The 6th North Carolina Regiment was authorized April 13, 1776 and assigned to the Southern Department on May 7, 1776.

The 6th North Carolina Regiment was organized during the Spring and Summer of 1776 at Halifax, NC. It included eight companies from Wilmington and Hillsborough Districts.

On February 5, 1777, it was removed from the Southern Department and assigned to the Northern Department. On July 8, 1777, it was assigned to the NC Brigade, an element of the Northern Department.

On May 29, 1778, Continental Congress ordered the reorganization of all NC regiments due to low numbers in their ranks. The 6th NC Regiment was folded into the 1st NC Regiment. The 6th NC Regiment was never reconstituted.

Thus, the 6th North Carolina Regiment was formed on April 15, 1776. It was formed with eight companies from men from the Wilmington and Hillsborough Military Districts, which made up nearly one-half the state, including much of the backcountry. They were organized at Halifax, NC, under the command of Colonel Alexander Lillington, hero of the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge.

When ready to march north to join the main army, they were instead called south to defend Charlestown against a suspected second assault in 1776 (after the first attack was repulsed in June). In the meantime, Colonel Lillington stepped down due to ill health. He was replaced by Colonel Gideon Lamb. The British did not return in 1776. The NC Line spent a miserable winter near Charlestown without the supplies promised by South Carolina.

The 6th NC Regiment marched north in the spring of 1777 and joined the main army, brigaded under Brigadier General Francis Nash. They were in the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, being at the Chew House in the latter and serving as rear guard for the American withdrawal during which Brig. Gen. Nash was mortally wounded. They were noted by one diarist as having captured sixteen guns during the attack, but having had to abandon them in the retreat.

They wintered at Valley Forge in Brigadier General Lachlan Macintosh's Brigade (GA). The NC troops were noted by Washington to be the poorest supplied of all the destitute men there. Their desertion rate was ten percent, the lowest in an Army that averaged 18 percent. It was a long way home.

In the reductions of 1778, the 6th NC Regiment was merged with the lst NC Regiment, assuming the lower regimental number. The supernumerary officers of the 6th NC Regiment were sent home to NC to recruit. All troops recruited by the 6th NC Regiment for the next several years were taken immediately into the other NC units. The 6th Regiment ceased to exist officially in early 1781 - even though it was never reconstituted after May of 1779.

In the meantime, the men of the 6th NC Regiment, now the lst NC Regiment, served at Monmouth, being engaged early and again late in the day, and in the Hudson Highlands. Some of them took part in the frontal assault by NC troops of Wayne's Light Infantry on Stony Point. In November of 1779 they were ordered south to Charlestown during the worst winter of the war. They arrived in time to take part in the defense and, along with the Virginians, took part in the only sortie during the siege.

On 12 May 1780, they went into captivity with the Fall of Charleston. Many of them were sent to the prison hulks in the harbor while others were imprisoned on John's Island. The 6th NC Regiment disappeared from the field and on paper.