North Carolina

Around the North Carolina village of Guilford Courthouse in the late winter of 1781, two weary armies clashed on a cold, wet afternoon. American forces under Nathanael Greene engaged Lord Cornwallis's British army in a bitter two-hour battle of the Revolutionary War. The frightful contest at Guilford was a severe conflict in which troops made repeated use of their flintlock muskets, steel bayonets and dragoon swords in hand-to-hand fighting that killed and wounded about eight hundred men. Historian John R. Maass recounts the bloody battle and the grueling campaign in the South that led up to it, a crucial event on the road to American independence.

Though most of the events in the French and Indian War took place hundreds of miles away, North Carolina was not exempt from its impact. As the European forces of France, Spain, Great Britain and their American Indian allies brought war to the New World, the colony mobilized troops, raised money, built forts and participated in several arduous military campaigns. The war had a huge influence on the colony, including a dramatic conflict between the colonial Governor Arthur Dobbs and the colonial legislature over how many troops to raise and how it would be funded. This led to an increasing sense of independence from Britain that would continue to build after the war was over. Join historian and author John R. Maass as he chronicles a significant yet often overlooked North Carolina history..

From January to July 1942, more than seventy-five ships sank to North Carolina's "Graveyard of the Atlantic" off the coast of the Outer Banks. A Standard oil tanker sank just sixty miles from Cape Hatteras.

German U-boats sank ships in some of the most harrowing sea fighting close to America's shore. Germany's Operation Drumbeat, led by Admiral Karl Donitz, brought fear to the local communities. The U-85 was the first U-boat sunk by American surface forces, and local divers later discovered a rare Enigma machine aboard. Author Jim Bunch traces the destructive history of world war on the shores of the Outer Banks.

On December 17, 2000, Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, performed one of the most heroic rescues in the history of the service. The cruise ship SeaBreeze I was listing, battered by hurricane-force winds and thirty-five-foot seas. The ship and the lives of its thirty-four crewmen were in imminent peril. A rescue helicopter arrived and, seeing that the vessel could capsize at any moment, hoisted twenty-six of the crew to safety, a record for a single helicopter rescue. A second helicopter, designated for the celebration of the Wright brothers' first flight, arrived on scene in time to rescue the remaining crew. Rear Admiral Carlton Moore tells the complete history of this daring rescue, including never-before-printed radio messages from the rescuers.

From the rocky slopes of Kings Mountain to the plains of Hannah's Cowpens, the Carolina backcountry hosted two of the Revolutionary War's most critical battles

On October 7, 1780, the Battle of Kings Mountain utilized guerilla techniques - American Over Mountain Men wearing buckskin and hunting shirts and armed with hunting rifles attacked Loyalist troops from behind trees, resulting in an overwhelming Patriot victory. In January of the next year, the Battle of Cowpens saw a different strategy but a similar outcome: with brilliant military precision, Continental Regulars, dragoons, and Patriot militia executed the war's only successful double envelopment maneuver to defeat the British. Using firsthand accounts and careful analysis of the best classic and modern scholarship on the subject, historian Robert Brown demonstrates how the combination of both battles facilitated the downfall of General Charles Cornwallis and led to the Patriot victory in America.

Charlotte was a hotbed of Revolutionary activity well before the fervency of revolt reached its boiling point in New England. Considered a wild frontier region at the time, Mecklenburg County welcomed the Reverend Alexander Craighead with ready hands for battle. Craighead's fiery rhetoric inspired the people of the region to action. What resulted was the creation of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, the first such document in the nation, and although the county had less than 3 percent of the colony's population, its Patriots accounted for over one-quarter of North Carolina's Revolutionary troops. Join author Richard P. Plumer as he reveals how the Queen City played an integral role in the formation of a proud and free America.