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 SAMUEL A’COURT ASHE 
 
 3fn ttoo Uol times 
 
 Volume i 
 
 FROM 15S4 TO 1783 
 
 GREENSBORO, N. C. : 
 Charles L. Van Noppen, Publisher 
 1908 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1908 
 BY CHARGES L. VAN NOPPEN 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 

 11 $ £ 
 
 A 
 
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 To Thomas Jordan Jarvis: 
 
 In taking a retrospect of past events I recall that you and the 
 lamented William Laurence Saunders and myself were fellow soldiers 
 in the long war ; that we shared in the anxieties of the Reconstruc- 
 tion period ; that we were together in the important work of 1870-72, 
 when you, as Speaker of the House, held the most commanding 
 position among our friends; that from that time onward we were 
 co-laborers in every effort that promised to promote the welfare 
 of the people; that we suffered together in disappointments and 
 enjoyed together many glorious victories; that during the six years 
 of your useful and brilliant administration we were in constant 
 co-operation, and in complete sympathy in all matters of public 
 concern ; and that since then, our cordial friendship has continued 
 without interruption, save that Saunders has rested from his labors. 
 Recalling those long years of association, when we were animated 
 by common hopes and subject to the same anxieties — in remembrance 
 of that eventful period — 
 
 I dedicate this volume to you and to the memory of our departed 
 friend, it being an early fruitage of his important state publications, 
 the preparation of which was made possible by your own cordial 
 concurrence ; and I inscribe your names on this page in recognition 
 of your great services to the people of North Carolina and in token 
 of my friendship. 
 
 S. A. Ashe. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 At different times in the past the public were led to hope 
 that Judge Murphey, Governor Graham or Governor Swain 
 would prepare a History of North Carolina, but these dis- 
 tinguished investigators into historical subjects had not the 
 leisure, or they were deterred by the labor that such a work 
 would entail. Fortunate would it have been had the litera- 
 ture of the State been enriched by such a contribution from 
 any one of those illustrious citizens. 
 
 And yet it is to be observed that it is only in more recent 
 years that the great mass of original documents bearing on 
 our history has been collected and made accessible to 
 students. The publication by the State of twenty-six vol- 
 umes of a thousand pages each of this material has thrown 
 such light on matters formerly obscure that the story of our 
 people can now be much more accurately written than ever 
 before. 
 
 It was the fortune of the writer to have been familiar 
 with these documents before they were made public by the 
 State, and to have carefully considered those of any par- 
 ticular import. An investigator into original sources of 
 North Carolina history for many years, he was naturally the 
 co-laborer of Colonel Saunders in his great work, and he 
 was also somewhat concerned in preparing the Prefatory 
 Notes of the State Records. It is then with some confi- 
 dence that he offers the result of his protracted labors to the 
 public. 
 
 As this work is based almost exclusively on the State 
 publications, nearly every statement relating to North Caro- 
 lina has for its support a contemporaneous document. 
 
 Every one owes something to the community of which he 
 is a member, and the author in performing the self-imposed 
 task of preparing this History of North Carolina feels that 
 he is only paying a small part of the natural obligations 
 resting on him as a citizen of the State. In the execution 
 of his design he has sought to present the past with unswerv- 
 ing fidelity. Animated by an ambition to do his work so 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 thoroughly that posterity will value it, he has closely investi- 
 gated all subjects, and, as far as practicable, has brought 
 together the circumstances bearing on transactions concern- 
 ing which there have been differences of opinion. 
 
 The history of North Carolina abounds with incidents 
 that illustrate the high patriotism of our people, their man- 
 hood, their constancy and their endurance. It has been with 
 pride that the author has sought to perpetuate the record of 
 those events and to enforce on posterity the lessons they 
 inculcate, while preserving the memory of those useful 
 citizens who have contributed to the public welfare. 
 
 The author makes acknowledgment to Dr. Stephen B. 
 Weeks for valuable suggestions, for his assistance in read- 
 ing proof and for his indefatigable labor in verifying refer- 
 ences. It is largely due to his critical acumen, to his 
 scholarly taste and to his unsparing labor that this volume 
 will be found so free from defects. 
 
 Acknowledgment should also be made to Mr. Charles L. 
 Van Noppen, the publisher, for his zealous interest. He 
 has not considered the cost but has been animated by a 
 patriotic purpose to be instrumental in the production of a 
 work which he hopes will gratify the people of the State. 
 
 The Author. 
 
 Raleigh, N. C., June i, 1908. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE FIRST EPOCH— 1584-91 
 
 RALEIGH’S EXPLORATIONS AND COLONIES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Contemporaneous Documents 
 
 Extracts from contemporaneous writings relative to the discovery 
 of Virginia. — Explorations. — Localities. — Attempted settlements at 
 Roanoke, and the fate of the Lost Colony. — The Croatans. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Explorations, 1584 
 
 England claims rights in America. — Sir Humphrey Gilbert. — 
 Walter Raleigh’s charter. — The landing of Amadas and Barlow. — 
 The spot uncertain. — The savages kindly. — Explorations. — Fortunate 
 return. — The new land named Virginia. — Conditions in America. 22 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Lane’s Colony, 1585-86 
 
 Lane’s colony. — Arrival at Wokokon. — Secotan visited. — Aquasco- 
 goc burned by Grenville. — Disembarkation at Hattorask.— Settle- 
 ment at Roanoke. — Fort Raleigh. — Explorations. — Manteo friendly. 
 — Wanchese hostile — The peril of famine. — Lane penetrates the 
 Chowanoak; seizes Skyco ; ascends the Moratoc. — Food exhausted. — 
 The Indian conspiracy. — The hostiles gather at Dasamonquepeuc. — 
 Lane strikes a blow and secures safety. — The arrival of Drake. — The 
 departure of the colonists. — Arrival of Grenville’s fleet. — Fifteen 
 men left to hold possession 29 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 viii 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 White’s Colony, 1587-91 
 
 Raleigh’s embarrassments. — Conveys an interest in Virginia to 
 Thomas Smith John White, and associates. — The citie of Raleigh in 
 Virginia. — White’s colony departs. — Howe murdered. — White de- 
 spoils the fields of the hostiles. — Baptism of Manteo. — Birth and 
 christening of Virginia Dare. — White returns to England. — The 
 Armada. — White’s first attempt to return to Virginia. — Raleigh makes 
 further conveyance of his interest. — White sails in February, 1591. — 
 Finds, colony removed. — Mace’s voyage. — Elizabeth dies. — Raleigh 
 arrested for treason. — The settlement at Jamestown. — Fate of the 
 Lost Colony 39 
 
 SECOND EPOCH— 1629-63 
 
 PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Charters and Colonial Officers 
 
 The charters.- — The concessions. — The Lords Proprietors and 
 their successors. — The Palatines.- — The governor, speakers of the 
 Assembly, and chief justices 50 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Beginnings of Permanent Settlement in Albemarle 
 
 Conditions in America. — Virginia under the treaty with Parlia- 
 ment. — Roger Green's explorations. — The king of Roanoke Island. 
 — Permanent settlement on the Carolina Sound. — The Restoration. 
 — The Cape Fear explored. — Berkeley receives instructions as to 
 Carolina. — The name Albemarle. — The Quakers. — The grant of the 
 Lords Proprietors. — William Drummond, governor of Albemarle. — 
 The second grant 55 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Settlement on the Cape Fear 
 
 The settlement on the Cape Fear. — Hilton’s explorations. — The 
 New England Association. — The first settlement. — Sir John Yeamans, 
 governor. — Conditions at Charlestown. — Yeamans sails from Barba- 
 does. — An Assembly at Cape Fear. — An Indian war. — Dissatisfaction. 
 — The Cape Fear River abandoned. — A new Charlestown on Ashley 
 River. — Slavery in the colonies. — The Indian inhabitants. . . 72 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 IX 
 
 THIRD EPOCH — 1663-1729 
 
 PROPRIETARY GOVERNMENT 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Administrations of Drummond and Stephens, 1664-69 
 
 The settlement of Albemarle. — Governor Drummond. — The first 
 Assembly. — Conditions at Albemarle. — The concessions. — Cessation 
 of tobacco planting. — An Indian war. — Changes in the Proprietors. 
 — Stephens governor. — The great deed. — Act of Assembly. — The 
 marriage act 88 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Carteret’s Administration, 1670-73 
 
 The Fundamental Constitutions. — Changes introduced by them. — 
 The first meeting under the Grand Model. — Carteret governor. — 
 The Grand Model in practice; The precincts. — The nobility. — The 
 Palatine’s Court. — The Quakers. — First dissatisfaction. — Carteret 
 sails for England. — John Jenkins deputy-governor. — Visits from 
 Edmundson and Fox 98 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Administrations of Jenkins and Miller, 1673-78 
 
 The navigation acts. — The Board of Trade. — The people murmur. 
 — Other causes of dissatisfaction. — An Indian war. — The tobacco 
 duty resisted. — The administration compromises. — Miller arrested. — 
 Eastchurch goes to England.— Governor Jenkins deposed. — East- 
 church appointed governor. — Bacon’s rebellion in Virginia. — A gov- 
 ernment hy the people . — Eastchurch deputizes Miller. — Opposition 
 to the navigation acts. — Durant resolves to revolt. — Miller acts 
 resolutely. — Durant returns to Albemarle. - — The crisis arrives. — 
 The revolt proceeds 112 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Administrations of Harvey, Jenkins, Wilkinson and 
 Sothel, 1679-89 
 
 The revolt successful. — A government by the people. — Victory 
 brings moderation. — Quiet succeeds the storm. — The revolt against 
 arbitrary power and the navigation acts. — The Proprietors dila- 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 tory. — The increase of Albemarle.— The Proprietors acquiesce. 
 — Seth Sothel sent to govern. — John Harvey governor. — Miller 
 flees. — Durant dominant. — Biggs retires to Virginia. — The Quakers 
 appeal to the Proprietors for protection. — Harvey dies; suc- 
 ceeded by Jenkins. — Culpepper tried, but acquitted. — Shaftesbury 
 in exile. — Albemarle to observe the law. — Wilkinson governor. — 
 Sothel arrives. — John Archdale visits Albemarle. — A view of the 
 situation. — Sothel becomes a tyrant. — He is expelled. . . . 126 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Administrations of Ludwell, Jarvis, Arciidale, Harvey 
 and Walker, 1689-1704 
 
 Philip Ludwell, governor of North Carolina. — Gibbs’s claim. — 
 Thomas Jarvis appointed deputy. — Ludwell governor of all Caro- 
 lina. — His instructions. — Changes in the system. — Conditions in Al- 
 bemarle. — Proprietors prepare rent roll. — Ludwell gives effect to the 
 Great Deed. — Thomas Harvey deputy-governor. — John Archdale 
 governor of Carolina. — The arrival of the Huguenots. — Erection of 
 Bath County. — The line between Carolina and Virginia in dispute. — 
 Pirates harbor in all the colonies. — Parliament directs that gov- 
 ernors should be approved by the king. — Henderson Walker gov- 
 ernor. — Changes in Albemarle 141 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Exclusion of the Quakers 
 
 Albemarle at the opening of the new century. — Religious affilia- 
 tions. — The Quakers. — Nathaniel Johnson governor of Carolina. — 
 The Church Party in South Carolina. — Major Daniel succeeds Hen- 
 derson Walker. — The Quakers excluded from office. — The Constitu- 
 tion ignored. — A new church law. — Daniel removed. — Succeeded by 
 Cary. — The colony grows.- — Virginia disputes the boundary. — John 
 Porter’s voyage to England. — He obtains redress. — New elements 
 in the controversy.- — Porter breaks with Glover. — Two govern- 
 ments contending. — Both call the Assembly. — Glover departs to Vir- 
 ginia. — Cary in possession. — The government orderly 154 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Cary Rebellion 
 
 The Palat'nes. — Their sufferings at sea. — They march through 
 the forest. — De Graffcnried’s Swiss. — New Bern founded. — 
 Hyde arrives in Virginia. — Invited to Carolina. — Glover’s influence. — 
 The Quakers excluded. — His authority denied. — The new Assembly. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xi 
 
 — Hyde succeeds. — The Cary administration declared a usurpation. 
 — Partisan legislation. — Hyde embodies men. — Cary prepared. — 
 Roach aids Cary.' — The people divide. — Governor Spotswood seeks to 
 mediate. — His agent threatens Cary. — Cary prepares to engage, but 
 fails. — Hyde’s moderation. — Cary and Porter sent to England. . 169 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The Tuscarora War 
 
 The Indians disquieted. — Lawson’s activities. — Lawson executed. 
 — The cause of the Indian war. — The massacre. — Preparations for 
 defence. — Active war. — Gale’s mission successful. — Barnwell acts 
 vigorously. — War measures. — Barnwell makes a truce. — Barnwell’s 
 Indians return ’to South Carolina. — Hostilities renewed. — The death 
 of Hyde. — Pollock’s truce with King Blount. — James Moore arrives. 
 — He takes Fort Nohoroco. — Many Tuscaroras depart for New York. 
 — Major Maurice Moore arrives. — Effects on the settlers. — Harmony 
 in the colony. — Governor Eden. — South Carolina imperilled. — Aid 
 sent. — The Cores renew hostilities 179 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Eden’s Administration, 1714-22 
 
 The Assembly of 1715. — The Church of England established in 
 the colony. — Other laws. — The precincts. — Partisan disagreements. — 
 "Blackbeard” harbors in Pamlico Sound. — Complicity of Knight. — 
 Moseley and Moore search the records. — Knight exonerated, resigns 
 and dies. — Moseley punished. — Revolution in South Carolina. — The 
 dividing line. — Colonel Pollock president. — William Reed succeeds 
 him. — Edenton. — Carteret Precinct. — A blow at nepotism. . . 196 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Administrations of Burrington and Everard, 1724-31 
 
 Governor Burrington explores the Cape Fear. — Opposition to him. 
 — Burrington displaced. — Sir Richard Everard. — Antagonism be- 
 tween Assembly and governor. — Altercations of Burrington and the 
 governor. — The ministers. — The settlement of the Cape Fear. — The 
 Assembly sustains Burrington. — He appeals to the Proprietors. — 
 Personal controversies. — The dividing line with Virginia. — Purchase 
 by the Crown. — Carteret retains his share. — Everard breaks with 
 Gale. — The lords of trade. — The currency act. — The end of the 
 Proprietarv government. — Conditions in North Carolina. — No public 
 school®. — Few ministers. — The Baptists. — Industries. — Population. — 
 Social conditions 208 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xii 
 
 FOURTH EPOCH— 1729-65 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA AS A ROYAL PROVINCE 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Burrington’s Second Administration, 1731-34 
 
 The Board of Trade. — The seal. — Everard's enemies. — Barrington 
 appointed governor. — The province during the interim. — Barrington 
 arrives. — Opposition to the royal instructions. — The first royal 
 Assembly. — Matters of controversy. — Currency act declared void. — 
 The quit rents. — Fees of officers. — The Assembly affronted. — The 
 basis of political action. — Burrington’s instructions. — He dispenses 
 with the Assembly. — Appoints new councillors. — Schoolmasters. — 
 The general court. — The governor erects new precincts. — His 
 action disregarded. — New conflicts. — Burrington’s arbitrary conduct. 
 — He is removed. — The second Assembly. — Chief Justice Little 
 arraigned.— The governor addresses the house. — The third 
 Assembly. — Barrington attempts to vindicate himself. — He rules 
 without council or Assembly. — The difficulties of the situation. — 
 Altered patents. — His opinion of the people. — Controversial docu- 
 ments. — His progressive action. — Dividing line between the Caro- 
 linas. — Landgrave Smith’s grant. — Questions settled and unsettled. — 
 The province grows. — Religious conditions. — The last Assembly to 
 meet Barrington. — No act passed during his administration. . 224 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Johnston’s Administration, 1734-52 
 
 Governor Johnston arrives. — Burrington’s enemies in the ascend- 
 ant. — Johnston cordially received. — The Assembly and the governor. 
 — Disagreements. — Wilmington incorporated. — Immigrants. — McCul- / 
 loh’s grants. — Swiss, Irish and Scotch. — The South Carolina 
 dividing line. — Clashing between the governor and the people. — The 
 new Assembly. — The governor appeals for instructions. — Precincts 
 converted into counties. — The compromise. — Progress in the colony. 
 —The chief justice impeached. — He dies. — Edward Moseley chief 
 justice. — The Spanish War. — Expedition to Cartagena. — The decision 
 of the Board of Trade. — The quit rents. — Body of laws. — Blank 
 patents. — The currency. — Governor’s, salary unpaid. — Matters in dis- 
 pute settled. — Granville, Johnston, and Duplin counties. — The Scotch 
 migration. — Anson County. — Granville’s territory. — The unarmed re- 
 bellion. — The two repudiated acts. — The Assembly of 1747. — Northern 
 counties not represented. — They refuse obedience. — Spanish invasion. 
 — Beaufort and Brunswick attacked. — New currency act. — Efforts to 
 displace Johnston. — Local differences. — First printing press. — Yellow 
 Jacket. — The Palatines. — ‘Wreck of Spanish fleet. — The contest be- 
 tween the new and the old counties. — The cessation of courts in 
 Albemarle. — The end of Johnston’s administration. — Two treasurers. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xiii 
 
 — Growth at the west. — The Germans and Scotch-Irish. — Orange 
 County. — Explorations by Spangenberg 247 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Dobbs’s Administration, 1754-65 
 
 Dobbs’s visit to Point Lookout. — President Rowan. — County of 
 Rowan. — Old style abolished. — The French claim. — Christopher Gist. 
 — The French invasion. — Innes’s regiment. — Innes commander-in- 
 chief. — Decision of vexed questions. — Dobbs appointed governor. — 
 Instructions to Governor Dobbs. — The constitution reformed. — 
 Dobbs reaches New Bern. — The growth of the province. — The Indian 
 inhabitants. — The Croatans. — The old counties elect their five mem- 
 bers. — The new Assembly. — Tower Hill. — The French and Indian 
 War. — The frontier settlements. — Fort Dobbs. — The first news- 
 paper. — North Carolina troops in the war. — Major Hugh Waddell. 
 - — Fort Duquesne taken. — McCulloh’s grant. — Internal matters. — 
 Dobbs County. — The governor arbitrary. — The king’s bounty. — • 
 Causes of difference. — The house outwitted. — The Enfield riots. — 
 The Assembly protests. — The governor not sustained. — The court law 
 annulled. — No courts held. — A new Assembly. — The Assembly reso- 
 lute. — The secret session. — The governor makes terms. — Courts re- 
 established. — The Cherokee war. — The western counties desolated. — 
 Fort Dobbs attacked. — Bethabara threatened. — Walnut Cove sur- 
 rounded. — Conditions more peaceful. — King George III. — Some 
 differences reconciled. — At the end of the war. — The council declares 
 its patriotism. — Population. — The Indians. — Abortive efforts for free 
 schools. — The courts. — Religious conditions. — Republicanism rife. — 
 British views with reference to America. — The right to tax claimed. 
 — The Assembly of 1764. — The Weekly Post Boy at Wilmington. — 
 Tryon appointed to relieve Dobbs. — The public agitated. — The firm 
 stand of the Assembly. — Claims exclusive privilege of imposing 
 taxes. — The Assembly concurs with Massachusetts. . . . 280 
 
 FIFTH EPOCH— 1765-75 
 
 CONTROVERSIES WITH THE MOTHER 
 COUNTRY 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Tryon’s Administration, 1765-71 : The Stamp Act 
 
 Governor Tryon’s administration. — Unrest in Mecklenburg. — 
 The cause of complaint in Orange. — The Assembly of May, 1765, 
 — The vestry act. — The stamp act passed. — Desire for inde- 
 pendence imputed to the colonists. — Popular ferment. — Speaker 
 Ashe declares the people will resist to blood. — The Assembly pro- 
 rogued. — Patrick Henry in Virginia. — Barre’s speech in Parliament. 
 
XIV 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 — Sons of Liberty. — An American congress called.— Dr. Houston 
 stamp-master. — North Carolina not represented. — Famine and dis- 
 ease in the province. — The people set up looms. — Action at Wilming- 
 ton. — Liberty not dead. — Dr. Houston resigns. — Governor Tryon 
 feels the people.— Deprecates independence. — The reply. — Desire for 
 independence disclaimed. — The act not observed. — Non-importation. 
 — The people united. — Conditions in England. — British merchants 
 and manufacturers clamor for repeal. — Pitt. — Camden. — Conditions 
 in America. — No business transacted. — The West settled. — In Gran- 
 ville’s territory. — Judge Berry commits suicide. — The rising on the 
 Cape Fear. — The people form an association. — They choose directors. 
 — Fort Johnston seized. — Tryon’s house invaded. — The act annulled. 
 — Business resumed. — The Assembly prorogued. — The stamps stored. 
 — The act repealed. — London rejoices.— America grateful. — Mayor 
 DeRosset’s manly sentiments. — Judge Moore suspended. . . . 310 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Tryon’s Administration, 1765-71: The Regulation 
 
 Murmurs from the west. — The governor’s proclamation. — The 
 reform movement. — The general polity of the province. — Tryon’s 
 action. — Purpose of the reformers. — Removal of the Tuscaroras. — 
 The Assembly meets. — November, 1766. — The burden too heavy to 
 bear. — The address to the king. — The southern treasurer. — No 
 provincial agent. — The governor’s palace. — The seat of government. 
 — Presbyterian ministers to perform marriage ceremony. — The 
 Cherokee line. — The Watauga settlement. — The need of currency. — 
 New legislation.— The speakers to be gowned. — Tryon joins in ask- 
 ing for currency. — New custom duties proposed. — The Assembly 
 prorogued. — The Regulators associate. — The meetings. — Oath-bound. 
 — Plillsboro raided. — Consternation of the officers. — Rev. George 
 Micklejohn the peacemaker. — The governor advises an appeal to 
 the Assembly. — Fanning seizes Husband. — The people aroused. — A 
 petition to the Assembly. — Presented to the governor. — His reply. 
 — He reaches Hillsboro. — Sends Harris to collect taxes. — Harris’s 
 report. — Hillsboro threatened. — Disturbing rumors. — The agreement. 
 — The voice of Anson. — Trouble in Johnston. — The governor’s de- 
 mands. — The army of 1768. — The Presbyterian ministers support tbe 
 governor. — The march to Hillsboro. — The Regulators embody. — 
 The governor’s terms. — The malcontents disperse. — The court held. 
 — Tryon desires to leave. — Regulators’ address. — Resolve of Assem- 
 bly. — Remedial legislation proposed. — Hillsboro riots. — Riot act. — 
 Alamance. — The battle. — The trials and executions. . . . 326 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Social Life at the Opening of the Revolution 
 
 In the homes of the people. — Social conditions. — The state 
 church. — The Protestant dissenters. — The Baptist churches.— 
 Pioneers of Methodism. — Education and schools. — Taxation. — The 
 lawyers. — The Quakers and the militia. — Servants and slaves. 377 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 XV 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Martin’s Administration, 1771-75 
 
 Martin’s administration. — The Regulator chieftains. — Pardon 
 asked. — The Assembly meets. — Act of oblivion recommended. — The 
 line between the Carolinas.- — The quarrel with the governor. — The 
 Assembly dissolved. — Sarah Wilson. — Purchase of Granville’s terri- 
 tory proposed. — Governor Martin proposes reforms. — He confers 
 with the Regulators. — The province tranquil. — Martin’s view of the 
 commotion. — The house objects to the South Carolina line. — Dis- 
 agreement of the houses over James Hunter. — Fanning’s losses. — 
 Changes at the west. — The court bill. — The attachment clause. — 
 The house resolute. — It is dissolved. — Courts by prerogative. — 
 Quincy’s visit. — Martin to become Granville's agent. — Colonial af- 
 fairs. — Committee of Correspondence. — The act of oblivion again 
 fails. — The house affronts the governor.- — The courts cease. — The 
 governor seeks conciliation. — Temporary courts of oyer. — The one 
 shilling tax. — Harvey urges a convention. — Continental affairs. — Tea 
 destroyed at Boston. — Parliament closes the port of Boston. — The 
 McDonalds come to the Cape Fear 396 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Martin’s Administration, 1771-75 — Continued 
 
 Organized resistance. — The Committee of Correspondence. — 
 William Hooper. — The Wilmington meeting. — The cause of Boston 
 the cause of all. — Parker Quince. — The first convention. — The 
 counties organize. — Governor Martin’s proclamation. — The conven- 
 tion held. — The resolution. — Non-importations. — Tea not to be used. 
 — The revolutionary government. — Committees of Safety. — In- 
 structions to delegates. — Governor Martin’s attitude. — Goes to 
 New York. — The Continental Congress. — The revolution pro- 
 gresses. — Cornelius Harnett. — The Edenton tea party. — Governor 
 Martin returns. — The Transylvania colony. — The second convention 
 called. — Proceedings on the Cape Fear. — John Ashe. — Robert Howe. 
 — The Regulators disaffected. — The Highlanders. — Enrolled Loyal- 
 ists. — The Assembly and the Convention. — John Harvey presides. — 
 The American Association signed. — The governor’s address. — The 
 house replies resolutely. — The Assembly dissolved. — The last appear- 
 ance of Harvey. — North Carolina at court. — Thomas Barker. — 
 Governor Tryon. — North Carolina favored. — The battle of Lexing- 
 ton. — Martial spirit aroused. — The governor questioned by Nash. 
 — He is alarmed. — The negro insurrection. — He seeks refuge at 
 Fort Johnston 417 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 The Mecklenburg Resolves, May 31, 1775 
 
 The Mecklenburg declaration. — Historical statement. — Documents 
 and observations. — Conditions in May. — Mecklenburg aroused. — The 
 
XVI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 great meeting at Charlotte. — Colonel Polk proclaims the resolves. — 
 Independence declared. — The old government annulled.— The leaders 
 in Mecklenburg. — The effect elsewhere. — At Salisbury. — At New 
 Bern. — Bethania. — Reconciliation still desired. — Apprehensions. — 
 Thomas Jefferson. — The Regulators.- — The patriots in the interior. — • 
 The clashing in Anson. — New Hanover acts. — Governor Martin’s 
 plans. — McDonald arrives. — New Hanover impatient. — Fort J ohnston 
 burned. — The Revolution progresses. — Dunn and Boote confined. 437 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 The Provincial Council, 1775-76 
 
 The spirit of resistance. — Martin’s proclamation. — The Congress. 
 • — The leaders. — The conditions. — The people divided. — Efforts to 
 gain the Regulators. — Proceedings of Congress. — Franklin’s confed- 
 eration. — Independence not the object. — The first battalions. — The 
 minute men. — County courts. — The test. — The money of the Revolu- 
 tion. — To provide necessaries. — Congress adjourns. — Enlistment of 
 troops. — The safety of Wilmington. — The plan of subjugation. — 
 Arrival of Highlanders. — Provincial council. — Tories and Whigs. — 
 The Indians placated. — The Scovellites. — The Snow campaign. — 
 Howe marches against Dunmore. — Norfolk destroyed. — Armed ves- 
 sels built. — The ministerial troops. — In England 472 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 The Provincial Council, 1775-76 — Continued 
 
 Martin prepares to act. — He sends commissions. — The rising. — 
 The Western patriots. — Caswell marches. — At Wilmington. — At 
 Cross Creek. — The Tories embody. — Moore at Rockfish. — McDonald 
 marches. — Moore’s Creek. — The battle.- — Death of Grady. — The 
 spoils. — Trouble in Currituck. — The effects of the victory. — In Vir- 
 ginia. — In North Carolina. — Mary Slocumb’s ride. — Reports of 
 Caswell and Moore 496 
 
 SIXTH EPOCH— 1775-83 
 
 THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 The Provincial Council, 1775-76 — Continued 
 
 The Provincial Congress. — The spirit of independence. — In the 
 Continental Congress. — At Halifax. — The committee. — The un- 
 daunted spirit to declare independence. — The delegates instructed. 
 — North Carolina leads the way. — The capturdd Tories. — The 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 XYll 
 
 drums and colors. — War measures. — On the water. — The Tories. — 
 Four new battalions. — For defence of Cape Fear. — Militia drafts. — 
 Civil affairs. — The members of the congress 513 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 The Council of Safety, 1776 
 
 Attempt to frame the Constitution. — Fundamental principles. — 
 The problems involved. — The temporary government. — Congress ad- 
 journs. — The first invasion. — General Lee. — Clinton’s disappointment. 
 — The fleet arrives. — The ardor of the Whigs. — Clinton offers par- 
 don. — No hostile movement. — The descent on Brunswick. — The 
 regiments land. — The fleet sails. — The Council of Safety. — The at- 
 tack on Fort Moultrie. — North Carolina’s gallant troops. — Affairs at 
 home. — The Continentals 527 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 Independence 
 
 Independence declared. — Lee’s resolution. — The declaration.- — 
 The North Carolina deputies. — The declaration proclaimed. — The 
 address of the council. — Religious teachings in Anson. — Tames Hun- 
 ter a patriot. — The Indians hostile. — Rutherford crosses the moun- 
 tains. — Washington district annexed. — The movement against the 
 Indians. — Rutherford successful. — The Surry regiment. — Moore’s 
 expedition. — The Tories active. — Salt-making. — The British abandon 
 Cape Fear. — A winter campaign threatened 540 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 The Constitution of 1776 
 
 Making the constitution. — Divergencies. — The conservatives. — 
 The results of the election. — Johnston burned in effigy. — The con- 
 gress meets. — The committee moves slowly. — Proceedings in the 
 convention. — Citizenship established. — The principles of government. 
 — Sovereignty of the people.- — The Orange instructions. — Those of 
 Mecklenburg. — Hooper urges the Delaware plan. — In the committee 
 room. — The draught reported. — The bill of rights. — The religious 
 test. — Thoroughly considered. — The Virginia constitution. — A rep- 
 resentative republic. — Public schools. — The religious test adopted. 
 — The instrument conservative. — A new administration installed. 556 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 Caswell's Administration, 1776-80 
 
 Caswell’s administration. — Military movements. — Political power. 
 — The first Assembly. — Tories banished. — Sheppard’s regiment. — 
 Conditions within the State. — The task of the patriots. — Johnston 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xviii 
 
 dissatisfied. — Loyalists depart. — Arrival of Lafayette. — Trade 
 through Ocracoke inlet. — The Continental Line join the Grand Army. 
 — Brandywine. — Germantown. — Death of Nash. — New battalions. 570 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 Caswell’s Administration, 1776-80 — Continued 
 
 The second session of the Assembly. — Articles of confederation. — 
 Valley Forge. — Supplies from North Carolina. — The North Carolina 
 line destitute. — Feeling in England. — Treaty with France. — The sec- 
 ond Assembly.— Dr. Burke in congress. — The battalions consoli- 
 dated. — Nine months’ Continentals. — Defection prevalent. — The 
 North Carolina brigade. — The judges appeal to the people. — At the 
 adjourned session. — For the southern campaign. — Importations con- 
 tinued. — The fall of Savannah. — Militia for the South.— Ashe sur- 
 prised at Briar Creek. — Boyd’s defeat. — Light horse at the North. 
 — Sumner and Hogun brigadiers. — The hardships of the officers.— 
 Prices and taxes. — Internal perils. — Movements of troops. — Battle 
 of Stony Point. — The second Assembly. — Efforts to increase the 
 Continental force. — Tory movements. — Battle of Stono. — Davie 
 wounded. — Battle at Savannah. — Hogun ordered South. . . 584 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 Nash’s Administration, 1780-81 
 
 The confiscation act. — Lillington’s brigade. — The fall of Charles- 
 ton. — The prisoners suffer. — Death of Hogun. — The delayed re-en- 
 forcements. — Tarleton’s quarters. — Invasion apprehended. — Caswell 
 major-general. — De Kalb’s re-enforcements arrive. — Gates to com- 
 mand. — Activity of Rutheyford. — Ramseur’s Mill. — Rutherford pur- 
 sues Bryan. — Plans of Cornwallis. — De Kalb encamps on Deep 
 River. — Davie's enterprise. — Gates advances. — Battle of Camden. — 
 Death of De Kalb. — Gallantry of Gregory and Dixon. — Gates’s ride. 
 — The disaster. — At Charlotte. — Sumter’s negligence. — Davie in ad- 
 vance. — The spirit of the people. — New supplies. — Preparations for 
 defence. — The Assembly acts. — The Board of War. — Smallwood 
 supersedes Caswell 6 °7 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 Nash’s Administration, 1780-81 — Continued 
 
 Cornwallis moves to Charlotte. — Davie’s gallant defence.— The 
 activity of the Mecklcnburgers. — Governor Martin’s proclamation. — 
 Movement on Augusta. — Ferguson marches westward. — The fron- 
 tiersmen assemble. — Battle of King’s Mountain. — Death of Chronicle. 
 — The victory gives great joy. — Its effects. — Cornwallis retires.— His 
 gloomy outlook. — Leslie in Virginia. — Moves to Camden. — Gates 
 moves forward. — Cornwallis’s disappointment. — Arrival of Greene. — 
 His activity.- — His forward movement. — The new year. — The Coun- 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xix 
 
 cil Extraordinary. — Caswell reinstated. — Four new continental bat- 
 talions. — No party divisions. — During Caswell’s administration. — 
 Nash's administration. — Dr. Burke’s zeal to correct abuses. — Sam 
 Johnston declines the presidency of congress 629 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 Nash's Administration, 1780-81 — Continued 
 
 The battle of Cowpens. — Cornwallis pursues Morgan. — The death 
 of Davidson. — Invasion of the State. — Greene crosses the Dan. — 
 The endurance of the troops.- — Cornwallis at Hillsboro. — O11 the 
 Cape Fear. — The movements of the armies. — Pyle’s massacre. — 
 Greene at Troublesome Creek. — Battle of Guilford Court House. 
 — Cornwallis moves east and Greene pursues. — Cornwallis reaches 
 Wilmington, Greene goes to South Carolina. — Craig occupies Wil- 
 mington. — Death of Harnett. — Cornwallis’s plans. — Cornwallis 
 marches to Virginia. — The inhabitants distressed. — At Edenton. — 
 The Whigs rally. — Greene in South Carolina. — Death of Major 
 Eaton. — Cartel of exchange agreed on. — Atrocities lead to threats 
 of retaliation. — Gregory defends the Albemarle region. . . . 648 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 Burke’s Administration, 1781-82 
 
 Conditions in North Carolina. — Major Craig at Wilmington. — 
 The Assembly meets. — Burke governor. — Action of Assembly. — 
 Governor Burke’s zeal. — Fanning embodies the Tories. — Pittsboro 
 taken. — Conditions in Bladen. — Wade’s victory. — Cornwallis’s plans. 
 — South Quay captured. — New continental battalions. — Craig in- 
 vades the eastern counties. — Lillington forbidden to fight. — New 
 Bern taken.- — Tory atrocities.- — Battle of Elizabethtown. — Governor 
 Burke’s plans. — Fanning defeats Wade. — The governor captured. — - 
 The battle of Cane Creek. — Butler surprised at Brown Marsh. — The 
 battle of Eutaw Springs. — The gallantry of the North Carolinians. 675 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 Martin’s Administration, 1781-83 
 
 Rutherford marches to Wilmington. — Cornwallis surrenders. — 
 Wilmington evacuated. — Rutherford disbands his army. — Fanning 
 not suppressed. — The Assembly at Salem. — The Tories active. — Gov- 
 ernor Martin’s action. — The return of Burke.- — He assumes the ad- 
 ministration. — Fanning’s brutality. — Progress of events. — Burke 
 seeks a re-election. — Alexander Martin chosen. — New legislation. — 
 The Moravians. — Depreciation of the currency. — The Continental 
 Line. — Indian hostilities renewed. — Leslie remains at Charleston. — 
 The deplorable condition of the army. — Charleston evacuated. — The 
 number of troops furnished by North Carolina. — The capture of 
 Lord Montague. — The condition in 1783. — Governor Martin’s ad- 
 dress. — The sovereign State 699 
 
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS, VOL. I 
 
 First map of the North Carolina Coast 3 
 
 From DeBry’s engraving from John White’s drawing, now 
 preserved in the British Museum. 
 
 The Lost Colony 43 
 
 Redrawn from an original Indian map first published in 
 Brown's “Genesis of the United States.” 
 
 A New Map of Carolina, by Philip Lea (1695) 145 
 
 From the "Charleston Year Book for 1883,” from an original 
 in the library of Captain William A. Courtenay. 
 
 Lawson’s map of North Carolina 169 
 
 Reduced and redrawn from the original in Lawson’s “New 
 Voyage to Carolina,” London, 1709. 
 
 Map showing the Evolution of Settlement and Location of 
 
 Races 377 
 
 Drawn by Samuel A. Ashe and Stephen B. Weeks. 
 
 Theatre of Operations in the Southern Campaign, 1780-83 . . 619 
 
 Reprinted by special permission from “General Greene,” by 
 Francis Vinton Greene, copyright 1893, by D. Appleton and 
 Company. 
 
 Map of North Carolina in 1783, showing the Evolution of the 
 Counties, Revolutionary Battlefields, and Lord Gran- 
 ville’s Line, 1743-76 725 
 
 Drawn by Samuel A. Ashe and Stephen B. Weeks. 
 
 Captain Samuel A’Court Ashe Frontispiece 
 
 From the Williams engraving from a photo published by 
 Van Noppen in the "Biographical History of North 
 Carolina.” 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh 1 
 
 From Knight’s “Gallery of Portraits” (1836), from engrav- 
 ing by Posselwhite after a portrait in the Collection of the 
 Duchess of Dorset. 
 
 Indian Village 27 
 
 From DeBry's engraving from White’s original painting 
 now in the British Museum. 
 
 Cooking Fish, Indian Method 34 
 
 From DeBry’s engraving from White’s original painting 
 now in the British Museum. 
 
 Great Seal of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina 51 
 
 From the copy published by Capt. William A. Courtenay 
 in the “Charleston Year Book for 1883” from the original 
 in the British Public Record Office. 
 
xxii MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Great Seal of the Colony of Albemarle 88 
 
 From an original found in the court house in Edenton, now 
 preserved in the Hall of History in Raleigh. 
 
 Philip Ludwell, first governor of North Carolina, 1689 . . . 192 
 
 From an original portrait now in the possession of his de- 
 scendant, Mrs. Bennehan Cameron. 
 
 Christopher Gale, Chief Justice 192 
 
 From the engraving by E. Witzler from the original. 
 
 Book-plate and Autograph of Edward Moseley 192 
 
 From the originals in the Weeks Collection of Caroliniana. 
 
 Bath Church, Beaufort County, built 1734 192 
 
 From a recent photograph. 
 
 Title Page of the First Printed Revisal of the North Carolina 
 
 Laws 273 
 
 From the oldest known copy of the first book printed by the 
 first printer on the first press in North Carolina; from the 
 original in the Weeks Collection. 
 
 Arthur Dobbs, governor of North Carolina, 1754-65 . . . 284 
 
 From a mezzotint in the Weeks Collection by MacArdell, 
 from the portrait by William Hoare. 
 
 Hugh Waddell, officer in the old French War and General in 
 
 the Regulation 284 
 
 From an etching by Albert Rosenthal from an original 
 miniature painted by Gainsborough, now owned by Col. 
 
 A. M. Waddell, Wilmington, N. C. 
 
 St. Paul’s Church, Edenton, built about 1735 284 
 
 From a recent photograph. 
 
 The Court House, Edenton, built about 1750 284 
 
 From a recent photograph. 
 
 The North Carolina Gazette, printed by James Davis, New Bern, 
 
 October 18, 1759 291 
 
 A facsimile reproduction, exact size, of the oldest known 
 issue of the first newspaper printed in North Carolina; from 
 the original in the American Antiquarian Society Library, 
 Worcester, Mass. 
 
 Edmund Fanning, prominent in the Regulation troubles . . 326 
 
 From an etching by Albert Rosenthal. 
 
 Monument to the Regulators, located on the Battlefield near 
 
 Burlington, N. C 326 
 
 From a photograph. 
 
 North Carolina Currency, 4 d., under the act of April 4, 1748 326 
 From an original in the Hall of Flistory, Raleigh. 
 
 North Carolina Currency, $i2p2, under act of April 2, 1776 . 326 
 
 From an original in the Weeks Collection. 
 
 Governor’s Palace, New Bern; built 1767-70; first occupied June, 
 
 1770 331 
 
 From an old print. 
 
 William Hooper, signer of the Declaration of Independence . 540 
 From the engraving by Williams, published by Van Noppen 
 in the “Biographical History of North Carolina after a 
 copy by Lambdin of the original by Trumbull. The Lamb- 
 din copy is in Independence Hall. 
 
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS xxiii 
 
 Joseph Hewes, signer of the Declaration of Independence . . 540 
 
 From the drawing by J. B. Longacre from an original por- 
 trait published in Sanderson’s "Lives of the Signers.” 
 
 John Penn, signer of the Declaration of Independence . . . 540 
 
 From the engraving by H. B. Hall from a drawing in the 
 collection of Dr. Thomas Addis Emmett, now in New York 
 Public Library. 
 
 Samuel Johnston, president of the Halifax Congress of April, 
 
 1776 ...... 540 
 
 From an original portrait by James Peele, owned by the 
 State of North Carolina. 
 
 Robert Howe, major-general in the Revolutionary War . . 571 
 
 From a half-tone in Davis’s “History of the Cincinnati in 
 North Carolina,” from a very old and faded picture found in 
 New York by Mr. Marshall De Lancey Haywood and 
 marked "Gen. Howe, American.” 
 
 Maurice Moore, Colonial lawyer, politician and judge . . . 571 
 
 From the Rosenthal etching from an original miniature in 
 the Hall of History. 
 
 Abner Nash, Governor, 1780-81 571 
 
 From the Rosenthal etching from an original in the Hall 
 of History. 
 
 Alexander Martin, Governor of North Carolina, 1781-85 . . 571 
 
 From the Rosenthal etching from a portrait in oil owned by 
 the estate of the late Colonel James Martin of Winston- 
 Salem, N. C. 
 
 General Joseph Graham, Revolutionary patriot 629 
 
 From a copy of an oil painting from life by Sully, the copy 
 now owned by Hon. A. W. Graham, Oxford, N. C. 
 
 Colonel William Polk, Revolutionary patriot 629 
 
 From an engraving on steel by William Sartain, published 
 in Polk’s "Leonidas Polk.” 
 
 Colonel Joseph McDowell, Quaker Meadows, Revolutionary 
 
 patriot 629 
 
 From an engraving by Hollyer, published in Draper’s 
 “King's Mountain.” 
 
 Colonel Joseph Winston, Revolutionary patriot 629 
 
 From an etching on copper by J. R. Stuart, from an original 
 etching in gold on glass, published in Draper’s "King’s 
 Mountain.” 
 
 Horatio Gates, American officer defeated at Camden .... 648 
 From a mezzotint in the Weeks Collection, published by 
 John Morris, London, 1778. 
 
 Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis, victor at Camden .... 648 
 From the engraving by PIoll after the painting by Hoppner 
 which appears in his "Correspondence,” edited by Ross, 
 London, 1859. 
 
 Banastre Tarleton, British officer defeated at Cowpens . . . 648 
 
 From an etching by Max Rosenthal from a print by Blackberd 
 in the Collection of Charles R. Hildeburn. 
 
 Daniel Morgan, victor at Cowpens 648 
 
 From the engraving by Prud’homme after Herring’s draw- 
 ing from Trumbull’s sketch. 
 
XXIV 
 
 MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Nathanael Greene, Major-General in the American army, victor 
 
 at Guilford C. H 658 
 
 From the portrait engraved by Naegle and published in 
 Caldwell’s “Greene,” Philadelphia, 1819. 
 
 Battlefield of Guilford Court House, March 15, 1781 .... 658 
 
 From a photograph of the field as it now appears, showing 
 memorial arch to Davidson and monument to Penn in fore- 
 ground and memorial arch to Nash in background — -looking 
 east toward the American position. 
 

 
 
 . 
 
Sir Walter Raleigh 
 
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 THE FIRST EPOCH— 1584-91 
 
 RALEIGH’S EXPLORATIONS AND COLONIES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Contemporaneous Documents 
 
 Extracts from contemporaneous writings relative to the discovery 
 of Virginia. — Explorations. — Localities. — Attempted settlements at 
 Roanoke, and the fate of the Lost Colony. — The Croatans. 
 
 [Richard Hakluyt, a lecturer on geography at Oxford, began 
 about the year 1580 to devote himself particularly to a study of the 
 geography of America, collecting all manuscript accounts of voyages 
 to that unknown country, translating and publishing them. In 1598 
 he gave to the world his greatest work, “The Principal Navigations, 
 Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation” (London, 
 1598-1600, three volumes). In the third volume of this valuable 
 collection are found the reports and narratives of those concerned in 
 Sir Walter Raleigh’s explorations and colonies in Virginia. The 
 author has made such extracts from them as are of particular interest 
 in connection with this work.] 
 
 THE FIRST VOYAGE 
 
 Made to the Coasts of America, with Two Barks, Wherein Were 
 
 Captains 
 
 M. PHILIP AMADAS 
 and 
 
 M. ARTHUR BARLOW, 
 
 Who Discovered Part of the Country now Called 
 VIRGINIA, 
 
 Anno 1584. 
 
 Written by One of the Said Captains and Sent to Sir Walter 
 Ralegh, Knight, at Whose Charge and Direction the 
 Said Voyage Was Set Forth. 
 
2 
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS 
 
 *584 [This account was written by Barlow, and as it is addressed to 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh, its preparation was completed after Raleigh was 
 knighted, which was subsequent to the return of the expedition.] 
 
 Extracts 
 
 Barlow's 
 Narrative, 
 H :< k 1 11 y t, 
 111, 301 
 
 See also 
 Goldsmid’s 
 edition of 
 Hakluyt, 
 Early 
 English 
 Voyages, 
 II, 169 
 et seq. 
 
 The 27th day of April in the Year of our Redemption 1584, 
 we departed from the west coast of England with two barks well 
 furnished with men and victuals. 
 
 The second of July we found shoal water . . . and keeping good 
 watch and bearing but slack sail, the fourth of the same month 
 we arrived upon the coast, which we supposed to be a continent 
 and firm land, and we sailed along the same a hundred and twenty 
 English miles before we could find any entrance or river issuing 
 into the Sea. 
 
 The first that appeared to us we entered, though not without 
 some difficulty, and cast anchor about three harquebus-shot within 
 the haven’s mouth, on the left hand of the same; and after thanks 
 given to God for our safe arrival thither, we manned our boats 
 
 and went to view the land next adjoining and to take possession 
 
 of the same, in the right of the Queen’s most excellent Majesty, as 
 rightful Queen and Princess of the same, and after delivered the 
 same over to your use according to her Majesty’s grant and letters 
 
 patent under Her Highness’ great seal. Which being performed 
 
 according to the ceremonies used in such enterprises, we first landed, 
 very sandy and low towards the water side, but full of grapes, etc. 
 We passed from the seaside towards the tops of those hills next 
 adjoining, but being of mean height, and from thence we beheld 
 the sea on both sides to the North and to the South, finding no end 
 any of both ways. This land lay stretching itself to the West, 
 which after we found to be but an island twenty miles long and 
 not above six miles broad. 
 
 We remained by the side of this island two whole days before 
 we saw any people of the country: the third day we espied one 
 small boat rowing towards us, having in it three persons. This 
 boat came to the island side, four harquebus-shot from our ships : 
 and there two of the people remaining, the third came along the 
 shore side towards us, and we being then all within board, he walked 
 up and down the point of the land next to us. . . . They are of 
 colour yellowish, and their hair black for the most part: and yet 
 we saw children that had very fine auburn and chestnut coloured 
 hair. 
 
 The next day there came unto us divers boats, and in one of 
 them the King’s brother accompanied by forty or fifty men. . . . 
 
rth Carolina 
 
 lite Drawings) 
 
VOYAGE OF AM ADAS AND BARLOW 
 
 o 
 
 His name was Granganimeo, and the King is called Wingina, the 
 country Wingandacoa. 
 
 After they had been divers times aboard the ships, myself and 
 seven more went twenty miles into the river that runs towards 
 the city Skicoak, which river they call Occam ; and the following 
 evening we came to an island which they call Roanoak, distant 
 from the harbor by which we entered seven leagues :* and at the 
 north end thereof, there was a village of nine houses built of 
 cedar and fortified round about with sharp trees to keep out their 
 enemies, and the entrance into it made like a turnpike ; when we 
 came towards it, standing near into the water’s side, the wife of 
 Granganimeo, the King’s brother, came running to meet us very 
 cheerfully and friendly. . . . 
 
 Beyond this island is the mainland ; and over against this island, 
 falls into this spacious water, the great river called Occam by the 
 inhabitants, on which stands a town called Pomeiock, and six days’ 
 journey from the same is situated their greatest city called Skicoak. 
 
 Into this river falls another great river, called Cipo. . . . Like- 
 wise there descendeth into this Occam, another river called Nomo- 
 pana ; on the same side thereof stands a great town called Choanook, 
 and the lord of that town and country is called Pooneno. This 
 Pooneno is not subject to the King of Wingandacoa. 
 
 Beyond this country is there another king whom they call Mena- 
 tonon. Towards the Southwest, four days’ journey, is situated a 
 town called Sequotan, which is the Southernmost town of Wingan- 
 dacoa, near unto which six and twenty years past there was a 
 ship cast away, whereof some of the people were saved, and those 
 were white people, whom the country people preserved. And after 
 ten days remaining in an out island, uninhabited, called Wocokon, 
 with the help of some of the dwellers of Sequotan, fastened two 
 boats of the country together and made masts unto them and 
 sails of their shirts and departed. . . . Adjoining to this country 
 aforesaid, called Secotan, begins a country called Pomouik, belonging 
 to another king whom they called Piamacum ; and this king is in 
 league with the next king adjoining towards the setting of the sun, 
 and the country Newsiok, situate upon a river called Neus; and 
 these kings have mortal war with Wingina, King of Wingandacoa. 
 
 When we first had sight of this country, some thought the first 
 land we saw to be the continent, but after we entered into the haven 
 we saw before us another mighty long sea; for there lieth along 
 the coast a tract of islands, two hundred miles in length, adjoining 
 to the sea, and between the islands, two or three entrances. When 
 you entered between them I these islands being very narrow for 
 *Twenty-one miles. 
 
4 
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS 
 
 the most part, as in most places six miles broad, in some places, less; 
 in few, more,) then there appeared another great sea, containing 
 in breadth in some places forty, and in some fifty, in some twenty 
 over, before you come unto the continent; and in this enclosed sea 
 are above a hundred islands of different bignesses, whereof one is 
 sixteen miles long. . . . 
 
 [After remaining in this new country about six weeks making 
 discoveries, and establishing friendship with the natives, these ex- 
 plorers, highly delighted, set sail for England accompanied by two 
 Indians, Wanchese and Manteo, and arrived at home about the 
 middle of September.] 
 
 THE VOYAGE 
 made by 
 
 SIR RICHARD GREENVILLE 
 for 
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 to 
 
 VIRGINIA 
 in the year 1585 
 
 Extracts 
 
 1585, 
 
 Grenville’s 
 
 Narrative, 
 
 Hakluyt, 
 
 III, 307 
 
 32 men at 
 Croatoan 
 20 days 
 
 The ninth day of April 1585, we departed from Plymouth, our 
 fleet consisting of the number of seven sails; the Tiger, the Roe- 
 buck, etc. 
 
 The 23d of June we were in great danger of a wreck on a breach 
 called the Cape of P'ear. The 24th we came to anchor in a harbor; 
 the 26th we came to anchor at Wocokon. The 29th we weighed 
 anchor to bring the Tiger into harbor, where through the unskill- 
 fullness of the master whose name was Fernando, the Admiral 
 struck on ground and sunk. The 3d day of July we sent word of 
 our arrival at Wocokon to Wingina at Roanoak. 
 
 The 6th, Master John Arundall was sent to the main and Manteo 
 with him ; and Captain Autry and Captain Boniton the same day 
 were sent to Croatoan, where they found two of our men left there 
 with thirty others by Captain Raymond twenty days before. The 
 8th Captain Autry and Captain Boniton returned with two of our 
 men, found by them, to us at Wocokon. 
 
 The nth day, the General accompanied by divers gentlemen in 
 
GRENVILLE'S VOYAGE 
 
 5 
 
 his tilt boat; Master Lane with twenty others in the new pinnace; j s8s 
 
 Captain Amadas with ten others in a ship-boat, and Francis Brook 
 and John White in another ship boat, passed over the water from 
 Wocokon to the mainland, victualled for eight days ; in which voyage 
 we first discovered the towns Pomeiok, Aquascogoh and Secotan ; 
 and also the great lake called by the savages Paquique. 
 
 On the 12th, we came to Pomeiok : the 13th we passed by water 
 to Aquascogok: the 15th we came to Secotan: the 16th we returned 
 thence, and one of our boats with the Admiral was sent to Aquas- 
 cogok to demand a silver cup, which one of the savages had stolen 
 from us, and not receiving it according to his promise, we burned 
 and spoiled their corn, all the people being fled. 
 
 The iSth, we returned from the discovery of Secotan, and the 
 same day came aboard our fleet riding at Wocokon. 
 
 The 21 st, our fleet anchoring at Wocokon, we weighed anchor 
 for Hatorask. 
 
 The 27th, our fleet anchored at Hatorask and there we rested. 
 
 The 29th, Granganimeo, brother to Wingina, came aboard the 
 Admiral and Manteo with him. 
 
 The 2d of August the Admiral was sent to Weapomeiok. 
 
 The 5th Master Arundell was sent for England. 
 
 The 25th our General weighed anchor and set sail for England, 
 leaving one hundred and seven men under the government of 
 Master Ralph Lane. 
 
 AN ACCOUNT 
 
 Of The Particulars Of The Employments Of 
 THE ENGLISHMEN 
 Left in Virginia by 
 RICHARD GRANVILLE, 
 
 Under the Charge of 
 MASTER RALPH LANE, 
 
 General of the Same; 
 
 From the 17th of August, 1585, until the 18th of June, 1586, 
 At Which Time They Departed the Country. 
 
 Sent and Directed to 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH. 
 
6 
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS 
 
 1585 
 
 1585^ 
 
 Lane s 
 Account, 
 Hakluyt, 
 III, 311 
 
 1586 
 
 First, therefore, touching the peculiarities of the country, you shall 
 understand that our discovery of the same has been extended from 
 Roanoak (the same having been the place of our settlement or 
 inhabitation) into the South, into the North, into the Northwest 
 and into the West. 
 
 The uttermost place to the southward of any, Secotan, being 
 from estimation four score miles distant from Roanoak. The pas- 
 sage from thence was through a broad sound within the main, the 
 same being without kenning land and yet full of flats and shoals. 
 
 To the Northward our fartherest discovery was to the Chesipeans, 
 distant from the Roanoak about one hundred and thirty miles ; the 
 passage to it was very shallow and most dangerous. . . . 
 
 There be sundry Kings whom they call Weroances, and countries 
 of great fertility, as the Mandoages, Tripanicks and Opossians, which 
 all came to visit the Colony of the English, which I had for a time 
 appointed to be residents there. 
 
 To the Northwest, the fartherest place of our discovery, was to 
 Chawanook, distant from Roanoak of about one hundred and thirty 
 miles. Our passage thither lay through a broad sound, but all fresh 
 water ; and the channel of great depth. The towns about the water’s 
 side, situated by the way, are the following: Passaquenoke, “the 
 woman's town," Chepanoc, Weapomeiok, Muscamunge, and Metack- 
 wem, all those being under the jurisdiction of the King of Wea- 
 pomeiok, called Okisco. From Muscamunge, we entered into the 
 river and the jurisdiction of Chowanook ; there the river begins 
 to straighten until it comes to Chowanook and then groweth to be 
 as narrow as the Thames between Westminster and Lambeth. 
 
 Between Muscamunge and Chowanook, upon the left hand as we 
 pass thither, is a goodly highland, and there is a town which we 
 call the blind town, but the Savages call it Ohanoak. It has a 
 very goodly cornfield belonging to it. It is subject to Chowanook. 
 Chowanook itself is the greatest province and seignory lying upon 
 that river, and the very town itself is able to put seven hundred 
 fighting men into the field, besides the forces of the province itself. 
 The King of the said province is called Menatonon. In March 1586, 
 amongst other things he told me that going a three days’ journey 
 in a canoe, and then descending to the land, you are within four 
 days’ journey to pass over land Northeast to a certain King's country 
 whose province lays upon the Sea. . . . Very near (Chowanook) 
 directly from the West runs a most notable river, and in all these 
 parts most famous, called the river Moratoc. This river opens 
 into the broad sound of Weapomeiok: and whereas the river 
 Chowanook, and ail the other sounds and bays, salt and fresh, show 
 no current in the world in calm weather, but are moved alto- 
 
LANE'S ACCOUNT 
 
 7 
 
 gether with the wind, this river of Moratoc has so violent a current *586 
 
 from the West and Southwest, that it made one almost of opinion 
 that with oars it would scarcely be navigable. 
 
 On the 8th day of June came advertisement to me from Captain 
 Stafford, lying at my Lord Admiral’s Island, that he had discovered 
 a great fleet of three and twenty sails, but whether they were 
 friends or foes, he could not yet discern. He advised me to stand 
 upon as good guard as I could. The gth of the same month he 
 himself came unto me, having that night before and that same 
 day travelled by land twenty miles. He brought me a letter from 
 the General, Sir Francis Drake. The tenth day he arrived in the 
 road of our bad harbor ; and coming there to anchor on the eleventh 
 day, I came to him. 
 
 [The above account was written by Lane. On the 19th of June, 
 1586, the whole colony embarked in the fleet of Sir Francis Drake 
 and arrived in Portsmouth on the 27th of July. Among the col- 
 onists was Thomas Hariot, who wrote and published an extended 
 account of the natural productions of Virginia, and of the nature 
 and manners of the people inhabiting there. Philip Amadas was 
 deputy governor and admiral of the country. Thomas Cavendish 
 was al=o one of the colonists. Extracts from Drake’s narrative 
 fo low.] 
 
 Drake’s narrative, 1586 
 
 The 9th of June, upon sight of one special great fire (which are 
 very ordinary all along this Coast even from the Cape of Florida 
 hither) the General sent his skiff to the shore where they found 
 some of our English countrymen, (that had been sent thither the 
 year before by Sir Walter Raleigh) and brought one aboard, by 
 whose direction we proceeded along to the place which they make 
 their port. But some of our shipps being of great draught, unable 
 to enter, we anchored all without the harbor in a wild road at Sea, 
 about twm miles from the shore. From whence the General wrote 
 letters to Master Ralph Lane, being Governor of those English in 
 Virginia and then at his fort, about six leagues from the road, 
 in an island which they call Roanoak : wherein especially he showed 
 how ready he was to supply his necessities and wants which he 
 understood of, by those he had first talked withall. 
 
 The morrow after. Master Lane himself and some of his Com- 
 pany coming unto him, with the consent of his Captains, he gave 
 them the choice of two offers, that is to say : either he would leave 
 a ship, pinnace and certain boats, with sufficient masters and 
 mariners, together furnished with a month’s victual, to stay and make 
 
 1586, 
 
 Drake’s 
 
 Narrative, 
 
 Hawks’ 
 
 Hist, of 
 
 North 
 
 Carolina, I, 
 139 
 
8 
 
 CONTEMPORANEO US DOCUMENTS 
 
 1586 
 
 further discovery of the country and coasts, and so much victual 
 likewise that might be sufficient for the bringing of them all (being 
 one hundred and three persons) into England, if they thought good 
 after such time, with any other thing they would desire, or that 
 he might be able to spare; or else, if they had made sufficient 
 discovery already, and did desire to return unto England, he would 
 give them passage. But they, as it seemed, being desirous to stay, 
 accepted very thankfully and with great gladness, that which was 
 offered first. Whereupon the ship being appointed and received into 
 charge by some of their own company sent into her by Master Lane, 
 before they had received from the rest of the fleet the provision 
 appointed them, there arose a great storm (which they said was 
 extraordinary and very strange) that lasted three days together, 
 and put all our fleet in great danger to be driven from their anchor- 
 ing upon the coast. For we broke many cables and lost many 
 anchors : and some of our fleet which had lost all (of which num- 
 ber was the ship appointed for Master Lane and his Company) was 
 driven to put to Sea in great danger, in avoiding the coast and 
 could never see us again until we met in England. Many also of our 
 small pinnaces and boats were lost in this storm. Notwithstanding 
 all this, the Generali offered them (with consent of his Captains) 
 another ship, with some provisions, although not such a one for 
 their turns as might have been spared before, this being unable 
 to be brought into their harbor. 
 
 Or else, if they would, to give them passage into England, 
 although he knew he should perform it with greater difficulty than 
 he might have done before. 
 
 [A few days after their departure Sir Richard Grenville with his 
 relief ships arrived, but finding the colony gone, left fifteen men in 
 the fort to hold possession.] 
 
 THE FOURTH VOYAGE 
 Made to 
 VIRGINIA, 
 
 With Three Ships, In The Year 
 
 1587- 
 
 Wherein was Transported the Second Colony. 
 
WHITE'S NARRATIVE 
 
 9 
 
 Extracts from White’s narrative 1587 
 
 [This is an account of the arrival in Virginia of the Lost Colony.] 
 
 In the year of Our Lord 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh, intending to 1587, 
 
 persevere in the planting of his country of Virginia, prepared a new Narrative 
 
 Colony of one hundred and fifty men to be sent thither, under the Hakluyt, 
 
 III, 34O 
 
 charge of John White, whom he appointed Governor, and also 
 appointed under him twelve Assistants, unto whom he gave a charter, 
 and incorporated them by the name of Governor and Assistants of 
 the “Citie of Raleigh in Virginia.” 
 
 Our fleet being in number three sails, namely, the Admiral (the 
 Lion), a ship of one hundred and twenty tons, a fly-boat, and a 
 pinnace, departed the six and twentieth of April from Portsmouth. 
 
 The eighth of May, we weighed anchor at Plymouth and departed 
 for Virginia. The sixteenth, Simon Ferdinando, Master of our 
 Admiral, lewdly forsook our fly-boat, leaving her distressed in the 
 bay of Portugal. . . . About the sixteenth of July we fell in with 
 the main of Virginia, which Simon Ferdinando took to be the Island 
 of Croatoan, where we came to anchor, and rode there two or three 
 days; but finding himself to be deceived, he weighed and 
 bare along the coast, where in the night, had not Captain Stafford* 
 been more careful in looking out than our Simon Ferdinando, we 
 had been all cast away upon the breach, called the Cape of Fear; 
 for we were come within two cables length upon it ; such was the 
 carelessness and ignorance of our Master. The two and twentieth 
 of July we arrived safe at Hatorask, where our ship and pinnace 
 anchored ; the Governor went aboard the pinnace, accompanied with 
 forty of his best men, intending to pass up to Roanoke forthwith, 
 hoping there to find those fifteen Englishmen, whom Richard Green- 
 ville had left there the year before, with whom he meant to have 
 some conference concerning the state of the country and savages, 
 meaning after he had done so to return again to the fleet, and pass 
 along the coast to the bay of Chesepiok, where we intended to 
 make our seat and fort, according to the charge given us, among 
 other directions in writing, under the hand of Sir Walter Raleigh; 
 but as soon as we were put with our pinnace from the ship, a 
 gentleman by the means of Ferdinando, who was appointed to return 
 for England, called to the sailors in the pinnace, charging them not 
 to bring any of the planters back again, but to leave them in the 
 island, except the Governor and two or three others as he approved ; 
 saying that the Summer was far spent, wherefore he would land 
 all the planters in no other place. Unto this were all the sailors 
 
 *In the pinnace. 
 
10 
 
 C0NTEMP0RANE0 US DOCUMENTS 
 
 1587 
 
 Manteo 
 christened 
 Aug. 13, 
 1587 
 
 Virginia 
 Dare, born 
 August 
 18, 1587 
 
 both in the pinnace and ship persuaded by the Master, wherefore 
 it booted not the Governor to contend with them, but passed to 
 Roanoke, and the same night at sunset went aland on the island, 
 in the place where our fifteen men were left, but we found none 
 of them nor any sign that they had been there, saving only we found 
 the bones of one of those fifteen, which the savages had slain long 
 before. . . . The same day order was given that every man should 
 be employed for the repairing of those houses which we found 
 standing, and also to make other new cottages for such as should 
 need. 
 
 The 25th, our fly-boat and the rest of our planters arrived all safe 
 at Hatorask, to the great joy and comfort of the whole company. 
 
 . . . The eighth and twentieth George Howe, one of our twelve 
 Assistants, was slain by divers savages, which were come over to 
 Roanoak, either of purpose to espy our company, and what number 
 we were, or else to hunt deer, whereof were many in the island. . . . 
 On the thirtieth of July, Master Stafford and twenty of our men 
 passed by water to the Island of Croatoan with Manteo, who had 
 his mother and many of his kindred dwelling in that island, of whom 
 we hoped to understand some news of our fifteen men, but especially 
 to learn the disposition of the people of the country towards us, and 
 to renew our old friendship with them. . . . We also understood of 
 the men of Croatoan that our man, Master Howe, was slain by the 
 remnant of Wingina’s men, dwelling then at Dasamonquepeuc, with 
 whom Wanchese kept company; and also we understood by them 
 of Croatoan, how that the fifteen Englishmen left at Roanoak the 
 year before, by Sir Richard Greenville, were suddenly set upon by 
 thirty of the men of Secota, Aquoscogoc, and Dasamonquepeuc. . . . 
 The 13th of August, our savage Manteo, by the commandment of 
 Sir Walter Raleigh, was christened in Roanoak, and called Lord 
 thereof and of Dasamonquepeuc, in reward of his faithful service. 
 
 The 18th [of August] Eleanor, daughter to the Governor, and 
 wife to Ananias Dare, one of the Assistants, was delivered of a 
 daughter in Roanoak, and the same was christened there the Sunday 
 following, and because this child was the first Christian born in 
 Virginia, she was named Virginia. By this time our ships had, 
 unladened the goods and victuals of the planters, and began to take 
 in wood and fresh water, and to new caulk and trim them for 
 England; the planters also prepared their letters and tokens to send 
 back into England. ... At this time some controversies arose 
 between the Governor and Assistants about choosing two out of the 
 twelve Assistants, which should go back as factors of the company 
 into England ; the next day, the 22A of August, the whole company, 
 both of the Assistants and planters, came to the Governor, and with 
 
WHITE’S NARRATIVE 
 
 one voice requested him to return himself into England for the 
 better and sooner of obtaining supplies and other necessaries for 
 them : but he refused it, and alledged many sufficient causes why 
 he would not. . . . Also he alledged, that seeing they intended to 
 remove fifty miles further up into the main presently, he being then 
 absent, his stuff and goods might be both spoiled, and most of them 
 pilfered away in the carriage. . . . 
 
 [Eventually White was persuaded to return to England. On 
 the seventh and twentieth of August the admiral and the fly-boat 
 weighed anchor and set sail for England, where they arrived in 
 November. The pinnace remained in the sound.] 
 
 The names of all the men, women and children which safely 
 arrived in Virginia and remained to inhabit there 1587. 
 
 John White 
 Roger Bailey 
 Ananias Dare 
 Chrystopher Cooper 
 Thomas Stevens 
 John Sampson 
 Clement Taylor 
 William Sole 
 John Cotsmur 
 Humphrey Newton 
 Thomas Colman 
 Thomas Gramme 
 Thomas Butler 
 Edw^ard Powell 
 John Burdon 
 James Hinde 
 Thomas Ellis 
 William Browne 
 Dionys. Harvie 
 Roger Pratt 
 George Howe 
 Simon Fernando 
 Nicholas Johnson 
 Thomas Warner 
 Anthony Cage 
 John Jones 
 William Willes 
 John Brooke 
 Cuthbert White 
 
 John Bright 
 William Dutton 
 Maurice Allen 
 William Waters 
 Richard Arthur 
 John Chapman 
 William Clement 
 Robert Little 
 Hugh Tayler 
 Hugh Wildye 
 Lewes Wotton 
 Michael Bishop 
 Henry Rufoote 
 Henry Dorrell 
 Henry Mylton 
 Thomas Harris 
 Thomas Phevens 
 Mark Bennett 
 John Gibbes 
 John Stillman 
 Robert Wilkinson 
 John Tydway 
 Ambrose Viccars 
 Edmund English 
 Thomas Topan 
 Henry Berry 
 Richard Berry 
 John Spendlove 
 John Hemington 
 
 Hugh Pattenson 
 Martin Sutton 
 John Farre 
 John Bridger 
 Griffin Jones 
 Richard Shabedge 
 James Lasie 
 John Cheven 
 Thomas Hewet 
 William Berde 
 Henry Brown 
 Richard Tompkins 
 Charles Florrie 
 Henry Payne 
 William Nichols 
 John Borden 
 Michael Myllet 
 Thomas Smith 
 Richard Kemme 
 Thomas Harris 
 Richard Taverner 
 John Earnest 
 Henry Johnson 
 John Starte 
 Richard Darige 
 William Lucas 
 Arnold Archand 
 John Wright 
 Thomas Scott 
 
 II 
 
 1 587 
 
 To remove 
 fifty miles 
 in the 
 interior 
 
 27 Aug., 
 
 1587 
 
 White’s 
 
 Narrative 
 
 Names of 
 colonists 
 
12 
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS 
 
 j 587 John Wyles 
 
 George Martyn 
 Peter Little 
 Bryan Wyles 
 
 Women 
 
 Alice Chapman 
 Emma Merimoth 
 
 Colman 
 
 Margaret Lawrence 
 Joan Warren 
 Jane Mannering 
 
 Thomas Smart 
 George Howe 
 John Pratt 
 William Wythers 
 
 Children born in Vir- 
 ginia 
 Virginia Dare 
 Harvie 
 
 Savages that were in 
 England, and re- 
 turned home to 
 Virginia with them 
 Manteo To way e 
 
 Eleanor Dare 
 Margery Harvie 
 Agnes Wood 
 Winifred Powell 
 Joyce Archard 
 Jane Jones 
 Elizabeth Glane 
 Jane Pierce 
 Audry Tappan 
 
 Rose Payne 
 Elizabeth Viccars 
 
 Boys and Children 
 
 John Sampson 
 Robert Ellis 
 Ambrose Viccars 
 Robert Archard 
 Thomas Humphrey 
 
 [Although this list purports to embrace the names of those who 
 remained in Virginia, yet John White and Simon Ferdinando re- 
 turned to England, and George Howe was murdered before White’s 
 departure. Neither physician nor minister is mentioned as such, 
 yet doubtless this colony was accompanied by a minister, as Manteo 
 and Virginia Dare were “christened.”] 
 
 THE FIFTH VOYAGE 
 of 
 
 M. JOHN WHITE 
 into the 
 
 WEST INDIES 
 and parts of America called 
 VIRGINIA 
 in the Year 1591 
 
 [This narrative was communicated to Hakluyt in February, 1 593 > 
 and printed by him in 1598-] 
 
 On the 20th of March, the three ships, Hopewell, the John 
 Evangelist and the Little John put to Sea from Plymouth with two 
 small shallops. . . . 
 
 The third of August, we stood again in for the shore, and at 
 midday we took the height of the same. The height of that place 
 
WHITE'S VOYAGE OF 1591 
 
 13 
 
 we found to be 34 degrees of latitude. Towards night we were 
 within three leagues of the low sandy islands of Wokokon. 
 
 On Monday, the 9th of August, the storm ceased and we had 
 very great likelihood of fair weather. Therefore we stood in again 
 for the shore, and came to anchor at eleven fathoms in 35 degrees 
 of latitude, within a mile of the shore, when we went on land on 
 the narrow sandy island, being one of the islands west of Wokokon. 
 Between the main, as we supposed, and that island, it was but a 
 mile over, and three or four feet deep in most places. On the 
 12th in the morning we departed from thence, and towards night 
 we came to anchor at the Northeast end of the island of Croatoan, 
 by reason of a breach which we perceived to be out two or three 
 leagues into the Sea: here we rode all that night. This breach 
 is in 355/2* degrees and it lays at the very Northeast point of Croa- 
 toan where goes a part out of the main Sea into the inner waters, 
 which part the island from the main land. 
 
 The 15th of August, towards evening we came to an anchor at 
 Hattorask in 36^ degrees, in five fathoms of water, three leagues-]- 
 from the shore. At our first coming to anchor on this shore we 
 saw a great smoke rise in the Isle Roanoak, near the place where 
 I left our Colony in the year 1587, which smoke put me in good hopes 
 that some of the Colony were there expecting my return out of 
 England. 
 
 The 16th and next morning, our two boats went ashore and 
 Captain Cooke and Captain Spicer and their Company with me, with 
 intent to pass to the place at Roanoak, where our countrymen 
 were left. . . . But before we were half way between our ship 
 and the shore, we saw another great smoke to the Southwest of 
 Kindrick’s Mounts: we therefore thought good to go to that second 
 smoke first. But that which grieved me more, was that when we 
 came to that smoke, we found no man, nor sign that any had been 
 there lately, nor yet any fresh water in all this way to drink. 
 
 Being thus wearied with this journey, we returned to the harbor 
 where we left our boats, who in our absence had brought their 
 casks ashore for fresh water. So we deferred our journey to Roa- 
 noak till next morning, and caused some of those Sailors to dig in 
 the sand hills for fresh water, whereof we found very sufficient. 
 That night we returned aboard with our boats and our whole 
 Company in safety. The next morning it was 10 o’clock aforenoon 
 before we put from our ships, which were then come to an anchor 
 within two miles of the shore. The Admiral’s boat first passed 
 the breach but not without some danger of sinking. For at this 
 
 1591 
 
 Aug., 1591. 
 White’s 
 Narrative, 
 Hakluyt, 
 
 hi , 350 
 
 *Really about 35 0 . 
 
 tNine miles. 
 
14 
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS 
 
 1591 
 
 Fair Roman 
 letters, 
 
 “C. R. O.” 
 
 “Croatoan” 
 
 time the wind blew at Northeast and direct into the harbor so 
 great a gale that the Sea broke extremely on the bar and the tide 
 went very forcibly at the entrance. Captain Spicer came to the 
 entrance of the breach with his mast standing up and was half 
 passed over, but by the rash and indiscreet steerage of Ralph Skinner, 
 his master’s mate, a very dangerous sea broke into their boat and 
 overset them quite. There were eleven in all; seven of the chiefest 
 were drowned ; among them, Captain Spicer and Ralph Skinner. . . . 
 Our boats and all things filled again, we put off from Hattorask, 
 being the number of nineteen persons in both boats. But before we 
 could get to the place where our planters were left, it was so 
 exceedingly dark that we overshot the place a quarter of a mile, 
 where we espied towards the North end of the island, the light of 
 a great fire through the woods, to the which we presently rowed. 
 When we came right over against it, we let fall our grapnel near 
 the shore, and sounded with a trumpet a call, and afterwards many 
 familiar English tunes of songs, and called to them friendly; but we 
 had no answer. We therefore landed at daybreak, and coming to the 
 fire, we found the grass and sundry rotten trees burning about the 
 place. From thence, we went through the woods to that part of the 
 island directly over against Dasamonquepeuc ; and from thence we 
 returned by the water side, round about the North point of the island 
 until we came to the place where I left our Colony in the year 1586. 
 In all this way, we saw in the sand the print of the Savages’ feet 
 of two or three sorts trodden in the night ; and as we entered 
 upon the sandy banks, upon a tree, in the very brow thereof, were 
 curiously carved these fair Roman letters, “C. R. O.” which letters 
 presently we knew to signify the place where I should find the 
 planters seated, according to a secret token agreed upon between 
 them and me at my last departure from them ; which was that in 
 any way they should not fail to write or carve on a tree or posts 
 of the doors the name of the place where they should be seated ; 
 for at my coming away, they were prepared to remove from Roanoak 
 fifty miles into the main. 
 
 Therefore at my departure from them in Anno 1587, I willed them 
 that if they should happen to be distressed in any of those places; 
 that then they should carve over the letters or name a -|- in this form. 
 But we found no such sign of distress. And having well considered 
 of this, we passed toward the place where they were left in sundry 
 houses ; but we found the houses taken down and the place very 
 strongly enclosed, with a high palisade of great trees, with curtains 
 and flankers very fort-like; and one of the chief trees or posts at 
 the right side of the entrance had the bark taken off and five feet 
 from the ground in fair capital letters was graven “Croatoan,” 
 
WHITE'S VOYAGE OF 1591 
 
 15 
 
 without any cross or sign of distress. This done, we entered into 
 the palisade, where we found many bars of iron, two pigs of iron; 
 four iron fowlers ; iron locker shot, and such like heavy things, 
 thrown here and there, almost overgrown with grass and weeds. 
 From thence, we went along the water side, towards the point of 
 the Creek, to see if we could find any of their boats or pinnaces, 
 but we could perceive no sign of them nor any of the last falcons 
 or small ordnance which were left with them at my departure 
 from them. 
 
 At our return from the Creek, some of our sailors meeting us, 
 told us that they had found where divers chests had been hidden, 
 and long sithence digged up again and broken up, and much of 
 the goods spoiled and scattered about, but nothing left of such 
 things as the Savages knew any use of undefaced. Presently 
 Captain Cooke and I went to the place, which was in the end of 
 our old trench made two years past by Captain Amadas — where we 
 found five chests that had been carefully hidden of the planters, 
 and of the same chests three were my own : and about the place 
 many of my things spoiled and broken, and my books torn from 
 the covers, the frames of some of my pictures and maps rotten and 
 spoiled with rain, and my armour almost eaten through with rust. 
 This could be no other than the deed of the Savages, our enemies 
 at Desamonquepeuc, who had watched the departure of our men 
 to Croatoan, and as soon as they were departed, digged by every 
 place where they suspected anything to be buried, but although it 
 much grieved me to see such sport of my goods, yet on the other 
 side, I greatly joyed that I had surely found a certain token of 
 their safe being at Croatoan, which is the place where Manteo was 
 born and the Savages of the island our friends. 
 
 When we had seen so much of this place as we could, we returned 
 to our boats, and departed from the shore towards our ships with 
 as much speed as we could, for the weather began to be overcast 
 and very likely that a foul and stormy night would ensue. There- 
 fore. the same evening, with much danger and labor, we got our- 
 selves aboard. . . . 
 
 The next morning it was agreed by the Captain and myself with 
 the master and others, to weigh anchor and go for the place at 
 Croatoan where our planters were, for that then the wind was 
 good for that plan, and also to leave that cask with fresh water on 
 shore on the island until our return. So then they brought the 
 cable to the capstan, but when the anchor was almost apeak the 
 cable broke, by means whereof we lost another anchor, wherewith 
 we drove so fast unto the shore that we were forced to let fall a 
 third anchor, which came so fast home that the ship was almost 
 
i6 
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS 
 
 1602 
 
 Colonists 
 
 abandoned 
 
 Letter of Sir 
 Walter 
 Raleigh to 
 Sir Robert 
 Cecil 
 
 Aug. 21, 1602 
 Edwards’ 
 Life of 
 Raleigh, 
 
 II, 251 
 
 aground by Kenrick’s Mounts ; so that we were forced to let slip 
 the cable end for end. And if it had not chanced that we had 
 fallen into a channel of deeper water close by the shore than we 
 accounted of, we could never have gone clear of the point that 
 lies to the Southward of Kenrick's Mounts. 
 
 It was therefore determined that all should go for St. John or 
 some other island to the Southward for fresh water. And it was 
 further proposed that if we could any ways supply our wants of 
 victuals and other necessaries either at Hispaniola, St. John or 
 Trinidad, that then we should continue in the Indies all winter 
 following, with hope to make two rich voyages of one, and at our 
 return, to visit our Countrymen at Virginia. 
 
 The Captain and the whole Company in the Admiral (with my 
 earnest petitions) thereunto agreed, so it rested only to know what 
 the master of the Moonlight, our consort, would do therein. But 
 when we demanded them if they would accompany us in that new 
 determination, they alledged that their weak and leaky ship was 
 not able to continue it, wherefore the same night we parted, leaving 
 the Moonlight to go directly to England, and the Admiral set his 
 course for Trinidad, which course we kept for two days. 
 
 [Later they changed their course and went after the Spaniards, 
 and after many adventures finally reached Plymouth October 24th.] 
 
 References to the colony, 1591-1709 
 
 Whereas as I wrote unto vow in my last that I was goun to 
 Weymouth to speak with a pinnes of mine arrived from Virginia, 
 I found this bearer, Captayne Gilbert, ther also, who went on the 
 same voyage. But mvne fell 40 leaugs to the west of it, and this 
 bearer as much to the east; so as neither of them spake with the 
 peopell. But I do sende both the barks away agayne, having saved 
 the charg in sarsephraze woode ; but this bearer bringing sume 
 2200 waight to Plampton, his adventurers have taken away their 
 parts and brought it to London. I do therefore humblie pray yow 
 to deal withe my Lord Admirale for a letter to make seasure of 
 all that which is come to London, either by his Lordship’s octoretye 
 or by the Judge: because I have a patent that all shipps and goods 
 are confiscate that shall trade their without my leve. And whereas 
 Sassaphraze was worth 10s., 12s. and 20s. per pound before Gilbert 
 returned, his cloying of the market, will overthrow all myne and 
 his own also. He is contented to have all stayde : not only for 
 this present ; but being to go agayne, others will also go and destroy 
 the trade, which otherwise would yield 8 or 10 for one, in certainty 
 and a return in XX weeks. . . . 
 
STRACHEY’S TRAVAILE INTO VIRGINIA 
 
 I beseich yow, favor our right : and vow shall see what a prety, 
 honorabell and sauf trade wee will make. 
 
 Yours ever to serve yow, 
 
 W. Ralegh. 
 
 [William Stracbey was secretary of the colony of Virginia, and 
 his "Historic of Travaile into Virginia Britannia” was apparently 
 written after the colony had been seated at Jamestown six years — 
 in 1613.] 
 
 The men, women and children of the first plantation at Roanoke 
 were by practize and commandment of Powhatan (he him- 
 self persuaded thereunto by his priests) miserably slaughtered, with- 
 out any offense given him, either by the first planted (who twenty 
 and od years had peaceably lyved intermyxed with those Savages 
 and were out of his territory) or by those who nowe are come to 
 inhabit some parte of his desarte lands. 
 
 Southward they [Newport’s exploring party] went to some parts 
 of Chowanook and the Mangoangs, to search there those left by 
 Sir Walter Raleigh, which parts — to the towne of Chesepeak — hath 
 formerly been discovered by Mr. Harriott and Sir Ralph Lane. 
 
 The high land is in all likelihoodes, a pleasant tract, and the 
 mould fruitful, especially what may lye to the Southward, where 
 at Peccarecamek and Ochanahoen by the relation of Machumps,* the 
 people have houses built with stone walls, and one story above 
 another, so taught them by the English w r ho escaped the slaughter at 
 Roanoke, at which time this our Colony, under the conduct of 
 Captain Newport, landed within the Chesepeake Bay, where the 
 people breed up tame turkeys about their houses, and take apes 
 in the mountains, and where at Ritanoe the Weroance Eyanoco 
 perserved seven of the English alive, four men, and two boys and 
 one younge mavde (who escaped and fled up the river of Choanook) 
 to beat his copper, etc. 
 
 [Powhatan] seems to command south and north from the Mango- 
 angs and Chowanoaks, bordering upon Roanoke and the old Vir- 
 ginia, a town pallisadode standing at the north end of the bay. 
 
 He doth often send unto us to temporize with us, awaiting per- 
 haps a fit opportunity (inflamed by his furious and bloody priests) 
 to offer us a taste of the same cup which he made our poor country- 
 men drink of at Roanoke. 
 
 [In “The True and Sincere Declaration” made by the governor 
 and councillors of the Jamestown settlement in December, 1609 — 
 they speak of having] intelligence of some of our nation planted 
 by Sir Walter Raleigh, yet alive, within fifty miles of our fort, who 
 
 *An Indian of Powhatan’s tribe who had been to England. 
 
 17 
 
 1613 
 
 1613. 
 
 William 
 
 Strachey’s 
 
 Travaile 
 
 into 
 
 Virginia, 85 
 
 Strachey, 26 
 
 Strachey, 48 
 
 1609. 
 
 The True 
 and Sincere 
 Declaration 
 
CONTEMPORANEOUS DOC U MEN TS 
 
 1608 
 
 Brown’s 
 
 Genesis, 
 
 h 349 
 
 Smith’s 
 
 True 
 
 Relation. 
 
 Brown’s 
 
 Genesis, 
 
 I, 184 
 
 February, 
 
 1608 
 
 December, 
 
 1608 
 
 can open the womb and bowels of this country; as is testified by 
 two of our Colony sent out to seek them, who (though denied by 
 the savages speech with them) found Crosses and Letters, the Char- 
 acters and assured Testimonies of Christians, newly cut in the barks 
 of trees. 
 
 [The discovery of these characters recently cut in the barks of 
 trees at that time locates some of Raleigh's colony within fifty miles 
 of Jamestown in 1608. The narrative continues:] 
 
 What he knew of the Dominions, he spared not to acquaint me 
 with, as of certain men cloathed at a place called Ochanahonan, 
 cloathed like me. 
 
 [And again:] We had agreed with the King of Paspehegh to con- 
 duct two of our men to a place called Panawicke, beyond Roanoke 
 where he reported many men to be apparelled. We landed him at 
 Warraskoyack, where playing the villain and deluding us for rewarde, 
 returned within three or four days after, without going further. 
 
 [Smith sent from Warraskoyack, Master Scitlemore and two 
 guides to seek for the Lost Colony of Sir Walter Raleigh. 
 
 Alexander Brown has found and embodied in his work a rude 
 drawing sent by Francis Nelson from Virginia in 1608 to illustrate 
 Smith’s “True Relation,” and the same year sent to Spain from 
 London. 
 
 On this map, on the Chowan, or on the Nottoway, falling into 
 the Chowan River, Ochanahonan is placed: and on the Tar, or upper 
 Pamlico River, “Pakrakanick" is located: and near it is a legend: 
 “Here remayneth 4 men clothed that came from Roanoak to 
 Ochanahonan.” Between the Chowan and the Moratoc (Roanoke 
 River) on this map is a legend: "Here the King of Paspehegh 
 reported our men to be, and wants to go.” And that region is 
 marked "Pananiock.” 
 
 On the map, the point Warraskoyack, from which Master Scitle- 
 more and two guides started, and where Smith landed "the King 
 of Paspehegh to conduct two of our men to a place called Pana- 
 wicke, beyond Roanoke," is on a stream that probably is intended 
 to represent Nansemond River. 
 
 This map was drawn on the relation of some Indian. The In- 
 dians of the James River had no connection with those farther 
 south. Powhatan’s jurisdiction did not extend over the Chowan- 
 ists or the Mongoaks. The Indian who gave the information on 
 which the drawing was based probably had but little familiarity with 
 the localities, knowing about the rivers but nothing of the coast. 
 He knew that the first river was the Chowan and its tributaries ; that 
 the next was the Moratoc, and that farther on there was a third — 
 the Tar. He probably knew nothing of the sounds. He placed the 
 chief town of the Chowan Indians on the northeast side of the 
 Chowan River, and Ochanahonan on the other side. It seems to the 
 author of this work that Ochanahonan is probably the town called by 
 Lane Ohanoak. On DeBry’s map this town is placed above the town 
 of Chowanoak, but in Lane’s narrative it is located below that town. 
 
LAWSON'S SUGGESTIONS 
 
 19 
 
 The Indian account places Pananiock, where White’s colony set- 
 tled. between the Moratoc and the Chowan rivers, but as the Indian 
 was probably not acquainted with the waters of the sound, and only 
 knew that the Moratoc discharged itself some distance below the 
 Chowan, he inaccurately indicates that both emptied into the ocean. 
 In that he was mistaken ; but he probably was correct in locating 
 the settlement north of the Moratoc River. It was between the 
 mouth of the Moratoc and the Chowan that Lane observed the 
 "goodly highlands,” and that location being substantially "fifty miles 
 in the interior" from Roanoke Island, it is there we would expect to 
 find the place of permanent settlement. And it is there that the 
 Indian relation places it. 
 
 After the massacre, “four men and two boys and one young 
 mayde" escaped and fled up the river of Chowanoak, and were 
 preserved by the Weroance at Ritanoe. This flight could have been 
 readily made from a point north of the Moratoc River. It is also 
 stated that four men came to Ochanahonan. If there were still other 
 fugitives than those preserved at Ritanoe, their journey through 
 the woods would also indicate that Pananiock was on the north of 
 the Moratoc.] 
 
 Lawson’s suggestions 
 
 The first discovery and settlement of this country was by the 
 procurement of Sir Walter Raleigh, in conjunction with some public 
 spirited gentlemen of that age, under the protection of Queen 
 Elizabeth; for which reason it was then named Virginia, which 
 begun on that part called Roanoke Island, where the ruins of a 
 fort are to be seen at this day as well as some old English coins 
 which have been lately found, and a brass gun, a powder horn and 
 one small quarter-deck gun made of iron staves, which method 
 of making guns might very probably be made use of in those days 
 for the convenience of infant colonies. 
 
 A further confirmation of this we have from the Hatteras Indians 
 who either then lived on Roanoke Island or much frequented it. 
 These tell us that several of their ancestors were white people and 
 could talk in a book as we do : the truth of which is confirmed by 
 gray eyes being found frequently amongst these Indians and no 
 others. 
 
 They value themselves extremely for their affinity to the English 
 and are ready to do them all friendly offices. It is probable that this 
 settlement miscarried for want of timely supplies from England, 
 or through the treachery of the natives : for we may reasonably 
 suppose that the English were forced to cohabit with them for relief 
 and conversation : and that in process of time, they conformed 
 themselves to the manners of their Indian relations; and thus we 
 see how apt human nature is to degenerate. 
 
 1608 
 
 Lawson’s 
 History of 
 North Caro- 
 lina, 108 
 
 1709 
 
20 
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS 
 
 1585 
 
 The Hatteras Indians 
 
 1709 
 
 C R., VI, 
 995 
 
 The 
 
 Croatans 
 
 1754 
 
 C. R., V, 
 i6t 
 
 [The Hatteras Indians in 1585 were not under the same govern- 
 ment as the savages on the mainland. They were a different tribe; 
 and they were so few in numbers and so poor that when Lane was 
 making a counterplot against Pemisapan and pretended that he was 
 going to make a journey to Croatoan, he asked to be furnished 
 with men to hunt for him while there, and with four days’ pro- 
 visions to last during his stay. No subsistence could be gotten 
 from the Croatoans. A century later, in Lawson’s time, that tribe 
 had but sixteen fighting men, and even if all of these had a strain of 
 English blood in them, their white ancestors might have been but 
 a very small fraction of the English colonists. The tribe was still 
 further reduced during the Indian War of 1711-15, when it 
 adhered to the English. It lingered about its old home, suffering 
 the fate of other small tribes, gradually becoming extinct. In 1763 
 some of the Hatteras and Mattamuskeet Indians were still living on 
 the coast of Hyde, where a reservation had been set apart for them. 
 Because names borne by some of the colonists have been found 
 among a mixed race in Robeson County, now called Croatans, an 
 inference has been drawn that there was some connection between 
 them. It is highly improbable that English names would have been 
 preserved among a tribe of savages beyond the second generation, 
 there being no communication except with other savages. If Eng- 
 lish names had existed among the Hatteras Indians in Lawson’s 
 time, he probably would have mentioned it as additional evidence 
 corroborating his suggestion deduced from some of them having 
 gray eyes, and from their valuing themselves on their affinity to the 
 English. It is also to be observed that nowhere among the Indians 
 were found houses or tilled lands or other evidences of improve- 
 ment on the customs and manners of the aborigines. When this 
 mixed race was first observed by the early settlers of the upper 
 Cape Fear, about 1735, it is said that they spoke English, cultivated 
 land, lived in substantial houses, and otherwise practised the arts 
 of civilized life, being in these respects different from any Indian 
 tribe. In 1754 they were described as being on “Drowning Creek, 
 on the head of Little Peedee, fifty families, a mixed crew, a lawless 
 people, possessed the lands without patent or paying quit rents; 
 shot a surveyor for coming to view vacant lands, being enclosed in 
 great swamps.” From that time to the present these people have 
 remained in their settlement on Drowning Creek. It is worthy of 
 remark that in 1754 they were not considered Indians, for the 
 military officers of Bladen County particularly reported that there 
 were no Indians in that county. Whatever may have been their 
 origin and the origin of their English names, neither their names 
 
REFERENCES TO LOST COLONY 
 
 21 
 
 nor their English manners and customs could have been perpetuated *585 
 
 from the time of the Lost Colony without exciting some remark 
 on the part of explorers, or historians. Apparently that com- 
 munity came into being at a later date. Yet it is to be observed 
 that many persons believe them to be the descendants of the Lost 
 Colony; and the Legislature has officially designated them as 
 "Croatans,” and has treated them as Indians.*] 
 
 *The subject of the connection of these Croatans with the colonists 
 has been ably discussed by Mr. Hamilton McMillan and by Dr. 
 
 Stephen B. Weeks, who maintain that view with much plausibility. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 Explorations, 1584 
 
 England claims rights in America. — Sir Humphrey Gilbert. — 
 Walter Raleigh’s charter. — The landing of Amadas and Barlow. — 
 The spot uncertain. — The savages kindly. — Explorations. — Fortu- 
 nate return. — The new land named Virginia. — Conditions in America. 
 
 England claims rights in America 
 
 Six years before the discovery of America the Portu- 
 guese, the most adventurous sailors of that age, had already 
 explored the coast of Africa and had turned the Cape of 
 Good Hope in their search for a route to the Indies. The 
 fortunate issue of the expedition undertaken by Columbus 
 under the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella gave to Spain 
 a claim to the New World and opened a door for a serious 
 clashing of interest between those two faithful supporters of 
 the Catholic religion ; and to settle their differences and to 
 establish their respective rights of dominion, Pope Alex- 
 ander VI in 1493 issued a papal bull dividing the undiscov- 
 ered regions of the earth between them. Drawing- an 
 arbitrary line on the map of the world running a hundred 
 leagues west of the Azore Islands, he apportioned to Portugal 
 all to the east of it and, depriving Spain of any interest in 
 Africa, allotted to that country the whole of the New World 
 “west and south of Spain.” And by a treaty, the next year, 
 this line was fixed three hundred and seventy leagues west 
 of the Cape Verde Islands. 
 
 England, however, did not recognize that arbitration as 
 binding upon her and claimed the Atlantic coast of America, 
 by virtue of the discoveries of the Cabots, who, in 1497, had 
 coasted along it from Labrador to Florida. From that time 
 onward there were occasional movements made by English 
 navigators for exploration, trade, and even colonization, that, 
 however, had no practical result. Although among the 
 great fleet of vessels that were employed in the Newfound- 
 
GILBERTS PATENT 
 
 23 
 
 land fisheries there were generally to be found fifty or more 
 bearing the English flag, it was not until Elizabeth’s time 
 that an attempt was made at English colonization. During 
 her reign England made a marvellous advance in wealth, in 
 manufactures and in population ; and a spirit of enterprise 
 was manifested by her merchants no less than among those 
 bold soldiers and seamen who sought fame and fortune in 
 battling against the Catholic Spaniards on land, and despoil- 
 ing their richly laden vessels on the sea. 
 
 One of the most notable of the enterprising heroes who 
 made her reign illustrious was Sir Humphrey Gilbert, whose Gilbert 
 great capacity and services had been rewarded by his ap- 
 pointment as lord lieutenant of Ireland. 
 
 But he had other claims to royal favor. Her lustful father 
 having beheaded her mother, and having cast her off in 
 infancy as illegitimate, Elizabeth, the queen, while having- 
 slight regard for her father’s kin, stood loyally to her 
 mother’s. In her girlhood days she had fallen to the care 
 of Mrs. Catherine Ashley, a connection on her mother’s side, 
 to whom she declared that she owed more for kindness and 
 preservation than she could have done to her own mother. 
 
 And this woman, for whom the queen cherished such warm 
 gratitude, was the aunt of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. So be- 
 yond his undoubted ability and merit there was an influence 
 favorable to him at court. In June, 1578, Sir Humphrey , 57 g 
 sought and obtained from the queen a patent to explore and 
 settle any part of the New World not already occupied by a 
 Christian prince, and to possess it for himself and his heirs, 
 with power and dominion over the same — a right royal 
 grant to any subject of the realm. He associated with him- 
 self in this enterprise his younger half brother, Walter 
 Raleigh, and in June, 1583, sailed from England with five I583 
 vessels and landed in Newfoundland. Raleigh, however, 
 did not accompany him, but wrote to him just previous to 
 his departure expressing the queen’s great interest in the 
 enterprise. “I have sent you,” he wrote, “a token from her 
 Majesty, an ancor guided by a lady, as you see ; and farther, 
 her Highness willed me to sende you worde that she wished 
 you as great good-hap and safety to your ship, as if herself 
 were ther in parson, desiring you to have care of your sealf, 
 
24 
 
 1583 
 
 Raleigh 
 
 Edwards’ 
 Life of 
 Raleigh 
 
 EXPLORATIONS, 1584 
 
 as that which she tendereth ; and therefore for her sake, you 
 must provide for it accordingly. Farther, she commandeth 
 that you leve your picture with me." 
 
 Surely Gilbert stood well with the woman his aunt had 
 reared, she "desiring him to have care of himself, as of 
 that which she tendereth." But Elizabeth’s fears were 
 prophecies. That barren, frozen, inhospitable shore was not 
 favorable for colonization, and the vessel that bore the in- 
 trepid navigator, overwhelmed in a fearful tempest, went 
 down at sea, and the brave Sir Humphrey perished. 
 
 But even that great misfortune did not dismay the enter- 
 prising spirit of Raleigh. As a young man, a volunteer 
 soldier of fortune, he had fought in the ranks of Protestan- 
 tism against the French and Spanish legions of intolerant 
 Catholicism. For some years he had served in the Irish 
 War, where he had displayed heroism and bravery, and had 
 also led his band and had put to the sword six hundred 
 Spanish and Italian troops, after surrender, in Smerwick 
 Bay ; a bloody butchery. Appearing at court as bearer of 
 despatches, his pronounced views as to the thoroughness 
 with which a war of extermination should be waged ac- 
 corded so well with Elizabeth’s own policy that she called 
 him her “Oracle.” A month later the command of a band 
 of footmen in Ireland became vacant, and the queen, in 
 April, T582, issued her command to the general-in-chief: 
 “But chiefly that Our Pleasure is to have Our servant, 
 Walter Rawley, trained sometime longer in that Our realm 
 for his better experience in martial affairs, and for the 
 especial care that We have to do him good, in respect of his 
 kindred, that has served Us, some of them (as you know) 
 near about Our person, these are to require you that the 
 leading of the said band may be committed to the said 
 Rawley; and for that he is for some considerations by Us. 
 excused to stay here, Our pleasure is that the said band be, 
 in the meantime, until he repair into that Our realm, de- 
 livered to some such as he shall depute to be his Fieutenant 
 there." That was the year before Sir Humphrey lost his 
 life, Raleigh being kept at court under the eye of the queen, 
 “for the especial care she had to do him good.” But inter- 
 ested in this matter of colonization, he did not let it slumber. 
 
