"In this book, Lindley S. Butler traverses oft-noted but little understood events in the political and social establishment of the Carolina colony. In the wake of the English Civil Wars in the mid-seventeenth century, King Charles II granted charters to eight Lords Proprietors to establish civil structures, levy duties and taxes, and develop a vast tract of land along the southeastern Atlantic coast. Butler argues that unlike the New England theocracies and Chesapeake plantocracy, the isolated colonial settlements of the Albemarle--the cradle of today's North Carolina--saw their power originate neither in the authority of the church nor in wealth extracted through slave labor, but rather in institutions that emphasized political, legal, and religious freedom for white male landholders"--