North Carolina's most historically significant political leader, whose legacy and philosophy and character influenced not only generations of Tar Heels, but also a host of very illustrious Southerners, their thinking, and the very manner in which they lived their lives and viewed the society around them. He was, indeed, to quote his contemporaries, "the father of states' rights" and the figure most critical in the actual development and survival of the states' rights philosophy which still, in some ways, percolates in American politics.