EXPEDITION OF AM AD AS AND BARLOW 
 
 2 5 
 
 The disastrous ending of his brother’s attempt did not deter 
 him. Although the queen made no such princely grant to 
 any other than Kate Ashley’s kin, Raleigh speedily obtained 
 a new patent for himself ; and at great expense he fitted out 
 at London two barks to transport, as his guests, a goodly 
 number of merchants, nobles and notable sailors, to discover 
 an eligible location for a colony in the warmer latitudes 
 bordering on Florida.* Having sailed from the Thames, 
 his vessels took their final departure from the west coast 
 of England on April 27, 1584, and sought the shores of 
 America by the southern route. Reaching the Canaries by 
 May 10th, a month later they arrived at the West Indies, 
 where they lingered a few days, and then entered the Gulf 
 Stream on their northward course. On July 2d they found 
 shoal water off Cape Fear; and then shortening sail, the 
 captains, Amadas and Barlow, proceeded cautiously until, 
 
 July 4th, f they arrived upon the coast. J Watching for a 
 harbor and an entrance, they coasted along one hundred FT 4, 1584, 
 and twenty miles before they discovered one, but finally 
 north of Cape Hatteras they discerned a breach and came 
 to anchor at its mouth. With grateful hearts, the company 
 assembled and piously returned solemn thanks for their safe 
 arrival ; and then they eagerly manned their boats and made 
 their landing on the south side of the inlet. This first land- 
 ing place of the English on the coast of Virginia was ap- 
 parently at the mouth of Trinity Harbor, as depicted on 
 the maps of the explorers, about twenty miles north of 
 Roanoke Island, and well within what has since been known 
 as Currituck Sound. It was forty miles north of Hattorask 
 Inlet, which afterward became the roadstead of the colonists. 
 
 *Jean Ribault had published in London his account of “Terra 
 Florida” in May. 1563, and on the dispersal of his colony later, 
 the survivors having put to sea in a small boat were picked up by 
 an English vessel and brought to England. (Brown’s “Genesis.”) 
 
 fBy the reckoning then in use the longest day in the year fell 
 on Julv 3d. This arrival on the coast was one day after the longest 
 day of the year. 
 
 tjohn Verazzani, a Florentine, sixty years before having sailed 
 from Madeira, on January 17, 1524, “through the assistance of 
 Heaven and the goodness of his ship, discovered a new land never 
 before seen by any man. either ancient or modern.” The point he 
 reached was this immediate locality where Raleigh’s captains first 
 saw the land. 
 
26 
 
 EXPLORATIONS, 1584 
 
 On reaching the solid ground, amid great rejoicing and with 
 ceremonial pomp, according to the custom of the times, they 
 took possession of the land in right of their sovereign, the 
 Queen of England, and formally delivered it over to the use 
 of Walter Raleigh. 
 
 The ceremony of taking possession Amadas and Barlow 
 deemed of such high importance that they made a record of 
 the particular gentlemen and men of account who were 
 present as witnesses of it, so that no question might be made 
 of their queen’s rightful title to the country. Being now 
 in possession, and having the English flag waving over the 
 soil of this new dominion, they proceeded to look about 
 them and view the land. With wonder they noted the 
 abundance of grapes that grew even on the sands of the 
 beach, where the surge of the sea overflowed them ; and in 
 all places else; on the hills and in the plains, on every little 
 shrub and climbing even up the branches of the high cedars. 
 Then with hurried footsteps they passed from the seaside 
 to the tops of the adjacent hills, and with amazement beheld 
 the broad sea stretching away on both sides as far as the 
 eye could reach. They found later that where they were 
 was an island some six miles wide and about twenty long, 
 a part of the sand banks that separated the sound from the 
 sea. “After we had entered into the haven,” wrote Barlow 
 in his narrative of the exploration, “we saw before us 
 another mighty long sea ; for there lies along the coast a 
 tract of island two hundred miles in length ; and between 
 these islands two or three entrances ; these islands being 
 very narrow, for the most part only six miles broad ; then 
 entering, there appeared another great sea, in breadth in 
 some places forty and fifty miles and in some twenty miles 
 before you come to the continent ; and in this enclosed sea 
 near a hundred islands, whereof one is sixteen miles long.” 
 
 As yet all was solitude. The face of nature was unbroken 
 by the hand of man. For two days they saw no evidences of 
 human life ; but on the third day after their arrival they 
 discovered a boat in the sound containing three savages, 
 who cautiously approached and held communication with 
 them. These being favorably received, and delighted with 
 the little presents given them, the next day forty or fifty 
 
An Indian Village 
 (From the John White Drawings) 
 
BARLOW'S REPORT, 1584 
 
 27 
 
 others visited the ships and exchanged commodities. It may 
 be observed in passing that the aborigines of America were 
 not generally called Indians by English writers until about 
 the year 1600 ; at that time they were spoken of only as 
 savages. But although so called, the natives were found to 
 be gentle in their disposition and not unfriendly, and them- 
 selves copper-colored, their admiration was unbounded at 
 the white skins of the strangers, their apparel and their great 
 ships, while the thunder and lightning from their muskets 
 filled them with awe. 
 
 A few days later Barlow proceeded in his boat to Roa- 
 noke Island, the distance being seven leagues, or about 
 twenty miles, and visited Granganimeo, brother to the King 
 Wingina, who lived with his wife in great state on that 
 island. The country was called by the natives Wingandacoa ; 
 and on the mainland were Secotan, Newsiok, and other 
 territories. For six weeks the explorers remained, making 
 excursions in all directions. July and August are delight- 
 ful months in those landlocked sounds, and all were charmed 
 by the natural advantages of that region as a place for 
 settlement. The beautiful flowers, the magnificent forests, 
 the noble watercourses, the abundance of game, the new and 
 valuable plants, possessing medicinal properties, all com- 
 bined to make this summer land appear to be a glorious 
 home for the proposed colony. And it must be remembered 
 that the company on board the ships had been especially 
 selected as men of experience for the purpose of ascertain- 
 ing a desirable location for the English settlement. 
 
 At length, taking specimens of the natural products, the 
 prized sassafras and the fragrant tobacco, and accompanied 
 by two young Indian men, Manteo and Wanchese, Amadas 
 and Barlow spread their sail and turned their prows home- 
 ward, reaching England safely about the middle of Septem- 
 ber. The happy return of the explorers caused much en- 
 thusiasm in England. Manteo and Wanchese excited wide- 
 spread interest among all classes, while the accounts given 
 by Amadas and Barlow and their companions of the new 
 land they had found led many to look with longing eyes 
 toward such an alluring country. Elizabeth, pleased at being 
 mistress of so fair a realm, and gratified at Raleigh’s success, 
 
28 
 
 1584 
 
 Ribault’s 
 Colony, 1564 
 
 EXPLORATIONS, 1584 
 
 conferred knighthood on him as a mark of her favor, and 
 at his solicitation named his possessions in America Virginia, 
 as a memorial of herself, who had remained through life a 
 virgin queen, and Parliament manifested its applause and 
 its hope of important commercial benefits by confirming and 
 ratifying the queen’s patent with all of its high powers and 
 exclusive privileges. 
 
 Conditions in America 
 
 Many years before, the Spaniards had explored and 
 claimed Florida; and when, in 1564, a French settlement 
 had been made on the river May by some Huguenots under 
 Ribault, at Fort Carolina, the Catholic Spaniards asserted 
 dominion and put them to the sword. In Canada, at the far 
 north, the French had made explorations and claimed the 
 possession, but between Florida and Canada the wilderness 
 was unbroken ; and when Amadas and Barlow landed on 
 the sandy shore near Cape Hatteras and raised there the 
 meteor flag of England and took possession of the country 
 for the English-speaking race, it was the first step in a series 
 of events of the utmost consequence to mankind. The limits 
 of Virginia were the undefined bounds of Canada at the 
 north, and of Florida at the south ; the Atlantic on the one 
 hand and the South Sea on the other; and that vast expanse, 
 so long a solitude, was in the course of time to become the 
 home of the greatest of all the nations of the earth. 
 
 Fortunate, indeed, was it for America and for humanity 
 that this first lodgment on our stormy coast was by a race 
 devoted to the Protestant faith, ardently attached to freedom 
 and personal liberty, and trained to the usages and customs 
 of the realm of England. Different certainly the world’s 
 history would have been had Raleigh not blazed the way ' 
 in English colonization, and had the dominion of the Span- 
 iards under the papal bull of Alexander been permanently 
 established throughout the Atlantic slope of America. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 Lane’s Colony, 1585-86 
 
 Lane’s colony. — Arrival at Wokokon. — Secotan visited. — Aquasco- 
 goc burned by Grenville. — Disembarkation at Hattorask. — Settle- 
 ment at Roanoke. — Fort Raleigh. — Explorations. — Manteo friendly. — 
 Wanchese hostile. — The peril of famine. — Lane penetrates the 
 Chowanoak; seizes Skyco ; ascends the Moratoc. — Food exhausted. — 
 The Indian conspiracy. — The hostiles gather at Dasatnonquepeuc. — 
 Lane strikes a blow and secures safety. — The arrival of Drake. — The 
 departure of the colonists. — Arrival of Grenville’s fleet. — Fifteen 
 men left to hold possession. 
 
 The first colony 
 
 Hastening to lay the foundations of a regal domain and 
 with an eager anticipation of rich returns from his com- 
 mercial dealings, Sir Walter now prepared a second expe- 
 dition, which was to transport a hundred colonists for settle- 
 ment in Virginia. Provisions were collected for a year’s 
 subsistence, by which time a new supply was to be furnished. 
 The colonists were to be under the authority of Ralph Lane, 
 as governor, who was chosen for this important post because 
 he had already given the world assurance of his bravery, 
 capacity, and resourcefulness. Among the enterprising men 
 of that day he ranked high for energy, courage and versatile 
 powers. Barlow, who, years before, had served with 
 Raleigh in Flanders, was again to be with the party, and was 
 to remain in Virginia as admiral ; while Cavendish, after- 
 ward famous as a bold and skilful navigator, Thomas 
 Hariot, highly distinguished as a mathematician and scien- 
 tist, and John White, whose maps and admirable sketches, 
 made in Virginia, are still extant, and who was deeply inter- 
 ested in the work of colonization, were likewise members of 
 the company. At length, the preparations being completed, 
 a fleet of seven vessels, all small, however, and capable of 
 entering the inlets of the Virginia sounds, under the com- 
 mand of Sir Richard Grenville, a kinsman of Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, and famous for his skill and bravery, set sail from 
 Plymouth on April 9, 1585. After various adventures that 
 
3 ° 
 
 LANE’S COLONY, 1585-86 
 
 15S5 
 
 The arrivaL, 
 June 25,1585 
 
 The 
 landing, 
 Aug. 17,1585 
 
 caused delay, the fleet passed the Cape Fear on June 23d, 
 and two days later came to anchor at Wokokon, now known 
 as Ocracoke, southwest of Cape Hatteras. One of the 
 vessels, under Captain Raymond, had, however, preceded the 
 others, and having reached the vicinity twenty days earlier, 
 had disembarked thirty-two men at Croatoan, a part of the 
 sandbanks nearer the cape, that island also being called the 
 “Admiral’s Island,’’ and Cape Hatteras itself was known as 
 Cape Amadas. 
 
 Exploration on the mainland 
 
 Some ten days were spent in examining the vicinity, and 
 then, on July nth, a considerable party embarked in four 
 large boats, and taking provisions for eight days, passed 
 over to the mainland, bordering on Pamlico Sound. They 
 visited the Indian town of Pomeiok, and the great lake, 
 Paquipe, and the town of Aquascogoc, and then Secotan, 
 and explored the rivers of that region. During the expedi- 
 tion an Indian at Aquascogoc stole a silver cup from Sir 
 Richard Grenville, and not restoring it, according to prom- 
 ise, Sir Richard went back from Secotan to that town for the 
 purpose of regaining it ; but the Indians had fled. So Sir 
 Richard, to punish the theft, burned and spoiled their corn, 
 which set those savages at enmity with the English. 
 
 Having gained some familiarity with those southern parts, 
 the admiral weighed anchor, and turning the cape, reached 
 Hattorask Inlet, having previously advised King Wingina 
 at Roanoke Island of their coming. The colonists were ac- 
 companied by Manteo and Wanchese. The former had been 
 strengthened in his friendship for the English, but the latter, 
 whether because of apprehensions of their great power, 
 which he had beheld in England, or because he belonged to 
 that tribe on the Pamlico whose corn Sir Richard had de-. 
 stroyed, displayed an unfriendly disposition toward them. 
 Arriving at Hattorask, the settlers disembarked on 
 August 17th, and landed on Roanoke Island. Who now can 
 enter fully into the feelings of those first adventurers, who 
 in that summer time made their lodgment in the New 
 World ! The unknown country, the placid waters of the 
 great sound, the delightful atmosphere and brilliant sunshine, 
 
LANE SETTLES ON ROANOKE ISLAND 
 
 3i 
 
 and their difficult intercourse with the untutored savages 
 who gathered around them — with their strange color, man- 
 ners, and customs — and themselves so far removed from 
 their distant homes — must have been constant subjects of 
 reflection, mingling pleasure and apprehension, gratifying 
 their spirit of adventure, and fostering hopes of personal 
 reward, but ever startling them with the extreme novelty 
 of their situation. A week after the landing Grenville took 
 his departure, leaving the colonists established on Roanoke 
 Island. 
 
 Fort Raleigh on Roanoke Island 
 
 Lane at once began the erection of dwelling houses at a 
 convenient point on the northern end of the island, and con- 
 structed a fort there, which he called Fort Raleigh ; and 
 from there excursions were made in every direction to get a 
 better acquaintance with the country and its products. To 
 the southward they went eighty miles to Secotan, that lay 
 near the mouth of the Neuse ; to the north they reached the 
 Chesipeans, some fifteen miles inland from the head of 
 Currituck Sound, and temporarily a small number of the 
 English established themselves in that region. From those 
 Indians, as well as from information derived from those 
 on the Chowan, Lane learned that there was a larger and 
 better harbor not far distant to the northward. On the Lane 
 west they penetrated to Chowanoak, a large Indian town explores 
 on the Chowan River, and in that region they found an 
 Indian sovereign, or Weroance, who ruled about eight hun- 
 dred warriors, having subject to him eighteen towns. These 
 towns, however, never consisted of more than thirty houses, 
 and generally of only ten or twelve. The houses were made 
 with small poles fastened at the top, the sides being covered 
 with bark, and usually about twenty feet long, although some 
 were forty and fifty feet, and were divided into separate 
 rooms. 
 
 In these explorations the colonists ascended the various 
 rivers emptying into the sound, and became familiar with the 
 adjacent country. Hariot devoted himself to the study of 
 the natural history of the region and wrote a valuable ac- 
 count of the animals, the vegetables, the plants, and the trees 
 
 1585 
 
3 2 
 
 1586 
 
 The spring 
 of 1586 
 
 Lane’s 
 expedition 
 up the 
 Mora toe 
 
 LANE’S COLONY, 1585-86 
 
 found there, and White made many sketches that are still 
 preserved in the British Museum. 
 
 Famine threatens the colonists 
 
 Among the savages, Ensinore, the old father of Wingina 
 and Granganimeo, and Manteo were friendly with the white 
 strangers ; but the other chieftains were not favorable to them, 
 although their bearing was not openly hostile. Granganimeo 
 unfortunately died shortly after the arrival of the colonists, 
 and upon that event Wingina, the king, according to some 
 usage, took the name of Pemisapan, and as time passed he be- 
 gan to intrigue against the English, in which he was joined 
 by Wanchese, Terraquine, Osacan, and other head men of the 
 Indians. Relying on an additional supply of provisions by 
 Easter, the colonists had been improvident, and by spring 
 had exhausted their stock, and the planting time of vege- 
 tables and corn had hardly come when they found them- 
 selves without food. Their reliance now, temporarily at 
 least, was on the corn of the Indians, and that was difficult to 
 obtain. Their situation had become one of peril, especially 
 as the Indians were reluctant to supply them. Pemisapan, 
 understanding their difficulties, and at heart their enemy, 
 now warily devised a plan for their destruction. He instilled 
 into the Chowanists and into the Mangoaks, a strong and 
 warlike tribe inhabiting the region on the Moratoc, or Roa- 
 noke River, that the English were their enemies ; and then 
 he informed Lane that the Mangoaks had much corn and 
 that there were rich mines of gold and copper and other 
 minerals in their country, and that they possessed stores 
 of pearls and precious stones. This appealed strongly to 
 Lane’s cupidity, and he eventually determined to visit them, 
 and applied to Pemisapan for guides, and three Indians 
 besides Manteo were assigned to accompany him. So in 
 March Lane set out on his expedition, taking the pinnace and 
 two smaller boats, with some fifty or sixty men. He visited 
 all the towns on the water’s edge, and was especially pleased 
 with some high land seen before reaching Chowanoak, sub- 
 ject to that king, where there was a goodly cornfield and a 
 town called Ohanoak. Arriving at Chowanoak, he found a 
 considerable assemblage there, the King Menatonon and his 
 
LANE EXPLORES ROANOKE RIVER 
 
 33 
 
 people being under apprehension that the English were 
 enemies to them. Although Lane as a precautionary 
 measure seized the person of the king and his young son, 
 
 Skyco, he, nevertheless, was able to disarm their fears, and 
 during a sojourn of two days with them obtained consider- 
 able information concerning the Mongoaks and their coun- 
 try, and also learned that by ascending the Chowan two days 
 in a boat he would be within a four days’ journey, by land, 
 of a king’s country that lay upon the sea. Obtaining some 
 corn from Menatonon, and keeping Skyco as a hostage for 
 further kindness, he sent the young Indian prince in the 
 pinnace to the fort, and with the remaining boats and forty 
 men pushed on up the Moratoc. His progress was slow, 
 and he observed the difference between the strong current 
 of that river and the sluggish waters of the great estuaries 
 of the broad sound of Weapomeiok, as the country north 
 of Albemarle Sound was then called. 
 
 The Mongoaks proved hostile, and when he had ascended 
 the river two days, having progressed about thirty miles, 
 they made an attack that was, however, easily repulsed. 
 
 Then penetrating into the country, Lane found that the Exploration 
 savages withdrew before him, removing all their corn and starvat ‘on 
 leaving nothing on which his men could subsist. His pro- 
 visions being nearly out, he left it to the men to determine 
 whether they should return or proceed ; but they had two 
 large mastiffs with them, and the men, declaring that the 
 dogs prepared with sassafras would be good for two days’ 
 food, would not then abandon the expedition ; and so they 
 pushed on farther, but without any favorable result. At 
 length, in danger of starvation, and their strength failing, 
 they turned down stream, and in one day reached an island 
 at the mouth of the river. 
 
 Their provisions now were entirely exhausted ; but here, 
 because of a heavy wind raising great billows in the sound, 
 they were constrained to remain the whole of the next day. 
 
 It was Easter eve ; and Lane says they truly kept the fast. 
 
 But Easter morn brought them new hope, and the storm 
 ceasing, they entered the sound, and by four o’clock reached 
 the Indian town of Chepanum (apparently on Durant’s 
 Neck, between Little and Perquimans rivers), which they 
 
34 
 
 LANE’S COLONY, 1585-86 
 
 1^! found deserted ; but fortunately there were fish in the weirs 
 
 that furnished timely food ; “for some of our company of the 
 light-horsemen were far spent,” those sailors who managed 
 the canoes or light boats since called gigs being facetiously 
 designated as “light-horsemen.” 
 
 The next morning, refreshed and strengthened, they re- 
 sumed their journey and returned to Roanoke in safety. 
 
 The Indians become hostile 
 
 In their absence, Pemisapan had stirred up the neighbor- 
 ing Indians to enmity against the remaining colonists, and 
 hoping that his devices for the destruction of Lane’s party 
 had succeeded, he sought to strengthen the resolution of his 
 followers by declaring that Lane and his party had either 
 died of starvation or had been cut off by the Mongoaks. 
 Ensinore, who had urged more friendly counsels, had un- 
 fortunately died toward the end of March, and there was 
 now no influence to counteract Pemisapan’s hostility ; and 
 urged by him, the Indians would no longer render any assist- 
 ance in the way of obtaining either fish or other food, and 
 the situation of the colony was becoming extremely critical. 
 The protracted absence of Lane’s party added to their de- 
 spondency, while it gave color to the report of their destruc- 
 _ . tion. Such was the deplorable condition on the island when 
 
 Pemisapan 1 , . r , . 
 
 plots Lane s reappearance, contrary to the prophecies ot his 
 enemies, together with the accounts given by the Indians 
 who had accompanied him of the ease with which he had 
 overcome those Mongoaks who had fought him, caused a 
 reaction in favor of the whites, and the Indians once more 
 began to set weirs for them and aided them in planting corn, 
 the planting season having now arrived. Still, until relief 
 should come from England, or the crops just planted should, 
 mature, the colonists had to rely on such supplies as they 
 could gather for themselves. In this extremity resort was 
 had to the oyster beds found in the sound ; and the better 
 to subsist, the men were divided into small companies, and 
 located at different points. Captain Stafford and twenty 
 others were sent to Croatoan, where, while getting oysters, 
 they could watch for the approach of the expected vessels 
 
Indians Cooking Fish 
 
THE CONSPIRACY OF P EA1 1 SAP AN 
 
 35 
 
 bearing relief ; at Hattorask a dozen more were stationed for 
 the same purpose, while every week companies of fifteen 
 or twenty were sent to the mainland to hunt for food. Thus 
 they managed to exist through the month of May, waiting 
 and" watching in vain for the promised supplies from 
 home. 
 
 In the meantime, Pemisapan, while preserving a friendly 
 guise, began to plot anew against them, and instigated the 
 hostile Indians to take the whites at a disadvantage, falling 
 upon them while scattered and cutting them off in detail. 
 
 To carry out this scheme he proposed to hold a great 
 assembly of Indians, to last a month, by way of solemnizing 
 the death of his father, Ensinore. This meeting was to be 
 held on the mainland, at Desamonquepeuc, opposite Roanoke 
 Island ; and besides seven hundred neighboring warriors, it 
 was to be attended by an equal number of the Mangoaks 
 and Chesipeans, who were to come and lie secretly in the 
 woods until the signal fires should give them the order to 
 rise. As a part of the same plan, it was arranged that 
 Terraquine, one of Pemisapan’s chieftains, with twenty men, 
 should set fire to the thatched roof of Lane’s house, and when 
 he should come out, they were to murder him. Another 
 leader and squad were to deal with Plariot the same way ; 
 and, similarly, all of the principal men of the colony were 
 to be surprised and overcome. Toward the end of May 
 the neighboring Indians began to assemble on Roanoke 
 Island, the night of June ioth being the time appointed for 
 the others to meet and carry into effect the murderous 
 plot. 
 
 Skyco, being the son of a king, on reaching the island 
 had been taken by Pemisapan to reside with his own family, 
 and as the young prince was held a prisoner and was deemed 
 hostile to the English, the plot became known to him; but reveals 
 Lane had treated him with kindness and consideration, and the pl ° 
 the young boy in gratitude revealed to him all the details of 
 the conspiracy. Confronted with such an emergency, 
 
 Lane’s strength of character and resolution promptly dis- 
 played itself. Had he been a weaker man, not so resource- 
 ful, the colonists would probably have fallen victims to 
 Indian strategy. 
 
 1586 
 
LANE’S COLONY, 1585-86 
 
 Lane’s strategy 
 
 Pemisapan had gone over to the mainland, ostensibly to 
 see about his growing corn crops, but really to attend to 
 collecting the hostile Indians. Lane, realizing that safety 
 could only be secured by the death of this wily foe and of 
 his coadjutors, resolved on an immediate stroke. He sent 
 him word to return to the island, for having heard of the 
 arrival of his fleet at Croatoan, he himself proposed to go 
 there ; and he wished Pemisapan to detail some of his men 
 to fish and hunt for him at Croatoan, and he also wanted 
 to purchase four days’ supply of corn to take with him. 
 Pemisapan, however, did not fall into the trap ; but while 
 promising to come, postponed doing so from day to day, 
 waiting for the assembling of the hostile Indians. At length, 
 on the last of May, all of Pemisapan’s own people having be- 
 gun to congregate on the island, Lane determined to wait 
 no longer. So that night he ordered “the master of the 
 light-horsemen,” as he termed his chief boatman, with a few 
 others to gather up at sunset all the canoes in the island, so 
 as to prevent any information being conveyed to the main- 
 land. As the “light-horsemen” were performing this duty, 
 they saw a canoe departing from the island, and in seizing it 
 two of the savages were killed. This aroused the Indians 
 who were present, and they at once took themselves to their 
 bows and the Englishmen to their muskets. Some few of 
 the savages were killed in the encounter and the others fled 
 down the island. At dawn the next morning, with the “light- 
 horsemen” and a canoe carrying twenty-five others, with the 
 “colonel of the Chesipeans,” and “the sergeant major,” Lane 
 hastened to the mainland, and sent word to Pemisapan that 
 he was coming to visit him, as he was about to depart 
 for Croatoan, and wished to complain of the conduct of 
 Osacan, who the night before had tried to convey away the 
 prisoner Skyco, whom he had there handcuffed. The Indian 
 king, ignorant of what had happened on the island, and not 
 suspecting any hostile purpose, received Lane and his at- 
 tendants, who, coming up, found him surrounded by seven 
 or eight of his principal Weroances, together with many 
 other warriors. 
 
COLONISTS RETURN TO ENGLAND 
 
 37 
 
 As soon as they met, Lane gave the agreed signal, “Christ, ^ 
 
 our Victory,” and immediately the colonel of the Chesipeans, 
 the sergeant major, and their company opened fire, and 
 Pemisapan and his chief men were slain and the others dis- 
 persed. A blow so sudden and terrible paralyzed the 
 Indians ; the plot was abandoned and the danger averted. 
 
 Drake arrives and the colonists return to England 
 
 A week later, on June 8th, the colony was thrown into an 
 ecstasy of excitement by the hasty arrival of a messenger 
 from Stafford, who reported seeing off Croatoan a fleet con- 
 sisting of more than twenty vessels ; but war had the year 
 before broken out between Spain and England, and it was 
 not at first known whether the ships belonged to friends 
 or foes. The next day, however, Stafford himself came, 
 having walked twenty miles by land, bringing a letter, prof- 
 fering food and assistance, from Sir Francis Drake, then 
 at Hattorask, who had just returned from sacking Santo Do- 
 mingo, Cartagena and St. Augustine. With a joyful heart, 
 
 Lane hastened to the fleet “riding at his bad harbor” ; and 
 Drake proposed to leave him a sufficient supply of provisions 
 and a small vessel that could pass the inlet and lie within 
 the sound. But before the necessary arrangements were 
 completed a terrific storm came up that lasted three days, 
 and the vessel which was to have been left was blown to 
 sea and did not return ; and much damage was done to the 
 other ships of the fleet, and many pinnaces and smaller boats 
 were entirely lost. After the storm had abated, Drake 
 offered to leave another vessel, but he then had none that 
 could enter the harbor ; so the ship, if left, would have had 
 to remain on the perilous coast. As an alternative propo- 
 sition Drake offered to take the colonists aboard and trans- 
 port them to England. After consideration, it was deemed 
 best to accept this last offer, and the different companies 
 into which the colony had been broken being again collected, 
 they embarked on June 19th and safely reached Portsmouth 
 on July 27th. Thus, after a nine months’ residence, ended first colony 
 the first attempt to plant a colony on Roanoke Island. 
 
 In the meantime, a bark bearing advice that a new fleet 
 was coming had been despatched from England, and some- 
 

 LANE’S COLONY, 1585-86 
 
 what later Sir Richard Grenville sailed with three vessels 
 freighted with supplies and bringing other colonists. The 
 first bark arrived immediately after the departure of Lane, 
 and finding the settlement abandoned, returned to England ; 
 but when Sir Richard came, a fortnight later, he remained 
 three weeks searching for the settlers and making explora- 
 tions ; and then putting fifteen men in the fort, with an ample 
 supply of provisions, he sailed away on a cruise against the 
 Spaniards. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 White’s Colony, 1587-91 
 
 Raleigh’s embarrassments. — Conveys an interest in Virginia to 
 Thomas Smith, John White, and associates. — The Citie of Raleigh in 
 Virginia. — White’s colony departs. — Howe murdered. — White de- 
 spoils the fields of the hostiles. — Baptism of Manteo. — Birth and 
 christening of Virginia Dare. — White returns to England. — The 
 Armada. — White’s first attempt to return to Virginia. — Raleigh 
 makes further conveyance of his interest. — White sails in Feb- 
 ruary, 1591. — Finds colony removed. — Mace’s voyage. — Elizabeth 
 dies. — Raleigh arrested for treason. — The settlement at Jamestown. — 
 Fate of the Lost Colony. 
 
 Raleigh’s Embarrassments 
 
 The unexpected return of Lane’s colonists greatly disap- 
 pointed Raleigh. His efforts at exploration and colonization 
 had involved great expenditures. He had already disbursed 
 forty thousand pounds in the enterprise, a sum approximat- 
 ing in this age half a million dollars, and that at a period 
 when there was no great accumulation of wealth in England. 
 He had now been at court some years and was a member 
 of Parliament ; and his fine powers and accomplishments, 
 his versatility of genius and varied learning, commended him 
 to the high favor of the queen, who gave substantial evi- 
 dence of her inclination to push his fortunes. In 1584 she 
 had bestowed on him a grant of twelve thousand acres of 
 forfeited land in Munster, Ireland, which he attempted to 
 colonize with English tenants and where he employed a 
 large force in cutting timber for market, which, however, 
 did not turn out a profitable enterprise. Also, beginning 
 in the same year, he received annually for five years profit- 
 able grants allowing him to export quantities of broadcloth 
 from England — a sort of monopoly ; and he likewise obtained 
 a lucrative monopoly in the grant of the “farm of wines,” 
 vesting in him the power of selling licenses for the vending 
 of wine and, in some measure, of regulating the price of 
 that commodity throughout the kingdom. Some months 
 after Lane’s return, on the attainder of Anthony Babbington, 
 
40 
 
 WHITE’S COLONY, 1587-91 
 
 1585 
 
 Edwards 1 
 Life of 
 Raleigh 
 
 1586 
 
 The 
 
 corporation 
 
 the queen was also pleased to bestow on Raleigh all of the 
 estates that had come to the Crown by the attainder, which 
 gave him rich manors and broad acres in five counties of 
 England. In July, 1585, when the war broke out with Spain, 
 he was created Lord Warden of the Stannaries (Cornwall 
 and Devon) and Vice-Admiral of Cornwall and Devon; and 
 two years later he was appointed captain of the Queen’s 
 Guard, the office of a courtier, to succeed Hatton, who was 
 to become Lord Chancellor. But neither his outlays in Ire- 
 land nor his expenditures for Virginia had yielded him any 
 return, while his living at court, where he indulged in mag- 
 nificent display, involved large expenses. 
 
 The Citie of Raleigh in Virginia 
 
 Such were his circumstances when Lane’s colony returned 
 to England in the fall of 1586. But unwilling to abandon 
 the enterprise and still hoping for profit from establishing 
 a trade in Virginia, he now determined to associate mer- 
 chants with him who would share the profits and the ex- 
 penses. At that time some of the wealthy merchants of 
 London were looking with eager eyes for new avenues of 
 trade and commerce. Chief among these was Thomas 
 Smith, whose subsequent enterprises led to his receiving 
 knighthood at the hands of his appreciative sovereign ; and 
 of their number was Richard Hakluyt, to whom posterity is 
 indebted for the collection and publication of many narra- 
 tives of exploration and discovery in that interesting period. 
 To Smith and eighteen other merchants who risked their 
 money in the enterprise Raleigh granted free trade forever 
 with his colony in Virginia, and to thirteen others he 
 assigned the right of governing the colony. Of these John 
 White, who had been in all the previous expeditions to Vir- 
 ginia, was constituted the governor, and the other twelve, 
 who also were to accompany the colony, were nominated 
 his assistants ; among them Ananias Dare and Dionysius 
 Harvie, who carried their wives with them, and the former 
 of whom was White’s son-in-law. These thirteen Raleigh, 
 by patent, under the powers contained in his own charter, 
 on January 7, 1587, erected into a corporation under the 
 name of “The Governor and Assistants of the Citie of 
 
RALEIGH ASSIGNS TO A CORPORATION 
 
 Raleigh in Virginia” ; and the nineteen merchants were made 
 members, “free of the corporation.” 
 
 A permanent settlement attempted 
 
 These preliminaries being arranged, a new colony was col- 
 lected, consisting of one hundred and twenty-one persons, of 
 whom seventeen were women, twelve apparently being wives 
 accompanying their husbands, and nine being children. On 
 April 26, 1587, three vessels bearing the colonists left Ports- 
 mouth for Plymouth ; and on May 8th finally took their de- 
 parture from that port for Hattorask, where, after many 
 adventures, two of them arrived on July 22d, and a few days 
 later the other. Raleigh had given written directions that 
 after taking in the fifteen men left by Grenville the vessels 
 were to proceed to Chesapeake Bay, where a new settlement 
 was to be made, and such was the purpose of Governor 
 White. But when White with a part of his men had left 
 the ship to visit Roanoke Island for the purpose of taking 
 off the fifteen men, Ferdinando, the admiral, influenced the 
 sailors to say that they could not be received back into the 
 ship, thus constraining all the colonists to disembark. At 
 sunset White’s boat reached the island, but the only trace 
 he could find of the men left by Grenville was the bones 
 of one that lay unburied where he had been slain. The fort 
 had been razed down, but the cottages were still standing, 
 some of the outer planks, however, being torn off. Forced 
 to remain there, White set the men at once to work to repair 
 the buildings and to construct others. The colonists had 
 hardly gotten established in their new homes, when George 
 Howe, one of the assistants, having strayed off two miles 
 from the fort catching crabs on the shore opposite the main- 
 land, was set upon by some savages, receiving sixteen 
 wounds from arrows, and was slain. This was an evidence 
 of hostility that White at once sought to allay. He sent 
 Stafford with twenty men, accompanied by Manteo, who 
 along with another Indian, Towaye, had gone to England 
 and had now returned, to Croatoan, where Manteo’s mother 
 and kindred were ; and from these friendly Indians it was 
 learned that some savages from the mainland had taken the 
 men left by Grenville unawares, had killed some of them, 
 
 41 
 
 1587 
 
 April, 1587 
 
 The colony 
 settled 
 
42 
 
 j 5 8 7 
 
 The baptism 
 of Manteo 
 and Virginia 
 Dare 
 
 WHITE’S COLONY , 1587-91 
 
 set fire to the house where they had taken refuge, and driven 
 them from the island ; they taking their boat and going to 
 an island near Hattorask, after which they had never been 
 seen. They also said that it was a remnant of Wingina's 
 men dwelling at Dasamonquepeuc who had slain Howe. To 
 establish more amicable relations with these hostile Indians, 
 the Croatoans were requested to go over to their towns and 
 proffer them the friendship of the English, who promised 
 to forgive and forget all past offences ; and it was agreed 
 that this embassy was to return with the answer within seven 
 days. At the end of the time, no answers being received, 
 White deemed it best to strike a blow to show that the 
 colonists were to be dreaded. At night, accompanied by 
 Stafford and twenty-four men and Manteo, he crossed over 
 to Dasamonquepeuc and secreted his force near the Indian 
 town ; and early in the morning he opened fire on some 
 Indians discovered there. Unfortunately, these were not 
 the hostiles, who, fearing punishment for the murder of 
 Howe, had fled, leaving their corn standing in the fields ; but 
 they were some of the Croatoans who had gone there to 
 gather the corn. White, disappointed in his revenge, de- 
 spoiled the fields and returned home. The colony being now 
 settled, on August 13th a ceremony was performed at Roa- 
 noke that gave expression to the gratitude of Raleigh and the 
 colony for the faithful and friendly services of Manteo. 
 
 By command of Sir Walter, the rite of baptism was admin- 
 istered to Manteo, and there was conferred on him the order 
 of Knighthood ; and he was created Lord of Roanoke and 
 Dasamonquepeuc. And five days later another interesting 
 event occurred, the birth of the first English child born in 
 America. On August 18, 1587, Eleanor Dare, wife of 
 Ananias Dare and a daughter of the governor, gave birth to 
 a daughter, who the next Sunday was christened Virginia, 
 because she was the first Christian born in the new country. 
 A few days later, also, was born to Dionysius Harvie and 
 his wife, Margery, a child, whose name, however, has not 
 been preserved. 
 
 The colonists to remove into the interior 
 
 It was now discovered that certain other particular sup- 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Lost Colony 
 
WHITE RETURNS TO ENGLAND 
 
 43 
 
 plies were needed, as this was intended to be a permanent G 
 
 settlement; and there was consultation as to who should 
 return with the fleet to obtain them. It was finally deter- 
 mined that White himself would answer the purpose best, 
 and he agreed to go with the vessels back to England. But 
 before his departure it was resolved that the colony should 
 remove to some point about fifty miles in the interior ; and 
 it was agreed that they would, on departing from the island, 
 leave some sign indicating their location ; and if in distress, 
 a cross would be the sign. It is probable that this point, 
 fifty miles in the interior, where the colony was to locate, 
 was the highland near Ohanoak, where there were goodly 
 cornfields and pleasant surroundings. 
 
 At length, the fleet being ready to sail, on August 27th, 
 after a month’s sojourn with the colony, White embarked 
 and departed for England. On the return voyage he met 
 with many perilous adventures, but finally, about the middle 
 of October, made land at Smerwick, on the west coast of 
 Ireland, and in November reached Hampton. With him Doyle, 
 came to England still another Indian, who, accepting Chris- Anferica!" 
 tianity, was baptized at Bideford Church ; but a year later T ’ 72 
 died, and was interred there. When the colonists receded 
 from White’s view, as he left the shores of Virginia, they 
 passed from the domain of history, and all we know is that 
 misfortune and distress overtook them ; and that they mis- 
 erably perished, their sad fate being one of those deplorable 
 sacrifices that have always attended the accomplishment of 
 great human purposes. 
 
 Conditions in England on White’s arrival 
 
 On White’s arrival, in November, 1587, seeking aid for 
 the colony, doubtless the merchants and others who had 
 ventured their means with Raleigh in this last attempt at 
 colonization and trade in Virginia, were willing to respond ; 
 but there were rumors of the preparation in Spain of a great 
 Armada to invade England, and an order had been issued 
 forbidding the departure of any vessel from any English 
 port. In that period of excitement and alarm, the necessi- 
 ties of the distant colonists were of less moment than the 
 pressing matters at home. Still Raleigh, exerting his per- 
 
44 
 
 WHITE’S COLONY, 1587-91 
 
 1588 
 
 The 
 
 Invincible 
 Armada, 
 July 21-29, 
 1588 
 
 Doyle, 
 English 
 in America, 
 I, 72 ; 
 Edwards’ 
 Life of 
 Raleigh, 
 
 I, 91 
 
 sonal influence, obtained a license for two small vessels to 
 sail, and on April 25, 1588, White departed with them from 
 Bideford for Virginia. The captains, however, were more 
 intent on a gainful voyage than on the relief of the colonists, 
 and betook themselves to the hazardous business of making 
 prizes. At length one of them, meeting with two ships of 
 war, was after a bloody fight overcome and rifled, despoiled 
 and disabled, and she returned to England within a month ; 
 and three weeks later, the other, equally badly served, came 
 home without having completed the voyage. Soon after- 
 ward, the great Armada appeared, and Raleigh was among 
 those who made havoc of the Spanish galleons in the “morris 
 dance of death,’’ that, beginning in the straits, lasted around 
 the north of Scotland and on the coast of Ireland. Im- 
 mediately on his return he was challenged to mortal combat 
 by the queen’s favorite, the handsome boy, Essex, and for a 
 time retired to Ireland in seclusion. But soon all his powers 
 and resources were employed in distressing Spanish com- 
 merce and in taking rich prizes, while England was again 
 and again threatened with Spanish invasion. In the follow- 
 ing March, 1589, because, perhaps, both of his public em- 
 ployments and of the greater facilities of the merchants to 
 care for the colonists, he transferred his rights in Virginia 
 by an assignment or lease to Thomas Smith, White and 
 others, and relinquished his interest in the colony. What 
 particular efforts these merchants made to relieve the 
 planters are not recorded ; but White afterward men- 
 tioned “having at sundry times been chargeable and trouble- 
 some to Sir Walter for the supplies and relief of the planters 
 in Virginia.” Because of the inhibition of the sailing of 
 merchant ships from England, no opportunity presented for 
 White to return to Virginia until early in 1591. He then 
 ascertained that John Watts of London, merchant, was about 
 to send three vessels to the West Indies ; but when they were 
 ready to depart, a general stay was again commanded of all 
 ships throughout England. Taking advantage of this cir- 
 cumstance, White applied to Sir Walter to obtain a special 
 license for these vessels to sail, on condition that they would 
 transport a convenient number of passengers with their fur- 
 niture and necessaries to Virginia. The license was obtained 
 
THE HISTORICAL RESULT 
 
 45 
 
 by Raleigh, but the condition was not observed ; and the only 
 passenger they would take was White himself, and no pro- 
 visions for the relief of the colonists. 
 
 White sails for Roanoke 
 
 Leaving Plymouth on March 20, 1591, they sailed for the 
 West Indies and sought to make prizes, and had some des- 
 perate encounters. Eventually, on August 3d, they reached 
 Wokokon, but were driven off by a storm. On Monday, 
 the 9th, however, the weather being fair, they returned and 
 anchored and went on shore, obtaining a supply of fresh 
 water and catching great stores of fish. On the morning of 
 the 1 2th they departed, and toward night dropped anchor at 
 the north end of Croatoan. The next morning they sounded 
 the inlet there, and then, on August 15th, came to anchor 
 at Hattorask, seeing a great smoke on Roanoke Island. The 
 next morning, after directing signal guns to be fired, to warn 
 the colonists of their presence, they entered the inlet ; but 
 observing a great smoke toward the southwest, they landed 
 and proceeded to it, only to meet with disappointment. Re- 
 turning to their vessels, the morning following they set off 
 again ; but on passing the bar one of the boats was upset, 
 and seven of the crew, including the captain, the mate and 
 the surgeon, were drowned, and the remaining men pro- 
 tested against proceeding further. Distressing, indeed, was 
 the situation of White and unpropitious the outlook of a 
 journey begun with such a calamity. But at length the men 
 reluctantly yielded and the boats proceeded to the island, 
 arriving after night, anchoring off the shore and sounding 
 a trumpet call and familiar tunes to evoke a response. But 
 all in vain. No answer came, although in the distance a 
 firelight was seen. At break of day they landed and hastened 
 to the fire, finding no sign of the English. Then pressing 
 across the island, they skirted along its western shore until 
 they came to the north point near where the settlement had 
 been. There on the shore they found a tree on which had 
 been cut the Roman letters C. R. O. With despondent c - R - °- 
 hearts they proceeded to the place of settlement, and saw 
 that the houses had been taken down and the place strongly 
 enclosed with a high palisade of great trees, very like a 
 
46 
 
 WHITE’S COLONY, 1587-91 
 
 I 59 I 
 
 Croatoan 
 
 Edwards’ 
 Life of 
 Raleigh 
 
 Mace 
 
 fort ; and on a tree was cut the word “Croatoan,” but with- 
 out the cross or sign of distress. The boats were gone ; the 
 pieces of light ordnance had been taken away, only some 
 of the heavier pieces remaining, and the fort was all grown 
 up with grass and weeds, as if long since deserted. A trench 
 in which White had buried his boxes had been opened and 
 his maps and property scattered, and his armor lay on the 
 ground, almost eaten through with rust. It was a scene of 
 desolation. There was still a hope, yet it must have been 
 but faint, that the colonists could be found at Croatoan. 
 White had just sailed along that island and had anchored 
 at its northern end and had beheld no sign of the presence 
 of any English there. Returning to the inlet, it was, how- 
 ever, determined to go again to that island. But after they 
 had weighed anchor, the design was relinquished ; and one 
 vessel returned to England and the other steered for the 
 West Indies. From that time onward the English who 
 settled in Virginia were known as Raleigh’s Lost Colony. 
 They were not forgotten, but were never discovered. 
 
 Raleigh’s efforts to relieve the colony 
 
 Greater enterprises now absorbed Raleigh, who had be- 
 come one of the most heroic of that splendid company of 
 heroes who brought lustre to the Elizabethan Age; but still, 
 between 1587 and 1602, it is said that he sent out no less 
 than five expeditions to seek his unfortunate company in 
 Virginia. In 1602 he bought a ship, hired a crew, placed 
 it under the command of Samuel Mace, who had twice be- 
 fore sailed for Virginia, and in March sent it forth to search 
 for the colonists. Mace struck Virginia forty leagues south- 
 west of Hatteras, and spent a month trading with the 
 Indians as he scoured along the coast ; but without going 
 to Croatoan or Hattorask, he returned to Weymouth iri 
 August. Raleigh hastened there to meet him, and found in 
 the same harbor another vessel likewise just arrived from 
 Virginia, but which had missed Roanoke also, by forty 
 leagues to the northward. He, however, proposed to send 
 them both away again, having saved the cost in the sassa- 
 fras they brought, which he claimed because of his owner- 
 ship of the land under his patent, no one having the right, 
 
JAMESTOWN INSTEAD OF ROANOKE 
 
 47 
 
 he asserted, to trade in Virginia except by his license. The ^ 
 
 next year Richard Hakluyt, one of the grantees in the charter 
 of the City of Raleigh, formally applied to Sir Walter for 
 permission to sail to northern Virginia ; but in the spring 
 of that year, 1603, Elizabeth died, and before the summer 
 had passed Raleigh was arrested for treason. 
 
 Jamestown settled — The Roanoke colony disappears 
 
 In the meantime the spirit of enterprise which had been 
 stimulated by Raleigh’s efforts at colonization had grown, 
 and Thomas Smith and a few other London merchants, in 
 1599, had laid the foundations of the East India Company, 
 whose great success led, in 1606, to the formation of another Virginia 
 corporation, called the Virginia Company, with two divi- f 6 °6 Pany ’ 
 sions, at the head of one division being Thomas Smith, now 
 knighted, and other London merchants and gentlemen who 
 had been associated with Raleigh in his enterprise ; and 
 on December 19, 1606, Christopher Newport set sail with 
 one hundred and forty-three immigrants and, on May 13th, 1607 
 settled Jamestown. The next year Newport was directed 
 to make an expedition to find Raleigh’s Lost Colony. 
 
 The fate of White’s colonists 
 
 The colonists, warned by previous mishaps, certainly 
 brought with them sufficient supplies to last until a crop 
 would mature in the fall of 1588, and they did not neglect 
 to begin their planting operations. 
 
 On his return White found no sign of any planting on 
 Roanoke Island ; nor was there evidence of any conflict 
 with the savages — no graves, no butchery. The dwellings 
 had been taken down and removed, and the light ordnance 
 had been carried away. The growth of weeds indicated that 
 two seasons had passed since the removal, and apparently the 
 spot had not been revisited by the colonists in many months. 
 
 On his departure for England, the avowed intention was 
 for the colonists to settle fifty miles in the interior ; and when 
 he coasted along Croatoan leisurely he observed no sign of 
 their presence on the shore. Instead of establishing them- 
 selves on that barren sandbank, exposed to the attacks of the 
 Spaniards, with no inviting streams, nor fertile fields, nor 
 shady forests, they looked westward for a secure and agreea- 
 
48 
 
 WHITE'S COLONY, 1587-91 
 
 ble location for their permanent settlement. Fifty miles 
 would have brought them to the “goodly highlands, on the 
 left hand between Muscamunge and Chowanoak,” where the 
 Indians already had fertile cornfields ; and there, according to 
 Indian statements of different sources, they appear to have 
 seated themselves on what are now the pleasant bluffs of 
 Bertie County. 
 
 Several vessels were at different times despatched to search 
 for them ; but none of these entered the great sounds. At 
 length, after Jamestown was settled, Newport in 1608 was 
 specially directed to make an exploration to discover them. 
 An expedition by water did not proceed far and was without 
 result. A searching party by land penetrated to the territory 
 of the Chowanists and Mangoaks, but did not find the 
 colonists. 
 
 Smith in his “True Relation’’ (1608) repeats information 
 derived from the king of the Paspehegh Indians, who re- 
 sided above Jamestown, to the effect that there were men ap- 
 parelled like himself at Ochanahonan, which seems to have 
 been on the Nottoway ; and that there were many at Pana- 
 wicke, a region apparently between the Chowan and Roanoke 
 rivers. Five years later, William Strachey, the secretary of 
 the Jamestown colony, gave some account of the missing colo- 
 nists derived from Machumps, a friendly Indian of con- 
 siderable intelligence, who had been to England and who 
 came freely and often to Jamestown. At Peccarecamek and 
 Ochanahonan, the Indians had houses built with stone walls, 
 one story above another, having been taught by the English 
 who escaped the slaughter at the time of the landing at 
 Jamestown. And at Ritanoe there were preserved seven of 
 the colonists, four men, two boys and a young maid, who 
 having escaped, fled up the Chowan. 
 
 For more than twenty years the colonists were reported 
 to have lived peaceably with the Indians and to have inter- 
 mixed with them in their locality, beyond the territory of 
 Powhatan ; and then on the arrival of the colonists at James- 
 town, Powhatan, persuaded by his bloody priests, procured 
 their slaughter, he being present on the occasion. Some 
 escaped; but none ever had communication with the James- 
 town settlers. 
 
FATE OF THE COLONY 
 
 49 
 
 Peccarecamek was apparently on the upper Pamlico, or 
 Tar River; and perhaps a trace of English blood might be 
 found in the aggressiveness' and fierceness of the Indians of 
 that region a century later. 
 
 Traces of the colonists 
 
 If others were preserved on the sandbanks, as they might 
 well have been, escaping in their pinnace through the waters 
 of the sound, a trace of them possibly came down to posterity 
 through their intermixture with the Hatteras Indians. That 
 small tribe had always been friendly with the whites : and 
 as late as 1709, grey eyes were found among them and they 
 cherished a friendship with the English because of their 
 affinity, according to their own traditions. Yet there were 
 other opportunities for an admixture of the races. Thirty- 
 two men of Captain Raymond’s company were among them 
 twenty days before the arrival of Lane’s colony, and the 
 following summer Captain Stafford and twenty men were 
 with them until Drake came in June, and doubtless others 
 were stationed there the next year to keep watch for the 
 expected return of White, until all hope had expired. Other 
 than these possible traces no memorial has ever been dis- 
 covered of the existence of the Lost Colony, whose mournful 
 fate, involved in mystery, has ever been a fruitful theme of 
 song and story. 
 
THE SECOND EPOCH— 1629-63 
 
 PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Charters and Colonial Officers 
 
 The charters. — The concessions. — The Lords Proprietors and 
 their successors. — The Palatines. — The governors, speakers of the 
 Assembly, and chief justices. 
 
 Carolana 
 
 Sir Robert Heath’s Patent — 30th of October, 1629. 
 
 By this grant Charles I conveyed to his Attorney-General, Sir 
 Robert Heath, Knight, his heirs and assigns forever so much of the 
 Continent of America as lay between 31 and 36 degrees of North 
 latitude, — “to have, exercise, use and enjoy in like manner as any 
 Bishop of Durham within the Bishopric or County Palatine of 
 Durham in our Kingdom of England ever heretofore had, held, used, 
 or enjoyed, or of right, ought or could have, hold, use, or enjoy. 
 And by these presents we make, create and constitute the same 
 Sir Robert Heath, his heirs and assigns, true and absolute Lords and 
 Proprietors of the region and territory aforesaid.” 
 
 “Know that we ... do erect and incorporate them into a 
 Province, and name the same Carolana, or the Province of Caro- 
 lana.” “Furthermore know ye that we do give power to the said 
 Sir Robert ... to form, make and enact and publish what laws 
 may concern the public state of said Province or the private profit 
 of all according to the wholesome directions of, and with the 
 counsel, assent and approbation of the Freeholders of the sarrie 
 Province.” 
 
 “Furthermore lest the way to honours and dignityes may seem 
 to be shutt, etc. do for ourselves, our heirs and successors give 
 full and free power to the aforesaid Sir Robert Heath, Knight, 
 his heirs and assigns to confer favours, graces and honours upon 
 those well-deserving citizens that inhabit the aforesaid Province, 
 and the same with whatever titles and dignityes (provided they be 
 not the same as are now used in England) to adorne at his pleasure.” 
 
Great Seal of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina 
 
THE CHARTERS OF 1663 AND 1665 
 
 Si 
 
 The charter to the Lords Proprietors 
 
 By the first charter, King Charles II on the 20th day of March, 1663, 
 granted to the grantees, the same territory conveyed to Sir Robert 
 Heath in 1629, and in large measure granted the same powers ; such, 
 for instance, as that the grantees, with the consent of the freemen, 
 should make laws, etc., and that they might bestow titles of nobility, 
 not being the same as those in use in England; and also authorizing 
 freedom in religion. The second grant made the 30th of June, 1665, 
 extended the territory conveyed so as to embrace “as far as the 
 north end of Currituck River, or Inlet, upon a straight, westerly line 
 to Weyanoke Creek, which lies within or about the degrees of 36 and 
 30 minutes northern latitude; and so west, in a direct line, as far 
 as the south seas ; and south and westward as far as the degrees 29, 
 inclusive.” In other respects the charters were the same; except 
 the provision establishing religious freedom is somewhat fuller 
 in the second. 
 
 The original Lords Proprietors 
 
 Edward Hyde. 
 
 George Monk. 
 William Lord Craven. 
 John Lord Berkeley. 
 
 Anthony Lord Ashley. 
 Sir George Carteret. 
 Sir William Berkeley. 
 Sir John Colleton. 
 
 After Clarendon’s death, his share was bought in 1679 by Seth 
 Sothel, on whose death in 1694, it was assigned to Thomas Amy, 
 a London merchant, who had been very active in promoting coloni- 
 zation. Eventually this share passed to Honorable James Bertie, 
 after whom the county of Bertie was named. 
 
 The share of the Duke of Albemarle was acquired by John Gran- 
 ville, Earl of Bath, who dying in 1701, was succeeded by his son, 
 John Lord Granville. In 1709 the Duke of Beaufort acquired this 
 share and devised it to James Bertie in trust for his sons, Henry 
 and Charles Somerset. His name appears in a county and in the 
 seaport town called in his honor, when he was Palatine. 
 
 The Earl of Craven’s share, he having no descendants, passed to 
 his grand-nephew, William Lord Craven, whose son William, Lord 
 Craven, succeeded him. That name is also perpetuated in a county. 
 
 The share of John Lord Berkeley came to his son, John, an 
 admiral of great merit; but it had been forfeited, and in April, 1698, 
 was sold to Joseph Blake, on whose death it descended to his son 
 of the same name. 
 
 On the death of Shaftesbury, his share passed to his son, Lord 
 Ashley. 
 
 1663 
 
 First and 
 second 
 charters of 
 Charles II t 
 1663, 1665 
 
 The devolu- 
 tion of 
 the shares 
 
5 2 
 
 CHARTERS AND COLONIAL OFFICERS 
 
 1663 - 1776 
 
 McCrady’s 
 South 
 Carolina, I, 
 716 
 
 George Carteret dying in 1679, was succeeded by his infant son, 
 who was represented by the Earl of Bath. This second George 
 Carteret dying about 1695, was succeeded by his son, George Car- 
 teret, who at the time of the purchase by the Crown in 1729, was 
 lieutenant-governor of Ireland, and in 1742 overthrew Walpole’s 
 administration and became prime-minister. About that time, on 
 the death of his mother, the Countess of Granville, he became Lord 
 Granville. He would not sell his share to the Crown, and in 1744 
 it was set apart to him in the northern half of North Carolina. 
 After the Revolution it was held by the State, although his heirs 
 brought suit to recover it, but failed in the courts. 
 
 On the death of Sir William Berkeley, 1677, his share was sold 
 by his widow to John Archdale for his son Thomas. Afterward in 
 1684 she and her husband, Philip Ludwell, sold it again to Sir 
 Peter Colleton for 300 pounds. Sir Peter purchased it for himself 
 and three other Proprietors and the title was conveyed to Thomas 
 Amy in trust for them. 
 
 In 1705 this share was acquired by John Archdale, who in 1709 
 conveyed it to John Dawson, his son-in-law. Later it was sold by 
 decree of the Court of Chancery and purchased by Hugh Watson 
 as trustee for Henry and James Bertie. 
 
 Sir John Colleton’s share on his death in 1666 descended to his 
 son, Sir Peter, who held it until 1694, and who was succeeded by 
 his son, Sir John Colleton. All of the shares were bought by the 
 Crown in 1729, except that of Sir George Carteret. 
 
 Palatines 
 
 1. Duke of Albemarle, October 16, 1669. 
 
 2. John Lord Berkeley, January 20, 1(370. 
 
 3. Sir George Carteret, February 5, 1679. 
 
 4. William Earl of Craven, November 20, 1680. 
 
 5. John Earl of Bath, April, 1697. 
 
 6. John Lord Granville, January 10, 1702. 
 
 7. William Lord Craven, 1708. 
 
 8. Henry Duke of Beaufort, November 8, 1711. 
 
 9. John Lord Carteret, August 10, 1714, and he so continued . 
 until the sale to the Crown in 1729. 
 
 John Lord Berkeley did not attend the meetings of the Proprietors 
 after 1671, Shaftesbury being then the particular manager. 
 
 Governors of Albemarle under the Proprietary Government 
 
 William Drummond, appointed October, 1664 — October, 1667. 
 
 Samuel Stephens, appointed October, 1667. Died December, 1669. 
 
 Peter Carteret, appointed October, 1670. Left colony May, 1673. 
 
GOVERNORS, SPEAKERS AND CHIEF JUSTICES 53 
 
 John Jenkins, president of council, appointed May, 1673. 1663 - 1776 
 
 Thomas Eastchurch, appointed November, 1676. Never qualified. 
 
 Thomas Miller, appointed 1677. Deposed by Culpepper. 
 
 John Culpepper, in power, 1677-78. 
 
 Seth Sothel, appointed 1678. Captured by Algerines. 
 
 John Harvey, appointed February 5, 1679. Died August, 1679. 
 
 John Jenkins, president of council, appointed November, 1679. 
 
 Henry Wilkinson, appointed February 16, 1681. 
 
 Seth Sothel, arrived 1682. Deposed fall of 1689. 
 
 Governors of North Carolina under the Proprietors 
 
 Philip Ludwell, appointed December 5, 1689. 
 
 Thomas Jarvis, deputy, 1691-94. 
 
 Thomas Harvey, deputy, July, 1694 — July, 1699. 
 
 John Archdale, governor, 1695. 
 
 Henderson Walker, president of council, 1699-1704. 
 
 Robert Daniel, deputy governor, 1704-05. 
 
 Thomas Cary, deputy governor, 1705-06. 
 
 William Glover, president of council, 1706-08. 
 
 Thomas Cary, president of council, 1708 — January, 1711. 
 Edward Hyde, governor, January, 1 71 x— September, 1712. 
 Thomas Pollock, president of council, September, 1712-14. 
 Charles Eden, governor, 1714-22. 
 
 Thomas Pollock, president of council, 1722. 
 
 William Reed, president of council, 1722-23. 
 
 George Burrington, governor, 1724-25. 
 
 Sir Richard Everard, governor, 1725-31. 
 
 Governors of North Carolina under the Crown 
 
 George Burrington, February 25, 1731 — November, 1734. 
 Gabriel Johnston, November, 1734 — July, 1752. 
 
 Nathaniel Rice, president, July, 1752 — January, 1753. 
 
 Matthew Rowan, president, January, 1753 — November, 1754. 
 Arthur Dobbs, November, 1754 — March 28, 1765. 
 
 William Tryon, March, 1765 — June 30, 1771. 
 
 James Hasell, president of council, July 1, 1771 — August, 1771. 
 Josiah Martin, August, 1771. Expelled 1775. 
 
 Speakers of the Assembly 
 
 George Catchmaid. 1666. 
 Thomas Eastchurch, 1675. 
 Thomas Cullen, 1676. 
 
 John Porter, 1697. 
 
 Edward Moseley, 1708. 
 
 William Swann, 1711. 
 Edward Moseley, 1715. 
 Edward Moseley, 1722. 
 Maurice Moore, 1726. 
 John Baptista Ashe, 1727. 
 
54 
 
 CHARTERS AND COLONIAL OFFICERS 
 
 16 63—1776 Thomas Swann, 1729. 
 
 Edward Moseley, 1731. 
 William Downing, 1734. 
 John Hodgson, 1739. 
 
 Sam Swann, 1743. 
 
 John Campbell, 1755. 
 
 Chief justices of North 
 
 Christopher Gale, 1712. 
 Tobias Knight, 1717. 
 Frederick Jones, 1718. 
 Christopher Gale, 1722. 
 Thomas Pollock, 1724. 
 Christopher Gale, 1724. 
 William Smith, 1731. 
 John Palin, 1732. 
 
 William Little, 1732. 
 Daniel Hanmer, 1733. 
 
 Sam Swann, 1756. 
 
 John Ashe, 1762. 
 
 John Harvey, 1766. 
 
 Richard Caswell, 1770. 
 
 John Harvey, 1772-75. 
 
 Carolina 
 
 William Smith, 1734. 
 
 John Montgomery, 1743. 
 
 Edward Moseley, 1744. 
 
 Eleazar Allen, 1749. 
 
 Enoch Hall, 1749. 
 
 James Hasell, 1750. 
 
 Peter Henley, December 5, 1755. 
 Charles Berry, 1758. 
 
 James Hasell, 1765- 
 Martin Howard, 1766-76. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Beginnings of Permanent Settlement in Albemarle 
 
 Conditions in America. — Virginia under the treaty with Parlia- 
 ment. — Roger Green’s explorations. — The king of Roanoke Island. 
 — Permanent settlement on the Carolina Sound. — The Restoration. 
 — The Cape Fear explored. — Berkeley receives instructions as to 
 Carolina. — The name Albemarle. — The Quakers. — The grant of the 
 Lords Proprietors. — William Drummond, governor of Albemarle. — 
 The second grant. 
 
 Conditions in America 
 
 The disturbed condition of England prior to her civil 
 war led to an immense emigration to the New England 
 plantations, and at the close of that period of unrest, marked 
 by the execution of the king in 1649, settlements had ex- 
 tended into Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire. 
 Maryland also had prospered, and Virginia’s population, 
 which in the first years after settlement increased but slowly, 
 numbered twenty thousand souls, and extended far into 
 the interior and well along the sluggish waters of the 
 Nansemond. 
 
 The region south of the thirty-sixth parallel, which under 
 the name of Carolana had, in 1629, been granted by King 
 Charles I to his attorney-general, Sir Robert Heath, had 
 not been settled ; and the wilds of Carolana remained un- 
 occupied save by the copper-colored aborigines. 
 
 While the civil war was raging at home, the Puritans of 
 New England adhered to Parliament, but Virginia remained 
 faithful to the Crown, winning by her loyalty the name of 
 the Old Dominion ; and upon the death of his father, 
 Charles II, then in exile, transmitted to Sir William Berke- 
 ley, who had been the royal governor for a decade, a new 
 commission confirming his authority. 
 
 Virginia under the treaty 
 
 Parliament, however, was not indifferent to the attitude 
 of those colonies that continued to sustain the monarchy, 
 and its power being fully established at home, in convenient 
 
5 6 BEGINNINGS OF PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 
 
 season took measures to assert its supremacy in Virginia. 
 On one hand, it threatened war; in the other it held out 
 the olive branch of peace, offering terms that could hardly 
 be refused. The Old Dominion preferred peace, and a 
 formal treaty was agreed to in 1652 that secured to Virginia 
 almost complete independence. The Assembly obtained the 
 right of choosing all the officers of the colony, including the 
 governor, who had formerly been appointed by the Crown, 
 and of defining their duties and privileges. It also secured 
 the high power of regulating commerce, and, without regard 
 to the British navigation acts, it declared that trade should 
 be absolutely free with all nations at peace with England. 
 The right of suffrage was extended to all freemen, and 
 “Dissenters” had full religious liberty; but under one clause 
 of the treaty the prayer-book was not to be used in the 
 churches. Of churches, there were none except in the very 
 heart of the colony, and ministers were so few that a bounty 
 was offered for their importation.* 
 
 Thus between the treaty of peace, in 1652, and the 
 Restoration, in 1660, the Old Dominion enjoyed a republi- 
 can government, and local independence. Indeed, Virginia 
 has the distinction of having been the first community in the 
 world whose government was organized on the principle of 
 manhood suffrage, where all freemen, without exception, 
 had an equal voice in the government, and their representa- 
 tives chose the administrative officers and controlled public 
 affairs. It was near the close of a decade of growth under 
 the favorable influences of virtual independence, that the in- 
 creasing population led to an overflow of the inhabitants 
 into the territory north of the Albemarle Sound, and per- 
 haps the movement was quickened by some apprehensions 
 that the downfall of the Commonwealth, then imminent, 
 would usher in a new era of religious intolerance. 
 
 Roger Green’s exploration 
 
 The Nansemond penetrates near to the head waters of 
 the Chowan, and before 1653 Roger Greenf had explored 
 
 *In 1658, while the Dissenters still held sway, Quakers were 
 banished. 
 
 fRoger Green is mentioned as “Clarke,” by which he is understood 
 to have been a clergyman, and it may be, if he was a member of the 
 
EXPLORATION EXTENDED 
 
 that fertile region, and some of the inhabitants of Nanse- 
 mond were considering a removal to that attractive country. 
 Green obtained from the General Assembly of Virginia a 
 grant of ten thousand acres for the one hundred persons who 
 should first seat on the Roanoke and on the lands on the 
 south side of the Chowan ; and “as a reward for his own 
 first discovery and for his encouraging the settlement,” 
 he was granted a thousand acres for himself. But while his 
 enterprise may have led to the subsequent settlement, no 
 memorial of his being concerned in it has come down to pos- 
 terity. The waters of the great sound had been explored 
 and were well known to Virginians, and about the year 
 1646 two expeditions had been made from Virginia against 
 the Indians on the sound : one by land, under General Ben- 
 nett, and the other by water, under Colonel Drew. Drew’s 
 vessels entered Currituck Sound and proceeded as far as 
 the Chowan River. At the mouth of Weyanoke Creek he 
 had an encounter with the Indians, with whom, however, he 
 soon established a peace ; and shortly afterward Henry 
 Plumpton, who had been on that expedition, together with 
 Thomas Tuke and several others, purchased from the 
 Indians all the land from the mouth of Roanoke River to 
 Weyanoke Creek. But they did not take possession, and 
 no settlement was made at that time. 
 
 In 1654, Francis Yardley, then governor of Virginia, 
 mentioned in a letter that small sloops were employed in 
 visiting the sounds of Carolina, and in hunting and trading 
 for beavers. In that year such a vessel, having left a couple 
 of her crew near Lynnhaven, where Yardley resided, he sent 
 his son and some other men to hunt for the sloop. These 
 visited the ruins of “Sir Walter Raleigh’s fort” on Roanoke 
 Island, then in a good state of preservation, and had 
 friendly intercourse with the king of the Roanoke Indians, 
 whom they induced to visit the governor at his home. 
 When the king of Roanoke came to Lynnhaven, he brought 
 with him his wife and one son, and during their sojourn 
 
 57 
 
 1653 
 
 o 
 
 Bennett and 
 Drew inCar- 
 olina, 1646 
 
 C. R., I, 676 
 
 o 
 
 Explora- 
 tions, 1654 
 
 The kingof 
 
 Roanoke 
 
 Island 
 
 Church of England, he was seeking to lead his flock to new homes, 
 where they could use the prayer book without restraint. 
 

 58 BEGINNINGS OF PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 
 
 1 6 s 4 there they all accepted Christianity and were baptized. 
 
 Yardley sent six carpenters to Roanoke Island to build an 
 English house for the king, whose son remained at Lynn- 
 haven to be taught to “read out of a book.” With the co- 
 operation of this king, an extensive exploration was then 
 made throughout the eastern portion of Carolina, where a 
 Spaniard was found living among the Tuscarora Indians, 
 and a purchase was made from the Indians of the territory 
 drained by three rivers, covering a large scope of country, 
 which probably lay north of Albemarle Sound. There were 
 further explorations, and in 1656 the General Assembly of 
 Virginia commissioned Colonel Thomas Drew and Captain 
 Thomas Francis to make discoveries between Cape Hatteras 
 and Cape Fear. 
 
 Permanent settlement on the Carolina Sound 
 
 But whatever settlement was then in contemplation, it was 
 probably arrested by an outbreak of the Indians, who now 
 began active hostilities on the northern confines of Vir- 
 The Recha- ginia. In 1656, several fierce tribes, known as the Rechahec- 
 rians, several hundred strong in warriors, established them- 
 selves near the falls of the James, and in a great battle 
 defeated the forces sent against them. But while this dis- 
 aster and the Indian depredations to the northward for a 
 time checked any movement to establish distant plantations 
 in the wilderness, yet when peace was restored and the de- 
 sire to seek new locations again began to be felt, the favor- 
 able situation of the region bordering on the Carolina Sound 
 speedily attracted the attention of the adventurous pioneer. 
 On the south it was protected by the wide sound ; on the 
 north and east the Indians were but few and had much 
 intercourse with the whites; on the west were the Tus- 
 caroras, who although a strong and brave nation, were not 
 unfriendly in their disposition. Their hunting grounds that 
 lay southward toward the Neuse had not been encroached 
 upon, while many traders, trafficking in their furs, supplied 
 them freely with those commodities they desired. Distant 
 from the vicinity of the fierce and troublesome tribes of the 
 upper James, the mild climate and fertile soil of the region 
 
THE FIRST PIONEERS 
 
 59 
 
 bordering on the landlocked sounds near Nansemond 
 offered many inducements to settlers, and so it came about 
 that in 1659, or thereabouts, the permanent settlement of 
 Carolina began. It was a movement so natural that the 
 particulars are not recorded in the local annals of the time. 
 A few active spirits, perhaps more adventurous than their 
 neighbors, resolved to make new homes in a more attrac- 
 tive locality. It was no great company, perhaps a dozen or 
 twenty men, who may have come from Nansemond through 
 the wilderness, or may have brought their supplies and 
 implements for house building by water from some con- 
 venient point in Virginia. The roll of these companions in 
 the enterprise of establishing “new plantations” to the south- 
 ward has not been preserved, and only incidentally have 
 the names of some of them been recorded. All we know is 
 that they came not as conquerors, writing their names in 
 blood on the scroll of Fame, nor yet were they exiles from 
 the habitations of mankind for conscience’ sake. It was a 
 time of peace in Virginia, when the freemen still governed 
 themselves, chose their own officers and made their own 
 laws. It was not oppression that drove these first settlers 
 into the wilderness. They were not discontented with the 
 democratic-republican institutions under which they were 
 living. They were not fleeing from the ills of life, nor 
 plunging into the primeval forest to escape the tyranny of 
 their fellow-men. But they were bold, enterprising, hardy 
 Virginians, nurtured in freedom’s ways, who were wooed to 
 this summer land by the advantages of its situation. The 
 movement involved no great change. It was merely a 
 removal of a few miles beyond the outlying districts of 
 Nansemond, with water communication to the marts of trade 
 on the Chesapeake. Nor did they come without the sanction 
 of the Indians, who were to be their neighbors in these “new 
 plantations.” They bought their land from the king of the 
 Yeopims with the consent of his people, and their doorsills 
 were not stained with blood, nor were their spirits tortured 
 with apprehensions of butchery. They came in peace and 
 were received as friends by the native inhabitants who sur- 
 rounded them. Among the earliest who were seated were 
 
 1650 
 
 Permanent 
 
 settlement, 
 
 165Q 
 
 Reasons for 
 settlement 
 
6o BEGINNINGS OF PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 
 
 John Battle, Dr. Thomas Relfe, Roger Williams and Thomas 
 Jarvis ; and with the first who came was George Durant, 
 who, however, did not select a plantation at once, but spent 
 two years in exploring, and bestowed much labor and cost 
 in finding out the country, with its rivers, channels, passages, 
 and conveniences, and then he bought from Kilcocanen, 
 king of Yeopim, with the consent of his people, a tract on 
 Roanoke Sound, upon a point then known as Wikacome, 
 but ever since called Durant’s Neck. This conveyance bears 
 date March i, 1661, but as the English year then began on 
 March 25th, that date may answer to March, 1662. In this 
 deed, Kilcocanen mentions that similar purchases had previ- 
 ously been made by other settlers ; and a few months later 
 Durant purchased a second tract from the friendly king 
 of the Yeopims.* 
 
 Durant at once began his clearing, and as the location of 
 any previous settlement has not been ascertained, Durant’s 
 Neck is the oldest known clearing in Albemarle. 
 
 Quickly after the arrival of these first pioneers others were 
 attracted to the “new plantations.” Lawson, writing about 
 fifty years later, mentions that “the first settlement was by 
 several substantial planters from Virginia and other planta- 
 tions ; and the fame of this newly discovered country spread 
 through the neighboring colonies and in a few years drew a 
 considerable number of families to join them.” Among those 
 who followed, buying Indian titles, were George Catchmaid, 
 of Treslick, Gentleman; John Harvey and Captain John 
 Jenkins. 
 
 Thomas Woodward, the surveyor-general and a member of 
 the council when the government was first established in 
 Albemarle, writing to the Proprietors on June 2, 1665, refers 
 to the quitrent exacted by them, and says that the people 
 will not “remove from Virginia upon harder conditions than 
 they can live there ... it being land only that they 
 come for.” Woodward also mentions that he had been many 
 years endeavoring and encouraging the people to seat Albe- 
 
 *Recorded in Book A, Perquimans County Records. 
 
REASONS FOR SETTLEMENT 
 
 61 
 
 marie, and that “those that live upon a place are best able 
 to judge of the place, therefore the petition of the General c - R - 100 
 Assembly that was here convened will deserve your Honor’s 
 serious consideration.” 
 
 It appears that the people were drawn to Albemarle because 
 of the land, but protested against paying a higher quitrent 
 than was exacted of them in Virginia, and they gave expres- 
 sion to their wishes in a petition of the Assembly at the 
 first session held in Albemarle. 
 
 These early purchases were made on the supposition that 
 the lands were beyond the limits of Virginia, and the first 
 settlers probably thought they would be free from the pay- 
 ment of quitrents and other public charges. They believed 
 themselves outside the bounds of the Old Dominion and 
 within the wilds of Carolina. Of Carolina the Common- 
 wealth had taken no notice, but now the Commonwealth itself 
 had passed away, and the change in the mother country 
 inaugurated changed conditions in the forests of the 
 Roanoke. „ 
 
 The Res- 
 
 The House of Commons, that half a century before had toratIon 
 emphasized, by the Petition of Right, its unswerving and 
 resolute purpose to maintain constitutional liberty, was the 
 wealthiest body that had ever assembled in England. It 
 fully represented in the purses of its members the property 
 of the kingdom. After varying developments, active hos- 
 tilities subsequently began between the Long Parliament 
 and the king, and in the course of the struggle the army 
 under the control of the Independents came to be the ruling 
 element, Oliver Cromwell, as its general, attaining supreme 
 power. By excluding a large number of the House of 
 Commons ; by abolishing the House of Lords ; by parcelling 
 out England into satrapies governed absolutely by his major- 
 generals, who systematically levied forced contributions from 
 the inhabitants, and by controlling parliaments at will, 
 
 Cromwell laid the foundation for a widespread sentiment in 
 favor of a return to the old constitution. In deference to 
 
62 BEGINNINGS OF PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 
 
 this public demand, he contrived a simulation of the three 
 estates, and he himself became Protector, representing the 
 sovereign ; and in semblance he established a House of Lords, 
 appointing to it nobles of his own creation. But the military 
 influence controlled by the Independents dominated, and the 
 discontent continued to grow in volume and intensity. 
 Property that had opened the struggle with Charles I now 
 cast about for some hope of security, and the Presbyterians 
 equally with the Churchmen were ready to try the Stuarts 
 once more as an escape from the domination of the Inde- 
 pendents. Such were the conditions on Cromwell’s death, 
 when his son Richard succeeded to his office, but could not 
 wield his power. The army, recognizing Richard’s feeble- 
 ness, fell away from him, and Cromwell’s system, losing its 
 military support, tottered to its fall. The end of the pro- 
 tectorate had come. At a call from the army the “bloody 
 rump,” which Cromwell had disbanded and suppressed, again 
 met, while cries for a free Parliament rang throughout the 
 kingdom. General Monk, in command of the forces in Scot- 
 land, maintaining an impenetrable silence, twice purged his 
 army of Independent zealots, and marched rapidly to 
 London, where he arrived in February. Under the lead of 
 Ashley Cooper, a man of great wealth and of superior 
 talents, who had espoused the cause of constitutional liberty 
 but had separated himself from Cromwell’s government, the 
 majority of the Long Parliament who had been ejected by 
 Pride’s Purge, after many years of exclusion, in March, 1660, 
 forced their way back to their seats, and after calling for the 
 election of a new Parliament, adjourned sine die that body 
 which had survived through so many years of turmoil and 
 revolution. The new Parliament, known as the “Convention 
 Parliament,” met on the 25th of April. Ashley Cooper 
 hastened with a delegation to Holland to invite Charles to 
 occupy his throne. Monk, still sphinxlike, controlled his 
 fifty thousand red coats — the uniform of Cromwell’s Iron- 
 sides — who, appalled, in gloomy silence submitted to the 
 complete and final overthrow, by their own general, of the 
 
EXPLORATION OF THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 63 
 
 power they had so long wielded in governing the Common- 
 wealth. Within a month Charles had landed, largely owing 
 his restoration to Ashley Cooper’s management and to 
 Monk’s resolute control of the hostile army ; to Clarendon’s 
 counsel, and to the fidelity of loyal friends, who never for- 
 sook his cause. 
 
 The Cape Fear explored 
 
 While these events were stirring England to its very foun- 1661 
 dation, and, by the overthrow of the Independents, the sup- 
 pression of the Republicans and the restoration of the 
 monarchy, had prepared the way for a new exodus from the 
 mother country, perhaps because of the favorable reports 
 spread abroad concerning the summer land of the “new 
 plantations,” attention was drawn to Carolina as a desirable 
 location for a new colony. From the north and the south 
 alike now came explorers. Massachusetts had at different 
 times projected colonies to the southward, and her vessels 
 traded along the coast and up the Chesapeake, and after 
 an exploration of the Cape Fear River, perhaps as early 
 as 1661, an association was formed in Massachusetts to 
 establish a plantation there, and the assistance of some Lon- 
 don merchants was invoked with the expectation that they 
 would supply the needed capital. But if New England was 
 looking to a more temperate climate with a view to coloniza- 
 tion, there were adventurers at Barbadoes who were likewise 
 casting longing eyes to the shores of Florida, as they then 
 usually called Carolina. Barbadoes had been settled by the 
 English in 1625, and during the civil war many Royalists 
 found refuge there, and a considerable number of prisoners 
 taken in battle were transported thither, so that the popula- 
 tion had become numerous, and some of the more active 
 spirits were intent on bettering their fortunes in a new settle- 
 ment. Captain William Hilton, with his vessel, the Adven- 
 ture, was despatched by John Vassall and others from 
 Barbadoes to explore the Carolina coast, and he had ascended 
 
64 BEGINNINGS OF PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 
 
 1663 
 
 Letter of 
 P. Colleton, 
 August 12, 
 1663, 
 
 C. R., I, 39 
 
 New 
 
 Englanders 
 on Cape 
 Fear 
 
 C. R.,I, 
 36 ct sty. 
 
 the Cape Fear and had made a favorable report of it. 
 Shortly afterward the first of the proposed settlers from 
 New England came to the Cape Fear, but perhaps because 
 Hilton had made his exploration and their title would be 
 disputed, without locating permanently they turned loose 
 their cattle on the cape, and having deposited in a box a 
 paper writing in which they sought to disparage that region, 
 they returned home and spread evil reports of both the 
 soil and the harbor. Some other vessels had followed them 
 from New England, but these also returned without making 
 a settlement. 
 
 Berkeley receives instructions about Carolina 
 
 While these movements looking to a settlement in Carolina 
 were in progress, Sir William Berkeley was again governor 
 of Virginia. That devoted loyalist had been removed from 
 office when the Old Dominion yielded to the authority of 
 Parliament in 1652, but after the abdication of Richard 
 Cromwell and before the Restoration, he had been elected 
 governor by the General Assembly, and was holding his 
 office at the will of the Virginians when Charles regained 
 his throne. The following year he visited England to pay 
 his court to the restored monarch, returning to Virginia in 
 November, 1662. 
 
 While in England he represented the situation of the 
 settlers on Carolina, or Roanoke Sound, as it was sometimes 
 called, who had purchased their lands and received deeds 
 from Kilcocanen, and regarded themselves as beyond the 
 borders of Virginia, and he received particular directions to 
 ignore the Indian titles and to require the inhabitants who 
 had settled there to take out patents from him under the 
 Virginia laws. Pursuant to this authority, immediately on 
 his return, in the autumn of 1662, Sir William announced 
 that the inhabitants on Roanoke Sound should no longer 
 hold under Indian titles, and he required all who had seated 
 land in the “new plantations” to take out patents from him 
 
PATENTS TO THE PIONEERS 
 
 6 5 
 
 and pay the usual quitrent. Patents were at once taken ^ 
 
 out by Thomas Relfe for lands on the south side of Pasquo- 
 tank River adjoining Thomas Keele’s land; and by Robert 
 Peele for land on Pasquotank River ; by John Harvey for Settlers 
 land on Chowan River, and another patent for two hundred 
 and fifty acres by John Harvey on the River Carolina adjoin- 
 ing Roger Williams’s land, Harvey having brought seven- 
 teen persons into the colony; by Captain John Jenkins, who 
 had brought in fourteen persons, for seven hundred acres, 
 being a neck bounded on the south by the River Carolina and 
 on the north by Perquimans River and on the west by the 
 great swamp that divides it from Thomas Jarvis’s land; and 
 by George Catchmaid for fifteen hundred acres adjoining 
 Captain Jenkins, who brought in thirty persons. Dr. Relfe 
 had brought with him fifteen persons, and the others a 
 greater or a less number. 
 
 Another patent was issued to George Catchmaid for 
 Durant’s Neck, including George Durant’s land. Durant had 
 induced Catchmaid to come and seat adjoining his premises, c .r,i, 59 
 and when Berkeley’s instructions were made known, Catch- et seg ' c 
 maid undertook to obtain a patent for Durant as well as 
 for himself, but instead of doing so, he took out one patent 
 covering both premises. He thereafter executed an agree- slc^fs^te 
 ment to make a conveyance to Durant, which led to a law- 
 suit, the record of which is full of historical interest. 
 
 Doubtless there were many other such patents issued to 
 those who had purchased Indian titles ; but these serve to 
 preserve the names of some of the earlier settlers, and they 
 show that they did not come empty-handed, but, as 
 Lawson says, they were men of substance, each attended 
 by a considerable retinue of servants. George Durant 
 came to be one of the most influential inhabitants of 
 Albemarle. 
 
 George Catchmaid, Gent., of Treslick, became the first 
 speaker of the Assembly and his widow married Timothy 
 Biggs, who afterward became one of the early Quakers and 
 
66 BEGINNINGS OF PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 
 
 1663 
 
 Local names 
 
 Grant of 
 Colleton 
 Island to 
 Sir John 
 Colleton, 
 C.R., I, 
 
 54» 55i and 
 the grants to 
 Harvey and 
 others, 
 
 59 et seq. 
 
 was the first surveyor of customs. John Jenkins became gov- 
 ernor, as did John Harvey ; Dr. Thomas Relfe attained 
 the age of ninety, and has descendants still living in Albe- 
 marle, and Thomas Jarvis was deputy governor, 1691-94, 
 and there are Peeles also in that section, and many Battles 
 in the State. A little later Roger Williams’s executrix 
 married Edward Haswell. There are two grants on record 
 for land embraced in two of the above patents, one to Thomas 
 Relfe, the other to John Harvey, adjoining the lands of 
 Roger Williams, for which a grant was issued sixteen years 
 later to John Varnham, being near Skinner’s Point, formerly 
 known as Moseley’s Point. 
 
 It will be observed that in these patents issued before 
 the end of September, 1663, by Governor Berkeley, the sound 
 itself, once called Roanoke Sound, was designated as the 
 Carolina River, its mouth being at the inlet. In London 
 the Proprietors named it the Albemarle, saying that it had 
 been the Chowan River, and Colleton Island was near its 
 mouth ; while the Roanoke, the Chowan, Pasquotank and 
 Perquimans rivers were already known by those names. 
 
 The only inlet mentioned at that time was Roanoke, in the 
 vicinity of Colleton Island ; but Ocracoke Inlet was then 
 known to exist, and it was thought to be a bolder one than 
 Roanoke. By that time the old Hatteras and Croatan inlets 
 had closed ; and a new breach had broken through the banks 
 opposite the upper portion of Roanoke Island. 
 
 The Quakers 
 
 So far as the records show, the actual settlement began 
 about 1659, about the time when New England and Virginia 
 were frowning at the new sect, the Friends, then attracting 
 attention because of their stubborn opposition to some of 
 the established usages of society and government. But that 
 was a coincidence rather than cause and effect. At that time 
 the number of Quakers in Virginia must have been very 
 small. The Society of Friends was introduced into that 
 colony by Elizabeth Harris, who arrived in 1656, and, 
 
REASONS FOR SETTLEMENT 
 
 67 
 
 remaining but a few months, returned to England the next 
 year. In March, 1660, the General Assembly prohibited any 
 Quaker from coming into the province, and that adverse 
 legislation extended to the Albemarle region equally with 
 the other portions of Virginia. Nor, indeed, did any 
 Quakers come to Albemarle seeking refuge and a haven. 
 
 Ten years after the settlement, Edmundson came from Vir- 
 ginia to Carolina and reached the place he intended, Henry 
 Phillips’s house, by the Albemarle. “He and his wife,” wrote 
 Edmundson in his journal, “had been convinced of the truth 
 in New England, and came here to live, and, not having seen 
 a Friend for seven years before, wept for joy to see us.” “j 0 u 
 Up to 1672 Phillips and his wife were the only Quakers in nal ' l6?I ' 
 Albemarle. On the other hand, it affirmatively appears that 
 the settlement was brought about by the ordinary induce- 
 ments of a favorable location, as Lawson expressly states ; 
 and it may he that the Albemarle country offered some 
 inducements in the way of security against the hostility of 
 the Indians, whose depredations had checked the expansion 
 of the colony on the James. The savages beyond Nansemond 
 were not so numerous and were more gentle, and the great 
 sounds afforded protection from the southward ; while Fort 
 Christiana, on the upper Meherrin, gave security from that 
 quarter. There was, however, a breadth of some thirty 
 miles intervening between the inhabited parts of Virginia 
 and the Albemarle settlement where the Indians roamed at 
 will. 
 
 The grant to the Lords Proprietors 
 
 Seeing that the time was ripe for colonizing Carolina, 
 Governor Berkeley doubtless conceived the idea of secur- 
 ing some advantage from it for himself and others who had 
 suffered because of their loyalty to their sovereign. Appli- 
 cation was made to the king for a grant of Carolina to 
 Sir William", his brother, John Lord Berkeley, Sir John 
 Colleton, then at the Barbadoes, who had spent £140,000 
 in the king’s cause, and a number of other gentle- 
 
68 BEGINNINGS OF PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 
 
 1663 
 
 The 
 
 Proprietors 
 
 Their 
 
 powers 
 
 men whose valuable services the king might well have 
 rewarded by such a princely gift ; and on March 24, 
 1663, the grant was secured. The grantees were per- 
 sons of the highest consequence. Edward Hyde, Earl of 
 Clarendon, the most illustrious of the king’s friends, whose 
 daughter had married the king’s brother ; General Monk, 
 who, having restored the monarchy and placed Charles on 
 the throne, had been created Duke of Albemarle ; William 
 Earl of Craven, a military officer of great merit, who had 
 advanced large sums to Charles ; Ashley Cooper, after- 
 ward created Earl of Shaftesbury, who had led the Parlia- 
 ment, as Monk had controlled the army ; and Sir George 
 Carteret, esteemed the best seaman of his day, who, like 
 Colleton and the two Berkeleys, had ever been devoted to 
 the fortunes of the Stuarts.* 
 
 These grantees were constituted absolute Lords Pro- 
 prietors of Carolina, with full powers of government such as 
 appertained to the Palatine County of Durham, and to create 
 dignities, the grant being similar to that of Sir Robert Heath, 
 the only limitation being that the laws should not be repug- 
 nant to the laws of England. Six weeks after the grant 
 was issued the Lords Proprietors held their first meeting 
 and formed a joint-stock company, and provided by general 
 contribution for transporting colonists and for the payment 
 of their expenses. But as soon as publicity was given to the 
 issuing of this grant, its validity was questioned because 
 the same territory had formerly been bestowed on Sir Robert 
 Heath ; and Samuel V assail claimed that he had an assign- 
 ment from Sir Robert for the southern half of Carolina for 
 a term of years not then expired, and Sir Robert Green- 
 field’s heirs claimed the other half ; while the heirs of the 
 Duke of Norfolk declared that Sir Robert took his grant 
 originally in trust for their ancestor ; and Maltravers, Earl 
 of Arundell and Surrey, likewise set up an interest. There 
 is some reason to believe that in 1639 a permanent settlement 
 
 *Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret also became the 
 owners of New Jersey in 1664. 
 
PATENT FOR CARO LAN A ANNULLED 
 
 was attempted. William Hawley appeared in Virginia as 
 governor of Carolina, and leave was granted by the Vir- 
 ginia legislature that he might colonize it by carrying a 
 hundred persons from Virginia, freemen, being single and 
 disengaged from debt, and it was said that Arundell was at 
 considerable expense in planting several parts of the country, 
 but was prevented from accomplishing his design by the 
 civil war breaking out in England. The assertion of a title 
 older than the grant to the Lords Proprietors interfered with 
 their contemplated arrangements, and at their instance the 
 grant to Sir Robert Heath was annulled by the Privy Coun- 
 cil ; but notwithstanding this proceeding, the title to Carolina 
 years afterward was claimed by Dr. Coxe, who in a 
 memorial to King William III traced his right through 
 different conveyances, and who declared that he had explored 
 and surveyed a large portion of the country, and his son, 
 Daniel Coxe, published an account and map of the territory, 
 which he still called Carolana. 
 
 William Drummond governor of Albemarle 
 
 As soon, however, as the title of the Proprietors was 
 assured, in September following, they vested in Sir William 
 Berkeley the power to appoint a governor for all that part 
 of their province which lay on the northeast side of the 
 River Chowan, now named by them the Albemarle River, 
 the Proprietors being aware that settlements had been made 
 in that territory. This, then, is the date of the first use of the 
 name Albemarle in connection with Carolina. The Pro- 
 prietors, in September, 1663, changed the name of “Chowan 
 River,” by which they meant “the waters of the sound as far 
 as Roanoke Inlet,” to Albemarle River, while the same 
 expansive waters had also been called the Carolina River ; 
 and earlier, the Roanoke River. The date when Governor 
 Berkeley discontinued issuing patents for land in Albemarle 
 in the name of the king under his instructions as governor 
 of Virginia was apparently December 25, 1663; after that 
 the patents for land there were issued under the direction 
 
 69 
 
 1663 
 
 Bancroft, 
 I, 130 
 
 0 
 
 Albemarle 
 named, 
 Sept., 1663 
 
70 BEGINNINGS OF PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 
 
 1664 
 
 C. R.,I, 238 
 
 Drummond 
 governor, 
 Oct., 1664 
 
 C. R.,I, 93 
 
 of the Lords Proprietors as being in Carolina. The first 
 patents, being under the \ irginia law, reserved a rent of 
 one farthing per acre, according to the Virginia custom ; 
 those issued after December 25, 1663, under the instructions 
 of the Lords Proprietors, were at the greater rate of half 
 penny per acre. But although Governor Berkeley had been 
 issuing patents for the land on the Albemarle as subject to 
 his authority as governor of Virginia, and as not being 
 within the limits of Carolina, yet after the grant to himself 
 and associates he seems to have refrained from asserting 
 the claim of Virginia to the plantations on the Chowan and 
 Pasquotank and to have allowed the Lords Proprietors to 
 proceed as if that territory were within their domain. He 
 visited the new settlement the following summer, and con- 
 formably to their direction, appointed necessary officers and 
 organized the government, and he either appointed William 
 Drummond, a Scotchman, then a resident of Virginia, to be 
 the governor, or recommended him for that post. The Lords 
 Proprietors having speedily considered plans for the gov- 
 ernment of their province, determined to form counties forty 
 miles square, each of which was to have its own governor; 
 and they proposed to lay off such a county on the Chowan 
 and to call it Albemarle. It is probable that in October, 1664, 
 they gave effect to this purpose, and at that time made out 
 and transmitted to Drummond his commission as governor 
 of the county of Albemarle, for on January 7, 1665, they 
 mentioned in a letter to him that they had previously sent 
 him by Peter Carteret his commission as governor of Albe- 
 marle County, but had by mistake stated that it was to con- 
 tain forty square miles instead of being forty miles square ; 
 and their plans seem to have contemplated that the term 
 of office for the governor should be three years ; and in 
 October, 1667, a successor was appointed to Drummond. 
 Later, one Nathaniel Batts was mentioned as having been 
 governor of Roanoke, and he may have been appointed to 
 that office by Governor Berkeley under the instructions of 
 the Lords Proprietors, Roanoke Island not being within 
 
CAROLINA ENLARGED 
 
 7 1 
 
 Albemarle County as originally laid off, and authority hav- ^ 
 
 ing been given to Berkeley to establish two separate gov- 
 ernments, one for each division of territory. 
 
 The second grant 
 
 Probably it was in connection with the organization of the 
 new government that attention was sharply drawn to the 
 fact that the Albemarle settlement was not in Carolina, but 
 was really within the boundaries of Virginia. The Lords 
 Proprietors, becoming aware that the limits of Carolina 
 just touched the northern shore of the sound and did not 
 embrace the plantations that had been settled, hastened to 
 apply to the king for an extension of their grant some 
 thirty miles further northward, and on June 30, 1665, the 
 king was pleased to make this addition to their possessions, 
 and issued a second grant or charter, extending Carolina to 
 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, which has ever 
 since been the dividing line between the two territories ; and 
 also extending it two degrees further to the southward. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Settlement on the Cape Fear 
 
 The settlement on the Cape Fear. — Hilton’s explorations. — The 
 New England Association. — The first settlement. — Sir John Yeamans, 
 governor. — Conditions at Charlestown. — Yeamans sails from Barba- 
 does.— An Assembly at Cape Fear. — An Indian war. — Dissatisfaction. 
 — The Cape Fear River abandoned. — A new Charlestown on Ashley 
 River. — Slavery in the colonies. — The Indian inhabitants 
 
 1662 
 
 Hilton 
 makes a 
 second 
 expedition 
 
 October, 
 
 1663 
 
 C. R., 1,71 
 
 The settlement of the Cape Fear 
 
 The evil reports set afoot in 1662 by the New Englanders 
 in regard to the Cape Fear soon reached Barbadoes, and the 
 persons there who had in contemplation a settlement on 
 that river thought it expedient, before proceeding further, 
 to cause a more particular investigation to be made of that 
 locality. Colonel Modyford and John Vassall, the chief 
 promoters, again engaged the services of Hilton, who 
 with Anthony Long and Peter Fabian, as representatives of 
 the association, in August, 1663, set sail on the Adventure 
 upon a new mission of discovery and particular exploration. 
 They skirted the coast from September 29th to October 2d 
 without finding an entrance, and when they were in the 
 vicinity of Cape Fear a violent storm came up, and they 
 were carried by the strong current of the Gulf Stream 
 nearly up to Hatteras. Returning, they reached the outer 
 roads of Cape Fear on October 12th, and then visited the 
 cape, expecting to find the cattle left there by the New 
 Englanders. But the cattle could not be found. Doubtless 
 the Indians had feasted upon them. A fortnight later they 
 entered the harbor, and finally came to anchor at the junction 
 of what they called the Main River and Green River, where 
 the town of Wilmington now is. They ascended in their 
 boats the northeast branch, naming certain localities Turkey 
 Quarter, Rocky Point, and Stag Park ; and likewise the 
 northwest branch, and Clarendon River, which they called 
 
HILTON EXPLORES THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 73 
 
 Hilton ; and while they found much poor land and many 
 pine barrens, and along the streams extensive marshes, on 
 the whole they were pleased with the locality as being suit- 
 able for a settlement. Indeed, no region is more attractive 
 than the Cape Fear in autumn. The soft, moderate climate, 
 the fine vegetation, the numerous flowers, the towering pines, 
 were all calculated to impress the explorers most favorably. 
 
 After a delightful experience of six weeks spent in explora- 
 tion, they turned their backs and dropped down to Crane 
 Island, about four leagues from the entrance of the harbor, 
 where they purchased the river and the adjacent land from 
 Wat Coosa, the king of the neighboring Indians, and his 
 chief men, and established friendly relations with them. On 
 December 4th they weighed anchor and turned their prow 
 southward for Barbadoes, where they arrived after a perilous 
 voyage of sixty days. In their report they strongly 
 denounced the disparaging statement made by the New Eng- 
 landers concerning the Cape Fear lands, and they gave a 
 renewed impetus to the projected enterprise. 
 
 But while these steps were being taken at Barbadoes, the 
 New England Association had not remained inactive. Still 
 purposing to establish a colony on the Cape Fear, they 
 sought the aid of London merchants to furnish means and 
 supplies, and to secure settlers from England, and were 
 taking measures to make the enterprise a success. Such was 
 the situation when it became known that Carolina had been 
 granted to the Lords Proprietors, and that terms of settle- 
 ment and title must be obtained from them. 
 
 When this information was received, the London adven- c. r„ 1 , 3 e 
 turers who were associated with the New Englanders 
 hastened to apply to the Lords Proprietors for the terms on 
 which a settlement could be made, and obtained assurances 
 of liberal treatment. The Proprietors, however, claimed the 
 privilege of appointing the governor, and this was not satis- 
 factory to the New Englanders, who had always enjoyed 
 the right of choosing their own governors, and objected 
 to any other mode of appointment. But this difference it 
 
74 
 
 1663 
 
 c. R., I, 39 
 
 The 
 
 declarations 
 
 and 
 
 proposals 
 
 C. R., 1,43 
 
 SETTLEMENT ON THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 was hoped might be reconciled. Indeed, the Proprietors 
 were eager to promote the settlement of their possessions, 
 and were active and energetic in doing so, considering the 
 pressing demands upon them of their high public em- 
 ployment. 
 
 Hardly had they entered upon their negotiations with the 
 New Englanders, however, when on August 12th they 
 received a communication from Barbadoes, signed by 
 Colonel Thomas Modyford and Peter Colleton, who were 
 cousins of the Duke of Albemarle, detailing the designs of 
 the Barbadoes adventurers and applying for terms of settle- 
 ment. With these two applications pending, the Proprietors, 
 buoyant with the prospects, hastened to respond, and on 
 August 25th they published their first declarations and pro- 
 posals to all that will plant in Carolina. They authorized 
 that the first settlement should be on Charles River, as Cape 
 Fear River was then named; and announced that the col- 
 onists were to make their own laws by their assembly- 
 men, by and with the advice and consent of the governor 
 and council. Freedom and liberty of conscience in all re- 
 ligious and spiritual things were absolutely granted. They 
 sought particularly to satisfy the New Englanders, who, 
 being Independents, demanded the right of electing their 
 governor and all other officers, by agreeing that the settlers, 
 before embarking, should present to them the names of 
 thirteen of the actual settlers, of whom one would be selected 
 for governor, and six more for the council ; and at the end 
 of every three years the inhabitants should in like manner 
 present thirteen persons from whom the governor and 
 council should be selected. 
 
 But even this was not satisfactory to the London agents 
 of the New Englanders, who insisted that the governor 
 must be elected by the people. The Proprietors, however, 
 disregarded this demand, and, hopeful of final acquiescence, 
 sought to consolidate the different interests, and to have the 
 adventurers or promoters at Barbadoes associate with them 
 those in New England and such persons in London, the 
 
CHARLESTOWN ON THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 75 
 
 Bermudas and other islands in the Caribbean Sea as could 
 be induced to engage in the enterprise. 
 
