North Carolina Tar Heels

TAR HEELS

Like many college nicknames, Tar Heels is related to the state the team calls home. North Carolina is known as the ``Tar Heel State'',. A letter discovered in 1991 by a state archivist provided the latest theory of the state's moniker.

An Aug. 24, 1864 letter from Maj. Joseph Engelhard, who later would be elected North Carolina's secretary of state, describes a fight involving men from North Carolina in which Gen. Robert E. Lee was heard to have said, ``There they stand as if they have tar on their heels.'' The letter described a battle on the outskirts of Petersburg, Va.

Another theory of origin dates back to the Revolutionary War, when British troops discovered that tar had been dumped into a stream to impede their crossing. When they finally got across what is now known as the Tar River, the soldiers found their feet completely black with tar. They determined that anyone who waded North Carolina rivers would acquire tar heels, thus the first reference to that nickname.

 
During a battle that came in War Between the States, a column of soldiers supporting North Carolina troops was driven from a field After the battle, the North Carolinians who had successful fought alone ran into the troops that had fled to safety.
One of the North Carolina soldiers told those who fled that Confederacy president Jefferson Davis said he ``was going to put it (tar) on you'ns heels to make you stick better in the next fight.''
Upon hearing about the incident, Lee smiled and said to a fellow officer, ``God bless the Tar Heel boys.''