Tar Heels

The term ""Tar Heel"" has been applied to North Carolinians and their state for more than 150 years. The author throughly discusses the origin and early application of the Tar Heel nickname during the Civil War. This well-illustrated booklet includes numerous quotations from documents of the period that chronicle the transition of the nickname from one of disparagement to one of pride.

Michael W. Taylor is a retired lawyer who practiced law for three and a half decades in North Carolina after growing up in Nigeria, as the son of Baptist missionaries, graduating with Honors in Greek from UNC-Chapel Hill, serving as a military historian in the Vietnam War, and earning a Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from Harvard with field archaeology experience in Cyprus and Greece. Taylor has a wide variety of near-lifelong interests in the history of Classical Antiquity, particularly of the Athenian democracy, and in the history of the American Civil War, particularly the role played by troops from North Carolina.