 These efforts were in some measure successful. The con- 
 flicting claims of New England and Barbadoes were recon- 
 ciled, and an association, of which Henry Vassall was the 
 London agent, was formed to make the settlement. Vassall 
 with much persistency continued negotiations for better 
 terms, and finally secured concessions which he thought 
 would be acceded to, and transmitted them to Barbadoes. 
 The promoters at Barbadoes now applied themselves with 
 such diligence to the work of preparation that on May 29, 
 1664, the first instalment of colonists disembarked on the 
 banks of the Cape Fear and established themselves at the 
 mouth of the creek since known as Old Town Creek, and 
 thither soon came accessions from New England, and the 
 settlement was apparently on a permanent and solid basis. 
 The river as earlv as August, 1663, was called the Charles 
 River, in honor of King Charles, and the new town was 
 named Charlestown. Five months after this settlement, in 
 October, 1664, at the time when the county of Albemarle 
 was laid off, the county of Clarendon was established on the 
 Cape Fear, and John Vassall was appointed surveyor and 
 Robert Sanford register of that county. 
 
 But among the Barbadoes adventurers were some who 
 were not favorable to the location on the Cape Fear, and 
 preferred a settlement further to the southward. The Pro- 
 prietors themselves entertained similar views, and dwelt 
 upon the necessity of establishing a colony at Port Royal. 
 While willing to foster all projects, they regarded with par- 
 ticular favor this new movement. Chief among the pro- 
 moters of it were Colonel John Yeamans, his son. Major 
 William Yeamans, Colonel Edward Reade and Captain 
 William Merrick, and these and their associates were sup- 
 posed to have the greatest influence at Barbadoes. Sir John 
 Colleton, one of the Proprietors who had resided in that 
 island, was a staunch friend of Colonel Yeamans, and recom- 
 mended that he should be selected to manage the details of 
 
 1664 
 
 May 2Q, 1664 
 Settlers 
 from New 
 England 
 and 
 
 Harbadoes 
 
 C. R., 156 
 
 County of 
 Clarendon 
 
 C. R., 1 , 75 
 
76 
 
 SETTLEMENT ON THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 1664 
 
 C. R., I, Q4 
 Yeamans 
 governor 
 of 
 
 Clarendon 
 
 County 
 
 C.R.,1, 78 
 c. R., I, 79 
 
 “The Con- 
 cessions M 
 
 organizing the colony. Resolved on this course, the Pro- 
 prietors ignored the negotiations they had had with Henry 
 Vassall as the agent of the association for the settlement 
 of Cape Fear and determined to treat with Major William 
 Yeamans, who, in the name of his father and eighty other 
 adventurers, made proposals for the exploration of the coast 
 and for establishing a colony further to the southward. 
 
 The negotiations being concluded, the Proprietors, in 
 order to strengthen the probabilities of success, sought and 
 obtained knighthood for Colonel Yeamans, who at their 
 instance was created baronet, and on January 11, 1665, they 
 appointed him governor of Clarendon County and of all 
 of Carolina to the southward and commissioned him lieuten- 
 ant-general, and invested him with full powers of control. 
 Contemporaneously with this appointment, the Yeamans 
 association, including some who had been interested in the 
 colony already settled on Cape Fear and other associates in 
 England, New England, the Leeward Islands and the Ber- 
 mudas, agreed on their part that before the last day of 
 September, 1665, they would provide two ships with 
 ordnance and munitions and provisions to make a settle- 
 ment south of Cape Romania, there to settle and erect 
 a fort. These measures being taken looking to colonization, 
 the Lords Proprietors now promulgated their “concessions” 
 and agreement with all who should settle at Albemarle, at 
 Clarendon, and at a county to be established further south, 
 which was to be called Craven. 
 
 Conditions at Charlestown on Cape Fear 
 
 c.r.,i, The Vassall colony at Cape Fear had now been seated a 
 year and a half, and the additions had been so considerable 
 that a publication intended to promote it claimed that the 
 population was already eight hundred. It is said they 
 brought with them from the Barbadoes cotton seed, which, 
 with corn and pulse, they planted ; and that in their clearings 
 they felled much timber, which was profitably shipped to Bar- 
 badoes; and they erected their houses and built forts, and 
 
THE ARRIVAL OF YEAMANS 
 
 77 
 
 made much progress toward establishing permanent plan- 
 tations. But despite the influx of population, they were still 
 dependent on others for provisions, clothing, and necessaries. 
 Besides, they had early incurred the enmity of the Indians 
 bv sending away some of the Indian children under pre- 
 tence of instructing them in learning and in the principles 
 of the Christian religion ; and although the Indians had 
 no guns, only bows and arrows, they annoyed the settlers 
 and killed their cattle. The fall of 1665 thus found them 
 in a bad case, in want of provisions, clothing and munitions, 
 but they were hopeful of speedy relief and were anxiously 
 expecting the arrival of the governor with needed succors. 
 
 Yeamans sails from Barbadoes 
 
 For some time great preparations had been making at 
 Barbadoes to carry into effect the agreement with the Lords 
 Proprietors. Sir John Yeamans had secured a frigate of 
 his own, the associated adventurers purchased a sloop, and 
 the Lords Proprietors bought a fly-boat, the Sir John, of 
 one hundred and fifty tons, which were to be used in the 
 expedition. On the fly-boat were stored the munitions and 
 the provisions and the armament for the fort, a part being 
 twelve cannon, a present from the king. By October, all 
 being in readiness, the governor and his little fleet set sail 
 for Cape Fear. On the way the vessels were separated 
 by a great storm, in which the frigate lost her mast and 
 came near foundering. But eventually, early in November, 
 they all came to anchor before the mouth of Charles River. 
 Suddenly, however, a fresh gale swept them from their 
 insecure anchorage and drove them to sea ; and upon their 
 return the Sir John stranded upon the outer shoals of the 
 bar, where she was soon broken to pieces by the violence of 
 the waves. Those on board fortunately were saved ; but 
 the provisions and clothing, the magazines of arms, the 
 powder and the king’s cannon were all lost. 
 
 Undismayed by his misfortunes, Yeamans began at once 
 to repair his frigate, which with the sloop had gotten safely 
 
 1664 
 
 Lawson, 127 
 
 C.R., I, 137 
 
 The king’s 
 gift 
 
 November, 
 
 1665 
 
 C. R., I, 119 
 
78 SETTLEMENT ON THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 'C 6s into the river, and proposed to send her back to Barbadoes 
 
 for recruits, while he awaited the result of an exploration 
 to the southward by Robert Sanford in the sloop. But the 
 necessities of the colonists, heightened by the loss of the 
 provisions on the fly-boat, led to a great clamoring that the 
 sloop might be sent to Virginia for their immediate relief. 
 To this Sir John assented, and having arranged for the 
 exploration to be made later by Sanford, he himself returned 
 to Barbadoes in his disabled frigate. The sloop reached 
 Virginia and obtained a supply of provisions, but on the 
 return voyage it was driven on shore at Cape Lookout by a 
 violent storm and was cast away. All of the crew except 
 two, however, escaped in their boat, and after many perils 
 contrived to reach the plantations on the Chowan. 
 
 An Assembly at Cape Fear 
 
 While Sir John was still at Charlestown, probably in De- 
 cember, 1665, an Assembly was held for Clarendon County, 
 he and his council participating ; and an address was pre- 
 pared to be sent to the Lords Proprietors detailing the 
 grievances of the colony and asking for redress. Although 
 Sir John at first agreed to join in this petition, at the last 
 he withheld his signature. In it the Assembly, of which 
 John Vassall seems to have been speaker, and the council 
 complained of the terms set out in “the concessions” ; that 
 the rent was too high ; that the method of laying off the land 
 was not satisfactory ; and that the penalty of forfeiture if a 
 man were not kept on every hundred acres was unreasonable. 
 They rehearsed that they had come to Cape Fear notwith- 
 standing the obloquy resting upon it, and were promised 
 large holdings of land by those acting for the Lords Pro- 
 prietors ; that after they had embarked upon the enterprise 
 the negotiations with their agent for terms had been inter- 
 rupted by the agreement made with Major William Yea- 
 mans, and now that misfortune had overtaken those acting 
 under that agreement they had lost all interest in sustaining 
 the colony. They therefore prayed that the negotiations 
 
ADDRESS FROM CHARLESTOWN 
 
 79 
 
 which had been interrupted might be again taken up “with ^ 
 
 us and with the adventurers of Old and New England” ; and 
 
 they promised, “when supported by freedom, to trample on 
 
 all difficulties.” And they warned the Proprietors that, 
 
 being deserted by all, only ruin awaited them, and that they 
 
 were utterly unable either to proceed or retire without aid, 
 
 and this they could hope to receive only upon obtaining the 
 
 terms originally asked. 
 
 From this address and other circumstances it appears 
 that the settlement had been chiefly made from New Eng- 
 land, and that when the Proprietors declined to allow them 
 to elect their own governor the New England association 
 refused to proceed ; while the adventurers at Barbadoes 
 chiefly looked to the proposed settlement further to the 
 southward. Such was the situation of the colonists in the 
 winter of 1665, eighteen months after the first landing, when 
 Sir John Yeamans was for a short time at Charlestown: the 
 Indians hostile, their cattle being destroyed, constantly c - R - x - 121 
 menaced by danger, provisions scarce, clothing needed, and 
 influences preventing supplies being furnished them, while 
 they themselves were dissatisfied with the terms of settle- 
 ment offered by the Lords Proprietors. Still, there was 
 some trade, the colonists having lumber to send out, and an 
 occasional vessel visited Charlestown ; and one evening in 
 June, Robert Sanford together with some seventeen other 
 inhabitants sailed southward, exploring the coast as far as 
 Port Royal, finding many places that were favorable for 
 settlement, uniting good lands and an excellent harbor with 
 security against attack by the Indians. And, indeed, he 
 reported that he observed an emulation among the Indians 
 to secure the friendship of the English, and this notwith- 
 standing they knew that the colonists at Clarendon were in 
 actual war with the Cape Fear Indians and had sent 
 away many of them. On their return, after a month spent 
 in exploration, their accounts seemed to have increased the 
 dissatisfaction among the inhabitants at Charlestown, who 
 in sending their address to England insisted that “because 
 
8o 
 
 SETTLEMENT ON THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 1666 they had settled in the worst locality, the heaviest terms 
 
 should not be exacted from them.” 
 c. r., 1, 144 John Vassall seems to have been in charge of the colony, 
 and in August, 1666, his cousin, Henry Vassall, their agent 
 in London, again sought a hearing by the Lords Proprietors. 
 He remonstrated with them that after agreeing with him on 
 terms of settlement, they ignored those negotiations and 
 entered into a different agreement with Major Yeamans, 
 Vassall and that the colonists were dissatisfied. He renewed his 
 solicitations for the terms originally agreed on, and declared 
 that many in England, in New England, the Barbadoes and 
 those actually at Cape Fear now awaited the issue of his 
 last appeal in their behalf. If his demands should be 
 assented to, he said, a good ship was ready to sail with men 
 and provisions, with the likelihood of other ships following 
 in the spring. But otherwise the whole design would be 
 abandoned and those on the place, he asserted, would give 
 up the settlement. 
 
 The Cape Fear River abandoned 
 
 Vassall’s warning seems to have been unheeded. Sir John 
 Colleton, one of the most active of the Proprietors, lay dead. 
 Albemarle was off the coast of Holland fighting the greatest 
 sea battle of that era. The other Proprietors were too 
 closely engaged to give much attention to Carolina. As 
 time passed the situation at Clarendon grew steadily worse, 
 c. r., 1, 160 In November, John Vassall sent an agent, Whitaker, to give 
 an account of the condition of the colonists, but he was taken 
 prisoner either by the French or the Dutch, and his mission 
 failed. Vassall wrote that he “had not heard a word from 
 any of the Proprietors since he received his commission by 
 Mr. Sanford,” in November, 1664. But the settlers still 
 had friends in Massachusetts. The General Court of Massa- 
 c. r., 1, 161 c i luse tt S; touched by their distress, imposed a general tax 
 for their benefit throughout that colony, and for a season the 
 necessities of Charlestown were relieved. Such measures, 
 
CHARLESTOWN ON CAPE FEAR ABANDONED 81 
 
 however, were only palliatives and not remedies. The causes 
 of discontent continued without abatement. 
 
 Vassall, who had spent much of his means in the enter- 
 prise, was greatly interested that it should not fail. 
 
 He sought to keep the colonists together, and for a time 
 succeeded. But at length they found a way by land to 
 Albemarle, and neither his arguments nor his authority 
 could longer prevail to quiet them. He therefore detained 
 the first vessel that came in until he could collect others to 
 take them all away together. Some went to Virginia, but 
 the larger part returned to Boston ; so, in September, 1667, 
 three years after the landing of the colony, Charlestown was 
 deserted and Clarendon County again became a solitude. 
 
 Vassall himself stopped in Nansemond, Virginia, and from 
 there, on October 6, 1667, he wrote to Sir John Colleton, of 
 whose death he had not heard, a touching letter : “I presume c ' R '’ r ’ 
 you have heard of the unhappy loss of our plantation on 
 Charles River, the reason of which I could have never so 
 well understood had I not come hither to hear — how that all 
 who came from us made it their business to exclaim against 
 the country as they had rendered it unfit for a Christian habi- 
 tation ; which hindered the coming of the people and sup- 
 plies to us, so as the rude rabble of our inhabitants were 
 daily ready to mutiny against me for keeping them there so 
 long. . . . And, indeed, we were as a poor company of 
 deserted people, little regarded by any others and no way able 
 to supply ourselves with clothing and necessaries, nor any 
 considerable number to defend ourselves from the Indians ; 
 all of which was occasioned by the hard terms of your con- 
 cessions, which made our friends that set us out from Bar- 
 badoes to forsake us ; so as they would neither supply us 
 with necessaries nor find shipping to fetch us away. Yet 
 had we had but £200 sent us in clothing, we had made a 
 comfortable shift for another year. And I offered to stay 
 there, if' but twenty men would stay with me, till we had 
 heard from your Lordships ; for we had corn enough for 
 two years for a far greater number, and though the Indians 
 
82 
 
 SETTLEMENT ON THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 1667 had killed our cattle, yet we might have defended ourselves. 
 
 But I could not find six men that would be true to me to 
 stay, so was constrained to leave it, to my great loss and 
 ruin.” 
 
 Thus the fair beginning of a settlement was defeated by 
 some unreasonable quibbling over a few acres of land in 
 a vast wilderness, and over the mode of appointing a 
 governor for a distant colony hedged in by the perils of 
 Indian warfare ; while the troubles of the colonists them- 
 selves were intensified by their selling into slavery Indian 
 children and also such Indian captives as fell into their hands 
 during the war that followed that act of heartless tyranny 
 and treachery. 
 
 A new Charlestown on the Ashley 
 
 However, the Lords Proprietors were not entirely inactive. 
 Indeed, their prospects were now improved, for Spain by 
 a treaty executed in 1667 abandoned her claim to Carolina 
 and conceded to England her colonial possessions and the 
 right to trade in those waters. So contemporaneously with 
 the abandonment of Cape Fear the Proprietors fitted out a 
 vessel under the command of Captain William Sayle, and 
 sent him to make another exploration of the coast. After 
 his return with a favorable report of Port Royal, the Pro- 
 prietors, having formed themselves into a stock company, 
 made a great effort and raised twelve thousand pounds, with 
 which they prepared two vessels amply stored with pro- 
 visions and arms, and bearing a considerable number of 
 emigrants. They appointed Sayle governor, and the expedi- 
 p 7< t r 1 ti° n ’ departing from England, arrived at Port Royal in 1670. 
 
 But after a year spent in that locality, the settlers were led 
 to remove to the west bank of the Ashley River, some miles 
 from its mouth, where they began a new Charlestown. 
 Within a year, however, Sayle succumbed to disease. West, 
 who was the mercantile agent of the Proprietors, hoped to 
 succeed him, but Yeamans, being a landgrave, was entitled 
 to be governor, and taking up his residence in Carolina, as- 
 
THE SOUTHERN COLONY PLANTED 83 
 
 sumed the reins of government, and continued to be governor 
 for five years, when, because of dissatisfaction with him, he 
 was retired and West was made a landgrave and appointed 
 governor. In 1679 the present city of Charleston* was laid i6 ?9 
 off at the junction of the Ashley and Cooper rivers, and the 
 colony removed thither ; the government offices were estab- 
 lished there, and it soon became a thriving and prosperous 
 community. 
 
 Slavery in the colonies 
 
 When in 1494 Pope Alexander VI, at the request of Portu- 
 gal and Spain, apportioned the New World between them, 
 Spain was forbidden any possessions east of the one hun- 
 dredth meridian, and could have no foothold in Africa. So 
 after the trade in negroes was begun, Spain looked to English 
 enterprise to supply her colonies with negro laborers, and a 
 considerable traffic in negroes sprung up. Later, when Eng- 
 land established colonies of her own, white labor was 
 obtained either by contract, the men engaging for a limited 
 period of bondage, or by the purchase of those who had been 
 condemned to servitude for some infraction of the law. 
 Every rising against the government, either in England, 
 Ireland, or Scotland, was followed by the transportation of 
 large numbers of the unfortunate malcontents to the colonies, 
 where they were either sold or bestowed as a gift upon some 
 favored planter. In Virginia, the whites held in bondage 
 were chiefly indented servants, under contract for a term 
 of years, although from time to time those condemned to 
 penal servitude, in some instances at their own request, were 
 sent there. The demand for labor in the “new plantations” 
 being great, a thriving trade was done in indented servants, 
 kidnapped children and condemned persons ; and since in 
 the course of this horrid business many outrages occurred, the 
 subject received the attention of the Board of Trade, of 
 Parliament, and of the courts. In 1620, an English vessel, 
 having captured some negroes on board of a Spanish ship, 
 
 *For nearly a century it was called Charlestown. 
 
8 4 
 
 SETTLEMENT ON THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 1659 
 
 Slaves in 
 
 New 
 
 England 
 
 Royal 
 
 African 
 
 Company 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 XI 5 
 
 The 
 
 Asiento,i7i3 
 
 1659 
 
 fell in with a Dutch man-of-war, which took possession of 
 the negroes, twenty in number, and stopping at Jamestown 
 the Dutch commander traded them for needed provisions. 
 In 1638 the first importation of negroes was made into New 
 England at Boston, and contemporaneously with this, at the 
 end of the Pequod War, Massachusetts and the other New 
 England colonies enslaved their Indian prisoners, selling the 
 men to the islands in the Caribbean Sea, but keeping the 
 women and maids among themselves. From that period 
 both Indians and negroes were used as slaves among the 
 English colonists. In 1631 the African Company was 
 chartered to transport negro slaves from Africa to the 
 Spanish colonies, and soon after the Restoration, 1662, the 
 second African Company was chartered, with exclusive 
 rights to carry on the slave trade, the Duke of York and 
 other nobles being at the head of it. Twelve years later this 
 company was supplanted by the Royal African Company, 
 composed of the king, his brother the Duke of York, and other 
 notables, among them four of the Proprietors of Carolina. 
 When Queen Anne came to the throne she specially directed 
 that the Royal African Company should take care that a 
 sufficient supply of merchantable negroes should be fur- 
 nished at moderate rates, and the slave trade grew to enor- 
 mous proportions. In 1713 England entered into a contract 
 with Spain, known as the “Asiento,” for the exclusive right 
 of supplying the Spanish colonies with negroes for thirty 
 years ; and the stock in the company holding this franchise 
 was taken, one-fourth by the King of Spain, one-fourth by 
 Queen Anne, and the other half by her favored friends. To 
 maintain this exclusive right of carrying on the slave trade 
 England engaged in sundry wars, and at the Peace of 
 Utrecht she required that it should be solemnly engrafted 
 into the treaty. 
 
 As early as the settlement of Albemarle the institution of 
 slavery had been well established, and there were whites, 
 Indians, and negroes held to bondage. The Indian tribes 
 themselves sold their prisoners taken in their neighborhood 
 
SLAVERY IN ALBEMARLE 
 
 wars to the colonists. And as in Africa wars were con- 
 tinually carried on to secure slaves for the slave marts, so 
 in America wars were fomented to obtain Indian prisoners 
 to be sold into slavery. Beginning in Massachusetts, this 
 practice of capturing and enslaving Indians led to the de- 
 struction of the first settlement on the Cape Fear and to 
 many of the wars in South Carolina, and it stimulated the 
 South Carolina Indians to come to the aid of North Caro- 
 lina in 1712, the captives taken at that time being sold in the 
 West Indies and in New England. Indeed, so many were 
 sent to Connecticut that the governor and council forbade 
 the importation of any more Tuscaroras for fear that in 
 connection with the neighboring tribes they would be a 
 source of danger to that colony. At the time of the settle- 
 ment of Albemarle there were two thousand negro slaves 
 in Virginia, while the white indented servants were four 
 times that many. In 1683 the white servants were sixteen 
 thousand, while the negroes were but three thousand. 
 
 The Indian inhabitants 
 
 The aborigines of North Carolina at the time of the settle- 
 ment consisted of many different tribes of Indians, each 
 having its own language. Near the great lakes of the 
 North were the Algonquins and the Iroquois. Some of 
 these moved southward and became inhabitants of North 
 Carolina. The Indians of the South are supposed to have 
 come from across the Mississippi River, and they extended 
 into North Carolina. Not only did these differ from the 
 northern Indians in language, but they were not so bar- 
 barous and they had made more progress from the savage 
 state. One of the tests now applied to determine whether a 
 tribe was of southern or northern origin is its pottery and 
 its ornamentation. It is said that the northern Indians 
 had made such a slight advance that none of their pottery 
 was decorated by a curved line. Pottery bearing curved 
 ornamentation has been found in western North Carolina 
 and also in eastern Carolina, and in a general way it has 
 
 85 
 
 1659 
 
 Conn. Col. 
 Rec., V, 516 
 
 Indian 
 
 civilization 
 
86 
 
 SETTLEMENT ON THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 *659 
 
 Rep. Bu. 
 Eth., XX, 
 >47, >59 
 
 Indian 
 
 origins 
 
 C. R.,V,9 
 
 been said that a line drawn from Hatteras marked the boun- 
 daries of the southern and northern Indians. There is 
 reason to believe that the southern Indians occupied North 
 Carolina and were measurably expelled by fierce tribes from 
 the north, except along the coast. 
 
 The Indians on the Cape Fear were Congarees. The 
 Hatteras and Coranines were southern Indians, and per- 
 haps also the Chowanoaks, who afterward became known 
 as Meherrins. The Mongoaks, later the Tuscaroras, the 
 Woccoons, and perhaps the Pamlicos, were northern 
 Indians. The Catawbas were southern. In 1656 the 
 Rechahecrians came from the north, fought with the Vir- 
 ginians, and passed southward into the mountains. It is 
 supposed they became the Cherokees, who have been ascer- 
 tained to be of northern origin.* Tradition assigns several 
 points in the Haw and Deep River country as scenes of 
 great battles between the northern and southern Indians. 
 
 Brickell in 1729 went on a mission to the Indians in that 
 part of the province, and in December, 1752, when Bishop 
 Spangenberg explored the lands on the upper Catawba, he 
 found the remains of an Indian fort, as also “tame grass, 
 which is still growing about the old residences on the north- 
 east branch of Middle Little River.” 
 
 There was always antagonism between the northern and 
 southern Indians, and the Catawbas were at constant war 
 with the Tuscaroras. Not only were the tribes destroyed 
 by their continual wars, but they were exterminated by 
 disease. The Pamlicos, that had been very numerous, about 
 1694 w r ere swept away by an epidemic, and later the 
 Catawbas were destroyed by the smallpox. Other tribes 
 met with a similar fate. 
 
 The Indians have left many memorials of their former 
 existence in North Carolina, which, however, have not been 
 carefully preserved. One intelligent investigator, Dr. Dil- 
 lard, says : “One of the largest and most remarkable Indian 
 mounds in eastern North Carolina is located at Bandon, on 
 
 *Now classed as Iroquois. 
 
THE CAROLINA INDIANS 
 
 the Chowan, evidently the site of the ancient town of the 
 Chowanokes, which Grenville’s party visited in 1585, and 
 was called Mavaton. The map of James Wimble, made in 
 1738, also locates it at about this point. The mound extends 
 along the river bank five hundred or six hundred yards, is 
 sixty yards wide and five feet deep, covered with about one 
 foot of sand and soil. It is composed almost exclusively of 
 mussel shells taken from the river, pieces of pottery, ashes, 
 arrow-heads and human bones. . . . Certain decorations 
 
 on their pottery occur sufficiently often among the Indian 
 tribes of the different sections to be almost characteristic of 
 them. A sort of corncob impression is found on a great deal 
 of Chowan pottery and also in Bertie. There are also pieces 
 with parallel striations, oblique patterns, small diamond pat- 
 terns formed by transverse lines, evidently made by a sharp 
 stick. Some are decorated with horizontal lines, while a 
 few are perfectly plain. In the deposits on the Chowan 
 River, at the site of the ancient Chowanoke town of Mava- 
 ton, the decorations on the pottery are both varied and 
 artistic. ... I have never seen so many distinct pat- 
 terns occurring in the same mound as at Avoca, left there by 
 the Tuscaroras. The ancient Tuscarora town of Metackwem 
 was located in Bertie County just above Black Walnut Point, 
 and most probably at Avoca, from the extensive deposits 
 there.” 
 
 1659 
 
THE THIRD EPOCH— 1663-1729 
 
 PROPRIETARY GOVERNMENT 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Administrations of Drummond and Stephens 
 
 The settlement of Albemarle. — Governor Drummond. — The first 
 Assembly. — Conditions at Albemarle. — The concessions. — Cessation 
 of tobacco planting. — An Indian war. — Changes in the Proprietors. 
 — Stephens governor. — The great deed. — Act of Assembly. — The 
 marriage act. 
 
 The settlement of Albemarle 
 
 The excellence of the location, the salubrity of the climate, 
 and the fertility of the soil soon drew to Albemarle consider- 
 able accessions of population. Lawson says that the first 
 who came found the winters mild and the soil fertile beyond 
 expectation, producing everything that was planted to a 
 prodigious increase ; that the cattle, horses, sheep, and swine, 
 breeding very fast, passed the winter without any assistance 
 from the planter ; so that everything seemed to come by 
 nature, the husbandman living almost void of care and free 
 from those fatigues which are absolutely necessary in winter 
 countries for providing necessaries ; and the fame of this 
 new-discovered country spread through the neighboring 
 colonies and speedily drew other families to it. 
 
 Indeed, it was a location abounding in attractions for the 
 hardy pioneer. The great Albemarle River, as they called 
 the sound, its mouth being Roanoke Inlet, while furnishing 
 in its wide expanse a protection from the southern Indians, 
 offered an unfailing supply of fish and game. The broad 
 Chowan was likewise a protection from the Tuscaroras, 
 whose hunting grounds lay on the west and down to the 
 waters of the Neuse. On the east and north were only two 
 small tribes, one of which gave some trouble in 1666, but was 
 
Seal of the Countv of Albemarle, 16G9-1G89, and 
 CONTINUED IN USE AS THE SEAL OF THE PROVINCE 
 
 of North Carolina until the purchase 
 bv the Crown in i?29. This repro- 
 duction is slightly larger 
 than the original; 
 
 REVERSE IS BLANK 
 
CONDITIONS OF SETTLEMENT 
 
 so speedily conquered that the war left no mark on the 
 infant settlement. The pioneers on their separated planta- 
 tions felt no alarm, and were quite free from Indian depreda- 
 tions. In natural advantages Albemarle was incomparable. 
 
 “Most of the plantations,” says Lawson, “enjoy a noble 
 prospect of large and spacious rivers, pleasant savannahs, 
 and fine meadows, with their green liveries interwoven with 
 beautiful flowers of most glorious colors, hedged in with 
 pleasant groves of the famous tulip-tree, stately laurels and 
 bays, myrtle, jessamine, woodbine and honeysuckle, and other 
 fragrant vines and evergreens, whose aspiring branches 
 shadow and interweave themselves with the loftiest timbers, 
 yielding a pleasant prospect, shade and smell ; proper habi- 
 tations for the sweet singing birds that melodiously entertain 
 such as travel through the woods of Carolina.” 
 
 Drummond governor 
 
 Sir William Berkeley in the fall of 1663 received from 
 the other Proprietors instructions to organize a government 
 at Albemarle, and was authorized to appoint a governor for 
 the settlers on the northern and another for the southern 
 shore of the sound* if he should deem it expedient. The 
 following summer he visited the settlement, then confined 
 chiefly to the waters of the Chowan, and appointed William 
 Drummond governor, and later the Lords Proprietors sent 
 a commission and instructions to Drummond, whose term 
 would seem to have begun in October, 1664. Berkeley was 
 also instructed to appoint six councillors to act with the 
 governor, and all other necessary officers ; and the governor 
 and councillors together with the freemen or their deputies 
 were to make all laws, which were to be transmitted to the 
 Lords Proprietors within a year for their approval or dis- 
 approval. These laws as enacted were to be in force until 
 they should be disapproved by the Proprietors. 
 
 *George Fox, in his Journal, 1672, speaks of Nathaniel Batts, who 
 had been "governor of Roanoak.” He had probably been appointed 
 governor under this authority for the southern division. He was 
 buried at Batts’s Island, near Durant’s Neck. 
 
 89 
 
 1663 
 
 Lawson, 
 History of 
 North 
 Carolina, 
 no 
 
 O 
 
 C. R., 1,50 
 Chalmers in 
 Carroll’s 
 Coll., II, 283 
 
 Oct., 1664 
 
9 o 
 
 DRUMMOND AND STEPHENS, 1664-69 
 
 1664 
 
 C. R., I, 52 
 
 Spring of 
 1665 
 
 C. R., I, 101 
 
 § 
 
 C. R., I, 252 
 
 The governor was to issue all grants for lands, and the 
 secretary was to record them, and these grants, like those in 
 Virginia, were to be void if the land should not be seated 
 in three years. A rent of half a penny an acre was to be 
 paid each year, but rent was not to be exacted for a period 
 of five years. The governor for his compensation was to 
 have the sole trade of furs until some other means of pay- 
 ment should be arranged. Governor Drummond was a 
 Scotchman who had been long settled in Virginia, and was 
 well acquainted with the vicissitudes of pioneer life. He was 
 a man of education, of integrity, and well fitted for his office. 
 Although sparsely settled, Albemarle was now not an un- 
 broken wilderness. 
 
 Population had flowed in, some of the planters being men 
 of large means, bringing with them from ten to thirty per- 
 sons ; and shortly after the government was organized, not 
 later than the spring of 1665, the first Assembly was held, 
 and the little settlement became a self-governing community, 
 a pure democracy, the entire body of the inhabitants acting 
 for themselves, and not through the instrumentality of 
 representatives. 
 
 Such was the beginning of the organized government of 
 Albemarle. At that first session a petition was drawn up to 
 be forwarded to the Lords Proprietors, the subject-matter 
 being that the settlers should continue to hold their lands 
 as they had done under the Virginia law, paying only a 
 farthing an acre rent, and that not in cash, but in commod- 
 ities, as was the practice in Virginia. The quantity of land 
 one could take up was dependent on the number of persons 
 he brought into the settlement, and the patents issued show 
 that some of the early settlers were accompanied by a 
 numerous retinue. 
 
 As an illustration of the early influx of population, a 
 remonstrance drawn up fourteen years after the settlement 
 was signed by twenty-one persons, who stated that most 
 of them had been inhabitants since 1663 and 1664. These 
 had become Quakers, while there was only one family of that 
 
A PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 9i 
 
 faith in the settlement in 1672. In 1666 quite a number of l 6 ® 
 
 settlers came from the Bermuda Islands, and, establishing 
 themselves on Pasquotank River, found employment in ship- 
 building. Trading vessels also began to frequent the waters 
 of Albemarle, the first large ship of which we have a record fJJFding 
 coming in during the winter of 1664. It was Captain 1666 
 Whittly’s vessel, which appears to have been employed by 
 the Proprietors in connection with their colonization. She 
 entered the sound through Roanoke Inlet, and when she 
 came in found fifteen feet of water, but on going out had 
 but eleven feet, and notwithstanding the channel had been 
 marked out, she grounded several times. “So uncertain 
 are all these inlets,” remarks Thomas Woodward, who was 
 then the surveyor of the colony. 
 
 The concessions 
 
 The system of government at Albemarle was soon after- c. r., 1, 79 
 ward still further perfected by the provisions specified in the 
 concessions, bearing date January, 1665, which formulated 
 a general plan, covering all the counties established in the 
 province. All acts of the Proprietors were to be authenti- 
 cated by the great seal of the province, kept at London, 
 while each county was to have its own proper seal, and that 
 designed and adopted for Albemarle continued in use as the 
 seal of North Carolina until after the purchase by the king, 
 in 1729. All grants and deeds for land were to be acknowl- 
 edged or proved by the oath of two witnesses and recorded, 
 and the conveyance first recorded was to be effectual, not- 
 withstanding any prior unrecorded conveyance. This pro- 
 vision, now so common, was then unknown to the English 
 law. It had its origin in Holland, and had been adopted 
 by the settlers in Massachusetts. It was a marked improve- 
 ment on the English system of ascertaining and perpetuating 
 titles. In those first days of settlement, the population being 
 inconsiderable, the freemen were either themselves to meet 
 in General Assembly or were to come together and elect 
 twelve deputies to represent them. 
 
9 2 
 
 1664 
 
 1666 
 
 C. R., I, 1 
 
 DRUMMOND AND STEPHENS, 1664-69 
 
 All officers were to swear to bear true allegiance to the 
 king, and to perform their duties faithfully, or were to 
 subscribe a declaration to that effect in a book. There was 
 full liberty of conscience, hut the General Assembly was to 
 have power to appoint as many ministers or preachers as 
 they should see fit, giving, however, to all persons the right 
 to have and to support any other ministers or preachers they 
 might please. 
 
 Each person coming in during the first year should be 
 entitled to have eighty acres of land for himself, and the 
 same quantity for his wife and every dependent capable of 
 bearing arms, and forty acres for each servant. And ser- 
 vants, after their term of servitude, should have an equal 
 right for themselves. But after the first year only sixty 
 acres were to be allowed instead of eighty. These grants 
 of land, while in fee, were subject to a yearly quitrent pay- 
 able to the Proprietors. The rent, half a penny an acre, was 
 to be paid in money. As an inducement to settlers, however, 
 the first payment of rent was postponed until the year 1671. 
 
 Thus, with full liberty of conscience guaranteed, with an 
 agreement that those who did not feel disposed to take an 
 oath of allegiance might merely subscribe a declaration of 
 their fealty, with a stipulation that no tax should be levied 
 or collected except by act of their General Assembly, and 
 that the Assembly, in the absence of the governor or his 
 deputy, might choose a president in his stead, and with an 
 Assembly elected by themselves vested with full power to 
 ordain laws and establish courts and appoint officers to 
 enforce them, the freemen of Albemarle enjoyed every liberty 
 they desired, and being blessed with bountiful harvests, led 
 easy, quiet lives in their sylvan homes. 
 
 The development of the “new plantations” progressed 
 rapidly. In addition to their corn and wheat, supplies and 
 provisions necessary for their subsistence and comfort in the 
 wilderness, the planters also raised tobacco ; and so consider- 
 able was the production of this commodity that when Mary- 
 land, in June, 1666, proposed a cessation from planting 
 
CESSATION OF TOBACCO PLANTING 
 
 93 
 
 tobacco for one year, the agreement was made dependent 
 not merely on the acceptance of Virginia, but by “the new 
 plantations” at Albemarle as well. 
 
 An Indian war 
 
 Agreeably to that invitation, Governor Drummond and 
 Thomas Woodward, who had been appointed a commissioner 
 to represent the General Assembly, met the other commis- 
 sioners at James City on July 12th and agreed on a plan, 
 which in order to be effective was to be ratified by their 
 respective legislatures, and the ratifications were to be ex- 
 changed by the last of September. The General Assembly 
 of Albemarle met, George Catchmaid, Gent., being the 
 speaker, and passed the desired act ; but about that time 
 there was an Indian outbreak and the colony was in peril, 
 and because of the Indian invasion the act ratifying the 
 agreement could not be transmitted within the period lim- 
 ited. However, the delay was only for a few days, and the 
 failure to send the act forward by the day fixed was held 
 immaterial. So by act of Assembly no tobacco was planted 
 during the year 1667. 
 
 In October of that year Drummond's term of three years 
 came to its close, and after an admirable administration that 
 capable governor, whose name is perpetuated in that of the 
 beautiful lake in the great Dismal Swamp, gave place to his 
 successor. Drummond retired to Virginia, where ten years 
 later, having engaged in Bacon’s rebellion, in January, 1677, 
 he fell into the hands of Governor Berkeley and was sum- 
 marily executed by that insensate and exasperated tyrant. 
 
 Drummond 
 hanged by 
 Berkeley, 
 1677 
 
 Changes in the Proprietors 
 
 In the meantime notable changes had occurred among the 
 Lords Proprietors. Clarendon, who, being Lord Chancellor, 
 was held responsible by the people of England for all the 
 improper measures of the court since the restoration, had 
 become very unpopular ; while his severe virjtue, no less than 
 his opposition to all schemes looking to the toleration of the 
 
94 
 
 1667 
 
 Clarendon 
 
 banished, 
 
 1667 
 
 Colleton 
 dies, 16 66 
 
 A lbemarle 
 dies 
 
 DRUMMOND AND STEPHENS, 1664-69 
 
 Catholics, had rendered him disagreeable to Charles. In 1667 
 he became an object of the king’s bitter hatred because he 
 ventured to thwart the passionate purpose of that lascivious 
 monarch. On August 30th of that year his seals of office 
 were demanded by Charles, and a month later, out of 
 common hatred, articles of impeachment were presented by 
 the popular leaders against him, and he was charged by the 
 Commons at the bar of the House of Lords with high 
 treason generally, without any allegations being specified. 
 On such a general charge the Lords refused to proceed ; but 
 Clarendon saw that his friends had fallen away, and that 
 both the opposing factions were bent on his destruction, and 
 so, seeking safety in flight, he retired to the continent. A 
 bill of perpetual banishment was passed against him, and 
 he sojourned in Europe until his death, in 1674, his last 
 years being employed in literary work. Such was the closing 
 of the honorable career of this devoted adherent of the 
 Stuarts, but a true Protestant and an honest Englishman. 
 Sir John Colleton had died in 1666, and Sir Peter Colleton 
 succeeded to his place among the Proprietors. Albemarle, 
 the skilful general and brave admiral, who, when London 
 was deserted by all during the great plague of 1665, had 
 given the world an additional illustration of his intrepidity 
 by remaining at his post in charge of the stricken city, had, 
 in 1666 and 1667, won famous victories at sea, and then, 
 falling ill with dropsy, lingered until December, 1669, when 
 his son, Christopher, Duke of Albemarle, succeeded him. 
 Sir George Carteret was vice-chamberlain to his Majesty’s 
 household, and Sir John Berkeley was at his post as lord 
 lieutenant of Ireland, while his brother, Sir William, re- 
 mained governor of Virginia. 
 
 Stephens governor 
 
 In October, 1667, the Lords Proprietors appointed Cap- 
 tain Samuel Stephens governor, and sent him for instructions 
 a copy of the concessions published in 1664. So far as the 
 government of Albemarle had conformed to the concessions 
 
STEPHENS SUCCEEDS DRUMMOND 
 
 95 
 
 there were no changes in the administration. Up to 1667 
 Albemarle had not been laid off into precincts, but the free- 
 men of the settlement chose twelve deputies, called in the 
 legislation of 1666 "committee," to represent them ; and the 
 General Assembly, composed of the governor, his council, 
 appointed by himself, and the representatives of the people, 
 sat together as one body and enacted laws and had the power 
 to establish courts and define their jurisdiction. 
 
 Of Stephens we know but little. His relations with the 
 Proprietors and people seem to have been pleasant. He 
 became the owner of Roanoke Island, and otherwise identi- 
 fied his interests with the growth of the colony. The 
 governor and council held a court for the county, which 
 exercised chancery powers, and had jurisdiction over estates. 
 
 They sat without pay, but it is probable that considerable 
 gain was made by way of compensation for public service by 
 a monopoly of trade with the Indians. 
 
 That Stephens was a gentleman of culture and standing Character of 
 may well be surmised from what is known of his wife; and settlers 
 in like manner it appears that Harvey and some of the other 
 settlers in Albemarle were the equals in social condition of 
 the best of the Virginia planters of that time. Such was the 
 real character of the original settlement, made, as Lawson 
 asserts, by men of substance. 
 
 The Great Deed 
 
 It was during Stephens’s administration that the Lords The 
 Proprietors were pleased to answer favorably the petition Assembly 
 of the Grand Assembly of 1665, so termed, perhaps, because 
 when the petition was prepared the people had not elected 
 delegates, but themselves assembled under the instructions 
 to Governor Berkeley; and for many years the legislative 
 body of Albemarle continued to call itself “the Grand 
 Assembly.” 
 
 On May 1, 1668, under the seal of the province, the Lords 
 Proprietors, in response to this request, granted that the 
 inhabitants of Albemarle should hold their lands upon the 
 
9 6 
 
 DRUMMOND AND STEPHENS, 1664-69 
 
 1668 
 
 The Great 
 Deed 
 
 Legislation 
 of 1669 
 
 The. 
 Virginia 
 debtor law 
 
 same terms and conditions as the people of Virginia, by 
 which the rent became only a farthing an acre and was pay- 
 able in commodities at a fixed price and not in money. This 
 concession was regarded so highly that the instrument con- 
 taining it was called “The Great Deed,” and in after years 
 it played an important part in North Carolina matters, and 
 for many years the General Assembly required that it should 
 be securely kept in the personal possession of the speaker of 
 the house. 
 
 At the session of the Assembly held in 1669 there were 
 passed seven acts that have come down to us. One of these 
 recites that no provision had been made for defraying the 
 expenses of the governor and council in time of the courts, 
 and “as the General Assembly thinks it unreasonable that 
 they should spend their time in the service of the county 
 and not have their charges borne, therefore every one who 
 brings a suit in court and is cast shall pay thirty pounds 
 of tobacco” as a sort of tax fee to pay the expenses of the 
 governor and council. Prior to that the governor and 
 council composed the only court held, for as no precincts 
 had been laid off, there were no precinct courts. 
 
 In order that Albemarle should not be behind Virginia in 
 offering inducements to settlers, an act was copied from the 
 Virginia statutes prohibiting the institution of any suit for 
 any debt against a person who should come into Albemarle 
 until after five years had elapsed from his arrival. 
 
 In 1642 Virginia had passed a similar law, which was 
 formally re-enacted by the Virginia Assembly in 1663, and 
 the settlers in Albemarle coming from Virginia brought with 
 them the remembrance of this legislation as a Virginia insti- 
 tution ; and, indeed, similar laws were adopted in other 
 colonies. There were no ministers in the colony, and but 
 few in Virginia ; so an act was then passed that legalized 
 marriage as a civil institution, and provided that a marriage 
 solemnized by the governor or any of his council in the 
 presence of three or four of the neighbors, the certificate 
 thereof being registered by the secretary, should be a valid 
 
THE EARLIEST KNOWN LEGISLATION 
 
 97 
 
 marriage, and any person violating such a marriage should 
 be punishable as if it had been performed by a minister. 
 This marriage law was born of the necessity of the case ; and 
 as it was founded in reason, the civil marriage thus insti- 
 tuted at Albemarle has since been adopted by all of the 
 enlightened states of the American Republic. These acts 
 were transmitted to England for the approval of the Lords 
 Proprietors, and meeting with their approbation, received 
 their sanction and became the law in the colony. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Carteret’s Administration, 1670-73 
 
 The Fundamental Constitutions. — Changes introduced by them.— 
 The first meeting under the Grand Model. — Carteret governor. — 
 The Grand Model in practice ; The precincts. — The nobility. — The 
 Palatine’s Court. — The Quakers. — First dissatisfaction. — Carteret 
 sails for England. — John Jenkins deputy-governor.— Visits from 
 Edmundson and Fox. 
 
 The Fundamental Constitutions 
 
 ,66 9 The banishment of Clarendon and the long illness of 
 
 Albemarle made an opening at court for the higher rise 
 of Lord Ashley, a man of superior mental powers and 
 capabilities. He had inherited great wealth, had been studi- 
 ous in the law and in the sciences, and, possessing a strong 
 influence with the people, soon attained the highest position 
 and power among the statesmen of England. A Presby- 
 terian and somewhat of a free thinker, among his intimates 
 was John Locke, the scholar and philosopher, with whom he 
 contracted a friendship based on their common sympathy 
 with civil and philosophical freedom. In 1667 Locke became 
 his secretary, and took up his abode in Ashley’s residence. 
 
 Shaftesbury The Lords Proprietors had requested Ashley to prepare a 
 permanent constitution for Carolina, and in the summer of 
 1669 a rough draught was submitted to them of that famous 
 instrument which has come down to posterity as Locke's 
 Fundamental Constitutions or the Grand Model of Gov- 
 ernment. This instrument was adopted and signed by the 
 Lords Proprietors on July 21, 1669. 
 
 The purposes avowed in it were to provide for the better 
 settlement of the government, to establish the interests of 
 the Proprietors with equality and without confusion, to 
 conform the government agreeably to the English monarchy, 
 and to avoid erecting a numerous democracy in their 
 province. 
 
THE FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONS 
 
 99 
 
 England had just passed through the experiment of the * 
 
 Commonwealth, the course of which was marked by many 
 deplorable excesses. The Proprietors had seen stalwart 
 republicans, seeking an escape from evils of their own crea- 
 tion, unite in offering a crown to Cromwell, and had wit- 
 nessed the establishment of a monarchy clothed with 
 arbitrary power under the specious title of Protector ; and 
 most of them had suffered severely in their fortunes and in 
 their persons during those convulsions ; and now that the 
 ancient constitution of the kingdom had been restored, largely 
 through their own instrumentality, they wished to avoid 
 erecting an unsteady and unrestrained democracy in their 
 possessions. They were themselves of the nobility, and 
 possessed in Carolina under the grant of the king even the 
 regal powers that were enjoyed by the owners of the Pala- 
 tine County of Durham. Not unnaturally, they sought to 
 guard their individual rights and privileges. As there were 
 eight Proprietors, to establish equality among them was a 
 .chief care. Eight great offices were created : one, the Pala- The e! g, hl: 
 tine, was assigned to the oldest Proprietor, and upon his 
 death the next in seniority succeeded him. The Palatine 
 was the executive, and the other Proprietors were to be 
 the admiral, chamberlain, chancellor, constable, chief justice, 
 high steward, and treasurer of the province. Carolina was 
 to be divided into counties, and there was to be an hereditary 
 nobility established in each countv consisting of one land- 
 grave and two caciques. The other inhabitants were freemen 
 and leetmen, as the landholders were called in the county 
 of Durham ; and the institution of negro slavery was recog- 
 nized. An alien by subscribing the Fundamental Constitu- 
 tions thereby became naturalized, but no person over seven- 
 teen years of age could have any benefit or protection of 
 the law who was not enrolled as a member of some religious 
 profession acknowledging the Deity. 
 
 ,, Each county was to be laid off into eight seignories, eight 
 baronies, and four precincts, and every precinct was to be 
 subdivided into six colonies. One of the seignories was to 
 
IOO 
 
 CARTERET'S ADMINISTRATION, 1670-73 
 
 1669 
 
 Divisions of 
 the land 
 
 Leetmen 
 
 Freemen 
 
 Nobles 
 
 be the property of each Proprietor. It was to contain 
 12,000 acres, and was to descend to his heirs male, with 
 some provision in case of failure of heirs. Four of the 
 baronies, 12,000 acres each, were for the landgraves, and 
 each cacique was to have two baronies. Each precinct was 
 to embrace 72,000 acres, and each of its six colonies was 
 to contain 12,000 acres. The land in the precincts could be 
 bought and sold at pleasure by the owners, but whoever 
 purchased it had to pay a yearly quitrent of a penny an acre 
 to the Lords Proprietors. Within the precincts, by special 
 grant, a holding of 3000 acres might be erected into a manor, 
 with certain powers and privileges vesting in the lord of the 
 manor, and in that case, being once erected into a manor, it 
 could be sold in fee only in its entirety, and no parcel of it 
 could be conveyed for a longer period than twenty-one years. 
 Provision was made for leetmen within the manors, baronies, 
 and seignories. A person became a leetman by voluntarily 
 entering himself as such in the proper court. On the 
 marriage of a leetman the lord was required to give him 
 ten acres of land for his life, subject to a rent of not more 
 than the eighth part of the yearly produce of the ten acres. 
 The children of leetmen were to remain forever as their 
 parents were ; and they were not to live off of the land of their 
 particular lord without license obtained from him. Being 
 subjects of their lord, all their controversies were to be tried 
 in the leet courts of their lord, who had a feudal jurisdiction 
 over them. Thus, besides negro slaves the inhabitants were 
 to be leetmen attached to the land, freemen, and nobles. 
 That the nobles should be properly maintained, they were 
 to have no power to alienate their property and dignity, 
 which must forever descend undivided to their heirs male, 
 but this provision was not to go into effect until the 
 year 1700. 
 
 The system of government was cumbersome and complex. 
 The Palatine and the other seven Proprietors, being the 
 great officers, formed what was designated the Palatine’s 
 Court. This body was, however, executive rather than 
 
THE FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONS 
 
 judicial. It had power to call parliaments, to pardon all 
 offences, to elect all officers, to negative the acts of Parlia- 
 ment, and generally was vested with all the powers granted 
 to the Proprietors, except as was otherwise limited in the 
 Fundamental Constitutions. In this court, any Proprietor 
 being absent, he could be represented by his deputy. 
 
 Each of the other great officers also had a court com- 
 posed of himself, six councillors, and twelve assistants 
 chosen from among the landgraves, caciques, and such com- 
 moners or freemen as were designated ; and to each of these 
 courts a particular jurisdiction was allotted. 
 
 Superior to these courts, however, was the Grand Council, 
 composed of the Palatine, the seven other great officers, and 
 the forty-two councillors. To this council was assigned the 
 power to determine controversies between the courts, and 
 to make peace and war, leagues and treaties with the Indians, 
 and to raise forces for war. It also had authority to prepare 
 matters to be adopted in Parliament, and no act could be 
 proposed in Parliament unless it had first passed the Grand 
 Council. 
 
 The Parliament was to consist of the Proprietors or their 
 deputies, the landgraves and the caciques, and one free- 
 holder from each precinct chosen by the freeholders. These 
 were to sit in one room, each member having one vote. 
 Parliament was to meet on the first Monday of November 
 every second year in the town it last sat in, without any 
 summons. And in order to elect members the freeholders 
 of each precinct were to meet on the first Monday of Sep- 
 tember every two years and choose their representatives. 
 
 Under the concessions the people had a right to elect 
 assemblymen on the first day of each January, and this new 
 provision investing them with the constitutional right to 
 elect a parliament every other September, to convene in 
 November without any call from the governor, was founded 
 in the severe experiences of the English people during the 
 troubles of the recent past, and was a change from English 
 methods largely favorable to the liberties of the people. In 
 
 IOI 
 
 i66g 
 
 The Pro- 
 prietors’ 
 courts 
 
 The 
 
 Grand 
 
 Council 
 
102 
 
 CARTERET’S ADMINISTRATION, 1670-73 
 
 1669 
 
 The 
 
 general 
 
 court 
 
 Lawyers 
 
 discoun- 
 
 tenanced 
 
 after years it became the foundation of a famous enactment 
 known as the Biennial Act of 1715, which, however, merely 
 continued in force the former practice. 
 
 In every county there was to be a general court, held by 
 ihe sheriff and one justice from each precinct. Appeals lay 
 from this court in important civil cases and in criminal cases 
 to the Proprietors’ court ; and in every precinct there was 
 to be a court consisting of a steward and four justices, who 
 should judge all criminal cases except treason, murder, and 
 other offences where the punishment was death, and excepl 
 criminal cases against the nobility ; and also all civil causes 
 whatsoever, but with appeal to the county court in important 
 cases. To try treason, murder, and other offences punishable 
 with death, a commission for itinerant judges was to issue 
 twice a year, who were to hold assizes in each county with 
 the sheriff and four justices, with appeal to the Proprietors’ 
 court. There were grand juries for the criminal courts, and 
 in all courts causes were determined by a jury of twelve 
 men, but a majority verdict was sufficient, unanimity not 
 being required. 
 
 While the nobles had great places provided for them, 
 there were thus open to the freemen avenues to distinction 
 in a judicial career, as members of Parliament, as assistants 
 in the great courts, and as councillors. But lawyers were 
 discountenanced, and it was declared a vile thing to plead 
 a cause for money. The purpose of this provision was, pos- 
 sibly, to build up a clientage for the great lords and add to 
 their importance. While appeals were allowed, a new trial 
 in the same court was forbidden, and all manner of comments 
 and of expositions on any part of the law was absolutely 
 prohibited. But at the end of a hundred years every law 
 was to be void. There were one hundred and twenty sections 
 of the Grand Model, or Constitutions as Locke called them, 
 and every part of them was to remain sacred and unalterable 
 forever, and every inhabitant was to take an oath to support 
 them. 
 
 Among the provisions of the Fundamental Constitutions 
 
THE FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONS 
 
 103 
 
 were some innovations on English customs that were not 
 without merit. There was to be in each precinct an officer 
 called the register, in whose records should be enrolled all 
 deeds, judgments, and conveyances which concerned any 
 land in the precinct, and until registered such conveyances 
 had no force. And in every seignory, barony, and colony 
 there was to be a registry for recording all births, marriages, 
 and deaths; and no marriage was to be lawful, no matter 
 what contract or ceremony was used, until both parties 
 mutually owned it before the register, and he had recorded 
 it, together with the names of the parents. 
 
 In regard to religion, while freedom of conscience was 
 allowed, yet it was enacted that no man should become a 
 freeman of Carolina or have any estate or habitation within 
 it '“that doth not acknowledge a god, and that god is to be 
 publicly and solemnly worshipped” ; and while no person of 
 the age of seventeen years could have any protection of 
 the law unless a member of a church, yet any seven persons 
 agreeing in any religion could constitute a church or pro- 
 fession on which they should bestow some name to dis- 
 tinguish it from others. 
 
 1669 
 
 Registration 
 of land and 
 of social 
 statistics 
 
 Religion 
 
 The changes introduced by the Constitutions 
 
 Some of the administrative provisions of the Grand Model 
 were not unlike those that had been in use in Albemarle from 
 the first. Others were easy to introduce. But the establish- 
 ment of new orders of nobility with the powers and privileges 
 accorded them and the subdivision of the counties as pro- 
 posed were utterly impracticable. 
 
 The details of what the philosopher Locke and his coadju- 
 tor, a sagacious man of business and practical statesman, 
 deemed a perfect plan of government were worked out with 
 great care and particularity. But political institutions to fit 
 the needs of a community must be the reasonable outgrowth 
 of actual conditions, developed through the natural opera- 
 tion of influences that affect the thoughts, habits, aspira- 
 tions, and life of the people. Although the Grand Model 
 
104 
 
 1669 
 
 The limita- 
 tions of the 
 Constitu- 
 tions 
 
 C. R., I, 179 
 
 CARTERET’S ADMINISTRATION, 1670-73 
 
 won high applause upon its publication in Europe, it did not 
 excite enthusiasm in Carolina. As a theoretical adjustment 
 of forces in government, establishing on a secure basis a 
 conservative aristocracy and perpetuating a monarchical 
 system along with guarantees of popular freedom, it was 
 doubtless superior to any European government of that era. 
 But it was not suited for freemen inhabiting a wilderness. 
 For the chief aim in view, the establishment of a practical, 
 government in Carolina, it was a strange admixture of un- 
 mitigated folly and theoretical wisdom. The provision 
 ordaining a nobility was probably not offensive to the inhab- 
 itants of Albemarle. The people of every nationality were 
 at that period accustomed to class distinctions, which entered 
 largely into the social life of their country, and an order 
 of nobility could not have been disagreeable to Englishmen in 
 any colony. But the plan was too elaborate to be put into 
 successful operation, and, except in some unimportant par- 
 ticulars, it was not attempted in Albemarle. A century later, 
 when a constitution was to be framed by practical statesmen 
 for a continent, the outline of a system, a few general grants 
 of power, a few denials of authority by way of limitation, 
 sufficed to establish a government that has evoked the 
 admiration of mankind. 
 
 The first meeting under the Grand Model 
 
 The principal features of the Grand Model having been 
 agreed on, a rough draft of it was, in July, 1669, trans- 
 mitted to Albemarle. The first meeting of the Proprietors 
 after its adoption was held in October, 1669, at the Cockpit, 
 a government office near Whitehall, where Lord Ashley’s 
 public business was commonly transacted, where the Board 
 of Trade held its sessions, and where later Princess Anne 
 resided until called to the throne. There were present all 
 of the Proprietors except Clarendon and Sir William 
 Berkeley. Albemarle, being the oldest of the Proprietors, 
 became the first Palatine. At a second meeting two months 
 later, January, 1670, it was resolved that instructions should 
 
CARTERET SUCCEEDS STEPHENS 
 
 be sent to Carolina to put the new model into operation. 
 Before that, however, Albemarle had, in December, passed 
 away, and Lord John Berkeley succeeded to the office of 
 Palatine. At this meeting - the acts of the General Assembly 
 of 1669, that had been transmitted to the Lords Proprietors 
 for their confirmation, were approved, and they were re- 
 drafted to conform to the requirements of the Grand Model, 
 and were then returned to Albemarle, where they were 
 passed for the second time on October 15, 1670. 
 
 Carteret governor 
 
 At this meeting, too, John Locke and Sir John Yeamans 
 were appointed landgraves ; and Lord Berkeley, exercising 
 his prerogative as Palatine, deputized Samuel Stephens, the 
 former governor, to be his deputy and to continue in as 
 governor. But about December of the year 1669 
 Stephens died, and the council in Albemarle having, in 
 such an emergency, the power and right to fill the vacancy, 
 chose as governor Peter Carteret, a kinsman of Sir George 
 Carteret, who had settled in Albemarle in 1664; and 
 Carteret entered actively on the duties, and as governor held 
 with the council a called session of the county court, being 
 the general court for the county, in July, 1670, at which time 
 administration was granted on the estate of Stephens to 
 John Culpepper, as attorney for Sir William Berkeley, whose 
 marriage with the widow may already have been solemnized. 
 That council, previously appointed by Governor Stephens 
 under his commission and instructions, was composed of 
 Colonel John Jenkins, John Harvey, Major Richard Foster, 
 and Captain Thomas Cullen, some of the other councillors 
 not being in attendance.* 
 
 *At a called court held July 15, 1670, at the house of Samuel 
 Davis, for the county of Albemarle, there were present the Hon. 
 Peter Carteret, governor and commander-in-chief ; Colonel John 
 Jenkins, John Harvey, Major Richard Foster, Captain Thomas 
 Cullen, councillors ; and the following was adopted : Whereas, 
 Mr. John Culpepper, Gent., attorney for Sir William Berkeley, 
 governor, and captain-general of Virginia, petitioned to this court 
 for letters of administration on the estate of Captain Samuel 
 Stephens, deceased, he putting in security to save the court harmless, 
 
 105 
 
 1669 
 
 C. R., I, 183 
 
 Stephens 
 
 dies, 
 
 Dec., 1669 
 
io6 
 
 1670 
 
 C. R., I, 181 
 
 Grand 
 Model vs. 
 the existing 
 system 
 
 MSS. 
 Records 
 at Edenton 
 
 CARTERET'S ADMINISTRATION, 1670-73 
 
 The news of the death of Stephens apparently reached 
 England before the instructions prepared for him at the 
 January meeting of the Proprietors had been sent, and so 
 later in the year Carteret was appointed governor and his 
 instructions were sent him, together with a copy of the Grand 
 Model, which had been completed and fully perfected on 
 March 1, 1670. 
 
 On September 27th of that year a general court was held 
 for the county of Albemarle, there being present the same 
 councillors, together with Francis Godfrey and John 
 Willoughby. 
 
 The Grand Model in practice: The precincts 
 
 I11 the instructions directed to Carteret as governor the 
 Proprietors said they were not able to put the Grand Model 
 fully into practice, “but intending to come as nigh to it as 
 we can,” Carteret was directed to observe it as far as prac- 
 ticable. These instructions, therefore, varied from the Grand 
 Model and also varied from the existing system at Albe- 
 marle in several particulars. Among the directions given 
 to Carteret was one that a writ should be issued to the four 
 precincts of Albemarle for the election in each of five repre- 
 sentatives for a general assembly, the division into four 
 precincts having been made conformably to the rough draft 
 of the Grand Model sent over in July, 1669.* Under the 
 concessions, and under Stephens’s instructions in 1667, the 
 inhabitants were to choose twelve deputies, until “distric- 
 tions of the county should be made,” and then each “dis- 
 triction” should choose two representatives. That would 
 
 it is ordered that the said Culpepper have orders of administration 
 granted him. Whereas, Andrew Woodward was summoned to this 
 court of chancery, and being required to give his oath upon inquiry 
 of what he knew to be the estate of Samuel Stephens, deceased, he 
 wilfully denied and refused to give his oath, wherefore the court 
 ordered that he remain a close prisoner. On September 27, 1670, a 
 general court was held at the same place, which seems to have been 
 at that time the convenient point of meeting. 
 
 *The names of three of these precincts were Carteret, Berkeley 
 and Shaftesbury; the name of the fourth is now not positively 
 known. 
 
THE GRAND MODEL IN PRACTICE 
 
 indicate that at least six subdivisions were then in con- 1669 
 
 templation ; now the county was divided into four precincts, 
 as required by the Grand Model, each electing five repre- 
 sentatives. Such was the origin of the right of the Albe- 
 marie precincts to have five representatives, which they sentatlves 
 continued to enjoy, despite all antagonism, until the adoption 
 of the state constitution in 1776.* 
 
 The nobility 
 
 Five persons appointed by the Lords Proprietors, who c. r., 1 , 181 
 theoretically were to represent the nobility, were to sit with 
 the twenty representatives chosen by the people to form 
 an Assembly. After the Assembly had chosen a speaker, it 
 was to elect five persons, who were to join the five deputies 
 appointed by the Lords Proprietors to form the governor’s 
 council, the governor himself being the deputy of the Pala- 
 tine. And this council of ten was to have the power of the 
 Grand Council in the Grand Model. The governor and the 
 five deputies were to form the Palatine’s Court, and were 
 vested with the jurisdiction and powers conferred on that 
 court. Particular authority was conferred on the governor 
 and council to establish courts for the administration of 
 justice ; and all the inhabitants were to take an oath of 
 allegiance and of submission to the form of government. 
 
 Such were the instructions to Governor Carteret, in 1670, 
 to put the Grand Model into operation “as nigh as may be,” 
 and in several particulars to alter the existing government 
 in order to do so, and to require the submission of the 
 people to it under the sanction of an oath. Carteret, who 
 early settled in Albemarle, and was so esteemed that he 
 had been speaker of the Assembly, and whose qualifications 
 were such that he had served as secretary of the general 
 court, sought to give effect to his instructions and put into 
 operation the changes indicated. The county had already 
 
 'In 1665. the freemen themselves met in Grand Assembly; in 1666, 
 they assembled and appointed members to represent them ; and this 
 was continued until the precincts were established, when the election 
 was by precincts. 
 
io8 
 
 CARTERET’S ADMINISTRATION, 1670-73 
 
 1670 
 
 Value of the 
 
 Grand 
 
 Model 
 
 1672 
 
 C. R., I, 215 
 
 been laid off into four precincts, which were now per- 
 manently established. The governor and deputies held their 
 Palatine’s Court, the council was increased by five common- 
 ers chosen by the Assembly, and in other respects attempts 
 were made to follow the instructions of the Proprietors. 
 
 The Grand Model in its complex entirety was not at all 
 adapted to a few scattered planters in a new settlement ; nor 
 were its provisions that erected a class of landed aristocracy 
 in harmony with the spirit of liberty and of equality which 
 would naturally be fostered in a remote wilderness. But it 
 contained some important principles of liberty which thus 
 became engrafted in the fundamental constitution of the 
 colony, and whose maintenance was in after years of great 
 interest to the people. Although it did not go into operation 
 in all its parts, yet in some respects the frame and system of 
 government conformed to it. The governor was the repre- 
 sentative of the Palatine, the deputies were appointed from 
 among the people, and the Assembly elected five persons to 
 sit with them ; the precinct courts, the general courts and 
 courts of chancery were now held conformably to the funda- 
 mentals ; and every second year, in September, the people 
 elected their deputies to sit in the legislature without any 
 writ; and the Assembly met in November. 
 
 The Quakers: Edmundson and Fox 
 
 It was during Carteret’s administration, in 1672, that 
 William Edmundson, a preacher of the new sect, the Friends, 
 visited Albemarle, and the first religious meeting was held in 
 the forests of Carolina. Accompanied by two woodsmen to 
 guide him through the wilderness, Edmundson passed on 
 horseback beyond the confines of the Nansemond settlements, 
 and on the third day reached the house of Henry Phillips, 
 the only Quaker then in Albemarle. Phillips and his wife 
 had been convinced in New England, and coming to Carolina 
 about 1665 had not seen a Friend for seven years. When 
 Edmundson made himself known, they wept for joy. Word 
 was speedily sent to the neighbors to come at noon to hear 
 
THE FIRST RELIGIOUS MEETINGS 
 
 log 
 
 the preacher, and many came. For a dozen years those 
 who had first seated in that remote locality had been without 
 church privileges, had not assembled in prayer, nor heard a 
 preacher of the Word. Edmundson, accustomed to the 
 observance of the proprieties, was shocked that they brought 
 their pipes and sat smoking during the religious service. 
 But while their forest breeding impressed him that they 
 were not religious, yet he found the way to their hearts, and 
 several at once received the “Truth with gladness.” Truly, 
 those were glad hearts that were converted and brought into 
 communion with this apostle of repentance preaching that 
 the inner light was a revelation of the Holy Spirit. On the 
 third day Edmundson, well pleased with Carolina, returned 
 to Virginia. But a few months later he was followed by the 
 very head and founder of the faith, George Fox. Fox 
 reached Bennett’s Creek toward the last of November, and 
 taking a canoe, proceeded to the Chowan and then to Eden- 
 ton Bay ; and there, obtaining a larger boat, went on to 
 Governor Carteret’s. The governor and his wife “received 
 them lovingly,” and Carteret courteously accompanied him 
 two miles through the wilderness. Thirty miles more 
 brought Fox to the residence of Joseph Scot, one of the 
 assemblymen, where they had a precious meeting ; and a 
 few miles further they reached the home of the secretary 
 of the colony, who had previously accepted the Quaker faith. 
 For three weeks Fox lingered among these people of the 
 forest, whom he described as tender and loving and recep- 
 tive of the truth, holding meetings to which they flocked. 
 The seed fell on good ground. The faith of the zealous and 
 earnest evangelist, who appealed so effectively to the con- 
 sciences of his hearers, took firm root in Albemarle. No 
 other religious meetings were held calling the people into 
 communion and at once ministering to their human needs 
 and satisfying their spiritual longings. It was in sympathy 
 with the solitude of their surroundings and the quietude of 
 their daily life. There had been naught to disturb the rest- 
 fulness of the people or to inflame their passions. Content- 
 
 1672 
 
 Edmundson 
 
 preaches 
 
 C. R., I, 217 
 
 Fox visits 
 Carolina 
 
I IO 
 
 1672 
 
 C. R., I, 2 iq 
 
 The 
 
 Assembly 
 of 1672 
 
 The Great 
 Deed 
 
 appealed to 
 
 CARTERET’S ADMINISTRATION, 1670-73 
 
 ment prevailed. The administration of their government had 
 been of the people and for the people. Their assemblies met 
 regularly, and the laws were of their own making. 
 
 The first dissatisfaction 
 
 At the session of 1672 at least fifty-four acts were passed, 
 which may, however, have embraced all former laws then 
 re-enacted. The fifty-fourth prohibited the sale of rum at a 
 greater price than twenty-five pounds of tobacco per gallon ; 
 for the unit of value was the pound of tobacco, and taxes, 
 rents, and debts were all payable in that commodity. This 
 attempt to regulate prices, interfering with the freedom of 
 trade, was soon found to be inexpedient, because if the 
 traders could not make a greater profit on the rum, they 
 would not bring in other commodities that were more neces- 
 sary to the inhabitants. The next year, therefore, the act 
 was repealed. 
 
 Notwithstanding those features of the Grand Model that 
 were inimical to freedom, there was probably no opposition 
 to the introduction of the administrative changes which 
 Carteret, under his instructions, put into operation. The 
 people, few in number, somewhat scattered, occupied with 
 their industries, probably did not at first greatly concern them- 
 selves with those provisions of the new constitution that 
 were not to be carried into effect at once among them ; but 
 when they were required to take an oath to support it and 
 to abide by it, and when one of its unalterable provisions 
 was that their rent per acre, instead of one farthing per 
 acre, payable in commodities, should be as much silver as is 
 contained in a penny, they exhibited signs of dissatisfaction. 
 They had just secured by the Great Deed the concession for 
 which they had petitioned years before, that their rent should 
 be like that in Virginia, and the proposed change must have 
 aroused indignation. In the records of Perquimans is an 
 entry showing that Francis Toms, Christopher Nicholson, 
 and William Wyatt, being Quakers, did subscribe the 
 Fundamental Constitutions, but they added a protest, how- 
 
DISCONTENT IN THE COLONY 
 
 hi 
 
 ever, that by accepting the Grand Model they should not 
 be disannulled of the gracious grant given by the Lords 
 Proprietors in their Great Deed to hold their lands according 
 to the tenure of Virginia. Doubtless this protest but ex- 
 pressed the common sentiment of all the inhabitants. 
 
 Besides, just at this time there were other causes of dis- 
 content arising from the navigation laws and customs duties, 
 which if enforced would seriously interfere with the trade of 
 the colony. But whatever was the occasion, dissatisfaction 
 pervaded the settlement — a dissatisfaction so pronounced that 
 Carteret could not stem it. The new element introduced into 
 the council by the admission of five inhabitants appointed by 
 the Assembly now changed the attitude of that body toward 
 public measures and virtually brought it under the rule of 
 the people themselves. The council was no longer in har- 
 mony with the governor. 
 
 Carteret’s efforts to compose differences were fruitless ; he Carteret 
 
 A resigns 
 
 wearied of the attempt, and finally laid down his office and 
 abandoned the colony. Before May, 1673, he sailed for 
 England, leaving the administration, it is said, in ill order 
 and worse hands. 
 
 On. May 25th, at a council held at the house of Thomas 
 Godfrey, Carteret was absent and Colonel John Jenkins 
 presided as deputy governor. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Administrations of Jenkins and Miller, 1673-78 
 
 The navigation acts. — The Board of Trade. — The people mur- 
 mur. — Other causes of dissatisfaction. — An Indian war. — The to- 
 bacco duty resisted. — The administration compromises. — Miller ar- 
 rested. — Eastchurch goes to England. — Governor Jenkins deposed.— 
 Eastchurch appointed governor. — Bacon's rebellion in Virginia. — - 
 A government by the people. — Eastchurch deputizes Miller. — Op- 
 position to the navigation acts. — Durant resolves to revolt. — Miller 
 acts resolutely. — Durant returns to Albemarle. — The crisis arrives. — 
 The revolt proceeds. 
 
 The navigation acts 
 
 Since the opening of the century there had been rapid 
 progress in the art of manufacturing and in the develop- 
 ment of the commercial interests of England. Fierce wars 
 had been waged for the expansion of trade and for the 
 establishment of commercial supremacy. The early navi- 
 gation acts, strengthened by Cromwell’s legislation, were 
 initial movements in a system intended to secure the mer- 
 cantile prosperity of England. And as the enterprising 
 Dutch were now proving successful competitors in the 
 colonial trade, there was in 1660 a further enactment, aimed 
 at Holland, that all importations into the plantations should 
 be in English ships. Because of that prohibition, Dutch 
 vessels were no longer seen in American harbors, and the 
 carrying trade was secured. But still there was direct inter- 
 course between the colonies and European ports, and the 
 London merchants did not reap all the advantage of the 
 colonial trade. So three years later English statesmanship 
 took a further step. The importation of European com- 
 modities into the colonies was prohibited unless shipped from 
 England. In the interest of the London merchants, it was 
 
THE NAVIGATION ACTS BURDENSOME 
 
 113 
 
 virtually enacted that the colonies could obtain foreign goods ^ 
 
 only from them. Still there was unrestrained trade between 
 the colonies themselves. The Englishmen in New England 
 could freelv barter with their fellow-subjects of Albemarle, 
 and that, indeed, was the chief source of supply for that 
 colony. And it may be that the New England merchants 
 evaded the navigation acts, and that a part of the European 
 commodities brought to Albemarle had not come by way of 
 London. At any rate, the growing mercantile importance of 
 New England attracted attention, and in 1672 a blow was 
 aimed to cripple it. An act was passed abridging the free- 
 dom of inter-colonial traffic. 
 
 A duty was imposed on tobacco and certain other enu- Tobacco 
 merated articles when exported from one colony to another. Xe« P ' d t0 
 And tobacco was the staple in which payments were made, taxed 
 It was the basis of bills of credit. The duty imposed was a 
 penny a pound, and to that extent the tax lessened the value 
 of tobacco as a debt-paying commodity in the inter-colonial 
 trade. Indeed, tobacco from the first had been the subject 
 of particular regulation. Its culture in England was for- 
 bidden, and Charles I had taken to himself the entire pro- 
 duction of the English colonies, at a price fixed by himself, 
 and it paid a duty on being brought into England. If any 
 obtained at Albemarle by the New England merchants was 
 shipped to the continent, the king lost his taxes and New 
 England obtained funds from abroad to pay for European 
 commodities to be clandestinely brought into the colonies. 
 
 To stifle this trade and to secure more funds for the deplen- 
 ished purse of a needy sovereign this export tax was im- 
 posed, and it was to be collected by officers of the Crown. 
 
 Indeed, the entire regulation of colonial affairs, being claimed 
 as a royal prerogative, had on the Restoration been com- 
 mitted to the king's Privy Council. Alien Ashley became 
 chancellor of the exchequer, in 1668, ever active in pro- 
 moting national advancement, he procured the appointment 
 of a Council of Commerce, to whom was assigned special 
 charge of the colonies. In 1672 Ashley became lord high 
 
1 14 
 
 1672 
 
 Origin * 
 
 1673 
 
 Shaftesb ury 
 
 JENKINS AND MILLER, 1673-78 
 
 chancellor and was created Earl of Shaftesbury, and in the 
 same year this export tax was laid on tobacco. 
 
 The Board of Trade 
 
 But the Council of Commerce was inefficient, and later it 
 was dissolved and its functions were transferred to a new 
 board appointed to take charge of all matters relative to 
 trade and the foreign plantations ; and the immediate care of 
 these affairs was committed to a few selected members, 
 among them being Shaftesbury, Craven, Berkeley, and Col- 
 leton, four of the Proprietors of Carolina, while Landgrave 
 Locke was their secretary. Such was the origin of this 
 board that continued until the Revolution to manage the 
 affairs of the American colonies. At the time of its creation 
 the colonies were free to export their products, except 
 tobacco and some other enumerated articles, in English ships, 
 to the West Indies and elsewhere, and to import rum and 
 salt and produce in return ; and European commodities im- 
 ported by one colony from England could be reshipped to 
 another ; tobacco could be exported from one colony to 
 another on the payment of the export tax, and upon its 
 importation into England an import duty was to be paid. 
 But while these were the regulations, they had not been 
 enforced. No customs officers had been appointed for 
 Albemarle, and there had been no interference with the trade 
 that enterprising New Englanders had established with 
 Albemarle. Now there was to be a change ; but Shaftesbury 
 was no longer on the board. 
 
 His zealous efforts to arrest the advance of Catholic influ- 
 ences had, in 1673, separated him from the other great 
 officers of state, and in September of that year, having been 
 dismissed from the office of lord chancellor, he became the 
 popular leader and the central figure in the contest against 
 the measures of the court. Having carried through Par- 
 liament a bill forbidding Catholics to come within ten miles 
 of London, the king, who was largely under Catholic influ- 
 
THE NAVIGATION ACTS ENFORCED 
 
 ences, dismissed him from the Privy Council and ordered 
 him to leave London. 
 
 The people murmur 
 
 It was fifteen years after the axe of the first settlers had 
 rung in the clearings of Albemarle before any order "by the 
 king's command” was heard in Carolina. Then came com- 
 missions for one Copeley and one Birch to be the king’s 
 collector of customs and his surveyor of customs ; and in 
 case these appointees should not be in the colony, the gov- 
 ernor was directed to fill the offices by his own appointment. 
 Copeley and Birch did not appear and claim their commis- 
 sions, so the duty of appointment devolved on John Jenkins, 
 then president of the council and acting governor. Oppo- 
 sition was at once manifested to this first step toward 
 putting in force the navigation acts and trade regulations 
 that had not been previously observed in Albemarle. But 
 Jenkins and the other deputies managed to reconcile the 
 people to it, and the appointments were made. Timothy 
 Biggs, the deputy of Earl Craven, who had married the 
 widow of Speaker Catchmaid, was appointed surveyor of 
 customs, and Valentine Byrd, the collector. Byrd was a man 
 of consequence and of wealth, and lived in style, as the 
 inventory of his estate filed on his death a few years later 
 indicates.* He entered on his duties, but probably was not 
 exacting or thorough in their performance. It was said that 
 many hogsheads of tobacco went out tax free marked as 
 "bait for the New England fishermen,” and European com- 
 
 *In 1680 we have the inventory of Captain Valentine Byrd, who 
 was one of the grandees of the time, and here we come upon "fine 
 Holland sheets,” and "diaper napkins,” and “table cloaths,” and 
 “silver tankards and spoons,” “dressing boxes,” “mirrors,” “books,” 
 “a coach.” and “lignum-vitae punch bowl,” with a rich account of 
 household articles in the shape of “warming pans,” “beds and bed- 
 ding,” “chairs and tables,” clearly demonstrating that Captain Valen- 
 tine Byrd was a man well-to-do in this world ; and if not very 
 comfortable, had no one to blame but himself, for he had men 
 servants and maid servants, negroes, Indians, and white convicts, and 
 lands well stocked and good tenements thereon, all of which he left 
 to his wife, who afterward gave both it and herself to the first 
 leader of rebellion, and became Madame Culpepper. 
 
 115 
 
 1675 
 
 C. R., I, 291 
 
 C. R., I, 292 
 
 Hawks, II, 
 578 
 
1 16 
 
 JENKINS AND MILLER, 1613-78 
 
 1675 
 
 The Re- 
 monstrance 
 
 An Indian 
 
 war 
 
 C. R., I, 658 
 
 Meherrins 
 
 subdued, 
 
 1676-77 
 
 The tobacco 
 
 duty 
 
 resisted 
 
 modities were allowed to be landed that did not come under 
 a London manifest. Still ostensibly the law was observed in 
 Albemarle, but it was a constant cause of irritation. 
 
 In the meantime other circumstances led to discontent 
 and apprehension among the inhabitants. There were 
 rumors that the rents were to be raised, and also that the 
 province was to be divided among the Proprietors, and that 
 Albemarle was to be allotted to Sir William Berkeley. It 
 would have been repugnant to the freemen of Albemarle to 
 be cast under the dominion of any single Proprietor ; but 
 when their ruler was to be Berkeley, whose tyranny in Vir- 
 ginia was drawing the inhabitants into revolt, the suggestion 
 was abhorrent to them, and the Assembly in November, 1675, 
 adopted a remonstrance to the Lords Proprietors on the 
 subject. 
 
 In addition to these troubles an Indian war now set in. 
 Some of the savages who had been waging a murderous 
 warfare on the northern borders of Virginia fled to the 
 Meherrins and stirred them up to hostilities, and they began 
 to roam in the wilderness between Albemarle and Nanse- 
 mond, and committed several murders that aroused the 
 people. Fortunately, just when needed, Captain Zack 
 Gilliam came into port from London with his armed ship, 
 the Carolina, bringing a cargo among which was a supply 
 of arms and ammunition, and a force was organized to 
 suppress the Indians. In the prosecution of this war, which 
 lasted for more than a year, as the council said later, “by 
 God’s assistance, though not without the loss of many men,” 
 the Meherrins were wholly subdued, and were removed from 
 their territory on the south side of the Meherrin River, which 
 thev had occupied under a treaty made by commissioners 
 appointed by King Charles II, to a reservation at the mouth 
 of the Meherrin River, and on the north side, although after 
 that some of them planted corn and built cabins on old fields 
 of the Chowanoak Indians on the south side of the river. 
 
 On the return of the force from this campaign against the 
 Meherrins the people, with arms in their hands, demanded 
 
NAVIGATION ACTS RESISTED 
 
 that the export tax on tobacco shipped to another colony 
 should not be collected. Here was incipient rebellion. The 
 grievance to be redressed was not because of the Proprietary 
 government, but it arose under the laws of England. The 
 purpose of the English statesmen was to build up England’s 
 greatness by constraining the colonies to trade at London 
 and by preventing inter-colonial trade in tobacco. The New 
 England traders, it was alleged, were adept in evading these 
 regulations. Vessels leaving England would stop at Ire- 
 land and obtain a quantity of linen ; others would call by 
 the Canary Islands and take in wine. There was nothing 
 immoral in the act itself. It had always been proper and 
 lawful, but now it was sinful because prohibited in the inter- 
 est of the London merchant. And so with tobacco. It was T obacco 
 entirely proper to export it from Albemarle direct to London export lawi 
 without any export duty, but if used to pay a debt in New 
 England it was burdened with an export tax. Its value 
 as a debt-paying medium, if used in the New England trade, 
 was lessened a penny a pound in the interest of the London 
 merchant. The coast trade was natural, but it was not 
 helpful to London, therefore it must be stifled. Such was the 
 argument of the English statesmen. The men of Albemarle 
 were not of that mind. They preferred to consult the advan- 
 tage of Albemarle. The law they objected to was not of 
 their making. It was not for their benefit. It was disad- 
 vantageous to their community. It was imposed on them 
 without their consent by men across the Atlantic to pro- 
 mote their own selfish interests. It was not submitted to with 
 complacency. Oppressive and unjust legislation bears the 
 same fruit in every age. There are evasions by artifice and 
 then revolt. Hogsheads of tobacco were clandestinely ex- ^™m 0 n 
 ported, and then the people with arms in their hands took 
 an open stand against the enforcement of the law. Chief 
 among those who led the opposition was George Durant, 
 who had become one of the most influential men in Albe- 
 marle, and who had a considerable quantity of tobacco for 
 shipment to New England ; and in alliance with him were 
 
1 18 
 
 1676 
 
 C. R., I, 292 
 
 The law 
 evaded 
 
 Miller 
 
 arrested 
 
 C. R., I, 269, 
 3*4 
 
 JENKINS AND MILLER , 1673-78 
 
 Richard Foster, one of the council ; Patrick White, William 
 Crawford, and Valentine Byrd himself. 
 
 The administration compromises 
 
 The few councillors and officials who felt constrained to 
 support the law were unable to cope with a determined com- 
 munity. They therefore effected a compromise. Without 
 authority, they offered to reduce the export tax to a farthing 
 the pound. That was assented to, and Byrd was allowed 
 thereafter to peacefully discharge his duties, but even then 
 probably he used no great vigilance as the king’s officer. 
 And, indeed, it was afterward alleged against him that he 
 allowed much tobacco to be exported without the payment 
 of any duty, and even winked at the importation of European 
 manufactures that had not come by way of England. 
 
 And now came some episodes that in the uncertain and 
 unsteady light thrown upon them and the shifting relations 
 of the actors cannot be certainly accounted for, and the causes 
 can only be surmised. 
 
 Thomas Miller, an apothecary, but a person of some con- 
 sideration, was often in drink. There seems to have been 
 bad blood between him and Jenkins, the president of the 
 council. It is said a conspiracy was formed by Jenkins and 
 John Culpepper, who had once been the surveyor-general 
 of Carolina, to charge him with uttering treasonable words 
 against the king’s person and the monarchy, as well as blas- 
 phemy. Early in 1676 he was arrested by Jenkins and the 
 council and held under a guard of soldiers, put in irons 
 and thrown into prison. Then, doubtless on their application 
 to Berkeley, that rank Royalist issued a mandate for Miller’s 
 removal to Virginia to be tried before him and his council. 
 The Albemarle Assembly, however, was no party to this 
 proceeding, and it heard evidence in opposition to the 
 charges. Miller, on being carried to Virginia, was acquitted 
 by Berkeley and his council, and he caused his attorney, 
 Henry Hudson, to institute an action for damages against 
 Culpepper, and then in May Miller took shipping for London, 
 
CONFLICT WITH GOVERNOR JENKINS 
 
 bearing with him a remonstrance to the Proprietors adopted 
 by the Assembly in the preceding November, and also a 
 subsequent address adopted in March, relative to the depo- 
 sition of Jenkins, and assuring the Proprietors of their 
 fidelity to them. 
 
 About the same time Thomas Eastchurch, speaker of the 
 Assembly, also sailed for London. He had had a case in 
 one of the courts, of which Captain John Willoughby 
 was a member, in which the court decided adversely to him, 
 and on his proposing to appeal to the Lords Proprietors 
 Willoughby denied the appeal, declaring that his “court was 
 the court of courts and the jury of juries.” Willoughby is 
 alleged to have been a great tyrant. For his tyrannical 
 conduct and oppression he was cited before the Palatine’s 
 Court, but he beat the officer of that court and refused to 
 attend ; thereupon he was declared in contempt and out- 
 lawed, and the succeeding General Assembly put a price on 
 his head, and he fled to Virginia and remained there until the 
 government of Albemarle subsequently became unsettled. 
 
 It would seem that Jenkins’s course toward Miller, and 
 perhaps his willingness to have the custom duty on tobacco 
 collected, led to charges of misdemeanor against him, and 
 the General Assembly deposed him from his office as presi- 
 dent of the council and imprisoned him and sent by Miller 
 to the Proprietors for instructions. There was a conflict be- 
 tween the Assembly and Governor Jenkins, who was never- 
 theless sustained by a majority of the council. Nor were 
 the Proprietors satisfied with the conduct of their own 
 deputies, who in several particulars had disregarded their 
 wishes and in some instances had thwarted them. The Pro- 
 prietors had directed that towns should be laid off and built 
 at Roanoke Island and elsewhere, so that trade could be 
 centred at certain points instead of being carried on in a 
 desultory way at the landing places of the planters. They 
 had also directed that a way by land should be opened to the 
 settlement on the Ashley; and they had particularly enjoined 
 that plantations should be settled on the south side of the 
 
 119 
 
 1676 
 
 Eastchurch 
 goes to 
 England 
 
 Governor 
 Jenkins 
 deposed, 
 May, 1676 
 
120 
 
 1676 
 
 C. R., I, 
 228-233 
 
 The spirit 
 of self-gov- 
 ernment 
 
 JENKINS AND MILLER, 16/3-78 
 
 sound. None of these instructions had been obeyed, and 
 the councillors had prevented any settlement on the south 
 side of the sound, because that would have interfered with 
 their individual trade with the Indians in that direction, 
 which they had engrossed. Indeed, Thomas Cullen, one of 
 the deputies, was accused of furnishing the Indians with 
 pistols and with arms and ammunition, and because of that 
 charge he fled from the colony. 
 
 Eastchurch appointed governor 
 
 In the fall of 1676 Eastchurch and Miller arrived in 
 London, and the Proprietors at once took their matters into 
 consideration. Eastchurch was not merely a gentleman of 
 good fame, but was related to Lord Treasurer Clifford, one 
 of the Board of Trade, who had solicited his appointment as 
 governor. The Proprietors finding that he was a very dis- 
 creet and worthy man, was speaker of the Assembly and 
 much interested in the prosperity of the colony, Novem- 
 ber 21, 1676, appointed him governor. They also, in a letter 
 to the Assembly, approved its action in regard to Jenkins, 
 and expressed their appreciation of the respect shown for 
 themselves by the Assembly. 
 
 Difficult indeed was the situation of those Proprietors who 
 were members of the Board of Trade and in duty bound to 
 see his Majesty’s customs collected, and were yet interested in 
 preserving quiet in their province, where the people were evad- 
 ing the payment of that tax in defiance of the royal authority, 
 and, emboldened by the progress of Bacon’s revolution in 
 Virginia, were likewise manifesting a purpose to govern 
 themselves.* 
 
 *In May, 1676, because of Berkeley’s supineness in not checking 
 Indian hostilities, many of the Virginians embodied under the leader- 
 ship of Nathaniel Bacon and marched against the Indians ; this pro- 
 ceeding being in defiance of Governor Berkeley’s wishes, on the 
 29th of the month he proclaimed them rebels. The next month an 
 Assembly met, and Berkeley having promised to issue a commission 
 to Bacon as commander of the forces against the Indians, all differ- 
 ences were quieted. But later the governor refused to abide by the 
 agreement, and withheld the promised commission. Bacon hurriedly 
 marched his troops to Jamestown, surrounded Berkeley and de- 
 
EFFORTS FOR COMPROMISE 
 
 i2r 
 
 If any one could reconcile the conflicting elements in Albe- i6 ?7 
 
 marie, Shaftesbury wisely surmised that he must be found 
 among those who were in favor with the Assembly. So 
 having appointed Speaker Eastchurch governor, he procured 
 Miller’s appointment as collector of customs, for Miller’s 
 cause had been espoused by the Assembly, and he had borne 
 their letters to the Proprietors, and on his account they had 
 imprisoned and deposed John Jenkins, the president of the 
 council. 
 
 A year had elapsed since the Assembly had by the deposi- ^ y °^ r e nment 
 tion of Jenkins taken the administration into its own hands, people 
 and still the Proprietors did not hasten to interfere. Shaftes- 
 bury, now grown to be the greatest of all subjects, had 
 persistently declined the overtures of the king, and had 
 resolutely agitated to secure safeguards for Protestantism 
 and liberty. In 1677 a mismove led to his arrest and im- 
 prisonment in the Tower, and all his applications for a 
 habeas corpus being denied, he was only released by the 
 king's order the following year. 
 
 Eastchurch deputizes Miller 
 
 The new governor dallied in England, and it was not until 
 toward June, 1677, that Eastchurch and Miller departed for 
 Albemarle. And even then, instead of sailing direct for 
 Virginia, they embarked in a vessel bound for the island 
 of Nevis, in the Caribbean Sea. There Eastchurch fell in Eastchurch 
 with a lady of attractive person and with a considerable Nevis** 
 
 manded the fulfilment of the promise. The governor complied ; but 
 shortly afterward revoked the commission as being obtained under 
 compulsion, and raised an army to take Bacon, who was again pro- 
 claimed a rebel. In September the contending forces met at James- 
 town. and Berkeley was routed and fled. Bacon thereupon called a 
 new Assembly. But on the first day of October he fell a victim to 
 fever contracted in the trenches of Jamestown. After his death 
 Berkeley soon re-established his authority and terrorized the Vir- 
 ginians by his unsparing cruelties and excessive executions. On i 6 77 
 January 29th, however, Herbert Jeffreys arrived from England, 
 bringing a commission as lieutenant-governor, and accompanied by 
 a regiment of soldiers. Berkeley sailed for England in April, and 
 smarting under the king’s disapprobation, soon after his arrival died 
 of a broken heart. 
 
122 
 
 JENKINS AND MILLER , 1673-78 
 
 1677 
 
 C. R., I, 
 278, 292 
 Miller 
 arrives 
 July, 1677 
 
 Opposition 
 to the 
 navigation 
 laws 
 
 fortune, and, remaining to pay his addresses, commissioned 
 Miller, who had been appointed deputy, to be president of 
 the council, and despatched him in advance to settle affairs 
 by the time of his own arrival. 
 
 In July Miller reached Albemarle, and having exhibited 
 his commissions, was quietly admitted into his various offices 
 and assumed the reins of government. All the inhabitants 
 again took the oath, or, being Quakers, subscribed it, of 
 allegiance to the king, fidelity to the Proprietors and sub- 
 mission to the established government. The Indians being 
 still hostile, Miller during the summer carried on a cam- 
 paign against them, and eventually they were overcome. 
 
 As collector of customs Miller appointed deputies in every 
 precinct, among them Timothy Biggs, who were very active 
 in collecting the export tax on tobacco and in seizing any 
 European commodities that had not come from England ; 
 and, indeed, the ship Patience was seized for unlawfully 
 bringing in such goods. 
 
 This zealous enforcement of these odious laws again 
 occasioned discontent among the inhabitants, who had acqui- 
 esced in Valentine Byrd’s easier administration. And then 
 it began to be rumored that Byrd was to be held accountable 
 for great sums and much tobacco that he ought to have had 
 in possession, as well because of what he had collected as 
 because of what he had failed to collect. Such demands 
 interested not merely Byrd, but all exporters of tobacco 
 who had profited by the reduction of the tax to a farthing 
 the pound. 
 
 Durant resolves to revolt 
 
 c. r., t, Perhaps it was because of this probable demand that the 
 idea of revolt had suggested itself to Durant, whose interest 
 lay in not disturbing the existing situation. He being in 
 London subsequent to the appointment of Eastchurch and 
 Miller, had plainly told the Proprietors that Eastchurch 
 should never be governor, and rather than that he would 
 revolt. Bold, self-reliant, and masterful must have been that 
 
DURANT BEGINS THE REVOLT 
 
 untitled woodsman when standing face to face with the 
 great earl and the other powerful noblemen who owned 
 Carolina he had warned them that Eastchurch should never 
 be governor, but that he would keep him out by force and 
 arms. Whatever principle had been settled in England by 
 the Restoration, in Albemarle Durant still held that govern- 
 ment should be by consent of the governed. And his purpose 
 to revolt against Eastchurch’s administration was openly 
 declared in Albemarle. 
 
 Of this Miller doubtless had timely information, and his 
 arbitrary measures while acting as governor may have been 
 taken because of it. He made limitations on the choice of 
 assemblymen, and succeeded in having himself invested with 
 the power of imposing fines at his own pleasure. Armed 
 with this authority, he issued warrants to have some of the 
 most considerable men in the colony brought before him 
 dead or alive, setting a price upon their heads, and for his 
 own protection he surrounded himself with a guard of 
 soldiers. Such desperate measures indicate apprehension 
 of trouble ; and, indeed, as they were reasonably calculated 
 to excite a conflict, Miller must have considered that revolt 
 was imminent and that the better way to meet it was by 
 resolution and a show of force rather than by temporizing. 
 Forewarned, he doubtless thought to overawe those who had 
 not already attached themselves to the leaders of the opposite 
 faction by a show of determined conduct. 
 
 On December I, 1677, the Carolina came into port from 
 London with George Durant on board, who found Gilliam 
 a willing ally in his plans. Gilliam himself had a grievance 
 against some of the Proprietors, who had turned him out of 
 a considerable employment in Hudson’s Bay, and wished 
 them evil. Plis son also seems to have had a vessel plying 
 from Albemarle to New England, and while the Carolina 
 and her consorts took in cargoes for London, there may have 
 been illicit traffic to which all the shipmasters were parties. 
 A person described as the New England ambassador had 
 been in Albemarle, and rumors were set afloat to inflame the 
 
 123 
 
 1677 
 
 Miller acts 
 resolutely 
 
 C. R., I, 
 249, 287 
 
 Durant 
 returns to 
 Albemarle 
 C. R., I, 292 
 
 Dec., 1677 
 
124 
 
 JENKINS AND MILLER, 16/3-78 
 
 1677 
 
 Purpose 
 of the 
 rebellion 
 
 people. It does no! appear that there was harbored a design 
 to throw off allegiance to the king or to deny the authority 
 of the Lords Proprietors, but rather to impede the enforce- 
 ment of the navigation acts and the collection of the tax 
 on tobacco shipped to New England. The laws relating to 
 trade bore hard upon them, and the Revolutionists proposed 
 to prevent their operation. If necessary to that end, they 
 would subvert the administration and set up a government 
 of their own, and thus at least for a time escape from the 
 rule of those who would enforce the regulations that bore 
 so heavily upon their trade. Such appears to have been 
 the purpose of the confederates, who drew into their meas- 
 ures nearly all the leading inhabitants, except alone the 
 deputies and those holding employment under Miller. The 
 occasion for the outbreak followed swift upon the arrival 
 of the Carolina. That ship was well armed, “a pretty vessel,” 
 carrying several cannon, and could defy any force Miller 
 could bring against her. She now brought in a cargo com- 
 posed in part, as the year before, of arms and ammunition, 
 swords and pistols for sale to the farmers of Albemarle. 
 
 The crisis arrives 
 
 c. R., i,2g 7 Coming to anchor off Captain Crawford’s landing, no 
 sooner had Gilliam gone ashore than Miller charged him 
 with having carried off his last cargo of tobacco without 
 paying the tax, and demanded the payment now of a thou- 
 sand pounds. Gilliam refused to make this payment, 
 alleging that the tobacco had been carried to London and the 
 tax was paid there. He was at once arrested and his papers 
 seized ; and Miller having thus begun his proceedings, 
 hastened that night aboard the Carolina, and with cocked 
 pistols sought to arrest George Durant, charging him with 
 treason. This step precipitated the crisis. It led at once to 
 a resolute purpose to overthrow the administration. The 
 men of Albemarle, trained in their secjuestered homes to 
 prompt action, now boldly took an open stand. The leader- 
 ship was conferred on John Culpepper, a man of energy 
 
CULPEPPER LEADS THE MOVEMENT 
 
 125 
 
 and enterprise, and the movement has been known to history 
 as the “Culpepper Rebellion.” A report was quickly spread 
 abroad that Gilliam was about to depart and carry all his 
 cargo away, and the inhabitants would lose the chance of 
 trading with him. Such a misfortune, it was declared, con- 
 cerned all the people, and to prevent it a revolution was 
 necessary. 
 
 Valentine Byrd, with Culpepper and other coadjutors, im- 
 mediately embodied a force and seized the person of Timothy 
 Biggs, deputy collector of customs, and arrested him on the 
 charge of murder. The next day a force of forty armed men 
 seized Miller and two other deputies and put them in irons, 
 charging them with treason. Culpepper, who is said to have 
 had considerable experience in insurrection in several of the 
 colonies, now despatched instructions to Richard Foster, 
 who, although one of the council and a deputy, was in 
 alliance with the confederates to arrest Hudson, the deputy 
 collector in Currituck, and to seize his papers and bring 
 him to George Durant's house. And a proclamation, called 
 the Remonstrance of the Inhabitants of Pasquotank, was 
 on the same day, December 3d, prepared and sent to the 
 other precincts, setting forth their justification for the revolt. 
 In it the confederates averred that the occasion of securing 
 the records and imprisoning the president was that thereby 
 the country might have a free Parliament, by whom their 
 grievances might be sent home to the Lords Proprietors. 
 Miller they charged with having denied a free election and 
 with cheating the country out of one hundred and thirty 
 thousand pounds of tobacco, besides the expense of “near 
 twenty thousand pounds of tobacco he had brought upon us 
 by his piping guard,” and they recited his conduct toward 
 Captain Gilliam and Durant, “and many other injuries, mis- 
 chiefs and grievances he hath brought upon us, that thereby 
 an inevitable ruin is coming upon us (unless prevented), 
 which we are now about to do ; and hope and expect that 
 you will join with us therein and subscribe this.” 
 
