Tar Heel

[2] In its early years as a colony, North Carolina became an important source of the naval stores of tar, pitch, and turpentine, especially for the Royal Navy.

[3] Tar was created by piling up pine logs and burning them until hot oil seeped out from a spout.

At one time, an estimated 100,000 barrels (16,000 m3) of tar and pitch were shipped from North Carolina to England every year.

Two-thirds of all the turpentine in the United States came from North Carolina, and one-half came from the counties of Bladen and New Hanover.

As the war continued, many North Carolinian troops developed smart replies to this term of ridicule: The 1st Texas Infantry lost its flag at Sharpsburg.

"[8] Walter Clark offers a similar account in the third volume of his Histories of the Several Regiments from North Carolina in the Great War, asserting that the nickname came about when North Carolina troops held their ground during a battle in Virginia during the American Civil War while other supporting troops retreated.

The North Carolinian troops' response: "He is going to put it on you'ns' heels to make you stick better in the next fight.

A Col. Joseph Engelhard, describing the Battle of Ream's Station in Virginia, wrote: "It was a 'Tar Heel' fight, and ... we got Gen'l Lee to thanking God, which you know means something brilliant.