroy Corbitt, The Formation of the North Carolina Counties, 1663–1943 (Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1950). Used by permission. More about the map)

Not everyone supported the Amendments of 1835. They were put to a vote of all eligible voters in the state — “all freemen of the age of twenty-one Years, who… have paid public taxes,” according to the Constitution of 1776 — and the results were 26,771 for the amendments and 21,606 against, or 55.3 percent for and 44.7 percent against.

Although the amendments were adopted by a fairly close margin, support for them wasn’t evenly spread out through the state. In each of the counties below, the vote was overwhelmingly one way or the other.

The vote in selected counties on the constitutional amendments of 1835¹
County	For	Against
Brunswick	0	466
Buncombe	1,322	22
Burke	1,359	1
Craven	131	270
Edgecombe	29	1,334
Hyde	2	431
Iredell	1,184	18
Lincoln	1,887	42
Martin	14	795
Orange	1,131	246
Rowan	1,570	18
Rutherfordton	1,557	8
Tyrrell	1	459
Wake	243	1,124
Warren	46	580
Washington	14	409
Wilkes	1,757	8

Activity

Find each of the counties listed in the data table on the map at the top of the page. (Click the map to see the full-sized version.) The simplest way to keep track of the counties is to print off a copy of the map, and to use crayons or markers to color them as you find them, using two different colors for counties voting for and counties voting against.
Once you’ve colored in the counties, the pattern of voting should be obvious. Does this surprise you? Given what you’ve read, why would people in different parts of the state have supported or opposed the amendments?

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For teachers

Lesson plan: Exploring the relevance of North Carolina’s State Constitution In this lesson from the North Carolina Civic Education Consortium, students will learn how the North Carolina Constitution is relevant in today’s world. They will view and take guided notes from a Power Point that explains the changes made to the state Constitution since its ratification in 1776, helping students understand that the state Constitution is a "living document" and that is can be updated to reflect the times while keeping its core principals the same. Students will then complete a "Comparing Constitutions Scavenger Hunt" where they will examine the NC and US Constitutions and compare the differences and similarities.