 1677 
 
 C. R., I, 293 
 
 Bmes and 
 
 Miller 
 
 arrested 
 
 The Remon- 
 strance of 
 Pasquotank 
 
 Dec., 1677 
 C. R., I, 248 
 
 C. R., I, 249 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 1677 
 
 CML, I, 
 
 242, 303 
 
 C. R., I, 2Q9 
 
 Dec., 1677 
 
 Administrations of Harvey, Jenkins, Wilkinson and 
 Sothel, 1679-89 
 
 The revolt successful. — A government by the people. — Victory 
 brings moderation. — Quiet succeeds the storm. — The revolt against 
 arbitrary power and the navigation acts. — The Proprietors 
 dilatory. — The increase of Albemarle. — The Proprietors acquiesce. 
 — Seth Sothel sent to govern. — John Harvey governor. — Miller 
 flees. — Durant dominant. — Biggs retires to Virginia. — The Quakers 
 appeal to the Proprietors for protection. — Harvey dies ; suc- 
 ceeded by Jenkins. — Culpepper tried, but acquitted. — Shaftesbury 
 in exile. — Albemarle to observe the law. — Wilkinson governor. — 
 Sothel arrives. — John Archdale visits Albemarle. — A view of the 
 situation. — Sothel becomes a tyrant. — He is expelled. 
 
 The revolt successful 
 
 The Revolutionists, having appealed to the country for 
 support, lost no time in dallying. A supply of arms was 
 obtained from the Carolina, and Culpepper conducted a force 
 to Chowan, where he seized the marshal and all the records in 
 his possession. 
 
 After keeping Miller and the other prisoners about a fort- 
 night at Crawford’s house, the Revolutionists proceeded by 
 water to George Durant’s, being accompanied by several 
 boats filled with armed men. As they passed the Carolina 
 she, with all her flags and pennons flying, saluted them by 
 firing three of her great guns. At Durant’s some seventy 
 men had assembled, and Foster, with an additional party, 
 soon arrived with their prisoner from Currituck. A search 
 was now made for the seal of the colony, which was found, 
 together with Miller’s commission and other public docu- 
 ments, concealed in a hogshead of tobacco. Being in pos- 
 session of the great seal and of the public records, and the 
 old officers deposed and in prison, Durant, Culpepper and 
 their associates proceeded to establish a government and to 
 order matters their own way. 
 
EASTCHURCH IN VIRGINIA 
 
 A government by the people 
 
 An Assembly of eighteen members was elected, which 
 deputed five of its members (John Jenkins and Valentine 
 Byrd being among the number) to sit with Foster, one of 
 the Proprietors’ deputies, and form a court for the trial of 
 the prisoners, who were charged with treason. A grand 
 jury was formed and a petit jury was being summoned when 
 the proceedings were interrupted by the receipt of a procla- 
 mation issued by Governor Eastchurch, warning them to 
 desist and return to their homes. Eastchurch had reached 
 Virginia eight days before, and on learning of the revolt, 
 hastened to demand that the Revolutionists should disperse 
 and be obedient to lawful authority. The trials were ad- 
 journed and a force was despatched to prevent Eastchurch 
 from coming into Albemarle ; and, as Durant had threatened, 
 they kept him out by force of arms. Disappointed and 
 baffled, Eastchurch invoked the aid of the governor of Vir- 
 ginia, there being in that province the troops sent from 
 England to suppress Bacon’s Rebellion, and permission was 
 given him to enlist volunteers. To meet this new danger that 
 threatened them the Revolutionists organized a larger force, 
 and to obtain the necessary funds seized the customs money 
 which Miller had collected, and deposed him as collector and 
 elected Culpepper in his stead, following a precedent that 
 had just been set in Virginia, where the Assembly elected a 
 collector to fill a vacancy. But while collecting recruits and 
 organizing his forces Eastchurch fell ill with fever, and 
 within a month died in Virginia. With his death all appre- 
 hension of immediate interference with their plans passed 
 away. Durant and his coadjutors were masters of Albe- 
 marle. All of the deputies but Foster being arrested, and 
 all opposition overcome, the Revolutionists now proceeded 
 more slowly and with greater caution. 
 
 Their success had been obtained by boldness and resolu- 
 tion, and it was complete ; but looking to the future, they 
 realized that their situation called for the exercise of wisdom 
 
 127 
 
 1677 
 
 C. R., I, 
 297, 299 
 
 C. R., I, 298 
 
 C. R., I, 298 
 
 Victory 
 
 brings 
 
 moderation 
 
128 
 
 HARVEY TO SOTHEL, 1679-89 
 
 1678 
 
 C. R., I, 300 
 
 Commis- 
 sioners sent 
 to England 
 
 C. R., 1,288 
 A free 
 government 
 
 and discretion. The interrupted trials were not resumed. 
 Miller was conveyed to William Jennings’s plantation at the 
 upper end of Pasquotank River, where a log house ten feet 
 square was built for his prison, and there he was confined, 
 not being allowed either writing material or intercourse with 
 any friend. Similar prisons were constructed for each of 
 the other prisoners, and precautions were taken to prevent 
 any of them communicating with England. But Biggs con- 
 trived to escape, and, succeeding in his efforts to reach Vir- 
 ginia, hastened to England. To counteract his representa- 
 tions to the Proprietors, the Assembly was convened and 
 two commissioners were despatched to explain their pro- 
 ceedings and to conciliate the Proprietors by promising all 
 manner of obedience to their authority, but they were to 
 enlarge on the tyranny of Miller and to insist strongly for 
 right against him. Chalmers says that these agents were 
 Culpepper and Holden, but apparently he is in error. Some- 
 what later Holden, who had been in England, returning to 
 Virginia stopped in Boston, and while there wrote to the com- 
 missioners of customs about what had taken place in Albe- 
 marle, and mentioned that he had never seen and did not 
 know Culpepper. It is said that one of these commissioners 
 was quickly despatched, Gilliam providing the funds, and 
 that the other, George Durant, was to sail in the Carolina 
 after measures to insure safety were perfected. Shortly after- 
 ward they were both together in London. 
 
 In the meanwhile there was established in Albemarle what 
 Culpepper called “the government of the country by their 
 own authority and according to their own model.” The 
 people had at last a free Parliament. Thomas Cullen was 
 speaker, and among the members were John Jenkins, Alex- 
 ander Lillington, Thomas Jarvis, Henry Bonner, William 
 Jennings, Anthony Slocumb, John Varnham, William Craw- 
 ford, Richard Sanders, Patrick White, and Valentine Byrd, 
 and other substantial men. Byrd’s career was, however, 
 fast drawing to a close, and within a year the troubles of 
 Albemarle had ceased for him. 
 
REASONS FOR CULPEPPER'S REVOLT 
 
 129 
 
 Foster, one of the deputies, and the assistants chosen by 
 the Assembly to act with the deputies in forming the grand 
 council, were co-operating with the Revolutionists, and these, 
 under the direction of Durant and Culpepper, managed the 
 public business. While Harvey and many others may have 
 been inactive, yet it does not appear that there was any 
 substantial opposition to the revolt. 
 
 As neither the king’s authority nor that of the Proprietors 
 was denied, the Revolutionists did not regard themselves as 
 being in rebellion. Indeed, at one time, when some of the 
 people set up a cry that they would have no lords nor land- 
 graves nor caciques, the leaders quickly hushed them and told 
 them that that would not do. They justified their action 
 on the claim of right to protect themselves from the arbi- 
 trary exercise of power by Miller ; and as to that, the 
 Proprietors found that they had cause for their action. 
 But before Miller came as deputy-governor Durant had 
 declared his purpose to keep Eastchurch out, and he took 
 measures in preparation for the revolt. From the attending 
 circumstances it reasonably appears that the original purpose 
 was to escape from a too rigid enforcement of the navigation 
 laws and custom duties, and to this end Culpepper was 
 chosen collector. The annual tax on tobacco was £3,000, and 
 that was the stake at issue. Indeed, just at that time strenu- 
 ous efforts had been made to obtain from the king a repeal 
 of this export duty. And while Charles, to show his favor 
 to Carolina, did at his own charge send two vessels to con- 
 vey some foreign Protestants to the province, and remitted 
 some of the duties and restraints of trade, and might have 
 granted this particular request, he was persuaded not to do 
 so by his commissioners of customs, who strongly recom- 
 mended against it because they foretold the exemption asked 
 for would occasion abuses more easy to prevent than to 
 abolish. 
 
 1677 
 
 The revolt 
 one against 
 arbitrary 
 power and 
 the naviga- 
 tion laws 
 
 Purpose of 
 the revolt 
 
 Thus the outbreak in Albemarle in 1677 was of the same Forerunner 
 
 ..... of 
 
 color and similar in origin to the outbreak on the continent Revolution 
 
I 3° 
 
 HARVEY TO SOTHEL, 1679-89 
 
 1678 
 
 Biggs 
 
 The 
 
 increase of 
 Albemarle 
 
 Exrent 
 in 1677 
 
 a century later, which in the course of its progress developed 
 into a struggle for separation and independence. 
 
 Therefore, while the Revolutionists established courts and 
 held parliaments and maintained order and otherwise carried 
 on the functions of government, his Majesty’s customs were 
 not collected with vigilance and exactness. 
 
 Timothy Biggs, although a Quaker, was by no means 
 submissive to his opponents. Indeed, the Quaker faith in 
 its early days did not have the exact cast that it subsequently 
 assumed. On reaching London, he sought to persuade the 
 Proprietors to put down the Revolution by force. In par- 
 ticular he urged that a ten-gun vessel could not be resisted, 
 and that sufficient volunteers could be obtained in Virginia 
 to rout the rebels. But the Proprietors were not of his mind. 
 They did not choose to engage in such a conflict. Indeed, 
 at that time it would have been difficult for them to have 
 subjugated the people of Albemarle united in determined 
 resistance. 
 
 The colony had grown. The tithables, being the working 
 hands between sixteen and sixty years of age, numbered 
 fourteen hundred, of whom, however, one-third were women 
 and negro and Indian slaves. Although the Proprietors had 
 bestowed but little attention on Albemarle, but had devoted 
 their efforts to promote the growth of their new town on 
 the Ashley, the neglected settlement was more populous and 
 more prosperous than the southern colony. The planters 
 were spread out from the Chowan to Currituck Sound ; and 
 besides a superfluity of provisions, of grain and cattle, their 
 annual crop of tobacco was 800,000 pounds, which sufficed 
 to secure the needed European commodities. And the dis- 
 content was general. Perhaps it was heightened because at 
 this time, tobacco being very low, Virginia by act of 
 Assembly undertook to prevent the Albemarle crop from 
 being marketed through her ports, and prohibited any of it 
 from being brought into that province. A measure so 
 unfriendly was exasperating. Efforts had been made to 
 establish local markets at different points on the Albemarle 
 
PEACE FOLLOWS STORM 
 
 shores, where the tobacco could be taken on board the vessels 
 for shipment, and the Proprietors had given directions to 
 lay off towns at Roanoke Island and elsewhere, but all such 
 endeavors to establish centres of trade had proved futile. 
 The tobacco was loaded at the farms of the producers. There 
 were no villages in the settlement. The public business was 
 transacted at private houses, and while George Durant’s 
 house was a place of meeting, yet other points were equally 
 convenient. There was no locality where an attack by an 
 armed force could have availed to subdue the inhabitants. 
 The prudence of Durant now bore its fruits. The Pro- 
 prietors rejected the proposal of the warlike Biggs, and 
 listening to the commissioners of the people, took the other 
 alternative. They sought to co-operate with the inhabitants ; 
 and accepting the assurance of the envoys that they had 
 no purpose to antagonize legitimate authority, made efforts 
 to establish order and government at Albemarle on a firmer 
 footing. 
 
 While remonstrating and threatening that they would 
 maintain their government with force, if need be, and would 
 punish to the extent of the law any new outbreak, they 
 declined to antagonize the revolutionary leaders, and pur- 
 sued the wiser and better way of preserving friendly relations 
 with their colony. Clarendon was now dead, and his share 
 in Carolina had been purchased by Seth Sothel, who at that 
 time stood well in the esteem of the other Proprietors. It 
 was thought that the presence of a Proprietor would invest 
 the administration with greater dignity and tend to allay the 
 factional strife and dissensions that had been involved in the 
 course of the Revolution. The commissioners representing 
 Durant and his associates, perhaps glad to embrace such an 
 easy solution of their difficulties, promised on the part of 
 the people the utmost submission to Sothel if he should 
 come as governor. 
 
 And so it was arranged that he should be the new gov- 
 ernor; and, the more certainly to remove former difficulties, 
 the Proprietors had Miller’s commission as collector of cus- 
 
 13 1 
 
 1679 
 
 Proprietors 
 
 acquiesce 
 
132 
 
 HARVEY TO SOTHEL, 1679-89 
 
 1679 
 
 Sothel 
 
 captured 
 
 1679 
 
 Miller flees 
 
 toms revoked, and Sothel was appointed to succeed him. 
 He early sailed for his new government, but misfortune 
 befell him during the voyage. The Algerines, whose pirati- 
 cal crafts were then scouring the seas near the Mediterranean, 
 overhauled his vessel and took him prisoner. Efforts were 
 at once made to secure his release by ransom, but for a time 
 they were in vain. 
 
 John Harvey governor 
 
 The Proprietors, to establish a temporary government, in 
 February, 1679, appointed John Harvey governor until 
 Sothel should be released, and obtained for Robert Holden 
 the appointment of collector, at the same time appointing 
 him a deputy and conferring on him a commission to make 
 an extensive exploration of Carolina to the mountains. 
 Holden had been a follower of Bacon in the Virginia rebel- 
 lion, but was pardoned and was then in England. In June 
 he reached Boston, bearing the commissions for Harvey and 
 for the other deputies. There he remained ten days exam- 
 ining into the methods of the New England traders, and he 
 reported that a half dozen traders controlled all the tobacco 
 raised at Albemarle, brought it to Boston, whence it was 
 shipped as bait and illegally conveyed to Europe, and the 
 king’s customs were defrauded. A few weeks later he 
 arrived at Albemarle, followed fast by Timothy Biggs, who 
 resumed his functions as surveyor of the customs. 
 
 In August Harvey was acting as governor, and at a Pala- 
 tine’s Court held by him, on affidavits covering the charges 
 against Miller by Jenkins in 1675, the deposed collector was 
 again arrested, but broke jail and made good his escape to 
 England. The old deputies had been reappointed, and the 
 council and courts were substantially composed of the same 
 members as under Miller’s administration. Associated with 
 the council to form the general court, Crawford, Blount, and 
 Varnharn were assistants chosen by the Assembly, being the 
 same assistants elected before the outbreak in 1676. And 
 these were members of the Revolutionary Assembly chosen 
 
DURANT IN THE ASCENDANT 
 
 133 
 
 dominant 
 C. R., I, 313 
 
 at Durant’s house when Miller was deposed. Harvey, the 
 governor, had not been an active participant on either side ; 
 but that he was not unfriendly with the Revolutionists is indi- 
 cated by his appointment of George Durant and Alexander 
 Lillington as justices for the precinct of Berkeley, with 
 authority to hold the precinct court, which, besides a civil, 
 had a criminal jurisdiction attached to it. 
 
 George Durant was now the attorney-general, and con- Durant 
 tinued to be the most influential person in the colony ; and 
 as the Proprietors had condoned the excesses of the Revo- 
 lutionists, he felt his power, and his enemies dreaded it. 
 
 Biggs, as Miller’s deputy collector and zealous supporter, 
 had been an object of especial malevolence; and, moreover, 
 there was probably some personal ill-will between him and 
 Durant, growing out of Catchmaid’s taking a patent in 1662 
 for Durant’s premises ; for although Catchmaid had entered 
 into an agreement to convey to Durant, he had never done so, 
 but the legal title had under his will vested in the widow, 
 and on her marriage to Biggs, although he and Durant had 
 come to an accounting, the matter was not closed. 
 
 Biggs was tenacious of his rights, a man of stubborn Bi ?gs 
 obstinacy, who realized his own importance as a king’s Virginia 
 officer, and he was fully satisfied with the honesty of his own 
 purposes and of the dishonest purposes of the leaders of 
 the Revolution. Smarting under a sense of the injuries and 
 wrong he had suffered, for which the Proprietors had pro- 
 vided no redress, he declined to be complacent toward the 
 new administration. Harvey having shown favor to Durant 
 and his coadjutors, whose influence was still dominant in 
 Albemarle, Biggs persuaded some of the other deputies to 
 join him in withdrawing from the council, sought to inter- 
 fere with the orderly collection of the customs by Holden 
 and prevailed on a number of his Quaker adherents to leave 
 the colony and seek refuge in Virginia. 
 
 1679 
 
 The 
 
 In the early days of the Revolution the Ouakers had sided Q l,ak « rs , 
 
 **■'' appeal tothe 
 
 with Biggs and James Hill, who were deputies and the most Proprietors 
 considerable men of their faith. Being called on to join the protection 
 
134 
 
 HARVEY TO SOTHEL, 1679-89 
 
 people in revolt, they had refused. Thereupon they were 
 c . r ., 1,252 required to surrender their guns; and when they held their 
 religious meetings it was alleged that they were plotting 
 against the revolutionary government. Their numbers had 
 increased considerably, not merely by conversion in Albe- 
 marle, but probably by accessions from abroad. In 1676 
 Edmundson, who had again visited the colony in that year, 
 wrote in his journal concerning them: “The people were 
 tender and loving ; and there was no room for the priests, 
 for Friends were finely settled, and I left things well among 
 them.” When Harvey’s administration began, and the gov- 
 ernment, instead of being under the influence of Biggs, as 
 they had hoped, was seen to be controlled by the popular 
 faction, their disappointment was great, and entertaining 
 apprehensions for their personal safety, they were led to 
 Kmo?- uaker abandon their homes. In September, 1679, a number of 
 strance, 1679 t i iem j 0 i ne d in a remonstrance to the Lords Proprietors, 
 setting forth their innocence of any turmoil and trouble and 
 vindicating themselves from aspersion. They declared that 
 “these persons by whom we have suffered are still breathing 
 forth their threats against us ; they having received an act of 
 grace and indemnity, as they call it. And now that the heads 
 of that sedition are elected to sit in Parliament, and some 
 of them are of the court, and so consequently to become our 
 judges, we shall be the objects for them to execute their 
 vengeance upon and they appealed to the Proprietors for 
 protection. 
 
 John Jenkins succeeds Harvey as governor 
 
 The Proprietors sought to compose these differences 
 among the inhabitants of their province, and while allowing 
 to the dominant faction the powers of government, required 
 that the minority should be protected from ill-usage. In the 
 appointment of Harvey they seem to have chosen wisely, 
 and after the first ebullition of dissatisfaction by the adherents 
 of Biggs and Miller had subsided the administration seems 
 to have been guided into calmer waters ; but Harvey was not 
 
CULPEPPER TRIED FOR TREASON 
 
 135 
 
 destined to see the full fruition of his efforts to adjust differ- 
 ences. After a term of six months he died in office, and the 
 council elected John Jenkins to be governor in his stead, 
 Jenkins being in office in February. But the change in 
 administration produced no alteration in policy, and quiet 
 continued to prevail while Jenkins was governor. 
 
 Miller having made good his escape, on reaching England 
 laid his case before the commissioners of customs, and pro- 
 ceedings were had that resulted in the arrest, in February, 
 1680, of Culpepper, who at that time was in England, on 
 the charge of rebellion and of embezzling the customs. Cul- 
 pepper admitted the facts alleged against him, but prayed 
 for a pardon ; and if not pardoned, he desired to be tried in 
 Carolina. His requests were not granted, and he was 
 arraigned and was on trial for treason when Shaftesbury 
 appeared as a witness and declared that at the time of the 
 Revolution there was no legal government in Albemarle ; 
 that neither the governor nor the government was legal 
 according to the Constitutions of Carolina ; and that taking 
 arms against them could not be treason ; and that the Par- 
 liament elected by the people was legal, the people having 
 a right to choose a Parliament every two years of their own 
 motion and without any writ ; and that the disorder in Albe- 
 marle was not treason, but a mere riot. And so on Shaftes- 
 bury’s testimony that Miller had obtained possession of the 
 government without legal authority, and that it was not 
 rebellion in the people to dispossess him, Culpepper was 
 acquitted by the jury. 
 
 Shaftesbury in exile 
 
 This was about the last appearance of Shaftesbury in con- 
 nection with the affairs of Carolina. In 1679 he had attained 
 the zenith of his great career. His unswerving purpose had 
 been to obtain security for Protestantism and constitutional 
 liberty, and he became the head of a strong party devoted 
 to those objects. In order to check the growth of Catholic 
 influences, he had made strenuous endeavors to have the 
 
 1679 
 
 Harvey dies 
 
 Culpepper 
 
 acquitted 
 
 C. R., I, 331 
 
 1680 
 
136 
 
 HARVEY TO SOTHEL, 1679-89 
 
 1680 
 
 Albemarle 
 to observe 
 the laws 
 
 queen removed from court, and to have James, Duke of 
 York, the king’s brother, dismissed from the council and 
 excluded from the succession, and the Duke of Monmouth, 
 a Protestant, declared legitimate so that he would succeed 
 to the throne. In these efforts he failed ; but he succeeded in 
 forcing through Parliament the Habeas Corpus Act, which 
 required immediate action on the part of any judge to whom 
 an application for the writ might be made — since become the 
 very palladium of Anglo-Saxon freedom. An election for 
 Parliament occurring in 1681, he prepared instructions to be 
 handed by the constituencies to their representatives, insist- 
 ing on the exclusion of James, the limitation of prerogative, 
 and security against popery and arbitrary power ; and he 
 again appealed to the king to legitimatize Monmouth. But 
 the king instead seized him and committed him to the Tower. 
 In October he offered to retire to Carolina if released. 
 Charles, however, was relentless, and had him indicted for 
 high treason; but the grand jury ignored the bill. Charles, 
 still bent on his destruction, managed to secure the appoint- 
 ment of men of his own selection as sheriffs of London, 
 and these picked the jurymen. Shaftesbury at length realized 
 that he could not escape the vengeance of his enemies and 
 fled in disguise to Holland, where he died in January, 1683. 
 
 Henry Wilkinson governor 
 
 Although Albemarle was now in repose, the Crown con- 
 tinued to complain of the seizure of the customs funds and 
 the non-observance of the navigation acts. So the Pro- 
 prietors agreed that steps should be taken to ascertain how 
 much Miller’s estate had been damaged and also promised 
 that there should be an efficient government maintained in 
 Albemarle ; and particularly that the customs laws should 
 not be evaded. 
 
 In February, 1681, the Proprietors appointed Captain 
 Henry Wilkinson, then in London, governor of Albemarle, 
 and gave him instructions to choose, with the consent of 
 the council, four able, judicious men who had not been 
 
THE PROPRIETORS CONCILIATE 
 
 137 
 
 concerned in the late disorders, who with him should be 
 a court to try all disputes growing out of these troubles ; 
 and he was also directed to ascertain the damages suffered 
 bv the king’s officers ; and in his instructions there was power 
 conferred on the council to elect a governor should he die 
 m office. Sir William Berkeley having died, the Proprietors 
 directed Governor Wilkinson not to admit any deputies for 
 that share, they claiming that as Berkeley had not conveyed 
 it in his lifetime, it devolved to his associates, and they 
 asserted that Sir William had never paid a penny toward 
 the settlement of Carolina. Later, however, four of them — 
 Albemarle, Craven, Carteret, and Colleton — purchased the 
 right of Sir William’s widow, then the wife of Colonel 
 Philip Ludwell, paying him £300 for it, and had it conveyed 
 to Thomas Amy in trust for them. In 1686 it appears that 
 Thomas Archdale, a minor son of John Archdale, had the 
 title to Lord John Berkeley’s share ; Amy to Sir William’s, 
 and Sothel to Clarendon’s ; and Sir Peter Colleton was the 
 Palatine. Wilkinson had been selected as governor because 
 of his reputation for prudence, which led to a hope that he 
 would be able to reconcile conflicting interests in Albemarle.* 
 The Proprietors, who were men of affairs, realized that the 
 inhabitants of Albemarle had the purpose to manage their 
 own concerns, and although they recognized the duty of 
 protecting their officers and deputies who had striven to 
 maintain their authority and to enforce the king’s mandates, 
 yet they considered it was best to pursue a conciliatory course 
 rather than one of exasperation. Efforts were made to heal 
 existing dissensions. An act of oblivion was passed, but 
 with a saving clause in regard to the payment of the money 
 that ought to have been collected for the king and to make 
 satisfaction for the injuries sustained by Miller, whose prop- 
 erty had been seized and destroyed ; and the Assembly levied 
 a tax to repay the customs money they had seized and used 
 to carry on the Revolution. On the governor and council 
 
 1681 
 
 The devolu- 
 tion of the 
 shares 
 
 The 
 
 moderate 
 policy of the 
 Proprietors 
 
 C. R., T, 
 
 328, 329 
 
 *Wilkinson on his appointment was created a cacique. 
 
i3« 
 
 HARVEY TO SOTHEL, 1679-89 
 
 1683 
 
 C. R., I, 283 
 
 C. R., I, 346 
 
 Archdale 
 
 visits 
 
 Albemarle 
 
 C. R., I, 
 350, 351 
 
 the Proprietors urged moderation. “We hope,” they said, 
 “your own interest, as well as our injunction, will induce you 
 to use your utmost endeavors to settle order among your- 
 selves, without which you can never expect an increase of 
 trade or strength. And these considerations ought so far 
 to prevail that we shall not be constrained to use force to 
 reduce the seditious to reason, since it is the good of the 
 inhabitants we most desire and not the taking away of any 
 man’s life and estate.” 
 
 Sothel arrives 
 
 But little, however, had been done toward redressing the 
 injuries of those who suffered in their estates during the 
 Revolution when Wilkinson’s administration suddenly closed. 
 Seth Sothel, after a long detention by the Turks, had been 
 ransomed, and after a sojourn in England, in 1683 he sailed 
 for Albemarle and assumed the government. Blank depu- 
 tations had been signed to be filled out by him with the 
 names of persons unconcerned in former differences ; and 
 he was instructed, with the consent of the council, to appoint 
 three discreet persons not concerned in the disorders to form 
 a court to try all actions growing out of those disturbances. 
 But instead, he appointed, according to the complaint of 
 Timothy Biggs, the very persons who had injured that 
 unpopular official, and Biggs alleged that he could obtain 
 no redress. 
 
 John Archdale, one of the Proprietors, perhaps in right 
 of his son, a man of education and of fine character, who, 
 like Penn and other men of capacity, wealth, and social stand- 
 ing, had accepted the faith of George Fox, was then in 
 Albemarle, and Sothel was instructed to confer with him 
 about making these appointments. He was also directed to 
 establish a county court for Albemarle, and to appoint a 
 sheriff who should hold the court as under the Fundamental 
 Constitutions, a court of criminal jurisdiction. At that time, 
 also, a receiver was appointed to collect the rents for the 
 Proprietors, the governor himself having before that been 
 
NAMES OF PRECINCTS CHANGED 
 
 139 
 
 charged with the duty of collecting them. And among other 
 changes that occurred about this time, 1684, the names 
 of the precincts were changed to Currituck, Pasquotank, 
 Perquimans, and Chowan.* Even at that early date some 
 complaint was made against Sothel that he engrossed to 
 himself the perquisites of the secretary and other inferior 
 officers ; and Colonel Ludwell, who owned a plantation in 
 Albemarle, complained that it was withheld from him by 
 Sothel on the pretence that it was forfeited. 
 
 In 1686 Sothel was out of Albemarle, and John Archdale 
 seems to have been conducting the administration. One 
 of Archdale’s letters gives a slight view of the colony at 
 that time. “For the present,” he writes, “we have not imme- 
 diate opportunities to send to England, by reason there is no 
 settled trade thither. . . . The country produces plenti- 
 fully all things necessary for the life of man. . . . We 
 
 at present have peace with all nations of the Indians.” The 
 Tuscarora king was very desirous to cut off a nation of 
 Indians called the Matchapungoes, which Archdale pre- 
 vented, and he hoped that he would have the country at 
 peace with all the Indians and with one another ; but the 
 people were very fearful of falling into some troubles again 
 should he leave them before the return of Sothel, and there- 
 fore he was remaining beyond his intention. 
 
 It was about this time also that the Coranines, a bloody 
 and barbarous tribe, were cut off by a neighboring nation, 
 and that the Pamlico Indians fell victims to some dreadful 
 plague, which opened the way for a settlement south of 
 Albemarle Sound. 
 
 On the death of Charles II, in 1685, his successor, King 
 James, at first made promises of protecting the charters of 
 the colonists, but soon steps were taken to bring them more 
 immediately under the control of the Crown. Proceedings 
 were begun to annul most of the Proprietary grants. The 
 Proprietors of Carolina wisely avoided any controversy, and 
 
 1684 
 
 MSS. 
 Records 
 Off. Sec. 
 State 
 
 C. R., I, 
 35 1 * 352 
 
 A view 
 of the 
 situation 
 
 Hawks, II, 
 378 
 
 The 
 
 charters 
 
 threatened 
 
 *The precincts bore their old names in 1680. 
 
140 
 
 HARVEY TO SOTHEL , 1679-89 
 
 16S8 
 
 Sothel 
 becomes a 
 tyrant 
 
 C. R., I, 369 
 
 Durant 
 opposes him 
 
 Sothel 
 impeached 
 and expelled 
 1689 
 
 C. R., I, 362 
 
 Ludwell 
 governor of 
 North 
 Carolina, 
 1689 
 
 their charter was not disturbed. Sothel seems to have gov- 
 erned acceptably to the people, although not observing his 
 instructions, until after Archdale left for England. Then 
 he entered on a career that has been described as infamous. 
 Being a Proprietor, he assumed to be above the law. He 
 seized upon the estates of some of the inhabitants without 
 any process from the courts, and arbitrarily imprisoned some 
 of the people. He used his authority to fill his purse, 
 imprisoning men illegally and releasing them on the pay- 
 ment of money. 
 
 Thomas Pollock and George Durant became victims. 
 Durant was charged with speaking words reflecting on him, 
 was seized and thrown into prison, and as the price of his 
 release Sothel exacted a bond for the payment of a sum 
 of money, which not being paid, he seized on Durant’s estate 
 without process of law. That was more than Durant would 
 stand. The point of endurance was passed. The revolution 
 of 1688, by which the people of England had driven King 
 James from the throne, doubtless had its influence in deter- 
 mining the action in Albemarle. Durant and Pollock 
 rose to right their wrongs. They seized the governor and 
 confined him in a log prison ten feet square, intending to 
 send him to England for trial. But Sothel sought to avoid 
 that. He entreated them instead to submit his case to the 
 General Assembly. This assented to, an Assembly was con- 
 vened in 1689, and he was tried and convicted of many mean 
 and despicable crimes, and of oppression, tyranny, extor- 
 tion, and taking bribes. The solemn judgment passed on 
 him was that he should abjure the country for twelve months 
 and his government forever. On receiving information of 
 these proceedings, the Proprietors, in December, 1689, sus- 
 pended him from the office of governor and appointed 
 Colonel Philip Ludwell to succeed him. On leaving Albe- 
 marle Sothel went to Charleston and assumed the reins of 
 government as a Proprietor, but fell into such courses there 
 that he was deposed by the Proprietors and instructed to 
 return to London. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Administrations of Ludwell, Jarvis, Archdale, Harvey 
 and Walker, 1689-1704 
 
 Philip Ludwell, governor of North Carolina. — Gibbs’s claim. — 
 Thomas Jarvis appointed deputy.— Ludwell governor of all Caro- 
 lina. — His instructions. — Changes in the system. — Conditions in Al- 
 bemarle.- — Proprietors prepare rent roll.— Ludwell gives effect to the 
 Great Deed. — Thomas Harvey deputy-governor. — John Archdale 
 governor of Carolina. — The arrival of the Huguenots. — Erection of 
 Bath County. — The line between Carolina and Virginia in dispute. — 
 Pirates harbor in all the colonies. — Parliament directs that gov- 
 ernors should be approved by the king. — Henderson Walker gov- 
 ernor. — Changes in Albemarle. 
 
 North Carolina: Ludwell governor 
 
 The inhabitants of Albemarle were now extending the 
 settlement to the west and south. The limits of the county 
 had been defined by the sound and five miles beyond, and 
 the time had come for an extension. The two settlements 
 at Charleston 5 " and at Albemarle were spoken of as South 
 Carolina and North Carolina. Albemarle was called North 
 Carolina by the Virginia council in 1688, and in commission- 
 ing Governor Ludwell, December 5, 1689, the Proprietors 
 appointed him “governor of that part of the province lying 
 north and east of the Cape Fear.” No longer was there to 
 be a governor of Albemarle ; but the province was divided 
 into two governments, the one north and east of the Cape 
 Fear and the other south and west of that river. Ludwell 
 was the first governor of North Carolina. In his instructions 
 he was authorized to appoint a deputy-governor, and he 
 appointed Thomas Jarvis, who had been one of the first 
 seaters, about 1659, to act as his deputy. 
 
 But the administration was disturbed by the claim of Cap- 
 tain John Gibbs, of Currituck, who on June 2, 1690, issued 
 a proclamation declaring Ludwell to be an impostor, and 
 
 *Charlestown on the Ashley was incorporated as Charleston in 1783. 
 
 i68g 
 
 C. R., I, 357 
 
 C. R., 1,360 
 
 Albemarle 
 gives place 
 to North 
 Carolina 
 
 C. R., I, 361 
 
 C R., I, 467 
 
 Gibbs 
 claims the 
 government 
 
142 
 
 LUDWELL TO WALKER, 1689-1704 
 
 1690 
 
 C. R., I, 3^3 
 
 MSS. 
 Records 
 Office 
 Sec. State 
 
 C. R., T, 
 
 373 - 38 o , 381 
 
 Changes in 
 the system 
 
 challenging any one who would maintain Ludwell’s title to 
 meet him in single combat, and promising to “fight him in 
 this cause as long as my eyelids shall wag.” He also with a 
 body of armed men invaded Albemarle, and broke up the 
 courts and seized two of the magistrates and carried them 
 off. His claim to be governor perhaps grew out of an 
 election by the council after the removal of Sothel by the 
 Assembly, for he invited the new deputies appointed by the 
 Proprietors to meet with him along with the other council- 
 men chosen by the Assembly. His position was so strong that 
 Governor Ludwell, who was in Virginia, represented to Gov- 
 ernor Nicholson of that province the desirability of his inter- 
 vention, and a month later Nicholson reported to the Crown 
 officers at home that he had quieted the stirs in Carolina for 
 the present, but that the people were mutinous, and how long 
 they would remain quiet was uncertain. In the meantime, 
 both Ludwell and Gibbs repaired to London to have the 
 Proprietors determine their claims, and Gibbs lost his cause. 
 
 Thomas Jarvis deputy governor 
 
 In the interim, between November, 1690, and Novem- 
 ber, 1691, Thomas Jarvis was acting as governor by appoint- 
 ment of Ludwell. In November, 1691, Craven, as Palatine, 
 appointed Colonel Ludwell governor of all Carolina, with 
 power to appoint a deputy-governor for North Carolina, and 
 instructions were sent him not based on the Fundamental 
 Constitutions, but “suitable to our charter from the Crown.” 
 The Fundamental Constitutions were largely abandoned. It 
 was contemplated to have but a single parliament for the en- 
 tire province, the representatives from Albemarle County 
 meeting with those of the southern counties, such being the 
 wording of the charter ; but that being impracticable, the 
 system of government in Albemarle was not thus altered. 
 
 Theretofore a governor had been appointed by the Pro- 
 prietors for the northern colony ; now, however, the gov- 
 ernor of Carolina was authorized to appoint a deputy-gov- 
 ernor for the northern as well as for the southern colony. 
 
THE TWO CAROLINAS 
 
 Another change made under his instructions was that the 
 Assembly no longer elected five commoners to sit in the coun- 
 cil, but the council was to be composed merely of the gover- 
 nor and deputies. The governor and council were to establish 
 courts and appoint the judges to hold them, the council itself 
 being a court of appeals and of chancery, and also a Pala- 
 tine's Court. The former title had been the grand council, 
 held by “the governor and lords deputies and the rest of the 
 members of the council of state.” A new court system was 
 under these instructions established, and two of the council 
 and some particular assistants were appointed to hold a gen- 
 eral court ; while the precinct courts continued to be held by 
 the justices and the sheriff of the precincts. Somewhat later 
 a change was made in the general court, and justices were 
 appointed and commissioned to hold that court, being sworn 
 in by the governor. 
 
 In their public instructions the Proprietors preserved the 
 appearance of adhering to the Grand Model, but by private 
 directions they allowed Governor Ludwell to ignore it in 
 many particulars. In Albemarle the changes introduced in 
 attempting to conform to it had been neither disagreeable 
 to the people nor oppressive in their consequences. While 
 in some measure the framework of the administration was 
 based on the system, its more peculiar features were entirely 
 ignored. It mattered little that the governor and council 
 should be called the Palatine’s Court ; that the grants should 
 be issued in the name of the Palatine and the other Lords 
 Proprietors, an innocent innovation that continued until the 
 purchase by the Crown in 1729, and generally the people 
 of Albemarle were content. In South Carolina the situation 
 was different. There the Proprietors had spent a large 
 amount of money in fostering the settlement, had, pursuant 
 to their chartered powers, created landgraves and caciques, 
 and efforts had been made to enforce some of the particular 
 provisions of the Fundamental Constitutions that were seri- 
 ously objected to by the inhabitants, whose dissensions and 
 violent proceedings caused the Proprietors more trouble and 
 
 M3 
 
 1691 
 
 New court 
 system 
 
 C. R., I, 381 
 
 Influence of 
 the Grand 
 Model in 
 North 
 Carolina 
 
 Influence of 
 the Grand 
 Model in 
 South 
 Carolina 
 
144 
 
 1693 
 
 Harvey, 
 
 deputy- 
 
 governor 
 
 Little clash- 
 ing with 
 Proprietors 
 
 Character of 
 the people 
 
 MSS. 
 
 Records 
 
 Off. 
 
 Sec. State 
 
 LUDWELL TO WALKER, 1689-1704 
 
 anxiety by far than the alleged turbulence of Albemarle ; 
 and to smooth over matters, Ludwell was directed to con- 
 sult the wishes of the inhabitants in conducting the govern- 
 ment at Charleston. 
 
 Having authority to appoint a deputy for Albemarle, 
 Ludwell at first continued Thomas Jarvis, and then ap- 
 pointed Thomas Harvey. He was, however, much in Albe- 
 marle himself, and while there acted as governor.* 
 
 Conditions in North Carolina 
 
 With Ludwell’s administration a new era began in the 
 North Carolina settlement. For more than a dozen years 
 it now enjoyed undisturbed repose. Indeed, there had never 
 been much clashing between the people and the Proprietors. 
 In great measure the inhabitants governed themselves, the 
 Proprietors being represented by some of the planters, whose 
 interests were identified with those of the colony, while the 
 governors were frequently selected from among the people. 
 If there were any turbulent spirits, with the exception of 
 Captain Gibbs, who asserted a claim to be governor and who 
 lived very near the Virginia line, they manifested turbulence 
 onlv on provocation. If occasionally a governor was 
 deposed and imprisoned, it was because of offences and in 
 vindication of freedom ; and truly in tracing their story one 
 finds remarkable illustrations of the sufficiency of their man- 
 hood to solve the problems of government. Even in the most 
 trying times government was never dissolved ; and while 
 the will of the people was enforced, anarchy did not supplant 
 
 *Dr. Hawks, II, 495, mentions Alexander Lillington as acting 
 as governor or president of the council. The author has not found 
 that record. Jarvis was governor in November, 1690, and in 
 November, 1691. Ludwell was present and acting as governor 
 in November, 1693, and in April. 1694; Thomas Harvey in July, 
 1694; Ludwell in August; Harvey in September; John Archdale in 
 July, 1695; and Thomas Harvey in April, 1696. In 1693 Alexander 
 Lillington was "High Sheriff" of Albemarle County, and as such 
 Governor Ludwell ordered him in November, 1693, to make proc- 
 lamation, that all persons in Albemarle could have their land under 
 the Great Deed of 1668, which led to Ludwell’s removal from office. 
 
Lea's New Map of Carolina, 1695 
 
CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 145 
 
 law. If in 1677 the Revolutionists ran into excesses and, 
 not content with seizing their enemies, destroyed their prop- 
 erty, it was in a moment of exasperation. Order was quickly 
 restored. Courts were organized and the machinery of gov- 
 ernment at once established on a new basis. For the most 
 part the inhabitants had no quarrels with the Proprietors ; 
 but they did seek in every way to escape from the oppression 
 incident to the enforcement of the trade regulations and 
 custom laws. 
 
 The collection of the quit rents had from time to time been 
 postponed, and the rent charged under the Great Deed was 
 not onerous. But now perhaps the Proprietors were more 
 intent on reimbursing themselves for their outlay, and the 
 payment of quit rents became of interest. A rent roll of 
 Albemarle prepared apparently about 1694 showed 146 mss 
 planters, some of them with several plantations, the average at Edenton 
 holding being about 275 acres ; altogether, about 40,000 acres 
 in farms, and probably a population of 4000. 
 
 Ludwell recognizes Great Deed 
 
 In November, 1693, Ludwell issued a proclamation to the 
 effect that under the Great Deed lands in Albemarle were 
 to be granted at the same rate as in Virginia, subject to 
 quit rents of only a farthing an acre ; and he directed Alex- 
 ander Lillington, the high sheriff of Albemarle County, to 
 give notice thereof to the people of Perquimans. Fault was Sec. State 
 found with him for reserving that low rent, and for assent- 
 ing to a new form of deed, that was considered to be in 
 derogation of the rights of the Proprietors. He justified 
 his action by declaring that it was in conformity with the 
 Great Deed ; but the Proprietors questioned the authenticity 
 of that document, no copy of it having been retained in 
 England, and they quickly revoked his commission. Still 
 Ludwell continued to exercise the functions of governor in 
 North Carolina during the years 1693 and 1694; and when 
 he was not present Thomas Harvey was the deputy governor. 
 
 To succeed Ludwell as governor of Carolina, Thomas 
 
146 
 
 1693 
 
 C. R., I, 391 
 
 Huguenots, 
 
 I69I 
 
 C. R., I, 472 
 
 Archdale 
 
 County 
 
 LUDIVELL TO WALKER, 1689-1704. 
 
 Smith,* a planter in South Carolina, was, in 1693, created a 
 landgrave and appointed governor. He seems to have con- 
 tinued Harvey in office, for the latter conducted the adminis- 
 tration when no governor was present until his death, on 
 July 3, 1699. 
 
 But Smith was hardly established in his government 
 before he represented to the Proprietors that the dissensions 
 in South Carolina were so great that no one could heal them 
 except one of the Proprietors ; and in August, 1694, John 
 Archdale was prevailed on to come over as governor. 
 
 John Archdale governor 
 
 In the following June Archdale reached Albemarle, where 
 a daughter, the wife of Emanuel Lowe, resided. While there 
 he exercised the functions of governor. But after a short 
 sojourn he passed on to Charleston, leaving Harvey in the 
 administration. Because of the concessions made to Albe- 
 marle in the Great Deed, Archdale was directed to limit that 
 county strictly to the territory north of the sound and east 
 of the Chowan, and a higher rent was to be exacted for 
 land beyond those boundaries. 
 
 Already settlements had been made elsewhere, and the 
 western shores of the Chowan were well occupied. In 1691 
 some of the Huguenots who had originally settled on the 
 James River, being attracted by the warmer climate, came 
 to Carolina and located on the Pamlico, where they pros- 
 pered so satisfactorily that constant accessions were made 
 to their numbers. Indeed, population was now extending 
 itself rapidly to the southward. 
 
 After Archdale became governor, the Pamlico region was 
 called by the council Archdale County in his honor ; but at 
 a Palatine’s Court held on December 9, 1696, he being then in 
 North Carolina, and presiding, an order was passed that 
 inasmuch as several persons had seated themselves on Pam- 
 
 *It was about this time that a grant of 40.000 acres of land was 
 issued to Smith, and located on the Cape Fear River, and perhaps 
 it was then in contemplation to make a settlement on that river ; but 
 if any were made, no evidence of it has been preserved. 
 
ARC HD ALE'S ADMINISTRATION 
 
 147 
 
 lico River, a writ of election was to issue to them as Pamlico 
 Precinct, in Bath County, to choose two assemblymen. The 
 change of name was made in compliment to John Lord Gran- 
 ville, Earl of Bath, a Proprietor, who possessed the share 
 originally belonging to the Duke of Albemarle, and who on 
 the death of Craven, in 1699, became the Palatine. The pre- 
 cinct of Pamlico was thus organized in 1696. Later Wick- 
 ham Precinct was established on the south of Albemarle 
 Sound, and before 1708 a third precinct was established 
 south of Pamlico Sound, called Archdale. 
 
 From North Carolina Archdale returned to England, leav- 
 ing Harvey his deputy in North Carolina, and appointing 
 Joseph Blake his deputy for South Carolina. Blake was a 
 nephew of the great admiral, and had once before been 
 deputy-governor at Charleston. His father, being a dissenter 
 and fearful of persecution in England, had years before 
 removed to South Carolina. A few years earlier the South 
 Carolina Assembly had made a strong remonstrance against 
 some of the provisions of the Fundamental Constitutions, and 
 in 1691 and 1693 they had been annulled; but in 1698 the 
 Proprietors, after consultation with Major Daniel, reformed 
 the Constitutions, reducing them to forty-one articles, elim- 
 inating the provisions about leet men and leet courts, and 
 making other changes, particularly with regard to courts, and 
 they sent a copy of the amended Constitutions to Governor 
 Blake by Colonel Daniel. 
 
 These Constitutions had been operative in North Carolina 
 only in some particulars, and the changes now made in them 
 were not of much interest to the inhabitants ; but this 
 amended copy seems to have been considered in the colony as 
 taking the place of that originally sent over. The admin- 
 istration in North Carolina was, however, in conformity with 
 the instructions to the governors rather than in close adher- 
 ence to the Fundamental Constitutions ; and the court system 
 was modified under Archdale’s government, and apparently 
 other changes were made about the time this new copy of the 
 Constitutions came over. Earlier, the general court had been 
 
 X696 
 
 Bath 
 
 County, 
 
 Lawson’s 
 
 map 
 
 C. R., I, 472 
 
 Harvey 
 
 deputy 
 
 governor 
 
 C. R., II, 
 85a 
 
 The Consti- 
 tutions 
 revised 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 
 453 
 
148 
 
 LU DWELL TO WALKER, 1689-1704 
 
 i6g8 
 
 Court 
 
 system 
 
 modified 
 
 Court 
 Records 
 MSS. 
 Off. Sec. 
 State 
 
 C. R., I, 386 
 
 C. R., I, 542 
 
 held by the governor and the council, with some assistants. 
 Now a commission was issued to two of the council, one 
 of whom was to be present at the court, and to some assist- 
 ants. The first commission of this sort was to Samuel 
 Swann and William Glover, and one of them was to hold 
 the court, there being in attendance one or more of the other 
 judges or justices. The title of chief justice was not specifi- 
 cally bestowed on either at that time, and its earliest use 
 appears to have been in 1713. 
 
 The line between Carolina and Virginia disputed 
 
 About the year 1680 the uncertain location of the dividing 
 line between Albemarle and Virginia began to attract atten- 
 tion. Some of the inhabitants of lower Norfolk and Curri- 
 tuck had taken out their grants from the Virginia authorities 
 and had paid their annual dues to Virginia ; but now Albe- 
 marle claimed payment from them, and on their application 
 that the line should be established, the Virginia officials 
 pleaded ignorance of the second grant to the Proprietors, 
 which extended their territory thirty miles to the northward. 
 But proof being furnished, in 1692 the surveyor of Virginia 
 ascertained substantially where the line 36° 30' would run, 
 and as the Old Dominion would lose considerable population 
 and property, her authorities stubbornly resisted every 
 attempt to have the question settled, and urged that the king 
 should buy Albemarle and attach it to Virginia, saying that 
 £ 2,000 would be a fair price. 
 
 Pirates infest the coast 
 
 Indeed, there was always some ground for apprehension 
 that the grant to the Proprietors would be annulled and their 
 province be taken from them. Complaints were made that 
 pirates found ready access to Carolina, and that the gover- 
 nors for bribes issued illegal commissions to sea rovers ; and 
 the evasion of the navigation acts was a continual source of 
 trouble. These allegations, however, applied to South Caro- 
 lina rather than to Albemarle, while there was yet greater 
 cause for scandal at Philadelphia and in all the northern 
 
PIRATES INFEST THE COAST 
 
 149 
 
 governments. Still, there was one particular charge made 
 against North Carolina. “Thomas Harvey,” said Randolph, c R T 
 “put masters to great charges because of their vessels not 541.546 
 being registered, though the time limited for registering 
 them was not expired.” This, however, would seem to indi- 
 cate that Harvey was too exacting in demanding a com- 
 pliance with the law. Another complaint Randolph makes 
 against Albemarle is : “The tobacco made in that province is 
 generally carried to Boston or to the islands near to Con- 
 necticut colony, where it is carried to Scotland, etc., which 
 fraud ought speedily to be prevented.” In this it would 
 seem that the Albemarle authorities were entirely within the Albemarle 
 law, as it was clearly their right to ship their tobacco to 
 Boston and Connecticut, and if the traders of those northern 
 marts afterward smuggled the tobacco into Scotland, 
 
 Holland, and Ireland against the law, the offence ought not 
 to be laid at the doors of North Carolinians. Mr. Randolph 
 continues : “During Governor Harvey’s government his 
 Majesty’s ship, the Hady, was driven ashore upon the sands 
 between the inlets of Roanoke and Currituck. The inhab- c. r., 1,547 
 itants robbed her and got some of her guns ashore and shot 
 into her sides and disabled her from getting off. The actors 
 were tried, and one of the chief was banished. Henderson 
 Walker, the present governor, in no sort fit for the office.” 
 
 The conclusion does not appear to be well drawn from the 
 premise. The affair happened in Harvey’s time, and the 
 government was active. That the bankers were thrifty is 
 undeniable, as the name “Nag’s Head”* would indicate. 
 
 Still so notorious were the evasions of the revenue laws in 
 all the Proprietary governments that in 1689 it was proposed 
 in Parliament to take cognizance of the colonies in America 
 and bring them more directly under the control of the king. 
 
 *The name “Nag’s Head” is said to have been derived from a 
 practice of the bankers fastening a lantern to the head of a horse, 
 which as the horse walked at night would have the appearance of 
 a light on a ship gently moved by the waves, thus alluring vessels 
 to the shore. There was also a “Nag’s Head” on the southern 
 coast of England, so named from the same practice. 
 
LU DWELL TO WALKER, 1689-1704 
 
 150 
 
 ^2 For the proper enforcement of the trade regulations it 
 
 was deemed necessary that the governor and other chief 
 officers should be appointed with the king’s concurrence ; 
 but this direction at the time was not observed by the 
 Proprietors. At length, in 169 7, Parliament enacted that 
 not only should the governors of the colony be approved 
 c. r., 1, 506 by the king, but they should take certain oaths of office 
 before qualifying. So when, in March, 1699, Governor 
 Harvey appointed Daniel Akehurst and Henderson Walker 
 commissioners to arrange with the Virginia authorities for 
 establishing the dividing line, Governor Nicholson refused 
 to recognize Harvey’s authority because he had not taken 
 the required oaths of office. 
 
 Henderson Walker governor 
 
 It was during this correspondence that the governor of 
 Virginia alleged that runaways escaping from Virginia were 
 harbored in North Carolina, which brought out an indignant 
 denial by Henderson Walker, who in July succeeded Harvey 
 as governor. In his reply Governor Walker said: “I assure 
 you that neither our laws nor our practice deserves such an 
 imputation of evil neighborhood. Neither are there any 
 runaways harbored here that we can discover by diligent 
 c.r. ,1,514 inquiry; nor shall anv such thing be suffered so far as it 
 is in our power to prevent it.” Governor Walker, whose 
 skill as a letter writer suffers nothing by comparison with 
 that of the governor of Virginia, then recited the laws in 
 force in Albemarle, and specified some particular runaways 
 who had come into the settlement, but had perished in the 
 uninhabited parts of the country ; and he expressed the 
 belief that the same fate had befallen others seeking to 
 escape into South Carolina. He did not rest easy under this 
 suggestion of his Virginia neighbors. 
 
 Changes in Albemarle 
 
 In the course of time Colonel Jenkins, Valentine Byrd, the 
 Harveys and many of the old leaders in Albemarle had passed 
 
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE COLONY 
 
 away and other men had risen to prominence. Durant died 
 in 1691, at the age of sixty-nine, while Sothel, after an 
 unsettled life still marked by devious ways, made his exit 
 in 1693, leaving a widow in Albemarle. Thomas Jarvis, one 
 of the first seaters, and deputy-governor in 1691 and subse- 
 quently, passed away in the spring of 1694. Alexander 
 Lillington, who had figured largely in the Culpepper Rebel- 
 lion, and whose family connection came to be the most 
 influential in the settlement, after marrying a third wife 
 in 1695, succumbed to disease two years later, at the age 
 of fifty-three, Governor Thomas Harvey soon following him. 
 But Thomas Relfe, also one of the first seaters, was still 
 living, and survived until 1707, being then ninety-three years 
 of age. He was one of those who made the first clearings 
 before the name Albemarle was ever heard of on the shores 
 of the river Carolina. 
 
 Major Sam Swann was now a resident of Perquimans, a 
 member of the council, judge of the general court, and col- 
 lector of customs, and Colonel Thomas Pollock, Henderson 
 Walker, William Glover, and John Porter (speaker of the 
 Assembly) were at the close of the century among the most 
 influential inhabitants. 
 
 Life in the colony 
 
 A letter written about the close of the century by William 
 Gale from Perquimans gives some insight into the affairs in 
 Albemarle at that time. Mr. Gale was just setting out on a 
 four months’ voyage to the Cape Fear, whither he had sent a 
 shallop’s load of goods to trade with the Indians. Appar- 
 ently he intended to pass up that river and go as far west- 
 ward as the mountains to establish an Indian trade there. A 
 well-qualified Indian trader, he says, “secures for himself a 
 comfortable living in this world.” “All sorts of English 
 goods are here very valuable, especially nails, carpenter’s 
 tools, hoes, axes, all sorts of linings, powder and shot, hats, 
 stockings, and what else is requisite to make a sortable store.” 
 The most direct route of communication from England was 
 
 151 
 
 1700 
 
 l6 99 
 
 S. R..XXII, 
 
 732 
 
152 
 
 LU DWELL TO WALKER, 1689-1704 
 
 by London ships bound for York River. Of the Indians he 
 said, "they live in small towns and bark cabins, palisadoed in 
 with two or three rows of stakes. Every town or nation has 
 its particular king and different language. They have some 
 notion of the flood, but very obscure. They offer the first 
 fruits of everything they eat to the devil, by whom they cure 
 diseases, and act several strange things, as laying the wind.” 
 He mentioned some thirteen different tribes, with whom he 
 was well acquainted and had very free commerce. “If 
 Henry Ramsbottom was here and would work, he might live 
 a companion for the best. His trade would bring him in 
 £300 per annum. Others might do very well. Our greatest 
 grievance is want of books and pleasing conversation. The 
 Quakers are here very numerous, but as for Independents, 
 Anabaptists, Presbyterians, and other sectaries, they have 
 little or no place here. Most who profess themselves doctors 
 and attorneys are scandals to their profession. The decay 
 of Christian piety is in such large characters that he who runs 
 may read. The second of January last it pleased God to 
 make me happy in a son, who bears the name of his grand- 
 father, but he has still the unhappiness to be unchristened, to 
 my great grief, the only minister we have had of the Church 
 of England having left us before my son was born, but it 
 was no loss to religion, for he was ye monster of ye age.” 
 
 The inventories of deceased persons filed in court afford 
 some information of the style of life and the value of house- 
 hold goods. Pewter dishes were in common use. A dozen 
 pewter plates were valued at about £1. Holland sheets 
 at fifty shillings a pair for fine ones, and thirty shillings for 
 coarser ones, while Osnaburg sheets were five shillings a 
 pair. A feather bed and bolster at £ 6 . Fifteen yards of 
 kersey at something less than £2. Plain shoes at three 
 shillings per pair. A fowling piece at £1 10s. Iron pots 
 were valued at four shillings a pound. A hand mill for 
 grinding meal was £ 6 ; a broad axe four shillings and a hand- 
 saw two shillings. Sheep were valued at ten shillings ; 
 cows at thirty shillings, and shoats at five shillings. Negro 
 
VALUES IN THE COLONY 
 
 153 
 
 men were valued at £35 sterling ; negro women at £30, and 
 children at £10. Mary, an Indian, was thought to be worth 
 £20 ; and a white woman servant, probably indentured, at £2 
 per year for the time she had to serve. At that time cotton 
 appears to have been cultivated. Lawson says : “The women 
 make a good deal of cloth of their own cotton, wool and 
 flax : some of them keeping their families, though large, 
 very decently apparelled, both with linens and woollens, 
 so that they have no occasion to lay their money out for 
 clothing.” But trading vessels came in often, bringing 
 merchandise, which was paid for in produce, rather than 
 money. There were hatters, and others skilled in different 
 trades in the colony. Tar, pitch, corn, tobacco, etc., had a 
 debt-paying value fixed by law. While most of the houses 
 were of wood, there were some of brick ; the lime being made 
 from oyster shells. The women, says Lawson, are well 
 featured and "have very brisk, charming eyes. They marry 
 very young, some at thirteen or fourteen ; and are very fruit- 
 ful, most houses being full of little ones. The girls are not 
 bred up to the wheel and sewing only, but the dairy and the 
 affairs of the house they are very well acquainted withal.” 
 
 1700 
 
 Lawson, 142 
 
1701 
 
 C. R., I, 
 
 572 
 
 May 24, 1689 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Exclusion of the Quakers 
 
 Albemarle at the opening of the new century. — Religious affilia- 
 tions. — The Quakers.- — Nathaniel Johnson governor of Carolina. — 
 The Church party in South Carolina. — Major Daniel succeeds Hen- 
 derson Walker. — The Quakers excluded from office. — The Constitu- 
 tion ignored.— A new church law. — Daniel removed. — Succeeded by 
 Cary. — The colony grows. — Virginia disputes the boundary. — John 
 Porter’s voyage to England. — He obtains redress. — New elements 
 in the controversy. — Porter breaks with Glover. — Two govern- 
 ments contending. — Both call the Assembly. — Glover departs to Vir- 
 ginia. — Cary in possession.— The government orderly, v . . 
 
 Albemarle at the opening of the new century 
 
 In a decade of entire repose, undisturbed by any dis- 
 sensions, the administration being by the people and for the 
 people, and quiet and orderly government prevailing, the 
 settlement had grown in population and in importance. The 
 more influential families were attracted to Chowan, while in 
 Pasquotank and Perquimans the Quakers had considerably 
 increased. Their numbers may have been swollen by some 
 few additions from abroad, but Governor Walker in 1703 
 attributed their growth entirely to the preachers who yearly 
 came to Albemarle to encourage and exhort to Quaker prin- 
 ciples. And there were none to dispute with or to oppose 
 them, for there were no churches in Albemarle and no preach- 
 ers. In England, before the Toleration Act was passed, in 
 William and Mary’s reign, there was some persecution of 
 non-conformists and dissenters, to whom the freedom of 
 conscience guaranteed by the charter and laws was an in- 
 ducement to remove to Carolina, but they located near 
 Charleston. There was no great influx of population to 
 Albemarle from beyond the seas. Accessions had come from 
 Virginia and the neighboring colonies; and even if they 
 
RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 
 
 155 
 
 were originally adherents of the Church of England, in the UU 
 
 absence of religious ministrations their affiliations became 
 weakened ; and, indeed, those born in Albemarle, who had 
 never attended any religious services, could have had but 
 slight attachment to any church. There were no missionary 
 societies then in the world, and other than the travelling 
 Quaker preachers, there were no missionaries. But about 
 the close of the century the Bishop of London, to whose 
 jurisdiction the colonies had been assigned, sent Dr. Bray 
 to Maryland to settle some differences, and he becoming 
 interested in the religious condition of the colonists, estab- 
 lished the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in For- 
 eign Parts, and sought to have ministers sent to America. 
 
 Bv correspondence he inspired zeal among some of the 
 churchmen in Albemarle, which doubtless was heightened by 
 the general religious revival incident to the Pope’s having 
 proclaimed the year 1700 as a year of jubilee. 
 
 In that year the first minister of the Church of England jJJQ Jjj 2 
 was sent to Albemarle, Mr. Daniel Brett, who on his arrival 
 conducted himself satisfactorily, but soon began such a course 
 as brought trouble and grief to the churchmen and strength- 
 ened the antagonism of those opposed to that communion. 
 
 With the opening of the new century Governor Walker and 
 other churchmen, in order to procure some religious services 
 in the colony, made strenuous efforts to elect an Assembly 
 that would establish parishes and provide for the erection of 
 church buildings and the maintenance of ministers. And 
 the Assembly of 1701 passed such an act. By it vestrymen 
 were appointed in every precinct, who were, besides other 
 duties, to erect church buildings and collect the assessments 
 for church purposes. In Chowan, where the adherents of 
 the Church of England predominated, the vestry met that 
 fall and made provision for a “reader” and for erecting a 
 chapel, which was completed the next year. Later other 
 chapels were erected. 
 
 In April, 1703, Mr. Blair was ordained to go to Albemarle, c.^ R ., ! > 
 and the next January reached the settlement. By that time 
 
156 
 
 I7°3 
 
 Blair, 1704 
 
 C. R.,I, 
 
 600, 603 
 
 C. R., I, 
 
 708 
 
 Gordon, 1708 
 
 THE EXCLUSION OF THE QUAKERS 
 
 a “reader” had been established in three of the precincts ; 
 but there were a great many children to be baptized, “whose 
 parents would not condescend to have them baptized with 
 godfathers and godmothers.” Besides the Quakers, Mr. Blair 
 found many who would be Quakers, but were deterred by 
 the moral life the Quakers enjoined ; others were in faith 
 like Presbyterians, and had preachers who baptized among 
 them, without, however, having any manner of orders ; and 
 lastly the Church of England people, who were the fewest 
 in number. The four old precincts were divided by rivers 
 along whose banks for a distance of some twenty miles lay 
 the plantations ; and between Pamlico and Albemarle there 
 were fifty miles of desert without any inhabitants. The 
 Indians were numerous, and on visiting their towns he found 
 many who could speak English and seemed to be fond of 
 their white neighbors. Mr. Blair would have remained in 
 the settlement, but no adequate provision being made for 
 his maintenance, he soon returned to England, suffering the 
 mishap of being taken prisoner by the French on his way. 
 
 A few years later Mr. Gordon gave a more extended 
 account of the inhabitants. Chowan, as it was the largest 
 of the old precincts, was the thinnest peopled. It contained 
 no Quakers or other dissenters ; but the people were very 
 ignorant, there being few who could read and write. 
 
 The Quakers 
 
 The Quakers in Perquimans were numerous, extremely 
 ignorant, proud and ambitious, and consequently ungovern- 
 able. Many persons had accepted that faith, being willing 
 to embrace any religion rather than have none at all. Pas- 
 quotank also was largely peopled by Quakers. The roads, 
 bad enough everywhere, were worst there, but it was closer 
 seated than the other precincts and relatively more populous. 
 In their way of living, the people of Pasquotank had much 
 the advantage of the other inhabitants, being more industri- 
 ous, careful, and cleanly ; but above all, says Mr. Gordon, 
 “I was surprised to see with what order, decency, and seri- 
 
RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 
 
 157 
 
 ousness they performed the public worship, considering how 
 ignorant the people are in the other parishes.” One of the 
 distinctive principles of the Quaker faith was that preaching 
 should be but the outpouring of the spirit ; that one should 
 preach only as the spirit moves him ; and on principle they 
 were opposed to a paid ministry, and also to paying tithes 
 to support ministers. The Quakers in Albemarle were there- 
 fore violently opposed to the new church law, that imposed 
 on them the duty of contributing to the support of paid 
 pastors, and as the next election for assemblymen after the 
 adoption of that law drew nigh, they made the repeal of that 
 act an issue. But about that time the act was returned by 
 the Lords Proprietors, annulled and disapproved by them, 
 because the provision made for the maintenance of the 
 ministers was inadequate ; and so it ceased to have effect 
 without the necessity of repeal by the Assembly. 
 
 Nathaniel Johnson governor of Carolina 
 
 In South Carolina Governor Moore had led an expedition 
 against Florida, but on his return a faction arose violently 
 opposed to his administration, so in June, 1702, Lord Gran- 
 ville, the Palatine, appointed Sir Nathaniel Johnson, who 
 was then residing in South Carolina, to be governor. 
 
 Under a recent act of Parliament, because of the trade 
 regulations, a bond was required of the new governor, and 
 he offered as his bondsman Thomas Cary, a merchant of 
 that province, who later was to figure largely in North Caro- 
 lina affairs. 
 
 In their instructions to Governor Johnson the Proprietors 
 required him to observe the Fundamental Constitutions as 
 modified in 1698. There was, however, no change made in 
 administrative methods in Albermarle. 
 
 But while the direction to enforce the Constitutions brought 
 no trouble in Albemarle, a period of great unrest and dis- 
 order now began, based on religious opinions. The same 
 differences among Churchmen that marked that period in 
 England had found their way to the forests of Carolina. 
 
 1703 
 
 1701 
 
 C. R., I, 572 
 Mr. Blair 
 
 C. R., I, 601 
 
 1695 
 
 The Church 
 party in 
 South 
 Carolina 
 
i5« 
 
 THE EXCLUSION OF THE QUAKERS 
 
 1704 
 
 Church 
 uniformity 
 in South 
 Carolina 
 
 There were those who cried out for conformity, while others 
 advocated toleration. Johnson's appointment was the signal 
 for a great show of zeal by the High Church party in South 
 Carolina, whose leaders were closely associated with Moore 
 and sustained his administration while the opposing faction 
 demanded a rigorous examination into the matters con- 
 nected with the Florida expedition. By great activity, 
 Moore's friends secured a majority in the Assembly, and by 
 one vote carried through a bill rigidly excluding all dis- 
 senters from the Assembly ; and when this act came before 
 the Proprietors for ratification, although violently opposed 
 by some, it was approved by Colleton and by Granville, 
 whose intolerance and arbitrary spirit were in full sympathy 
 with its provisions, and notwithstanding Archdale strenu- 
 ously objected, Granville also signed for Carteret and 
 Craven, and it went into operation. 
 
 Robert 
 Daniel 
 deputy - 
 governor 
 
 The 
 
 Quakers 
 excluded 
 from office 
 
 C. R., I, 
 
 709 
 
 Major Daniel succeeds Walker 
 
 In April, 1704, Governor Walker died, and Governor 
 Johnson sent Major Daniel, who was a landgrave, from 
 South Carolina to be deputy-governor. Major Daniel had 
 established for himself an enviable reputation for bravery 
 and experience in business. He had won laurels during the 
 war with the Indians and Spaniards at the south, and was 
 highly esteemed. Some of the neighboring tribes now giv- 
 ing trouble, he called a council of their chiefs and agreed 
 with them for a firm peace, one of the articles being that 
 the English were not to furnish rum to the Indians. 
 
 Up to that time the Quakers had not been required to take 
 oaths in Carolina, being excused by the original concessions 
 and by the Fundamental Constitutions; but soon after 
 Daniel’s arrival in the colony the act of Parliament imposing 
 the oaths of allegiance to Queen Anne, who had just come 
 to the throne, was transmitted to him, and he tendered them 
 to the members of the council and other officers of the 
 government. They were such oaths as most dissenters could 
 take ; but the Quakers would take no oath whatsoever, and 
 
QUAKERS REFUSE THE OATHS 
 
 159 
 
 insisted on their constitutional right to sign a declaration 
 of like tenor in a book. This privilege was now denied them, 
 and they were excluded from their places under government. 
 And when the Assembly met the same proceedings were had, 
 and the house was thus purged of Quakers. A large part 
 of the population was denied the right to hold office. It was 
 in effect a revolution, changing without legal sanction the 
 constitution of Albemarle. 
 
 It was inconsistent with the Grand Model, subversive of 
 the fundamental constitution of the colony and utterly repug- 
 nant to those practices and customs which had their origin 
 in the earliest lodgment in the wilderness and had grown 
 with the growth of the settlements as the woof and warp of 
 the rights of the people. The whole foundation on which 
 the political structure of the colony rested was wiped away 
 by this requirement of an oath of office to be taken after 
 the prevailing English fashion ; for it is to be observed that 
 it was not until the eighth year of George I, twenty years 
 later, that the affirmation of Quakers was received in Eng- 
 land in lieu of the customary oath. But on this new require- 
 ment Governor Daniel insisted, and, carrying his design into 
 execution, he drove the Quakers from the house and thus 
 secured a pliant majority, who followed his leadership. 
 
 A new law for establishing the Church was enacted, and. 
 to secure it against the possibility of repeal, he determined 
 to exclude Quakers from future assemblies, and to this end 
 he caused an act to be passed prescribing an oath of office 
 to be taken by way of qualification for membership. And 
 so the church act was passed beyond the power of repeal. 
 
 But the violence of this course resulted in commotion. 
 The Quakers were not disposed to be deprived by this 
 parliamentary proceeding of the political rights they had 
 hitherto enjoyed in the colony. They were numerous in 
 Pasquotank and Perquimans, and by uniting with the Pres- 
 byterians and other dissenters in Bath, they were superior 
 in power to the Church party, who were in the majority only 
 in Chowan and Currituck. Such an alliance seems to have 
 
 1704 
 
 Wm. 
 Gordon’s 
 statement, 
 C. R.,I, 
 708-715 
 
 A new 
 church law 
 1704 
 
 C. R., I, 709 
 
 The 
 
 Quakers 
 
 resist 
 
i6o 
 
 THE EXCLUSION OF THE QUAKERS 
 
 1705 
 
 Cary 
 
 succeeds 
 
 Daniel, 
 
 1705 
 
 C. R., I, 
 
 709 
 
 been formed, and an effort was made to secure the removal 
 of Governor Daniel, and they soon had the satisfaction of 
 obtaining an order for his suspension. 
 
 Thomas Cary governor 
 
 Again was Governor Johnson called on to appoint a dep- 
 uty-governor, and this time he selected Thomas Cary, a 
 merchant doing business in South Carolina, who came to his 
 new charge in 1705. 
 
 When the legislature assembled to meet Cary, the law 
 passed the year before requiring an oath of office to be taken 
 by the members was still on the statute-book, but it seems 
 to have been expected that Cary would either ignore that law 
 altogether, or, not enforcing it strictly so far as the Quakers 
 were concerned, would admit them to seats on their making 
 affirmation after the custom of that sect. Cary, however, 
 followed the same course that had led to Daniel's downfall. 
 
 He disappointed all the favorable expectations that had 
 been raised by the change of governors, and augmented the 
 inquietude of the colony by proceeding still further in the 
 line of the new departure. 
 
 The Assembly met him in November, but the members 
 refusing to take the oaths, he dissolved it and called a new 
 election. When the new Assembly met, applying the law 
 which required an oath of office with rigorous exactness, he 
 excluded the Quaker members and obtained a majority that 
 would sustain his measures. He then caused an act to be 
 passed imposing a fine on any person who should enter into 
 an office before taking an oath of qualification and another 
 declaring void the election of any person who should promote 
 his own candidacy. 
 
 With these provisions in force, not only were the Quakers 
 debarred from entering into an office, but the election of 
 any Presbyterian or other dissenter who was objectionable 
 might be declared void on the slight pretext that he had 
 promoted his own election. 
 
 Step after step had been successfully taken to bind the 
 
DISSENTERS RESIST CARY 
 
 Assembly hand and foot. Inflamed by Cary’s proceedings, 
 the opponents of these measures hastened to send John Porter 
 to England to seek a redress of grievances. 
 
 The colony grows 
 
 In the meantime the growth of the colony, especially to 
 the southward, had continued. The town of Bath was laid 
 off in 1704. The precinct of Pamlico, established ten years 
 earlier, was in 1705 limited from Moline’s Creek five miles 
 west of the mouth of Pungo to the westward up the Pam- 
 lico ; and from Moline’s Creek north and east was Wickham 
 Precinct; while all south of Pamlico River, including the 
 settlers on the Neuse, was Archdale Precinct. It was in 
 Archdale Precinct on the Trent that the Huguenots had 
 located. Lawson says: “Most of the French who lived at 
 that town on James River (Mannakin Town) are removed 
 to Trent River, where the rest were daily expected, in 
 August, 1708.“ There they made very good linen cloth and 
 thread and raised considerable quantities of hemp and flax, 
 being well established. They were accompanied by their 
 pastor, Richebourg. 
 
 These precincts were each allowed two representatives in 
 the Assembly. The influx of population was chiefly from 
 Virginia, and so great was the movement that the com- 
 missioners of trade and plantations at London directed an 
 inquiry into its causes and how it might be prevented. 
 Among the new accessions was John Lawson, an English- 
 man, who landed at Charleston in 1700 and journeyed 
 through the interior near the sites of Salisbury and Hills- 
 boro, then eastward to Pamlico, and he remained in the 
 colony studying its natural history. He returned to England 
 in 1707 and published “A New Voyage to Carolina” in 1709 
 (later reprinted as the “History of North Carolina”), with a 
 map of the province at that time. He returned to Albermarle 
 as surveyor-general in 1711. 
 
 Another important accession was Edward Moseley, Gent., 
 probably an Englishman, perhaps from the Barbadoes, who 
 
 161 
 
 1706 
 
 C. R., I, 
 629 
 
 C. R., iii, 453 
 
 Lawson’s 
 Hist, of 
 N. C., 141 
 
 John 
 
 Lawson 
 
 C. R., I, 703 
 
 Edward 
 
 Moseley 
 
1 62 
 
 1706 
 
 Hawks, II, 
 139 
 
 C. R., I, 
 
 658 
 
 The Indians 
 reduced 
 
 Oct., 1706 
 
 THE EXCLUSION OF THE QUAKERS 
 
 came into the province about 1704 and soon began to play a 
 prominent part in public affairs, being surveyor-general, and 
 in 1705 a member of the council.* 
 
 Governor Daniel, who was a landgrave, located near Bath 
 Town, a region which was now attracting many of the new 
 settlers ; but others pushed up the Chowan, where they came 
 in contact with the Meherrin Indians, who were forcibly 
 dispossessed of their lands and moved farther to the north- 
 ward, a proceeding which again involved a dispute with 
 Virginia about the dividing line. 
 
 The Chowan Indians had formerly, by grant from the 
 Yeopims, occupied the land on the south of Meherrin River, 
 and after the Indian war of 1675, i n which they were sub- 
 dued, they were required to locate farther eastward. The 
 Meherrin Indians settled on the north side of that river 
 and then roamed on the south side, where they eventually 
 had plantations. In 1706 they were ordered to abandon 
 these plantations and move to the north side. Not obey- 
 ing these directions, Colonel Pollock, who had possessions 
 on the west side of the Chowan, with a force of forty-six men 
 seized many of them and brought them to terms. The 
 government of Virginia complained of this proceeding, de- 
 claring that the land along the Meherrin was in its terri- 
 tory, and that the Carolinians had no right to locate the 
 Indians upon it; but being doubtful of its claim, the Vir- 
 ginia surveyor was directed to secretly run a line 36° 30' 
 to see where it really was. He probably discovered enough 
 to remain quiet, for when the dividing line was established 
 later the Virginia claim was shown to be erroneous. 
 
 John Porter’s voyage to England 
 
 The prime objects Porter had in view appear to have been 
 the restoration of the rights of the Quakers to hold office, 
 the setting aside of the laws requiring the assemblymen to 
 
 *On May 7, 1703, the treasurer of South Carolina paid Edward 
 Moseley £5 15.?. for transcribing the catalogue of the library books 
 at Charlestown. On August 4, 1705, Edward Moseley married the 
 widow of Governor Walker. 
 
PORTER’S MISSION TO ENGLAND 
 
 i6 3 
 
 take an oath of office, and the restoration of the privilege of 
 the colony to choose its own governor from among the 
 council. He had hardly reached England before Cary left 
 Albemarle and returned to South Carolina, where he re- 
 mained for more than a year, not coming back to his govern- 
 ment until after Porter himself had returned, and during his 
 absence William Glover, a member of the council, admin- 
 istered the affairs of the colony. 
 
 Porter’s visit to England was well timed. He found pub- 
 lic attention largely addressed to Carolina affairs. The 
 “Representation of the case of the Dissenters in South Caro- 
 lina,” made by John Ashe, had been supplemented by 
 DeFoe’s “Party Tyranny in Carolina,” and public inter- 
 est had been awakened in the grievances of the distant col- 
 onists. Boone, from South Carolina, had secured the 
 co-operation of merchants dealing with the province, and 
 their petition to the House of Lords had led that body to 
 address the queen, setting forth the illegality of the pro- 
 ceedings at Charleston, and the queen in council had there- 
 upon declared the church legislation of Governor Johnson 
 null and void, and had directed steps to be taken to declare 
 the charter forfeited ; and besides, the church dignitaries had 
 expressed their strong disapproval of the measures by which 
 the Church party in South Carolina had sought to carry out 
 their political purposes. 
 
 Under these circumstances John Porter’s mission could 
 hardly fail of success. He obtained substantial redress, and 
 after lingering a year in England, returned, in October, 1707, 
 bearing an instrument of writing, or commission, for the 
 settling of the government, by which the laws imposing oaths 
 were suspended ; and he also brought an order suspending 
 Colonel Cary as governor, and vesting the powers of that 
 officer in the president of the council, to be chosen by that 
 body, according to the custom before Daniel’s time. 
 
 He also obtained new deputations from the Lords Pro- 
 prietors appointing other deputies, a majority of whom it 
 
 1 706 
 
 MSS. 
 Records 
 Off. Sec. 
 State 
 
 C. R., I, 698 
 
 Gordon’s 
 
 letter, 
 
 C. R.. I, 
 
 708-715 
 
 C. R,, II, 891 
 
 C. R., I, 634 
 
 C. R., I, 643 
 
 C. R.. I, 709 
 Oct. 1707 
 
164 
 
 THE EXCLUSION OF THE QUAKERS 
 
 New 
 element 
 in the 
 controversy 
 MSS. 
 Records 
 Off. Sec. 
 State 
 
 C. R., I, 710 
 May, 1708 
 
 Hawks, II, 
 381 
 
 C. R., I, 727 
 
 C. R., I, 
 689, 732 
 Hawks, II, 
 3 *° 
 
 C. R., I, 689 
 
 C. R., I, 720 
 
 C. R., I, 732 
 
 is stated were Quakers. Thus equipped, his aim seemed 
 accomplished ; but difficulties, however, apparently arose in 
 the performance of his programme. 
 
 On his return, in the fall of 1707, Porter found Governor 
 Cary still absent and William Glover conducting the admin- 
 istration as president of the council. This arrangement he 
 did not disturb. Indeed, it appears that Glover was then 
 chosen president of the council, and for some time remained 
 at the head of the government with the sanction of all parties. 
 But later Glover refused to admit the Quaker deputies unless 
 they would take the oaths. Discontent at once was mani- 
 fested by many of the people, and it became so prevalent 
 that on May 13, 1708, Cary, who had then returned, Porter, 
 Foster, and Pollock, representing the various factions, united 
 in a proclamation commanding the people’s obedience to the 
 existing government. 
 
 But hardly had this proclamation been issued before a 
 new element entered to breed further disturbance. 
 
 Mr. Adams and Mr. Gordon, two ministers sent out by 
 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 
 Parts, arrived in the colony about that time, and their com- 
 ing set the Quakers and Presbyterians and all opposed to 
 the church law in violent commotion. Glover writes to the 
 Bishop of London, September 25, 1708, that “time had 
 slipped away while I was engaged in the unhappy troubles 
 which the enemy, alarmed at the coming over of these worthy 
 gentlemen, has raised against me.” 
 
 Mr. Adams wrote in October, 1709, that when Gordon and 
 himself came over (April, 1708) “we found the government 
 in the hands of such persons as were promoted for God's 
 service and good order and from whom we met with all 
 reasonable encouragement. But now the case is sadly altered, 
 for the Quakers, alarmed at our arrival,” etc. And Glover 
 himself two years later wrote to the Society : “Although the 
 trouble and confusion this unhappy country has labored 
 under ever since the arrival of your Lordship’s missionaries 
 has compelled me to retire from all public employment,” etc. 
 
GORDON AND ADAMS ARRIVE 
 
 165 
 
 It was evidently the arrival of the two ministers that 
 changed the aspect of affairs. 
 
 Porter breaks with Glover 
 
 While these commotions were agitating the colony, some 
 time between May 13th and July 24th, it would seem that 
 Porter found it expedient to break with Glover, and confess- 
 ing the disappointment he had experienced at his hands, 
 to establish the authority of the new council without waiting 
 for the Assembly. To this end the new council was called 
 together, and on July 24th it chose as president Colonel Cary, 
 who doubtless agreed to conform his actions to the expressed 
 will of the Lords Proprietors and to carry out the letter and 
 spirit of the commission for settling the colony, which he 
 perhaps found less hesitation in doing now that Granville 
 was dead and the motive for siding with the Church party 
 was no longer so apparent. 
 
 What took place during that long, hot summer is not 
 recorded, save only in a general way that the colony was 
 the scene of great disturbances and that the Church party 
 lost ground and fell into a pitiable minority. 
 
 On September 18, 1708, Mr. Adams, who remained in the 
 colony after his coadjutor, Mr. Gordon, had withdrawn from 
 the commotion, writes concerning the troubles : “Besides, 
 we shall be engaged in perpetual broils as we now are at 
 present, for our old worthy patriots who have for many 
 years borne rule in the government with great applause 
 cannot without concern and indignation think of their being 
 turned out of the council and places of trust for no other 
 reason but because they are members of the Church of 
 England, and that shoemakers and other mechanics should 
 be appointed in their room merely because they are Quaker 
 preachers,” etc. 
 
 Two governments contending 
 
 But Glover was not content to be displaced in that manner, 
 and still claimed the power and authority of the gov- 
 
 1708 
 
 July 24, 1708 
 C. R , I, 793 
 
 C. R.,I, 
 688, 710 
 
 Disturb- 
 ances, 1708 
 
 C. R., I, 687 
 
1 66 
 
 1708 
 
 Both call the 
 
 Assembly 
 
 October, 
 
 1708 
 
 Pollock’s 
 Letter Book 
 
 Hawks, II, 
 380 
 
 C. R., I, 
 696-698 
 
 Oct. 11, 1708 
 
 C. R., 1 , 698 
 
 THE EXCLUSION OF THE QUAKERS 
 
 ernor’s office. And so there were two governments, each 
 claiming to be regular and lawful, each with its adherents, 
 who loudly proclaimed their opponents to be rebels and 
 traitors. 
 
 The whole colony became involved, and both sides being 
 determined, the drift was to open rupture. Colonel Jennings, 
 of Virginia, wrote to the Lords Proprietors on Septem- 
 ber 20th that the Quakers had the cunning to set all the 
 country in a flame and all but themselves in arms against 
 one another, and there had already been one man killed in 
 the fray. There was no hope of peace save by submitting 
 the matter to the legislature. Under these circumstances 
 Colonel Pollock, on behalf of Glover, made an agreement 
 with Cary to submit the claims of the two rival presidents 
 to an assembly to be elected, and so Cary and Glover each 
 issued separate writs for an election of an assembly to be 
 held on October 3, 1708. 
 
 This election was quietly held in six precincts, but the 
 result in Chowan was contested. The assembly consisted 
 of twenty-six members, five from each of the four precincts 
 of Albemarle and two from each of the three precincts in 
 Bath County. 
 
 The Cary party carried Bath County and Perquimans and 
 Pasquotank. In Chowan there was a contested election. 
 Currituck alone stood faithful to the losing cause of Presi- 
 dent Glover. 
 
 Eight days later the Assembly met. The outlook was 
 gloomy indeed for Glover. Moseley and the other Cary 
 contestants from Chowan were seated without delay, and 
 Moseley himself was elected speaker of the Assembly. 
 
 Glover departs to Virginia 
 
 The commission to settle the government brought over by 
 Porter was read and the Assembly determined that by that 
 instrument the Lords Proprietors had suspended the laws 
 made both in Governor Daniel’s time and in Governor Cary’s 
 
CARY’S ASSEMBLY 
 
 167 
 
 time relative to qualifying by taking oaths of office. Colonel 
 Pollock insisted, however, that the former law was not so 
 much as mentioned in the writing — but such was the decision 
 of the Assembly. Glover protested that he would not be 
 bound by the action of the body, although elected under his 
 own writ, along with the writ of Cary. He insisted that 
 they should be sworn — or, in other words, purged of the 
 Quaker members — before he would abide by his agreement. 
 His protest was treated with scant courtesy. He had 
 appealed to the people. He had agreed to abide by the 
 popular verdict ; and now that the people had spoken, now 
 that a large majority of the legislature was against him, he 
 sought to reverse that judgment, and to that end invoked the 
 same method of suppression that had been lately practised — 
 at variance with the fundamental constitution of the colony 
 as well as repugnant to the particular commission of the 
 Lords Proprietors. But his efforts were without avail. 
 Withdrawing from his agreement to submit his claims to the 
 decision of the Assembly, he left the colony and took refuge 
 in Virginia. In this voluntary exile Colonel Pollock accom- 
 panied him, and Gale, the presiding judge of the general 
 court, went to England, and it was not until two years after- 
 ward, when Hyde entered upon the administration as presi- 
 dent of the council, that they returned. 
 
 The Cary government was thus left in undisturbed pos- 
 session. The council consisted of Cary, the president ; 
 Foster, Porter and the Quakers. One of the first measures 
 of the new administration was to declare void all acts done 
 by the Glover government during the preceding nine months, 
 thus stigmatizing the retention of power by the old council 
 through the exclusion of the new deputies as in the nature 
 of rebellion. 
 
 But although all the machinery of government was in 
 Cary’s hands, there remained a large faction disappointed, 
 sullen and antagonistic — and it was this faction that con- 
 tained the men who had been trained in the management 
 of public concerns. Changes were made in the local officers. 
 
 1 70S 
 
 Pollock’s 
 Letter Book 
 
 The Cary 
 government 
 
THE EXCLUSION OF THE QUAKERS 
 
 1 68 
 
 1708 The old set gave place to the adherents of the new adminis- 
 
 tration. 
 
 Emanuel Lowe, Archdale’s Quaker son-in-law, was ap- 
 pointed to the land office, and other Quakers, Presbyterians 
 and Independents were given public employment. The 
 courts were open; suits were begun and prosecuted to judg- 
 ment and execution ; wills probated and administration 
 granted. The public lands were opened to entry and 
 patents granted, and all the branches of government appear 
 c R 1 6g to have been administered in due form ; and particularly 
 is it noteworthy that the vestry act was maintained in opera- 
 c. r ., 1, 690 tion ; and further that the Virginia government complained 
 of the large emigration of Virginians into North Carolina. 
 
 In December, 1708, the Proprietors appointed Edward 
 Tynte governor of Carolina, and expected him to appoint 
 Edward Hyde deputy-governor of North Carolina ; but until 
 Hyde should arrive Cary was left unmolested in the admin- 
 istration of affairs. In March, 1709, the Proprietors ap- 
 pointed Lawson and Moseley, the speaker of Cary’s house, 
 to settle the disputed line between Virginia and North Caro- 
 lina ; and in September, 1709, they appointed Christopher 
 Gale receiver-general in the colony and Lawson surveyor- 
 general, both of these being then in London. The Propri- 
 etors signified no particular displeasure at the situation of 
 affairs in North Carolina, but in after years tbe period of 
 Cary’s administration was known as “’Cary’s usurpation.” 
 
. v* 
 
 i 9 er 
 
 = (&pC Fair 
 
 V ** J 
 
 THE 
 WESTERN 
 O C EjtN 
 
 FAC -SIMILE 
 
 < 9^4 MAP OF THE WHABTFEl^ 
 FAETtS OF N . CAROLINA 
 
 jirepjtrcJ- bylonj^frwjfoit- 
 
 ./ _ i - Surveyor C&nrraltfFC 
 
 F? /Stale ofoQ _B7t[yjh Miles l^OS 
 
 6Q D) a.t*ry 6jr CLeO- Schro^tor. MV. 
 
 Lawson’s Map of North Carolina, 1709 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Cary Rebellion 
 
 The Palatines. — Their sufferings at sea. — They march through 
 the forest. — De Graffenried’s Swiss. — New Bern founded. — 
 
 Hyde arrives in Virginia. — Invited to Carolina. — Glover's influence. — 
 
 The Quakers excluded. — His authority denied. — The new Assembly. 
 
 — Hyde succeeds. — The Cary administration declared a usurpation. 
 
 —Partisan legislation. — Hyde embodies men. — Cary prepared. — 
 
 Roach aids Cary. — The people divide. — Governor Spotswood seeks 
 to mediate — His agent threatens Cary. — Cary prepares to engage, 
 but fails. — Hyde's moderation. — Cary and Porter sent to England. 
 
 The Palatines 
 
 It was during the time while Lawson was in England * 7 ™ 
 
 and was preparing his History for publication that arrange- 
 ments were made for the settlement of a considerable num- 
 ber of colonists on the Trent, in Archdale Precinct, near 
 where the French had settled and where Lawson had a 
 large tract of land. Great numbers of Protestants had been German 
 expelled from the Palatinate, a fertile and populous country 
 on the Rhine, now embraced in Baden and Bavaria, and 
 many thousands, utterly impoverished and destitute, sought 
 refuge in England. Their support had become a heavy tax 
 on the public, the English people being at that time them- 
 selves in great distress, and efforts were made to disperse 
 them throughout the kingdom and the American colonies. 
 
 Baron De Graffenried, a Swiss nobleman, being in negotia- 
 tion with the Lords Proprietors for land in Carolina for a 
 Swiss colony, was induced to take charge of a number of 
 these poor Palatines. The queen assumed the expense of 
 their transportation and made a donation of £4,000 for their 
 benefit, while a committee of lords supervised the agreement 
 with the Proprietors and inspected the vessels before the 
 final embarkation. Six hundred and fifty of the most robust 
 of the Palatines were selected by De Graffenried, who placed 
 them under the direction of Christopher Gale, John Lawson 
 and a third associate ; and ample provision being made for 
 
THE CARY REBELLION 
 
 170 
 
 1710 
 
 The 
 
 Palatines 
 
 sail 
 
 April, 1710 
 C. R., I, 718 
 
 Lawson 
 locates the 
 Palatines 
 
 The Swiss 
 June, 1710 
 
 their sustenance, at length, in January, 1710, after religious 
 services by their pastor and other demonstrations of inter- 
 est, the two transports sailed from Gravesend, accompanied 
 for protection by a squadron of naval vessels commanded 
 by an admiral. 
 
 Hardly had the voyage begun, however, before storms 
 arose and impeded the progress of the vessels, and the 
 voyage was protracted to more than three months. Un- 
 happy, indeed, was the fate of these poor exiles driven from 
 their prosperous homes by cruel religious persecution. Dur- 
 ing their long voyage more than one-half succumbed to 
 disease on shipboard, while the sufferings of the others 
 impaired their strength and vitality. Finally, in April, they 
 reached the Chesapeake, but as they were entering that 
 friendly harbor a French vessel captured one of the trans- 
 ports and plundered it of everything valuable, depriving 
 the miserable immigrants of even their clothing. 
 
 After landing, their numbers were still further diminished 
 by fever and disease before they were able to set out 
 through the forests for their march to the Chowan. Even- 
 tually the remnant reached the plantation of Colonel Pollock, 
 who provided for their necessities and transported them .in 
 boats to the Trent, where they finally arrived in horrible 
 plight, finding no preparations made to receive them, 
 although Lawson was engaged until August in locating 
 them. Gale, the receiver-general, had been a member of 
 the general court in North Carolina from 1703 until the 
 overthrow of Glover’s administration, when he went to 
 England. He now returned with Lawson, and was, as chief 
 justice, destined to play an important part in the affairs of 
 the colony. He had brought instructions from the Pro- 
 prietors to use such of the public revenues as could be 
 spared for the support of the Palatines ; but Cary having 
 received the public funds, withheld them from Gale, and 
 inadequate provision was made for the colonists, who found 
 themselves driven to the necessity of selling even their 
 clothes to the neighboring settlers for meat and bread. 
 
 Six months after the departure of the Palatines, De Graf- 
 fenried, who had been created a landgrave by the Lords Pro- 
 prietors, followed with his colony of Swiss. Their voyage 
 
THE PALATINES AND SWISS 
 
 171 
 
 was more fortunate, and after a few weeks they landed 
 in excellent spirits on the banks of the James and likewise 
 came by land to Colonel Pollock’s, reaching the Trent in 
 September, where they found the unhappy Palatines in 
 miserable plight. 
 
 Being a landgrave, De Graffenried had official prominence 
 in the province, and he used every effort to ameliorate the 
 condition of his colonists, and addressed himself to the 
 work of building a town, which he named New Bern. Many 
 planters now occupied the lands on the Pamlico; the French 
 colony had been increased by accessions from Virginia ; 
 lands along the shore, even between North River and Core 
 River (near the present town of Beaufort), were taken up 
 in 1709, and the settlements were extending southward 
 along the coast. So it happened that the period of Cary’s 
 administration was marked by a considerable expansion and 
 development of the province, but yet the administration was 
 net efficient. The new men appointed to office were not 
 trained in official duties, grave complaints were rife, and 
 the government lost some of the prestige it had acquired on 
 the withdrawal of Glover and his adherents to Virginia. 
 
 New Bern 
 
 founded 
 
 1710 
 
 The Cary 
 administra- 
 tion 
 
 Records 
 
 Carteret 
 
 County 
 
 Hyde arrives in Virginia 
 
 Such was the condition when Colonel Edward Hyde, who 
 had been selected bv the Proprietors as deputy-governor of 
 North Carolina, reached Virginia, in August, 1710, where, 
 however, he failed to receive his commission as he had August, 1710 
 expected, for Edward Tvnte, the governor of Carolina, 
 who was to have sent it to him from Charleston, died with- 
 out doing so. Hyde’s coming had been anxiously expected 
 by the Glover faction, who hastened to make their court to 
 him ; but being without a commission, he prudently remained 
 in Virginia and awaited developments. Being the first 
 cousin of the queen, the “awful respect” due to his family 
 drew public sentiment toward him ; and there being no ques- 
 tion that the Proprietors had designated him for appoint- 
 ment as deputy-governor, Carv was persuaded to join in an 
 invitation that Hyde should come to Carolina and enter upon 
 the administration as president of the council. 
 
 In January, 1711, this invitation was accepted, and Hyde Jan,> 1711 
 
172 
 
 THE CARY REBELLION 
 
 1 7 1 1 
 
 Hyde’s 
 
 administra- 
 
 tion 
 
 C. R., I, 
 
 768, 781, 784 
 
 Glover’s 
 
 influence 
 
 Opposition 
 
 arises 
 
 coming to Carolina, settled himself in Chowan, near Colonel 
 Pollock's, who, as well as Glover, had returned about that 
 time to his Carolina home. But although the new presi- 
 dent came in by common consent, he was met at the outset 
 with the same practical question that had so largely entered 
 into the politics of the colony during the preceding decade. 
 Should Quakers be admitted to office? Should they be 
 allowed to enter into office without qualifying themselves 
 by taking an oath ? This question could not be avoided. It 
 met the new administration face to face and demanded an 
 unequivocal answer. 
 
 Hyde might perhaps have determined the matter in ac- 
 cordance with the practice of the preceding administration 
 and agreeably to the fundamental constitution of the colony 
 had it not been for the influence exerted by the adherents 
 of Glover, who had suffered no little because of their fidelity 
 to the cause they represented. They prided themselves that 
 it was the cause of the legitimate, lawful and regular gov- 
 ernment no less than the cause of the Church and of true 
 religion, and they sought, not without avail, to impress the 
 new governor with the correctness of their views, and doubt- 
 less he espoused them the more readily since they were in 
 conformity with the prevailing notions in England in regard 
 to the Quakers. 
 
 Urmstone, who had succeeded Mr. Adams as the solitary 
 clergyman in the colony, wrote that “after long debates 
 Hyde persists in Mr. Glover's opinion of not suffering 
 the Quakers, who had deputations, either forged or granted 
 by those who were not Proprietors, to be of the council, or 
 have anything to do in the administration,” which meant that 
 the Quakers were excluded from the council, as in Glover’s 
 time. And again Pollock wrote to the Lords Proprietors, in 
 September, 1712, that “the Quakers are not permitted to sit 
 in the Assembly.” 
 
 This decision on the part of Hyde opened afresh all the 
 old sores, and threw into the opposition a strong party, who, 
 having lately enjoyed the powers of government, were easily 
 led to make another stand for the principles they had so 
 ardently maintained. The leaders of that party coming to 
 understand that Hyde’s administration would be in the 
 
THE CHURCH PARTY TRIUMPHS 
 
 173 
 
 nature of a return of the Glover faction, whose temper was 
 very bitter and hostile, sought to weaken it by withdrawing 
 their adherence and declaring that Hyde, having no com- 
 mission, was not a legal governor. 
 
 The new Assembly 
 
 The Cary officers, it is said, falling in with these sug- 
 gestions. retained their records, seals and other muniments 
 of office and would not surrender them to Hyde’s appointees. 
 Such was the situation when, in March, 1711, the Assembly, 
 called by Hyde, met at Colonel Pollock’s residence in 
 Chowan. Of that Assembly Urmstone writes : “With much 
 difficulty we had the majority. . . . The Assembly was made 
 up of a strange mixture of men of various opinions and 
 inclinations : a few Churchmen, many Presbyterians, Inde- 
 pendents, but most anythingarians — some out of principle, 
 others out of hopes of power and authority in the govern- 
 ment to the end that they might lord it over their neighbors, 
 all conspired to act answerably to the desire of the president 
 and council.’’ The Quakers being excluded, the Assembly 
 was sufficiently manageable. 
 
 The rising sun was too strong for those who were deemed 
 to be on the wane. Hyde triumphed over the opposition. 
 The “awful respect” of his great name was heavy weight 
 in his favor, and “the Presbyterians, Independents and any- 
 thingarians” of the Assembly were drawn to his side in hopes 
 of favors to come, and also because three months before he 
 had been brought in as governor bv common consent ; while 
 Cary’s administration had fallen into disrepute because of 
 inefficiency, and he himself had either squandered or had 
 not collected the quit rents due the Lords Proprietors. 
 Whatever were the influences working the change, the 
 Assembly was quite as severe against the Cary party as the 
 former Assembly had, in October, 1708, been against its 
 Glover opponents. It declared that Carv and Porter had 
 failed to attend with Hyde as members of his council, that 
 they had been guilty of sedition and had sought to overturn 
 Hyde’s government, and they impeached them for high 
 crimes and misdemeanors and committed them to the cus- 
 tody of the provost marshal. 
 
 1711 
 
 March, 1711 
 
 C. R., I, 768 
 
 Hyde 
 
 succeeds 
 
 Partisan 
 
 legislation 
 
 Cary and 
 
 Porter 
 
 impeached 
 
174 
 
 THE CARY REBELLION 
 
 1711 
 
 C. R., I, 785 
 Proceedings 
 in the courts 
 annulled 
 
 C. R.. I, 
 
 785, 786 
 
 C. R., I, 780 
 
 Cary’s 
 
 usurpation 
 
 C. R., I, 791 
 
 Hyde 
 
 embodies 
 
 men 
 
 May, 1711 
 
 It petitioned the Lords Proprietors to remove Car}', 
 Porter and Moseley from any share in the government ; and 
 as Cary’s government had declared void all proceedings had 
 nine months before it came in, so this Assembly declared 
 void all proceeding, save certain exceptions, that had been 
 in Cary’s courts, land offices, etc., during the space of two 
 entire years. 
 
