Tar Heel

Tar Heel is a nickname applied to the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is also the nickname of the University of North Carolina athletic teams, students, alumni, and fans.
The origins of the Tar Heel nickname trace back to North Carolina's prominence in the mid 18th and 19th centuries as a producer of turpentine, tar, pitch, and other materials from the state's plentiful pine trees. "Tar Heel" (and a related version, "Rosin Heel") was often applied to the poor white laborers who worked to produce tar, pitch, and turpentine. The nickname was embraced by North Carolina soldiers during the Civil War and grew in popularity as a nickname for the state and its citizens following the war.
History of term.
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. Tar and pitch were largely used to paint the bottoms of wooden ships, both to seal the ships and to prevent shipworms from damaging the hulls. Tar was created by piling up pine logs and burning them until hot oil seeped out from a spout.
Hugh Lefler and Albert Newsome claim in their "North Carolina: the History of a Southern State" (3rd edition, 1973) that North Carolina led the world in production of naval stores from about 1720 to 1870. At one time, an estimated of tar and pitch were shipped from North Carolina to England every year. After 1824, North Carolina became the leader for naval stores in the United States. By the time the Civil War began, in 1861, North Carolina had more than 1,600 turpentine distilleries, 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.
The vast production of tar from North Carolina led many, including Walt Whitman, to give the derisive nickname of "Tarboilers" to the residents of North Carolina. North Carolina was nicknamed the "Tar and Turpentine State" because of this industry. These terms evolved until the nickname "Tar Heel" was being used to refer to residents of North Carolina. The term gained prominence during the Civil War, when it had a mainly pejorative meaning. Starting around 1865, however, the term began to be used by residents of North Carolina themselves as an expression of pride.
One of the earliest known references to the term in print came in 1863 in an article in a Raleigh newspaper in which a Confederate soldier from North Carolina is quoted:
The troops from other States call us “Tar Heels.” I am proud of the name, as tar is a sticky substance, and the “Tar Heels” stuck up like a sick kitten to a hot brick, while many others from a more oily State slipped to the rear, and left the “Tar Heels” to stick it out.
In 1893, the students of the University of North Carolina founded a newspaper and named it "The Tar Heel," later renamed "The Daily Tar Heel." By the early 1900s, the term had been embraced by many, both inside and outside the state, as a non-derisive term for North Carolinians.
Legendary explanations.
The following legends and anecdotes have arisen trying to explain the history of the term Tar Heel.
River fording by General Cornwallis.
According to this legend, the troops of British General Cornwallis during the American Revolutionary War were fording what is now known as the Tar River between Rocky Mount and Battleboro when they discovered that tar had been dumped into the stream to impede the crossing of British soldiers. When they finally got across the river, they found their feet completely black with tar. Thus, the soldiers observed that anyone who waded through North Carolina rivers would acquire "tar heels."
Ability to hold ground.
In the third volume of Walter Clark's "Histories of the Several Regiments from North Carolina in the Great War", the author explains 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. After the battle, supporting troops asked the victorious North Carolinians: "Any more tar down in the Old North State, boys?" and they replied: "No, not a bit; old Jeff's bought it all up." The supporting troops continued: "Is that so? What is he going to do with it?" The North Carolinian troops' response: "He is going to put it on you'ns' heels to make you stick better in the next fight."
Reluctant secession.
The State of North Carolina was the next to last state to secede from the United States of America, and as a result the state was nicknamed "the reluctant state" by others in the south. The joke circulating around at the beginning of the war went something like: "Got any tar?" "No, Jeff Davis has bought it all." "What for?" "To put on you fellows' heels to make you stick." As the war continued, many North Carolinian troops developed smart replies to this term of ridicule: The 4th Texas Infantry lost its flag at Sharpsburg. As they were passing by the 6th North Carolina a few days afterward, the Texans called out, "Tar Heels!", and the reply was, "If'n you had had some tar on your heels, you would have brought your flag back from Sharpsburg."
Robert E. Lee quotation.
The book "Grandfather Tales of North Carolina History" (1901) states that: During the late unhappy war between the States it [North Carolina] was sometimes called the "Tar-heel State," because tar was made in the State, and because in battle the soldiers of North Carolina stuck to their bloody work as if they had tar on their heels, and when General Lee said, "God bless the Tar-heel boys," they took the name. (p. 6)
A letter found in 1991 (dating from 1864 in the North Carolina "Tar Heel Collection") by North Carolina State Archivist David Olson supports the theory that Lee might have stated something similar to this. A Colonel 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."