instance, we are the tenth most populousnstate (1980 census), a position wenhave not deviated far from throughoutnthis century. We are six times biggernthan New Hampshire, twice as big asnIowa or Oregon, considerably biggernthan Indiana or Wisconsin. Yet fornsome reason our presidential primary,nwhich has been competitive for decadesnnow, is never noticed like thosenstates’ by the media moguls. (Couldnthey be prejudicedU?)nAt the time of the American Revolution,nwe were bigger than any of then13 colonies except Virginia and Pennsylvanian(that is, bigger than New Yorknor Massachusetts) and growing fast.nAnd unlike some states I won’t mention,nour influence was always heavilynon the patriot side, especially after wenbroke the Scotch Tories at the Battle ofnMoore’s Creek Bridge, which, ifnAmerican history were ever told right,nwould be as famous as Bunker Hill.nAnd we have a pretty long history,nby American standards, and includingnthree rebellions before the Revolution,ngoing back almost four centuries now.nWe have always made up our ownnminds, and always been American republicans.nNot democrats, not progressives,nnot liberals, not conservativesnin your Wall Street sense, but Ameri­nLIBERAL ARTSncan republicans. Our Revolutionarynheroes chronicled here, to name just anfew — John Ashe, Richard Caswell,nWilliam Richardson Davie, CorneliusnHarnett, James Iredell, Willie Jones —nwere fully the equals, as patriots andnstatesmen, of some of the betteradvertisednchaps from other states.nPerhaps our most representativenleader of all time was Mr. Macon, mynaccount of whom, for the next forthcomingnvolume of the DNCB, appearsnherein. As I said, we think for ourselves.nConsider Sam Ervin or JessenHelms. You will have a rather hardntime fitting them into any categoriesndevised by the newspapers or the Stanfordnpolitical science department.n(Ervin appears herein. Senator Helmsndoes not. The DNCB’s one discriminationnis against the living, who are notnincluded.)nNot only are we a large state with anhistory a good deal older than thenUnited States and an independent spirit,nbut we are an empire within ourselves.nA coastal (plantation) region, anpiedmont (yeomen and industry) region,nand a mountain region, each onendistinct and bigger than the similarnregions in any other Southern state.nYou can find within our broad boundsnanything that you can find in anynPROHIBITION—A KILLER OF AN IDEAnHerbert Hoover called it “a great socialnand economic experiment noble in motivenand far reaching in purpose.” It’snbetter known as the prohibition of alcohol,nand the 1980’s showed that the ideanis far from dead.nThat Mikhail Gorbachev’s anti-alcoholnprogram failed is well known in thenWest. What is less well known is thenextent to which this campaign affectednSoviet society. A shortage of sugar immediatelyndeveloped as bootleggers begannstockpiling this key ingredient. Anshortage of toothpaste then followed:nmost Soviet toothpaste has an alcoholnbase, which citizens started drinkingnonce they had distilled it from the toothpaste.nSome Soviet citizens even beganndrinking perfume, jet fuel, and industrialnalcohol. Eleven thousand Soviet citizensndied from drinking surrogate alcohol inn36/CHRONICLESnMuch the same has happened in thenIndian state of Gujarat. Here alcohol isnbanned out of respect to the state’s mostnfamous native son, Mahatma Gandhi.nNot surprisingly, bootlegging thrives innGujarat, as does disease. Illegal breweriesnoperate in unsanitary conditions, andnsewage water and rusty vats have contributednto contaminated brews. The citynof Baroda has been particulady hard hit.nAs recently reported by India TribunenMagazine, three hundred people werenadmitted to Baroda’s SSG Hospital innMarch 1989 because of alcohol contamination.nAbout two hundred ofnthese patients died, and a dozen werenleft blinded. “The actual number [ofndead] will never be known,” reports thenTribune, because “many die in theirnhomes as their families are afraid ofnpolice problems.”nnnSouthern state, most of anything thatnyou can describe as generally American,nand a great deal that is not foundnanywhere else.nWhen it came time for the CivilnWar, we did not want to rush intonthings. But when others had fouled itnup beyond help, we did not hesitate.nWe told Mr. Lincoln what he could donwith his troop requisition and votedn120-0 for secession. We provided 45ngenerals to the Confederacy (CivilnWar buffs will find in the DNCB anhost of familiar heroes like Gilmer,nGrimes, Hoke, Pender, Pettigrew,nRamseur, and many others) and nearlyna fourth of the men who carried GeneralnLee’s bayonets for four years. Butnwe also produced George W. Kirk,nwho fought a guerrilla war against thenConfederacy from the mountains;nGeneral John Gibbon, who commandednsome of the federal troops on CemeterynRidge; and Solomon Meredith,nwho moved off to Indiana and endednup in command of the Iron Brigade,nthe best outfit in the Northern army.nAs I said, we do our own thinking.nWe have always exercised an undueninfluence inside the Congress,nwhere smarts count more thannpublicity. Consider, in the 19th century,nJames I. McKay, chairman of thenHouse Ways and Means throughoutnthe Jacksonian era, or Willie P. Mangum,npresident pro tern of the Senate,nor William A. Graham, the Whig candidatenfor Vice President in 1852, mennwho in their own day were as famous asnClay or Webster. Or in the 20th century,nClaude Kitchin, Woodrow Wilson’snfloor manager in the House, or Carl T.nDurham, first and for many years chairmannof the Joint Atomic Energy Committee.nOr outside the Congress, JosephusnDaniels, probably the mostnpowerful Democratic editor in thencountry, who was FDR’s chief when henwas assistant secretary of the Navy andnwho always referred to FDR as Franklin,neven after he was a fourth-termnPresident.nMaybe your taste runs to the bizarren— people who did not hold publicnoffice but who did something unusual.nHow about the assassin Thomas C.nDula, who is immortalized in the folknsong “Tom Dooley” and who was innthe same Confederate regiment as myngreat-grandfather and his brothers? Orn