 It further re-enacted the former law in regard to the 
 qualification of all officers by oaths according to the strict- 
 ness of the English laws, and enacted that all laws made 
 for the establishment of the Church in England should be 
 in force in the colony. 
 
 And various sundry other enactments were made in the 
 first flush of victory by those who had been under the ban 
 for three years, of such a character as to draw even from 
 Spotswood, “that they added some other clauses perhaps too 
 severe to be justified, wherein it must be confessed they 
 showed more their resentment of their ill-usage during Mr. 
 Cary’s usurpation (as they call it) than their prudence to 
 reconcile the distractions of the country.” 
 
 Particularly was an act passed directing Cary to account 
 with Hyde for all funds that he had collected for the Lords 
 Proprietors, and upon his failing to do so within two months, 
 Hyde was authorized to issue execution against his prop- 
 erty. Truly, Cary had fallen from his high estate, and the 
 Glover party, animated by a fierce resentment of their in- 
 juries, were pursuing him with a strong hand. Having 
 disrobed him of power, they sought to press him to the 
 wall. But as Spotswood wrote, their measures were beyond 
 their power to enforce them. By their want of moderation 
 thev threw the whole opposition into violent antagonism. 
 
 Both Cary and Porter escaped from the custody of the 
 provost marshal and regained their liberty, and two months 
 having elapsed without the former having accounted for 
 the money of the Lords Proprietors, Hyde embodied a force 
 to go and take him. On Sunday, May 26th, Hyde, with 
 some secrecy, collected about eighty men at his own house 
 in Chowan, and on Monday crossed the sound and went 
 twelve miles up the river, where his force was increased to 
 one hundred and fifty men. Hastening through the wilder- 
 
CARY TAKES UP ARMS 
 
 175 
 
 ness, on the 28th they reached Cary’s house at Pamlico, but 
 he having received notice of their approach, made his escape 
 to Governor Daniel’s house, a few miles farther down the 
 river. 
 
 The next day Hyde pursued, but found that his delay 
 had been disastrous. Cary had called around him some 
 forty followers and had so fortified himself that it was 
 hazardous to attack him. 
 
 On June 1st the forces of the disappointed governor with- 
 drew, having only their trouble for their pains, and having 
 by an accident lost one of their own men, a kinsman of the 
 governor, who unfortunately was killed during the expedi- 
 tion. So ended Hyde’s fiasco, and well indeed had it ter- 
 minated there! Whatever else may have been the disposi- 
 tion of Cary, he was not a man to shun danger, no matter 
 in what form it came. He was as resolute as he was violent, 
 and as audacious as implacable. 
 
 He at once infused into the people of Pamlico that the As- 
 sembly was not called by proper authority, that it was not 
 duly elected, that Hyde was not governor, having no com- 
 mission sent him, and therefore that he could not comply 
 with this demand to account with Hyde for money belonging 
 to the Lords Proprietors. Nor did his efforts end in words. 
 He erected his standard and gathered his forces. 
 
 And just then Captain Roach, an agent of Dawson, one of 
 the Lords Proprietors, brought his vessel into Pamlico, there 
 being among his cargo several cannon and a quantity of 
 small arms and ammunition. Roach vigorously espoused 
 the side of Cary, and strengthened his cause as well by de- 
 claring that the Proprietors did not intend that Hyde should 
 be governor, as by furnishing the munitions and sinews of 
 war. A brigantine belonging to Emanuel Lowe was armed 
 with cannon and a barco-longo was also equipped for active 
 service. 
 
 All was activity among the Presbyterians and Indepen- 
 dents of Bath. And so with Hyde and his supporters in 
 Chowan. 
 
 Pasquotank and Perquimans and Currituck seem not to 
 have been involved, the Quakers remaining quiet and the 
 
 1711 
 
 Dennis’s 
 Narrative, 
 C. R., I, 803 
 
 Roach aids 
 Cary 
 
 C. R., I, 804 
 
176 
 
 THE CARY REBELLION 
 
 Spotswood 
 seeks to 
 mediate 
 
 June, 1711 
 
 C. R., I, 760 
 
 C. R., I, 795 
 
 Cary 
 threatens 
 Hyde with 
 Parke’s fate 
 
 other citizens of those counties responding but slowly to the 
 call of the governor for active support. Indeed so slowly 
 did they respond that Hyde early realized the superior 
 strength of his adversary, and at once applied for aid to the 
 governor of Virginia. 
 
 On June 13th Spotswood, in response to the demand, de- 
 termined to send a mediator to seek a suspension of military 
 operations until the differences of the contestants could be 
 laid before the Lords Proprietors. To that end, on June 
 20th he wrote letters to each, Hyde and Cary, which he sent 
 by Mr. Clayton, saying to Cary that he had ever advised 
 Hyde to moderation and to endeavor to reconcile and unite 
 both parties, and that it was on this basis that he now pro- 
 posed mediation. 
 
 On June 25th Clayton reached Pollock’s residence, which 
 was situated somewhat west of the site of Edenton, and on 
 the next day delivered the letter to Cary, whose well-manned 
 brigantine and barco-longo were then sailing off some 
 twelve miles from Pollock’s in the sound. 
 
 Cary agreed to the proposition to meet Hyde the next day 
 at an appointed place, and that in the meantime the forces 
 should remain where they were. But Hyde, upon considera- 
 tion, found the appointed place too inconvenient, and sug- 
 gested two other points for a conference to be held on the 
 28th. But this proposition, says Hyde himself, did not 
 reach Cary in time, because of bad weather, and negotia- 
 tions thereupon were broken off. 
 
 Clayton again visited Cary and delivered a second letter 
 from Spotswood, withheld at first, threatening Cary with 
 his own armed interference if he should not come to terms. 
 Cary now declared he would make no terms, but that he 
 would seize Hyde and his council, and that Hyde might ex- 
 pect the same fate that Colonel Parke had at Antigua. 
 
 This threat produced a great commotion among the 
 friends of Governor Hyde, for two years before Colonel 
 Parke, the governor of the island of Antigua, one of the 
 British Isles in the Caribbean Sea, had after three years of 
 tyranny and despotic oppression been seized by the outraged 
 people, and had been torn limb from limb ; a tragic fate, well 
 known in Virginia, where one of Governor Parke’s daugh- 
 
HYDE IS VICTORIOUS 
 
 1 77 
 
 ters had married Colonel Custis, and was thus allied to some 
 of the first people in that colony. 
 
 But Cary’s threats were impotent. His men were not 
 equal to the occasion. On the morning of June 30th, he de- 
 termined to make the attempt to seize Hyde, and approach- 
 ing Pollock’s house that lay near the water, he fired two can- 
 non from his brig and, throwing a force into two boats, 
 made a dash for the land. 
 
 But Hyde was prepared, and returning shot for shot, 
 struck the mast of the brig, and deployed his men along the 
 shore ready for the assault. Such an unexpected show of 
 force struck terror into the hearts of Cary’s men, who quickly 
 returned to their vessel and sought to draw off.* Hyde in 
 turn manned some boats and gave pursuit. And now Cary’s 
 force thought only of escape. The brig was hastily run 
 ashore, and the men fled into the woods. When Hyde’s 
 boats approached, the brig, armed with six cannon, fell into 
 their hands, along with her owner, Emanuel Lowe, and three 
 sailors, who composed her crew. 
 
 Being favored by this good fortune, Hyde issued a procla- 
 mation pardoning all who had been led into acts of violence, 
 except the chief movers, which, together with the loss of 
 prestige incident to the miscarriage of the attempt to seize 
 Hyde, tended to draw the people away from Cary, whose 
 forces rapidly dispersed. Roach, however, fortified himself 
 at Pamlico, and it was said that John Porter went among the 
 Indians and endeavored to persuade them to fall upon the 
 people on the western shores of Chowan, the inhabitants 
 there having espoused the cause of Hyde. The Indians, how- 
 ever, declined the invitation, if any were indeed made to them. 
 In the meantime, Hyde, flushed with his success in capturing 
 the armed brigantine, hastily threw on board of the vessel 
 a force of his own and sailed off to Pamlico to make an end 
 of the matter by capturing Cary at Roach’s house, the place 
 where he had fortified ; but again did the governor find dis- 
 cretion the better part of valor. Cary was too strongly en- 
 
 *This sudden flight was probably due to the appearance among 
 Hyde’s followers of Baron De Grafifenried’s servant, in his yellow 
 coat, which led to the impression that some of the queen’s troops 
 were present, it being treason to make war on them. 
 
 1711 
 
 C. R , 1, 
 
 762, 795 
 
 June 30 
 
 De Graffen- 
 ried’s Narra- 
 tive, C. R., 
 I, 918 
 
 Hyde’s 
 
 moderation 
 
 C. R., I, 795 
 
i 7 8 
 
 THE CARY REBELLION 
 
 Cary and 
 Porter sent 
 to England 
 July 31 
 
 Porter’s will 
 Off. Sec. 
 State 
 
 C. R., I, 750 
 
 Final 
 separation 
 of North 
 and South 
 Carolina 
 
 trenched ; no attack was made, and the expedition returned 
 without result. But Spotswood having on the application 
 of Hyde sent some marines to his assistance, the appearance 
 of these on Pamlico, about July 10th, being troops of the 
 queen, accomplished the final dispersion of the Cary 
 forces. 
 
 Colonel Cary and several of his most active supporters 
 hastily proceeded to Virginia to take shipping for England, 
 but were there seized by Spotswood, and, on July 31st, were 
 sent to England on board a man-of-war under charges of 
 rebellion and sedition. They arrived in London on Septem- 
 ber 25th, but there being no evidence produced against them, 
 they were discharged. 
 
 On November 20th, within a month after his arrival, we 
 find Cary before the Lords Proprietors obtaining copies of 
 the charges made against him by Hyde. A year later he had 
 returned to Carolina, Hyde having been instructed by the 
 Lords Proprietors not to proceed to the punishment of any 
 of the parties engaged against him. John Porter remained 
 in England and died at Bridgewater during the spring or 
 summer of 1713. 
 
 On the death of Governor Tynte, the Lords Proprietors 
 appointed Hyde governor of North Carolina in his own 
 right, and a recent act of Parliament requiring the approval 
 of the Crown, the royal assent was given, and on May 9, 
 1712, he received his appointment, bearing date Jan- 
 uary 24th. Taking the oaths, he became Governor of North 
 Carolina, being the first appointed by the Lords Proprietors 
 since Ludwell’s time, and this appointment was the begin- 
 ning of the entire separation of the government of North 
 Carolina from that of the southern colony. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 The Tuscarora War 
 
 The Indians disquieted. — Lawson’s activities. — Lawson executed. — 
 The cause of the Indian war. — The massacre. — Preparations for 
 defence. — Active war. — Gale’s mission successful. — Barnwell acts 
 vigorously. — War measures. — Barnwell makes a truce. — Barnwell’s 
 Indians return to South Carolina— Hostilities renewed. — The death 
 of Hyde. — Pollock’s truce with King Blount. — James Moore arrives. 
 — He takes Fort Nohoroco. — Many Tuscaroras depart for New York. 
 — Major Maurice Moore arrives. — Effects on the settlers. — Harmony 
 in the colony. — Governor Eden. — South Carolina imperilled. — Aid 
 sent. — The Cores renew hostilities. 
 
 The Indians disquieted 
 
 In the dissensions of the colony, the Pamlico section ad- 
 hered to Cary, and the Indians of that region were led by the 
 execrations of the neighboring- whites to regard the new gov- 
 ernor as a person to be detested by them, while the rapid 
 extension of the settlements to the southward and along the 
 waters- of the Pamlico and Neuse raised apprehensions lest 
 they should be forced back and utterly expelled from their 
 old hunting grounds. At this time the tribes at the north 
 had dwindled into insignificance ; they were the Meherrins, 
 the Nottoways, and the Chowans on Bennett’s Creek and 
 the Pasquotank, some of whom had already fallen into the 
 habits of the whites, wore clothes and had cattle, making 
 butter for sale. On the western frontier, beginning in Vir- 
 ginia and extending nearly to the Neuse, were the Tusca- 
 roras, a warlike tribe of northern origin. They occupied 
 fifteen towns and numbered altogether 1200 fighting men. 
 Adjoining them were the Woccoons, about one-tenth their 
 number ; and a few miles distant were the Pamlicos, once an 
 important tribe, who had, however, been swept away by a 
 fearful epidemic some fifteen years before, and now could 
 boast only fifty braves. The Neuse and the Chautauquas, 
 who occupied the region allotted to De Graffenried’s colony. 
 
 Sept., 
 
i8o 
 
 THE TUSCARORA WAR 
 
 1711 
 
 Ryrd’s Div. 
 Line, 89 
 
 Lawson’s 
 
 work 
 
 Sept. 8, 1711 
 
 were likewise weak ; but the tribes farther to the eastward, 
 on Bear River and Core Sound, were more populous. Near 
 Bath was a small tribe of Pungos, and on the sounds to the 
 south were found the Coranines ; while at Hatteras lived 
 the remnant of a tribe now reduced to sixteen braves, who 
 claimed that some of their ancestors were white, and valued 
 themselves extremely on their kinship to the English, and 
 were very friendly. In confirmation of this claim, in efifect 
 that they were descended from Raleigh’s Lost Colony, Law- 
 son declares that some of them had grey eyes, a circum- 
 stance not observed among any other Indians. 
 
 In the distant interior, on the Eno, had been the Oc- 
 coneechees, and nearby the Schoccories and the Keiauwees, 
 and farther south the Saponas and the Toteros; but these a 
 few years earlier had consolidated and had removed from 
 Carolina into Virginia, settling at Christianna, ten miles 
 north of the Roanoke. After remaining there some twenty- 
 five years, however, they returned to Carolina and dwelt with 
 the Catawbas. In all, there were some 1500 braves bor- 
 dering on the south and west of the settlements ; but the 
 Indians to the northward, nearer the Virginia line, did not 
 sympathize in the apprehensions felt by the lower towns 
 concerning the encroachments made on the Pamlico and 
 Neuse and were not inclined to be inimical to the whites. 
 
 Lawson had projected an interior road from the southern 
 settlement to Virginia, and with a view to locating it he had 
 made a progress through the region inhabited by the 
 Indians ; he had also as surveyor been conspicuous in estab- 
 lishing the Palatines and the Swiss, and in laying off planta- 
 tions, and indeed himself had a large grant located on the 
 Neuse; and thus he became an object of particular resent- 
 ment among the discontented Indians. 
 
 Such was the feeling early in September, some two 
 months after the dispersion of Cary’s forces and the flight of 
 his principal adherents from the colony, when Lawson and 
 Christopher Gale and Baron De Graffenried arranged for an 
 expedition up the Neuse and to make a progress through the 
 Indian towns with a view of locating the proposed road. 
 Gale was fortunately detained, but the baron and Lawson, 
 accompanied by two negroes, on September 8th, set out from 
 
LAWSON’S FATAL EXPEDITION 
 
 181 
 
 New Bern by boat on the exploration, taking fifteen days’ 
 provision with them. On the evening of the second day, 
 the Indians, discovering them, became alarmed, and mistak- 
 ing the baron for Governor Hyde, seized them and hurried 
 them in great haste to their king’s town, on Cotechney, where 
 a council of Indian chiefs was speedily assembled, by whom 
 both the baron and Lawson were condemned to instant 
 death. 
 
 De Graffenried, however, with great address, saved him- 
 self by asserting that he was not an Englishman, but a king 
 and a friend of the queen of England, who would certainly 
 punish them for any violence done to him. Reprieving 
 him, on Lawson they reaped their vengeance by a sum- 
 mary execution ; an unhappy fate, in strange contrast with 
 the humane and friendly sentiments he had expressed in 
 his History in regard to the proper treatment and the wel- 
 fare and happiness of these original inhabitants of the Caro- 
 lina territory. The day following the trial and execution of 
 Lawson, the Indian chieftains informed De Graffenried that 
 they had determined to make war on the English, and that 
 the particular objects of their enmity were the people on the 
 Neuse, Pamlico and Trent rivers and on Core Sound, for set- 
 tlers had established themselves even in that locality. 
 
 Governor Pollock, writing to Governor Spotswood some 
 nine months after the outbreak, gives this account of the 
 origin of the war : ‘‘Our own divisions, chiefly occasioned by 
 the Quakers and some few other evil-disposed persons, hath 
 been the cause of all our trouble. For the Indians being 
 informed by some of the traders that the people that lived 
 here were only a few vagabond persons that had run away 
 out of other governments and had settled here of their own 
 head, without any authority, so if they were cut off there 
 would be none to help them ; this, with the seeing our own 
 differences rise to such a height that we, consisting of only 
 two counties, were in arms against each other, encouraged 
 them to fall on the county of Bath, not expecting that they 
 would have any assistance from this county or any other 
 English plantation. This is the chief cause that moved the 
 Indians to rise against us so far as I can understand.” 
 
 This internecine strife and bitterness doubtless led the 
 
 1711 
 
 Hawks, II, 
 389; 
 
 De Graffen- 
 ried'sNarra- 
 tive, C. R.,I, 
 925 
 
 Sept., 1711 
 
 Lawson 
 
 executed 
 
 The cause 
 of the 
 Indian war 
 
 Hawks, II, 
 434 
 
1 82 
 
 1711 
 
 Cary’s 
 
 adherents 
 
 the 
 
 sufferers 
 
 The 
 
 massacre 
 
 Sept. 22,1711 
 
 De Graffen- 
 ried’s Narra- 
 tive, C. R.,I, 
 933 
 
 THE TUSCARORA WAR 
 
 Indians to consider that a favorable time and opportunity ; 
 but the cause, the reason of their enmity, was quite another 
 thing. If some of Hyde’s adherents are to be believed, they 
 had during the Cary troubles declined to attack the whites, 
 although invited to do so ; and it was only after quiet had 
 been restored and Cary and Porter had been absent two 
 months that hostilities began. In July some of Hyde’s ad- 
 herents alleged that at the time of the dispersal of Cary’s 
 forces, John Porter had gone among the Tuscaroras and 
 sought to incite them to cut off the inhabitants on the 
 Chowan who were adherents of Hyde, but they had refused 
 to be drawn into such an enterprise. In the massacre now 
 resolved on, the upper towns of the Tuscaroras again de- 
 clined to participate; but the Cotechneys, the Woccoons, the 
 Pamlicos, the Cores and the Neuse Indians were the chief 
 promoters of the murderous work, and the victims were the 
 settlers who had located on the frontier and who had been 
 Cary’s supporters. The outbreak was evidently an effort of 
 the southern tribes to preserve their hunting grounds, which 
 the settlers were now fast occupying. 
 
 Five hundred warriors, consisting of Indians from every 
 tribe on the southern frontier, having congregated at Han- 
 cock’s town on the Cotechney, formed into small bands and 
 dispersed themselves as if in a friendly way throughout the 
 new settlements. On the morning of September 22d, about 
 sunrise, they fell upon the unsuspecting planters in their 
 isolated homes and began a fearful massacre. In two hours 
 one hundred and thirty persons fell beneath their bloody 
 blows. O11 some plantations all, men, women and children 
 alike, were ruthlessly and barbarously murdered ; at others, 
 the men only were slain, and the women and children were 
 spared to be held, however, as slaves. In savage wrath, they 
 slew and burned and pillaged, and the entire region south of 
 the Albemarle was a horrid scene of brutal murder and deso- 
 lation. The French settlers on the Pamlico suffered heav- 
 ily, eighty of De Graffenried’s colonists fell victims, and the 
 outlying districts were depopulated. 
 
 In those hours of fearful calamity, those who fortunately 
 escaped the first fury of the savages fled in dismay to con- 
 venient points of refuge. They collected at Bath and at ten 
 
THE MASSACRE 
 
 183 
 
 other places, where they hurriedly fortified themselves 1 / 11 
 
 against attack. 
 
 Many incidents of the butchery were heart-rending, and 
 some of the escapes heroic. At the house of John Porter, 
 
 Jr., his wife, Sarah Lillington, seeing an Indian in the act of 
 dashing her infant’s brains out against a tree, rushed upon 
 him and rescued her child from his clutches. Captain Maule 
 being present, he and Colonel Porter seized their guns and 
 covering the flight of the females, successfully beat off the 
 savages until they had reached the landing, where taking a 
 boat they pushed out into the broad river and escaped, be- 
 holding in the distance their home enveloped in flames. 
 
 For two days the murderous bands glutted themselves c. r., 1,826 
 with blood and revelled in spoil, but on the third day, the 
 plantations being deserted, laden with booty and carrying 
 eighty women and children preserved as captives, they re- 
 turned to their fort on the Cotechney. The dead lay un- 
 buried in that hot September sun, food for the vultures, 
 the dogs and wolves. Many bodies were shockingly muti- 
 lated, and others fancifully arranged by the savages in their 
 wild and merry glee. Mr. Nevill, an old gentleman, was laid 
 on his floor with a clean pillow beneath his head, which was 
 ornamented with his wife’s head-dress, and his body de- 
 cently covered with new linen ; while Mrs. Nevill was set 
 upon her knees in the chimney corner, her hands lifted up as 
 if in prayer ; and a son was laid out in the yard with a pillow 
 under his head and a bunch of rosemary at his nose. 
 
 Fugitives from their homes, with their butchered friends 
 unburied, the air polluted from their decomposing remains, 
 the survivors of Bath County kept watch and ward at the 
 asylums they had gained, in momentary dread of the reap- 
 pearance of the foe, while the other settlements were paral- 
 yzed with fear lest the whole colony should be destroyed. 
 
 Although a blow so sudden and unexpected, so terrible Effects 
 and shocking, at first staggered even the most resolute, Gov- massacre 
 ernor Hyde and the leaders in Albemarle speedily took such 
 measures of safety as were open to them. Since the Quakers 
 would not bear arms, but little aid could be expected from 
 them, while the inhabitants west of the Chowan being them- 
 selves apprehensive of attack, assembled in strongholds for 
 
184 
 
 THE TUSCARORA WAR 
 
 C. R., I, 815 
 
 Oct. 15, 1711 
 
 Active war 
 C. R., I, 828 
 
 C. R., I, 826 
 
 Gale’s 
 
 mission 
 
 successful 
 
 C. R., I, 828 
 
 their own protection. But factions were hushed and former 
 opponents vied with each other in patriotic efforts for the 
 common weal. Information was hurriedly despatched to 
 Governor Spotswood, who caused some of the Virginia 
 militia to collect near the Tuscarora towns bordering on the 
 Virginia line, and sought to enlist the upper Tuscaroras in 
 the suppression of the hostile Indians. As an inducement 
 to engage their assistance, he offered six blankets for the 
 head of every enemy they would bring him and “the usual 
 price for the women and children as slaves.” These towns, 
 however, asked for a month to consider the proposal, and 
 then determined to remain neutral ; but fearful of their defec- 
 tion, the hostile tribes sent their women and children toward 
 the Cape Fear, leaving only the warriors in their own terri- 
 tory ; and then they again began to roam throughout the 
 Pamlico region, and collisions between their bands and the 
 inhabitants were of frequent occurrence. 
 
 Indeed, with the opening of October, companies having 
 been organized and equipped, active warfare was inaugu- 
 rated ; and scouting parties sent out from the forts were am- 
 bushed and often sustained heavy losses. A company of fifty 
 men approached one of the Indian strongholds and was re- 
 pulsed by three hundred braves. Early in that month Cap- 
 tain Brice, who commanded at Bath, sent off some fifty men 
 for special service, and the Indians fell upon them in the 
 woods, and for three days a desultory battle was maintained, 
 the whites eventually being driven in with considerable loss. 
 
 Taking advantage of the absence of this detachment, the 
 garrison then being reduced to only a hundred men, another 
 force of Indians attacked it, while a number of Indian 
 prisoners within the fort rose and took the whites in the 
 rear. The males of the latter, however, were quickly de- 
 spatched and the women and children secured, and then the 
 assault was successfully repulsed. Of the captives within 
 the fort, thirty-nine women and children were then sent 
 abroad and sold as slaves. 
 
 Christopher Gale, the receiver-general, having been sent 
 to Charleston by sea to solicit aid, the South Carolina 
 Assembly promptly responded with assistance. Colonel 
 Hugh Grange, with others, was elected to secure the neces- 
 
SOUTH CAROLINA SENDS AID 
 
 185 
 
 sary supplies, and Colonel John Barnwell was appointed to 
 the command. Gale hastened back on his return voyage 
 from Charleston, bringing a considerable supply of ammu- 
 nition, but he was taken prisoner by the French and was 
 detained for several months. In the interval during his 
 absence, the North Carolina government receiving no infor- 
 mation from him relative to the result of his mission, again 
 sent a despatch boat to Charleston asking aid, and Barn- 
 well’s force, largely drawn from friendly Indians, was hur- 
 ried forward. 
 
 North Carolina was the dividing ground between the 
 northern and southern Indians, and there was no affinity 
 between the Indians of South Carolina, who had originally 
 come from beyond the Mississippi River, and those of east- 
 ern North Carolina, who had at some previous time migrated 
 from the northward ; and the southern Indians were not 
 averse to availing themselves of this opportunity of attack- 
 ing the Tuscaroras and the neighboring tribes, expecting 
 to make profit from the sale of their prisoners as slaves. 
 
 Barnwell, his troops consisting of fifty whites and some 
 Cherokees and Creeks, passed along the Santee to the Con- 
 garees, then up the Wateree River to the vicinity of the 
 Catawbas, near where Charlotte is, embodying detachments 
 of all these tribes in his force. He then came east to the 
 Yadkin and crossed the Cape Fear below the junction of 
 the Haw and Deep and then pursued a northeast course, 
 striking the Cotechney at an Indian town called Torlnmte, 
 eventually arriving on the lower Neuse on January 28th.* 
 He seemed to have followed a trading path used by the 
 Indians and traders leading from Torlnmte to the Catawbas, 
 a shorter course than that generally taken by the Virginia 
 traders, who, crossing the Roanoke higher up, came by a 
 route near Oxford and Hillsboro to the trading ford near 
 Salisbury and then down to the Catawbas. But his progress 
 through the wilderness was difficult and attended with much 
 delay and suffering for the want of provisions. 
 
 McCrady’s 
 
 South 
 
 Carolina, I, 
 
 499 
 
 1712 
 
 rle had 21S Cherokees under Captains Harford and Turstons, 
 79 Creeks under Captain Hastings, 41 Catawbas under Cautey, and 
 28 Yamassees under Captain Pierce. 
 
THE TUSCARORA WAR 
 
 1 86 
 
 1712 
 
 C. R., I, 839 
 
 Hawks, II, 
 537 
 
 Fort 
 
 Cotechney 
 
 War 
 
 measures 
 
 C. R., I, 
 
 837-839 
 
 April, 1712 
 
 Assembly 
 dissolved. 
 May 10, 1712 
 
 Barnwell acts vigorously 
 
 On reaching New Bern, Barnwell acted with great vigor, 
 and immediately fell upon the hostiles some twenty miles 
 above New Bern, killing three hundred and taking more 
 than a hundred prisoners. But as soon as this victory was 
 won, half of his force, satisfied with their booty, deserted 
 him and returned to South Carolina, carrying their prison- 
 ers, who were shipped to the West Indies to be sold into 
 slavery. Notwithstanding his force was now much reduced, 
 Barnwell pursued the enemy until they retired into a 
 stronghold which they had fortified on a high and inacces- 
 sible bluff overlooking the river, which could not be attacked 
 with advantage. Withdrawing from that section, he led 
 his Indians some thirty miles to the east of New Bern, where 
 he encountered the Cores and drove them from their towns, 
 and pursued them with such fury that a great many were 
 slain. On his return he was reinforced by two hundred 
 and fifty whites, under Captains Brice, Boyd, and Mit- 
 chell, and together they assaulted Fort Cotechney, or Han- 
 cock’s Fort, near the site of Snow Hill, but were driven 
 off. Nevertheless, the people felt so relieved by his pres- 
 ence, and were so elated from their former despondency by 
 the result of his movements, that when the Assembly met it 
 adopted an address to the Lords Proprietors in high praise 
 of him. 
 
 To carry on the war heavy duties had been laid on both 
 exportations and importations, and now the legislature 
 authorized the issue of £4,000 of paper currency, the first 
 of such currency issued by the colony; and urgent applica- 
 tion was made to Virginia for two hundred white soldiers 
 from that province. Governor Spotswood undertook to 
 raise such a force, but ascertaining that the North Carolina 
 authorities had made no provision either for their pay or 
 their maintenance, and meeting with obstacles because of 
 opposition in the Virginia Assembly, he found it imprac- 
 ticable to proceed. Under the circumstances, as the expendi- 
 ture would be for the Lords Proprietors, he suggested that 
 the territory north of the Albemarle should be mortgaged 
 to secure the repayment of the money that would have to 
 be advanced for the purpose, but since the Assembly had no 
 
A CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES 
 
 187 
 
 authority to enter into such an agreement, those terms could 
 not be accepted by it, and the desired assistance was not fur- 
 nished by Virginia. 
 
 In April, Barnwell proposed to make another attack on 
 Fort Cotechney, and at the suggestion of De Graffenried, 
 who, having been released, was now again in the settlement, 
 some cannon were carried through the forest, borne on long 
 shafts with a horse in front and one behind, and these were 
 well placed to bombard the stronghold. When all was in 
 readiness for the assault the cannon were discharged and 
 hand grenades were thrown into the fort ; and these unac- 
 customed instruments of warfare so terrified the Indians 
 that they begged for a truce. A council of war was held 
 by Barnwell and his officers, and since it was feared that 
 the large number of women and children held prisoners by 
 the Indians would be massacred in the melee if the fort were 
 carried by assault, a truce was granted upon the condition 
 that all the white prisoners should be immediately released, 
 and with the expectation that it would eventually be fol- 
 lowed by a lasting peace. 
 
 This failure to press the Indians to an extremity at that 
 favorable time created dissatisfaction on the part of the 
 governor and his council with Barnwell, who nevertheless 
 justified it by in turn complaining that his troops were not 
 furnished with provision and that a cessation of the siege 
 was desirable on that account. 
 
 ■ Deplorable indeed was the condition of the unfortunate 
 captives now restored to freedom, being bereft of husbands 
 and fathers and their homes destroyed by the barbarous 
 savages ; widows and orphans, they were helpless depen- 
 dents upon the charity of people whose own necessities were 
 great, but for the moment they were transported with joy 
 at their happy deliverance from impending death, and with 
 grateful hearts blessed those who had rescued them from a 
 fearful fate. 
 
 Barnwell’s Indians were disappointed at the truce and ces- 
 sation of operations, as they had hoped to take more prison- 
 ers and to profit by their sale; but he withdrew to New Bern, 
 where provisions could be had ; and after a few weeks, under 
 the pretence of a good peace, he lured the eastern Indians 
 
 X712 
 
 Barnwell 
 makes a 
 truce 
 
 Hyde 
 
 dissatisfied 
 
 with 
 
 Barnwell 
 
 Barnwell’s 
 Indians 
 return to 
 South 
 Carolina 
 
1 88 
 
 THE TUSCARORA WAR 
 
 1712 
 
 Barnwell 
 leaves 
 North 
 Carolina 
 C. R., I 904 
 
 Summer of 
 1712 
 
 A call to 
 arms en 
 masse 
 
 C. R., I, 877 
 
 Forts 
 
 erected 
 
 to the vicinity of Core village, where his savages fell upon 
 them unawares and took prisoners many women and 
 children. 
 
 The South Carolina Indians now hurried home with their 
 captives, leaving Barnwell and the companies raised in 
 Albemarle to carry on the hostilities which this breach of 
 faith naturally engendered. On July 5th Barnwell himself 
 was wounded, and taking shipping, he returned to Charles- 
 ton, promising, however, to use his best endeavors to have 
 other assistance sent. 
 
 Hostilities renewed 
 
 As long as Barnwell’s force was on the Pamlico the enemy 
 had been held in check, but now that the country was clear, 
 furious at the treacherous breach of the truce, the hostile 
 Indians became very active, and again was the region south 
 of the Albemarle a scene of bitter warfare. The farms were 
 deserted, the crops abandoned, and the inhabitants again 
 assembled in their garrisons for mutual protection ; while 
 around those places of refuge hostile bands incessantly 
 prowled, scalping all who fell into their hands. A small 
 number of Yamassees, however, had remained, and under 
 Captain Mackay did good service near Bath ; but the sav- 
 ages roamed at will throughout the country at large, devas- 
 tating the plantations and confining the people to their 
 forts ; and so another summer was passed with no crops 
 made and the Pamlico and new settlements in a state of 
 siege. 
 
 Fully aroused to the necessity of decisive action, the 
 Assembly now made a draft of the entire fighting population 
 to subdue the enemy, and all who would not enroll them- 
 selves as soldiers were to forfeit £5 for the maintenance of 
 the struggle. In addition to the garrisoned plantations, two 
 considerable forts were now erected, one at Core Point, on 
 the sound, in the vicinity of the Core Indians, and one at 
 Reading’s plantation, on the Tar River, in the section 
 open to the Cotechneys. But although the emergency was 
 so great, many were discontented at the strenuous measures 
 of the administration, and some of the inhabitants left their 
 homes and fled to Virginia. 
 
THE WAR PROSECUTED 
 
 189 
 
 In the midst of these difficulties the yellow fever broke out 
 in the colony, and Colonel Hyde, who had received his com- 
 mission as governor only that May, was taken with a violent 
 fever and died on September 8th, after a week’s illness. 
 Fortunately, Colonel Pollock was ready to continue the 
 administration as president of the council, for he had large 
 experience and great ability, and could command the confi- 
 dence not only of the inhabitants, but of the authorities in 
 Virginia and of South Carolina. A packet ship had been 
 employed to plv between the province and Charleston, and 
 Governor Craven had already agreed to send an additional 
 force of friendly Indians, the charges to be paid in North 
 Carolina bills, and President Pollock sought to infuse into 
 the people confidence and hope, although at the moment 
 affairs seemed desperate. Captain Byrd, who had been sent 
 on an expedition, fell into an ambuscade, and he himself 
 was killed and many of his men slain ; and in September 
 Colonel Mitchell and Colonel Mackay, who had with them 
 one hundred and forty men, were defeated and compelled 
 to abandon the enterprise they had undertaken. 
 
 There was unexpected delay in starting the expedition 
 from South Carolina, but Governor Craven hurried on some 
 barrels of powder and shot and twenty guns, which were 
 supplied to the forces then at Coretown Fort, who were 
 awaiting the arrival of reinforcements before again pro- 
 ceeding to assault Fort Cotechney. I11 the meanwhile the 
 Indians had attacked Fort Reading, on the Tar, and also had 
 made an assault on the garrison at Colonel Jones’s plantation, 
 near the mouth of the Pamlico, but were successfully re- 
 pulsed in both instances. 
 
 Pollock’s truce with King Blount 
 
 But while preparing for a protracted struggle, Colonel 
 Pollock had wisely renewed negotiations with Tom Blount, 
 the king of the Upper Tuscaroras, and toward the end of 
 September succeeded in arranging with him to seize Han- 
 cock, the chief of the Cotechney Indians, and bring him in 
 alive with a view to making peace. Indeed, the hostiles 
 themselves were in distress for the want of food ; and at 
 length, through King Blount, a truce was agreed on to last 
 
 1712 
 
 The death of 
 Hyde, Sept 8 
 C. R., I, 869 
 
 Pollock 
 
 succeeds 
 
 Losses 
 
 Sept., 1712 
 
 C. R., I, 882 
 
 C. R., I, 
 
 880, 883 
 
190 
 
 THE TUSCARORA WAR 
 
 1712 
 
 James 
 Moore 
 arrives 
 Dec. 1, 1712 
 
 C. R., I, 892 
 
 * 7 r 3 
 
 Indian forts 
 
 He takes 
 Fort 
 
 Nohoroco 
 
 March 23, 
 
 1713 
 
 C. R., II, 
 19, 27-29 
 
 Indian 
 
 power 
 
 broken 
 
 The 
 
 Tuscaroras 
 move north 
 
 until January 1st, and in the interval the Tuscaroras were 
 to cut off all those who had participated in the massacre and 
 were to surrender a number of the chief men from each 
 of the six Indian forts as hostages for the good behavior of 
 the hostile tribes. 
 
 Before the truce had expired, the new army from South 
 Carolina, consisting of thirty-three whites and a thousand 
 friendly Indians under Colonel James Moore arrived on the 
 Neuse, and moved to the Chowan for convenience in obtain- 
 ing needed provisions until it was seen whether the Indians 
 would surrender the hostages as agreed on. This they failed 
 to do, and preparations were made to strike a blow that 
 would break their power. 
 
 The facilities for reaching the Pamlico and Neuse and 
 even Core Fort by water transportation had been of great ad- 
 vantage during the war, and now the necessary supplies were 
 sent forward by boat, and on January 17th Colonel Moore 
 marched from Chowan, but a heavy snow falling, he was 
 obliged to remain inactive at Fort Reading on the Tar until 
 February. I11 the meantime, the Indians had fortified them- 
 selves in two strongholds, one, Cohunche, which was Han- 
 cock’s fort on the Cotechney, and the other called Fort 
 Nohoroco. 
 
 At length, all being in readiness and his army being rein- 
 forced by a considerable number of whites raised in the 
 colony, among them a company under Captain Maule, on 
 March 20th Colonel Moore invested Fort Nohoroco, and 
 after three days’ hot fighting took it. His loss was 46 whites 
 and 91 friendly Indians, while he took 392 prisoners and 192 
 “scalps,” and reported 200 others killed and burned within 
 the fort and 166 killed and taken outside of the fort in a 
 scout. In all, the Indian loss was about 800. This was per- 
 haps the severest battle ever fought with the Indians up to 
 that time. It broke the power of the Tuscaroras, and al- 
 though there were emissaries from the New York Indians, 
 urging them to persist in hostilities, they now made peace, 
 surrendering all of their prisoners and delivering up twenty 
 of their chief men to Colonel Moore. 
 
 Soon afterward, the greater part of this powerful tribe, 
 including those in Fort Cohunche, retired up the Roanoke 
 
THE INDIAN POWER BROKEN 
 
 and removed to New York and became the sixth nation 
 there. Hardly had the fort been taken, before many of the 
 South Carolina Indians hurried home to sell their prisoners ; 
 so that Colonel Moore was left with only one hundred and 
 eighty of those who came with him. These scouted the 
 woods, seeking other prisoners until June, when Colonel 
 Moore collected them and marched against the Mattamus- 
 keets, who had fallen on the inhabitants of Croatan and 
 of Roanoke Island, and on the planters of Alligator River 
 and had butchered forty-five of them. On the approach of 
 Colonel Moore, these savages quickly dispersed in the 
 swamps of Hyde, but Moore pursued them with vigor and 
 broke them up. 
 
 In the meantime another detachment of friendly Indians, 
 under Major Maurice Moore, hoping to take more prison- 
 ers, had started from South Carolina; but Colonel Pol- 
 lock stopped them and sent them back ; and in September 
 Colonel Moore himself returned home, having won high 
 praise for his bravery and wisdom, and leaving many grate- 
 ful hearts among those he had rescued from captivity and 
 saved from death. His brother Maurice, however, remained, 
 and having married Mrs. Swann, the widow of Colonel 
 Swann, became the brother-in-law of Edward Moseley, and 
 being allied with the strongest family connection in the 
 province, for a generation exerted a large influence in its 
 affairs. 
 
 During these perilous times many of the Huguenots who 
 had established themselves on the exposed frontier accom- 
 panied their pastor, Philippe de Richebourg, and joined their 
 brethren on the Santee ; while De Graffenried, who after a 
 six weeks’ detention with the Indians had been released 
 through the efforts of Governor Spotswood, but who had 
 for himself and his colonists made a treaty of neutrality with 
 the hostile Indians, now sought to protect his colonists, and 
 later intended to remove them to the Potomac ; but a series 
 of misfortunes interfered, and after mortgaging the land he 
 had obtained from the Lords Proprietors to Colonel Pollock 
 to secure the advances made for his people, in the spring of 
 1713 he sailed from New York for England. His Swiss 
 and Palatines remained, and, indeed, the pacification of 
 
 191 
 
 ! 7‘3 
 
 C. R., II, 30 
 
 C. R., II, 
 39 - 45 
 
 Maurice 
 
 Moore 
 
 arrives 
 
 De Graffen- 
 lied returns 
 to England 
 
192 
 
 THE TUSCARORA WAR 
 
 17*3 
 
 MSS. 
 
 Records 
 
 Carteret 
 
 County 
 
 Harmony 
 in the 
 colony 
 
 C. R., II, 
 T 45 
 
 De Graffen- 
 ried’s Narra- 
 tive 
 
 March, 1713 
 
 the hostile Indians was followed by a quick expansion 
 of the settlements to the southward. On Core Sound and 
 North River lands patented "during Cary’s usurpation" 
 were now occupied; and in October, 1713, the town of 
 Beaufort was laid off into lots, which were sold to pur- 
 chasers. The following February tracts of land were taken 
 up on Bogue Sound. To the northward, in November, 1713, 
 a grant was issued to John Porter for 7000 acres between 
 Drum Inlet and Topsail Inlet, including Point Lookout. It 
 was recited that this land had been surveyed before the in- 
 structions prohibiting such grants. 
 
 All the inhabitants being concerned in the common de- 
 fence a spirit of harmony and co-operation was fostered, and 
 Colonel Pollock bore testimony that the Quakers had con- 
 tributed more aid than he had expected from them ; but he 
 never became reconciled to Moseley, attributing to his in- 
 fluence the previous internecine trouble of the colony, and 
 ascribing to him a purpose to cause Barnwell to be ap- 
 pointed governor in place of Hyde, and alleging that Barn- 
 well’s truce with the Indians was a movement to that end. 
 This appears, however, to be only another illustration of the 
 distorted views which personal antagonisms and animosi- 
 ties were responsible for in that period of our history ; and 
 indeed Governor Spotswood took occasion to recommend to 
 Pollock that he should abate somewhat his enmity to 
 Moseley. 
 
 After Colonel Hyde was established in the government, 
 the proceedings of the Cary courts were declared void, and 
 doubtless the justices were superseded by other appoint- 
 ments. William Glover, who would naturally have been des- 
 ignated as the presiding justice, was dead in October, 1711, 
 and the court w'as then presided over by Nathaniel Chevin, 
 one of the oldest of the councillors. On the return of 
 Christopher Gale to the province after his capture by the 
 French on his way from his mission to South Carolina for 
 aid, he was appointed colonel of the militia of Bath County, 
 and in July, 1712, he began to execute the office of chief 
 justice, and in March, 1713, used that title. In Janu- 
 ary, 1716, he received his commission as chief justice from 
 
l. St. Thomas’s Church, Bath 
 2. Philip Ludwell 3. Christopher Gale 
 
 4. Book-Plate and Autograph of Edward Moseley 
 
EDEN BECOMES GOVERNOR 
 
 193 
 
 the Lords Proprietors. As far as appears, he was the first 1714 
 
 chief justice of the province.* 
 
 Charles Eden governor 
 
 On learning of the death of Governor Hyde, the Lords 
 Proprietors appointed Charles Eden to succeed him, and the 
 new governor arrived in the colony and took the oath of 
 office in May, 17 14. Although all was quiet at that time, £°™ s °£ the 
 shortly thereafter about thirty braves of the Cores and other 
 neighboring tribes, who had suffered so heavily during the 
 war, in revenge for their losses, began a systematic course of 
 irregular warfare. One day they would massacre in one 
 vicinity, and a few days later they would appear many miles 
 away and cut off unsuspecting families. And soon their 
 numbers increased until they were estimated at two hundred 
 
 *Dr. Hawks mentions that Edward Moseley was chief justice from Hawks, II, 
 1707 to 1711. The writer has been unable to find that there was any 139 
 chief justice in the province before 1713. Major Sam Swann was 
 the senior justice of the general court, after the governor ceased 
 presiding over the court, from 1697 until his retirement in 1703. 
 
 Then William Glover, who was next in commission, was the senior 
 
 justice until 1706, when, on the departure of Governor Cary from 
 
 the colony, Glover became president of the Council, and Christopher 
 
 Gale, who had been a justice of the court from 1703, became the 
 
 presiding justice. He presided during the year 1707, and perhaps 
 
 until the overthrow of the Glover government in the summer of 
 
 1708, when with Pollock and Glover he probably left the colony. On Proceedings 
 
 the accession to power of the Cary faction, in 1708, all court annulled 
 
 proceedings for nine months were annulled and declared void ; and 
 
 on the incoming of Hyde, three years later, the court proceedings 
 
 for the two years of Cary’s administration were likewise annulled. 
 
 Moseley may have been chief justice during Cary’s administration, 
 but the writer has found nothing to indicate it. He was not licensed 
 to practice until 1714. In 1711 the court was held by Nathaniel 
 Chevin, Francis de la Mere, and Jonathan Jacocks. At the general 
 court held July 29, 1712, the justices were Christopher Gale, William c. R . 11, 
 de la Mere, Thomas Relfe, and Thomas Garrett. There was no 34, 8o ’ 217 
 chief justice. At the general court, March, 1713, Gale presided 
 under the title of chief justice. Somewhat earlier, perhaps, the 
 receiver-general had instructions from England to pay £60 for the 
 support of the chief justice, and in April, 1713, the council resolved 
 that Gale was entitled to this compensation, “as he had executed 
 that office from July 1. 1712.’’ He executed the office, but probably 
 held no appointment as chief justice. It seems that because of this 
 provision of £60 for the support of the chief justice, Gale was 
 appointed to that office in the spring of 1713. In 1715 the Lords 
 Proprietors commissioned him as chief justice, and he was sworn in 
 January 21, 1716. 
 
194 
 
 THE TUSCARORA WAR 
 
 Feb. ii, 1715 
 
 South 
 
 Carolina 
 
 imperilled 
 
 C. R., II, 
 180 
 
 Colonel 
 
 Maurice 
 
 Moore’s 
 
 expedition 
 
 hostiles. Again alarm seized the people, and some deter- 
 mined on flight to Virginia. To prevent that exodus, a 
 proclamation was issued forbidding such removals ; and 
 Governor Spotswood gave orders for the arrest of any who 
 should come into that province without a passport from the 
 North Carolina authorities. Garrisons were again posted on 
 the southern frontier, and parties of whites and friendly 
 Indians were sent out to suppress the enemy ; but at length 
 on February 11, 1715, a treaty was made with the Cores 
 and their allies by which they were to observe peace, 
 and territory on Mattamuskeet was assigned them for 
 occupancy. 
 
 Hardly had this peace been concluded before information 
 was received of a very extensive uprising of the Indians in 
 South Carolina, threatening the utter destruction of that 
 colony. The Yamassees near the Savannah River having 
 been instigated by the Spaniards, to the number of 6000, 
 suddenly fell on the planters, and killed 400 whites, while 
 650 braves of the Catawbas and Cherokees came down the 
 Santee, driving those who escaped into Charleston for safety. 
 Governor Craven’s energy and determined spirit alone saved 
 them. Enrolling every man into the militia, he drove the 
 Yamassees back beyond their old territory and expelled them 
 from Carolina. Toward the last of May, the North Carolina 
 council ordered that ten men should be drawn from each of 
 the three companies, forming the “Governor’s Own Regi- 
 ment,” and that Colonel Theophilus Hastings should proceed 
 with them by water to Charleston ; and also that fifty men 
 should be sent by land under Colonel Maurice Moore. 
 
 The route taken by Colonel Maurice Moore was by New 
 Bern down the coast to Old Town, then along the coast by 
 land to the vicinity of Charleston, where he was largely re- 
 inforced. He then proceeded to Fort Moore, on the Savan- 
 nah, seventy-five miles north of Augusta, and from there to 
 the northwest, through Rabun Gap, against the Cherokee 
 Indians. 
 
 Colonel Moore and his force were fortunate in rendering 
 such valuable service in South Carolina that the General As- 
 sembly of that province invited him to its floor and thanked 
 him in person for his aid ; to Colonel Hastings they after- 
 
AID TO SOUTH CAROLINA 
 
 195 
 
 ward paid £250 for his services, and to Colonel Moore 
 they made a gift of £100. Indeed, the situation in South 
 Carolina became so critical that application was made at 
 London for troops and munitions to be sent from England, 
 and the Lords Proprietors admitting their inability to pro- 
 tect their Carolina possessions, the matter of their purchase 
 was considered by the Crown, but no definite action was 
 then taken. 
 
 In the fall of that year, the Cores broke their peace and TheCores 
 killed some settlers, and the council resolved that that tribe hostility 
 
 • ■ • # L ■ i\ ■ | 11^ 
 
 should be exterminated ; and again companies were raised to 200 
 carry on hostilities, generally composed of ten whites and 
 some auxiliary Indians, who made profit in taking the hos- 
 tiles alive and selling them as slaves. This desultory warfare 
 continued for about three years, rangers being required to 
 clear the woods and protect the settlers from massacre. How 1715-18 
 terrible and murderous was the war may be inferred from 
 the number of infants, more than fourscore, that fell victims, 
 besides the older children and mature persons. 
 
 By agreement with the Tuscaroras, they were to occupy a 
 territory between the Pamlico and Neuse, but in fear of the 
 hostile Indians of South Carolina, in the summer of 1717, 
 they desired to be placed in a more protected section, and 
 were assigned a region for occupancy north of the Roanoke. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Nov. 13, 1 
 
 C. R., II. 
 207 
 
 Eden’s Administration, 1714-22 
 
 The Assembly of 1715. — The Church of England established in the 
 colony.. — Other laws. — The precincts. — Partisan disagreements. — 
 “Blackbeard” harbors in Pamlico Sound. — Complicity of Knight. — 
 Moseley and Moore search the records. — Knight exonerated, resigns 
 and dies. — Moseley punished. — Revolution in South Carolina. — The 
 dividing line. — Colonel Pollock president.. — William Reed succeeds 
 him. — Edenton. — Carteret Precinct. — A blow at nepotism. 
 
 The Assembly of 1715 
 
 The Assembly that first met Governor Eden in 1715 was 
 a notable one, convening just after the Indian war, and fol- 
 lowing the dissensions that had marked Governor Hyde’s 
 administration. Moseley, always at the head of the Popular 
 party, was the speaker, and although differences between the 
 council and administration on the one hand and the Assembly 
 on the other again found expression, some of the greater 
 questions that had agitated the colony had been finally settled 
 by the course of events. The rights claimed for the Quakers 
 under the concessions were now denied them. The senti- 
 ment that prevailed in England found a full voice in Albe- 
 marle. Liberty of conscience was declared ; but Quakers 
 were rendered ineligible to office ; nor were they allowed to 
 give evidence in any criminal case ; nor could they serve on 
 juries, but their affirmation was to be taken as a substitute 
 for an oath in those cases in which their testimony was 
 admissible. 
 
 All officers, including members of the Assembly, were re- 
 quired to take the test oath as well as the oaths of office. 
 
 The Church of England established in the colony 
 
 The Church of England, being the only one which under 
 the charter could have public encouragement, was declared 
 the established church. The two counties were di- 
 vided into nine parishes, for each of which vestrymen were 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND ESTABLISHED 
 
 197 
 
 selected, with the duty of providing a minister at a stipend 
 not exceeding £50, and to build a church and a chapel 
 in each parish ; and to meet those expenses, they were 
 to collect all fines and forfeitures imposed by law ; and were 
 empowered to lay a poll tax not exceeding five shillings per 
 annum on the poll. It was also enacted that every person 
 appointed a vestryman who neglected to qualify for one 
 month was to forfeit his place, and unless he were a dis- 
 senter, should also forfeit £3. So if a dissenter were 
 selected as a vestryman, he need not have qualified. But 
 while these provisions were made for the employment of 
 ministers, they were not put in operation. No pastors were 
 regularly settled in the colony ; only missionaries came, be- 
 ing sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. 
 In 1711, John Urmstone, a missionary, came to Chowan, 
 and he remained in the colony about ten years. Rev. Mr. 
 Rainsford came in 1712, but removed to Virginia in about 
 twelve months. In 1718 Rev. Mr. Taylor came, but died 
 after a residence of two years. In 1723, Thomas Bailey was 
 in the colony as a missionary, and Rev. John Blacknall for 
 awhile. These appear to have been all. The vestry act does 
 not seem to have been carried into effective operation in any 
 precinct, but at Edenton there was generally a missionary. 
 In 1732. there was no minister of the Church of England in 
 the entire colony. 
 
 Magistrates who by a former law were empowered to per- 
 form the marriage ceremony were forbidden to exercise that 
 function in any place where a minister resided. 
 
 The Assembly fixed the price at which skins, hides, fnrs 
 and produce were to be received in payment of debts, includ- 
 ing quit rents and public dues. It re-enacted laws that had 
 long been in force, including those based on the Fundamental 
 Constitutions which had been adopted and carried into 
 operation as nearly as circumstances permitted. Among 
 these was that which has been known as the biennial act, 
 which, conformably to the 73d and 75th articles of the Con- 
 stitutions, provided that in September of every second year, 
 the people were to choose assemblymen, who were to convene 
 in session the next November, thus making provision for 
 the regular meeting of the people’s representatives indepen- 
 
 1715 
 
 Parishes 
 
 erected 
 
 The Church 
 established 
 
 Missionaries 
 
 Other laws 
 C. R., II., 
 
 213 
 
EDEN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1714-22 
 
 19S 
 
 17*5 
 
 The new 
 precincts 
 C. R., II, 
 
 214 
 
 C R., HI 453 
 
 Acts of 
 
 Assembly- 
 
 1715 
 
 The revisal 
 of 1715 
 
 C R„ II, 
 
 217 
 
 dently of any action on the part of the governor and council ; 
 although the right to alter the time and place of meeting was 
 allowed to the Palatine's Court ; and the powers vested in the 
 Lords Proprietors by the Crown were not denied. 
 
 At that time, Bath County was divided into three pre- 
 cincts, now named Beaufort, Hyde* and Craven. The in- 
 habitants of Craven Precinct were to vote at Swift’s planta- 
 tion, at the mouth of Hancock Creek, while those of the town 
 of New Bern were to vote in that town; the inhabitants of 
 Beaufort were to meet at Bath Town, and those of Hyde at 
 Websterson’s plantation on the west side of Matchapungo 
 River. The Albemarle precincts were to return five mem- 
 bers ; those of Bath County only two each. The inequality 
 was doubtless because the new precincts were so sparsely 
 settled. Under the original constitution, each of the precincts 
 of Albemarle County was entitled to five members, but that 
 provision was held not to apply to Bath County. The As- 
 sembly also provided for another issue of paper currency, 
 elected a public treasurer, levied a tax to retire the currency, 
 and arranged to pay its indebtedness to South Carolina. 
 Also provision was made for the appointment of a register 
 in each precinct to register deeds and record all births, 
 deaths and marriages, as had long been the law and was re- 
 quired by the Constitutions. In fact, all the laws were 
 revised and re-enacted at this session, and the common law 
 of England was declared in force in North Carolina. 
 
 When the acts were submitted to the Lords Proprietors, 
 they disapproved of the provision requiring the receiver of 
 quit rents to receive the provincial bills for dues to the Pro- 
 prietors, and they further informed the Assembly, “we have 
 resolved that no more land shall be sold in the province, but 
 only in England,” and they reminded the Assembly that no 
 act thereafter passed would be valid for a longer time than 
 two years unless it received their approval. 
 
 In the fall of 1715 they appointed Christopher Gale chief 
 justice, and he was sworn in January 24, 1716. 
 
 *The territory embracing Mattamuskeet Lake was attached to 
 Currituck Precinct, and so remained until 1745, when it was annexed 
 to Hyde. 
 
INTERNAL DISCORD 
 
 199 
 
 The journals of the house contained several resolutions, 
 as having been adopted, but which the governor and council 
 declared had not been passed ; the first was a declaration 
 against impressments by the governor and council, as being 
 a great infringement of the liberties of the people ; another 
 was in condemnation of the treatment of the Core Indians ; 
 another, in condemnation of those who refused to take the 
 public bills as paper currency in payment of fees, was evi- 
 dently aimed at some of the administrative officers. Not 
 content with mere resolutions, the Assembly appointed a com- 
 mittee to represent the deplorable circumstances of the colony 
 to the Lords Proprietors. Evidently the former factions 
 were not entirely hushed. On the contrary, the differences 
 springing from diverse interests now became the basis of 
 two parties, one adhering to the officials who represented 
 the Proprietors, and the other composed of those inhabitants 
 who sought the general welfare, which may well be called 
 the Popular party. 
 
 Nor was the governor antagonized by only the People’s 
 party. He had some enemies closer at hand. In the sum- 
 mer of 1717, Christopher Gale sailed for London, with the 
 purpose, as alleged by Parson Urmstone, himself a very 
 erratic character, of accomplishing Governor Eden’s down- 
 fall, and with the hope of supplanting him. This none too 
 pious missionary introduces us to both the parties without 
 evincing much partiality. The complaints against the gov- 
 ernor, he asserts, were not groundless : “His honor has acted 
 toward all men very arbitrarily, not to say unjustly.” He 
 is declared “to be a strange, unaccountable man.” But of 
 Gale, the parson entertained no better opinion. 
 
 The result of Gale’s mission, however, was not hurtful to 
 Eden ; on the contrary, at the same meeting of the Lords 
 Proprietors at which Gale was reappointed chief justice, 
 Eden was made a landgrave. But Gale, whether smarting 
 from his disappointments, or for other reasons, did not re- 
 turn to Carolina for several years. And another affair oc- 
 curred that stirred the colony and involved the administra- 
 tion. 
 
 » 7>5 
 
 Partisan 
 
 disagree- 
 
 ments 
 
 C. R., II, 
 243> 244 
 
 C. R., II, 
 
 299 
 
200 
 
 1718 
 
 C. R., II, 
 320, 335 
 
 C. R., II, 
 3 2 5 
 
 Spotswood 
 
 acts 
 
 Nov. 22, 1718 
 
 EDEN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1714-22 
 
 Thack harbors in Pamlico Sound 
 
 Among the pirates who infested the Atlantic coast, having 
 their rendezvous in the Bahamas, was Thack, or Thatch, or 
 Teach, his name being written in several ways, familiarly 
 known as “Blackbeard.” One of his lieutenants was Major 
 Steed Bonnett, a man of gentle birth and of education. 
 These sometimes came into the sounds of North Carolina ; 
 and they had friends there, as in Virginia and South Caro- 
 lina. But among the better class of people, there was in- 
 dignation that pirates should be tolerated by the officers. 
 When the king offered pardon to all pirates who should sur- 
 render and reform, Thack availed himself of the terms and 
 came in and promised to lead an honest life; but after a 
 month he was again on the high seas. At length Captain 
 Woodes Rogers, who had saved Alexander Selkirk from his 
 desert island, was sent to break up the nest of pirates in the 
 Bahamas. While he was successful in capturing many, Bon- 
 nett and Thack were not taken, and found a refuge in the in- 
 lets of North Carolina. 
 
 Shortly afterward Thack sailed from the Pamlico and 
 soon returned with a cargo of oranges and other fruit, sugar 
 and spices, taken from a French vessel, which he had cap- 
 tured on August 22 d, near the Bermudas, and then burned 
 off the coast of Carolina. Some of this plunder he stored 
 in the barn of Tobias Knight, an Englishman who had come 
 over with Eden and who was secretary of the colony ; and 
 in the absence of the chief justice, Gale, had been appointed 
 to that high position. Information was sent by some of the 
 inhabitants to Governor Spotswood, who, deeming himself 
 clothed with authority, determined to capture the pirate. 
 There were two British men-of-war in the harbor ; but there 
 was so much sympathy for the pirates in Virginia, that Gov- 
 ernor Spotswood would not hazard communicating his pur- 
 pose even to any member of his council. Obtaining two 
 sloops, and fitting them out secretly with men supplied from 
 the men-of-war, he sent them under the command of Lieu- 
 tenant Maynard in search of Thack’s vessel, the Adventure, 
 which on November 22, 1718, was discovered near Ocra- 
 coke Inlet. A desperate battle followed. Knowing the 
 shoals of the sound, Thack had some advantage ; but at last, 
 
BLACKBEARD, THE PIRATE 
 
 201 
 
 hard pressed, the Adventure was stranded. As Maynard’s 
 sloop now approached the pirate ship, Thack poured into it 
 a murderous broadside that swept oft' many of the crew. 
 But Maynard, ordering his men below, steered directly for 
 the Adventure, and as the vessels closed, Thack and his crew 
 sprang upon the deck of the sloop and, animated by a des- 
 perate courage, hoped to take possession and make their es- 
 cape. But Maynard’s men rushed from below, and in the 
 hand-to-hand encounter that ensued the pirates were over- 
 come. The Adventure carried 8 cannon; and of the 
 crew of 18 men, 9 besides Thack were killed outright, and 9, 
 some desperately wounded, were taken prisoners ; of the 
 king’s men, 12 were killed and 22 wounded. The prisoners 
 who survived were taken to Virginia, tried and convicted of 
 piracy. 
 
 Upon the capture of Thack’s vessel, Governor Spotswood 
 sent Captain Brand of the British Navy to obtain the stolen 
 merchandise. Colonel Maurice Moore and Jeremiah Vail 
 accompanied him to Pamlico, and the goods were found, 
 some being discovered in the barn of Tobias Knight. Im- 
 mediately the governor and some of his council remonstrated 
 at the action of Governor Spotswood, claiming that these 
 proceedings were unlawful and improper. Separating Col- 
 onel Pollock and Governor Eden from Tobias Knight, it ap- 
 pears that the governor regarded that it was an invasion of 
 his government for Governor Spotswood to send a force into 
 North Carolina waters even for the purpose of capturing a 
 pirate ; and he keenly felt and warmly remonstrated against 
 Captain Brand’s taking possession of the sugars and remov- 
 ing them to Virginia, to be disposed of by the court of admi- 
 ralty. Colonel Pollock doubted the strict legality of Gover- 
 nor Spotswood’s action, but advised Governor Eden to make 
 no point about it. While the council stood by Knight, Eden’s 
 action is hardly consistent with innocence as to the alleged 
 complicity with the pirate, and he certainly did not give ex- 
 pression to any great satisfaction at Thack’s destruction. 
 Still if Eden had any association with Thack, it was less operl 
 and notorious than the bearing of some of the governors of 
 other colonies toward the pirates. 
 
 The public records according to the instructions of the 
 
 X718 
 
 C. R., II, 
 
 325 
 
 Complicity 
 of Knight 
 
 C. R., II, 
 
 319 
 
 C. R., II, 
 341. 346, 349 
 
202 
 
 EDEN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1714-22 
 
 1718 
 
 Moseley and 
 Moore 
 search the 
 records 
 
 C. R., II, 
 344 
 
 Lords Proprietors were to be open to public inspection ; but 
 in the absence of any public buildings, they were kept in 
 rooms of private houses. The records of the secretary’s 
 office were deposited in a private house at Sandy Point, near 
 Edenton ; and Maurice Moore and Edward Moseley, being 
 determined to search the records for incriminating evidence 
 regarding improper dealings between the authorities and 
 Thack, on December 27th broke into that room, barred the 
 door and proceeded to make an investigation. For this 
 alleged trespass and misdemeanor, the governor issued a 
 warrant for their arrest, and sent a considerable body of 
 men to apprehend them. Indignant at such a posse being 
 sent to take him, Moseley exclaimed that “the governor 
 could find men enough to arrest peaceable citizens, but none 
 to arrest thieves and robbers.” The intimation was plain, 
 that the governor was willing to shield the pirate, and the 
 allegation was scandahim niagnatum. Moseley and Moore 
 were bound over to court, and an indictment followed as a 
 matter of course. At the trial of the pirates before the 
 admiralty court in Virginia, the evidence implicated Tobias 
 Knight as being in complicity with Thack, and a copy of the 
 testimony was sent by Governor Spotswood to Governor 
 Eden. At a meeting of the council, about the opening of 
 April, this testimony was considered and an order was passed 
 to serve a copy of it on Knight, who was not in attendance. 
 At the next meeting in May, Knight filed a statement in ex- 
 planation. While making sweeping denials, alleging that he 
 was pursued “by Moore and Vail and that family,” he de- 
 clared that he had not sought to conceal the fact that the 
 sugars were stored on his premises ; and he alleged that they 
 were lodged there at the request of Thack only until a more 
 convenient store could be procured by the governor for the 
 whole cargo. This apparently connected the governor with 
 the transaction, and would necessarily involve him if Knight 
 were found implicated in any illicit dealings regarding these 
 goods. The governor himself made no particular explana- 
 tion, but the result of the investigation could not be doubt- 
 ful. 
 
 The council hastened to declare that Knight was not 
 guilty, and ought to be acquitted of the crimes laid to his 
 
KNIGHT EXONERATED BY THE COUNCIL 
 
 203 
 
 charge. Still of Knight’s complicity there is no question, 1718 
 
 while his explanation that seemed to involve Governor Eden The council 
 
 A . exonerates 
 
 may well be entirely disregarded. The circumstances are Knight, but 
 
 . , , . . , - .he resigns 
 
 inconsistent with his innocence, ihack, being a notorious and dies 
 pirate, had accepted the king’s offer of pardon ; had then re- 
 turned to his trade ; had again surrendered and made ap- 
 plication for a second pardon ; and while the application was 
 still pending, he had sallied out with his vessel armed with 
 eight cannon and manned by a crew of desperadoes, and hav- 
 ing taken a French merchantman and transferred the cargo 
 to his own ship, had burned his prize off the North Caro- 
 lina coast ; and then coming in, devised the story not likely 
 to impose on the credulity of any one, that he had found a 
 wreck on the high seas and had saved the cargo. A part of 
 his stores was conveyed at the dead of night to the barn of 
 the chief justice of the colony and concealed beneath the 
 fodder. When Knight was first questioned by Captain 
 Brand, he positively denied that any such goods had been 344 ’’ ' 
 concealed on his premises. The denial being ignored and he 
 being informed that a memorandum found on the person 
 of the dead pirate attested the facts, he reluctantly made the 
 admission. Also in Thack’s possession was discovered a let- 
 ter from Knight of recent date, beginning, “My friend,” and 
 containing friendly advice, in itself being full proof of the 
 intimate connection and guilty association. Against these 
 facts, the exoneration by the governor and council carried no 
 weight. Knight resigned as chief justice, Colonel Frederick 
 Jones becoming his successor, and then he died before the 
 summer had ended. Such was the termination of the career 
 of that English adventurer, who, like many others sent over 
 by the Proprietors to hold important office, sought to win 
 fortune at the expense of honor and character, and was ut- 
 terly indifferent to the good fame and material welfare of 
 the inhabitants of the province. Fie was doubtless quite 
 right in ascribing to the Swann and Lillington connection a 
 purpose to uncover his nefarious dealings. The gentlemen 
 of that family had a patriotic interest in removing from their 
 settlement the reproach of harboring pirates, as their action 
 in searching the records sufficiently indicates. 
 
 For their offences Moore and Moseley were tried at the 
 
204 
 
 EDEN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1714-22 
 
 1719 
 
 C. R„ II, 
 366, 368 
 
 C. R., II, 
 
 368 
 
 general court in October, 1719. To the indictment for break- 
 ing into the secretary’s office, they with Thomas Luten and 
 Henry Clayton pleaded guilty ; and a fine of £5 was imposed 
 on Moore, and of five shillings on Moseley. But the case 
 against Moseley, for his scandalous words, was regarded as 
 more serious. The jury rendered a special verdict — -that 
 Moseley had uttered the words, and “if the law be for the 
 king, then he was guilty.” After several days’ delay, the 
 court ruled that he was guilty ; and it being considered that 
 his action was in the nature of stirring up sedition, he was 
 sentenced to pay a fine of £100, and to be incapable of holding 
 any office or place of trust in the colony for three years. His 
 practice, however, was large and important, and as he was 
 silenced as a lawyer, the business of the court was so impeded 
 that the chief justice, Jones, requested that his disabilities 
 as an attorney might be removed ; and in view of the allega- 
 tion that he had intended to raise sedition, perhaps also be- 
 cause of the recent revolution in South Carolina, Moseley was 
 led to state, in a petition to the council, that his words were 
 not uttered with such a sinister design, but only through 
 heat and passion ; and he asked to be relieved of the sen- 
 tence. But the governor, perhaps, felt that there was too 
 much truth in what Moseley had so bluntly alleged for the 
 offence to be forgiven, and the only concession he made was 
 that Moseley might bring to an end such litigation as had 
 been committed to him before the sentence was imposed, but 
 should take no new cases. So for three years the leader of 
 the Popular party and the most influential citizen of the 
 province was excluded from all public employment and for- 
 bidden to practise law. 
 
 Revolution in South Carolina 
 
 While these matters were in progress in North Carolina, 
 the condition in South Carolina had become so intolerable 
 under the inefficient government of the Lords Proprietors, 
 that the people having determined on a revolution, following 
 the methods practised in England, formed an association to 
 stand by each other ; and the Assembly which convened on 
 November 28, 1719, resolved itself into a convention, and 
 threw off the authority of the Lords Proprietors, offering the 
 
THE REVOLUTION IN SOUTH CAROLINA 
 
 205 
 
 administration to Governor Johnson, who had succeeded 
 Craven, if he would continue to act as governor and hold the 
 province for the king. This Governor Johnson properly re- 
 fused to do, and the people then elected James Moore gov- 
 ernor, and applied to the king to receive South Carolina as 
 a royal province. 
 
 A revolution so complete and successful cast dismay 
 among the Proprietors and their officers in North Carolina, 
 and raised anew in England the question of the Crown’s 
 resuming possession of the entire territory of Carolina. It 
 also led to the consideration of the dividing line between 
 the two governments. 
 
 The South Carolina authorities claimed the Cape Fear River 
 as a boundary, and asserted that their government had issued 
 grants for land on that river ; but in the earlier days the 
 Santee had been the northern limit of South Carolina, and 
 more lately, after Clarendon County had ceased to exist, the 
 territory north and east of Cape Fear was assigned to the 
 North Carolina government. As there were no settlements 
 in the Cape Fear region, the question had not been of im- 
 portance, and before the boundary was marked North Caro- 
 lina had occupied the southern bank of the Cape Fear River 
 as a portion of Bath County. 
 
 Conditions in North Carolina 
 
 As painful and devastating as the Indian war had been, 
 its sacrifices 'were not without compensation. Although the 
 trade in furs largely ceased the colony received a greater 
 benefit from quieting all apprehensions of Indian outbreaks. 
 The savages being suppressed, the extension of the planta- 
 tions proceeded without interruption and population con- 
 tinued to flow in, the settlements progressing to the south- 
 ward as well as to the westward along the navigable streams. 
 
 In January, 1670, the Assembly had passed an act restrict- 
 ing grants of land in any one survey to six hundred and sixty 
 acres in order to remedy the evil of large tracts or plan- 
 tations being insufficiently cultivated ; and tbe Proprietors 
 in 1694 had authorized Governor Archdale to sell land in 
 Albemarle in fee for what he could reasonably obtain for it ; 
 however, not under £10 for a thousand acres, and reserving 
 an annual rent of not less than five shillings to a thousand 
 
 1719 
 
 Moore leads 
 the South 
 Carolina 
 revolt 
 
 The South 
 Carolina 
 dividing 
 line 
 
 Population 
 
 increases 
 
206 
 
 EDEN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1714-22 
 
 1722 
 
 Land 
 
 patents 
 
 Eden dies 
 March, 1722 
 
 Colonel 
 
 Pollock 
 
 president 
 
 His death, 
 August 30, 
 1722, and 
 character 
 
 acres. Later the Proprietors, understanding that advantage 
 was being taken of them by the issue of patents for thou- 
 sands of acres in a body which was not seated, but thus 
 withdrawn from other purchasers while yielding no rents, 
 in their instructions to Governor Hyde forbade the issue 
 of any patents whatsoever. They also forbade the survey 
 of any lands within twenty miles of the Cape Fear River. 
 In January, 1712, however, at Governor Hyde’s instance, 
 they modified these directions so that he was allowed to issue 
 patents not to exceed six hundred and forty acres in a body, 
 requiring a cash payment of twenty shillings for every hun- 
 dred acres, and an annual rent of one shilling sterling money 
 of Great Britain per acre. These terms necessarily applied 
 only to the lands in Bath, for those in Albemarle were held 
 under the Great Deed. The council represented in 1718 
 that these orders relating to the sale of land imposing such 
 hard terms were inconsistent with the settlement of the 
 province, and it unavailingly asked that they might be re- 
 voked. At that time there were about one million acres held 
 subject to quit rents, and there were about two thousand 
 tithables in the colony ; and despite the orders, the people 
 were spreading out in Craven and up the Neuse and along 
 the Roanoke. Indeed, the province was making rapid 
 strides in importance when, in March, 1 722, Governor Eden 
 died. 
 
 So far as the internal affairs of the colony were concerned, 
 during the latter years of Eden’s administration at least, 
 the people enjoyed a period of repose. Except for the 
 irritation that may have incidentally grown out of its atti- 
 tude toward Moseley, his administration was apparently 
 quiet and pleasant, although the desultory depredations of 
 the Indians added somewhat to the cares of his official life. 
 On his death. Colonel Pollock was again chosen president ; 
 but that valuable citizen, who for twenty years had been 
 one of the most prominent and influential, as he was doubt- 
 less the richest, of the inhabitants, did not long survive this 
 last accession of power. In all the contests that had divided 
 the people he had taken sides against the party to which 
 Moseley adhered. When the latter stood for popular rights, 
 Pollock threw his influence toward maintaining the authority 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE COLONY 
 
 of the administrative officers ; but of his sterling worth, 
 ability and character there is no question. 
 
 On his death, toward the last of August, he was suc- 
 ceeded by William Reed, who was in no wise comparable to 
 him, either in social position or in respectability of 
 character. 
 
 Chief Justice Gale, after an absence of nearly four years, 
 returned to the province just as Governor Eden expired, 
 and resumed his official functions, and he also took his seat 
 at the council board as a deputy of James Bertie, one of the 
 Lords Proprietors. 
 
 A hamlet had sprung up on Queen Anne’s Creek and Gov- 
 ernor Eden had made his residence there, and the council 
 and general court met at that place. It was now incor- 
 porated as a town under the name of Edenton, and became 
 the established seat of government. An Assembly was held 
 there in October, 1722. The previous Assembly was pre- 
 sided over by William Swann, but Moseley’s disabilities 
 having now expired by the passage of three years, he was 
 chosen speaker of the new body. Among its acts was one 
 establishing seats of government in the several precincts 
 and settling the courts and court-houses. And because the 
 territory west of the Chowan had become so populous, a new 
 precinct was laid off in that territory named Bertie, doubt- 
 less in compliment of the Proprietor. 
 
 In August, 1722, the council had established Carteret 
 Precinct, extending southward indefinitely to the bounds of 
 the government, including all the settlements in that direc- 
 tion ; and the town of Beaufort was incorporated into a sea- 
 port, entitled to a collector of customs ; and a road was 
 directed to be opened from Core Point to New Bern. The 
 growth of the province had been retarded for the want of 
 commercial facilities, and to improve navigation an act 
 was passed to encourage a settlement at Ocracoke Inlet, 
 because of the good anchorage and harbor there. 
 
 Another act had for its object to discourage the influx of 
 official adventurers by prescribing a qualification for officers 
 that would exclude such persons as any new governor might 
 bring over as satellites in his train; it prohibited the gov- 
 ernor from granting any office to any British subject who 
 had not resided three years in the province. 
 
 207 
 
 1722 
 
 William 
 
 Reed 
 
 succeeds 
 
 him 
 
 Edenton 
 
 S.R., XXIII, 
 
 102 
 
 Bertie 
 
 Precinct 
 
 Carteret 
 Precinct 
 C. R., II, 
 458 , 459 
 
 Official 
 
 adventurers 
 
 discouraged 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Administrations of Burrington and Everard, 1724-31 
 
 Governor Burrington explores the Cape Fear. — Opposition to him. 
 — Burrington displaced. — Sir Richard Everard. — Antagonism be- 
 tween Assembly and governor. — Altercations of Burrington and the 
 governor. — The ministers. — The settlement of the Cape Fear. — The 
 Assembly sustains Burrington. — He appeals to the Proprietors. — 
 Personal controversies. — The dividing line with Virginia. — Purchase 
 by the Crown. — Carteret retains his share. — Everard breaks with 
 Gale. — The lords of trade. — The currency act. — The end of the 
 Proprietary government. — Conditions in North Carolina. — No public 
 schools. — Few ministers. — The Baptists. — Industries. — Population. — 
 Social conditions. 
 
 Governor Burrington 
 
 To fill the vacancy caused by the death of Eden the Lords 
 Proprietors proposed to appoint George Burrington, of 
 Devon, governor of North Carolina, and on February 26, 
 1723, the king gave his assent; but it was not until the 
 succeeding January that Burrington reached Edenton and 
 took the oaths of office. The new governor had held office 
 under the Crown in every reign since the revolution of 
 1688, and must have had considerable official experience. 
 He was a man of violent temper, firm and resolute, and one 
 who could brook no opposition. Thomas Jones, a son of 
 Chief Justice Jones, had intermarried with Miss Swann, the 
 stepdaughter of Moore, and had thus connected his father 
 with the Moseley and Moore faction ; while by the death of 
 Colonel Pollock Chief Justice Gale was left the most respect- 
 able and influential member of the opposition. On Bur- 
 rington’s arrival he not unnaturally allied himself with the 
 dominant party, that contained not merely the numerical 
 majority controlling the Assembly, but almost all the influ- 
 ential men in the province. Moseley himself was now of 
 the council,* and the power of the administration was with 
 
 *To fill a vacancy in the council, the other councillors could 
 temporarily elect. 
 
CONDITIONS IN THE PROVINCE 
 
 209 
 
 his friends. The Assembly met three months later and for- 
 mally begged that the instructions of the Lords Proprietors 
 prohibiting the sale of lands in Bath might be disregarded 
 until an address could be sent to them in England. It was 
 asserted that, the land office being closed persons coming 
 into the colony to locate could obtain no grants and were 
 forced to go elsewhere, and that the welfare of the province 
 demanded a change in regard to these matters. Burrington 
 entered heartily into the measure. There was a particular 
 prohibition against making any grant on the Cape Fear 
 River, but he obtained by purchase an old patent issued by 
 Governor Hyde in 1711 to Thomas Harvey, calling for five 
 thousand acres, and he determined to locate it on that river. 
 There were other such patents for lands bearing that date 
 eventually located on the Cape Fear, but whether they were 
 issued pursuant to a purpose to make a settlement in that 
 region at that time, or whether they were issued in blank 
 and originally intended for a different locality, is a question 
 not now possible to determine. With a view to opening up 
 that region to settlers, Burrington undertook to make a 
 thorough exploration of it. He visited it in person, and 
 underwent much hardship, privation, exposure and danger 
 in exploring its streams, its swamps and wildernesses. If 
 he was not persuaded to this resolution by Maurice Moore, 
 he was- at least seconded and encouraged in it by him. 
 
 Moore, who had traversed that country in going to the 
 aid of South Carolina in 1716, determined to form a colony 
 and settle there, and to this end he interested his brothers 
 and friends in South Carolina and his family connections 
 in Albemarle and Bath counties, who agreed to join him in 
 making a new settlement. 
 
 But while these matters were in progress, Burrington’s 
 unfortunate temper threw him into personal antagonism 
 with the chief justice and other officials. In addition to 
 his salary as governor, the Lords Proprietors had granted 
 him and two associates a lease of the exclusive right of the 
 whale fisheries along the coast ; and whether from some 
 incident springing from that lease or from some dereliction 
 of duty on the part of the naval officer at the port of Roa- 
 noke, and of the collector of customs, the governor in the 
 
 1724 
 
 c. r., 11T 
 
 528 
 
 Explores the 
 Cape Fear 
 C. K., II, 569 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 
 502 
 
 C. R., II, 
 569 
 
 Opposition 
 
 to 
 
 Burrington 
 
210 
 
 BURR1NGT0N AND EVERARD , 1724-31 
 
 1724 
 
 C. R., II, 
 561 
 
 C. R., 11,559 
 
 Everard 
 appointed 
 governor 
 Jan., 1725 
 
 C. R ,11,562 
 
 Everard 
 reaches 
 Edenton, 
 July, 17^5 
 
 summer of 1724 threatened violence to one and imprison- 
 ment to the other. Chief Justice Gale, who was also a 
 collector of a port, sustained his brother officials, and toward 
 the chief justice Burrington was abusive and violent, Gale 
 even declaring that the governor had come to his residence 
 at night and threatened to kill him and to burn his house 
 over his head. Burrington had been affable to the people, 
 and had so ingratiated himself that he was popular among 
 the rich as well as the poor ; and now the assemblymen stood 
 by him, while the councillors generally supported Gale. The 
 chief justice speedily left the colony and sailed for England, 
 bearing a representation, signed by seven of the council, 
 complaining of the governor’s violence and arbitrary 
 conduct. 
 
 Arriving at London, Gale hastened to inform, the com- 
 missioners of customs, under whom he held his office as 
 collector of the port at Beaufort, of the illegal action of 
 Burrington, and declared that, believing his life in danger, 
 he had been obliged to flee from the province, and that he 
 could not return but at the hazard of his life. In addition, 
 Gale appears to have impressed the Lords Proprietors with 
 the belief that Burrington was preparing to lead a revolu- 
 tion, as James Moore had done in South Carolina, and throw 
 off the authority of the Proprietors. Evidence of this, 
 according to his enemies, was afforded by his association 
 with Maurice Moore, his visits to South Carolina, his ap- 
 pointment of Moseley to administer the government during 
 his temporary absence, his arrangement for the settlement 
 of the Cape Fear, notwithstanding the prohibition of the 
 Proprietors, and his courting popularity among the people 
 and his friendly alliance with the leading inhabitants. In 
 this mission Gale was more successful than in his alleged 
 attempt to overthrow Eden. The fears of the Proprietors 
 were at once aroused, and apprehending that they might 
 lose their province either through revolution or by the king 
 taking possession because of the illegal conduct of their 
 governor, in haste they appointed Sir Richard Everard to 
 supplant Burrington, and in July, 1725, Everard reached 
 Edenton and took the oaths of office. Gale accompanied 
 the new governor, who not unnaturally looked to him for 
 
FACTIONAL DISTURBANCES 
 
 211 
 
 advice and counsel, and being a weak man, fell entirely 
 under his influence. 
 
 According to the biennial act, an Assembly was to be 
 elected in September, and as the time approached, Bur- 
 rington became very active in managing to secure the elec- 
 tion of members who were friendly to him. He visited all 
 the precincts and stirred his friends to zeal and activity. By 
 law the Assembly was to meet in November, but Gale advis- 
 ing that there was no need for an Assembly at that time, 
 the governor in October issued a proclamation proroguing 
 it until April. On the other hand, it was declared that 
 under the fundamental constitution of the province the 
 governor had no power to postpone the meeting of the 
 Assembly, and, in disregard of the proclamation, the mem- 
 bers convened at Edenton on the day fixed by law, Burring- 
 ton being a member, and the body chose Moore as speaker. 
 
 The Assembly was entirely in sympathy with the deposed 
 governor, and having resolved that the prorogation was an 
 infringement of their liberties and a breach of the privileges 
 of the people, they declared that at their next meeting they 
 would proceed to no business until their lawful privileges 
 were confirmed. The governor and council refused to recog- 
 nize that the house was in session, but nevertheless, the 
 house adjourned from day to day, and the next day adopted 
 an address to the Lords Proprietors in which they repre- 
 sented that the great happiness which the province had 
 enjoyed under the administration of Burrington had been 
 “much disturbed by the unexpected change made through 
 many false and malicious calumnies raised against that 
 gentleman by persons of the most vile character and des- 
 perate fortunes” ; and they solemnly denied that there was 
 any disposition or design on the part of Burrington or any 
 one else to cause such a revolution as had taken place in 
 South Carolina ; and they represented that great evils were 
 apprehended from the vile administration which the province 
 was threatened with from a governor “entirely influenced 
 by a few persons of the most irreligious and immoral 
 character.” 
 
 Having given expression to these sentiments, the house 
 adjourned to the first Tuesday in April, the day set by the 
 
 1725 
 
 Antagonism 
 
 between 
 
 Assembly 
 
 and 
 
 governor 
 Nov., 1725 
 
 C.R., II, 577 
 
 C. R., II, 
 577 ) 578 
 
212 
 
 BURR 1 NGT 0 N AND EVERARD , 1724-31 
 
 1725 
 
 C. R., II, 
 
 648 
 
 A Itercations 
 of Barring- 
 ton and 
 the governor 
 
 C. R., II, 
 
 65 1 
 
 The 
 
 ministers, 
 C. R., II, 
 
 604 
 
 governor for its meeting. Burrington, strengthened by the 
 support the house gave him, felt no restraint in making 
 evident his contempt for Everard. Announcing that in nine 
 months he would be restored to the office of governor, he 
 promised places to his friends who had been dismissed by 
 the new administration, and he carried himself very defiantly 
 toward the governor, in utter disregard of law and order. 
 Proclaiming that Sir Richard was an ape, a noodle, and 
 no more fit to be a governor than Sancho Panza, he sought 
 to disparage him with the people, and going to Sir Richard’s 
 residence at Edenton in the night, he called him out and 
 threatened him and abused him with great opprobrium. 
 In one of these violent demonstrations, a night attack on the 
 governor’s house, he was accompanied, among others, by 
 Cornelius Harnett, an Irishman who had recently come into 
 the colony with several thousand pounds’ worth of mer- 
 chandise and had established himself as a merchant. Indeed, 
 on the night of December 2, 1725, after their assault on the 
 governor, they broke open the doors of the house of the 
 constable and beat that officer furiously; and James Potter 
 coming to his neighbor’s aid, they violently assaulted him ; 
 and then forcing the door of Thomas Panis’s residence, they 
 assaulted him and drove his family out of the house. The 
 governor himself was disorderly, but not quite so violent 
 in his demonstrations as Burrington. But together they 
 caused about Edenton a discreditable uproar, and the greater 
 part of the province was more or less interested in their 
 bitter antagonism, Gale’s friends in the council gathering 
 around Everard, while the assemblymen were of Burring- 
 ton's faction. Even the only two ministers in the province 
 took different sides. Rev. Mr. Bailey, a missionary, was of 
 the Burrington faction, and received no courtesy but hard 
 usage from Everard ; while Rev. Mr. Blacknall, who had 
 come over with the new governor, and sided with him, was 
 represented by Sir Richard to the Bishop of London as a 
 very good preacher, a gentleman, perfectly sober, and be- 
 loved by all but Mr. Burrington’s party. This Mr. Black- 
 nall, who was of a highly respectable connection in England, 
 perhaps in ignorance of the provincial law, was led soon 
 after his arrival to perform the marriage service between a 
 
THE CAPE FEAR SETTLED 
 
 213 
 
 white man and a mulatto woman. On the same day, per- 
 haps ascertaining that he had committed an offence, he went 
 before the chief justice and made an affidavit of the fact. 
 
 Being subject by law to a penalty, one-half of which was for 
 the use of the informer, he claimed his half, which lessened 
 his fine to that extent. Doubtless he erred through ignorance. 
 
 There was nothing to his personal advantage in his delin- 
 quency, and he lost no time in acknowledging his violation 
 of the law and in evoking its operation. But he did not 
 remain long in the province, soon going to Maryland. 
 
 This factional disturbance in Albemarle perhaps rather setUemem 
 hastened than delayed the settlement of the Cape Fear. capiTFear 
 Bath County extended from Albemarle Sound down to the 
 undefined southern limits of the province ; and when Car- 
 teret Precinct was established it included the entire un- 
 settled region, embracing the Cape Fear and down to the Carteret Co. 
 South Carolina line. The first known grant in that wilder- eLOr 1 
 ness was issued to Maurice Moore on June 3, 1725, for 
 fifteen hundred acres on the west bank of the river, sixteen 
 miles below the present town of Wilmington, where he laid 
 out a town which he called Brunswick, in honor of the 
 reigning house, and invited settlers to locate there. His 
 brothers, Roger* and Nathaniel, and other friends came from 
 South Carolina, and Maurice Moore and a large part of the 
 Lillington connection also prepared to remove from Albe- 
 marle. The former took up lands on the lower Cape Fear, 
 while the Albemarle contingent located their grants on the Sta 5 Park 
 northeast branch, where Burrington also took his five thou- 
 sand acres, by grant dated June 25, 1725 ;f and other acces- 
 sions being made, at last there was reason to hope that the 
 advantage of a good port and harbor would be obtained for 
 die province. 
 
 At the March term of the court Burrington and Harnett 
 
 *Roger Moore, because of his wealth and large number of slaves, 
 was called “King Roger.” There is a tradition on the Cape Fear that 
 he and his slaves had a battle with the Indians at the “Sugar Loaf,” 
 nearly opposite the town of Brunswick. Governor Tryon, forty 
 years later, mentioned that the last battle with the Indians was 
 when driving them from the Cape Fear in 1725. The tradition would 
 seem to be well founded. 
 
 tSome of the names bestowed on localities by Hilton in 1663 are 
 yet retained : Stag Park, Rocky Point, etc. 
 
214 
 
 BURRINGTON AND EVERARD, 1724-31 
 
 1726 
 
 cT*., ii, 
 
 698 
 
 April, 1726 
 
 C R., II, 
 608 
 
 C R., 11,619 
 
 were indicted for their violent trespasses and assaults, and 
 the latter left Albemarle, and going to the Cape Fear, con- 
 ducted a ferry across the river at the new town of Bruns- 
 wick, which at the March term of the general court at 
 Edenton in 1727 was duly established and legalized. Bur- 
 rington was in his seat as a member of tbe Assembly which 
 met pursuant to the prorogation on April 1st. That body 
 remained steadfast to his interests and manfully stood by 
 him, notwithstanding his disorderly conduct. John Baptista 
 Ashe, with whom Burrington had established very cordial 
 relations, having been acquainted with several members of 
 his family in England, was, in the absence of Moore, chosen 
 speaker, and he strongly supported the ex-governor. Sir 
 Richard opened the proceedings with an address appealing 
 for love and charity, and that all breaches should be healed, 
 that the country should flourish and all be happy. 
 
 The house met this tender of the olive branch with a 
 resolution that all its debates should be secret, and that any 
 member who should disclose the purport of any debate 
 should be expelled. After a week’s delay an answer was 
 adopted to the governor's address, detailing at large the 
 alleged grievances of the people, and aimed at the adminis- 
 trative and court officers, who were denounced as vile and 
 base characters ; and they called on the governor to heal 
 the breaches by bringing them to punishment. The gov- 
 ernor was, however, reported to be dangerously ill, and the 
 address could not be presented. The house next delivered 
 an address to Burrington, full of compliments, and thanking 
 him for his many services and the advantages received under 
 his mild administration ; and then an address to the Lords 
 Proprietors was adopted, declaring that they would esteem 
 it one of the greatest favors if the Proprietors would restore 
 Burrington to the office of governor. Called to the gov- 
 ernor’s dwelling, because he was too ill to attend at the 
 council chamber, the house presented its address and asked 
 for an answer to their grievances ; but instead of a reply, the 
 secretary announced that the governor and council had 
 agreed on a prorogation, and the governor verbally pro- 
 nounced a prorogation, which the house on its return to 
 its chamber declared illegal ; but nevertheless, it adjourned 
 
ASSEMBLY SUSTAINS BURLINGTON 
 
 215 
 
 to the day appointed. Burrington forwarded the resolutions 
 in his favor to the Lords Proprietors, and addressed to them 
 a memorial relative to his administration. He mentioned 
 that because of mighty storms in August before his arrival 
 the crops had been destroyed and there was almost a famine, 
 yet a thousand families came to live in the province during 
 his administration, and more would have come had not pro- 
 visions been so scarce ; that he had reorganized the militia ; 
 and finding that the magistrates were of no respectability, he 
 had prevailed on Colonel Moseley, Colonel Harvey, Colonel 
 Swann, Colonel Maule and other gentlemen to preside over 
 the precinct courts, which had borne excellent fruits in estab- 
 lishing the courts in the confidence and respect of the people ; 
 that he had purposed being of use to Governor Everard, 
 and he took occasion to warn him against the advice of 
 Gale, Lovick, and Little, but unavailingly ; that great im- 
 provements had been effected through his own efforts, and 
 that he had remained in Carolina expecting to learn from 
 them the nature of the complaints against him, but was still 
 in ignorance ; and that he would take the first opportunity 
 to clear his character, if sullied. 
 
 In the meantime the prosecutions against him were con- 
 tinued on the docket, no particular efforts being made to 
 arrest him and bring him to trial. He did not leave the 
 province, but established himself on the Cape Fear, at 
 Governor's Creek, five miles below Brunswick, where he 
 remained until 1728. Yet he was quiet. Edmund Porter, 
 who had recently returned to Carolina after an absence of 
 some ten years, was almost as violent toward the officers 
 as the deposed governor had been, and there was generally 
 in progress a sharp controversy between some private per- 
 son and either the governor or the chief justice or the 
 attorney-general, apparently of a personal nature ; but in 
 the course of the proceedings they were made to bear the 
 character of sedition and rebellion. In this remote and 
 spairsely settled country doubtless the officers frequently 
 acted arbitrarily, while occasionally some citizen, not suffi- 
 ciently respecting the government, manifested a spirit of 
 excessive freedom and independence and was guilty of dis- 
 orderly offences. 
 
 1726 
 
 Burrington 
 appeals 
 to the 
 Proprietors 
 
 C.R., 111,28 
 
 Personal 
 
 contro- 
 
 versies 
 
2l6 
 
 BURRfNGTON AND EVERARD, 1724-31 
 
 1728 
 
 C. R., II, 
 
 733 
 
 1728 
 
 Swann 
 passes the 
 Dismal 
 Swamp, 
 
 C. R.. 11,755 
 
 The dividing line 
 
 After years of delay, in 1728 the dividing line between 
 Virginia and Carolina was established. Governor Eden and 
 Governor Spotswood had agreed on a compromise of the 
 vexed questions involved, which had been accepted by the 
 authorities in England, but the king delayed authorizing 
 the actual survey to be made, so the matter lay in abeyance 
 until, in 1727, the governor of Virginia informed Sir Rich- 
 ard that he had received instructions to appoint surveyors 
 on the part of the Crown. The line was to run from the 
 north shore of Currituck Inlet due west to the Chowan; if it 
 struck the Chowan between the mouths of Nottoway and 
 Wiccons Creek it was to continue west to the mountains. 
 But if it struck to the south of Wiccons Creek it was to 
 follow the Chowan to that creek and then due west ; and 
 if that line struck the Blackwater River to the northward 
 of Nottoway River it was to come down the Blackwater 
 to the Nottoway and then west to the mountains. On the 
 part of North Carolina, Christopher Gale, John Smith, 
 Edward Moseley, and William Little were appointed the 
 commissioners, and William Byrd, Richard Fitzwilliam, and 
 W. Dandridge were to act for Virginia, representing the 
 interest of the Crown. On March 7th a cedar post was fixed 
 on the seashore as the beginning of the line. Four days 
 later they struck the land “formerly belonging to Governor 
 Gibbs,” now to Mr. Bladen, one of the Lords of Trade, 
 which was found to lie in North Carolina. The line cut the 
 Blackwater above the mouth of the Nottoway, and so the 
 surveyors followed the stream down to the point, the report 
 saying that the former Virginia commissioners had been 
 in error twenty-one and one-half miles. So there were 
 thrown into Carolina a great quantity of land and many 
 families that had formerly been claimed by Virginia, com- 
 puted at a hundred thousand acres of land and three hun- 
 dred tithables. It is also noted that when the surveyors 
 struck Dismal Swamp the Virginia surveyors went around 
 it, but the North Carolina surveyors boldly essayed the 
 attempt and passed through it. The first one to come out 
 on the west side was young Sam Swann, a nephew of 
 Moseley, whose vigor, energy and learning subsequently 
 
THE KING PURCHASES CAROLINA 
 
 217 
 
 led to his taking a prominent part in the affairs of the 
 colony. On April 5th the commissioners suspended the 
 work, which was resumed on September 25th, and a week 
 later the Roanoke was reached. 
 
 On October 6th, when Hycootte Creek was reached, one 
 hundred and sixty-eight miles from the inlet and forty-five 
 miles west of the Roanoke River, the North Carolina com- 
 missioners resolved that they had gone far enough for the 
 present, it being fifty miles beyond any inhabitants. The 
 Virginia surveyors, however, preferred going on, and ran 
 the line about seventy-two miles farther west, being alto- 
 gether a distance of two hundred and forty-one miles from 
 the sea, reaching the hills of the present county of Stokes. 
 
 1728 
 
 C.R., 11,776 
 
 C. R., II, 
 815 
 
 Purchase by the Crown 
 
 There had been some movement looking to the purchase 
 of the Carolinas by the Crown, which perhaps was inter- 
 rupted by the sudden death of the king in 1727, but in 
 January, 1728, a number of the Lords Proprietors united 
 in a memorial offering to surrender their interests ; and an 
 agreement for the surrender being reached, an act of Par- 
 liament was prepared authorizing and establishing the agree- 
 ment, and the conveyance was made. At that time the eight 
 shares were held and owned by the following Proprietors : 
 That of Clarendon by James Bertie; that of Albemarle by 
 the Duke of Beaufort ; that of Craven by Lord Craven ; that 
 of Colleton by Sir John Colleton ; that of Carteret by Lord 
 John Carteret; that of Ashley by a minor, John Cotton; 
 that of Sir John Berkeley by Joseph Blake, and that of 
 Sir William Berkeley by Mary Dawson, widow of John 
 Dawson, or Elizabeth Moore or Henry Bertie, there being a 
 legal controversy to determine their rights. 
 
 All joined in the conveyance except Lord John Carteret, 
 who was at that time lieutenant-general and governor of 
 the Kingdom of Ireland, and his share was reserved to him. 
 
 By the agreement, each of the seven shares was to be 
 purchased at the price of £2,500, being £17,500 in all; and 
 the payment was to be made and the conveyance executed 
 in June, 1729. There was, however, a considerable amount 
 
 c.r., 111,33 
 
 The last 
 Proprietors 
 
 Sale com- 
 pleted, 
 June, 1729 
 
2l8 
 
 BURRINGTON AND EVERARD, 1724-31 
 
 1728 
 
 Carteret 
 retains 
 his share 
 
 Everard 
 breaks with 
 Gale 
 
 C. R., Ill, 2 
 
 C. R., Ill, 5 
 
 The Lords 
 of Trade 
 
 C.R., IIL63 
 
 The 
 
 cuirencv act 
 C. R., Ill, 
 *45 
 
 of quit rents due to the Proprietors, and to satisfy their 
 claim for rents the king allowed them an additional sum 
 of £5,000. 
 
 Notice of the proposed sale was, in December, 1728, con- 
 veyed to the governor and council, and the council addressed 
 a memorial to the king manifesting their happiness in the 
 transfer of the province to the protection of the Crown, 
 and then they continued : “That it was with the greatest 
 sorrow that they felt obliged to make remonstrance against 
 the character of Sir Richard Everard, whose incapacity, 
 weakness, disregard of law, wickedness, and violence” they 
 proceeded to set out with great particularity. 
 
 On the other hand, some three weeks later Sir Richard 
 published a declaration to convince mankind, and in par- 
 ticular the inhabitants of the province, that all the unhappy 
 misunderstandings and dissensions between him and the 
 Assembly and other gentlemen of good note were owing to 
 the calumnies and false information given him by Chief 
 Justice Gale, John Lovick and William Little, who he de- 
 clared were the only enemies to the repose and quiet of the 
 people. 
 
