A Demographic View of the North Carolina Continental Line, 1775–1783

Originally published in the Journal of the American Revolution on December 22, 2021.

Many North Carolina soldiers served in both the North Carolina militia/state troops and one of the state’s Continental regiments. To complement my study of the demographics of the militia and state troops, this article presents a detailed look at North Carolina Continental soldiers who served only in the North Carolina Continental Line.

The North Carolina Continental Line came into official existence on November 28, 1775 when the two existing state regiments were “raised to the Continental Establishment.”^[1] By early 1776, four additional regiments were raised.^[2] Later in the year three more were added, bringing the total to nine regiments. “Despite the need to fill those regiments already established,” the North Carolina General Assembly created another in the spring of 1777.^[3] The 10th Regiment barely lasted a year and was permanently disbanded in June 1778.^[4] Earlier in that same year so many men had died, deserted, been wounded, and were unfit for service that the nine regiments were consolidated into three.^[5] Later in 1778, two short-lived “field” regiments, the 4th and 5th, were raised of “nine months men” to serve in South Carolina and Georgia.^[6] The previous three regiments were sent to South Carolina in late 1779 and were present at the siege and surrender of Charleston in 1780. North Carolina Continental regiments were only re-formed after British troops left the state in April 1781.

Between 30,000 and 36,000 North Carolina men served the state during the war with approximately 8,800 of these serving in the North Carolina Line.^[7] The latter number may seem high, but North Carolina contributed less than its complement of Continentals to the revolutionary cause. The two main reasons for this were the state’s relative poverty and a heavy reliance on militia and state troops. Additionally, due to the state’s inability to pay sufficient recruitment bounties, officers from neighboring states often came to the North Carolina backcountry during the war and were successful enlisting men for their own state’s lines.^[8]

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