 Burrington appears to have been at that time at his 
 plantation on the Cape Fear, but he soon departed for Lon- 
 don. There, in August, he had the satisfaction of presenting 
 to the authorities this declaration of Sir Richard’s, which 
 was a tardy vindication of his own character from the former 
 representations of both Gale and the governor. The Board 
 of Trade, to whom was committed the affairs of the colony, 
 now had before them the statement of the council reflecting 
 on Everard and the proclamation of Everard denouncing 
 Gale and Little ; while another paper was received by them, 
 ostensibly the remonstrance of the inhabitants of North 
 Carolina against the appointment of Burrington as gov- 
 ernor. In the meanwhile, the administration of the province 
 was not interfered with, and Everard, Gale and their associ- 
 ates remained in undisturbed possession of their respective 
 offices. 
 
 After the execution of the deed transferring the province, 
 and probably with information of it, but before official noti- 
 fication, at its session of 1729 the Assembly passed a very 
 
THE CURRENCY ACT 
 
 219 
 
 7V 
 
 important act relating to the currency, making Sir Richard a 
 ^presen t of £clq cl in consideration of his assenting to it. 
 Dr. Hawks, with a copy of the act before him, says that it 
 was passed in 1727, and was to go into effect in 1728; but 
 in that he was mistaken : perhaps such a bill was prepared 
 for the Assembly of 1727, and the copy he saw was a bill 
 drawn up two years before it was enacted into a law. 
 
 By that act five commissioners were appointed to prepare 
 and issue bills to the amount of £40,000. One-fourth was to 
 be delivered to the treasurer to redeem the old bills, which 
 if not redeemed were to become valueless within a fixed 
 time. A treasurer was appointed for each precinct, and the 
 residue of the bills was to be apportioned among the pre- 
 cincts according to their several needs and lent out by the 
 precinct treasurers to citizens on mortgages of unencumbered 
 real estate of twice the value of the loan. The loans were 
 to be repaid in fifteen years, one-fifteenth and the interest 
 being paid each year, the rate of interest being 6*4 per cent. 
 The loan feature of the act had been in use in South Caro- 
 lina and in other colonies and had proved a beneficent gov- 
 ernmental operation, and doubtless was of much advantage 
 to the people of North Carolina. While it was provided that 
 twenty shillings of the bills were to be held as being worth 
 fifteen pennyworth of silver as current in Virginia, yet as 
 they might alter in value, it was provided that each suc- 
 ceeding legislature should periodically revise this arrange- 
 ment and declare the value in silver of twenty shillings 
 in bills according to the then situation. Contracts specifi- 
 cally made to be paid in sterling money or in gold and 
 silver were not at all affected by this act. 
 
 This law took effect, and there being about £10,000 of the 
 former issue of bills outstanding, they were retired; and the 
 currency of the province was this new paper money when 
 the king’s officers came into authority, and so continued for 
 many years, for although the validity of the act was ques- 
 tioned, it was never repealed. 
 
 The end of the proprietary government had now come, 
 and with it passed away the distinctive features of admin- 
 istration founded on the Fundamental Constitutions. Until 
 then the office of Palatine had survived, and landgraves and 
 
 The 
 
 currency 
 
 End of 
 
 proprietary 
 
 government 
 
220 
 
 BURRINGTON AND EVERARD , 1724-31 
 
 1729 
 
 Influence 
 of the 
 transfer 
 
 Growth 
 
 slow 
 
 Education 
 
 caciques — the orders of Carolina nobility. With the end of 
 the proprietary system these all necessarily fell. But other 
 than that the transfer to the Crown worked but little change 
 in the general system of government. 
 
 For two-thirds of a century the colony had been under 
 the general management of the Proprietors ; but left largely 
 to itself, it had developed on its own lines. The grant to 
 Charles’s courtiers of an immense territory in the wilds 
 of an unsettled continent could not have been expected to 
 bring them speedy fortune. It entailed some considerable 
 outlay at first, and the development being slow, no riches 
 had been amassed at the expense of the settlers. Still, one- 
 eighth of Carolina was a noble patrimony, and had the Pro- 
 prietors been able to retain their shares for another gen- 
 eration, and had acceptable agents to represent their inter- 
 ests after population had thickened, they would have en- 
 joyed a princely inheritance. 
 
 Conditions in North Carolina 
 
 Naturally the growth of North Carolina had been par- 
 ticularly slow. The situation was much less favorable than 
 in the settlements to the north, or even in South Carolina. 
 To the first plantations, situated on Albemarle Sound, access 
 was difficult and dangerous. Roanoke Inlet was not only 
 shallow, but beset with treacherous and shifting shoals; and 
 Ocracoke, though bolder, was not well known, while the 
 storms of Hatteras were a perpetual menace to adventurous 
 merchantmen. The absence of a good port and harbor 
 tended to stifle the growth of the colony, while more favored 
 and attractive localities drew elsewhere the enterprising emi- 
 grants from Europe who sought new homes in America. 
 
 Life was easy and pleasant, but the population was so 
 sparsely seated that social advantages and the benefits that 
 attend the gathering together of many families into a com- 
 pact community were deplorably lacking. There were no 
 public schools. There were doubtless some schools and also 
 some tutors employed on the plantations, but no academies 
 for the improvement of the young had been established in 
 the colony. But notwithstanding the absence of schools, edu- 
 cation was not entirely neglected. A will of that period con- 
 
EDUCATION IN THE PROVINCE 
 
 221 
 
 tains this direction : “I will that my slaves be kept at work 
 on my lands, that my estate may be managed to the best 
 advantage, so as my sons may have as liberal an education 
 as the profits thereof will afford. And in their education I 
 pray my executors to observe this method : Let them be 
 taught to read and write, and be introduced into the prac- 
 tical part of arithmetic, not too hastily hurrying them to 
 Latin or grammar; but after they are pretty well versed 
 in these, let them be taught Latin and Greek. I propose 
 this may be done in Virginia, after which let them learn 
 French. Perhaps some Frenchman at Santee will under- 
 take this. When they are arrived to years of discretion let 
 them study the mathematics. I will 'that my daughter be 
 taught to write and read and some feminine accomplish- 
 ment which may render her agreeable, and that she be not 
 kept ignorant as to what appertains to a good housewife in 
 the management of household affairs.” 
 
 There was but little organized religion among the inhab- 
 itants, except alone the Society of Friends. Efforts to build 
 churches and engage pastors of the established Church of 
 England had not been effective. There was generally a 
 missionary or two in the vicinity of Edenton, but sometimes 
 not one was resident in the whole province. An effort had 
 been made to found a library at Bath, and Edward Moseley, 
 whose liberal views had thrown him on the side of the 
 Quakers in what was known as the “troublesome time” of 
 1708 to 1711, and who was ever among the foremost in 
 patriotic works, had presented a well-selected library to be 
 kept at Edenton, setting an excellent example of practical 
 philanthropy, which, however, neither Pollock nor Eden nor 
 Gale nor any of his wealthy antagonists was inclined to 
 follow. 
 
 Dr. Brickell, writing in 1731, says: “The want of Protes- 
 tant clergy is generally supplied by some schoolmaster, who 
 reads the liturgy and then a sermon. Next to the Quakers 
 the Presbyterians are the most numerous. They have had 
 a minister of their own for many years, chiefly along the 
 Neuse” ; while still earlier there had been some independent 
 preachers, who claimed neither holy orders nor affiliation 
 
 1729 
 
 Ashe’s will, 
 Off. Sec. 
 State 
 
 Few 
 
 ministers 
 
 Libraries, 
 
 C.R.,11,583 
 
 Denomina- 
 
 tions 
 
222 
 
 BURRINGTON AND EVERARD , 1724-31 
 
 1729 
 
 The 
 Baptists 
 N. C. Bapt. 
 Hist. Papers 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 
 48 
 
 Industries 
 
 C.R., 11,241 
 
 Population 
 C. R., Ill, 
 
 433 
 
 Social 
 
 conditions 
 
 with any organized church. Mostly around Bath clustered 
 the Roman Catholics, who had a clergyman of their own. 
 
 The first Baptist congregation was organized about the 
 time when the proprietary rule was drawing to its close. “In 
 1727 the Baptists organized a single church, now known 
 as Shiloh, in Camden County.” Two years later Everard, 
 writing to the Bishop of London, said that when he first 
 came over, in 1725, there were no dissenters except Quakers 
 in the government ; but now Paul Palmer, the Baptist 
 teacher, had gained hundreds ; and he asserted that the 
 Quakers and Baptists were then flourishing among the 
 North Carolinians. He mentions that there was at that 
 time not a single clergyman in the province, meaning of the 
 Church of England, while the Quakers and Baptists were 
 very busy making proselytes and holding meetings daily in 
 every part of the government. There was no ground for 
 any friction among the people on the score of religious 
 differences.* 
 
 The industries were very limited. Besides farm work, 
 there was some shipbuilding, for early in the settlement a 
 colony from the Bermudas had begun that as an occupation, 
 and it had been continued without interruption. Mention 
 was made of a young man being brought from Virginia to 
 be apprenticed in Albemarle to learn the shipbuilding trade, 
 and Matthew Rowan came from Ireland to build a ship or 
 two for some persons in Dublin. The building of ships was 
 one of the established industries of the colony. 
 
 In the whole province there were in 1729 about 30,000 
 inhabitants; for four years later, in 1733, allowing for about 
 1000 immigrants coming in subsequent to his own arrival, 
 Governor Burrington estimated the whites at 30,000, the 
 negroes at 6000 and the Indians at 800. 
 
 With such a small population, many very poor and ex- 
 pending their energies in clearing fields and in building 
 cabins for temporary abode, each family measurably depen- 
 dent on its own labor and resources, as hired help must 
 necessarily have been scarce, there could be but little expec- 
 tation of those social conditions that are developed in a 
 
 *In 1729 an act was passed that apparently gave to the freeholders 
 in each parish the right of electing the vestrymen. 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 
 
 223 
 
 long-settled and concentrated community. But the colony 
 was on the eve of a fuller development at the very time that 
 the Proprietors conveyed their interest to the Crown. The 
 opening of the Cape Fear River to settlement, giving a very 
 fair port to the colony, was followed by a considerable 
 immigration to that section, which soon became of greater 
 importance commercially and industrially than the more 
 northern portion of the province. 
 
 , Dr. Brickell, in his “Natural History of North Carolina,” Th 
 written about 1731, mentions incidentally that New Bern Indians 
 “has but few houses or inhabitants; Hancock Town, on the 
 northwest branch of Neuse River, about two hundred miles 
 from its mouth, formerly an Indian town, and where they 
 had a fort in time of war ; Beaufort is small and thinly in- 
 habited ; Brunswick has a great trade, a number of mer- 
 chants and rich planters.” Of the Indians he gives some 
 account. Those that lived near the settlement numbered not 
 over fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred, including women 
 and children. There were three kings — King Blount, King 
 Durant, King Highter. “They pay tribute once or twice a 
 year. The women make the corn, the men hunt. They live 
 in wigwams, except the civilized kings, who have houses. 
 
 The Indians, being of several nations, have different cus- 
 toms. Some are civilized and are very serviceable to J:he 
 planters, hunt and fowl for them, make weirs, assist in plant- 
 ing corn, etc. Many also speak English. There was formerly 
 a nation called the Pasquotanks, who kept cattle and made 
 butter, but at present none have cattle.” He mentions that 
 there were “no Muchapungoes or Coranines to be met with 
 at this day, 1731. The Saponas live on the west branch of 
 the Cape Fear ; the Toteros are neighbors to them ; the 
 Keyawees live on a branch of the Cape Fear that lies to the 
 northwest.” He also states that “the Indians have a great 
 aversion to the negroes, and kill them when they find them in 
 the woods.” He made an extended journey to the western 
 part of North Carolina on an embassy to the Indians inhabit- 
 ing there. Two or three years later Burrington mentioned 
 that the smaller tribes, who had resided near the settlements, 
 had entirely disappeared. 
 
THE FOURTH EPOCH— 1 729-65 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA AS A ROYAL PROVINCE 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Burrington's Second Administration, 1731-34 
 
 The Board of Trade. — The seal. — Everard’s enemies. — Burrington 
 appointed governor. — The province during the interim. — Burrington 
 arrives. — Opposition to the royal instructions. — The first royal 
 Assembly. — Matters of controversy. — Currency act declared void. — 
 The quit rents. — Fees of officers.— The Assembly affronted. — The 
 basis of political action. — Burrington’s instructions. — He dispenses 
 with the Assembly. — Appoints new councillors. — Schoolmasters. — 
 The general court. — The governor erects new precincts. — His 
 action disregarded. — New conflicts. — Burrington’s arbitrary conduct. 
 — He is removed.— The second Assembly. — Chief Justice Little 
 arraigned. — The governor addresses the house. — The third 
 Assembly. — Burrington attempts to vindicate himself. — He rules 
 without council or Assembly. — The difficulties of the situation. — 
 Altered patents. — His opinion of the people. — Controversial docu- 
 ments. — His progressive action.— Dividing line between the Caro- 
 linas. — Landgrave Smith’s grant. — Questions settled and unsettled. — 
 The province grows. — Religious conditions. — The last Assembly to 
 meet Burrington. — No act passed during his administration. 
 
 The Board of Trade 
 
 1729 South Carolina had been a royal province several years 
 
 when, upon the transfer of seven of the proprietary shares 
 of Carolina to the king, the administration of public affairs 
 in North Carolina was likewise assumed by the Crown. The 
 management of the province now fell to the care of the 
 commissioners for trade and plantations, a board of the 
 Privy Council restored, after a lapse of twenty years, in 
 1696, and at this time composed of the Earl of Westmore- 
 
 c. R., hi, land, P. Dominique, Thomas Pelham, Edward Ashe, Martin 
 Bladen, W. Cary, Sir Oliver Bridgman, and Sir Thomas 
 Frankland. To this board was committed the determina- 
 tion of all administrative questions relating to the colonies, 
 
EVERARD FAILS OF REAPPOINTMENT 
 
 225 
 
 the governors being appointed on its recommendation by 
 the king and council, and the chief officers, although desig- 
 nated by it, also being commissioned by the Crown. 
 
 The original seal of the county of Albemarle had been 
 continued in use as the seal of North Carolina, while the 
 Lords Proprietors had the great seal of their province of 
 Carolina at London. This seal, adopted shortly after the 
 royal grant was made, bore on one side of it a scroll, on 
 which were sketched two well-filled cornucopias supported 
 by two Indians, together with legends and heraldic orna- 
 mentation. Upon the transfer of dominion to the Crown, 
 a new seal becoming necessary, the commissioners adopted 
 one similar to that of the Lords Proprietors ; the two figures 
 and the cornucopias were preserved, but now the devices 
 represented Liberty presenting Plenty to the king; and this 
 seal, with some slight alterations, has continued to be the 
 great seal of the State of North Carolina. 
 
 Notwithstanding the sale, Sir Richard Everard might 
 have been retained as governor ; but if there was a dis- 
 position to continue him in the administration his enemies 
 succeeded in rendering it impossible. The contest between 
 them was a bitter one. Everard, perhaps in view of the 
 change, had broken with Gale and his son-in-law, William 
 Little, and throwing himself into the arms of the popular 
 party, had ascribed all of his delinquencies to the bad advice 
 of those men, his former friends, whom he now denounced 
 in unmeasured terms. They, on the other hand, hastened to 
 make representations and prefer charges against him that 
 destroyed the possibility of his retention. They alleged 
 that he was a party to frauds in the issuing of land grants 
 to the disadvantage of the king ; that he was arbitrary, tyran- 
 nical and violent in his conduct ; and, moreover, that he 
 was disaffected toward the reigning house — that he had 
 hailed the death of George I in 1727 with joy, declaring, 
 “Now farewell to the house of Hanover” ; and especially 
 that he had been concerned in the Preston rebellion, the 
 rising at Preston in favor of the Pretender in 1715. Before 
 this last allegation was made public in the colony, Edmond 
 Porter, who had returned to North Carolina in 1725 and 
 was now judge of admiralty, was industrious in befriending 
 
 1729 
 
 The seal 
 C. R., Ill, 
 79i 1 19 
 
 Everard’s 
 
 enemies 
 
 C. R., Ill, 5 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 2 -4i 3 1 
 
226 BURRINGTON’S SECOND ADMINISTRATION, 1731-34 
 
 S33 Everard ; and particularly he represented to the Secretary 
 
 of State, the Duke of Newcastle, that Everard, upon learn- 
 ing of the purchase by the Crown, had given written orders 
 that no more patents for land should be issued until new 
 18, 49 ’ instructions should be received ; but that Lovick, the secre- 
 
 tary, and Moseley, the surveyor, were disobedient and bad 
 utterly disregarded the governor’s positive orders. But 
 Porter himself had been accused of having participated in 
 the same rising, after he had fled from Albemarle on the 
 suppression of Cary’s adherents, and when this charge was 
 made against the governor Porter quickly withdrew his 
 support. Indeed, as soon as Everard’s loyalty was called 
 in question every friend fell away from him, and the charge 
 proved fatal to his hopes. 
 
 c. r., in, 
 66 
 
 C. R„ III, 
 
 85 
 
 1730 
 
 The 
 
 province 
 during the 
 interim 
 
 Burrington appointed governor 
 
 Burrington, who had continued to reside on his Cape 
 Fear plantations, now hastened to England to press his own 
 claim ; and with all the documents with him, he was able 
 to clear himself of the defamatory allegations Gale and his 
 party had formerly made against him, and he succeeded 
 in securing the prize. In the fall of 1729 it was decided 
 that he should be appointed governor, and the next Jan- 
 uary his commission was signed ; but his instructions were 
 not finally prepared until December, 1730, when he took his 
 departure for Carolina. 
 
 Being directed to recommend officers, he desired that the 
 following persons should be of his council: James Jenoure, 
 surveyor ; Robert Halton, Edmond Porter, John Baptista 
 Ashe, Eleazar Allen, Matthew Rowan, Cornelius Harnett, 
 and John Porter; also James Stallard and Richard Evans, 
 who, however, never came to Carolina. Burrington would 
 make no recommendation for chief justice and secretary, 
 leaving their selection to Colonel Bladen, who designated 
 for chief justice William Smith, a young barrister of Lon- 
 don ; and for secretary, Nathaniel Rice, his own son-in-law ; 
 while John Montgomery was later appointed attorney- 
 general. 
 
 When information was received in the colony of the pur- 
 chase by the Crown, in the absence of particular directions, 
 
BURLINGTON ARRIVES 
 
 227 
 
 there was some cessation of the exercise of governmental 
 functions. The legislature held its session as usual in 
 November, 1729, and with Everard’s assent passed several c. r „ 111, 
 acts, particularly one for the issue of £40,000 of paper cur- 143 
 rency; and presently there was unusual activity in locating 
 blank patents, which had long since been issued, and some 
 of them without the payment of any purchase money. But 
 the chief justice ceased to hold courts and the members of the 
 council did not attend the governor when he called a meet- 
 ing of the board. So it happened that for two years previous 
 to Burrington’s return no general court was held, nor any 
 Assembly for eighteen months, while some of the precinct I42 ’ In ’ 
 courts had likewise suspended their sessions, and there 
 was a general arrest of the operations of government. The 
 condition was one tending to anarchy, but the people were 
 busv and there were no riots nor serious disturbances. Still 
 it was desirable to re-establish at once the regular and 
 orderly" administration of justice and to have the Assembly 
 convene to meet the new governor and recognize the changes 
 produced by r the purchase and prescribed in his instructions. 
 
 On reaching Edenton toward the end of Februarv, Bur- 17 b 1 - , 
 rington, together with several of his new councillors, took 
 the oaths of office and immediately" issued writs for the 134, 4 * 
 election by" the freeholders of an Assembly, which was called 
 to meet on April 13th, and ordered a general court to be 
 held at Edenton on April 1st. When the court met the 
 grand jurors for the entire province made a loyal address 
 to his Majesty the king, reciting that as it was the first court 
 held since the purchase, they took the earliest opportunity 
 to express their devotion to his Majesty; and then they 
 thanked the king for the appointment of Burrington as their 
 governor. 
 
 It is to be observed that neither Moore, Moseley nor Swann Opposition 
 had any" share in the administration. It is said that Bur- royal 
 rington had quarrelled with Moore about the location of his instruct,ons 
 patent for five thousand acres of land, he proposing to locate 
 it on the rich lime lands at Rocky Point on the northwest 
 branch of the Cape Fear; but Moore had preceded him 
 and had taken up those lands himself, so that Burrington, 
 disappointed and angry, was obliged to content himself with 
 
228 BURRINGTON’S SECOND ADMINISTRATION , 1731-34 
 
 173 1 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 33 1 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 287, 296 
 
 Matters of 
 controversy 
 C. R. t III, 
 
 268, 331 
 
 lands at Stag Park, several miles higher up that river. This, 
 together with other causes of difference, led to personal 
 antagonism between Burrington and Moore’s connections; 
 but there was no opposition manifested to him immediately 
 on his arrival. Doubtless the leading inhabitants felt a keen 
 interest in the changes that would probably attend the pur- 
 chase by the king, and they waited developments with 
 anxiety. Just before the Assembly was to convene, in April, 
 Ashe arrived at Edenton from the Cape Fear to attend the 
 council, and the tenor of Burrington’s instructions became 
 known. Until then all had been agreeable at the council 
 board ; but Ashe immediately began to oppose the governor, 
 and endeavored by “false reasoning and fallacious argument’’ 
 to impose upon the judgment of the other councillors. Un- 
 successful at first, he soon gained the chief justice and 
 Edmond Porter to join him. And after the Assembly met, it 
 was not long before the members of that body were also 
 earnestly co-operating with him. 
 
 The first royal Assembly 
 
 Moseley was the speaker. The governor at the opening 
 of the session presented a written address, for the kind 
 terms of which the Assembly resolved to return him thanks ; 
 and then they began the consideration of the matters called 
 to their attention in the address. Among these recommen- 
 dations was one to appoint an agent to look after the affairs 
 of the province in England, which later was acted on by a 
 subsequent Assembly, and this channel of communication 
 with the authorities at London eventually became highly im- 
 portant ; another was to prevent the depreciation of paper 
 currency, and still another to establish a new town on the 
 Cape Fear, and to appoint commissioners for that purpose. 
 This last proposition ignored the town of Brunswick, which 
 Moore had laid out in 1725, and which had become a mart 
 of commerce and had been made two years before the seat 
 of government for New Elanover Precinct; and it was a 
 direct blow aimed by Burrington at Moore’s interests. 
 
 Three days later Speaker Moseley and some other leading 
 members of the house waited on the governor and asked 
 him if he would not ratify the currency act and some other 
 
BURRINGTON OPPOSES THE ASSEMBLY 
 
 229 
 
 laws whose validity was in doubt, as they had been assented 
 to by Governor Everard after the news had been received of 
 the purchase by the Crown. This Burrington not only re- 
 fused to do, but he declared the currency act was a nullity ; 
 and to show that he disregarded it he appointed William 
 Smith, the new chief justice, treasurer of the province in the 
 room of Edward Moseley, who was appointed treasurer in 
 that act. This the Assembly resented, and it hotly repre- 
 sented that the province already had a treasurer with whose 
 ability and integrity they were very well satisfied ; and who, 
 having been appointed in an act of Assembly by the governor, 
 council and Assembly, could not be removed but by the like 
 power. The governor, a majority of the council adhering 
 to him, replied that Moseley was indeed a person of sufficient 
 ability, “and we heartily wish that his integrity was equal 
 to it’’; and as to his appointment they said “the act of 1729, 
 by which he was appointed, is void,” that being the act 
 under which all the paper money then current in the province 
 had been issued. This attack on the speaker, involving also 
 the validity of the currency, led to a declaration by the 
 Assembly that Moseley’s “integrity was equal to his abili- 
 ties,” and that the act of 1729 was not void; and even if 
 it should be disallowed by the king, Moseley’s appointment 
 was also under previous acts, whose validity was unques- 
 tioned. 
 
 In Burrington’s instructions reference was made to the 
 large amounts of quit rents that were many years in arrears 
 in Carolina at the time of the purchase, and the king offered 
 to remit those arrearages if the Assembly, in an act on that 
 subject, would require all grants to be recorded in the office 
 of the receiver or auditor, so that a perfect rent roll could 
 be made out, and would further require the payment of 
 rents to be in proclamation money, and that fees should be 
 paid in proclamation money also — that is, in current specie 
 of foreign coinage the value of which was ascertained and 
 fixed in sterling money by proclamation of the Crown. 
 
 Referring to this offer, the Assembly informed the gov- 
 ernor that while the rents were largely in arrears in South 
 Carolina, they had been regularly paid in this province, and 
 that the king’s offer was of no interest to the inhabitants 
 
 
 C R , III, 
 
 268, 302 
 
 Currency 
 act declared 
 void 
 
 Quit rents 
 C- R., Ill, 
 
 294 
 
230 BURRINGTON’S SECOND ADMINISTRATION , 1731-34 
 
 173 * 
 
 Fees of 
 officers 
 C. R., Ill, 
 2 97 i 308 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 300 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 
 265 
 
 of North Carolina; yet it passed a bill requiring all future 
 grants to be recorded in the receiver’s office, and offered 
 to pay the quit rents in tobacco or other products or in bills 
 at some small discount; but the Assembly would not agree 
 to make payment in specie at all. The governor insisted 
 that the rents were payable in sterling money, and that he 
 and his council were authorized to regulate the fees. 
 
 These fees had, by an act of Assembly, for twenty years 
 been payable in paper currency at its face value, but the 
 governor, basing his action on his alleged instructions, had 
 already ordered that the officers should not be required 
 to receive the bills unless at the rate of four for one, a change 
 that increased the fees fourfold. To this matter the Assembly 
 now adverted, declaring the practice of exacting “four for 
 one” illegal and an extortion, and asked the governor to 
 issue a proclamation forbidding it. 
 
 Burrington was a man of very strong characteristics, 
 doing nothing by halves. He was vain, proud, arbitrary 
 and violent, intemperate in his conduct, and entirely self- 
 reliant. Indifferent to others, when aroused he worked his 
 will with passion, and, heedless of consequences, struck his 
 opponents with a strong hand. He himself had authorized 
 this practice which the house characterized as extortion ; 
 and full of indignation, he sent a message to the house : 
 “For my own part, I cannot refrain from telling you that 
 whoever the person was who formed the said paper of com- 
 plaint, I compare him to a thief that hides himself in a 
 house to rob it, and, fearing to be discovered, fires the house 
 and makes his escape in the smoke.” Thereupon the house 
 replied that “the complaint was the unanimous voice of the 
 whole house, no member dissenting, and that they regarded 
 that such treatment of any member was a great indignity and 
 contempt put upon the whole house, and a breach of 
 privilege.” 
 
 And now the breach between the governor and the 
 assembly was beyond healing; he had not only insulted the 
 speaker, but had affronted the house. Whatever chance 
 there had been to lead the Assembly to observe his instruc- 
 tions had been destroyed by his ill-temper, and his oppo- 
 nents had triumphed. Divergence of views might have been 
 
POSITION OF PROVINCE ON THE TRANSFER 23 r 
 
 expected, but mere differences might to some extent have 
 been reconciled by a conciliatory policy, while now adjust- 
 ment had become impracticable. 
 
 The position of the leading men in the province was sub- 
 stantially that the purchase by the king of the proprietary 
 shares carried with it only the rights of the several Pro- 
 prietors and worked neither alteration in the constitution 
 of the province nor in the rights and powers which the 
 people and the Assembly had immemorially enjoyed, and 
 the house was resolved to maintain its privileges. Still 
 there was an inclination, in so far as it might be proposed, 
 to put the Assembly on the footing of Parliament, and to 
 concur in changes tending to that end. But Burrington 
 could not brook opposition, and at length, on May 17th, 
 after a stormy session of five weeks, during which no bill 
 carrving out any of the governor's instructions was passed, 
 he wearied of the contest and prorogued the Assembly until 
 September. Thus ended the first session, with Burrington 
 baffled and the opponents of any constitutional changes 
 brought somewhat into harmonious action. At the first, 
 the situation being novel and the ground untried, the leaders 
 in the council as well as in the house had to feel their way 
 and carefully weld their associates into an organized oppo- 
 sition ; but before the house separated they had reached 
 safe ground, and the position of the leaders came to be well 
 understood and sustained by the people. 
 
 Burrington’s instructions 
 
 Among Burrington’s instructions was one limiting suf- 
 frage to freeholders, whereas before all freemen could vote. 
 Another was that in all acts for levying money express 
 mention should be made that the money was granted to the 
 king ; and no money was to be levied which was not liable 
 to be accounted for to the king. Others were that all officers 
 were to be appointed by the governor and council, and 
 this the governor held to embrace the treasurer ; that all 
 quit rents and fees should be paid in proclamation money ; 
 that the .governor should not assent to any bill providing 
 for the issue ~of paper, currency unless it contained a clause 
 declaring that it should not take effect until approved by 
 
 i 7 3t 
 
 The basis of 
 
 political 
 
 action 
 
 C. R., T 1 1 , 
 262, 264 
 
 Mav, 1731 
 C. R., Ill, 
 324 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 
 93, 100, 103 
 
 / 
 
2^2 BURRINGTON'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION, 1731-34 
 
 i73‘ 
 
 School- 
 
 masters 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 116 
 
 The 
 
 general 
 
 court 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 237^ 3 IO > 32 2 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 241 
 
 the king; and that no public money should be disposed of 
 except by the governor’s warrant approved by the council, 
 the right of the Assembly to direct payment without the 
 governor’s consent being denied. 
 
 There were other instructions relating to the quantity 
 of land that might be taken up and to the payment of 
 quit rents, at variance with the Great Deed of grant ; and 
 that old instrument, which had been authenticated by Gov- 
 ernor Archdale in 1695 an d then recorded, and which had 
 been delivered to Richard Sanderson for safe keeping, was 
 produced in the house and committed for preservation to 
 the care of the speaker ; and a direction was made that it 
 should be formally brought to the attention of his Majesty 
 the king, with the hope that he would not disregard it. 
 
 Among other instructions that, however, were not ger- 
 mane to the antagonisms then raised was one in regard to 
 schoolmasters : “And we do further direct that no school- 
 master be henceforth permitted to come from this kingdom 
 and to keep school in that our said province without the 
 license of our Lord Bishop of London, and that no other 
 person now there, or that shall come from other parts, shall 
 be admitted to keep school in North Carolina without your 
 license first obtained.” And another, that touched the king’s 
 private purse, was for the particular benefit and advantage 
 of the Royal African Company, “who were to bring in a 
 constant and sufficient supply of merchantable negroes at 
 moderate rates.” 
 
 To hold the general court in April the governor had ap- 
 pointed three assistants to sit with the chief justice, as had 
 been the custom in proprietary times, and when the Assembly 
 was considering a court bill requiring that a general court 
 should be held four times a year in each of the counties, 
 apparently there being a proposition to erect a third county, 
 inquiry was made by the house as to the judicial power of 
 these assistants, and the governor and council replied that 
 they had no judicial power whatever; but a few days later 
 the governor changed his opinion and held that they had 
 an equal voice in determining all questions with the chief 
 justice, a position that seemed at variance with the powers 
 and rights conferred in the commission of the chief justice, 
 
BURRINGTON DISMISSES THE ASSEMBLY -233 
 
 signed by the king himself, and which was so derogatory to 
 the authority and station of the chief justice that Smith 
 regarded it as a personal affront, and three days after the 
 Assembly was prorogued he resigned his seat in the council, 
 and a bitter feud sprang up between him and the governor. 
 A few days later, after conferences with the leading mem- 
 bers of the Assembly, in which he undertook to represent 
 their grievances to the Crown, he left for England, declaring 
 that he was going to have Burrington displaced ; and, be- 
 cause of his absence, John Palin was appointed chief justice 
 by the governor and council, the councillors present being 
 only John Lovick and Edmond Gale, whom the governor 
 appointed that day for this special purpose. 
 
 Burrington dispenses with the Assembly 
 
 In November, an election having been held under the 
 biennial act in September, a new Assembly met at Eden- 
 ton, but the governor at once prorogued it to meet in March, 
 saying that he had made representations to his Majesty 
 about the obstructive conduct of the last Assembly, and had 
 asked for further instructions, and until they were received 
 he himself would take care that the business of the province 
 was transacted. 
 
 When he realized that his old friends were alienated and 
 that he could not control even the majority of those coun- 
 cillors who were in the province, Burrington cast about to 
 strengthen himself by attaching the other faction to him. 
 In July he called a council at Edenton, which because of 
 the distance from the Cape Fear was attended only by Sur- 
 veyor-General Jenoure and Edmond Porter, some of the 
 other councillors not being in the province. The situation did 
 not, according to the terms of his instructions, warrant his 
 appointing new councillors ; but he was animated by a pur- 
 pose to strengthen himself and to weaken the opposition, 
 and with this view, he appointed John Lovick and Edmond 
 Gale councillors, persons whom he had previously denounced 
 as being utterly unworthy of any public station ; and these 
 being facile, he began to oust those councillors who were 
 disagreeable to him. 
 
 Beginning with Edmond Porter, who had formerly been 
 
 1731 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 2 39 
 
 1731 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 2 53 
 
 Appoints 
 
 new 
 
 councillors 
 
 July, 1731 
 
234 BURRINGTON'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION, 1731-34 
 1731 
 
 c. r., hi, his c ' ose friend, but who was now not only in the opposition, 
 412 but was at bitter enmity with Gale and Little, he heard 
 
 charges brought against him by Little and suspended him 
 as judge of admiralty, and turned him out of the council; 
 and he appointed. Gale to the vacant judicial position. He 
 next cited Cornelius Harnett to answer because of a debt 
 Harnett and Rev. Mr. Marsden owed to the captain 
 of a vessel which had been wrecked, and whose damaged 
 c. r„ hi, cargo they had bought ; and he succeeded in forcing Harnett 
 to resign. With Ashe, who the governor declared “was 
 altogether bent on mischief,” he had more trouble. Ashe 
 would not resign, and a notable conflict ensued between 
 them. But for a time Burrington had entrenched himself 
 securely in the council and could control the appointment 
 to vacancies. 
 
 The governor erects new precincts 
 
 Nov., 1731 
 
 May, 1732 
 C. R., Ill, 
 
 4*7i 450 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 439* 45°* 45i 
 
 His action 
 disregarded 
 
 The governor and council assuming the power to lay off 
 precincts, their authority to do so was strongly contested. 
 However, they erected the precinct of Onslow and that 
 of Edgecombe, extending from Roanoke River to the north- 
 east branch of the Cape Fear; and also, in November, 1732, 
 Bladen, although at that time it was said that there were 
 not three freeholders nor thirty families in Bladen, and not 
 many more in Onslow. That such a power resided in the 
 governor and council was denied as being a derogation of 
 the rights of the Assembly, and not only a violation of the 
 Fundamental Constitutions, which it was a-sserted had been 
 accepted by the people of North Carolina in 1669 and also 
 in 1698, but against all the laws and established precedents ; 
 for though at different times the governor and council had 
 laid off precincts, such as New Hanover, in 1729, yet the 
 legislature had afterward passed acts establishing them and 
 fixing their representation. 
 
 Not only were those who proposed to maintain the vested 
 rights of the people antagonistic to this claim of authority 
 by the governor and council, but they paid no attention to 
 his instructions and proclamations that only freeholders 
 should vote for members of the Assembly, and, in utter dis- 
 
 Jfcr 
 
 ■G 
 
BURRINGTON'S CONFLICTS CONTINUE 
 
 235 
 
 regard of his directions, all freemen were allowed to vote as 
 formerly. 
 
 Constantly circumstances brought about some new occa- 
 sion for either personal or official conflict between the gov- 
 ernor and his adversaries. The chief justice, Smith, had 
 already gone to England threatening to obtain his removal, 
 and Burrington apprehended that Colonel Bladen was aiding 
 and fostering this design with the hope of securing the 
 appointment of his own son-in-law, Rice, as his successor. 
 About twenty men from South Carolina had settled on the 
 Cape Fear, among them three brothers of a noted family 
 named Moore, all of the set known as the Goose Creek 
 faction, “always very troublesome in that government,” 
 who the governor had been told would expend a great sum 
 to get him turned out ; and between them and Moseley on 
 the Chowan messengers were constantly passing. How- 
 ever, notwithstanding all menaces, he was not terrified, “but 
 acted with such resolution and firmness that the province 
 was soon put in a quiet condition and has so continued with- 
 out any imprisonments or persecutions.” Such was Bur- 
 rington’s declaration a year after his arrival ; but his un- 
 wisdom raised him enemies in London, while his arbitrary 
 course embittered his opponents in Carolina. Eight months 
 after he assumed the government he wrote to the Board of 
 Trade that Ashe had intended to go to England to co- 
 operate with Smith for his removal, but as he had not gone 
 “Baby Smith will be quite lost, having nothing but a few lies 
 to support his cause, unless he can obtain an instructor from 
 a gentleman in Hanover Square.” The following June the 
 Board asked him to explain that reference, and he avowed 
 in a rambling letter that it was meant for Colonel Bladen. 
 The compliment paid to Colonel Bladen by naming a pre- 
 cinct in his honor was hardly sufficient to atone for such 
 an indignity. 
 
 And if in February Burrington could applaud himself 
 for not having resorted “to imprisonment and persecution,” 
 by March his mild behavior had given way to more arbitrary 
 inclinations. He had issued a direction that no one should 
 be allowed to practise law unless licensed by himself ; and 
 doubtless an attorney’s oath was exacted of all who applied 
 
 1732 
 
 New 
 
 conflicts 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 
 338 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 
 370 
 
 Barring- 
 ton's 
 arbitrary 
 conduct 
 C. R., Ill, 
 356. 375. 504 
 
23 6 BURRINGTON’S SECOND ADMINISTRATION, 1731-34 
 
 Moseley 
 
 imprisoned 
 
 Ashe 
 
 arrested 
 
 Oct., 1732 
 C. R., Ill, 
 375’ 376, 378, 
 379’ 4 2 3> 5i7 
 
 for a license. Moseley had been licensed to practise in 1714, 
 and was a lawyer of twenty years’ standing, although in 
 late years he had retired from the business. However, in 
 March, 1732, he did appear for Edmond Porter; and while 
 with his hand on the book to take the oath, the governor in 
 a great rage ordered his arrest and threw him into prison, 
 presumably for appearing as an attorney without the gov- 
 ernor’s license. At the next term of the court, in July, 
 Moseley hazarded a remark on a legal question to the chief 
 justice in court; whereupon the governor again ordered 
 the sheriff to commit him to jail. On habeas corpus before 
 the chief justice and full court an order was quickly made 
 for his release ; but the governor was indignant at the pro- 
 ceeding, claiming that the court ought not to release within 
 twenty-four hours any one whom he had ordered to prison ; 
 and he so abused Palin, the chief justice, whom he himself 
 had but recently appointed, that that officer resigned, and 
 William Little, Gale’s son-in-law, was appointed to the 
 position; and all the associate judges resigned and a new 
 set was appointed. Palin's resignation, however, did not 
 deter the governor from again pressing the court to do duty 
 in his behalf. On Old Town Creek, a few miles above 
 Brunswick, Ashe had a plantation, while Burrington had one 
 on Governor’s Creek, lower down. There was a question as 
 to the ownership of two mares which Burrington’s servants 
 had, under his orders, branded with his mark and taken into 
 possession. Ashe brought an information before the gen- 
 eral court at Edenton and claimed the mares as his property, 
 and also claimed the penalty which the law prescribed for 
 branding stock belonging to another. Burrington there- 
 upon had him arrested for his “scurrilous libel,’’ and caused 
 the warrant to be returned before himself and Judge Owen, 
 who exacted the bond Burrington suggested, being £ 1,000, 
 which Ashe deemed excessive and would not give. On 
 habeas corpus before the chief justice, Little refused to 
 examine into the cause of the commitment, but the bond was 
 reduced one-half, even that being a heavy bond ; and it was 
 alleged that these proceedings were contrived to prevent 
 Ashe’s departure for England, where, at the request of 
 many, he was going to secure a redress of grievances. 
 
BURRINGTON’S SECOND ASSEMBLY 
 
 237 
 
 In the meantime representations had been made to the 
 Board of Trade of Burrington’s oppressive and lawless con- 
 duct, and before he had been in office two years his removal 
 was determined on, and in March, 1733, Gabriel Johnston 
 was commissioned by the king as his successor. 
 
 The second Assembly 
 
 Not realizing that the Board of Trade might be per- 
 suaded to disregard his representations, and conscious of 
 his purpose to rule well if not wisely, Burrington did not 
 deviate from the course he had marked out for himself with 
 reference to those who did not sustain his administration. 
 Brave, bold and self-reliant, he was always candid. There 
 was in his disposition no element of craft or dissimulation. 
 He thought he knew what would best promote the develop- 
 ment of the province, and he sought to carry into effect 
 his views regardless of opposition. He thought he knew 
 what his instructions required of him, and he resolutely 
 undertook to obey their tenor. Finding the Assembly at 
 points with him about the payment of quit rents and fees, 
 he applied for additional instructions, and avowed his pur- 
 pose to have no Assembly until those instructions were re- 
 ceived. Eventually, toward the end of March, 1733, the 
 long delayed answer came to his request, and he at once 
 ordered an election to be held in May for assemblymen to 
 meet in July. When the body convened he explained that 
 his new instructions were similar to the first he had re- 
 ceived. Moseley was again the speaker, and in his reply 
 to the governor’s speech he dwelt on the impracticability of 
 paying the quit rents in specie, and denied that they were 
 payable in sterling money, as now claimed. Originally he 
 asserted they were payable in produce, and when paper 
 money was issued a law was passed that this paper currency 
 should be good for all payments except alone for the pur- 
 chase of land, for as to that the Lords Proprietors had 
 always exacted specie. The lands in Albemarle were never 
 sold, while some in Bath County were granted on quit rents 
 alone and others were sold for specie, reserving a much 
 lower quit rent in addition to the purchase price ; and the 
 house insisted that the Assembly of 1731 had offered to his 
 
 1733 
 
 c. R„ III, 
 
 534 
 
 July, 1733 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 561 
 
 Quit rents 
 
238 BURRINGTON'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION , 1731-34 
 
 1733 
 
 Chief 
 
 Justice 
 
 Little 
 
 arraigned 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 587 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 562 
 
 The 
 
 governor 
 addresses 
 the house 
 C. R., Ill, 
 598, 603, 604 
 
 Majesty all they could do in regard to the payment of rents. 
 As for the disuse of the Assembly, it said there were other 
 matters requiring the attention of the governor than the quit 
 rents ; among them not merely exorbitant fees taken by the 
 officers, but the perversion of justice by evil and wicked 
 officers, especially by Chief Justice Little and his associates 
 on the bench. 
 
 This grave charge against the chief justice at once brought 
 a reply. Little in a long and caustic letter petitioned the 
 governor and council that since they could not try him as a 
 court, they would examine into any charges made against 
 him and ascertain whether or not he were unfit to be a 
 councillor ; for he admitted that if he were guilty of per- 
 verting justice he ought to be removed from the council 
 board. This paper being communicated to the house, it was 
 referred to a committee, and the house temporarily pro- 
 ceeded with its other business. There were several new 
 points on which quarrels now arose with the governor. The 
 house would not recognize the new precincts of Bladen, 
 Onslow, and Edgecombe, erected by the governor and coun- 
 cil, and would not admit the members elected in them. It 
 had some of the officers appointed by the governor arrested 
 and brought to its bar for misconduct ; and finally it cited 
 several officers, among them the chief justice, before it to 
 answer why they had exacted in payment of their fees four 
 times the amount in currency which the law had fixed. 
 
 At length, on the fourteenth day of the session, the com- 
 mittee on Little’s petition reported that it contained scanda- 
 lous expressions reflecting on the dignity of the house, and 
 he was ordered into custody to answer for affronting the 
 house. Matters had now reached a serious pass, and the 
 governor intervened to protect his officer. He sent an 
 address to the house sustaining Little, assuming that the 
 particular charge against him was taking fees at four for 
 one, which the governor himself had directed and which 
 had been done by Chief Justice Smith prior to Little, and 
 who, having just returned from England, had been grate- 
 fully thanked by the Assembly for his services abroad. 
 
 This assumption of the governor that the only charge 
 against Little was the taking of improper fees led to a fierce 
 
BURRINGTON’S THIRD ASSEMBLY 
 
 239 
 
 arraignment of the judicial action of the chief justice while i 73 
 
 on the bench, and brought forward the governor’s own 
 conduct in regard to the imprisonment of Ashe and with 
 reference to Porter. The governor in his turn gave a loose cY'r , Yfi 
 rein to his anger and vehementlv defended himself and 608 > 611 
 assailed the house ; and then, not a single law having been 
 passed, he dissolved the Assembly. 
 
 The third Assembly dissolved 
 
 The regular election for an Assembly was held in Sep- Nov., 1733 
 tember, and in November the house met at Edenton ; but 
 there was no quorum of councillors to make another house, 
 so after waiting several days, the governor had the mem- 
 bers to attend him and dissolved the Assembly. But before 
 parting with them, however, he read a long paper in vindi- 
 cation of his conduct from the aspersions of his enemies. 
 
 In June he had applied for leave to return to England, hav- 
 ing doubtless heard that a successor had been appointed to 
 his office, and feeling that there was no longer any occasion c. r.,iii, 
 to fight the battles of a government that did not sustain him. 613-622 
 The address he now made was therefore couched in very change of 
 different terms from any of his former productions. It was tone 
 a manly, sensible address, and his moderation must have 
 disarmed enmity and won him friendly sympathy. It put 
 many of the complaints against him in a different light from 
 what the circumstances were made to bear when pressed by 
 his adversaries ; and it rather sustained his opinion that 
 some at least among those whose bitter hostility and antag- 
 onism he had aroused “were subtle and crafty to admiration.” 
 
 For nearly a year ensuing Burrington conduqted public gct^, 1734 
 affairs with neither an Assembly nor a council. He himself 627,628 
 had a long and dangerous illness, some of the council died 
 and others left the province. Rice, who at one time when 
 Burrington was absent from the province, being the senior 
 and ranking member of the council, was sworn in as presi- 
 dent of the council, was suspended by the governor on 
 his return, because of “villainies,” as was also Montgomery, 
 another “villain.” Halton neglected to attend for two years, 
 and Ashe, who died in the fall of 1734, had not attended for 
 more than twelve months. Everard also was dead, and so 
 
240 B U RRING T ON'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION , 1731-34 
 
 1734 
 
 The plot 
 against his 
 life 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 165 
 
 Altered 
 
 patents 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 
 502 
 
 was Chief Justice Little. To succeed Little, Daniel Hanmer 
 was appointed, notwithstanding Smith had returned from 
 England and was ready to resume the functions of his office. 
 At length a collision took place, the final result of which 
 produced unexpected consequences. The details of it are 
 obscure. Burrington claimed that Smith, Rice, Montgomery 
 and some of their confederates attempted to assassinate him 
 by shooting at him with pistols, and that he would have been 
 murdered if some courageous men had not come to his 
 assistance and rescued him. Bills of indictment were at once 
 found against these councillors in Hanmer’s court, and they 
 fled by night to Virginia, where they continued until Gov- 
 ernor Johnston landed in North Carolina. These proceed- 
 ings threw the province into new confusion and disorder 
 during the last months of Burrington’s administration. 
 
 It was Burrington’s misfortune to have been the first gov- 
 ernor appointed to establish in the province those changes 
 which the Board of Trade deemed necessary upon the pur- 
 chase by the Crown. In an attempt to carry out their direc- 
 tions any one would have met with embarrassment and been 
 confronted with all the opposition that the popular leaders 
 could lawfully make; but more than that, Burrington had 
 troubles that another person of a different temperament 
 might have avoided. He was embroiled personally with the 
 Moores and their kindred, with Moseley, Porter and Swann, 
 because of conflicting interests and disputes about land ; and 
 many of his personal difficulties grew out of his antagonism 
 with those men. 
 
 Without doubt there had been some abuses in regard to 
 the issuing of patents and the location of blank warrants. 
 For instance, Edmond Porter alleged that Burrington him- 
 self in 1725 obtained a warrant issued in 1711 for six hun- 
 dred and forty acres of land in Albemarle, charged with a 
 quit rent of two shillings sixpence, and altered it to a Bath 
 County purchase warrant for five thousand acres at six- 
 pence quit rent, and located it at Burgaw. The grant, which 
 is recorded at Beaufort, seems at least in part to sustain 
 Porter’s assertion, for it is based on a warrant issued in 
 1 7 1 1 , when grants for five thousand acres were not allowed, 
 and when no entries were permitted on the Cape Fear at all. 
 
BURRINGTON’S OPINION OF THE PEOPLE 241 
 
 Other such warrants, bearing internal evidence of having 1734 
 
 been issued in 1711, located on the Cape Fear, might well 
 lead to an erroneous impression that there had been an 
 attempted settlement on that river about that time. The 
 use of blank patents had been general in all sections of 
 Bath County, and any attempt to destroy the validity of 
 titles based on them would necessarily lead to violent 
 antagonism ; and later Governor Burrington himself suc- 
 cessfully argued before the Board of Trade that these grants 
 were not to be disturbed. 
 
 As for the various affairs in which Burrington was made c. r , in, 
 
 0 . 617 
 
 to appear at a disadvantage, there were probably two sides 
 to most of them — as in his conflict with Ashe about brand- 
 ing the mares, which presents quite a different appearance 
 when Burrington gives his version of the circumstances. 
 
 His own opinion of the people, expressed in a letter to ^‘ s t h° pinion 
 the Board of Trade a year after his arrival, was that “the £ eo £ le in 
 inhabitants of North Carolina are not industrious, but subtle 338 
 and crafty to admiration ; always behaved insolently to their 
 governors ; some they have imprisoned, drove others out of 
 the country; at other times, set up two or three supported 
 by men under arms. All the governors that were ever in 
 this province lived in fear of the people (except myself) and 
 dreaded their assemblies. The people are neither to be 
 cajoled, nor outwitted. Whenever a governor attempts any- 
 thing by these means he will lose his labor and show his 
 ignorance. They never gave the governor any present ex- 
 cept Sir Richard Everard. With him they agreed for £500 
 in bills to pass the pretended laws in 1729, in the name of 
 the Proprietors, when he was shown the act of Parliament 
 of the king’s purchase. It must be allowed, were these acts 
 valid, the assemblymen made a good bargain for the people 
 they represented.” 
 
 These ideas of the characteristics of the people furnish 
 some key to Burrington’s conduct. The crafty people seem 
 to have withstood him, but he had the resolution not to quail 
 before them. There was, indeed, no duplicity in his actions, 
 either in his private quarrels or his public controversies ; 
 and had it not been for his infirmity of temper, notwith- 
 standing the zeal of the popular leaders to prevent unconsti- 
 
242 BURRINGTON’S SECOND ADMINISTRATION , 1731-34 
 
 1734 
 
 Controver- 
 sial docu- 
 ments 
 C. R., III, 
 3 2 5. 356, 375, 
 450-457 
 
 Burring- 
 
 ton’s 
 
 progressive 
 
 action 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 372, 435 
 
 tutional alterations in their government, his relations with 
 them might have been on a more pleasant footing. Still, 
 contests must have necessarily arisen, for he candidly 
 avowed that the people should be curbed, and he urged a 
 repeal of the biennial act, saying that “that act must be 
 repealed before the people of this country can be brought 
 into a good subjection”; and also the repeal of the act 
 appointing treasurers to the precincts, who he claimed had 
 the local influence to control the assemblymen ; and the neces- 
 sity of taking the power of the purse away from the 
 Assembly. 
 
 His position on these subjects alone was quite sufficient 
 to array the people strongly against him. As these and 
 other such questions involved the constitution of the prov- 
 ince, their discussion led to historical research of much 
 interest, and the papers written on those subjects not only 
 throw much light on the obscure history of the province, 
 but are highly creditable to the authors. Particularly note- 
 worthy is that of Rice and Ashe on the constitution of the 
 province, while those that relate to Moseley and Porter, 
 some written by Burrington himself, are often strong and 
 full of interest. 
 
 If this first administration of a royal governor was a 
 period of violent antagonism, it was also one of patriotic 
 fervor, although the personal controversies were so inter- 
 mixed with political action that it is difficult to separate 
 them. The basis of it all was a resolute purpose on the 
 part of the leading inhabitants to preserve the constitutional 
 rights of the province ; and the contest then begun continued 
 in one shape or another until the connection with the Crown 
 was brought to a close by the Revolution of 1776. 
 
 Still, in many respects Burrington’s career gives indis- 
 putable proof that he sought to promote the progress of 
 the province. He made journeys to every part of the inhab- 
 ited country, examined the roads, urged the construction of 
 bridges, sought to organize the militia on a good footing and 
 to raise the standard of the precinct courts ; and he urged 
 an extension of the general courts. He explored the har- 
 bors and caused charts to be made of Ocracoke, Beaufort, 
 and Cape Fear inlets, the only ones of use to the commerce 
 
THE SOUTH CAROLINA LINE 
 
 243 
 
 of the province, and he otherwise endeavored to render 
 his administration serviceable to the inhabitants ; but per- 
 haps the best service he rendered was in deferring the 
 running of the line as proposed between North and South 
 Carolina, which, if once established, would have given to 
 South Carolina a large part of our interior territory, which 
 the South Carolinians coveted, for the directions at that time 
 were to run the dividing line thirty miles distant from the 
 Cape Fear River up to the head of that stream and then a 
 due west course. 
 
 The South Carolina authorities claimed that the Cape 
 Fear River itself was the dividing line, and in support of 
 that view they asserted that grants issued by that gov- 
 ernment had been located on that river. It does appear 
 from a deed made by Schinking Moore to Richard Eagles, 
 March 14, 1763, recorded in the register’s office of New 
 Hanover County, that a grant of 48,000 acres of land 
 was issued May 13, 1691, to Landgrave Thomas Smith, 
 and that said Smith and wife Mary conveyed to William 
 Watters 700 acres thereof located on the northeast branch 
 of the Cape Fear River, just above the dividing of said 
 rivers; and on April 21, 1736, Maurice Moore conveyed 
 to Colonel Thomas Merrick a tract of land lying at a place 
 called the Haulover, on the east side of the Cape Fear River, 
 “beginning at Landgrave Smith’s corner tree,” etc. 
 
 From these conveyances it would seem that Landgrave 
 Smith’s tract was located on the Cape Fear River, and its 
 bounds were recognized after the permanent settlement. 
 Roger Moore, who came to the Cape Fear about 1725, 
 married a daughter of the Landgrave, and perhaps the fact 
 that that particular grant was located on the Cape Fear 
 may have in some degree influenced the removal of the 
 Moores, resulting in the permanent settlement of the 
 Cape Fear, which by some of the older residents was spoken 
 of as the third attempt to settle that river. 
 
 Many of the questions raised by Burrington in the course 
 of his administration were not settled at that time. At 
 London they were referred to the law officers of the Crown, 
 good lawyers and fair men, who made a thorough examina- 
 tion before delivering an opinion ; and often there was long 
 
 1734 
 
 C. R.. Ill, 
 244. 372, 435 
 
 Landgrave 
 
 Smith’s 
 
 grant 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 125, 154 
 
 Book E, 
 New Han. 
 Co. Records, 
 35, 3L3 
 
a b3c(J 
 
 244 BURRINGTON’S SECOND ADMINISTRATION, 1731-34 
 
 >734 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 
 292. 354 
 
 C. R„ III, 
 
 621 
 
 i/ 
 
 The 
 
 ovince 
 
 ows 
 
 . R., Ill, 
 
 344, 432, 433 
 
 delay before the facts could be definitely ascertained war- 
 ranting a decision. In regard to the validity of the Great 
 Deed, the law office was apparently misled by Mr. Shelton, 
 the secretary of the Lords Proprietors, who declared that it 
 had never been recognized at all by the Lords Proprietors, 
 and it therefore held that the instrument was intended to 
 have only a temporary effect. When this opinion was com- 
 municated to Burrington he replied with considerable 
 vigor, urging the same view which the Assembly enter- 
 tained — that it was a valid grant and contract and could not 
 lawfully be ignored. 
 
 In regard to the validity of the currency act passed in 
 1729, it was held that all acts passed before Governor 
 Everard had notice of the sale to the king were valid ; any 
 passed after such notice were null. But that act being in 
 operation, it was never disallowed or annulled, and the paper 
 currency authorized by it continued to be the chief money 
 used in the province. Other questions remained undeter- 
 mined ; but it appearing that the governor had sat with the 
 councillors when the legislature was in session and had taken 
 part in the discussion and in the consideration of bills, he 
 was rebuked and reminded that as he represented the king, 
 his sole function was to allow or disallow bills that passed 
 the two houses, and that he must not meddle with the 
 Assembly. Such was the custom in England, and the purpose 
 was to conform the province to the customs at home. One 
 of his instructions was, “You shall take care that the mem- 
 bers of the Assembly be elected only by freeholders, as being 
 more agreeable to the custom of the kingdom, to which you 
 are as near as may be to conform yourself in all particulars.” 
 That idea eventually commended itself to the people, and 
 subsequently they sought to model their legislature after 
 Parliament. 
 
 In the meantime the province received accessions in popu- 
 lation and made progress in importance. While the northern 
 section had grown more populous, requiring the erection of 
 Edgecombe Precinct, there being twenty families on the Tar 
 River alone, the opening up of the Cape Fear proved of still 
 greater consequence. Settlers were locating on both 
 branches of the river ; the wealthy South Carolina planters, 
 
THE PROVINCE GROWS 
 
 245 
 
 who had removed to the lower portions of the river, had 
 begun the cultivation of rice, while saw-mills were erected 
 and the forests yielded for export tar, pitch, turpentine, staves 
 and plank. Bladen was being settled as well as Onslow. 
 
 John Maultsby had taken out, about 1731, a warrant for 
 six hundred and forty acres of land opposite the confluence 
 of the two branches of the- Cape Fear; and John Watson 
 located a similar warrant adjoining and below that tract; 
 and in 1732 a few enterprising men had for trade settled 
 on Maultsby’s entry and called the place New Liverpool, and 
 the next spring Michael Higgins, Joshua Granger, James 
 Wimble and John Watson joined in laying off a town, called 
 New Town or Newton, on the Watson entry, which soon 
 became a rival of Brunswick. Roads had been opened from 
 the Cape Fear to South Carolina, and two roads led to the 
 northward, one by the coast to New Bern and one by Rocky 
 Point to Edenton ; while there was easy communication by 
 water with Charleston, with the great sounds and with Nor- 
 folk. During one year forty-two vessels had sailed from 
 Brunswick well laden with valuable cargoes. The products „ndu° 0 u n s s 
 had so increased that in addition to those of the forests, and 
 of grain and tobacco, much live stock was sold abroad, many 
 cattle and at least fifty thousand fat hogs being yearly driven 
 to Virginia. Although there had been no great change in 
 the way of church privileges, yet there had been some im- 
 portant ones. John La Pierre, a Frenchman, who had come 
 to South Carolina in 1708, and had officiated on the Santee, 
 had about the year 1727 come to the Cape Fear, where he 
 remained several years. In 1732 Dr. Richard Marsden, who 
 had cast his fortune with the Cape Fear people some four 
 years earlier, had a charge at New River, which Burrington 
 was seeking to promote and develop, and where about one 
 hundred families had settled. For a time Rev. Bevin Gran- 
 ville officiated at Edenton and the surrounding country, 
 where he baptized over one thousand children. In Albemarle 
 there was one Presbyterian minister with a congregation 
 and there were four meeting houses of the Friends. In 1735 
 John Boyd was employed in the Northwest parish, where 
 he claims to have likewise baptized one thousand infants. 
 
 In that section he reported “no sects,” but lower down the c 8 R " 111 
 
246 BURRINGTON’S SECOND ADMINISTRATION, 1731-34 
 
 Nov., 1734 
 
 C. R , III, 
 
 634 
 
 C. R., Ill, 
 641 
 
 No act 
 passed 
 during his 
 administra- 
 tion 
 
 country there were a great many Quakers and Baptists; 
 for Paul Palmer's work was indeed progressing. 
 
 Burrington had applied for permission to return to Eng- 
 land, and in expectation of receiving it in October, he filled 
 up the council board by the appointment of a number of 
 new members and called an Assembly to meet him at Eden- 
 ton on November 6th. When the Assembly met Moseley 
 was again chosen speaker ; but former antagonisms seem to 
 have largely subsided. 
 
 The last Assembly to meet Burrington 
 
 The governor addressed the Assembly in a conciliatory 
 speech complimenting the members, and “not doubting that 
 they would promote the passing of such acts as are recom- 
 mended or required in the king’s instructions.” Moseley, 
 as speaker, returned hearty thanks for his kind speech, and 
 added : “That we are very glad you have conceived so good 
 an opinion of our understanding and capacity to serve this 
 province.” In his reply the governor accepted “your answer 
 to my speech very kindly,” and assured them that the good 
 opinion he entertained of the wisdom and good intentions 
 of the members was grounded on the real merit he knew they 
 were possessed of ; and he wanted them to so act that “this 
 country may have reason to thank us at the end of this 
 session, and their posterity not only to remember us with 
 gratitude, but to bless our memories.” As the temper of 
 the governor seemed to be not so arbitrary, the house itself 
 became more complacent. On the second day of the session 
 it ordered a bill to be prepared declaring that only free- 
 holders should vote, agreeably to the king’s directions ; and 
 they ordered other bills to be brought in establishing the 
 three new precincts, Edgecombe, Onslow, and Bladen ; and 
 were proceeding on a line that must have been very accept- 
 able to Governor Burrington when, on November 13th, it was 
 certified by proclamation that Governor Johnston had pub- 
 lished his commission on the Cape Fear in open council. 
 Burrington’s administration immediately closed. The house 
 proceeded no further in business, but stood dissolved, there 
 having been no act of Assembly passed during the whole 
 period that Burrington was governor. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Johnston’s Administration, 1734-52 
 
 Governor Johnston arrives. — Burrington’s enemies in the ascend- 
 ant. — Johnston cordially received.— The Assembly and the governor. 
 
 — Disagreements. — Wilmington incorporated. — Immigrants. — McCul- 
 loh’s grants. — Swiss, Irish and Scotch.— The South Carolina 
 dividing line. — Clashing between the governor and the people. — The 
 new Assembly. — The governor appeals for instructions. — Precincts 
 converted into counties. — The compromise. — Progress in the colony. 
 
 — The chief justice impeached. — He dies. — Edward Moseley chief 
 justice. — The Spanish War. — Expedition to Cartagena. — The decision 
 of the Board of Trade.— The quit rents. — Body of laws. — Blank 
 patents. — The currency.- — Governor’s salary unpaid. — Matters in dis- 
 pute settled. — Granville, Johnston, and Duplin counties. — The Scotch 
 migration. — Anson County. — Granville’s territory. — The unarmed re- 
 bellion. — The two repudiated acts. — The Assembly of 1747. — Northern 
 counties not represented. — They refuse obedience. — Spanish invasion. 
 
 — Brunswick attacked. — New currency act. — Efforts to displace 
 Johnston. — Local differences. — First printing press. — Yellow Jacket. — 
 
 The Palatines. — Wreck of Spanish fleet. — The contest between the 
 new and the old counties. — The cessation of courts in Albemarle. — 
 
 The end of Johnston’s administration. — Two treasurers. — Growth at 
 the west. — The Germans and Scotch-Irish. — Orange County. — Ex- 
 plorations by Spangenberg. 
 
 Governor Johnston arrives 
 
 On the arrival of Governor Gabriel Johnston at Cape Nov., i 734 
 Fear he was met with great cordiality bv the gentlemen of 
 the vicinity, and he lost no time in assuming the reins of 
 government. There had been no change in the list of coun- 
 cillors originally appointed by Governor Burrington, except 
 that on Burrington’s recommendation Roger Moore and 
 Cullen Pollock had been selected to fill vacancies, and now 
 Edwa rcLMoselev and Matthew Rowan were added to the 
 board. The suspensions and appointments made by Bur- 
 rington a few months earlier were unknown in London, and 
 were a surprise to Johnston when informed of them. On 
 November 2, 1734, Johnston opened his commission at 
 Brunswick in the presence of the gentlemen of the town and 
 
2 4 8 
 
 JOHNSTON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 1754 
 
 C. R., IV, I 
 
 Burring- 
 
 ton’s 
 
 enemies in 
 the 
 
 ascendant 
 C. R., IV, 
 77, 81 
 
 Burrington 
 goes to 
 England 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 45 
 
 Johnston 
 
 cordially 
 
 received 
 
 Jan., 1735 
 
 of councillors Robert Halton, Eleazar Allen and Roger 
 Moore, who had not attended Burrington’s board then in 
 session with the Assembly at Edenton. Being informed that 
 Burrington had supplanted many officers illegally, the gov- 1 
 ernor on the day he qualified issued a proclamation com- 
 manding all officers, civil or military, who had been removed 
 or suspended to resume their offices and enter again on the 
 discharge of their duties; and Smith, the chief justice; Rice, 
 the secretary ; Halton and Edmond Porter at once took their 
 places at the council board. 
 
 Blanmer, lately appointed chief justice, and Burrington’s 
 other appointees were now roundly and freely characterized 
 as base tools to work Burrington’s arbitrary will on deserv- 
 ing gentlemen who had the manhood to disagree with him. 
 The tables were indeed completely turned ; and the late gov- 
 ernor’s enemies being in control of the Assembly as well as 
 of the council, those who had fled the province, ostensibly 
 in fear of their lives, returned in triumph. 
 
 Adverting to the disorders that prevailed, Governor 
 Johnston ordered a court of oyer and terminer to be held 
 at Edenton on December 2d, and issued writs for the election 
 of an Assembly, which was to meet on January 15th. His 
 prompt and strenuous action, at once ignoring all courtesy 
 that might have been due to his predecessor and reversing 
 the whole course of the administration, was a bitter humilia- 
 tion to Burrington, who now left the province with his 
 family and returned to England, where he, however, con- 
 tinued to interest himself in North Carolina affairs. 
 
 About the middle of January the governor in great state 
 made his journey through the counties from Brunswick to 
 Edenton, where he met the Assembly, being received with 
 every manifestation of cordial approbation ; and, indeed, the 
 Assembly, generally so parsimonious, made an appropriation 
 of £1,300 to pay the expenses of his equipage on that 1 
 occasion. 
 
 M oseley being in the upper house, as the council was now 
 called when acting as a part of a law-making power, in con- 
 formity with the disposition to assimilate the Assembly to 
 Parliament, William Downing was chosen speaker of the 
 lower house ; and there was a continuation of the same influ- 
 
CURRENCY ISSUED 
 
 249 
 
 ences that formerly controlled the action of that body, and 
 the zeal of the representatives to maintain the rights of the 
 people was unabated. 
 
 On one point at least the governor, the council and the 
 house were agreed : they found a common ground in their 
 denunciation of Burrington and his appointees. Smit h, the 
 oldest councillor, presided over the upper house ; and he and 
 Porter and Rice, along with Mos eley and Moore, were fierce 
 irPtEeir arraignment of the deposed governor and of his 
 profligate tools and accomplices, alleging that they had per- 
 secuted and expelled from the province his Majesty’s officers, 
 whose lives were in danger, and were only preserved by 
 timely and hasty flight ; and the Assembly and Governor 
 Johnston heartily joined in the general condemnation. 
 
 In its first flush of patriotic aydor the Assembly made an 
 allowance to the king of £1,300 for the service of the public 
 m the province, and ordered bills to the amount of £10,0 00 
 to be struck off ; and passed an act to call in the outstanding 
 paper money, which had been largely counterfeited, and to 
 issue £40^.000 of new bills in exchange; also acts limiting 
 suffrage to freeholders, according’ to the instructions of the 
 governor to conform the Assembly to Parliament ; and for 
 establishing the precincts of Onslow and Blad en, allowing 
 them representatives in the house. But notwithstanding 
 this disposition to be on friendly terms with the governor, 
 the old points of controversy again arose to disturb the har- 
 mony ; and especially was the house settled in its purposes 
 that the quit rents should be paid either in current paper 
 money or in produce on the farms, while the governor, who 
 was sustained by a majority of the council, held that they 
 were payable in specie. 
 
 173s 
 
 C.R., IV, 81 
 
 The 
 
 Assembly 
 and the 
 governor 
 
 C R., IV, 
 
 ISO, lS4i 155 
 
 S.R., XXIII, . 
 117 
 
 Onslow and 
 Bladen 
 
 Disagreement over the quit rents 
 
 When Chief Justice Smith was in England he learned that c. r., iv, 
 the Lords Proprietors had ordered all enactments of the Z01 ’ 290 
 Assembly to be certified to them, and such as were not con- 
 firmed by them were to expire at the end of two years; and 
 as the practice of certifying the acts to the Proprietors for 
 confirmation had fallen into desuetude, he ascertained that 
 of the whole body of laws in the province only six had been 
 
250 JOHNSTON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 C. R , 
 _ai — - 
 
 iv, 
 
 confirmed, and therefore he considered that all others had 
 ceased to have legal effect. So impressed was he with this 
 view that he submitted the matter to the law officers of the 
 Crown with a request for instruction ; but no decision was 
 reached and no instruction was given at that time on the 
 points he raised. 
 
 Governor Johnston, however, had no hesitation in agree- 
 ing with Smith, and made this view the basis of his position 
 in discussing the quit-rent subject with the Assembly; and 
 a majority of the council also sustained the chief justice 
 and Colo nel Halton, to whom the matter of the rents had 
 been referred as a committee, in holding in effect that pay- 
 ments were to be made in silver, and that his Majesty could 
 collect his rents without asking the consent of the Assembly ; 
 and, indeed, the conduct of the chief justice was such that\ 
 in a controversy between him and Moseley, in the presence 
 of the speaker and other members of the house, Moseley, 
 giving way to his indignation, struck him, and was bound 
 over to the general court to answer for the assault. 
 
 The governor, who relied on the rents to pay his salary, 
 being sustained by the chief justice and a majority of the 
 council, also took the advanced position that two years after 
 the Great Deed was signed the Lords Proprietors, by their 
 
 Great Deed \ . , , . , ? , . L,. ’ . 
 
 action, revoked it, and it was therefore a nullity ; and insist- 
 ing that the laws which had formerly been confirmed were 
 no longer operative, he declared that he would proceed tew 
 collect the rents in silver, and that those who were not con- 
 tent to make the payments he demanded could settle up 
 arrears and move out of the province, abandoning their 
 homes and the lands they had improved. This suggestion 
 but added fuel to the flames ; and Moseley, to whose custody 
 the Great Deed had been committed by the previous Assembly, 
 now formally presented it to Speaker Downing for safe 
 keeping. Being unable to move the house from its position, 
 Johnston on March 1st made a great show of indignation and 
 prorogued the Assembly. 
 
 Undeterred by opposition, the governor asserted his pur- 
 pose to proceed ; and notwithstanding the general opinion 
 that there must be an act of Assembly providing for the col- 
 lection of the rents, he assumed that his personal views 
 
 c. R., IV, 
 
 33 
 
 Quit rents 
 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 20, 1 12 
 
JOHNSTON QUARRELS OVER QUIT RENTS 251 
 
 should necessarily control, and he determined to make it 
 plain that he was master of the situation, and issued a proc- 
 lamation requiring all rents to be at once paid to the receiver- 
 general. I However, he so far yielded to the circumstances 67 " ’ 
 
 of the inhabitants as to assent that the rents might be paid 
 in paper currency instead of silver, but at the rate of seven 
 for one^fand if not voluntarily paid, the receiver was to_ 
 distrain ; "and in that case eight for one was to be exacted ; 
 and he proceeded to erect a court of exchequer, with Smith 
 as chief baron, the particular business of the court) being to 
 enforce the collection of the rents. There was, however, no^dp. R., iv, 
 receiver in the province, the king’s receiver-general, John 
 Hamerton, being a resident of South Carolina ; so to facili- 
 tate the collections Eleazar Allen was appointed receiver for 
 North Carolina, a proceeding which so angered Hamerton 
 that he issued a proclamation warning the people not to make 
 any payment to Allen. But this only served to rouse the 
 governor’s spirit, and he ordered that assistant receivers 
 should be appointed to attend at every precinct court house 
 and make distress if need be. Some rumors of discontent 
 were heard because of this new turn of affairs, and the 
 governor was astute in selecting and appointing militia 
 officers who would sustain his administration. He did not 
 propose to brook opposition to his methods, and was ready to 
 enforce his will at every hazard. 
 
 Nearly all of the councillors then resided on the Cape Fear, 
 and the growing importance of that region, together with 
 its fine navigable river, led the governor at first to make that 
 his residence instead of Edenton. 
 
 He was, however, at points with the Moores because of 
 their landholdings, some of their lands having been obtained 
 under old blank patents, which they had bought, and which 
 the governor considered as in fraud of the rights of the 
 king; and he viewed the town of Newton with more favor 
 than he did Brunswick, and perhaps determined to locate 
 there. 
 
 c. R., IV, 8 
 
 Wilmington incorporated 
 
 Immediately on his return from Edenton, in 1735, doubt- c a R Ch ’iv 735 
 less at his instance, an application was made to the council 43 
 
2 5 2 
 
 JOHNSTON'S ADMINISTRATION , 1734-52 
 
 1735 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 44 . 45 
 
 Wilmington 
 
 incorporated 
 
 to incorporate that rival of the older settlement in which 
 the Moores were interested, but the councillors apprehended 
 that they had not the power. 
 
 However, he proceeded to give signal proofs of his favor 
 to Newton. He ordered that on May 13th a land office 
 should be opened there ; also on the same day a court of 
 oyer and terminer was appointed to be held there ; also the 
 court of exchequer, of which William Forbes and James 
 Innes were designated as assistant barons ; and likewise the 
 council. Truly, that May 13, 1735, was a gala day for the 
 little village, which had already made progress in its struggle 
 for trade and importance against the established seat of local 
 government lower down. The governor, realizing its ad- 
 vantageous situation, threw all of his influence to secure its 
 ascendancy. He bought land there, as did also Colonel 
 Halton, Captain Innes, Captain Rowan and Woodward, the 
 surveyor-general, and James Murray, who came to be a close 
 friend to the governor ; and the next year an act was intro- 
 duced to incorporate the town under the name of Wilming- 
 ton, in honor of the governor’s patron at Court; but the 
 Moores were able to defeat the measure in the house. How- 
 ever, a session or two later the bill was brought forward 
 again. The council was composed of eight members. The 
 presiding officer, Chief Justice Smith, voted for the bill, 
 making a tie ; and he then voted a second time to break the 
 tie ; and the bill being hurried to the house, was put through 
 before the Moores had time to oppose its passage. This 
 occasioned a strong remonstrance from those interested in 
 Brunswick, who protested that it was illegal for a member 
 of the council to cast two votes. At the next session the 
 house again passed the bill to cure this alleged defect. 
 
 Immigrants 
 
 Attention now began to be attracted to North Carolina, 
 and particularly to the region drained by the Cape Fear 
 River, as a home for settlers, and Governor Johnston stimu- 
 lated interest among his friends in Great Britain by his 
 c. r., iv, letters and representations. Before he had been in the gov- 
 ernment a year he was in communication with Mr. Dobbs 
 and some other gentlemen of distinction in Ireland, and 
 
THE McCULLOH GRANTS 
 
 253 
 
 with Henry McCulloh, a kinsman of his and a merchant in 
 London, relative to their sending over families ; and Captain 
 Woodward, as their attorney, selected a tract on Black River, 
 in New Hanover, of sixty thousand acres for them ; and in 
 January, 1736, McCulloh petitioned the Board of Trade for 
 two other tracts, one at the head of the Northeast and the 
 other at the head of the Northwest River, which were 
 allowed him. Simultaneously with this movement, Governor 
 Burrington, then in London, and Mr. Jenner proposed to 
 settle a colony of Swiss between the Neuse and the Cape 
 Fear rivers, and asked that a new precinct should be laid 
 o ff in that region for them ; but later the location desired 
 was changed to one nearer the mountains. However, this 
 proposed colony seems eventually to have been merged in 
 McCulloh’s undertaking. This enterprising gentleman was 
 appointed by Governor Johnston his agent in England, and 
 he also secured an appointment as inspector-general of the 
 grants and revenues of the king in South and North Caro- 
 lina ; and a few months later, having associated two mer- 
 chants, Huey and Crymble, and some other gentlemen with 
 him, he obtained an order for twelve tracts of land of one 
 hundred thousand acres each, not to be at a greater dis- 
 tance from each other, however, than ten miles, and each 
 tract to be subdivided into eight equal parts. [For these tracts 
 the grantees were not to begin to pay quit rents rqitil the 
 expiration of ten years, having that time for settlement. The 
 grants were ordered to be located on the head waters of 
 Neuse, Peedee and Cape Fear rivers, and they were the 
 basis of the immense land interest subsequently held by 
 McCulloh in North Carolina. 
 
 To induce the immigration of settlers, it was urged that 
 the climate on the Cape Fear was as good as that of England ; 
 that living was cheap ; that fortunes were easily made ; that 
 those who came early and took up land would find that its 
 value was doubled yearly, as had been the case on the lower 
 part of that river. These inducements appealed strongly to 
 enterprising young men to leave the well-occupied marts of 
 Britain and seek their fortunes in a country where hope 
 promised them such advantages. Captain Innes, a man of 
 unusual merit, seems to have accompanied the governor when 
 
 1735 
 
 C. R., IV, 73 
 
 C R., IV, 
 685, ft Sf<], 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 156, iS 7 
 
 McCulloh's 
 
 grants 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 668 
 
 Letters of a 
 Loyalist 
 
2 54 
 
 JOHNSTON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 1736 
 
 James 
 
 Murray 
 
 Free Masons 
 
 Swiss, Irish 
 and Scotch 
 C. R., IV, 
 685-687 
 
 The South 
 Carolina 
 dividing 
 line 
 
 Records 
 New 
 Hanover 
 County, 1737 
 
 lie arrived, and among those who were induced through the 
 influence of the governor to come over in the fall of 1735 
 was James Murray, a young Scotchman, then resident at 
 London, who brought with him a stock of goods, and arrived 
 on the Cape Fear January 1, 1736. Not being able to 
 obtain a house at Newton as he had intended, he opened 
 his store at Brunswick, where he found ready sale for all 
 of his merchandise except “wigs.” These fashionable orna- 
 ments of dress, much to Murray’s disgust, he was unable to 
 dispose of, either at Charleston or on the Cape Fear. 
 
 But if the people would not wear wigs, they nevertheless 
 brought with them the ideas and habits of the people at 
 home. In 1735 they made application to the Grand Lodge 
 of England for a charter of a Free Mason’s lodge, which was 
 granted under the name of Solomon Lodge ; and one of the 
 first buildings erected in the village of Wilmington was a 
 Mason’s lodge. 
 
 The first considerable number of families coming together 
 were Swiss, who arrived about the end of 1736, and a colony 
 of Irish, who were settled on the upper waters of the North- 
 east ; among the latter being Colonel Sampson, the Owens,* 
 Kenans and Walkers; and in September, 1739, the McNeals, 
 Duncan Campbell, Colonel McAlister and several other 
 Scotch gentlemen brought over three hundred and fifty 
 Scotch people, who settled in the western part of Bladen 
 Precinct. Earlier a colony of Welsh settled in the upper 
 part of New Hanover County, on what has since been known 
 as the “Welsh Tract. ”f To encourage such colonies the 
 Assembly exempted from taxation for ten years all bodies of 
 Protestants settling in the province numbering forty persons, 
 and in particular appropriated £ 1,000 for the benefit of the 
 Scotch settlers. 
 
 Governor Burrington having fortunately postponed 
 settling the boundary line of South Carolina, Governor 
 Johnston appointed commissioners for that purpose, one of 
 
 *The Holmes family appears to have located at first in Edge- 
 combe and then to have removed to Duplin. 
 
 fin March, 1737, the Welsh Tract extended from Burgaw Creek 
 to Widow Moore’s on Black River, and then to the bounds of the 
 precinct, embracing Duplin and Sampson counties. 
 
JOHNSTON URGES PROGRESS 
 
 255 
 
 whom was Eleazar Allen. The commissioners met at Allen’s 
 residence, Lilliput, near Brunswick, on April 23, 1735, and 
 agreed that a due west line should be run from Cape Fear 
 along the seacoast for thirty miles, and then proceed north- 
 west to the thirty-fifth degree of north latitude, and then run 
 west. A week later they ran the line to Little River, and in 
 September continued it seventy miles t6 the northwest ; and 
 two years later it was extended in the same direction twenty- 
 two miles. There the work was discontinued until 1764, 
 when the line was run west to the vicinity of Catawba River. 
 
 When the receivers first began to collect the rents, which 
 were then several years in arrears, many persons paid, and 
 the governor was much gratified at the success of his plan 
 of proceeding without the sanction of the Assembly ; but at 
 length, on rents being demanded in Chowan, Moseley re- 
 fused to give his countenance to a proceeding he deemed 
 illegal and subversive of the rights of the people. He de- 
 clined to pay, and others thereupon stood with him, and 
 collections almost wholly ceased. 
 
 While his officers were meeting with success the governor 
 had had no use for an Assembly, and being determined to 
 set his face against the biennial act, under which elections 
 were held without his writs, he dissolved the Assembly so 
 chosen in September, 1735, without permitting it to convene. 
 The next year he issued his writs for a special election of 
 assemblymen, and convened the Assembly in September, 1736. 
 In his address to that body he urged that the interests of 
 the people and of the province would be best subserved by 
 promoting religion and education, and asked that provision 
 should be made for public worship, and that at least one 
 school should be established in the province. The house 
 at that time, however, had more pressing matters to con- 
 sider than the academic promotion of virtue, and called the 
 attention of the governor to the unlawful action of those who 
 were collecting rents under his orders, and declared that 
 their conduct was an intolerable grievance. Nevertheless, 
 the house passed a fee bill, which the governor rejected, and 
 also a bill providing for a rent roll and for the collection 
 of rents, and for quieting possessions, by the provisions of 
 which all blank patents were declared valid, the validity of 
 
 1735 
 
 s. R., XI, 
 >49 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 246 
 
 The new 
 Assembly 
 Sept., 1736 
 C. R., IV, 
 225, 226 
 
256 
 
 JOHNSTON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 17.16 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 24I, 272 
 
 The 
 
 governor 
 appeals for 
 instructions 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 250 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 267 
 
 the Great Deed reaffirmed and the rents declared payable in ] 
 commodities, rated at specified values ; and the value of the 
 paper money was to be annually fixed by a commission com- 
 posed of the governor, four members of the council and the 
 speaker and six members of the Assembly, to be chosen by 
 the house. This bill was so clogged with provisions which, 
 in the opinion of a majority of the council, were detrimental 
 to his Majesty’s interest, that the upper house rejected it, 
 and the governor, having twice unavailingly called the house 
 to attend him, prorogued the obstinate Assembly until 
 March ; and when it then met, the house having ordered 
 into custody the officers who had been collecting the rents 
 from unwilling citizens under compulsion from fear of 
 distraint, the governor promptly dissolved it. 
 
 In the meantime Governor Johnston had immediately after 
 the adjournment of the first Assembly made a full representa- 
 tion to the Board of Trade of the differences between the 
 people and himself. He had urged that the Great Deed had 
 been revoked by the Lords Proprietors ; that except six un- 
 important laws the former legislative enactments had never 
 been confirmed and were now nullities ; that especially the 
 biennial act ought to be repealed ; that the blank patents 
 ought to be set aside ; and he asked instructions as to these 
 matters as well as in regard to the Assembly's contention 
 about the rents. But the Board of Trade took no heed and 
 his appeals for direction were in vain. No instructions 
 having been received in reply to his request, Governor 
 Johnston now advised the Crown officers at home that unless 
 the old laws were annulled his Majesty would have very 
 little to do in his province, for the people had taken especial 
 care to make themselves independent both of the Crown and 
 of the Lords Proprietors/^ and he asked that a company of 
 troops, that would not be under the direction of the Assembly, 
 might be sent to the province and he be commissioned as 
 captain of it. Evidently the governor was minded to earn- 
 out his will and purposes even by force if necessary; and 
 perhaps there was some occasion for troops, for when at 
 the general court a man was imprisoned for insulting the 
 marshal of the court, the people of Bertie and Edgecombe, 
 understanding that his offence was non-payment of quit 
 
QUIT -REN 1 TROUBLES 
 
 257 
 
 rents, rose to the number of five hundred and approached 
 Edenton with the purpose of rescuing him, cursing the king, 
 and with their hearts full of rebellion. While it was only 
 in these two precincts that the people openly embodied, yet 
 the seeds of insurrection were widely disseminated, and the 
 governor hastened to advise McCulloh that the biennial act 
 should at once be repealed and that the people should be 
 warned and commanded by a royal proclamation to obey 
 the governor. With this spur, the Board of Trade during 
 the summer obtained from the king an order repealing that 
 law ; and conformably thereto, in November Governor 
 Tohnston issued a proclamation giving notice of its repeal. 
 Such was the ending of one of the muniments of liberty 
 and safeguards of freedom which Shaftesbury had embodied 
 in his celebrated Fundamental Constitutions in the early days 
 of the settlement. 
 
 At an Assembly held in New Bern in March, 1739, the dis- 
 position to fashion the province after the model of England 
 had its effect, and an act was passed converting the precincts 
 into counties, and for appointing sheriffs in each of them, 
 but as that necessarily supplanted the official functions of the 
 marshal, that office was abolished, and Colonel Halton was 
 allowed a money consideration for his damages. Provision 
 was also made for holding circuit courts, and at an adjourned 
 session a month later the struggle over the quit-rent trouble, 
 which had lasted so many years, was adjusted by a compro- 
 mise, which was very agreeable to the governor, provision 
 being made for a rent roll and the rents to be paid in a 
 limited number of commodities, such only as the governor 
 approved — tobacco, hemp, flax, deer skins and beeswax ; and 
 the value of the provincial currency was to be fixed by a 
 commission as in the bill formerly rejected by the council. 
 One of the considerations for the passage of this bill by the 
 Assembly was that it confirmed the blank patents, in which 
 nearly all of the chief men of the province were in some 
 measure interested, and it gave an assurance of title to lands 
 which they had improved, in some instances at great ex- 
 pense. 
 
 On the other hand, the governor and his officers had for 
 some time been without compensation for their services, and 
 
 1736 
 
 c. R., iv, 
 
 251 
 
 July, 1737 
 
 Biennial 
 
 Act 
 
 repealed 
 
 Precincts 
 
 converted 
 
 into 
 
 counties 
 
 S. R ., 
 
 XXI II, 129 
 
 Rent roll 
 prepared 
 
258 
 
 JOHNSTON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 1 739 
 
 Progress 
 in the 
 colony 
 
 Products 
 
 Chief 
 
 Justice 
 
 Smith 
 
 impeached 
 
 as this arrangement opened the way for the payment of their 
 salaries, it was very gratifying to his Excellency, who 
 hastened to send the act to England with his approval and 
 urgent request for its confirmation. In the meanwhile, not 
 doubting that it would be confirmed, he put it into operation, 
 and that cause of disagreement between the administration 
 and the opposition was regarded as entirely removed. Still, 
 the antagonism between the governor and the Moores, who 
 were spoken of by the administration as “the family,” re- 
 mained ;* but this cause of difference being settled, Eleazar 
 Allen abandoned the governor and joined “the family,” which 
 put the administration in the minority in the council. This 
 unexpected defection of Allen led the governor to immedi- 
 ately appoint as councillor James Murray, on whose fidelity 
 he could rely. 
 
 The exports of the Cape Fear River had now become rel- 
 atively considerable. The vast pine forests were filled with 
 light wood, being the heart of the resinous pine after the 
 body of the fallen tree had decayed many years before, and 
 the business of making tar engaged a large part of the popu- 
 lation ; indeed, so much of this staple article of commerce 
 was speedily produced that the markets of the world soou 
 became overstocked. The Moores and their friends, who 
 together had brought some twelve hundred slaves to the 
 settlement, began in 1735 the culture of rice, of which large 
 crops were now being produced for export; and in 1738 
 George Lillington reported to the Assembly that he had 
 brought the culture of indigo to perfection ; while particular 
 efforts were made in various parts of the province to grow 
 hemp and flax. The silkworm was also introduced, saw- 
 mills had been erected, bricks were burned, and much prog- 
 ress was made in comfortable living as well as in profitable 
 commerce. 
 
 There had been constant accessions to population, and the 
 chief matters of difference between the people at large and 
 the administration having been settled, an era of good will 
 was ushered in, and there was a period of quietude and of 
 steady growth. Still the chief justice did not give satisfac- 
 tion in his courts. In some measure he seems to have 
 ^Murray’s “Letters of a Loyalist.” 
 
THE BUSH ASSEMBLY 
 
 259 
 
 justified the opinion expressed of him by Burrington, and S 4 ° 
 
 there were many complaints of his irregular proceedings. 
 
 At length, in 1739, matters reached a crisis, and there was 
 a determination to impeach him. The Assembly was to have 
 met in New Bern in November, but because of advers^ winds c. r., iv, 
 the members from Albemarle, who were coming by water, 351 ’ 352 
 were delayed, and only twenty-six members at first appeared. 
 
 That number was sufficient for a quorum and the body might 
 have been organized. But the chief justice had been very 
 useful to the governor, and it was alleged that in order to 
 protect this officer, with the governor’s connivance, resort 
 was had to management, and Smith procured four members 
 to take to the bushes and absent themselves, thus preventing 
 an organization. After waiting two or three days, a majority 
 of the council advised a dissolution — advice which the gov- 
 ernor hastened to follow, and the impending impeachment 
 was thus avoided. From the method pursued to break the 
 quorum that Assembly became known among the people as 
 the “Bush Assembly.” A new election was, however, at once Feb., i 74 <> 
 
 " C R IV 
 
 ordered, and when the body met Smith managed to secure 4 68, 500, so 4 
 the good will of a majority by promising to have passed a 
 certain bill allowing some additional commodities to be re- 
 ceived in payment of taxes and in discharge of debts, the 
 rating, of these commodities to be at a very high value. Sir 
 Richard Everard, the son of the former governor, however, 
 presented and pressed the resolution of impeachment, setting 
 out in detail some eighteen impeachable offences ; but a 
 majority of the house, being thus won over to the cause of 
 the chief justice, cut short the time for bringing forward 
 the testimony, and by a preponderance of six votes held that 
 the evidence presented was insufficient to justify the pro- \ 
 ceeding. So Smith not only thus avoided the blow, but, \ 
 indeed, during the year found an opportunity of dealing one 
 to his old enemy, Hanmer, who had been used by Burrington 
 to keep him out of his office. Hanmer was charged with per- 
 jury and tried before Smith and convicted. He begged 
 for mercy, but Smith was obdurate, and imposed on him such 
 a heavy punishment that in 1743 Hanmer, being then released 
 from prison, petitioned the Crown for relief against the chief 
 justice, who, he alleged, had persecuted him and destroyed 
 
26 o 
 
 JOHNSTON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 1740 
 
 Moseley 
 
 chief 
 
 justice 
 
 The 
 
 Spanish war 
 
 1740 
 
 C. R , IV, 
 421 
 
 his fortune and wrecked his health. Smith, however, did not 
 survive long enough to engage in this new controversy. In 
 1744 he died, and John Montgomery succeeded him as chief 
 justice; himself surviving only a few months, when Edward 
 Moseley was appointed to the position. 
 
 For years there had been a constant disregard by the 
 English traders of the commercial regulations which Spain 
 had thrown around the commerce of her American colonies 
 with a view of excluding foreign trade and maintaining an 
 exclusive dealing with the mother country. The contract 
 of the English for the importation of negroes, known as the 
 Asiento, increased their facilities for smuggling and main- 
 taining an illicit trade with the Spanish colonies, which was 
 carried on with great gain, particularly by the merchants of 
 Jamaica. There were besides other causes of differences be- 
 tween England and Spain, which, however, in the spring of 
 1739 had been amicably settled by a convention; but the 
 convention was not promptly carried into effect, and the 
 English traders, fearing that their trade would be cut off 
 by it, were clamorous in demanding a “free sea” even in 
 the Spanish Main.* To please them war was declared with 
 Spain on a point that was of unusual interest to the English 
 colonies in America, as it related to unrestrained commercial 
 intercourse with the Spanish settlements to the southward. 
 
 In view of these hostilities, in the summer of 1740 Gov- 
 ernor Johnston received instructions to raise such troops 
 as could be obtained in the province, and he called a special 
 session of the Assembly to make provision for them. The 
 members were zealous in their patriotic ardor, and with 
 notable unanimity appropriated £12,000 sterling for the 
 maintenance of the levies ; and the governor hired four 
 vessels at Edenton, three companies of a hundred men each 
 being raised in the northern counties, and one vessel at Wil- 
 mington, where a hundred men enlisted, to convey them on 
 the expedition. So ready were the people to go that many 
 
 '‘'While the merchants were clamoring, one Jenkins, a sailor, ap- 
 peared before Parliament and exhibited one of his ears that had 
 been cut off by the Spaniards. This turned the scale against Wal- 
 pole’s peace policy, and the war became known as “the war of 
 Jenkins’s ear.” 
 
THE SPANISH WAR 
 
 261 
 
 more companies could have been obtained had adequate pro- 1740 
 
 vision been made for them. 
 
 These troops were originally intended to operate with the Expedition 
 
 . A 1 1 t • r* a • t0 Cartagena 
 
 expedition under General Oglethorpe against bt. Augustine, 
 and some of them were despatched on that service. That 
 expedition having failed, they sailed for Jamaica, where the 
 British forces were concentrated. Captain Innes commanded 
 one company, and with him were Lieutenant Pringle and 
 Lieutenant Douglass, who appear to have come from Eng- 
 land. They sailed from Wilmington on November 26, 1740, 
 and were actively engaged in the West Indies. Later these 
 forces were in Admiral Vernon’s expedition against Carta- 
 gena, where, after meeting with some successes, the want 
 of co-operation between the army and the navy worked their 
 ruin. Not only were there great losses on the land, but 
 after the troops were driven to re-embark a fever broke out 
 among them and nine out of ten of the colonial contingent 
 succumbed to disease, the entire loss in the expedition being 
 over 20,000 men. But few of the North Carolina troops 
 returned. That they bore an honorable part in the opera- 
 tions may be gathered from the fact that Lieutenant Pringle 
 was wounded at the siege of Boca-Chica, while Captain 
 Innes won such distinction and his merit was so thoroughly 
 recognized that in 1756 he was appointed commander-in-chief 
 of the Virginia forces. Colonel Washington was glad to 
 serve under him. 
 
 The decision of the Board of Trade 
 
 After the act relating to the rents had been in operation 1741 
 some two years the governor was humiliated at receiving 
 information that it had been disallowed by the king. The Quit-rent 
 passage of the act had been obtained by him after a long disallowed 
 conflict with the Assembly, and it happily settled many con- 
 tentions ; but the half dozen merchants in London trading 
 to North Carolina protested against the provision which 
 allowed a commission to fix the value of the currency ; and 
 for that reason the entire settlement of the vexed questions 
 was annulled. It is no wonder that the governor’s patience 
 was taxed beyond measure by this untoward and unwise 
 action. But that was not his only disappointment; the other 
 
262 
 
 JOHNSTON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 1741 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 287 
 
 The 
 
 Great Deed 
 
 The 
 
 quit rents 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 291 
 
 Laws 
 
 confirmed 
 
 Blank 
 
 patents 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 322 
 
 questions submitted by him were all decided practically ad- 
 verse to the positions he had taken. In February, 1738, the 
 law officers made their adverse report, but it was held up 
 three years at London and not communicated to Governor 
 Johnston until 1741, notwithstanding his anxious solicitude 
 for decisive instructions. In regard to the Great Deed, it was 
 held that that instrument was revocable, but that its revoca- 
 tion could not affect grants made while it was in operation ; 
 and whether it was revoked by the commission and instruc- 
 tions to Governor Sayle in 1669, as contended by Johnston 
 and McCulloh, depended on whether Albemarle was within 
 Sayle’s territory — which, indeed, had been limited to “south 
 and west of Cape Carteret’’ ; and even were it within that 
 territory, the board considered that a long and quiet enjoy- 
 ment of land would cure all defects of title. 
 
 The greater question was as to the payment of the quit 
 rents, and its decision was entirely in conflict with the gov- 
 ernor’s views and sustained Moseley and the Assembly at 
 all points in the controversy. It was held that the rents 
 were not payable in specie, but might be paid in commodities 
 at the market value, and that the place of payment was on 
 the farms. 
 
 Concerning Johnston's contention that the whole body of 
 the laws were a nullity, it was decided that as they had been 
 in use among the people and acquiesced in by the Proprietors 
 they were not void and could not be repealed by the Crown ; 
 still they made an exception in regard to the biennial act, 
 and held that it was in the province of the king to repeal 
 and annul that for special reasons, as had been done. 
 
 After a full examination into the matter of blank patents, 
 the nature of which was fully explained to them by Gov- 
 ernor Burrington, the law officers decided that notwithstand- 
 ing the Lords Proprietors had ordered their land office to 
 be closed, yet the patents were good if the Proprietors were 
 made privy to them, or had afterward received the con- 
 sideration money ; but those issued after notice of the king’s 
 purchase were not good ; and they held that the circumstance 
 that the patents were blank as to boundaries was not of 
 itself sufficient to avoid them ; and if any of the patents 
 were voidable, the proper course to annul them was by infor- 
 
THE BOARD ADVERSE TO JOHNSTON’S CLAIMS 263 
 
 mation in the courts. These decisions, however, were not T 
 
 for three years communicated to the governor, who in 
 ignorance of them had maintained his position on the matters 
 involved with partisan loyalty and devoted zeal in behalf 
 of what he regarded were the legal rights of his sovereign. c R Iy 
 Disheartened in the extreme, for the only gratification he j 8 3 
 had enjoyed was in the repeal of the biennial act, the 
 governor, receiving no salary whatever, nevertheless con- 
 tinued to apply unavailinglv for new instructions, until at 
 length, in 1747, the humiliating answer came that he had 
 better try to get a new act passed for the collection of rents 
 not containing the objectionable feature of a commission to 
 fix the value of the currency that had caused the rejection 
 of the former act. He had asked for bread and they gave 
 him a stone. 
 
 But notwithstanding this ill-usage, Governor Johnston currency 
 would abate nothing from the tenor of his original instruc- 
 tions, and the receivers of rents would not settle them for 
 commodities, and now rated the provincial currency at only 
 one-tenth the value of specie. As great as was this rate 
 of depreciation, it was equaled in the neighboring province of 
 South Carolina, where for three-quarters of a century the 
 currency was never at a less discount than 700 per cent. ; 
 and where twenty-eight of the merchants of Charleston 
 having, in 1722, presented a memorial complaining of broken 
 pledges in not retiring the currency, the Assembly ordered 
 them all into the custody of its officers. 
 
 The people of North Carolina, however, were not content Governor’s 
 with having their currency rated so low, and abstained from „np!J d 
 paying their rents ; and so little money was collected that 
 the governor’s salary remained unpaid ; and especially was 
 this the case after the northern part of the province had 
 been set apart to Earl Granville, the rents in arrears as well 
 as those annually to accrue in that territory after 1744 being 
 the individual property of that Proprietor, while those accru- 
 ing in the lower portion of the province, which had not been 
 so long settled, were of comparatively insignificant value. 
 
 Embarrassed by his pecuniary condition, other matters bore 
 equally hard on the governor. Civil war was raging in his 
 
264 
 
 JOHNSTON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 1744 native country,* where the young Stuart prince had erected 
 
 the standard of his father and had gathered around him 
 his zealous Highlanders, while the low-country Scotch, being 
 Presbyterians and followers of John Knox, adhered to the 
 Protestant house of Hanover. The situation of his kindred 
 and friends gave him much concern ; and because of the war 
 with Spain and then with France, the seacoast of the prov- 
 ince was opened to easy assault, and its defenceless con- 
 dition was the occasion of much uneasiness ; forts should 
 be built and a militia organized ; assemblies and general 
 courts had been constantly held at Edenton, which was too 
 dispute inaccessible as a seat of government, and a more convenient 
 location was desired, where the officers should reside and 
 the public records be kept ; the acts of the Assembly were in 
 confusion and a codification indispensable ; the time for 
 which the provincial bills were to run was about to expire, 
 and provision should be made for renewing them ; while 
 other subjects of almost equally grave importance claimed 
 attention. Yet assemblies would meet, and because of 
 jealousy between the houses or disagreements with the gov- 
 ernor, little or nothing was accomplished. Still, one by one 
 these subjects were considered, and occasionally some would 
 be acted upon, except alone that establishing a seat of gov- 
 ernment ; as to that there was an irreconcilable difiference 
 between the houses, the northern members of the Assembly 
 insisting on Bath, the governor and the council, of whom a 
 majority resided on the Cape Fear, proposing New Bern; 
 so there could be no agreement. 
 
 Westward expansion 
 
 Granville But whatever were the perplexities of government, the 
 
 and • • . - . - . 
 
 Johnston province continued to grow m population and importance. 
 
 ' CS T Virginians from the beginning had flocked across the border. 
 
 831^834^ ' After the old precincts at Albemarle were well occupied, 
 these immigrants from the adjoining province possessed 
 themselves of Bertie, and there the population became so 
 numerous that in 1741 the new county of Northampton had 
 to be erected. Five years later the first settlement that the 
 Virginians had made on the Tar had so expanded that Edge- 
 *It is said that Governor Johnston’s brothers were in this rising. 
 
IMMIGRANTS ARRIVE 
 
 265 
 
 combe had to be divided, and Granville was portioned off 
 on the western frontier ; while in like manner Johnston , 
 County (first proposed to be named Essex) was formed from 
 the western part of Craven, extending up the course of the 
 Neuse. 
 
 In New Hanover 22,000 acres of land had been surveyed 
 for McCulioh between the Northeast and Black rivers, and 
 50,000 acres were located for him a little higher up, which 
 were under the care of Dr. William Houston, near Soracte 
 and the Golden Grove, where the Irish and Swiss settlers had 
 been established in 1736. In 1736 George Vaughan, a bar- 
 rister of Dublin, Ireland, purchased of a Mr. Hewitt 12,000 
 acres of land situated in this territory and apparently a part 
 of the 50,000 acres laid off for McCulioh and his associates ; 
 and the next year, 1737, John Sampson, a nephew of 
 Vaughan, settled on the tract as agent. Three years later 
 Vaughan resolved' to appropriate the land, together with one 
 hundred slaves, to the purpose of Christianizing five Indian 
 tribes* then said to be in the vicinity ; and under an arrange- 
 ment Sampson sought to carry out these general purposes, 
 but for some reason the plan appears to have miscarried. 
 Indeed, the settlement of upper New Hanover prospered so 
 well that in 1 749 a new county was formed out of that terri- 
 tory, at first proposed to be called “Donegal,” or Fane, 
 but on consideration was named Duplin, in honor of Lord 
 Dupplin, one of the Board of Trade. 
 
 And even a still more interesting movement was witnessed 
 on the other branch of the Cape Fear. Some Scotchmen had 
 been induced, perhaps through the influence of Governor 
 Johnston, to come to that region shortly after his appoint- 
 ment, and later there were large accessions of the same 
 population. In 1739 Colonel McAlister arrived with three 
 hundred and fifty Scotchmen in one body. After the disaster 
 at Culloden the adherents of Charles Edward were put to 
 the sword and threatened with extermination. The chieftains 
 and more prominent leaders were quickly despatched, while 
 the humbler people were hunted like wild animals in a chase 
 and butchered without compunction of conscience. The 
 
 *Indian relics are still found widely scattered throughout Duplin 
 and Sampson counties. 
 
 1746 
 
 S.R, XXIII 
 248, 249 
 
 Court 
 
 Records, 
 
 New 
 
 Hanover 
 
 County 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 1064 
 
 Duplin 
 
 County 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 viii 
 
 The Scotch 
 migration 
 
266 
 
 JOHNSTON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 1746 
 
 Culloden 
 
 Highlanders 
 in Cumber- 
 land, 1746 
 
 Vass, Hist. 
 New Bern 
 Presby. 
 Church 
 
 Anson 
 County 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 888, 1064 
 
 bloody work was, however, at length arrested by a tardy 
 proclamation of mercy, and a pardon was issued under the 
 great seal exempting from the death penalty nineteen out of 
 twenty who had escaped the terrible slaughter. To deter- 
 mine who should be the victims of this melancholy fate, there 
 was resort to the haphazard chance of casting the lot. Those 
 undefended by fortune perished, the other nineteen being 
 adjudged to suffer only expatriation — a merciful boon, per- 
 petual exile. The removal of entire clans was enforced, and 
 hundreds who, not being involved in the trouble, might have 
 remained in their desolated country preferred to abandon 
 their beloved mountains and share the fortunes of their com- 
 patriots rather than remain in their deserted homes. Indeed, 
 the feudal tenures of the olden time were then destroyed, 
 and the ties that bound the clansmen to their chiefs passed 
 away, introducing new conditions that were intolerable to 
 the Highlanders. Some influences turned the tide of migra- 
 tion to the upper Cape Fear, where a number of their High- 
 land companions had already located. So that in 1746 the 
 vicinity of the present town of Fayetteville was occupied 
 by a considerable colony of these unhappy Scotchmen, and 
 shipload after shipload of these unfortunate people disem- 
 barked at Wilmington and then penetrated far into the 
 wilderness of the interior. In 1749 Neal McNeal at one 
 time brought over five hundred with him, and they scattered 
 through Bladen, Anson and what is now Cumberland 
 counties. Five years later the stream began to flow again, 
 and from that time onward there were constant arrivals from 
 the Highlands of Scotland, until a vast territory was occu- 
 pied by them. Beliol, of Jura, one of the Hebrides Islands, 
 found employment for a vessel regularly engaged in bringing 
 in annually Scotch emigrants, who were reared almost within 
 hail of classic Iona, the hallowed home of primitive Presby- 
 terianism. Even as late as in 1775 a colony of three hundred 
 and fifty arrived, and joined their kindred on the upper Cape 
 Fear. 
 
 From South Carolina other colonists had pushed up the 
 Peedee, taking possession of the fine lands along that river 
 far to the west of the Bladen settlements, so that in Septem- 
 ber, 1748, they besought the council for the benefit of a new 
 
ANSON COUNTY ORGANIZED 
 
 267 
 
 county, saying that there were between two hundred and 
 three hundred white tithables in the Peedee country a hun- 
 dred miles distant from the court-house ; and in answer to 
 their prayer a county was established called Anson, in honor 
 of the brave commodore whose fame at that time was 
 resounding throughout the world. Indeed, so rapid had fyeen 
 the progress of settlement that when, in 1746, Moseley and 
 the other commissioners for running the Granville line 
 reached the Saxapahaw, at the present southeast corner of 
 Chatham County, they found settlers and houses already 
 there, though the country was but sparsely occupied, and 
 the region to the west was as yet uninhabited. 
 
 Sir John Carteret, who held high office at Court, perhaps 
 animated by an ambition to be the sole possessor of immense 
 territories in the New World, had, in 1729, declined to dis- 
 pose of his share on the purchase by the Crown of Carolina, 
 and by the king's command his portion was set apart to him 
 in severalty adjoining Virginia, and the dividing line was 
 agreed to be the parallel of latitude 35 0 and 34', by which 
 about two-thirds of the province became his individual prop- 
 erty. Carteret, by the death of his mother, had just then 
 succeeded to the title of Lord Granville. He had the year 
 before overthrown the Walpole administration, and was sec- 
 retary of state ; and he had uncontrolled ascendancy over the 
 king, and was “not only the most brilliant debater, but the 
 ablest statesman of his time.” 
 
 In the winter of 1743 his line was run from Hatteras to 
 Bath, and in the spring of 1746 it was continued to Saxapa- 
 haw, passing near the present towns of Snow Hill and 
 Princeton ; and when extended farther west it became 
 eventually the southern boundary of the counties of Chatham, 
 Randolph, Davidson, and Rowan. From the time it was 
 run all the interest of the Crown ceased in the rents within 
 that extensive territory, they belonging exclusively to Gran- 
 ville, who appointed Moseley and Halton his agents for col- 
 lecting the rents and making grants in his name. 
 
 This division of the province between the king and Gran- 
 ville, and the conflicting interests of the northern and 
 southern counties, and the desire of the governor to estab- 
 lish a seat of government in New Bern, led to one of the 
 
 1746 
 
 S. R., XXIII 
 
 343 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 811 
 
 Granville’s 
 
 territory 
 
 His line run 
 
268 
 
 1746 
 
 Nov., 1746 
 C. R., IV, 
 870 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 838, 843 
 
 JOHNSTON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 most strenuous struggles that marked the course of public 
 affairs. 
 
 The unarmed rebellion - 
 
 The Assembly was composed of fifty-four members, of 
 whom, as the northern counties had five each while the 
 southern counties had but two, the majority always lay with 
 Albemarle ; so to compass his purpose with regard to estab- 
 lishing a seat of government the governor skilfully resorted 
 to management. An Assembly having met in New Bern in 
 June, 1746, and the houses having disagreed as between Bath 
 and New Bern, the governor prorogued the body to meet at 
 Wilmington in November, at a time when the northern mem- 
 bers would be engaged in sending their cattle and hogs to 
 Virginia for sale, and could not conveniently attend at so 
 remote a place. The Albemarle representatives, relying on 
 their power to break a quorum bv remaining away, agreed 
 on that course and did not go to the Cape Fear. In former 
 years the result would have answered their expectations ; but 
 with the growing importance of the Cape Fear region and 
 the divergence of interests that had arisen between the sec- 
 tions new conditions had come to defeat these calculations. 
 When the house assembled, there being eight old members 
 and seven newly elected, fifteen in all, in attendance, the 
 speaker, Sam Swann, calling to his aid the rule of the British 
 Parliament by which 40 members out of 556 constituted a 
 quorum, declared a quorum present, and the house proceeded 
 to business. (Only two bills were passed, but these were of 
 great importance. I v By one of them the seat of government 
 was fixed permanently at New Bern, where public papers 
 were required to be kept, instead of at the private residences 
 of the officers in the different parts of the province, as 
 had been the practice ; and circuit courts were established 
 to be held throughout the province while the other 
 was intended to destroy the inequality of representation by 
 allowing to each county in the province two representatives 
 and no more. This was a direct blow at the northern coun- 
 ties, which the Albemarle people furiously resented. They 
 declared that by the constitution of the province the original 
 Albemarle counties had a right to five members, of which 
 
THE UNARMED REBELLION 
 
 269 
 
 they could not be deprived ; and that a quorum of the house 
 consisted of a majority of all the members, and that a less 
 number could not lawfully pass a bill. They asserted that 
 the governor had by artifice and trick devised this proceeding, 
 and as they had fallen into the trap, they now prepared to 
 meet the emergency by a counter-plot. By agreement, they 
 were to abstain from attending future sessions ; and their 
 declaration that the act establishing the seat of government 
 and appointing commissioners to erect the public building at 
 New Bern was a nullity raised an obstacle in the way of 
 giving effect to that law which could not be overcome, and 
 the buildings were not erected. The governor issued writs 
 for a new Assembly to meet in February, ordering the 
 sheriffs to return but two members from any county, but 
 the Albemarle people disregarded these instructions and 
 voted for five members as formerly. Throughout the whole 
 region there was concert of action, and the entire section 
 was united as one man to preserve their constitutional rights. 
 When the Assembly met the elections in those counties were 
 held void, and new writs were issued for another election, 
 but the people to a man abstained from voting. There were 
 no elections held. The northern counties would not be rep- 
 resented by less than five members. Both sides, however, 
 appealed to the higher authority of the Crown ; but the law 
 officers in England, who during the whole colonial period 
 acted on a high plane and sought to be fair and impartial, 
 would not decide except on a full hearing, and required 
 testimony to be taken in the province as to the disputed facts. 
 This delay brought no harmony to the province, and as 
 months passed the interests of the sections conflicted more 
 and more. The public men who had formerly acted in unison 
 drifted apart ; faction and party spirit ran high, and the prov- 
 ince became divided into two sectional parties, whose antag- 
 onism constantly grew in bitterness. 
 
 The governor did not choose to risk another Assembly, or 
 perhaps deemed it ill-advised to disturb existing conditions, 
 so year after year tbe Assembly elected in February, 1747, 
 continued to meet under successive prorogations. Having 
 no representatives, the northern counties refused to obey the 
 laws enacted by the Rump ; they did not recognize the new 
 
 1747 
 
 The two 
 
 repudiated 
 
 acts 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 855, 864 
 Feb., 1747 
 
 Northern 
 counties not 
 represented 
 
 They refuse 
 obedience 
 
270 
 
 JOHNSTON’S ADMINISTRATION , 1734-52 
 
 1747 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 1312 
 
 S. R.,XXII, 
 403 
 
 S.R.,XXII, 
 262, 278 
 
 Aug., 1747 
 
 Beaufort 
 Taken 
 S. R., XXII, 
 
 263 
 
 1748 
 
 S. R..XXII, 
 
 286 
 
 circuit courts, and especially they would pay no taxes to 
 support a government in which they had no share ; and as 
 the northern inhabitants would pay no taxes, after a while 
 neither would the southern, who would not bear the burden 
 of government alone. The house eventually became like 
 the Long Parliament in England, a body exercising the func- 
 tions of government, but no longer representative of its con- 
 stituents. While its enactments had the force of law in the 
 southern counties, in the northern they were utterly dis- 
 regarded. 
 
 The Spanish invasions 
 
 Notwithstanding the defection of the northern members, 
 the Assembly had to deal with matters of general interest. 
 Particularly did the defenceless condition of the coast give 
 great concern. In 1741 several Spanish privateers took pos- 
 session of Ocracoke Inlet, and seized the vessels arriving 
 there. They also landed and carried off the cattle of the in- 
 habitants. Eventually they were driven away, but their 
 depredations were so great that provisions had to be sup- 
 plied to the distressed people at a cost to the province of 
 more than £10,000. 
 
 Again in 1744 they harassed the coast; and in 1747 boldly 
 entered the harhor of Beaufort. Major Enoch Ward hastily 
 gathered some militia and held them at bay until August 
 26th, when they succeeded in gaining possession of the town 
 itself. In a few days, however, Colonel Thomas Lovick and 
 Captain Charles Cogdell came to the rescue with a sufficient 
 force, and early in September the Spaniards were expelled, 
 suffering considerable loss. At least ten of the invaders 
 were captured. But so successful were these forays that the 
 next summer they were continued, and the coast was ravaged. 
 Early in July some of the Spanish ships lay in the harbor of 
 the lower Cape Pear, while a company of militia held the 
 shore against them. 
 
 At that time six of the Spaniards were captured, and 
 they withdrew, only, however, to return in heavier force 
 about the beginning of September. On the 4th of that 
 
THE SPANISH INVASIONS 
 
 271 
 
 month the alarm was given at Wilmington that they were 
 ascending the river, and the militia companies hurried in 
 detachments to the scene. The general defence had been 
 committed to Eleazar Allen, Roger Moore, Edward Moseley 
 and William Forbes, as commissioners; while Major John 
 Swann was in immediate command. Among the companies 
 participating in the defence were those commanded by Cap- 
 tain William Dry, Captain John Ashe and Captain John 
 Sampson. These alone numbered more than 300 troops. The 
 Spaniards quickly took possession of Brunswick, and for 
 four days, from the 6th to the 10th, hostilities were active. 
 At length, on the 10th, one of the Spanish vessels was blown 
 up, and the others were driven off. All that day Colonel 
 Dry was employed burying dead Spaniards, and two days 
 later he was getting the guns, anchors and other valuables 
 ashore from the wreck. It was from this destroyed vessel 
 that the painting was obtained which is still preserved in the 
 vestry-room of St. James’s Church at Wilmington. The 
 spoils from the wreck were appropriated for the use of 
 the churches at Brunswick and Wilmington. A considerable 
 number of the Spaniards were killed and wounded ; while at 
 least twenty-nine fell into the hands of the inhabitants. The 
 alarm occasioned by these attacks aroused the people, and 
 the Assembly readily yielded to the suggestion of the gov- 
 ernor to make preparations for defence. A bill was passed to 
 issue new currency to the amount of £6, 000 sterling for the 
 purpose of erecting two large forts, one at Cape Fear and 
 the other at Ocrac oke, while smaller ones were to be built 
 at Core Sound and Bear Inlet ; but only the one at Cape Fear 
 was ever completed. (The governor, however, had been par- 
 ticularly instructed no! to assent to a new issue of currency, 
 and in violating these directions he imposed terms which he 
 hoped would shield him from blame for his disobedience. He 
 required that the Assembly should agree that the use of 
 commodities in the payment of taxes should cease, and that 
 all public payments should be made in proclamation money. 
 This was a point gained which the governor had long had 
 very much at heart, and from his standpoint it was cheaply 
 
 1748 
 
 Sept. 10 
 
 B runswick 
 attacked, 
 Sept. 6-io, 
 1748 
 
 R. S., XXII, 
 
 271-286 
 
 Jr 
 
 S. R., XXIII 
 
 292 
 
JOHNSTON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 1748 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 936 
 
 No reports 
 
 Local 
 
 differences 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 972 
 
 ^Effort to displace Johnston 
 
 I The passage of this currency bill and the disturbed con- 
 
 / dition of affairs in the province, however, led the London 
 
 I merchants and McCulloh to make an effort for Johnston’s 
 removal. Toward the end of 1748 John Morris, Francis 
 Corbin, Arthur Dobbs and others began proceedings against 
 him, which J. A. Abercromby, who had just been appointed 
 agent for the province by the Assembly, very skilfully 
 delayed, and then McCulloh filed a memorial in his own 
 behalf complaining of alleged misconduct on the part of the 
 governor, which later seems to have been sufficiently 
 answered. (One of the allegations against Governor John- 
 ston was tlrat he had ceased making any reports to the 
 officials at home, but while the Board of Trade stated that 
 for five years, between 1741 and 1746, they had received no 
 communications from him, it appeared that letters and pack- 
 ages had been sent by the captains of the merchant vessels, 
 who had not delivered them. Doubtless the governor was, 
 however, negligent, for he was receiving no salary and all 
 his efforts to procure an adjustment of controversies that 
 might result in his collecting rents sufficient to pay salaries 
 had been defeated by the non-action of the home government^ 
 At length, in 1748, the Assembly having passed the cur- 
 rency bill with his concurrence, the next year they passed 
 two others that afforded him great satisfaction /* one pro- 
 viding for a codification of the laws and the other to prepare - 
 a rent roll, requiring that all grants and deeds should be 
 recorded for that purpose. The northern counties were 
 opposed to all of these measures. Trading to Virginia, they 
 naturally wanted a currency of equal value with the Virginia 
 currency, and were opposed to any depreciation of North 
 Carolina money ; and being now in Granville’s territory, their 
 pecuniary interest was no longer identified with that of 
 the southern counties. Quite an uproar was raised in the 
 province in 1749, and the governor in his address to the 
 Assembly, now composed exclusively of southern members, 
 sought to strengthen them in their position and prevent them 
 from vielding to the clamor of their former associates of 
 the Albemarle section. “Go on, therefore, gentlemen,” he 
 said, “and continue in the same good cause you have begun. 
 
A 
 
 COLL ECTION 
 
 O F 
 
 All the P U B L I C 
 
 ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, 
 
 O F 
 
 The PROVINCE of 
 
 NO R TH- CAROL IN A.- 
 
 Now in FORCE and USE. 
 
 Together with the TITLES of all fuch LAWS a* arc Obfolete, Ex* 
 pir’d, or Repeal’d. 
 
 And alfo, an exadt TABLE of the Titles of the ACTS in Force. 
 
 Revised by Comviijjionert appointed by an Adi of the GENERAL AS- 
 SEMBLY ' of the faid Province, for that Purpo/e j , and Examined with the 
 Records , and Confirmed in full Ajfembly. 
 
 WWW 
 
 NEW BERN-. Printed by James Davis, M,DCC,LI. 
 
 Facsimile Title Page of the first printed North Carolina Revisal, reduced 
 
JAMES DAVIS , PRINTER 
 
 273 
 
 Nothing adds a greater lustre to virtuous and public-spirited 
 action than a steady, undaunted perseverance. Let no vain, 
 clamorous boasting, no monstrous calumnies and forgeries, 
 industriously spread among ignorant people, no petulant and 
 noisy behavior in private conversation, the constant attendant 
 of a bad and desperate cause, deter or dishearten you.” But 
 if the governor was firm, so were the leaders of the Albe- 
 marle people ; the northern counties were immovable ; still 
 the Assembly continued its sessions without regard to the 
 vacant seats in the hall, and session after session it passed 
 acts of public importance. 
 
 Early in 1749 it appointed an agent to represent the 
 province at London ; and it passed an act to encourage 
 James Davis to set up a printing office in the province, 
 and accordingly in that year the first printing press was 
 put in operation in North Carolina, and after that the 
 laws were printed at the end of the sessions when they 
 were passed and distributed among the counties. There 
 had been a school kept at Brunswick in 1745, and now the 
 legislature passed an act to establish a free school, of which 
 John Starkey was the author, but which, however, did not 
 become effectual ; and it also established new counties, and, 
 indeed, conducted legislation as if there were no opposition 
 to their enactments within the province. 
 
 Samuel Swann and Edward Moseley had been appointed 
 commissioners to revise the laws of the province, and the 
 revisal having been made, it was reported to the Assembly 
 on April 14, 1749. Subsequently this revisal was printed, and 
 was known from its sheepskin binding as “Yellow Jacket.” 
 
 It was in 1748 that we have a last view of the poor Pala- 
 tines as a distinct body. The land on which they had located 
 was originally granted to De Graffenried, who to obtain 
 needed supplies for his people had mortgaged it to Colonel 
 Pollock. In the next generation the mortgage was fore- 
 closed and the Palatines lost their homes. On their petition 
 to the king, Governor Johnston was directed in March, 1748, 
 to allot to them an equivalent in lands elsewhere, and to 
 exempt them from any rent for ten years. Two years later 
 Governor Johnston gave them lands in what are now Craven, 
 Jones, Onslow, and Duplin counties, where their descendants 
 
 1749 
 
 First 
 
 printing 
 
 press 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 980 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 990 
 
 4 Yellow 
 Jacket ” 
 
 Palatines 
 
274 
 
 JOHNSTON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 1750 
 
 Wreck of 
 
 Spanish 
 
 fleet 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 1152-1225 
 
 are still to be found — many of their names, however, having 
 in the passage of time been anglicized, as has also been the 
 case with the Germans of the interior. 
 
 About two years after the attack on Brunswick, in a great 
 storm on August 18, 1750, five vessels of the Spanish mer- 
 cantile fleet were cast ashore on the coast ; one was lost at 
 Currituck Inlet, one was sunk at Cape Hatteras, one was 
 beached at Ocracoke, one at Drum Head Inlet and one 
 near Topsail. The cargoes were all valuable, that of the 
 vessel wrecked at Ocracoke being worth a million dollars. 
 Its commander, Don Bonilla, made no application for aid, 
 but for some weeks was carrying on futile negotiations with 
 the neighboring bankers for small vessels to carry off his 
 cargo. ("Eventually, however, Governor Johnston sent 
 Colonel fnnes there to give security and protection to the 
 shipwrecked mariners and the valuable merchandise. On 
 arrival he found that the Spanish captain had loaded his 
 silver on two small sloops, one of which slipped away, carry- 
 ing off a hundred chests of silver, but the other Colonel 
 Innes was able to secure, and eventually the property was 
 returned to its owners’. 
 
 The contest between the counties 
 
 It was long before the Crown officers took action in the 
 matter in dispute between the old and the new counties ; 
 but eventually they directed depositions to be taken touching 
 the facts underlying the respective contentions. On the 
 part of the governor and new counties it was asserted that 
 the right of the old counties to five representatives was 
 founded on the biennial act, which had been repealed bv 
 the king. On the other hand, the old counties traced back 
 the privilege to the Fundamental Constitutions, under which 
 Albemarle was divided into four precincts, each allowed 
 five representatives ; and although it was admitted that the 
 Fundamental Constitutions had long ceased to be operative, 
 yet it was claimed that rights under it had been sanctioned 
 by usage. Wyriott Ormond and Thomas Barker were 
 appointed the agents to manage the affair, and they con- 
 ducted it with great skill, while all the other leaders and 
 
THE UNARMED REBELLION 
 
 275 
 
 public men of the northern counties zealously co-operated 
 with them. 
 
 Yet the southern counties were also active, and when the 
 Assembly met in March, 1752, holding its eleventh session, 
 there were high hopes that these differences would be 
 speedily determined conformably to the wishes of the 
 governor. These expectations, however, were not realized, 
 and the evil conditions continued to prevail. How evil they 
 were may be gathered from the testimony of Bishop Spangen- 
 berg. “In the older counties,” wrote the bishop from Eden- 
 ton in September, 1752, ‘‘there is perfect anarchy. As a 
 result, crimes are frequently occurring, such as murder and 
 robbery. The criminals cannot be brought to justice. The 
 citizens do not appear as jurors, and if court is held to decide 
 such criminal matters no one is present. If any one is im- 
 prisoned the prison is broken open and no justice is admin- 
 istered. In short, such matters are decided by blows. Still 
 the county courts are held regularly, and what belongs to 
 their jurisdiction receives the customary attention.” The 
 condition, however, was not altogether bad, for while the 
 people would not recognize the new courts organized under 
 laws, passed since they were denied representation, yet they 
 maintained in full vigor the old county courts held under 
 the long established laws of the province. Local govern- 
 ment was thus maintained despite the unarmed rebellion and 
 the apparent anarchy and confusion, and the progress and 
 development of the province was not materially interrupted. 
 
 But Governor Johnston did not live to see the end of the 
 controversy. O11 July 17, 1752, death terminated his long 
 and stormy administration. Save the era of good-will, 
 ushered in by the passage of the currency act of 1736, which 
 was disallowed by the king, there were always conten- 
 tions that disturbed the province while he was governor. 
 Many of these sprang from his own action. Ardently desir- 
 ing to promote the welfare of the inhabitants, he was anxious 
 to establish a permanent capital, to have the laws codified 
 and courts provided for, while the payment of his salary 
 depended on the collections of rents and the preparation 
 of a rent-roll. In seeking to accomplish these purposes he 
 resorted to management and methods that resulted in the 
 
 ’ 75 2 
 
 Cessation of 
 courts 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 1311 
 
 The end of 
 Johnston’s 
 administra- 
 tion 
 
276 
 
 ^752 
 
 Population 
 
 increases 
 
 JOHNSTON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 unarmed rebellion and the great confusion that prevailed 
 in the northern counties. Still he left the province much 
 more populous than when he arrived. Precincts were 
 converted into counties, court-houses built, the southern 
 boundary in part established, and the vexed matter of rents 
 and the currency question settled ; and the laws were codi- 
 fied, a better court system inaugurated, and considerable 
 advances made in government. / 
 
 During his administration fm 1748, the office of treasurer 
 of the northern counties was created, and Thomas Barker 
 was appointed to it, and Edward Moseley was appointed 
 treasurer of the southern counties. On Moseley’s death, 
 Eleazar Allen succeeded him, and when Allen died, in 1750, 
 a controversy arose over the exclusive right of the lower 
 house to designate the treasurers. After some unavailing 
 contention the upper house concurred in the appointment of 
 John Starkey. By an act of 1754 Barker and Starkey were 
 again appointed, but whenever a new appointment was to be 
 made the upper house asserted a right to participate in the 
 election, always, however, in the end relinquishing its pre- 
 tension and concurring in the appointment made by the lower 
 house. The period of Johnston’s administration is, more- 
 over, remarkable for the rapid settlement of the western part 
 of the province. 
 
 The growth of the west 
 
 While Virginians continued to cross the line into the upper 
 portions of Granville County, the more remote interior came 
 to be occupied by an influx of unexpected settlers. The north 
 of Ireland had in Charles I’s time been settled by Scotch 
 Presbyterians, who were now removing in large numbers 
 to the New World. Some came to Charleston, and pushed 
 into the up-country from that point, but still greater num- 
 bers landed at Philadelphia, and having made some settle- 
 ments in Pennsylvania, turned southward, and by 1739 
 reached the Valley of Virginia. Others pressed still further 
 to the south, and by 1745 made settlements in that well- 
 watered district between the Catawba and the Yadkin, which 
 has been called a veritable Mesopotamia. These were soon 
 followed by another stream of immigrants known as the 
 
IMMIGRANTS 
 
 2 77 
 
 Pennsylvania Dutch — Germans who had previously located 
 in Pennsylvania.* These settlers made "the great wagon 
 road from the Yadkin River through Virginia to Philadel- 
 phia, distant four hundred and thirty-five miles,” of which a 
 map is preserved in the Library of Congress. It ran “through 
 Lancaster and York to Winchester, thence up the Shenan- 
 doah Valley, crossing the Fluvanna River at Looney’s Ferry; 
 thence to Staunton River and down the river through the 
 Blue Ridge, thence southward crossing the Dan River below 
 the mouth of Mayo,” and on near Salem to the mouth 
 of Reedy Creek. Other settlers from Virginia and the 
 north came farther east, by the old Red House in Cas- 
 well County, and then followed the Indian trail across the 
 Haw to Trading Ford, near Salisbury. In 1746 Mat- 
 thew Rowan was in the western region, and estimated 
 that there were not above one hundred fighting men 
 in the entire section between Virginia and South Carolina. 
 Seven years later he thought that there were then thirty 
 times as many, and said their numbers were increasing 
 daily. These immigrants, coming in bodies, settled in 
 neighborhoods to themselves, forming respectively German 
 and Irish communities, scattered here and there throughout 
 the wilderness, and maintaining their customs and manners 
 as well as speech and characteristics, and largely transmitting 
 them to their posterity. 
 
 Similarly, Quakers from Virginia and Pennsylvania in 
 1750, or earlier, located at Cane Creek and at New Garden; 
 and from time to time their numbers were increased by ac- 
 cessions until the Society of Friends gave a particular cast 
 to the inhabitants of that section. 
 
 The territory north of Granville’s line being withdrawn 
 from the king’s domain, and about sixteen hundred square 
 miles between the Catawba and the Uwharrie having been set 
 aside for McCulloh, and the line dividing the province from 
 South Carolina not having been run beyond the Peedee, the 
 
 1752 
 
 The 
 
 Germans 
 and the 
 Scotch- Irish 
 C. R., IV, 
 
 xxi 
 
 C. R., V, 24 
 
 Weeks’s 
 Southern 
 Quakers 
 and Slavery, 
 102-105 
 
 Orange 
 
 County 
 
 1752 
 
 *Pennsylvania was dominated by the Quakers, who lived chiefly 
 in the eastern part of that province, and would make no prepara- 
 tions for defence against the Indians. When the Indians became 
 hostile, through the influence of the French, the settlers on the 
 frontier, getting no protection from the Quaker government, sought 
 more secure homes in western Carolina. 
 
278 
 
 JOHNSTON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1734-52 
 
 1752 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 1348 
 
 Explora- 
 tions by 
 Spangen- 
 berg, x 75 2 
 
 C. R.. IV, 
 
 1 312 et seg. 
 
 Owen 
 
 administrative officers paid but slight attention to these 
 interior settlements that were growing so rapidly, almost 
 without their knowledge and entirely independently of their 
 influence. Still the extension of population westward from 
 the seacoast counties was realized, and by 1752 the upper 
 parts of Bladen, Johnston, and Granville becoming well popu- 
 lated, a new county, called Orange, was erected, beginning 
 at the Virginia line, near Hyco Creek, running south to 
 where Granville’s line crosses the Cape Fear, and then west 
 with Granville’s line to the Anson line, and with the Anson 
 line north to Virginia. 
 
 In the fall and winter of that year, 1752, Bishop Spangen- 
 berg made an extensive journey throughout the western 
 region to locate one hundred thousand acres of land pur- 
 chased from Lord Granville for the Moravians. Setting out 
 from Edenton in September, on November 12th he camped 
 on the Catawba near what he called the “Indian Pass.” The 
 nearest settlement was that of Jonathan Weiss, or Perrot, a 
 hunter, twenty miles distant. He found many hunters about 
 there who lived like Indians, and whose purpose was to 
 secure skins and furs for sale. A week later the bishop was 
 near Quaker Meadows, about two miles from the site of the 
 present town of Morganton. Here he thought himself fifty 
 miles beyond the settlements. The whole woods were full 
 of Cherokee Indians pursuing game. Higher up the Middle 
 Little River he found the remains of an Indian fort, where 
 apparently the Indians had lived some fifty years earlier, and 
 other indications of Indians having inhabited that region 
 were met with later. It was in that vicinity that Lederer 
 stopped in his explorations, 1670, and Dr. Brickell found 
 Indians there in 1731. 
 
 Entering the mountains by mistake, on December 3d the 
 bishop reached a branch of New River at an old Indian field, 
 and followed that river to within fifteen miles of the Virginia 
 line. Then turning southward, he reached the head waters 
 of the Yadkin, and coursing down a very rapid stream, 
 eventually got out of the Blue Ridge Mountains and returned 
 to the Yadkin, where he found a Welshman, Owen, who had 
 settled on that stream the preceding spring. This was four 
 miles above an old Indian settlement, known as Mulberry 
 
THE MORAVIANS 
 
 2/9 
 
 Fields, not far from Wilkesboro. But except Owen’s, the 
 bishop understood there was no other habitation within sixty 
 miles. Later the Moravians found seventy-three thousand 
 acres in one body, one hundred and fifty miles from a land- 
 ing on the Cape Fear and three hundred and fifty miles from 
 Edenton, and there they made their settlement. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 Dobbs’s Administration — 1754-65 
 
 Dobbs’s visit to Point Lookout. — President Rowan. — County of 
 Rowan. — Old style abolished. — The French claim. — Christopher Gist. 
 — The French invasion. — Innes’s regiment. — Innes commander-in- 
 chief. — Decision of vexed questions.- — Dobbs appointed governor- 
 instructions to Governor Dobbs. — The constitution reformed. — 
 Dobbs reaches New Bern. — The growth of the province. — -The Indian 
 inhabitants.— The Croatans. — The old counties elect their five mem- 
 bers. — The new Assembly.— Tower Hill. — The French and Indian 
 War. — The frontier settlements. — Fort Dobbs. — The first news- 
 paper. — North Carolina troops in the war. — Major Hugh Waddell. 
 — Fort Duquesne taken.— McCulloh’s grant. — Internal matters. — 
 Dobbs County. — The governor arbitrary. — The king’s bounty. — 
 Causes of difference. — The house outwitted. — The Enfield riots. — 
 The Assembly protests. — The governor not sustained. — The court law 
 annulled. — No courts held. — A new Assembly. — The Assembly reso- 
 lute. — The secret session. — The governor makes terms. — Courts re- 
 established. — The Cherokee war. — The western counties desolated. — 
 Fort Dobbs attacked. — Bethabara threatened. — Walnut Cove ^sur- 
 rounded. — Conditions more peaceful. — King George III. — Some 
 differences reconciled. — At the end of the war. — The council declares 
 its patriotism. — Population. — The Indians. — Abortive efforts for free 
 schools. — The courts. — Religious conditions. — Republicanism rife. — 
 British views with reference to America. — The right to tax claimed. 
 — The Assembly of 1764. — The Weekly Post Boy at Wilmington. — 
 Tryon appointed to relieve Dobbs. — The public agitated. — The firm 
 stand of the Assembly— Claims exclusive privilege of imposing taxes. 
 — The Assembly concurs with Massachusetts. 
 
 Extracts from Governor Dobbs to the Board of Trade 
 
 DOBBS’S VISIT TO POINT LOOKOUT 
 
 I set out from New Bern April 9, 1755, to view the River Neuse, 
 and proceeded up it near one hundred miles to the falls to see 
 what proper situations were upon that river for the seat of govern- 
 ment, as being the most central and convenient for the whole 
 province. The most convenient place is at Stringer’s Ferry, on the 
 north side of the river, about four hundred yards from it, upon a 
 gentle rising ground near forty feet higher than the river. It is 
 about forty-two miles by land from New Bern to it. 
 
 I arrived here [Portsmouth Harbor] last night from Edenton 
 by water in a sloop. We passed through Albemarle Sound, Roanoke 
 
DOBBS VISITS POINT LOOKOUT 281 
 
 or Croatan, and Pamlico Sounds, and so over the swash to Occa- J 755 
 
 cock Island ; and from thence to this road near Core Banks, where 
 I summoned the commissioners to meet me to fix upon a place to 
 erect a fort or battery to protect the ships in the harbor, out of 
 which they were taken by privateers last war. The storms, they 
 tell me. for some years past have made vast havoc among these sandy 
 islands. The opening of Occacock Inlet, betwixt this and that inlet, 
 is enlarged from two to four miles. Beacon Island, which lays 
 betwixt them, within the entrance, is one-half washed away, and 
 become only a dry sand at low water. ... A town is laid out 
 called Portsmouth, where the merchants propose to erect warehouses 
 to lodge their goods in and load all their goods in large ships here 
 by lighters from the several towns of Edenton, Bathtown and New 
 Bern. The company sailed hence to Virginia about three weeks 
 ago. We hope they are now near their rendezvous. I proceed from 
 this to view the harbor at Cape Lookout and Topsail Inlet. . . . 
 
 Of Cape Lookout, he says, I have gone up in a canoe within Core 
 Sound, and no vessel being in the harbor, I had no boat to sound it ; 
 but all agreed to the depth laid down, and that the French and 
 Spanish privateers had known it of late years, brought in their 
 prizes there, wooded, watered and heaved down their vessels, and 
 sent ashore and killed the cattle and furnished themselves with fresh 
 provisions and excellent fish. . . . This I fixed upon as the only 
 proper place to build a fort upon, but as this harbor is the best, 
 although small, of any harbor from Boston to Georgia, and may be 
 of the utmost consequence to the trade and navigation of England, 
 where all our cruisers can ride in safety, as in a mill pond, and 
 warp out at any time in an hour; where they can wood, water and 
 clean, and be at sea in a few hours; where the whale fishers of the 
 northward have a considerable fishery from Christmas to April, when 
 the whales return to the northward ; and where our trading ships 
 may have always a safe harbor upon easterly storms ; and the 
 whole bay without, a safe road against all but southwesterly winds, 
 when they can run into the harbor ; and since in time of war it has 
 been and will be a place of safety for French and Spanish privateers, 
 to infest the whole coast, I think it should be made a station for our 
 guardships or cruisers. 
 
 Rowan’s administration 
 
 On the death of Governor Johnston, Nathaniel Rice,* who 
 was the ranking councillor, took the oaths of office as presi- 
 
 *Rice was secretary of the province, and Henry McCulloh was 
 appointed to succeed him in that office. 
 
282 
 
 DOBBS’S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 1753 
 
 C. R., V, 38 
 
 Rowan 
 County 
 C. R., V, 76 
 
 New Style 
 
 dent, but he himself did not long survive his accession to this 
 dignity. He expired in the following January, Matthew 
 Rowan succeeding him in the administration. Rowan was 
 one of Burrington’s councillors, and had for twenty years 
 been of the council and was highly esteemed in the province. 
 
 The old Assembly, which had now dwindled away to about 
 sixteen members, continued to meet, one session being held 
 in the spring of 1753, when, among other acts, it passed one 
 recognizing the large immigration to the western section, 
 establishing the county of Rowan, composed of that part of 
 Anson which lay north of Granville’s line. This Assembly 
 held its first session in February, 1747; but at that time the 
 year began on March 25th, so that the record in its journal 
 states that it was begun in February, 1746. By a British 
 statute passed in 1750 “the old style” was abolished, and the 
 year thereafter was to commence on January 1st; and two 
 years later eleven days, being those from September 3d to 
 the 13th, inclusive, were omitted from the reckoning in order 
 to readjust and reform the calendar.* 
 
 The French invasion 
 
 Hardly had President Rowan been qualified before matters 
 of great importance claimed his attention. In view of prob- 
 able encroachments by the French in the interior, the king 
 had directed the governors of the American colonies to be 
 prepared for such an emergency. In possession of Louisiana 
 and of Canada, the French claimed the whole intervening 
 territory, and upon their first movement toward taking pos- 
 session along the western slope of the Alleghanies, the Ohio 
 Company in 1750 sent to North Carolina for Christopher 
 Gist, then at his home on the banks of the Yadkin, where it 
 approaches the Virginia line, and employed him to visit the 
 Ohio region and make friends of the Indians. Crossing the 
 mountains on the head waters of the Potomac, he went far 
 into the Indian country, breaking the hold of the French 
 upon the tribes there, and the next year he went again to the 
 same region and established the first English settlement 
 
 *The shortest day in the year had fallen on December iolh ; now 
 by this rectification of the calendar it became December 21st. 
 March 25th was, centuries earlier, the date of the vernal equinox, 
 and hence was originally made the beginning of the new year. 
 
GIST VISITS THE OHIO 
 
 283 
 
 across the mountains. Governor Dinwiddie now proposed 
 an embassy to the lakes, and a party was formed consisting 
 of George Washington, an interpreter, two Indian guides, 
 and Gist. On the return, Washington, taking Gist as his sole 
 companion, separated himself from the others and success- 
 fully completed the journey that made him famous, even at 
 that early age. But the French were not to be deterred from 
 their purpose, and speedily invaded western Virginia. To 
 meet them, Governor Dinwiddie proceeded to organize an 
 army, and North Carolina was called on to assist. In March 
 the Assembly voted an aid to the king of £40,000, of which 
 £12,000 was for the purpose of organizing a regiment of 
 seven hundred and fifty men for service in Virginia ; several 
 thousand for the construction of forts, and £6,000 for 
 Starkey's public school ; and under this act £22,000 of paper 
 money was struck off. At the moment it was thought that 
 Virginia would provide the supplies for these troops, but that 
 province would not furnish the needed provisions, so in view 
 of the larger expense than was at first contemplated the 
 number of men to be enrolled was reduced to two hundred 
 and fifty. President Rowan appointed Innes to the command 
 of the regiment ; and the other officers were Caleb Granger, 
 lieutenant-colonel; Robert Rowan, major; and captains 
 Thomas Arbuthnot, Edward Vail, Alexander Woodrow, 
 Hugh Waddell, Thomas McManus, and Moses John DeRos- 
 set. At that early period North Carolina learned the lesson 
 that war is largely a question of finance. The northern 
 counties would not circulate the new currency, as they did 
 not recognize the legality of the Assembly, nor would they 
 pay the taxes laid to meet these bills. This currency would 
 not, therefore, pass in Virginia; so without specie, and our 
 currency being at a great discount abroad, in order to supply 
 these troops the Carolinians drove beef cattle and hogs to 
 Virginia, where they had to be sold at a sacrifice. 
 
 Governor Dinwiddie, knowing the capabilities of Colonel 
 Innes, on June 3d tendered him the appointment of com- 
 mander-in-chief of all the forces to be employed against the 
 French. At that time Colonel Innes was in North Carolina 
 superintending the departure of his regiment, but he hastened 
 to the iront, and two days after the Great Meadows disaster 
 
 '754 
 
 C. R-, V, 392 
 
 Innes’ 
 
 regiment 
 
 *754 
 
 G. R., V, 313 
 
 C. R., V, 125 
 Innes 
 
 commander- 
 
 in-chief 
 
284 
 
 DOBBS'S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 175 I 
 
 C. R., V, 
 130-133 
 
 Decision of 
 the vexed 
 question 
 
 C. R., IV, 
 73 
 
 C. R., V, 8t, 
 108, 1 1 3-116 
 
 reached Winchester, and hurrying on to Wills Creek, took 
 formal command. After that reverse it appeared to Gov- 
 ernor Dinwiddie that the available force was not sufficient 
 to attack the French, who had fifteen hundred men, while 
 Innes had but seven hundred and fifty ; and because it was 
 not thought well to advance for the want of provisions, 
 Governor Dinwiddie suggested that the troops be scattered, 
 some being sent to Alexandria and some stationed at Win- 
 chester. The supplies for the North Carolina troops becom- 
 ing exhausted, and Virginia being unwilling to furnish any, 
 on August nth, at Winchester, the North Carolina regiment 
 was disbanded and sent home, leaving for defence only about 
 one hundred and fifty troops, which Virginia had at the front. 
 Colonel Innes remained in command until October, 1754, 
 when he was superseded by Governor Sharpe, of Maryland, 
 who had been particularly designated by the king to be the 
 commander-in-chief ; but although superseded, Innes con- 
 tinued in service as camp master general, completed the con- 
 struction of Fort Cumberland, made treaties with the Indians, 
 and organized the forces. 
 
 While these matters were in progress North Carolina 
 affairs had received attention in London. L T pon being in- 
 formed of the death of Governor Johnston, the king, on 
 January 25, 1753, appointed Arthur Dobbs to succeed him. 
 
 Governor Dobbs had apparently been interested in North 
 Carolina matters as early as 1733, and in 1735 had a grant of 
 twelve thousand five hundred acres on Deep River and one 
 for sixty thousand acres on Black River, in New Hanover 
 Precinct. He also had a grant for a large territory between 
 Salisbury and the Catawba Indians, and on these tracts in 
 1757 there were some seven hundred inhabitants. His inter- 
 est in North Carolina was so active that in 1749 he had 
 co-operated in the movement to have Johnston removed. 
 
 Following his appointment, the Board of Trade being 
 directed to prepare instructions, were confronted with the 
 various undecided questions relating to the province that 
 had been so long before them, and which they now took steps 
 to have determined. 
 
 The whole constitution and all the laws of the province 
 were at their instance subjected to a very close examination. 
 

 l. St. Paul’s Church, Edenton 
 2. Arthur Dobbs 3. Hugh Waddell 
 
 4. Court House, Edenton 
 
* 
 
 
 
 
 
 
OPINIONS OF LAIV OFFICERS 
 
 285 
 
 The law officers thought that the usage which had prevailed, 
 by which the old counties had five representatives, was not 
 shown to be illegal ; but they considered that fifteen might 
 properly be a quorum of the Assembly. In their opinion the 
 king’s prerogative extended to the establishment of counties 
 and the incorporation of towns, and fixing their right of 
 representation, and they held that those matters were not 
 within the cognizance of the legislature. 
 
 Since fifteen was held a quorum, the Assembly of 1747, 
 which was still in existence, was a legal body, and all its 
 acts were valid until repealed. But the act depriving the 
 northern counties of their five members, it was considered, 
 had been passed by management, precipitation and surprise, 
 and that, together with the act fixing the seat of government 
 and establishing the circuit court was for that reason declared 
 inoperative. In conformity with the recommendation of the 
 law officers, instructions to Governor Dobbs were drawn, di- 
 recting the repeal of all laws establishing counties, and order- 
 ing him to issue charters for counties and for towns and to 
 fix their representation in the Assembly ; and also to repeal 
 all laws establishing places for holding the courts and for a 
 seat of government. Likewise the acts relating to quit rents 
 were repealed, and the rents were again declared to be pay- 
 able only in money ; and also many other laws that had long 
 been in use in the province were now annulled by the king. 
 Indeed, the whole constitution was reformed and the 
 Assembly was shorn of many of the powers it had exercised. 
 Still, the exclusive right to levy taxes remained to that body, 
 and the power now claimed by the Crown to fix the seat 
 of government and establish courts could avail but little if 
 the Assembly would not provide the means to make it effec- 
 tive. Since the acts establishing counties and allowing repre- 
 sentation were annulled and no longer in force, the governor 
 was directed to issue his writ for the election of an Assembly 
 to consist of sixty members, each county having the par- 
 ticular representation which the Crown had fixed and allowed 
 it, being, however, exactly the same as before the act of 1747, 
 except that some counties and towns were overlooked and 
 inadvertently omitted. 
 
 About the end of July, 1754, Governor Dobbs sailed from 
 
 1754 
 
 C. R.,V, 81, 
 
 I08, II3-H6 
 
 Instructions 
 to Governor 
 Dobbs 
 C. R., V. 
 
 1107 
 
286 
 
 DOBBS'S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 *754 England, and reached Virginia after a voyage of ten weeks. 
 
 For more than a month he was engaged in arranging with 
 Governor Dinwiddie and Governor Sharpe of Maryland the 
 details of a plan of campaign against the French, and he 
 reached New Bern only at the close of October. Immedi- 
 ately on arriving he proceeded to make himself acquainted 
 with the affairs of the province, and called for a militia 
 CR., v, 161 return. As indicating the extension of population at that 
 
 Population . . 0 A A 
 
 time, Bertie reported 720 men for military duty; Northamp- 
 ton, 737 men, which was thought to be 200 short ; Edge- 
 combe, 1317; Granville, 734; Orange, 490; Anson, 790; and 
 Rowan, 996. At Wilmington, Governor Dobbs found 
 seventy families and at Brunswick twenty. There were six- 
 teen vessels in the Cape Fear River, while it was estimated 
 c. R.,v, 158 that one hundred came in annually. Eighteen feet of water 
 was reported at the bar. At Wilmington a good town house 
 had been built, and a brick church stood ready for the roof ; 
 while at Brunswick the church, also of brick, was not quite 
 so far advanced. Forts had been begun below Brunswick, 
 at Ocracoke and at Beaufort. 
 
 The Indian war being in progress,* particular inquiries 
 were made as to the location of Indians in North Carolina. 
 In Bertie County there were reported a hundred warriors 
 of the Tuscaroras and two hundred women and children. 
 In Chowan, two men and three women and two children. In 
 Granville County there were the Saponas, with fourteen men 
 and fourteen women. The Meherrins had seven or eight 
 fighting men in Northampton. The report concludes : "These 
 are all the Indians except about eight or ten Mattamuskeet 
 Indians, and as many on the islands or banks, a total of 
 twenty.” The reports of the colonel of Bladen County and 
 of Captain William Davis, who had a troop of light horse, both 
 said “no Indians” in that county. Colonel Rutherford of that 
 county, who was also the receiver-general, added this mem- 
 orandum : "Drowning Creek, on the head of Little Peedee, 
 fifty families, a mixed crew, a lawless people, possess the 
 
 *At the first session of the general court for the southern counties, 
 including Rowan, after the arrival of Governor Dobbs, the grand 
 jury, in an address to him, stated that seventeen persons had been 
 murdered and ten carried off by the Indian enemy. 
 
 The Indian 
 inhabitants 
 
 C. R., V, 
 161, 321 
 
REPORTS ON INDIAN INHABITANTS 
 
 287 
 
 lands without patent or paying quit rents ; shot a surveyor for 
 coming to view vacant lands, being enclosed in great swamps. 
 Quakers to attend musters or pay as in the northern 
 counties.” These reports show that there were no Indians 
 there, but that some fifty families of mixed blood had settled 
 themselves on Drowning Creek. These doubtless were the 
 same people who in more recent times have been called Croa- 
 tan Indians. Their origin is obscure, but probably they came 
 up from South Carolina — ‘‘a mixed crew.” Quakers had 
 settled at Carver’s 'Creek as early as 1740. 
 
 Governor Dobbs on his arrival issued a proclamation dis- 
 solving the Assembly of 1747, and calling for the election 
 of new members. His writs were directed to all the counties 
 conformably to his instructions, and five members were once 
 more returned from the northern counties. Thus the end 
 had come of the ‘‘Long Assembly,” and the northern counties 
 rejoiced in their right to send five representatives, while the 
 new counties had but two. 
 
 When the new Assembly convened, in December, 1754, the 
 animosities that had so long existed between the sections 
 had not subsided, and for speaker there was a tie vote, the 
 candidates being Sam Swann, the speaker of the last 
 Assembly, and John Campbell, who respectively represented 
 the warring factions. Some of the northern members had 
 not then come in, while Swann had no hope of any consider- 
 able accessions to his supporters, and so, realizing his defeat, 
 he withdrew from the contest and Campbell was unanimously 
 chosen. In their reply to the governor’s address the Assembly 
 said : “We shall endeavor to obliterate the remembrance 
 of our former contests and the ill consequences that 
 attended them;” and in an address to his Majesty they re- 
 turned their sincere thanks that he had been pleased “to 
 examine the constitution of the province and to repeal several 
 laws repugnant thereto, whereby the people, by your 
 Majesty’s favor, are restored to their ancient rights and priv- 
 ileges, and the contests which subsisted among us are happily 
 terminated.” 
 
 After Governor Burrington’s time the governors had kept 
 their instructions private, except such as were particularly 
 intended to be made public. Governor Dobbs now laid before 
 
 1754 
 
 The 
 
 Croatans 
 
 The 
 
 unarmed 
 
 rebellion 
 
 successful 
 
 C. R., V t i54 
 
 Campbell 
 
 speaker 
 
 C. R., V, 
 2i 3, 249, 254 
 
288 
 
 DOBBS’S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 >754 
 
 Court law 
 
 Counties and 
 towns re- 
 established 
 
 C. R., V, 406 
 
 C. R., V, 
 
 34 2 
 
 Tower Hill 
 as site for 
 capitol 
 
 the Assembly his instructions claiming for the king the right 
 to select a place for the seat of government and to designate 
 the places at which courts should be held. Although this 
 was in derogation of the long-established power of the legis- 
 lature, the Assembly without making any point of it con- 
 formed its action to the king’s command, and when consider- 
 ing a bill establishing supreme courts of justice, requested 
 the governor to designate the several places where he would 
 appoint the courts to be held. The governor designated 
 New Bern and Edenton for the counties near those towns; 
 Enfield for Northampton, Edgecombe and Granville ; Salis- 
 bury for Rowan, Orange and Anson, and Wilmington for the 
 Cape Fear counties. Thus a new court law was passed 
 in 1754- 
 
 In regard to the repeal of the acts establishing counties, 
 the Assembly requested the governor to solicit the king not 
 to repeal them because of the many inconveniences that 
 would ensue, and further, that he would allow the Assembly 
 to continue to establish new counties, reserving to the king 
 the power of granting charters to towns, establishing fairs 
 and appointing places for holding courts of justice. Agree- 
 ably to this request, the governor recommended to the Board 
 of Trade that the desire of the Assembly should be complied 
 with, and in June, 1755, additional instructions were given, 
 allowing the Assembly to re-enact all laws establishing 
 counties and towns, provided that they should contain no 
 clause allowing representation, as that was to be the exclusive 
 right of the king. 
 
 For the seat of government the governor selected a site 
 at Tower Hill, near Stringer’s Ferry, on the Neuse, but he 
 had been instructed not to definitely locate it except after 
 consultation with the Assembly. In 1756 he brought that 
 site to the attention of the legislature, and a committee was 
 appointed to examine and report upon it, which they did 
 favorably. 
 
 Governor Dobbs also communicated to the Assembly a 
 proposition from George Vaughan, of Lisbon, Ireland, who 
 had called his nephew, John Sampson, home from 
 Duplin County and arranged the details of a plan to trans- 
 port immigrants to that county, and had purchased a ship 
 
FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 
 
 289 
 
 for that purpose, and also to engage in trade, with a view 
 of creating a fund for the establishment of a seminary, with 
 the expectation that the Assembly would lay a tax on all the 
 negroes in the province to increase it ; but the Assembly did 
 not act upon the subject of the seminary. On the contrary, 
 the £ 6,000 then in hand to establish a public school was 
 diverted for purposes of defence. 
 
 The war had been conducted with but ill success, and now a 
 company of one hundred men was raised to serve at the 
 north for a year and ten months, and fifty men were enlisted 
 to defend the western part of the province. Of the former, 
 the governor’s son, Edward Brice Dobbs, an .officer of the 
 British army who had accompanied his father, was appointed 
 the captain, and that company joined the army in Virginia, 
 then under the command of General Braddock. General 
 Braddock was sent from England with several British regi- 
 ments and was invested with supreme command of military 
 affairs in the colonies. He led his forces into the mountains 
 near Fort Duquesne, where on July 9th he suffered a terrible 
 defeat, himself being killed. Gaptain Dobbs’s company was 
 fortunately not in this disastrous engagement, being with 
 Colonel Dunbar, at that time scouting in the woods. After 
 this defeat. Colonel Dunbar, who succeeded to the command, 
 precipitately withdrew to Philadelphia, leaving Colonel Innes 
 in command at Wills Creek, and the North Carolina com- 
 pany remained there with him on the frontier. However, 
 during the summer Colonel Innes, being very much dissatis- 
 fied with his situation and the management of affairs, re- 
 signed and returned home. 
 
 On our own western frontier some of the Indians had 
 become hostile, in one settlement having slain some fifteen 
 persons and carried off captive about an equal number. They 
 ranged at will through the frontier settlements and caused 
 much apprehension in the western districts. To arrest them, 
 Captain Waddell, with a company of frontiersmen, scouted 
 along the mountains. 
 
 In the summer of that year, 1755, Governor Dobbs visited 
 the western part of the province, passing through Salisbury, 
 which then consisted of seven or eight log houses and the 
 court-house. He viewed his extensive tract of land in that 
 
 '755 
 
 The French 
 and Indian 
 war 
 
 *755 
 
 The _ 
 frontier 
 
290 
 
 DOBBS'S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 •755 
 
 C. R., V, 
 355 , 356 . . 
 Dobbs visits 
 the West 
 
 C. R., V, 
 357 
 
 1753 
 
 Moravians 
 
 C. R., V, 
 1148 
 
 Clewell, 
 Hist, of 
 Wachovia 
 
 Weeks, Press 
 of North 
 Carolina in 
 Eighteenth 
 Century, 16 
 
 vicinity, lying on Rocky River and its branches, which had 
 been patented in 1746, and he found seventy-five families 
 located on it. He visited between thirty and forty of them, 
 each having from five to ten children, who went barefooted 
 and with a single garment in warm weather ; while no woman 
 wore more than two thin garments. They were Scotch-Irish 
 Presbyterians, who had settled together in order to have a 
 teacher of their own opinions and choice. Besides, there 
 were twenty-two families of Germans or Swiss, all industri- 
 ous. They raised horses, cows, hogs and sheep ; Indian corn, 
 wheat, barley, rye and oats ; made good butter and tolerable 
 cheese, and had made good success with indigo. Captain 
 Waddell was then on the frontier, and Governor Dobbs 
 selected an eminence with good springs on Third Creek for 
 a fort of refuge for the settlers, which was afterward begun 
 by the people and finished by direction of the Assembly. It 
 was named Fort Dobbs in his honor. The southern Indians, 
 however, remained faithful to the whites, and the troubles 
 at that time were soon quieted. 
 
 In November, 1753, the Moravians, coming by way of 
 Winchester and Saura Gap, made their first settlement on the 
 land Bishop Spangenberg had purchased on the Yadkin, 
 calling it Bethabara. The hostile Indians at the north now 
 drove many settlers from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, 
 where they located on Muddy Creek, South Fork, and neigh- 
 boring streams. Many also stopped at Bethabara. For pro- 
 tection against the Indians the Moravians enclosed their mill 
 and settlement with palisades, but they were not interfered 
 with. In 1758, many Cherokees and Catawbas, going north 
 to aid the English, passed through the Moravian settlement, 
 being well provided there with provisions and otherwise 
 kindly treated. It was during this period of war, when in- 
 formation of passing events was eagerly sought, that the 
 first newspaper was published in the province. Franklin, 
 the postmaster-general for the colonies, in the summer of 
 1755 appointed James Davis, the printer, postmaster at New 
 Bern ; and the following October the Assembly authorized 
 a post to be run every fifteen days between Suffolk and 
 Wilmington, Davis undertaking to send the messengers; and 
 he also conveyed at stated periods letters and packages to 
 

RSDAY, Oc i'o'JsicR 18, 1759. 
 
7 
 
 Facsimile of North Carolina Gazette, 1759. Exact Size of Original 
 
FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 
 
 291 
 
 everv county in the province. This opened the way for 
 Davis to issue a newspaper, and probably in December, 1755, 
 he began the publication of the North Carolina Gazette. The 
 Gazette continued to furnish its readers with “the freshest 
 advices, foreign and domestic,” at the price of sixteen 
 shillings per annum, for six years, when, perhaps because 
 unremunerative, the publication ceased. 
 
 At the third session of the Assembly, which met on Sep- 
 tember 30, 1756, Speaker Campbell was unable to attend 
 because of ill health, and Sam Swann was chosen speaker. 
 The necessity of maintaining a force in the field was now 
 thoroughly appreciated by the Assembly, and strenuous 
 efforts were made to co-operate with Governor Dobbs. 
 Tpooo were appropriated for the erection of the fort at the 
 west, and another company, under Captain Andrew Bailey, 
 was employed in that quarter. 
 
 In the spring of 1757 South Carolina was threatened by the 
 Indians on her frontier, and two-thirds of the militia of the 
 lower counties were ordered to be held in readiness to march 
 to the assistance of that province. To supplement the forces 
 in Virginia, especially in their scouting operations, bands 
 of Indians from the Meherrins and Tuscaroras, as well as the 
 Catawbas, were sent northward to join the army now under 
 the command of General Forbes. Captain Dobbs’s company, 
 as well as Captain Caleb Granger’s and Captain Arbuth- 
 not’s (with whom were Lieutenant Henry Johnston, Lieu- 
 tenant Ferguson and Ensign David Rogers), and also Cap- 
 tain McManus’s company (John Payne being one of the 
 lieutenants), after serving in Virginia, were formed into a 
 battalion and sent to New York under the command of Cap- 
 tain Dobbs, who was now promoted to be major. There 
 Captain Granger’s company served in the Crown Point cam- 
 paign. On the return of Lieutenant Payne, he was promoted 
 to be captain, and later he marched his company to South 
 Carolina. 
 
 In 1758 two other companies were raised, one for Fort 
 Johnston, under Captain James Moore, who also led his com- 
 pany to South Carolina ; and one for Fort Granville, on the 
 coast, under Captain Charles McNair. During that year 
 300 men were sent to join General Forbes ; 200 went by sea, 
 
 1756 
 
 C. R., V, 
 688, 717 
 
 F<-rt Dobbs 
 
 C. R., V, 
 xxv tt seq. 
 C. R., V, 
 
 967 
 
 Haywood, 
 Beginning 
 of Freema- 
 sonry in 
 North 
 Carolina, 4 
 
 Service at 
 the North 
 
 C. R., V, 
 
 967 
 
29 2 
 
 DOBBS'S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 1758 
 
 Waddell, 
 
 A Colonial 
 Officer, 61 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 384 
 
 Nov. 25, 
 1758 
 
 McCulloh’s 
 grants 
 C. R., V, 
 
 xxxiii, 1106 
 
 and 100, taken from the western frontier, passed up the 
 Valley of Virginia, and with these troops were a number of 
 Cherokee Indians, the whole battalion being under the com- 
 mand of Major Hugh Waddell, who had won great fame 
 for his courage and capacity. 
 
 William Pitt was now at the helm of affairs in England, 
 and was prosecuting the war with great vigor. The disasters 
 of the previous campaign were to be succeeded by strenuous 
 endeavors for victory. In Virginia, General Forbes pushed 
 forward toward Fort Duquesne ; but winter set in while 
 he was still forty miles from his destination. In that moun- 
 tainous wilderness, without information, and ill prepared for 
 a siege of the fort or to pass the winter in that desolate 
 region, the general was in such sore straits that he offered 
 a reward of ±50 to any one who would capture an Indian 
 from whom information could be obtained. Sergeant John 
 Rogers, of Waddell’s command, fortunately succeeded in 
 taking an Indian alive, and because of the information gained 
 from him the general, who was contemplating a retreat, dis- 
 carded that purpose, continued his advance, made a forced 
 march, and found that the enemy had on his approach aban- 
 doned their stronghold. Passing into the hands of the 
 English, Duquesne was at once named Fort Pitt, in honor 
 of the great war minister ; and the Indians came in and made 
 treaties of peace, which secured a cessation of hostilities 
 along that frontier. 
 
 During this period of the war and unrest the controversy 
 between Henry McCulloh and Granville, within whose terri- 
 tory some of the McCulloh grants had been located, was 
 brought to a conclusion by an agreement that McCulloh was 
 to become Granville’s tenant, and in lieu of all other rents he 
 was to pay an annual sum of £400 from 1757 until 1760, after 
 which date he was to pay four shillings for every hundred 
 acres of land retained by him, but he was to reconvey and 
 surrender to Granville all lands not then settled. As the 
 period for settling McCulloh’s grants in the king’s domain 
 was about to expire, in 1756 he petitioned that because of the 
 wars and difficulties he be allowed three years’ additional time, 
 and accordingly the time for settlement was extended for 
 him until 1760, when he was to surrender his grants, retain- 
 
THE ASSEMBLY AND THE GOVERNOR 
 
 293 
 
 ing only two hundred acres of land for each white person 
 settled by him in the province. 
 
 At first Governor Dobbs appears to have gotten on quite 
 well with the Assembly. The matter of quit rents was not so 
 interesting to the people as formerly, not only because half of 
 the province had been conveyed to Granville, but on the growth 
 and development of the colony, the thickening of population 
 and the general advancement in prosperity it was not so 
 essential that the rents should be paid in farm produce, and 
 the determination of the Crown that they should be paid in 
 money no longer met with serious resistance. But the 
 instructions of the Crown officers limiting the powers of 
 Assembly caused some dismay among the leaders both at the 
 north and at the south ; and there was evidently a spirit 
 among them to come together again. Indeed, neither side 
 could boast a complete triumph over the other, for the action 
 of the Assembly in 1747 fixing a quorum at fifteen and pro- 
 ceeding with legislation in the absence of a majority was 
 upheld, and while the two important acts which the northern 
 members protested against were annulled, that action was 
 not taken on their ground and their position was not sus- 
 tained ; and the subject-matters of those acts were taken 
 entirely from under the power of the Assembly and declared 
 to be within the prerogative of the Crown. Necessarily, 
 there were personal antagonisms which only time could heal. 
 The defeat of Swann at the opening of the new Assembly 
 was to have been expected, and his election as speaker at the 
 third session indicates that progress had been made in the 
 direction of restored fraternal relations. The general desire 
 to co-operate in measures of defence appealing to their 
 patriotism doubtless also conduced to healing the breaches. 
 
 At the session of November, 1758, the Assembly compli- 
 mented the governor by locating the capital at Tower Hill, 
 and by creating a new county, embracing the seat of govern- 
 ment, which was called Dobbs in his honor ; and it also laid 
 a tax to pay the salaries of the chief justice and attorney- 
 general. 
 
 But notwithstanding this disposition on the part of the 
 Assembly to be complaisant, there was a divergence between 
 the Assembly and the governor, who seems to have developed 
 
 1758 
 
 I nternal 
 affairs 
 
 Dobbs 
 County 
 S. R., XXIII 
 494, 495 
 
 The 
 
 governor 
 
 arbitrary 
 
294 
 
 DOBBS’S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 1758 
 
 The king’s 
 bounty 
 
 Causes of 
 difference 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 x ~3 
 
 C. R , V, 
 1087 
 
 The house 
 outwitted 
 
 C. R., VI, 3 
 
 an arbitrary and exacting spirit and would brook no oppo- 
 sition to his purposes. Old, self-willed and petulant, he 
 appears to have regarded himself as a ruler rather than as a 
 mere executive officer, and he sought to constrain rather than 
 to influence. 
 
 It was known that to reimburse the colonies for their war 
 expenditures the Crown proposed to allow £200,000 for dis- 
 tribution among all of them, and £50,000 was to be given 
 to the southern colonies exclusively. The control of that part 
 of these funds which would be allotted to North Carolina 
 now became a subject of difference between the Assembly 
 and the governor. The governor asserted his prerogative to 
 dispose of the money, while the Assembly claimed the right 
 to use it in their own discretion ; and also the right to appoint 
 an agent for the province and to select the committee to 
 correspond with him and give him directions. The governor 
 very emphatically denied all these claims. In the hill locating 
 the seat of government at Tower Hill no appropriation had 
 been made for the construction of the public buildings ; hut in 
 a second bill granting an aid to the king and providing 
 for the equipment of three companies to consist of one 
 hundred men each there were embodied provisions appropri- 
 ating out of the expected funds £4,500 for the erection of 
 the government houses, and also appointing James Aber- 
 cromby agent for the province, and designating Sam Swann, 
 Thomas Barker, John Starkey, George Moore and John Ashe 
 as a committee of correspondence. The governor objected 
 to this bill, as it was in conflict with his notions of the rights 
 of the Assembly, and determining to defeat it, he resorted 
 to what he called finesse. Going among his friends in the 
 council, he suggested to them not to oppose either of the 
 two bills and to let the objectionable aid bill go to the third 
 reading, excepting some trifling matters of amendment. 
 Thus a bill locating the seat of government was passed ; hut 
 when the aid bill came up the governor procured the council 
 to postpone it for some days, and in the meantime he pro- 
 rogued the Assembly. He himself described the result: 
 “Upon this disappointment the lower house were all in a 
 flame, the managers being greatly disappointed, and repre- 
 sented to me that there must be a dissolution unless the 
 
THE GOVERNOR vs. THE ASSEMBLY 
 
 295 
 
 upper house would resume the bill.” It ended, however, in 
 the house appointing Abercromby their own agent for two 
 years and appointing their own committee of correspondence, 
 and in their making an address to the Crown praying 
 that a part of the sum allowed North Carolina should be 
 laid out in purchasing glebes and establishing free schools in 
 each county. By the governor’s action the aid bill was 
 defeated, and no provision was made for raising troops for 
 defence at that time. Spring was not over, however, before 
 the need of more forces at the north resulted in pressing calls 
 on Governor Dobbs for additional troops, and he was driven 
 to the necessity of hastily summoning the Assembly to meet 
 at New Bern. The house convened on May 8 , 1759- an ^ P ro ~ 
 ceeded to pass an aid bill exactly similar to the one that the 
 governor had succeeded in defeating by his boasted finesse. 
 The upper house, however, amended it by striking out all 
 the sections not pertinent to the raising of troops, to which 
 the Assembly not agreeing, it was prorogued, and the session 
 ended without the adoption of any measure whatsoever. 
 Necessarily these causes of difference led to much irrita- 
 tion, which was emphasized by the governor’s non-action in 
 regard to disturbances in the interior of the province. 
 
 On January 24, 1759 , there were riots in Granville’s terri- 
 tory, and a number of citizens who were discontented at the 
 frauds practised by Granville’s agents and their entry takers 
 and surveyors forcibly took possession at night of the house 
 of Francis Corbin, the chief agent, and seized him and carried 
 him off some seventy miles, and held him in duress until 
 he gave a bond. And Robert Jones,* then attorney-general, 
 made affidavit that the rioters intended to silence him, or 
 “to pull deponent by the nose and also abuse the court,” and 
 unless they were suppressed “there would be no safety in the 
 counties in which they lived.” 
 
 Because of this lawlessness the Assembly addressed the 
 governor and pointed out that no steps had been taken to 
 punish the offenders and requested that the chief justice and 
 other justices and other officers should be required to exert 
 themselves and bring the guilty parties to punishment ; and 
 also requesting that if it should be necessary the regiments of 
 
 *The father of Willie and Allen Jones. 
 
 1759 
 
 C. R„ V, 
 1094 
 
 Dec., 1758 
 Free Schools 
 John Ashe’s 
 address 
 
 May, 1759 
 C. R., VI, 
 40 
 
 Tlie Enfield 
 riots 
 
 C. R., V, 
 vii 
 
 The 
 
 Assembly 
 
 protests 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 105, 106 
 
296 
 
 DOBBS'S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 1759 
 
 The 
 
 governor not 
 sustained 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 55 
 
 The court 
 law annulled 
 
 militia in the several counties might be called out to assist the 
 civil powers, cause obedience to the laws and restore peace 
 and order ; and the Assembly loudly complained that the gov- 
 ernor had taken no action in this matter, but, on the contrary, 
 had seemed to lend it his countenance by appointing men 
 engaged in the riots to be magistrates and to hold other posi- 
 tions under the government. 
 
 During the summer the Board of Trade at London re- 
 ceived from the governor his letter enclosing the rejected 
 aid bill, together with his reasons for not allowing it to pass, 
 which he put on the ground that the bill diminished his 
 Majesty’s prerogative. In their reply the Board said that 
 the proposed act did not appear to them to have that effect 
 “to such an extent as you seem to apprehend.” They sus- 
 tained the Assembly in their claim to have the right to appro- 
 priate the funds allowed them by the king ; and also in their 
 right to appoint an agent, and they asserted that they saw 
 no ground to disapprove the aid bill in its abstract principle ; 
 still they concurred in the view that separate matters em- 
 braced in the measure ought not to have been incorporated 
 in one act ; and they also thought that the committee of 
 correspondence, while properly appointed by the legislature, 
 ought to have included some members of each house. 
 Although urged by the governor to repeal the act of 1754, 
 by which the Assembly had appointed the treasurers, the 
 Board peremptorily refused to do so, saving that the practice 
 of appointing treasurers by the legislature, and even of 
 making them responsible to only one house, had prevailed so 
 long that it would be improper to interfere with it. It would 
 seem that these decisions so adverse to the positions taken 
 by the governor, and so clearly sustaining the Assembly in 
 its view of these matters, might have led to some abatement 
 of Governor Dobbs’s arbitrary conduct, but having once 
 assumed a position antagonistic to the popular leaders, he 
 became more strenuous in his opposition rather than com- 
 plaisant. 
 
 About that time there came over instructions repealing the 
 act fixing the seat of government at Tower Hill, for the 
 Board said that it was only intended that the Assembly should 
 recommend a location, not definitely fix the place ; and also 
 
COURT ACT REPEALED 
 
 29 7 
 
 repealing the act of 1754 establishing supreme courts and I75q 
 
 enlarging the jurisdiction of the county courts. By that act 
 the office of associate justice had been created, the appointees 
 to hold during good behavior, and in the absence of the 
 chief justice they were to exercise full jurisdiction. As a 
 qualification for appointment they were to have been bar- 
 risters of five years’ practice in England or attorneys of 
 seven years’ practice in this or an adjoining province. These 
 features were objectionable to the Board of Trade, for they 
 restricted the power of the king to select, thus encroaching 
 on his prerogative, and they also rendered the justices inde- 
 pendent of the Crown. The bill therefore had been annulled c. r.,vi, 56 
 by the king, while the former court law of 1746 had been 
 repealed by the Assembly. So the province was to be left 
 without any court system whatever. Under these circum- 
 stances the governor deemed it prudent to withhold the an- 
 nouncement until the next session of the Assembly, which was 
 to convene in December. When the Assembly met, in view 
 of these new instructions, the lower house prepared another 
 bill to establish courts that would be free from the par- 
 ticular defects that had led to the repeal of the original act ; 
 but this new measure was not agreeable to the governor 
 and council, who objected to the manner in which the judges 
 were to be paid and to the judicial power conferred on the 
 associate justices provided for in the bill, and it failed to 
 
 pass the upper house. So for a time — eight months in 1759 No court; 
 
 and 1760 — there was a cessation of the courts in the province. 
 
 The governor had received among other instructions one ' Currency 
 forbidding him to assent to any act making paper money a 
 legal tender ; he was also informed that he might call a new 
 election for assemblymen if he should choose to do so. 
 Thereupon he dissolved the Assembly, it having already held 
 nine sessions, and issued writs for the election of assembly- 
 men to meet on April 22, 1760. The differences between the 
 governor and the leaders now came to an acute issue, and 
 the vear 1760 is notable for its conflicts. It is also notable 
 as the beginning of the practice of passing temporary court 
 laws. 
 
 One of the reasons why the governor had not previously 
 dissolved the Assembly was that he did not know how to 
 
298 
 
 DOBBS'S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 1760 
 
 Secret 
 session 
 May, 1760 
 
 The 
 
 governor 
 makes terms 
 C. R., VI, 
 410-414 
 
 apportion the representation. Most of the counties and 
 towns had applied for charters of incorporation, but some 
 had not. In issuing his writs for the election he omitted 
 Tyrrell and other counties and some of the towns. Where 
 elections were held, however, the Assembly admitted the 
 members without regard to the writs, falling back on the 
 old constitution of the colony and ignoring the claim set up 
 by the Crown that it had a right to apportion representation 
 at its will. Thus originated another cause of conflict with 
 the governor. 
 
 The particular object the governor had in view in calling 
 the Assembly was to have passed an aid bill, as great military 
 efforts were in contemplation for the ensuing campaign. 
 But riots and disorders had continued in Edgecombe, Hali- 
 fax and Granville counties, and the Assembly was in ill- 
 humor at the governor’s conduct in not seeking to suppress 
 them. It adverted to the scenes of violence that had dis- 
 turbed the peace of the province, and dwelt on the fact that 
 there were no courts in existence to curb and restrain the 
 lawless people ; and it declared it would pass no aid bill until 
 the superior court bill was assented to. The governor, on 
 the other hand, was firm in his purpose to come to no terms 
 with the popular leaders and would not assent to the court 
 bill. Finally, after some heated controversy, on May 23, 
 1760, the house, animated by a spirit of defiance, took bold 
 action. It resolved itself into a committee of the whole, and 
 warning the members that if any one should divulge what 
 might be said in the debate he should be dismissed from the 
 house, spent five hours in considering the action of the gov- 
 ernor, and adopted a series of twenty resolutions aimed 
 against him, and declaratory of his arbitrary conduct, and 
 also prepared a long address to the king complaining very 
 bitterly of his Excellency, which was to be presented by the 
 agent of the province and was not to pass through the gov- 
 ernor’s hands at all. This resolute action apparently made 
 some impression on the governor, who then proposed to 
 come to terms, offering to prorogue the Assembly for three 
 days, and agreeing that if they would pass an aid bill, and 
 also the court bill, with a clause limiting its operation to 
 two years unless ratified by the king, he would assent to it in 
 
TEMPORARY COURT ACT 
 
 299 
 
 that form. This gave some hope of the establishment of 
 courts and of correcting the disorders that threatened the 
 peace and prosperity of the province, and so the leaders 
 of the Assembly assented to the proposition and a court bill 
 was passed similar to the previous one— the associate justices 
 were to be skilled lawyers and were to hold during good 
 behavior. With this beginning, for a period of more than 
 ten years it became the practice to pass a court bill in that 
 form, by which the duration of the courts became subject 
 to a limitation of two years. Also under the agreement the 
 house passed an aid bill, but the governor now' had changed 
 his mind as to the aid bill, and as he did not like some of its 
 provisions, especially deeming the bounty offered for enlist- 
 ments too small, and as he considered that the pressing 
 necessity for raising troops no longer existed, he chose not 
 to assent to it. At that time there w'as also a divergence be- 
 tween the two houses, for the upper house would not pass the 
 bill appointing Abercromby the agent, so the house passed 
 another appointing Mr. Bacon, which, how'ever, shared the 
 same fate. The clash involved matters of right and pow'er 
 and the privileges of the respective bodies, the low'er house 
 claiming the exclusive right of designating the agent, and 
 also of selecting the committee of correspondence, which the 
 upper house would not assent to. The house then by solemn 
 resolution appointed Bacon agent of the Assembly, not of the 
 province. In the midst of the turmoil the governor pro- 
 rogued the Assembly until September 1st. 
 
 The western counties desolated 
 
 While the governor and Assembly were engaged in their 
 controversies conditions in the western part of the province 
 became deplorable. In October, 1759, the people who had 
 made their homes on the w r aters of the Yadkin and Cataw'ba 
 heard with dismay that the Creeks and Cherokees, theretofore 
 friendly, had declared war against the English. Bands of 
 Indians began to pass the defiles of the mountains and roam 
 along the foothills. A reign of terror set in. Accounts of 
 atrocities and butcheries and of destroyed homes came thick 
 and fast to Salisbury and Bethabara. They were intensely 
 
 1760 
 
 C. R., vTT 
 
 420, 426, 437 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 437 
 
 Clewell, 
 
 Hist. 
 
 Wachovia 
 
300 
 
 DOBBS'S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 1760 
 
 The 
 
 Cherokee 
 
 war 
 
 Fort 
 
 Defiance 
 
 Fort Dobbs 
 attacked 
 
 Bethabara 
 
 threatened 
 
 harrowing, while some of the escapes were marvellous. Many 
 brave men, reluctant to abandon their homes, fortified them 
 with palisades, and forts or stronghouses were erected where 
 neighboring families could assemble for safety. The men 
 slept with their rifles at hand, and the most resolute were 
 in dread of stealthy attack, of ambush and of having their 
 houses burned at night. It was then that Fort Defiance and 
 other forts in that region were hastily constructed by the 
 people. 
 
 The narratives of those who escaped massacre were heart- 
 rending, while many men, women and children fell victims 
 to the cruel tomahawk of the merciless foe. Few particular 
 accounts of these individual experiences have been preserved ; 
 but all the section west of the Catawba and of the upper 
 Yadkin was desolated. Fort Dobbs, where Colonel Waddell 
 was stationed, was, on February 27, 1760, unsuccessfully 
 assailed by the hostiles ; and information came through the 
 “Little Carpenter” that Bethabara would be attacked, and 
 preparations were made for the defence. At length a large 
 body of Cherokees stealthily surrounded the town ; but hear- 
 ing the village bell ring, they supposed themselves discovered 
 and retired. Again they approached just as the night watch- 
 man blew his trumpet, and they withdrew, and then desisted, 
 although during that spring they remained for six weeks in 
 the vicinity devastating the country. Among those who 
 found refuge at Bethabara was a farmer named Fish and his 
 son, who had escaped from their home on the Yadkin. 
 Anxious to see if their house had been burned, they pre- 
 vailed on another refugee, a stranger, to return with them 
 to ascertain. On the way they were ambushed. Fish and 
 his son fell, while the stranger was pierced by several arrows, 
 one of which, passing through his body, protruded from 
 his back. However, he escaped the Indians, and seeking to 
 return, forded the Yadkin, where he soon saw another com- 
 pany of savages approaching. Again plunging into the river, 
 he crossed and succeeded in eluding them. A storm set in, 
 and he wandered all night in a pelting rain, suffering torture 
 from his wounds, and in dread of being overtaken. Thus 
 passed twenty-four hours, when at length he reached Betha- 
 bara, where the arrows were skilfully extracted by the good 
 
INDIAN WAR ON THE FRONTIER 
 
 301 
 
 Dr. Bonn. Unfortunately the name of this man was not 
 recorded. 
 
 A detachment of soldiers marched out to give burial to the 
 bodies of Fish and his son. On their way they found a 
 farmer besieged and defending his home, which the savages 
 had already succeeded in setting on fire. They quickly drove 
 the hostiles off and saved the farmer and his children. The 
 next day, March 12th, came an appeal for help from Walnut 
 Cove, which was surrounded by the Indians. A company 
 hastened to their rescue and brought in the survivors. A 
 farmer, Robinson, had constructed a palisade around his 
 house and resolutely made defence. Eventually he was 
 driven from it into his log house, where he continued the 
 struggle. At length his last load of powder was exhausted 
 and he and his wife and children fell victims to the bloody 
 tomahawk. Soon, however, sufficient soldiers arrived to 
 secure protection, and on Easter Sunday, 1760, as many as 
 four hundred soldiers attended the church services at 
 Bethabara. 
 
 The Assembly had been prorogued until September, but on 
 receiving information of a general uprising of the Indians, 
 and learning that the militia had refused to march beyond 
 the limits of the province, Governor Dobbs convened the 
 houses again on June 30th'. All were now of one mind. An 
 aid was at once voted to the king; a force of three hundred 
 men was raised for service, the militia was organized, and 
 authority was given to embody them for defence. 
 
 At a subsequent session held in November, 1760, there 
 was a purpose to send five hundred men to co-operate with 
 Virginia and South Carolina against the Cherokees ; but in 
 the aid bill then passed the Assembly had named the agent 
 at London, whom the governor disapproved of, and for this 
 reason he rejected the bill and prorogued the Assembly, which 
 reconvened in its fifth session on December 5th to recon- 
 sider its action ; but the house was firm in resisting the blan- 
 dishments of the governor, who then dissolved it. The tide 
 of war had rolled away from the borders of the province 
 and the necessity for harmonious action had passed. 
 
 In February, 1761, information being received of the acces- 
 sion to the throne of the young king, George III, he was 
 
 1760 
 
 Walnut 
 
 Cove 
 
 desolated 
 
 June, 176c 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 439 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 513 
 
 1761 
 
 King 
 
 George III 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 520 
 
302 
 
 DOBBS'S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 1761 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 552 
 
 C.R., VI, 
 
 539 
 
 The 
 
 Assembly 
 
 sustained 
 
 Ashe 
 
 speaker 
 
 The council 
 
 proclaimed with great enthusiasm amid the firing of cannon 
 on the Cape Fear, and writs for a new election of assembly- 
 men were at once issued, and the body convened on 
 March 31st. 
 
 When the Assembly met it lost no time in upbraiding the 
 governor with his defeat of the aid bill, and because he had 
 called the Assembly together at Wilmington instead of at 
 some more convenient point, and the disagreement was pro- 
 nounced. Rev. Mr. Moir wrote April 13th, while the 
 Assembly was in session : “The misunderstanding between 
 the governor and leading men of this province still subsisting, 
 we are as unhappy as ever.” But in the end the Assembly 
 became more complaisant ; a committee of correspondence 
 was appointed embracing members of both houses, and a 
 new agent was named, probably not objectionable to the gov- 
 ernor — these, as at the previous session, being features of the 
 aid bill, which the governor now approved. At the same 
 session the tax to pay the salaries of the chief justice and 
 attorney-general was increased. 
 
 In the meanwhile the Board of Trade had written to Gov- 
 ernor Dobbs that he had no right to interfere with the 
 appointment of the agent by the Assembly, but that he should 
 urge the house to conform to the instructions of the Crown 
 and recognize fifteen members as constituting a quorum, 
 and to pursue the same method in regard to paying out 
 moneys and auditing accounts that was in use at home. 
 
 A new election was called, the Assembly meeting in April, 
 1762. At that session Sam Swann, who had since 1743, with 
 a single interruption, been the speaker, retired from that 
 office, and his nephew, John Ashe, succeeded him. In all 
 the controversies with Johnston and Dobbs, Swann had 
 been the great leader. Indeed, on one occasion Johnston had 
 silenced him as a lawyer, and Dobbs felicitated himself that 
 as extreme as had been his own action he had never gone 
 to that length. 
 
 Differences between the Assembly and council, whose mem- 
 bership since the purchase by the Crown thirty years before 
 had been changed only on the death of its members, and 
 which was now composed of Hasell, Rutherford, DeRosset, 
 Spaight, Sampson and McCulloh, led those gentlemen to say 
 
INTERNAL CONDITIONS 
 
 3°3 
 
 to the Assembly : “We apprehend ourselves as nearly con- 
 cerned in the blessings of liberty and property as any other 
 inhabitants of this province, and shall ever with cheerfulness 
 concur with you in every measure that to us shall appear con- 
 ducive to the securing of these most valuable blessings.” 
 A new court law was passed that year, in which provision 
 was made for an associate justice at Salisbury. 
 
 In conformity with political and religious conditions, it 
 was considered that efforts should be made to maintain the 
 Church of England as the national church in the province. 
 From 1701 there had been parishes and vestrymen and some 
 provision made for supporting clergymen of the established 
 church. But so little effort was made to carry the law into 
 effect that often there were only one or two clergymen in 
 the province. As the province grew and the policy was 
 introduced to fashion the government on the model of the 
 mother country, renewed efforts were made in this respect. 
 The vestry act of 1760 being repealed by the king, in 1762 
 another act was passed, which, however, was also disallowed 
 because the appointment or employment of the ministers was 
 conferred on the vestry and not allowed as a privilege of the 
 Crown, although under that act all ministers employed had 
 tc hold the license of the Bishop of London. Thus it hap- 
 pened that in the autumn of 1762 all the vestries in the 
 province were dissolved and the entire church system dis- 
 organized. Two years later, however, a new act was passed, 
 in which the vestries were given power to levy a ten-shilling 
 tax toward building churches, maintaining the poor, paying 
 the readers and encouraging schools in each county. 
 
 Under Pitt’s able administration the war had been so 
 vigorously and successfully pressed that in the fall of 1760 
 Canada was conquered and the Indians brought into peaceful 
 relations with the English. Three years later a treaty of peace 
 was signed, by which the British Empire extended from the 
 Gulf of Mexico to Hudson Bay and from the Atlantic to 
 the Mississippi ; and the colonists, now freed from fears of 
 foreign foes, could devote themselves more exclusively to 
 home affairs. The tide of immigration that ten years earlier 
 was setting so strongly to western Carolina was, however, 
 checked because of the Indian war. Yet at the conclusion 
 
 1762 
 
 The vestry 
 act 
 
 S.R., XXIII, 
 
 605 
 
 Peace of 
 Paris, 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 1027, 1040 
 
304 
 
 DOBBS'S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 1762 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 1030 
 
 Indians 
 C. R., VI, 
 616 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 1041 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 995 
 
 The free 
 schools 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 1006 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 73, 106, 132 
 
 of peace North Carolina had a population of about 100,000 
 whites and more than 10,000 negroes. On the Cape Fear 
 were forty saw-mills producing some 30,000,000 feet of lum- 
 ber annually, and there were exported from that river 36,000 
 barrels of naval stores. 
 
 The Indian aborigines had nearly disappeared. On a 
 reservation of ten thousand acres on the Roanoke were con- 
 gregated all that remained of the Tuscaroras, the Saponas, 
 and Meherrins. Of the first there were one hundred braves, 
 of the last two only twenty each. The Catawbas had num- 
 bered three hundred warriors, but in 1761 so many were 
 sw'ept off by smallpox that only sixty braves remained, an 
 equal number of women and hardly more than one child to 
 each pair. 
 
 The remnants of the Hatteras Indians appear to have 
 joined the Mattamuskeets on their reservation in Hyde, 
 where were only some seven or eight Indian men. Originally 
 it was said that the Indians had a violent antipathy to the 
 negro, but in time that repugnance seems to have subsided, 
 and there was some admixture of the two races. 
 
 Educational facilities in the province were limited. In 
 1749 John Starkey introduced a bill making an appropriation 
 of f6,ooo for a free school, but in 1754 that money was used 
 for other purposes. Another appropriation of £ 6,000 was, 
 however, then made. But there was some objection in Eng- 
 land to this bill and it was disallowed. Four years later 
 the Assembly prayed the king that a part of the sum allowed 
 the province by the Crown in return for its aids might be used 
 to establish churches and a free school in each county; but 
 there was always an objection. Frequent applications were 
 made for this permission, and as late as 1763 the request and 
 denial continued, the Board of Trade merely saying that until 
 the Assembly should be sufficiently compliant as to remove 
 the original objections it would not consider the subject. 
 Eventually, in 1765, Governor Tryon, probing the matter, 
 could get no light on the subject otherwise, and formally 
 asked the Assembly what the cause of difference was, receiv- 
 ing the answer that the Assembly did not know, as the objec- 
 tion had never been communicated to that body. On again 
 representing the matter to the Board of Trade he was advised 
 
RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS 
 
 305 
 
 that “some complaints had been made against the original 
 act by some merchants.” And so because of Governor 
 Dobbs’s wilfulness in not communicating to the Assembly 
 those objections in order that they might be removed or 
 answered, “the complaints of some merchants” resulted in 
 depriving the province of the benefit of free schools. Such 
 was one of the results of the colonial system of government. 
 
 The court system provided for a superior court, with a 
 chief justice appointed in England, and three associates, who, 
 in 1761, were Marmaduke Jones, William Charlton and 
 Stephen Dewey — all good lawyers; but in 1762 the new act 
 divided the province into five districts, in each of which, 
 except the Salisbury district, an associate justice was ap- 
 pointed, who in the absence of the chief justice had juris- 
 diction to hear and determine all cases, except mere matters 
 of law. For the Salisbury district an assistant judge was 
 appointed. He was to be a learned lawyer and his juris- 
 diction was as ample as that of the chief justice himself. 
 These court laws were to endure only for two years unless 
 approved by the king, so there were constant re-enactments. 
 
 Notwithstanding the provision made for the maintenance 
 of an orthodox parochial clergy, there were in 1764 not more 
 than six established clergymen in the province, and only 
 three or four churches then finished. But the Presbyterians 
 had their ministers, and the Quakers had again become flour- 
 ishing. The Baptists also were numerous. 
 
 Paul Palmer in 1727 gathered together a congregation of 
 Baptists in the Albemarle section, and about 1742 William 
 Sojourner settled on Kehukee Creek, where later the 
 Kehukee Baptist Association was formed, and early in 1755 
 Shubeal Stearns, a native of Boston, settled on Sandy 
 Creek, where he soon drew into his communion more than 
 six hundred members ; and these churches became mother 
 churches of the Baptist associations in North Carolina. 
 
 A new sect, too, had sprung up, calling themselves Meth- 
 odists, zealous and enthusiastic religionists, but disclaimed 
 by Mr. Whitefield, then on his passage through the province, 
 as the followers of Wesley and himself, yet doubtless owing 
 their origin to Whitefield's teachings in New England. 
 
 Governor Dobbs was loud in his denunciation of all oppo- 
 
 1762 
 
 S. R., XXIII 
 55o 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 621 
 
 Thejudicial 
 
 System 
 
 Parochial 
 clergy 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 1039 
 
 Baptists 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 1061 
 
 Methodists 
 
3°6 
 
 1763 
 
 Republican- 
 ism rife 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 304-309 
 
 C. R.,VI, 32 
 
 British 
 views with 
 reference to 
 America 
 
 McCulloh 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 1021 
 
 The right to 
 tax claimed 
 
 DOBBS’S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 sition to his measures and schemes, and ascribed the antag- 
 onism of the leaders in the Assembly to a spirit of republi- 
 canism, which he declared was more rife in this province 
 than in any other. He insisted that Speaker Swann, his two 
 nephews, John Ashe and George Moore, and John Starkey, 
 who formed the committee of correspondence, composed a 
 junto, whose object was to lessen the prerogatives of the 
 Crown and absorb the administration into their own hands 
 and extend the power of the Assembly. That the Assembly 
 under its leaders was ever determined in the assertion of 
 its right to hold the purse and maintain the freedom of 
 the people as subjects of Great Britain is sufficiently plain. 
 How far any of the inhabitants were disaffected toward the 
 monarchical system does not appear. Proud of their birth- 
 right as British subjects, they never contemplated the relin- 
 quishment of self-government under the constitution of the 
 province ; but they were loyal to their king and had no 
 expectation of any change until at length, to their dismay, 
 changes came. 
 
 The colonies had cheerfully made great appropriations to 
 aid the king in the prosecution of his wars and to relieve the 
 necessities of the Crown. But these were voluntary offer- 
 ings. In England it was held that the general government 
 of the mother country had a right to something more — to 
 exact by law a fund for the purposes of the Empire. The 
 regiments stationed in America were to be supported by 
 the American colonies. The colonial governments were to be 
 reformed and a surer provision made for the compensation, 
 of the governors and other officers. Quickly following the 
 treaty of peace, these and other matters of similar import 
 were discussed in England, and on October 10, 1763, Henry 
 McCulloh, who for thirty years had been concerned with 
 the American colonies, proposed a stamp act to raise the 
 necessary funds. In January, 1764, Governor Dobbs wrote 
 to the Board of Trade: “I apprehend the British Parliament 
 may lay duties upon goods imported into the several colonies 
 to support the troops necessary to secure our great acqui- 
 sitions on this continent, as also to support the additional 
 
RISE OF THE FOURTH ESTATE 
 
 officers of the revenue.” Such was the drift of official 
 sentiment. 
 
 The Assembly of 1764 
 
 At the session of the Assembly held in Wilmington in 
 February, 1764, that town began to be regarded as the 
 seat of government for the province. Andrew Steuart, a 
 printer located there, was employed to publish the laws. 
 Brunswick and Bute counties were erected. An act was 
 passed for building a school-house and a residence for a 
 schoolmaster in New Bern, and John Starkey and Joseph 
 Montfort were appointed the public treasurers for the term 
 of three years. John Ashe was again elected speaker of the 
 Assembly. 
 
 The early newspapers 
 
 Perhaps the conflicting interests of New Bern and Wil- 
 mington, or the more personal ambitions of two printers, in 
 the summer of 1764 led to the revival of Davis’ newspaper, 
 now under the name The North Carolina Magazine, or 
 Universal Intelligencer. And in September Andrew Steuart 
 began at Wilmington the publication of The North Caro- 
 lina Gazette and Weekly Post Boy. The Post Boy, how- 
 ever, was short-lived, and ceased to exist in 1767, being 
 succeeded two years later by The Cape Fear Mercury, pub- 
 lished by Adam Boyd. 
 
 Tryon appointed to relieve Dobbs 
 
 Governor Dobbs, who was now nearly fourscore years of 
 age and very infirm, asked leave to return to England ; and 
 to relieve him, William Tryon, a young officer of the Queen’s 
 Guards, was, on April 26, 1764, appointed lieutenant-gov- 
 ernor, and in July received his final instructions. On Octo- 
 ber 10th he arrived at Brunswick, expecting to enter at once 
 on his duties ; but to his disappointment he found that Gov- 
 ernor Dobbs would not depart until the coming spring. 
 
 It was expected that there would be warm disputes when 
 the General Assembly should meet in October, 1764. In the 
 previous March the suggestion of McCulloh had been acted 
 on and a resolution had passed Parliament, without question, 
 
 307 
 
 1764 
 
 Steuart 
 
 public 
 
 printer 
 
 Weeks’Press 
 of North 
 Carolina in 
 Eighteenth 
 Century, 32 
 
 Arrives 
 Oct. 10, 1764 
 
 The public 
 agitated 
 
3°S 
 
 DOBBS'S ADMINISTRATION, 1754-65 
 
 1764 
 
 The power 
 to tax 
 
 The firm 
 stand of the 
 Assembly 
 Oct., 1764 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 1314-1318 
 
 Claims the 
 exclusive 
 privilege of 
 imposing 
 taxes 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 1261 
 
 Assembly 
 concurs with 
 Massachu- 
 setts 
 
 Bancroft, 
 
 V, 204 
 
 that it was expedient to lay stamp duties on the colonies, and 
 the public mind was greatly agitated. For a century England 
 had restricted and regulated the commerce of her colonies, 
 and in recent years Parliament had exacted heavy duties on 
 trade with the adjacent French and Spanish settlements, 
 while no manufactured goods could be imported except alone 
 from English ports. But that had been for the expansion 
 and regulation of commerce. Now a different interest was 
 to be subserved, and Parliament proposed to tax the colonies 
 for purposes of revenue. In England no one disputed the 
 right ; in America it was a question so novel and so momen- 
 tous that at first public opinion was not pronounced. The 
 omnipotence of Parliament had never been disputed. But 
 on the passage of the resolution in March came an examina- 
 tion into the subject. The illumination was gradual. The 
 power to tax was the power to destroy, and America became 
 enshrouded in a turmoil of anxious thought. Such were 
 the conditions when the Assembly met in October. 
 
 As if to emphasize the spirit of the house, the governor 
 and council having appointed a printer “under the sounding 
 appellation of his Majesty’s printer,” the house declared 
 it knew of no such office, and it resolved that James Davis 
 should print the laws ; and when the governor claimed for 
 himself as a representative of the Crown, in conjunction with 
 the king’s councillors, the right to direct payment out of 
 the funds allowed the province by the king, the house re- 
 solved “that the treasurers do not pay any money out of 
 any fund by order of the governor and council without the 
 concurrence or direction of this house.” It proposed to hold 
 the purse strings. 
 
 And in reply to the opening address of the governor the 
 house said: “It is with the utmost concern we observe our 
 commerce circumscribed in its most beneficial branches, 
 diverted from its natural channel, and burdened with new 
 taxes and impositions laid on us without our privity and 
 consent, and against what we esteem our inherent right and 
 exclusive privilege of imposing our own taxes.” 
 
 As yet no other Assembly in any other colony had made 
 so positive a declaration. Incidentally the power of Parlia- 
 ment was flatly denied. Massachusetts had addressed a cir- 
 
THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO TAX 
 
 309 
 
 cular letter to the other colonies as-king concert of action in 
 making a representation to the Crown and desiring “their 
 united assistance.” The speaker, John Ashe, on Novem- 
 ber 17th laid this letter before the house, and it was resolved 
 that “Mr. Speaker, Mr. Starkey, Mr. McGuire and Mr. Har- 
 nett and Mr. Maurice Moore be a committee to answer the 
 above letter,” and “to express their concurrence with the 
 sentiments of the House of Representatives of Massachu- 
 setts.” Such was the first movement on the surface of the 
 troubled waters. The house asserted its exclusive right to 
 lay taxes, and to direct payment out of the public funds, and 
 it sent to Massachusetts its concurrence in the proposed 
 remonstrance. 
 
 1764 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 1296 
 
 Martin, 
 North 
 Carolina, 
 II, 188 
 
THE FIFTH EPOCH— 1 765-75 
 
 CONTROVERSIES WITH THE MOTHER COUNTRY 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Tryon’s Administration — 1765-71 : The Stamp Act 
 
 Governor Tryon’s administration. — Unrest in Mecklenburg. — 
 The cause of complaint in Orange. — The Assembly of May, 1765. 
 — The vestry act. — The stamp act passed. — Desire for inde- 
 pendence imputed to the colonists. — Popular ferment. — Speaker 
 Ashe declares the people will resist to blood. — The Assembly pro- 
 rogued. — Patrick Henry in Virginia. — Barre’s speech in Parliament. 
 — Sons of Liberty. — An American congress called. — Dr. Houston 
 stamp-master. — North Carolina not represented. — Famine and dis- 
 ease in the province. — The people set up looms. — Action at Wilming- 
 ton. — Liberty not dead. — Dr. Houston resigns. — Governor Tryon 
 feels the people. — Deprecates independence.- — The reply. — Desire for 
 independence disclaimed. — The act not observed. — Non-importation. 
 — The people united. — Conditions in England.- — British merchants 
 and manufacturers clamor for repeal. — Pitt. — Camden. — Conditions 
 in America. — No business transacted.- — The West settled. — In Gran- 
 ville’s territory. — Judge Berry commits suicide. — The rising on the 
 Cape Fear. — The people form an association. — They choose directors. 
 — Fort Johnston seized. — Tryon’s house invaded. — The act annulled. 
 —Business resumed. — The Assembly prorogued. — The stamps stored. 
 — The act repealed. — London rejoices. — America grateful. — Mayor 
 DeRosset’s manly sentiments. — Judge Moore suspended. 
 
 Governor Tryon 
 
 On March 28, 1765, Governor Dobbs, who was then pre- 
 paring to depart for England, died at his villa at Brunswick, 
 and William Tryon assumed the reins of government as 
 lieutenant-governor, he having qualified as such in the pre- 
 ceding November. An officer of the army and a cultured 
 gentleman, just turned thirty-six years of age and in the 
 flush of vigorous manhood, and in many respects a master- 
 ful man, he at once gained the esteem of the people. To 
 the Assembly on its meeting he promised his best endeavors 
 to render acceptable service to the province, and declared that 
 
MUTTERINGS OF DISCONTENT 
 
 3i 1 
 
 he should ever deem it equally his duty “to preserve the 
 people in their constitutional liberty as to maintain inviolable 
 the just and necessary rights of the Crown”; and to the 
 lower house in particular he said : “In the integrity of my 
 heart I must declare I look for neither happiness nor satis- 
 faction in this country but in proportion to the assistance 
 I meet with in my endeavors to promote the prosperity of 
 its inhabitants.” Events, however, were happening that 
 sorely perplexed him. A condition of unrest pervaded the 
 province. In Mecklenburg County, where Selwyn had large 
 tracts of land obtained from McCulloh, many settlers had 
 located without deeds and would not acknowledge his claim 
 of ownership, and when his agent undertook to survey a 
 tract for widow Alexander a mob assembled under the leader- 
 ship of Thomas Polk and severely whipped and abused the 
 surveyor, John Frohock, Abraham Alexander, and several 
 others who were running the line, destroyed the compass, and 
 threatened young Henry Eustace McCulloh with death. 
 
 Toward the northern frontier there was trouble brewing 
 of a different character. After the adjournment of the 
 Assembly in November, 1764, reports reached Governor 
 Dobbs of serious disturbances in the county of Orange result- 
 ing from the exactions of the county officers, and Governor 
 Dobbs issued a proclamation forbidding any officer from 
 taking illegal fees. But this did not arrest the evil, and the 
 agitation soon extended to Granville. “A Serious Address 
 to the Inhabitants” of that county was issued in June, 1765. 
 In it the authors declared that “they were not quarrelling 
 with the form of government, nor yet with the body of 
 their laws, but with the malpractices of their county officers 
 and the abuses of those who managed their public affairs.” 
 While the frontier settlements were thus agitated over their 
 local matters, on the seaboard the people were disquieted 
 because of the purpose of Parliament to tax the colonies. 
 
 Immediately on entering upon his duties Governor Tryon 
 reconvened the Assembly, the meeting being held at New 
 Bern on May 3, 1765. He urged that body to institute a 
 strict examination into the condition of the public funds, 
 and recommended the re-enactment of the vestry act free 
 from the objections made to it; but in doing so he professed 
 
 1765 
 
 c. R., VII, 
 37 
 
 Riot in 
 Mecklen- 
 burg 
 
 Martin, 
 North 
 Carolina, 
 II, 191 
 
 Unrest in 
 Orange 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 89 
 
 Tryon’s 
 
 action 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 41 ct srq. 
 
312 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1765 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 41 et seq. 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 205 
 
 Agent 
 
 suspended 
 
 In England 
 
 himself the warm advocate of toleration as well as of prog- 
 ress. Among other improvements, he suggested the estab- 
 lishment of a post route from Suffolk to Wilmington, where 
 it would connect with one to Charleston. In 1763 provision 
 had been made for one year for a post between Suffolk and 
 Wilmington. Now, at the instance of the governor, the 
 Assembly raised a committee to make this post route perma- 
 nent, but for some cause the committee was not progressive 
 and did not carry out the purpose. 
 
 Agreeably to the governor’s suggestions, a new vestry act 
 was passed. The selection of ministers of the established 
 church was to be no longer with the vestries, but with the 
 governor, who also had the power to suspend them. On his 
 appointment the ministers were to be received into their 
 parishes as incumbents. The vestry were to pay the salary 
 and lay the taxes for that purpose. At this session contests 
 again arose between the two houses. 
 
 In 1759 the Board of Trade had instructed Governor 
 Dobbs that the committee of correspondence ought to consist 
 of members of both houses, which the lower house would 
 not agree to. In 1765 the council asked that all correspond- 
 ence should be submitted to it, and the house hotly denied 
 the request. Referring to this episode, Governor Tryon 
 represented to the Board of Trade that if the house persisted 
 in that course the agent ought not to be recognized. The 
 house, nevertheless, maintained its right; so the agent was 
 suspended and was not recognized by the Board ; and it was 
 not until 1768 that a new agent was appointed. 
 
 There was another contest over the appointment of a 
 treasurer. John Starkey having died, the lower house nom- 
 inated Richard Caswell, while the upper house desired Louis 
 Henry DeRosset, one of the councillors. Their disagree- 
 ment was not composed when, on the morning of May 18th, 
 the Assembly was suddenly prorogued. 
 
 The stamp act 
 
 A year had elapsed since Parliament had passed the reso- 
 lution that it was expedient to tax the colonies. At length, 
 in February, 1765, the bill prepared by the ministry was 
 introduced in the House of Commons, where some oppo- 
 
THE STAMP ACT 
 
 sition was encountered, fifty votes being cast in the negative ; 
 but in the House of Lords there was no division. On 
 March 25th the bill received the royal assent.* To the peti- 
 tions of the colonies in opposition to the measure it was 
 constantly replied that their antagonism was founded in a 
 desire to sever their connection with the mother country, 
 and that the issue should then be met and the dissatisfied 
 Americans should be reduced to submission. This, however, 
 was not the spirit that animated the colonies. Indeed, while 
 remonstrating, there was no other thought but of acqui- 
 escence. In April New York was still tranquil and Massa- 
 chusetts was not aroused. Otis, the Boston leader, indig- 
 nantly repelled the imputation that America was about to 
 become insurgent, and declared it to be “the duty of all 
 humbly and silently to acquiesce in all the decisions of the 
 supreme legislature.” No one will “ever once entertain a 
 thought but of submission.” “They undoubtedly have the 
 right to levy internal taxes on the colonies” ; and he solemnly 
 declared, "From my soul I detest and abhor the thought of 
 making a question of jurisdiction.” 
 
 The colonial agents in England, while vigorously opposing 
 the passage of the act, had no other idea but that it would be 
 carried into successful operation. Ingersoll returned to Con- 
 necticut as the stamp master, and Franklin recommended 
 to his friends to apply for the places. In Virginia Richard 
 Henry Lee sought the appointment. Still, when the event 
 was imminent and news came in May that the act was passed, 
 the people fell into a ferment. It was a matter of feeling 
 rather than of cold reason. The popular heart was moved 
 without regard to those in public station. 
 
 The Assembly of North Carolina had on the last day of 
 October, 1764, declared that “we esteem it our inherent right 
 and exclusive privilege to impose our own taxes.” Virginia 
 a fortnight later had less positively asserted the right, and 
 had argued that the people of that province “cannot now 
 be deprived of a right they have so long enjoyed”; but 
 neither Massachusetts nor any of the other colonies, had 
 
 *This act not only required the payment of stamp taxes but pro- 
 vided for the trial of offenders against the act out of the province 
 and without a jury. 
 
 3 X 3 
 
 1765 
 
 In America 
 
 Bancroft, 
 V, 271 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 
 1261 
 
314 
 
 TRYON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1765 
 
 OR, VII, i. 
 Martin, 
 North 
 Carolina, 
 
 II, 195 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 88 
 
 Wirt, Life 
 Patrick 
 Henry, 75 
 ct seq. 
 
 Sons of 
 Liberty 
 
 claimed exemption from parliamentary taxation. But the pub- 
 lic mind now became agitated, and Governor Tryon, seeing 
 the trend of affairs, asked the speaker of the house what the 
 people would do. “Resist unto blood and death,” was the 
 emphatic answer of Ashe. Apprehensive that the lower 
 house was about to take some action, the governor, on Sat- 
 urday, May 18th, after the house had adjourned, suddenly 
 prorogued the Assembly till November, the business of the 
 Assembly being unfinished and not at all rounded up. 
 
 Near a fortnight later the session of the Virginia Assembly 
 was drawing to its close without any action having been 
 taken on the stamp act, when Patrick Henry, who had been 
 elected to fill a vacancy, took his seat as a member. At 
 once, on May 28th, he offered a series of resolutions on 
 the subject and sustained them in an impassioned speech: 
 “Gesar had his Brutus ; Charles I his Cromwell, and 
 George III” — “Treason! Treason!” was echoed through- 
 out the hall — “may profit by their example.” 
 
 Opposed by the speaker, by Pendleton, Bland, Wythe, and 
 the Randolphs, the resolutions were adopted by a majority of 
 but a single vote ; and the next day the last of the resolu- 
 tions — the one asserting that “the colony had the sole right 
 and power to lay taxes” — was expunged from the record. 
 
 When the bill was before the House of Commons Colonel 
 Isaac Barre, who had served with Wolfe in Canada, made 
 an eloquent defence of the colonies, saying : “They planted 
 by your care! No; your oppressions planted them in 
 America. They fled from your tyranny. They nurtured by 
 your indulgence ! They grew by your neglect of them. As 
 soon as you began to care for them, that care was exercised 
 by sending persons to rule them — men whose behavior on 
 many occasions caused the blood of those Sons of Liberty to 
 recoil within them.” A copy of Barre’s speech was hurried 
 to New York, and there, in June, was printed and distributed 
 by the thousands, while the startling words of Henry were 
 being echoed throughout America. The people became 
 greatly inflamed and aroused, and the expression "Sons of 
 Liberty” was treasured from Massachusetts to Georgia. Still 
 as yet the only thought was to secure relief by petition and 
 remonstrance. The Massachusetts Assembly, being then in 
 
THE STAMP ACT 
 
 3i5 
 
 session, called for an American congress, which should con- 
 sist of committees appointed in the several colonies by the 
 lepresentatives of the people, to meet in New York in October 
 “to consider of a united representation to secure relief,” and 
 even then the question of exclusive right to tax the colonies 
 was carefully avoided. The people watched and waited, 
 hugging the delusion that their English friends would not 
 drive them to despair. 
 
 In England there was no thought of retreat. The stamps 
 were prepared and stamp masters were appointed for every 
 colony. On July 11th the commissioners of the treasury 
 appointed Dr. William Houston, of Duplin, stamp master for 
 North Carolina. He did not apply for the position, and it is 
 probable that he was appointed at the instance of McCulloh, 
 for he appeared in North Carolina in 1735 as McCulloh’s 
 agent for settling his grants on the northeast branch of the 
 Cape Fear, and for many years remained in that employ- 
 ment. The act was to go into operation on November 1st, 
 and the stamps were early sent to the northern colonies. 
 In October the Congress met. North Carolina, Virginia, 
 Georgia, and some other colonies were not represented, as 
 their assemblies could not meet to send deputies. It formu- 
 lated a remonstrance and petition. 
 
 That summer was the hottest ever known in North Caro- 
 lina in the memory of the inhabitants. There was a general 
 failure of crops : and such was the extreme scarcity of pro- 
 visions that the slaves were fed on “cattle and apples” until 
 the potato crop matured in the fall. The following June 
 vessels were prohibited from carrying out any breadstuffs, 
 except for the necessary supply of the crews, and the 
 Assembly was prorogued in April because of the scarcity 
 of food. The yellow fever broke out in New Bern, and 
 Governor Tryon himself was seized by a malarial fever that 
 confined him until late in November. Yet notwithstanding 
 their other distresses, the stamp act held the first place in 
 the minds of the people. At Edenton and New Bern, as 
 well as at Wilmington, the inhabitants adopted strong reso- 
 lutions expressing their utter abhorrence of the odious act, 
 and to manifest their indignation and purpose “the people of 
 North Carolina set up looms for weaving their own clothes.” 
 
 1765 
 
 The 
 
 Congress 
 
 Houston, 
 
 stamp 
 
 master 
 
 C. R., VII. 
 i54 
 
3 16 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1765 
 
 North 
 Carolina 
 Gazette 
 Nov. 20,1765 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 123-125 
 
 Proceedings 
 
 at 
 
 Wilmington 
 
 Houston 
 
 resigns 
 
 Nor did their demonstrations stop there. On October 19th 
 “near five hundred people assembled at Wilmington and ex- 
 hibited the effigy of a certain honorable gentleman ; and 
 after letting it hang by the neck for some time near the 
 court-house, they made a large bonfire with a number of tar 
 barrels and committed it to the flames. The reason assigned 
 for the people’s dislike to that gentleman was from being 
 informed of his having several times expressed himself much 
 in favor of the stamp duty. After the effigy was consumed 
 they went to every house in town and brought all the gentle- 
 men to the bonfire, and insisted upon their drinking, ‘Liberty, 
 property, and no stamp duty, and confusion to Lord Bute 
 and all his adherents,’ giving three huzzas at the conclusion 
 of each toast.” This assemblage probably marked the for- 
 mation of the Sons of Liberty on the Cape Fear, and was 
 composed of the people of New Hanover and the adjoining 
 counties. 
 
 “On October 31st another great number of people 
 assembled at Wilmington, and produced an effigy of Liberty, 
 which they put into a coffin, and marched in solemn pro- 
 cession with it to the churchyard, a drum in mourning 
 beating before them, and the town bell, muffled, ringing 
 a doleful knell at the same time ; but before they committed 
 the body to the ground they thought it advisable to feel its 
 pulse, and when finding some remains of life they returned 
 back to a bonfire ready prepared, placed the effigy before it 
 in a large two-armed chair, and concluded the evening with 
 great rejoicings on finding that Liberty had still an existence 
 in the colonies.” 
 
 Dr. Houston, on November 16th, came to Wilmington, 
 and the people, three or four hundred in number, immediately 
 gathered together with drums beating and colors flying and 
 carried him into the court-house, where he signed a resig- 
 nation, which was followed by great demonstrations ; and in 
 the evening “a large bonfire was made and no person 
 appeared in the streets without having ‘Liberty’ in large 
 capital letters in his hat; and they drank in great form all 
 the favorite American toasts, giving three cheers at the 
 conclusion of each.” In Cumberland, at New Bern, and at 
 
TRY ON'S DINNER TO THE LEADERS 
 
 3i7 
 
 his own home in Duplin, the people made similar demonstra- 
 tions and hung Dr. Houston in effigy and then burned the 
 effigy. 
 
 Governor Tryon, who was now somewhat recovered from 
 his protracted illness, seeing the determination of the people, 
 sent out circular letters to about fifty of the principal inhabi- 
 tants, requesting their presence at dinner with him on 
 November 18th. In his interview with these gentlemen the 
 governor expressed his “hope that no violence would be 
 attempted in case the stamps should at any time arrive in the 
 province” ; and also he hoped “that none in this province were 
 desirous of destroying the dependence on the mother 
 country.” He mentioned “the impossibility of the stamp act 
 operating in all its parts in this province, where the whole 
 cash of the country would scarcely pay a single year of the 
 tax,” and declared his intention of making such representa- 
 tions that, whether the act were repealed or not, there would 
 be a favorable indulgence and exemption of this colony ; 
 and as an inducement for allowing the act to have effect in 
 part, he “generously offered to pay himself the whole duty 
 arising on” certain instruments. 
 
 The next morning the gentlemen waited on the governor 
 with their reply, saying: “We cannot but applaud the happy 
 distinction of this province, which has a governor so studious 
 of promoting and so well satisfied to prosecute its advan- 
 tages and prosperity.” They disclaimed “any desire to inter- 
 rupt or weaken the connection between Great Britain and 
 her colonies,” but declared that “we cannot assent to the 
 payment of the smaller stamps ; an admission of part would 
 put it out of our power to refuse with any propriety a sub- 
 mission to the whole ; and as we can never consent to be 
 deprived of the invaluable privilege of a trial by jury, which 
 is one part of that act, we think it more consistent as well 
 as securer conduct to prevent to the utmost of our power 
 the operation of it.” The governor in his reply regretted 
 that his intentions of service to the province at this junction 
 had so little prospect of success, and lamented the conse- 
 quences he apprehended from the resolution the gentlemen 
 had adopted. 
 
 Such was the spirit of the Cape Fear gentlemen, openly 
 
 1765 
 
 C. R„ VII, 
 
 I27-I3O 
 
 The people 
 refuse his 
 overtures 
 C. R., VII, 
 129 
 
TRY ON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 318 
 
 1765 
 
 C. R„ VII, 
 *43 
 
 The spirit 
 of America 
 
 The king 
 resolute 
 
 Jan., 1766 
 Pitt 
 
 avowing their purpose not to permit the operation of the 
 act in any particular ; and all the counties of the province 
 were in full sympathy with them. Ten days after the dinner, 
 and after Houston had resigned, some stamps arrived at 
 Brunswick on the sloop-of-war Diligence, but because of the 
 situation of affairs they remained on board that vessel until 
 her departure in the spring. 
 
 Contemporaneously with these proceedings in North Caro- 
 lina, the merchants of New York City entered into a reso- 
 lution not to import any goods until the stamp act was 
 repealed. Elsewhere their example was followed ; and the 
 people organized themselves into associations, taking the 
 name applied to them by Colonel Barre in Parliament, “Sons 
 of Liberty.’’ A patriotic fervor possessed the people, and 
 even before importations had ceased they discarded clothing 
 of British manufacture and began to wear the homespun 
 of the country. Rich and poor, those of the highest social 
 and political station as well as the humblest citizens, joined 
 in the cry of “Liberty, property, and no stamps.” Never 
 were the people so united ; there was but one voice — to resist. 
 In December Gadsden, of South Carolina, wrote : “The 
 whole force of North Carolina was ready to join in pro- 
 tecting the rights of the continent,” and in January the 
 Sons of Liberty in New York resolved “that they would 
 march to the relief of those in danger of the stamp act.” 
 Such was the sentiment that prevailed throughout the 
 colonies. 
 
 In England other matters of serious import stirred the 
 court and divided the people, and changes in the ministry 
 were frequent. But at length the attitude of the colonists 
 arrested attention ; and merchants and manufacturers, aghast 
 at the possible consequences to their business, united their 
 clamors with those of the Americans for repeal. The king, 
 nevertheless, was resolute, and when Parliament opened on 
 January 14th he informed it that “orders had been issued 
 for the support of lawful authority.” Pitt, however, declared 
 emphatically that Parliament had no right to tax the colonies, 
 and like a clap of thunder he startled the house when he 
 exclaimed, “I rejoice that America has resisted.” In the 
 House of Lords Camden spoke with equal strength. But 
 
 Camden 
 
THE STAMP ACT REPEALED 
 
 3 T 9 
 
 at first they were overborne. The purpose to maintain the 
 omnipotence of Parliament was fixed. But politics were in 
 a turmoil, and changes in the ministry suddenly occurred. 
 A month after the session began Conway, now in the min- 
 istry, moved for leave to bring in a bill to repeal the act. He 
 declared that it had interrupted British commerce and de- 
 stroyed one-third of the manufactures of Manchester — had 
 thrown thousands of poor out of employment, and that to 
 assist the Americans, France and Spain would engage in 
 war with Britain. Amid great excitement, despite the oppo- 
 sition of the king, leave was given by a vote of 275 to 167. 
 The first step to repeal was taken. 
 
 The new year opened in America with all in a state of 
 suppressed excitement. The act had not been operative. 
 The courts were either closed or transacted little business. 
 Newspapers were published on unstamped paper and ships 
 sailed without legal clearances. It was a condition of un- 
 armed rebellion. 
 
 Open rebellion on the Cape Fear 
 
 In North Carolina, Tryon having received his commission 
 as full governor, on December 21st dissolved the Assembly 
 and issued writs for the election of new members. The elec- 
 tion was held in the midst of excitement on February nth, 
 and the legislature was to convene April 22d. Writing in 
 January from New Bern, Rev. Mr. Reed said : “The people 
 here are peaceable and quiet, yet they seem very uneasy, dis- 
 contented and dejected. The courts of justice are in a great 
 measure shut up, and it is expected that in a few weeks there 
 will be a total stagnation of trade.” On Christmas Tryon 
 wrote home : “The obstruction to the stamp act . . . has 
 been as general in this province as in any colony on the 
 continent. . . . No business is transacted in the courts 
 . . . though . . . regularly opened, and all civil gov- 
 ernment is now at a stand.” Such was the situation in the 
 east. At the west not a man favored the stamp act ; but that 
 matter was not so interesting on the frontier as in the marts 
 of trade. Ten years of peace had brought renewed im- 
 migration from the north. A settlement from New Jersey was 
 made on the Yadkin. The Moravians received accessions, 
 
 17 66 
 
 Conway 
 urges repeal 
 
 New 
 election, 
 Feb., 1766 
 C. R., VII, 
 x 33t x 43? J 54 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 114 
 
 At the west 
 
320 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1766 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 285 
 
 In 
 
 Granville’s 
 
 territory 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 144 
 
 \ 
 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 94 
 
 and had engaged in manufactures. “They have mills, forges, 
 furnaces, potteries, foundries, all trades and things in and 
 among themselves.” They drew copper from the neighbor- 
 ing mines. “They are all bees, not a drone suffered in the 
 hive; what they do not consume they sell in the adjacent 
 territory,” receiving for their products furs and peltry, which 
 they send off to Virginia and into South Carolina, obtaining 
 in return rum, sugar, linen and woollen goods, pewter and tin 
 wares and other necessaries. While this development was 
 being made at Bethabara, Rowan and Mecklenburg counties 
 were being occupied. During the fall and winter of 1765 a 
 thousand wagons passed through Salisbury, and the people 
 were clearing the forests seventy miles west of Fort Dobbs 
 and forty miles beyond the Catawba. 
 
 In Granville’s territory the land offices were closed on the 
 death of Lord Granville in 1763, and his heir and successor 
 had not yet opened them again. Some of the occupants of 
 his lands dreaded the expected reopening, because of the 
 abuses of his agents ; while others were discontented because 
 they could not obtain titles to the premises they had im- 
 proved. The grievances of the people in the back country 
 continuing, the movement for redress progressed, securing 
 the adherence of many of the inhabitants. Specie was very 
 scarce, and while even the merchants estimated that because 
 of the great growth of the province £200,000 of paper 
 currency was needed, the amount outstanding was only 
 £75,000. Necessarily there was great pecuniary distress. 
 Such was the general condition of the province — unrest at 
 the west, insufficient currency, civil government at a stand, 
 and the Sons of Liberty holding together, not knowing what 
 a day might bring forth. 
 
 Another event added to the gloom on the Cape Fear — 
 the suicide of Chief Justice Berry. On March 18, 1765, a 
 duel occurred between Lieutenant Whitehurst and Alexander 
 Simpson, master, both of the British sloop Viper, the cause 
 of which was said to have been some woman. Simpson was 
 wounded and Whitehurst killed. Simpson was apprehended, 
 but the night before Governor Dobbs died he made his escape 
 from jail and fled to Virginia. He was subseciuently taken 
 and put on trial at New Bern, where Chief Justice Berry 
 
SEIZURE OF THE DOBBS AND THE PATIENCE 321 
 
 held the court. The case was tried before the arrival of all 
 of the witnesses for the prosecution, and Simpson was ac- 
 quitted, at which the governor manifested much displeasure. 
 When, on December 20th, the governor called a council at 
 Wilmington to qualify under his new commission, Judge 
 Berry, on being notified to attend, conceived that the council 
 was called for the purpose of suspending him, and was so im- 
 pressed with the belief that he at once shot himself in the 
 head, and after lingering eight days died. The melancholy 
 affair was greatly regretted. To succeed Berry, Governor 
 Tryon commissioned James Hasell as chief justice. He was 
 the senior member of the council and had at different times 
 filled the office of chief justice for seven years. At the same 
 time, in January, 1766, he appointed Robert Howe an associ- 
 ate judge. 
 
 Thus far Trvon had managed so astutely that there had 
 been no clashing with the people. But it could not be averted. 
 
 In January two merchant vessels, the Dobbs and the 
 Patience, came into the Cape Fear and were seized because 
 their clearance papers were not duly stamped, and were 
 held by the British men-of-war, the Diligence and the Viper. 
 At once the patriots of that region were aroused and demand 
 was made for their release. The matter was referred to the 
 attorney-general , Robert Jones, who was at his home on the 
 Roanoke, and during the delay the leaders of the people 
 arranged their plans. The mayor of Wilmington resigned 
 and Moses John DeRosset, a strenuous opposer of the act. 
 was elected in his place. The people of Onslow, Duplin, and 
 Bladen were brought together at Wilmington to meet those 
 of New Hanover and Brunswick, and they entered into an 
 association. ‘‘Detesting rebellion, yet preferring death to 
 slavery, . . . we hereby mutually and solemnly plight our 
 faith and honor that we will at anv risk whatever, and when- 
 ever called upon, unite and truly and faithfully assist each 
 other to the best of our power in preventing entirely the 
 operation of the stamp act.” On the next day, February 18th, 
 the people chose John Ashe the speaker, Alexander Lilling- 
 ton and Colonel Thomas Lloyd “directors to direct the move- 
 ment.” General Hugh Waddell was appointed to marshal 
 and command the citizen soldiery, of whom six hundred were 
 
 1766 
 
 Death of 
 Judge Berry 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 160 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 168 et ±eq. 
 
 North 
 
 Carolina 
 
 Gazette, 
 
 Feb. 26, 1766 
 
 Ashe and 
 Waddell 
 lead in open 
 rebellion 
 
 The 
 
 Association 
 
 The 
 
 Directory 
 
3 22 
 
 TRYON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1766 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 172 et seq. 
 
 The 
 
 Diligence 
 and the 
 Vif>er 
 defied 
 
 C. R VII, 
 178 
 
 Fort 
 
 Johnston 
 
 seized 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 386 
 
 The council 
 
 armed, while there were one hundred of the people unarmed. 
 The purpose was to secure the liberation of the detained 
 vessels, and they resolved to march to Brunswick and require 
 their release and prevent the operation of the stamp act in 
 any particular. It was an orderly movement of the people, 
 organized under civil authority of their own appointment, 
 with the military subordinate to the directory, at the head of 
 which was the speaker of the Assembly. Accompanying the 
 directors were the mayor and corporation of Wilmington, 
 and gathered around them were all the gentlemen of the Cape 
 Fear — a cavalcade of patriots intent on a high purpose and 
 full of high resolve. As a measure of this incipient war the 
 inhabitants of Wilmington determined that no provisions 
 should be furnished to the British cruisers, and when the 
 contractors’ boat came to the town for supplies they seized 
 the crew and threw them into jail, and with a great demon- 
 stration hauled the boat through the town in triumphal 
 procession. 
 
 The directors sent by Harnett and Moore a letter notifying 
 Governor Tryon, who, after Dobbs’s death, resided at Bruns- 
 wick, that they proposed him no personal harm, but were 
 coming to right their wrongs ; and forward the companies 
 marched, Waddell’s patriotic soul flaming high as he reso- 
 lutely led them on to their act of treason and flagrant 
 rebellion. 
 
 Quickly a detachment seized Fort Johnston ; quickly the 
 public offices were invaded and the papers of the detained 
 vessels obtained. But yet the vessels were held by the men- 
 of-war. Recognizing that a crisis was reached, the king’s 
 officers determined to stand by the colors of his Majesty 
 to the last. There was to be no yielding to the insurgents. 
 At noon on the 20th a council was held, attended by the 
 governor and all of the British officers ; and Captain Lobb, 
 the senior naval officer, declared his unalterable purpose to 
 hold the ship Patience and to require a return of her papers, 
 which the insurgents had taken. And so it was agreed by 
 the governor and all. But in the afternoon a party of the 
 insurgents — doubtless the directors, Waddell, Harnett, James 
 and Maurice Moore, Mayor DeRosset and the corporation 
 of Wilmington — boarded the ship of war Diligence, and 
 
RELEASE OF THE DOBBS AND THE PATIENCE 323 
 
 there, under the royal flag, surrounded by his Majesty’s 
 officers, they made demand upon Captain Lobb to surrender 
 the vessels and abandon any purpose to sustain the stamp 
 act. What passed is not recorded ; but in the evening Cap- 
 tain Phipps, of the Viper, came on shore and reported to the 
 governor that "all was settled.” The vessels were released. 
 
 The people had redressed their grievances. The stamp act released 
 was not to be enforced in any particular. The governor was 
 indignant, disgusted, but powerless. 
 
 The collector, the comptroller, the clerks, and other pro- 
 vincial officers, one of them, William Pennington, being taken 
 by Harnett from the residence of Governor Tryon, were 
 now brought with great formality all together, at the centre 
 of a circle formed by the people, and there were constrained 
 to make public oath never to perform any duty with regard 
 to the stamps. The stamp act being thus annulled in North 
 Carolina, in triumph the people returned to their homes vic- 
 tors over the governor and the king’s forces. 
 
 The effect of this bold and determined movement, that had 
 no exact parallel in any other colony — for first the people 
 ordained a government with authority to direct and secondly 
 they organized a military force subordinate to the directory — 
 resulting in the full accomplishment of the purpose designed, 
 must have been lasting on the minds of the people. It 
 established the leaders still more in public confidence, for 
 successful achievements appeal strongly to the popular heart. 
 
 It also brought home to the people the value of organized 
 resistance and prepared them to take resolute action when 
 at a later day their rights and liberties were again invaded. 
 
 With this experience, under the same chieftains, they were 
 the more easily marshalled to sustain the measures of 1775 
 in open revolt from the dominion of the mother country. 
 
 The submission of Tryon and of the king’s naval forces to 
 their power, the remembrance of that glorious triumph easily 
 paved the way for their formation of military companies in 
 March, 1775, for the destruction of Fort Johnston, and the 
 expulsion of Governor Martin from the soil of the province. 
 
 After that no attempt was ever made to observe the stamp 
 act in North Carolina. The governor and all public officers 
 abandoned the contest. Vessels sailed in and out as before 
 
324 
 
 TRY ON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1766 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 188 
 
 Houston 
 gives up his 
 documents 
 
 In 
 
 Parliament 
 
 The act 
 repealed 
 
 Rejoicing in 
 London 
 
 the act was passed. The business of the courts was resumed, 
 and the act was entirely disregarded. 
 
 But as the Assembly was to meet in April, on February 26th 
 the governor prorogued it till November, and he declared 
 his purpose not to allow any Assembly to meet until he had 
 received further instructions from the king. On April 15th 
 Dr. Houston again appeared at Wilmington, and there he 
 was forced to surrender to Mayor DeRosset his commis- 
 sion and his instructions. The Diligence having been 
 ordered to depart, the boxes of stamps were transferred 
 at the end of March to the Viper, and later were deposited 
 in Fort Johnston, where they remained until sent back to 
 England. 
 
 Proceedings similar to those in North Carolina took place 
 in all the colonies, but nowhere else was there equal bold- 
 ness and resolution in action ; yet in every province the law 
 had been entirely annulled by popular resistance. Still the 
 issue was undetermined, and America, in an attitude of 
 defiance, waited with anxiety for news from England. 
 
 Although the House of Commons, responsive to the de- 
 mands of British trade and commerce, had expressed a will- 
 ingness to repeal the stamp act, yet Parliament was by no 
 means ready to abandon its alleged right to tax the colonies. 
 Pari passu with Conway’s bill for repeal, another, declaring 
 the absolute power of Parliament to bind the colonies in 
 all cases whatsoever, was rushed through the two houses ; 
 and in the House of Lords the repeal bill met with strenuous 
 opposition and protests, but finally, on March 18th, it re- 
 ceived the unwilling and sullen assent of the king. The 
 multitude, however, applauded. There was great rejoicing 
 in London, the vessels on the Thames displayed all their 
 colors, the church bells rang out joyous peals, and at night 
 the city was illuminated with bonfires, and all the principal 
 houses were lighted from within. The swiftest vessels 
 hurried the. news across the Atlantic, where it was received 
 with public demonstrations of universal gladness and heart- 
 felt patriotism. So sudden a popular revulsion from appre- 
 hension and defiance to gratitude and loyalty is without a 
 parallel in history. The colonists at once rescinded their 
 resolves of non-importation, gave their homespun clothes to 
 
STAMP ACT REPEALED IN AMERICA 
 
 3 2 5 
 
 the poor, and turned their attention once more to their local ^ 
 
 concerns. Throughout North Carolina there was great rejoic- 
 ing. At New Bern the gentlemen met at the court-house to 
 celebrate the event. An elegant dinner was served in com- 
 mon-hall, Cornell presiding. Many toasts “were drank un- J 0 ^ nists 
 der a display of colors and other ensigns of Liberty, among s rateful 
 them, toasts to Camden, Pitt Conway and Barre ; ‘the Liberty 
 of the Press’ ; ‘the Governor and the Province’ ; the whole 
 conducted with great good order, decency and decorum.” 
 
 The day concluded with a ball in the court-house “and the s.c. Gazette 
 evening was most happily and agreeably spent.” At length Aus ‘ 5 ’ 1776 
 on June 13th Governor Tryon received official intelligence 
 of the repeal, and a week later Moses John DeRosset, mayor £_R., vii, 
 of Wilmington, on behalf of the corporation, addressed 
 formal congratulations to the governor. In the course 
 of subsequent correspondence DeRosset and the other gentle- 
 men at Wilmington declared that they were well assured 
 that the governor’s conduct had always been regulated 
 by no other motive than a generous concern for the 
 public good. Still there was no abatement of manly expres- 
 sion, and in regard to their own action they pointedly said : 
 "Moderation ceases to be a virtue when the liberty of British 
 subjects is in danger.” Thus in the general rejoicing, while 
 there was no admixture of bitterness for Tryon, there was 
 asserted a resolution to maintain the rights of the people 
 as British subjects; and Governor Tryon afterward men- 
 tioned that only one person connected with the uprising on 
 the Cape Fear ever expressed any regret at his action, and 
 he was not a native of the province. 
 
 While all of the gentlemen of the Cape Fear had taken a 
 pronounced part in these stamp act proceedings, the governor 
 manifested his displeasure at the action of Maurice Moore 
 alone. He was assistant judge for the district of Salisbury, 
 and because of his intemperate zeal and conduct in opposi- 
 tion to the act the governor suspended him, and on 
 March 7th appointed Edmund Fanning to the vacancy. In 
 addition to his personal participation in the expedition to 
 Brunswick, Moore had published a pamphlet showing that 
 the colonists “are constitutionally entitled to be taxed only by 
 their own consent.” 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Tryon’s Administration, 1765-71 : The Regulation 
 
 Murmurs from the west. — The governor’s proclamation. — The 
 reform movement. — The general polity of the province. — Tryon’s 
 action. — Purpose of the reformers. — Removal of the Tuscaroras. — 
 The Assembly meets — November, 1766. — The burden too heavy to 
 bear — The address to the king. — The southern treasurer. — No 
 provincial agent. — The governor’s palace.— The seat of government. 
 — Presbyterian ministers to perform marriage ceremony. — The 
 Cherokee line. — The Watauga settlement. — The need of currency. — 
 New legislation. — The speakers to be gowned. — Tryon joins in ask- 
 ing for currency.— New custom duties proposed. — The Assembly 
 prorogued. — The Regulators associate. — The meetings. — Oath-bound. 
 — Hillsboro raided. — Consternation of the officers. — Rev. George 
 Micklejohn the peacemaker. — The governor advises an appeal to 
 the Assembly. — Fanning seizes Husband. — The people aroused. — A 
 petition to the Assembly. — Presented to the governor. — His reply. 
 — He reaches Hillsboro. — Sends Harris to collect taxes. — Harris’s 
 report. — Hillsboro threatened. — Disturbing rumors. — The agreement. 
 — The voice of Anson. — Trouble in Johnston. — The governor’s de- 
 mands. — The army of 1768. — The Presbyterian ministers support 
 the governor. — The march to Hillsboro. — The Regulators embody. 
 
 - — The governor’s terms. — The malcontents disperse. — The court- 
 held. — Tryon desires to leave. — Regulators’ address. — Resolve of 
 Assembly. — Remedial legislation proposed. — Hillsboro riots.— Riot 
 act. — Alamance. — The battle. — The trials and executions. 
 
 Murmurs from the west 
 
 L 7 “ On June 25, 1766, Governor Tryon, happy at the turn of 
 
 affairs, issued a proclamation announcing the repeal of the 
 stamp act and on the same day, in pursuance of particu- 
 lar instructions received from the Crown, he issued a procla- 
 mation in the king's name, stating that complaints had been 
 made that exorbitant fees have been demanded and taken, to 
 the great dishonor of the king’s service and the prejudice of 
 the public interest; and all public officers whatever in their 
 respective stations throughout the province were forbidden 
 “to receive any other fees than those established by proper 
 authority on pain of being removed from their offices and 
 prosecuted with the utmost severity of the law.” On the 
 
1. North Carolina Currency, 1748 2. North Carolina Currency, 1776 
 
 3. Edmund Fanning 
 4. Monument to the Regulators 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 ' ' . 
 
 
 

THE REFORM MOVEMENT 
 
 3 2 7 
 
 same day, because of the extraordinary want of provisions 
 in the province, it was determined that the General As- 
 sembly should not then be convened, but should stand pro- 
 rogued until October. 
 
 While the eastern part of the province now returned to a 
 happy quietude, the disturbed conditions at the west were 
 not allayed. In August the leaders of the reform movement 
 in the county of Orange issued an advertisement, referring 
 to the success of the Sons of Liberty in withstanding the 
 Lords of Parliament, and proposing that each neighbor- 
 hood throughout the county should meet and appoint one 
 or more men to attend a general meeting at Haddock’s Mills, 
 “at which meeting let it be judiciously inquired whether the 
 free men of this country labor under any abuses of power,” 
 and proposing to call upon all persons in office to give an ac- 
 count of their stewardship, a proceeding similar to the town- 
 ship meetings immemorially held in Massachusetts. On 
 October 10th such a meeting was held, but none of the 
 officers appeared as requested. Disappointed in this first 
 attempt, both at the lukewarmness of the people and the 
 non-attendance of the officers, the leaders proposed that an- 
 other conference should be called, and the practice be main- 
 tained, believing that “on further matured deliberation the in- 
 habitants will more generally see the necessity of it and the 
 number increase in favor of it to be continued yearly.” 
 
 The complaints of these people were because of the admin- 
 istration of local affairs. The general polity of the province 
 was the outcome of circumstances. The king appointed the 
 governor, the chief justice and the attorney-general, the 
 first two of whom being sent from England while the last 
 had been appointed from among the citizens. The council 
 was a continuing body, appointed by the Crown, and, as none 
 had ever been removed, holding for life. From Burrington’s 
 administration appointments had been made only to fill 
 vacancies caused by death or removal from the province. 
 When a vacancy occurred, the governor mad^ a temporary 
 appointment until the Crown could act. A part of the ex- 
 penses of the administration was paid by the quit rents ; 
 but generally the needs of government were met by taxes 
 assessed by the Assembly. There was no tax on land or 
 
 1766 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 249, 250 
 
 Reform 
 movement 
 at the west 
 
 1766 
 
 The general 
 polity of the 
 province 
 C. R., VII, 
 472 et seq. 
 
TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 property, only on the poll and on some minor subjects of 
 taxation. As the expenses increased, the poll taxes were 
 multiplied and became grievous, especially in the frontier 
 counties, where the people were without market for their 
 produce and had no currency and many of them were poor. 
 
 There were five judicial districts, for each of which an 
 associate judge was appointed by the governor; and while 
 the associate for the Salisbury District alone was required 
 to be a lawyer by profession, yet all of these associates were 
 lawyers. To each district court there were two clerks, one 
 for civil causes appointed by the chief justice, the other the 
 clerk of the Crown for criminal cases, appointed by the 
 secretary of the province. 
 
 There was a court for each county, pleas and quarter 
 sessions, held by the justices of the peace, and to each of 
 these courts there were likewise two clerks, one for civil 
 causes and the other the clerk of the Crown. The appoint- 
 ment of the first was with an officer of the province, denomi- 
 nated “The clerk of the pleas” ; the clerks of the Crown were 
 appointed by the secretary of the province. Oftentimes one 
 person filled both offices. The sheriffs of the different 
 counties were annually appointed by the governor, but he 
 was confined to select from among three persons recom- 
 mended by the justices of the peace; and the register of 
 deeds was likewise appointed by the governor to hold dur- 
 ing his pleasure. The fees of all officers were fixed by law, 
 and a part of the compensation of the chief justice also 
 consisted of fees incident to his court. The influence of 
 these local officers was felt in the election of members of 
 the Assembly and in perpetuating their own power, and they 
 became dominant factors in the management of public 
 affairs. The attorneys-at-law were also potent influences, 
 and of these there were forty-five practising in the province. 
 Convinced of the abuses that these conditions led to, Gov- 
 ernor Tryon sought to mitigate them, and among other 
 things announced that no county court clerk or practicing at- 
 torney should be appointed a justice of the peace — the justices 
 of the peace being appointed by the governor with the sanc- 
 tion of the council, to hold at his pleasure. All local affairs 
 were within the administration of these justices, who, sitting 
 
THE POLITY OF THE PROVINCE 
 
 329 
 
 as the court of the county, primarily passed on all complaints 
 of exorbitant fees or charges of maladministration by the 
 county officers, had cognizance of county matters, laid county 
 taxes and settled with county officers. Under that system 
 there was no responsibility to the people. The justices of 
 the court annually recommended the sheriff for appoint- 
 ment and they influenced the election of assemblymen. They 
 were appointed by the governor on the recommendation 
 of the Assembly. Thus they became a part of a self-per- 
 petuating circle, composed of officers, lawyers, justices and 
 their dependents, controlling local affairs, and with inter- 
 ests widely different from those of the people at large. 
 Popular discontent could not make itself felt in legal and 
 accustomed channels ; and this seems to have been the 
 fundamental reason for the innovation proposed bv the re- 
 formers to introduce county meetings of the inhabitants 
 annually to consider the action of their officials and all pub- 
 lic matters, and such at first was the extent of the demand. 
 
 During the summer of 1766 the sachem of the Tuscaroras, 
 who had moved to New York fifty years before, came to the 
 province, and after spending some time with the Indians on 
 the reservation, arranged for the removal of more of that 
 tribe to join the Six Nations. The funds for their removal 
 were supplied by Robin Jones, attorney-general, who had 
 long manifested a particular kindness toward those isolated 
 and almost friendless Indians. A part of the reserve was 
 conveyed to him as security, and one hundred and thirty 
 Tuscaroras in August marched north, leaving only one hun- 
 dred and four of that tribe, including women and children, 
 remaining in North Carolina. 
 
 The Assembly meets 
 
 On November 3d the legislature convened at New Bern, 
 being the first meeting of the representatives of the people 
 since May, 1765. During the intervening eighteen months 
 the public voice had been stifled by the astuteness of the gov- 
 ernor, and now harmony and good understanding subsisted 
 throughout the province. On the first day of the session, 
 November 3d, John Harvey of Perquimans was unanimous- 
 ly elected speaker, and it was not until November 7th that 
 
 17 66 
 
 No responsi- 
 bility to the 
 people 
 
 Removal of 
 Tuscaroras 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 43i 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 343 
 
 Harvey 
 
 speaker 
 
330 
 
 1766 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 347-350 
 
 The tone 
 of the 
 Assembly 
 
 TRY ON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 John Ashe, the speaker of the former house, appeared and 
 took his seat as a member. The temper of the house while 
 kindly was not subservient. The committee to prepare a 
 response to the governor’s opening address were Elmsly, 
 Maurice Moore, Sam Johnston, Cornelius Harnett, Edmund 
 Fanning, Robert Howe and Joseph Hewes. In it they said : 
 “This house is truly sorry that any reason whatever should 
 have prevented your meeting this Assembly till this time. 
 The alarming tendency of the stamp act and the reproachful 
 names of rioters and rebels which were liberally bestowed 
 on his Majesty’s faithful subjects of North America ren- 
 dered it in our opinion highly expedient that this house 
 should have been assembled some months sooner.” Con- 
 tinuing, they said : “It is our duty to acknowledge in the 
 most grateful manner the moderation and goodness of his 
 Majesty and the justice of his Parliament in removing from 
 us a burden much too heavy for us to bear.” A similar tone 
 of fine manhood pervaded the address, yet they manifested a 
 kindliness toward the governor himself, and congratulated 
 him “on a peculiar mark of the royal favor to this province, 
 manifested to us in your appointment to this government ; 
 and be assured we will cheerfully take all occasions to render 
 your administration easy and happy.” 
 
 The council took great exception to the strictures of the 
 Assembly, but the governor carefully suppressed his own 
 sentiments, merely declaring that he was “an utter stranger 
 to the reproachful and detestable title of rebel ; that such an 
 opprobrious title never found place in my breast ; nor am 
 I conscious of having ever misrepresented or aggravated any 
 part of the disturbances in the colonies, either general or 
 particular.” 
 
 On November 22d the house appointed Messrs. Ashe, Fan- 
 ning and Howe a committee to prepare an address of thanks 
 to the king “on the happy event of the repeal of 
 the stamp act and on the 26th Ashe, the central figure 
 in the stamp act proceedings, submitted the address to the 
 house. It was strong and manly as well as patriotic. There 
 was no wavering ; no apology. The language used to the 
 governor was now repeated to the king. The stamp act 
 was “a burden much too heavy for us to bear,” but they 
 
Governor's Palace, New Bern 
 
TRY ON'S PALACE 
 
 33 1 
 
 spoke of their “cordial and natural attachment to the mother 
 country, and love and duty to his Majesty’s royal person.” 
 
 Because of the failure to elect a treasurer for the southern 
 district at the last session the governor had appointed as 
 temporary treasurer Samuel Swann, and now the lower 
 house proposed to appoint John Ashe. The upper house, 
 however, again asserted its right to participate in the elec- 
 tion, and inserted the name of Louis DeRosset, as on the 
 former occasion. But on the lower house standing firm the 
 council proposed to amicably settle the difference by joining 
 in and making the same nomination, without abandoning its ( r 
 claim of participation ; and Ashe was thereupon elected. 3*4 ” 
 
 The restoration of good feeling between the Assembly and xxii’i, 664 
 the Crown was signalized by the passage of an act appropri- 
 ating £5,000 for the building of a residence for the u.e'cfpTtai 
 governor at New Bern, virtually making that the seat of 
 government ; and taxes were laid for the purpose of paying 
 the cost of construction. To the governor himself was given 
 power to design the building and to contract for its comple- 
 tion. Governor Tryon soon found that the amount appro- 
 priated was not sufficient to complete a building according to 
 the plans adopted, but nevertheless he proceeded in the erec- 
 tion of a magnificent structure, surpassing any other build- 
 ing in the colonies, having reason to believe that the Assem- 
 bly would make an additional appropriation. 
 
 At this session the act concerning marriages, passed in xxfii, 6 7a 
 1741, was amended, much to the gratification of the Presby- ^' c a t rriage 
 terians. By that act the justices of the peace where there 
 were no established ministers were authorized to perform 
 the marriage ceremony. These justices in the western coun- 
 ties were for the most part Presbyterians, as the great 
 mass of the inhabitants were, and now the law was changed, 
 extending the privilege of performing this service to 
 Presbyterian ministers ; but the fee for the service was re- 
 served to the ministers of the established church in the par- 
 ishes where one was settled ; and the marriage license was to 
 be granted by the governor, who furnished a supply in 17 66 
 blank, and signed by him, to the county clerks. On Decern- 6 _' S R ' ,VI1 ’ 
 ber 2d, with very amicable relations existing between the 
 
TRY ON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 governor and the Assembly, the session was brought to its 
 close. 
 
 The Cherokee line 
 
 In the progress of settlement the colonists were encroach- 
 ing on the hunting grounds of the Indians, and there was 
 more or less friction along the whole frontier from Canada 
 to Georgia. The king and ministry were anxious to prevent 
 hostilities, and some of the Cherokee chieftains had visited 
 England and been assured by the king of his purpose to pro- 
 tect them. Dividing lines were ordered to be run that should 
 mark the hunting grounds of the Indians and the limits of 
 the territory open to settlers. Such a line had been run 
 from McGowan’s Ford, on the Savannah, northeastwardly 
 to Reedy River, leaving a considerable territory east of the 
 mountains in South Carolina as Indian lands ; and Governor 
 Tryon was ordered to have that line continued through west- 
 ern North Carolina. The Indians had in October agreed 
 that the line should run from Reedy River north to the 
 mountains, and then to Chiswell’s lead mines on the New 
 River or the Kanahwa. Now some chiefs contended that it 
 should be run direct from Reedy River to the mines. Gov- 
 ernor Tryon was desirous that the change should not be 
 made, but that the North Carolina boundary should be the 
 mountains. In order to effect his purpose he proposed 
 to attend the meeting of the Indians and surveyors. It is 
 to be observed that the dividing line between North and 
 South Carolina had been marked out only to the Catawba 
 nation, and to the westward of the Catawba River it had 
 not been established at all ; but in any event North Carolina 
 was interested in running the Indian boundary north from 
 Reedy River to the mountains, for that left no Indian hunt- 
 ing grounds east of the mountains. Many Indian chieftains 
 were to be present and locate the line. On May 6th the 
 governor left Brunswick, and on the 21st, with an escort 
 of fifty men and a considerable number of surveyors and 
 woodsmen, he took up his march from Salisbury for Reedy 
 River, where he was to meet the Indians. On June 4th, 
 with their sanction. Governor Tryon directed the line to be 
 run a north course to the mountains. He favorably im- 
 
THE CHEROKEE LINE 
 
 333 
 
 pressed the Indian chieftains, one of whom was the Wolf 
 of the Keowee, the others having similar names ; and they 
 complimented him, after their fashion, by conferring on him 
 the title of “The Great Wolf.” The line was run fifty-three 
 miles north, where it struck a mountain, which the surveyors 
 named Trvon, now in Polk County, on the dividing line be- 
 tween the Carol inas, but then supposed to be well within the 
 limits of North Carolina, in fact located on the map of that 
 period as being in the Brushy Mountains, so little was then 
 known of the western portion of the province. 
 
 On his return the governor issued a proclamation forbid- 
 ding any purchase of land from the Indians and any issuing 
 of grants for land within one mile of the boundary line. 
 
 Some years earlier adventurous hunters had begun to pass 
 the mountains in search of game. Of these Daniel Boone 
 was perhaps the boldest. He crossed the valley of the Hol- 
 stein, passed through Cumberland Gap, and visited Ken- 
 tucky. At length, about 1768, settlements began to be made 
 on the Watauga, the first to erect a cabin and to move his 
 family, it is said, being William Bean, removing from some 
 North Carolina settlement. Others soon followed. Thus 
 began the occupation of that region, which later received 
 large accessions from the inhabitants of the western counties. 
 
 On December 5th the legislature again met. It made pro- 
 vision for paving the cost of running the Indian boundary, 
 amounting to about £400, expressed its sense of high obliga- 
 tion to the governor for superintending it in person, thanked 
 him for his care in erecting the governor’s house and for 
 calling attention to abuses in the collection of taxes by the 
 sheriffs, and referred to the harmony and industry that pre- 
 vailed in the province, but called attention to the distress, al- 
 most ruin, that seems “to be our inevitable lot from the great 
 want of a sufficient quantity of circulating currency.” 
 
 New legislation 
 
 The two years for which the court law had been enacted 
 being about to expire, a new law, establishing six judicial 
 districts, was enacted to continue in force for five years and 
 until the end of the next session of Assembly thereafter. 
 These courts were to be held by the chief justice and two 
 
 1767 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 508 
 
 Great Wolf 
 of Carolina 
 
 Boone 
 
 Watauga 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 565 
 
 S R 
 
 XXIII, 688 
 
334 
 
 TRY ON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1768 
 
 xxiii, 7 ii, 
 
 723' 
 
 Tryon joins 
 in asking for 
 currency 
 
 4 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 681 
 
 associate justices, and in case of the absence of the chief 
 justice or either of the others, it was lawful for one to hold 
 the court. Maurice Moore and Richard Henderson were 
 appointed the associates. 
 
 An additional £10,000 was granted for finishing the gover- 
 nor’s house and a poll tax of 2s. 6d. was imposed for three 
 years for that purpose. A stringent law was enacted with re- 
 gard to the accounting of sheriffs, and members of the Assem- 
 bly were declared ineligible to the sheriffalty. Public ware- 
 houses were established for tobacco at Campbellton, at Tar- 
 boro, Kinston, Halifax, and seven other points in the north- 
 ern part of the province, inspectors to give receipts for the 
 same, their receipts or notes being transferable in the course 
 of trade ; and similar warehouses were established at Camp- 
 bellton and Halifax for the storage of hemp and flax. 
 
 Commissioners were appointed to construct a public road 
 from the frontier in Meckdenburg County — that then ex- 
 tended to the mountains — through Rowan, Anson and 
 Bladen, to Wilmington. The design was to connect the back 
 country with the seaports of the province, the people of 
 Mecklenburg and Rowan having theretofore established 
 trade relations with Charleston. 
 
 Under Governor Tryon’s influence and the progress of 
 events, there was a disposition to depart from the simplicity 
 of former years, illustrated by the construction of the gov- 
 ernor’s palace, and the Assembly determined that the speaker 
 and other officers of the two houses should appear in robes 
 appropriate to their offices, and the governor was requested 
 to procure them at the public expense. On January 16, 1768, 
 the business of the session being well finished, the Assembly 
 was prorogued until May. 
 
 Because of the general distress incident to insufficient cur- 
 rency, acknowledged by the governor and merchants as well 
 as by the people, a petition to the king was drawn by the 
 Assembly, praying leave to issue £100,000 in paper currency, 
 and promising not to make any currency lawful ten- 
 der for any indebtedness to the Crown or to any merchant or 
 others residing in Great Britain. The inference was that 
 this paper currency would be made legal tender for debts 
 within the province. Governor Tryon strongly urged that 
 
FEELING IN THE ASSEMBLY 335 
 
 this request should be granted. He dwelt on the great need 
 for currency in the province, representing that there was not 
 enough for the payment of taxes, and that indeed he thought 
 that the ability of the people to raise the funds for the gov- 
 ernor's mansion depended on this proposed issue of currency. 
 
 He therefore had a personal interest in the matter. But the 
 
 r petition 
 
 petition was denied on the ground that legal tender paper refused 
 currency led to frauds, and that no consideration of local 
 inconvenience would induce the ministry to ask Parliament 
 to depart from the principles of the act it had passed in 1764 
 forbidding the issue of legal tender paper money. Later c. r.. vii, 
 Tryon again urged that this favor be granted to the people, 6 ' 9 ’ 681 
 for the public distress was augmented by the new taxes laid 
 for the mansion, for the judges and other officers, and for 
 other expenses that had been incurred at his instance. Much 
 to his mortification he was curtly answered by the Earl of 
 Hillsborough that the subject had been disposed of and could 
 not be reconsidered. 
 
 Pursuant to the declaratory act of March, 1766, new cus- New 
 tom duties had been imposed on the colonies by act of Par- duties 
 
 . imposed 
 
 hament and a board of customs officers was appointed. 
 
 This proceeding led to the publication of “Letters from a 
 Pennsylvania Farmer” that again aroused the colonists, an 4 
 the Assembly of Massachusetts in February, 1768, issued a 
 circular letter to the other colonies, asking for “a united and - VI1 ' 
 dutiful supplication” to the Crown, but the apprehension 
 was expressed that they would be considered “factious and 
 disloyal, and having a desire to make themselves independent 
 of the mother country.” This letter was received by Speaker 
 Harvey on the first day of April ; and at the end of that 1768 
 month the governor prorogued the Assembly till the middle 
 of June. In the meantime the burgesses of Virginia had 
 made a similar address. Soon afterward Governor Tryon 
 received directions from the Earl of Hillsborough that if the 
 Assembly of North Carolina should indicate any purpose to c. p., vii 
 take action on the subject, he should prorogue or dissolve it, 
 and in conformity with these instructions he prorogued the 
 Assembly. 
 
336 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1768 
 
 1768 
 
 C. R.. VII, 
 713 etseq. 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 671, 726 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 699, 726 tt 
 seq 
 
 The Regulators associate 
 
 While continental matters were thus again claiming pub- 
 lic attention, the people in the back parts of North Carolina 
 were continuing their efforts to redress their local grievances. 
 The initial proceedings of this movement had been directed 
 from Sandy Creek, a tributary of the Deep (now in the 
 eastern part of Randolph County), where Hermon Hus- 
 band* resided. In the same vicinity lived his brother-in-law, 
 James Pugh ; William Butler, the Coxes, Hendrys, Fudges, 
 and other active men. Farther north was the residence of 
 James Hunter, the first cousin of James and Alexander Mar- 
 tin, a man of parts and a strong speaker. Rednap Howell, 
 another agitator, was a schoolmaster, and a maker of rhymes, 
 whose point and wit, rather than their musical cadences, ap- 
 pealed to the popular heart. The greatest interest was mani- 
 fested by the people west of the Haw. In February, March 
 and April meetings were held at various points, and it was 
 resolved that they should be held regularly every three 
 months. The officers had not attended, as required, to give 
 an account of their stewardships. The demands of the peo- 
 ple were unsatisfied. Under the direction of their leaders 
 they proposed to press forward, and a new character was im- 
 parted to the movement. An oath-bound association was 
 entered into, binding the subscribers to pay no taxes until 
 they were satisfied that the levies were agreeable to law ; and 
 to pay no officer any more fees than the law allows ; and 
 they desired “that the sheriffs will not come this way to col- 
 lect the levy, for we will pay none before there is a settlement 
 to our satisfaction,” and they asked that their assemblymen 
 and vestrymen should appoint a time to settle with them. 
 Hitherto the inhabitants engaged in these proceedings had 
 assumed no name, and were spoken of as “the mob,” or “the 
 country now they began to be known as “the Regulators.” 
 
 The Sons of Liberty had vetoed the power of Parliament 
 to tax America. The Regulators of Sandy Creek, not ques- 
 tioning the power of their county courts and Assembly to 
 
 *While this name has been generally spelled Husbands there is no 
 question that the true spelling is Husband. See facsimile autograph 
 in Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery, 178. 
 
THE REGULATORS ASSOCIATE 
 
 337 
 
 lay taxes, vetoed the collection of the levies until they them- 
 selves should have passed on the propriety of payment. 
 
 The grievances they sought to remedy were general, all 
 persons except the officers being affected, and they had the 
 sympathy of even those who had not subscribed the asso- 
 ciation. By April they were assured of the cooperation of 
 many in the adjoining counties of Rowan and Anson, and 
 they were strengthened in their purposes by these accessions. 
 It was not long before an occasion arose for determined ac- 
 tion. On April 8th Sheriff Harris of Orange distrained a 
 horse for a levy. The people were quick to resist. A hun- 
 dred armed men appeared in Hillsboro, then a hamlet of two 
 stores, a few straggling log dwellings, a framed building or 
 two, and a small wooden court-house. They seized the sheriff 
 and tied him, took possession of the horse, treated several 
 of the inhabitants roughly, and being provoked by some one 
 at the residence of Colonel Edmund Fanning, shot several 
 bullets through the house, but without wounding any one. 
 Colonel Fanning was an attorney and was absent, attending 
 the court at Halifax. He was a representative of the county 
 in the Assembly, colonel of the militia and register of deeds, 
 by the appointment of the governor, in whose regard and 
 esteem he stood very high. He was the leading officer of the 
 county, and had now become the chief object of popular re- 
 sentment. 
 
 This outbreak caused consternation among the officers of 
 the county: They had long been threatened ; now threats 
 had become action. John Gray, the lieutenant-colonel of the 
 militia, hastened to consult with Major Lloyd, proposing to 
 call out the militia men, and he despatched information to 
 Colonel Fanning. Fanning immediately ordered the captains 
 of the militia to raise their companies ; but the defection was 
 so prevalent that to the astonishment of the officers, only 
 one hundred and twenty men responded. Indeed Adjutant 
 Francis Nash, who was also the clerk of the court, reported 
 that such was the universal dissatisfaction with the officers 
 and leading men, that one hundred and fifty men could not be 
 raised in the whole county to oppose the Regulators. Fan- 
 ning hurried to Hillsboro and found that the people in 
 every part and corner of the county were confederating by 
 
 1768 
 
 The 
 
 oath-bound 
 
 association 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 705, 710 
 et seq. 
 
 Hillsboro 
 
 raided 
 
 C. R., VTI, 
 
 713 et seq. 
 
33 « 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1768 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 716 
 
 Micklejohn 
 
 counsels 
 
 moderation 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 718, 720 
 
 Husband 
 and Butler 
 arrested 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 743 
 
 The people 
 in arms 
 
 solemn oath and with open violence to refuse payment of 
 taxes and prevent the execution of the law, threatening death 
 and destruction to himself and others. He reported to 
 Governor Tryon that he learned that on May 3d they were 
 to environ the town with fifteen hundred men and execute 
 their vengeance on him ; and if not satisfied to their desire 
 they were to lay the town in ashes. Great was the excite- 
 ment, and panic prevailed. On April 25th. the Regulators 
 held a general conference, and on that occasion the minister 
 of the parish. Rev. George Micklejohn, attended and per- 
 suaded them from going to Hillsboro in a body, but to ap- 
 point twelve men to be there on May nth and have a settle- 
 ment with the officers in accordance with instructions then 
 agreed on. 
 
 Governor Tryon, on being informed of the riotous pro- 
 ceedings of April gth, ordered the militia of Bute and six 
 neighboring counties to hold themselves in readiness to 
 march to Fanning’s assistance ; and wrote advising that if 
 there were any grievances, the people should appeal to the 
 Assembly ; and he declared that every matter founded in 
 equity and justice would have his support, on condition, how- 
 ever, that the people would disperse and that order and tran- 
 quillity should be restored. These despatches were borne by 
 his secretary, Mr. Edwards. But Fanning had not been con- 
 tent to await developments. He proposed to act with reso- 
 lution. On Sunday night, May 1st, having caused warrants 
 to be issued for the arrest of Husband and William Butler, 
 Fanning with twenty-seven men dashed out to Sandy Creek 
 and early Monday morning made the arrests, and hurried 
 back to Hillsboro, where an order was prepared to incar- 
 cerate the prisoners in the New Bern jail. The news flew 
 through the country and a prodigious enthusiasm aroused 
 the people ; they hurried with their arms to Hillsboro, 
 but in the early morning as some seven hundred men were 
 approaching the town, they were, to their astonishment, met 
 by Husband. As quick as Fanning had been, popular action 
 had been equally as speedy. The country was in arms, and 
 the prisoners could not be conveyed to New Bern without 
 rescue, and so, constrained by the uprising of the people, 
 
TRY ON PROMISES REDRESS 
 
 339 
 
 Fanning caused them to be released on bail. Thus Husband 
 was unexpectedly restored in safety to his friends. 
 
 Later in the morning Secretary Edwards came out to meet 
 the people. He read to them the governor’s proclamation, 
 and promised in the governor's name, if they would return 
 to their homes and be quiet, he would seek to secure a re- 
 dress of their grievances and would lay the matter before 
 the Assembly. To this they agreed, saying that that was all 
 they wanted. Such a petition was drawn for signature. 
 While it was being circulated among the people there were 
 a few days of repose. Ralph McNair, a warm friend of 
 Fanning, had lately spent some days with Husband, who 
 had conferred with him as to the criminal offences that mobs 
 might commit, and on McNair’s return to Hillsboro he 
 addressed a long letter to Husband more fully explaining 
 these criminal matters, and urging him to come and confer 
 with Fanning, bringing with him other men of his neighbor- 
 hood, such as William Butler, John Lowe and James Hunter ; 
 and he enclosed a petition which he suggested should be 
 adopted and signed by the Regulators. But that petition did 
 not meet their views, and at a general meeting, held on May 
 2 1 st, it was resolved to hold by the first draft that had then 
 been signed by about four hundred and fifty men, and a com- 
 mittee was appointed to prepare an address to the governor, 
 giving a full narrative of the grievances of the people, and of 
 their action from the beginning. This paper is exceedingly 
 well written and reflects much credit on its author. It was 
 signed by John Lowe, James Hunter, Rednap Howell, Har- 
 mon Cox, John Marshel, William Cox, William Moffitt and 
 George Hendry, one of whom probably wrote it. It was 
 drawn with candor, and in some measure it bears testimony 
 of the esteem in which Governor Tryon was held even by 
 the Regulators themselves. At a meeting of the committee 
 on May 30th, held at Cox’s Mill on Deep River, they 
 directed James Hunter and Rednap Howell to lay this ad- 
 dress, the petition, and all the accompanying papers before 
 the governor and council. This duty was performed on 
 June 20th, and the next day the governor, with the concur- 
 rence of the council, w r rote his reply addressed to “the in- 
 habitants on the south side of the Haw.” While calling on 
 
 1768 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 733* 758, 767 
 
 Their 
 
 petition 
 
 C R , VII, 
 759 et seq. 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 766 
 
340 
 
 TRYON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1768 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 792 , 794 
 Tryon’s 
 answer 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 796 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 799, 821 
 
 the people to desist from any further meetings and to aban- 
 don all title of Regulators or associators, and to allow the 
 sheriffs and other officers to execute their duties, the gover- 
 nor promised to “listen to the voice of distress and the just 
 complaints” of the people and “the hardships they may groan 
 under,” and to give orders for the prosecution of every offi- 
 cer who had been guilty of extortion or illegal practices. At 
 their request the governor also informed them that the pro- 
 vincial tax for 1767 was seven shillings, to which were to 
 be added the county and parish taxes. The Regulators, 
 however, concluded that some of the provincial taxes laid 
 for a particular object had long since answered the purpose 
 of their creation, and that the public funds should be in a 
 very different situation from that reported by the Assembly 
 and the treasurers. They also saw that the proclamation of 
 the governor against the taking of illegal fees had had no 
 effect, for the register, they said, had raised his fees rather 
 than reduced them. 
 
 Tryon reaches Hillsboro 
 
 On July 6th Governor Tryon, who resided during the sum- 
 mer months in the up country, arrived with his family at 
 Hillsboro. Days passed, and no answer was received to his 
 letter, but he learned that the Regulators were continuing 
 their meetings. A difficult situation was presented. Large 
 numbers of the inhabitants, not actuated by any vicious pro- 
 pensity, had joined themselves together in an oath-bound 
 association to nullify the law. That the grievances they com- 
 plained of were not merely imaginary, the governor had 
 reason to believe. Thus far he had treated them with consid- 
 eration, courtesy and respect. He had received their com- 
 munications from their representatives and had answered 
 while firmly, yet neither arrogantly, defiantly nor unkindly. 
 As a representative of the king and the chief officer of gov- 
 ernment, he could do not less than require submission to the 
 constituted authorities, but apparently he sought concilia- 
 tion. The time coming on for the appointment of sheriffs, 
 he did not reappoint the sheriffs of Orange and Rowan, but 
 substituted Lea for Harris in Orange and appointed a new 
 sheriff for Rowan. Still Harris had to collect the back taxes, 
 
REGULATORS STAND FIRM 
 
 34i 
 
 and the governor on August 1st, being determined to assert 
 the authority of the province, sent Harris among the Regu- 
 lators to make collections and advise them that he expected 
 them to obey the laws of the country according to his letter 
 of June 21st. 
 
 Two days later the sheriff returned and reported that he 
 found assembled at the meeting at George Sally’s nearly 
 four hundred men, who unanimously refused to pay any 
 taxes and declared they would kill any man who should dare 
 to distrain for their levies. Other unavailing intercourse 
 ensued between the governor and the Regulators, and the 
 flame of discontent was constantly fanned. By August gt’h 
 five hundred men assembled at Peeds, and information was 
 brought to Hillsboro that if the insurgents’ demands were 
 not complied with they would burn the town. The next day 
 they approached to within twenty miles of Hillsboro, and 
 matters wore a serious aspect. But Tryon was not dis- 
 mayed. He ordered out all the militia, two hundred and fifty 
 of whom obeyed the call, and proceeded to fortify the 
 town. On the evening of the 12th eight of the principal 
 insurgents sought an interview with the governor to arrive 
 at an understanding. 
 
 One of the wild rumors that flew among the people was 
 that the governor was to bring down the Indians on them, 
 and that he was raising the militia to harry their settlements. 
 It was this that inflamed them. At this interview the gover- 
 nor made denial of such purposes ; Colonel Fanning and Mr. 
 Nash agreed to submit the differences between the people 
 and themselves to the judgment of the supreme court ; and it 
 was further agreed that the accounts of the sheriffs and other 
 officers, after being examined and approved, should be posted 
 at the court-house, and that the sheriff should make no col- 
 lections until after the approaching superior court in Sep- 
 tember. At the same time the governor gave directions that 
 the Regulators should meet on August 17th at George 
 Sally’s, where the sheriffs should attend with their settle- 
 ment and give satisfaction to the people. These terms sat- 
 isfied the leaders, and the Regulators dispersed and returned 
 to their homes. But the governor was not at all satisfied. 
 By show of force the people had gained a point ; and unless 
 
 1768 
 
 The 
 
 Regulators 
 
 determined 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 819 et seq. 
 
 They 
 
 approach 
 
 Hillsboro 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 804 
 
 Tryon 
 orders out 
 militia 
 
 They 
 
 disperse 
 
342 
 
 TRYON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1768 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 724, 766 
 In Anson 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 807 
 
 In Johnston 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 885 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 706 
 
 Aug., 1768 
 
 the powers of government were asserted, they would persist 
 in having their own way. The extension of the movement 
 had become formidable. Already their general meeting was 
 spoken of by their committeemen as their “General Assem- 
 bly.” From Anson, where in May the inferior court 
 had been broken up, came an address to the gov- 
 ernor from the malcontents, informing him that they to 
 the number of five hundred had resolved if nothing hap- 
 pened to their succor to defend their “cause in the dis- 
 agreeable manner of a force, and to have persisted 
 unto blood.” In August also came the disturb- 
 ing information that a body of eighty men had assembled at 
 Johnston County court with the intention of turning the 
 justices off the bench. It was the very first day of the term. 
 The justices adjourned court for the term, and rallying the 
 friends of government attacked the insurgents, and after a 
 smart skirmish drove them out of the field. It seemed 
 to the governor, if the movements were not arrested, 
 that civil government in most of the counties would be over- 
 turned, and that the insurgents would abolish all taxes and 
 debts, and all laws for the enforcement of order. The trial 
 of Butler and Husband was to be at the September term of 
 court, and grave apprehensions were felt that the Regulators 
 would rescue their leaders if convicted. Against such an 
 event the governor took pains to guard. On August 13th, 
 with the concurrence of the council, he required that twelve 
 of the principal men should wait on him at Salisbury and 
 give bond as security that no rescue should be made of Butler 
 and Husband ; and he determined to call on the people not 
 involved in the defection to rally for the support of govern- 
 ment. He proposed to embody the militia of the western 
 counties to protect the court and enforce its judgments. 
 
 The army of 1768 
 
 On the very day that Sheriff Lea was to meet the people 
 at George Sally’s by the governor’s own appointment, Gov- 
 ernor Tryon left Hillsboro for Salisbury, where he arrived 
 the next evening. He issued orders for the review of the 
 Rowan regiment on the 26th, and then hastened on to Meck- 
 lenburg, where he found emissaries from Orange arousing 
 
TRY ON RAISES AN ARMY 
 
 343 
 
 the people. The purpose of the governor was to collect a 
 force of volunteers through the militia organizations to sus- 
 tain the court and curb the Regulators. On the 23d nine 
 hundred militiamen were reviewed at Colonel Polk’s, and 
 an association oath to “maintain the government and laws 
 against all persons whatsoever who shall attempt to alter, 
 obstruct or prevent the due administration of the laws or 
 disturb the peace and tranquillity of the province,” was ten- 
 dered them, but it being objected to, the call for volunteers 
 was postponed. Subsequently a large number volunteered. 
 
 Reaching Salisbury on the 25th, the governor found that 
 the Regulators, while declaring that they had no intention 
 to release the prisoners, declined to give the bonds required. 
 But if disappointed by this denial, the governor had the 
 satisfaction of receiving assurances from another quarter. 
 The four Presbyterian ministers in the western counties sent 
 him an address, enclosing the pastoral letter they had writ- 
 ten to their flocks, urging the Presbyterians to be steadfast in 
 support of government. He also found much gratification 
 in the result of the review of the militia at Salisbury. So 
 prompt and unanimous was the Rowan regiment to respond 
 to his call for volunteers that the governor with great for- 
 mality presented the king’s colors to the Rowan regiment, 
 and requested that Captain Dobbins’ company, which was 
 the first to volunteer, should bear them. Returning to Meck- 
 lenburg, he directed the volunteers from that county to 
 assemble on September 12th, and issued orders for the 
 Rowan regiment to join him at Salisbury on the 13th. On 
 the night of the 13th the two battalions encamped on the 
 Yadkin, having with them two pieces of artillery, nine 
 wagons and accompanied by droves of beeves. En route to 
 Hillsboro this little army passed for three days through the 
 very heart of the disaffected district. Orders had been issued 
 for the Orange and Granville militia to assemble, and on the 
 2 1st all the forces were united at Hillsboro. Here, too, the 
 governor was joined by a number of gentlemen from the 
 east and a company of cavalry. But the insurgent leaders 
 had not been inactive. They had collected a force of some 
 eight hundred men, and at daybreak of the 22d took post 
 within less than a mile of the town. However, instead of 
 
 T768 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 809 ct seq. 
 
 The 
 
 governor 
 seeks aid 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 814 
 
 The 
 
 Presbyterian 
 
 ministers 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 823 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 828 
 
 The 
 
 Regulators 
 
 embody 
 
344 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1768 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 841 
 
 They retire 
 
 Martin 
 
 Howard 
 
 The court 
 held 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 843 et seq. 
 
 Trials of 
 1768 
 
 making any attack, they opened negotiations for a settlement 
 of differences. Governor Try on had been ill for several days, 
 an illness that confined him for some five weeks. He con- 
 vened a council of his officers and required that the Regula- 
 tors should deliver up their arms, surrender five of their 
 chiefs for trial, and should also declare that they would pay 
 all taxes assessed against them. Not relishing these terms, 
 the malcontents deemed it best to disperse. Thirty of them, 
 however, delivered up their arms. The superior court opened 
 its session on September 22d. It was presided over by Mar- 
 tin Howard, the new chief justice, who had been appointed 
 by the king and now displaced Hasell. He was a lawyer of 
 Rhode Island, where, because of his loyalty in stamp act 
 times, he had been hung in effigy, and his house and prop- 
 erty destroyed by the outraged people. Leaving Rhode 
 Island, he had in the intervening years resided in England. 
 With him on the bench were Maurice Moore and Richard 
 Henderson, the associate justices; while McGuire, a fine law- 
 yer, was the prosecuting officer, and John Cooke, appointed 
 by the chief justice, clerk of the court. Husband was in- 
 dicted and tried for being concerned in the riot, but was ac- 
 quitted. Fanning was indicted in many cases for extortion, 
 found guilty, and in each case was fined a penny and costs. 
 His defence was that he had submitted the question to the 
 inferior court as to what fees he was entitled to, and he had 
 in every instance taken less than the court had adjudged 
 would be his due. William Butler was indicted for rescue of 
 goods and also for a riot, and John Philip Hartso was like- 
 wise indicted for a riot. These were convicted. Butler 
 was fined £50 and sentenced to six months’ imprison- 
 ment. Hartso’s sentence was lighter. Francis Nash appears 
 to have been indicted for extortion, but his case was not 
 tried, and he was bound over till the next term of the court. 
 An indictment against James Hunter, Hamilton and others 
 was found a true bill by the grand jury, but was quashed for 
 irregularity; another indictment against James Hunter and 
 others was also quashed ; and still another. From these 
 proceedings it would appear that the court held the scales of 
 justice with an even and impartial hand. Immediately at its 
 close Governor Tryon issued a proclamation, “out of com- 
 
TRYON’S MODERATION 
 
 345 
 
 passion to the misguided multitude, and being much more 
 inclined to prevent than punish crimes of so high a nature,” 
 granting pardon to all concerned in the disturbance of the 
 public peace, except Hunter, Husband and eleven others ; 
 and he released the prisoners and suspended the payment of 
 their fines for six months, and later asked the king to extend 
 pardon to all, both as to persons and fines, except alone as 
 to Husband ; and he represented to the king that ‘‘to say that 
 these insurgents had not a color for their showing a dis- 
 satisfaction at the conduct of their public officers would be 
 doing them an injustice, for both the register and clerk of 
 the county of Orange were found guilty of taking too high 
 fees.” Colonel Fanning on conviction immediately resigned 
 as register.* 
 
 Quiet was now restored to the province, and the Assembly, 
 being convened on November 3d, on the 7th a quorum ap- 
 peared, and the governor made a report of his proceedings 
 against the Regulators. The house expressed to Governor 
 Tryon its fullest conviction of the necessity for marching 
 troops to Hillsboro, and its detestation of the riotous and 
 illegal proceedings of the insurgents, and gratefully thanked 
 him for his action. It also thanked him for his efforts to 
 secure an emission of paper currency as a legal tender, and 
 again declared that it was “the only remedy of saving this 
 province from rum.” It concurred in the governor’s opinion 
 that the interior policy of the country was never more an 
 object of serious concern than at that juncture, and the house 
 added that it was happy in supporting his actions, and that 
 it most sincerely wished that he should long continue to pre- 
 side over the province. 
 
 Tryon desires to leave 
 
 Toward the close of 1768 it had doubtless come to be un- 
 derstood that Governor Tryon was desirous of relinquishing 
 his position as governor. His relations with the Earl of 
 Hillsborough, who was the minister in charge of the colonies, 
 were close, and to him probably Tryon confided his wishes. 
 Not only did he see loom up before him the contest with the 
 people growing out of their resolute purpose not to submit to 
 
 *In England the law officers held Fanning blameless. (C. R. VIII, 33.) 
 
 1768 
 
 The 
 
 governor’s 
 
 attitude 
 
 Nov., 1768 
 Governor 
 thanked by 
 Assembly 
 
 C. R., VII 
 93i 
 
346 
 
 TRYON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1768 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 219 
 
 Mercer, 
 
 It. gov. 
 
 In other 
 colonies 
 
 Nov., 1768 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 
 928 
 
 Try on 
 County 
 
 the exactions of Parliament, but the particular conditions in 
 North Carolina must have been a source of annoyance as 
 having been in some measure the result of his own action in 
 fastening taxes on the people beyond their ability to pay, 
 and thus inflaming the discontent which recpiired force to 
 suppress. Besides, he had suffered grievously in his health, 
 and so in December, 1768, George Mercer was appointed 
 lieutenant-governor. Mercer was a Virginian, and had 
 served with Washington in the French and Indian War. He 
 had been stamp distributor in 1765, and had suffered for his 
 loyalty. Like Martin Howard, he had taken up his residence 
 in England, and now it was proposed to provide for him, 
 as had been done for Howard, in North Carolina. He 
 waited in England expecting to take Tryon’s place when he 
 should leave. A little later, an infant son having died in 
 March, and perhaps urged by his wife, Tryon made a formal 
 request to be restored to his regiment, or to be employed at 
 court. 
 
 He had so managed as to avoid issues and disputes with 
 the Assembly, and at this session his personal influence was 
 still a factor. There had been clashing elsewhere. In 
 Massachusetts the opposition to the collection of the custom 
 duties had led to orders for troops and armed vessels to be 
 stationed at Boston. On receiving information of this move- 
 ment the people of that city, much excited, requested the gov- 
 ernor to convene the Assembly, and when he refused the 
 towns and districts appointed deputies to hold a convention. 
 This body, the first of the kind, met and issued an address on 
 the subject of the people’s grievances. In other colonies pub- 
 lic ardor was also aroused. When the North Carolina Assem- 
 bly convened, Speaker Harvey presented the two letters 
 from Massachusetts and Virginia that had been received in 
 the spring. There was evidently a division of sentiment, but 
 moderation prevailed. The speaker was verbally directed to 
 make reply to the letters ; and then local affairs engaged the 
 attention of the body. Among the acts passed was one pro- 
 hibiting that the two offices, clerk of the superior court and 
 clerk of the inferior court, should be held by the same person. 
 A new county was set off on the frontier of Mecklenburg 
 and named Tryon in honor of the governor. Disappointed 
 
INTERNAL AFFAIRS 
 
 347 
 
 in its hopes of being allowed to issue legal tender currency, 
 the Assembly, to pay the indebtedness of the province, now 
 directed promissory notes to be issued to the amount of 
 £20,000, and it authorized the sheriffs to receive in 
 payment of all taxes, except those for the sinking fund, these 
 notes and the promissory notes and receipts given by the in- 
 spectors at the public warehouses for tobacco, hemp, rice, 
 indigo, wax, tallow and deer skins. Such were the best 
 measures the Assembly could devise to relieve the financial 
 stringency and to make easy the payment of taxes. To 
 lighten taxation the house also adopted a resolution that a 
 tax of a shilling per poll imposed in 1760, and one of two 
 shillings imposed in 1761 had had their effect and ought not 
 thereafter to be collected ; and although the governor could 
 not give his assent to the resolution, the direction of the 
 Assembly was obeyed by the treasurers, sheriffs and people. 
 Governor Tryon, however, again offered to lay before the 
 Crown an impartial statement of the situation, and to urge 
 that permission be granted to emit legal tender paper cur- 
 rency. 
 
 The obstacle to the appointment of a provincial agent 
 continuing, the house by resolution appointed as its agent 
 Henry Eustace McCulloh, who, though a member of the 
 council, was in England on leave, and was a correspondent 
 of Speaker Harvey ; and it adopted a remonstrance and ad- 
 dress to the Crown, expressing “their concern and anxiety 
 because of the acts of Parliament in regard to taxation” and 
 declaring that “free men cannot be legally taxed but by 
 themselves or their representatives,” and praying the king’s 
 “interposition in favor of the distressed and oppressed peo- 
 ple in the colony.” Its tone, however, was submissive rather 
 than obstructive. It did not please Sam Johnston, 
 who denounced it as “great pusillanimity.” On the other 
 hand Tryon felicitated himself on the temper and mod- 
 eration of the Assembly. Doubtless there was a motive to 
 seek favor abroad and, through the good offices of Governor 
 Tryon, to secure if possible permission to issue legal tender 
 currency, which was deemed so vitally necessary to the peace 
 and happiness of the people. The chief obstacle in the way 
 of accomplishing this purpose was Lord Hillsborough, and 
 
 1768 
 
 C R , VII, 
 
 983 
 
 C R., VII, 
 877, 973; 
 
 VIII, 9 
 
 McCulloh, 
 
 agent 
 
348 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1769 
 
 C. R., VII, 
 973 
 
 C. R , VIII, 
 
 39 , 58-60 
 
 March, 1769 
 C. R., VIII, 
 3 a 
 
 with him Tryon was supposed to have a particular influence. 
 Having adopted its address and appointed an agent to pre- 
 sent it, the house now appointed a committee of that body to 
 conduct the correspondence. Among those appointed were 
 Samuel Johnston and Joseph Hewes, but they declined the 
 service, Johnston saying that the proceedings “were so in- 
 consistent with his sentiments” that he refused to join in the 
 address. The address was well received by the king, and 
 Lord Hillsborough at once indicated that while he could not 
 assent to the issue of a legal tender currency, yet if the As- 
 sembly would ask to issue a paper currency founded on 
 credit, similar to that of New England and Maryland, every 
 indulgence would be allowed. 
 
 In England there was much diversity of views in regard to 
 America. Parliament in February urged the king to action, 
 and that he should have offenders against the law transported 
 to England and tried there ; but McCulloh wrote to Harvey : 
 “I have it from authority to acquaint you that the acts com- 
 plained of are to be repealed — their proud stomachs here 
 must come down — our politics are a scene of confusion. 
 Men’s minds seem greatly inflamed. The ministry most 
 cordially hated.” Hillsborough himself wrote to Tryon that 
 “in the opinion of the present ministry it was inexpedient 
 to tax America ; that instead of other taxes, at the next ses- 
 sion the ministry is to propose to take off the duties on glass, 
 paper and colors.” 
 
 Six months had now passed with no notable disturbance 
 among the people. At March term James Hunter was tried 
 at Hillsboro and, although convicted, was awarded a new 
 trial. Husband, who was also then tried, was acquitted. 
 Sheriff Lea, when attempting to arrest some of the former 
 insurgents, was seized by their friends and severely whipped; 
 but the governor, who seemed inclined not to be too quick 
 to raise a quarrel with the people, said that the act did not 
 meet with the general approbation of the Regulators, and the 
 people were quiet; yet the council recommended that the 
 prosecution of the offenders should be conducted with the 
 utmost rigor of the law. On May 6th, Governor Tryon, 
 announcing that he had qualified under his commission as 
 
REGULATORS' ADDRESS TO THE PROVINCE 349 
 
 governor, dissolved the Assembly and issued his writ for an 
 election of new members, to be held July 18th. 
 
 In view of this election the Regulators issued an address 
 to the inhabitants of the province, hoping to change the 
 personnel of the Assembly. In it it was declared that the 
 causes of the commotions were the misapplication of the pub- 
 lic money to the enriching of individuals without defraying 
 the public expenses ; pillaging the people by exorbitant and 
 unlawful fees of public officers; limiting the jurisdiction of 
 the inferior courts, dragging the people into the superior 
 courts, adding greatly to the necessary expenses and cost of 
 litigation. Especially was stress laid on the enormous in- 
 crease of the provincial tax, and with fine art it was said : 
 ‘‘Many are accusing the legislative body as the source of all 
 these woeful calamities. These, it must be confessed, are the 
 instrumental cause.” But the address bluntly laid the trouble 
 at the door of the people, and asserted that “the original, 
 principal cause is our own blind, stupid conduct in choosing 
 persons to represent us who would sacrifice the true interests 
 of their country to avarice or ambition.” It was declared 
 that “the majority of our Assembly is composed of lawyers, 
 clerks and others in connection with them, while by our own 
 voice we have excluded the planter.” It was a strong ad- 
 dress. It had its effect in Orange, Granville and Anson. In 
 Anson, Spencer was rejected by the people; in Granville, 
 Tom Person and Howell Lewis were elected. Orange sent 
 Husband and Pryor instead of Edmund Fanning and 
 Thomas Lloyd. Mecklenburg and Rowan, however, stood 
 firm. In the latter Rutherford was again returned, but Fro- 
 hock, then under grave charges, gave place to Sheriff Locke. 
 While there were other changes in several counties, they do 
 not seem to have been due to these influences. However, 
 the Regulators were not content to rest there. In August a 
 committee was raised to attend the Salisbury court, and to 
 bring to justice those officers who had broken the law; but 
 their efforts were without avail, for in every case they pre- 
 sented the grand jury ignored the bills. Yet they had this 
 satisfaction — that the governor, having received authority 
 from the king, now issued his proclamation pardoning 
 
 1769 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 38 
 
 Wheeler, 
 Hist. North 
 Carolina, II, 
 325 
 
 The causes 
 of complaint 
 
 Husband’s 
 
 book 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 106 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 67 
 
35 ° 
 
 TRYON’S ADMINISTRATION , 1765-71 
 
 176Q 
 
 Storm at 
 New Bern 
 
 C. R , VIII, 
 7 ii 159 
 The new 
 Assembly 
 
 Oct., 1769 
 
 The meeting 
 at Raleigh 
 Tavern 
 
 C R , VIII, 
 
 88 
 
 James Hunter and all other persons who had been concerned 
 in the disturbances of the previous year. The ordeal of the 
 courts had been stood. No punishment had resulted. 
 
 On September 7th a great disaster befell New Bern and 
 the eastern part of the province. The severest storm ever 
 known devastated that section. The tide rose in a few hours 
 at New Bern twelve feet higher than ever before, and the 
 wind blew so violently that nothing could stand before it. 
 Every vessel and boat was driven up into the woods. One 
 entire street, with its houses, storehouses and wharves, was 
 swept away, and several of the inhabitants were carried off 
 in the flood. Bridges and ferryboats were destroyed, and 
 the roads were impassable for weeks because of the fallen 
 trees. For the most part the crops were lost and there was 
 great suffering in all that region. In the midst of this 
 wreckage the Assembly met in October at New Bern, Har- 
 vey again being the speaker. The situation was somewhat 
 different from that at the previous session. In May the Vir- 
 ginia Assembly had adopted vigorous resolutions against the 
 acts of Parliament, and George Washington was about to 
 present resolutions again recommending the non-importation 
 of British goods, when Lord Botetourt, the governor, hastily 
 dissolved the Assembly. But the members were not to be 
 thus outdone. They immediately convened as a sort of con- 
 vention at Raleigh Tavern and adopted Washington’s resolu- 
 tions and communicated their action to the other colonies, 
 and once more non-importation agreements were entered into 
 by the people in all the provinces. 
 
 Similar sentiments dominated in North Carolina, and to 
 allay them Governor Tryon in his address to the Assembly 
 urged that : “The weighty concerns that will fall under your 
 consideration this session require all possible temper and 
 moderation and he had the happiness to inform the body 
 that the ministry, instead of laying further taxes, had the 
 intention to propose to Parliament to take off the duties on 
 glass, paper and colors ; and he besought their prudence and 
 candor and a confidence that would remove the prejudices 
 that had been excited against the mother country. 
 
THE ASSEMBLY ACTS 
 
 35i 
 
 The house proceeds to business 
 
 Petitions were presented to the Assembly by many inhabi- 
 tants of Anson County, and also by inhabitants of Orange 
 and Rowan, setting forth the grievances of which the Regu- 
 lators complained, and urging remedies. These papers, like 
 the address to the governor of May, 1768, were admirably 
 drawn. Especially were the remedies recommended in the 
 Anson petition worthy of the earnest consideration of the 
 Assembly. They proposed reforms that in the progress of 
 events had become necessary in the administration of public 
 affairs. The house first, with the concurrence of the gover- 
 nor, appointed an agent for the colony, McCulloh being 
 continued in that employment. Then, when it had hardly en- 
 tered on the business of the session. Speaker Harvey pre- 
 sented the resolutions transmitted by the House of Burgesses 
 in Virginia. 
 
 Nothing now was to be gained by moderation. The ap- 
 peals of the governor were disregarded and the Assembly at 
 once unanimously adopted similar resolutions and also 
 
 “Resolved, That the sole right of imposing taxes on the inhabi- 
 tants of this his Majesty’s colony in North Carolina is now and 
 ever hath been legally and constitutionally vested in the house of 
 Assembly, etc. 
 
 “Resolved, That all trials for treason or crime whatsoever com- 
 mitted in said colony by any person residing therein ought of right 
 to be had and conducted in and before his Majesty’s courts held 
 within said colony,” etc. 
 
 In the address to the king the Assembly said: “We cannot with- 
 out horror think of the new, unusual, and permit us to add uncon- 
 stitutional and illegal mode recommended to your Majesty of seizing 
 and carrying beyond seas the inhabitants of America suspected of any 
 crime,” etc. 
 
 An address to the king was adopted which the committee 
 of correspondence was to transmit to McCulloh “with direc- 
 tions to cause the same to be presented to his Majesty and 
 afterward to be published in the English papers.” This 
 measure, as violent as it was unexpected, was a blow in the 
 face to the governor. As a salve to his wounded pride, the 
 house, however, assured him of its steadfast confidence in 
 
 1769 
 
 Nov , 1769 
 Petiti. 11s for 
 new counties 
 
 c. r., vin, 
 
 75-81, 151 
 
 C. R. VIII, 
 122 
 The 
 
 Assembly 
 
 defiant 
 
 C R., VIII, 
 
 135 
 
352 
 
 TRYON'S ADMINISTRATION , 1765-71 
 
 1769 
 
 Nov. 6-7, 
 1769 
 
 S. C. Gaz- 
 ette, Dec. 8, 
 1769 
 
 Non-int- 
 
 portation 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 169, 170 
 
 Martin, 
 Hist. North 
 Carolina, 
 
 II, 253 
 
 The wishes 
 of the 
 people 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 75-80 
 
 his good purposes and intentions, and of its unalloyed es- 
 teem and attachment ; but its action required him under his 
 instructions to dissolve the Assembly, and this he did with 
 some show of mortification rather than of anger. But the 
 members, notwithstanding the dissolution, immediately re- 
 paired to the court-house, organized by electing John Harvey 
 moderator, and prepared an association paper which they 
 signed, pledging themselves to non-importation and not to 
 use goods of British manufacture. 
 
 Writing to Lord Hillsborough in January, Tryon re- 
 ferred to his application to be relieved as governor, and re- 
 marked that the proceedings of the Assembly wounded his 
 sensibilities — the more because he was dangerously ill at the 
 time. He had no expectation of re-establishing cordial re- 
 lations. “Confidence, my lord,” said he, “that delicate polish 
 in public transactions, has received an ugly scratch, and I 
 fear we have no artists here who can restore it to its original 
 perfection.” He would have been glad to leave the province 
 at once, but until the building at New Bern should be com- 
 pleted and his accounts should be passed on, he felt it neces- 
 sary to remain ; but he ardently requested leave to return to 
 England in the spring of 1771. Hillsborough about the same 
 time directed him to call a new election of representatives, 
 and urged that he should be cautious in his speech; for in- 
 deed the governor’s address to the last house, “pledging the 
 faith of the Crown for the repeal of some taxes,” had been 
 brought into Parliament, and a motion made there that “it 
 was derogatory to his Majesty’s honor, and to the freedom 
 of parliamentary deliberation.” But Hillsborough was able 
 to protect him, and the proposed rebuke failed to pass. 
 
 Before the dissolution the house had entered zealously on 
 business. The petitions of the inhabitants of the different 
 western counties were read to the Assembly by Husband, one 
 of the representatives of Orange. Apparently they were not 
 drawn by the same hand. One from Orange, signed by 
 Francis Nash and other officers of the government, asked 
 that there should be established at Hillsboro a public in- 
 spection of tobacco and hemp, and other commodities; one 
 from Anson County particularly desired that Presbyterian 
 ministers might be allowed to celebrate marriage with pub- 
 
REMEDIAL LEGISLATION PROPOSED 
 
 353 
 
 lication of banns. The grievances complained of by the 
 Regulators were set forth in petitions from Anson and from 
 Orange and Rowan. The state of the sinking fund was 
 particularly commented on. A division of Orange and 
 Rowan was asked for. It was proposed as remedies for ex- 
 isting evils the use of tickets and ballots at elections ; impos- 
 ing taxes on estates ; not collecting taxes in money until there 
 was more currency ; abolishing fees and perquisites for the 
 chief justice, paying him by a salary; giving to a single 
 justice the power to enter final judgment without appeal and 
 without lawyers on small debts ; restricting the fees of clerks 
 and lawyers, and relieving defendants of costs on indict- 
 ments when not found guilty by the jury. The Assembly was 
 also requested to send a remonstrance to the king on the 
 conduct of the receiver of quit rents, and also in regard to 
 the action of the governor and council in granting warrants 
 for lands. And the Assembly was asked to establish ware- 
 houses on the Peedee, on the Catawba, at Campbellton, and at 
 some point in Tryon County; and finally that every denomi- 
 nation of people might marry according to their respective 
 ceremonies. Some of these proposed reforms had in the 
 progress of events become necessary in the administration 
 of public affairs, and were worthy of the earnest considera- 
 tion of the Assembly. 
 
 Agreeably to these petitions the Assembly had at once 
 begun to devise remedial legislation. A bill allowing a single 
 justice to try cases involving only £5 passed all of its sev- 
 eral readings, except the third in the council, when the dis- 
 solution occurred, and it fell. Another, to limit the fees 
 taxed for attorneys, met with a similar fate. The Assembly 
 was pressing forward in the consideration of such measures 
 when it was notified of the impending dissolution ; and then 
 in its last moments, with the hope and expectation of bene- 
 ficial results, it passed some resolutions intended on the one 
 hand to remove grievances and on the other to curb popular 
 demonstrations. It resolved that the public accounts, begin- 
 ning with the year 1748, should be examined and stated by 
 Mr. John Burgwin, confessedly a very competent accountant, 
 who was required to make his report at the next session ; and 
 it resolved that if any public officer exacted illegal fees, on 
 
 1769 
 
 Reforms 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 ior 
 
 The 
 
 Assembly 
 
 responsive 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 *39 
 
 Public 
 
 accounts 
 
354 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION , 1765-71 
 
 1769 
 
 Feb , 1770 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 156, 192, 195 
 
 The Sons 
 of Liberty 
 Active 
 
 South 
 Carolina 
 Gazette, 
 July 26, 1770 
 
 conviction he should receive the highest punishment the 
 house could inflict. But opposition to sheriffs being preva- 
 lent and peace within the province being of the greatest mo- 
 ment, the house declared that all persons who opposed sher- 
 iffs in the execution of their office should be regarded as 
 enemies of their country and deserving of the highest pun- 
 ishment. 
 
 The failure of remedial enactments because of the unex- 
 pected dissolution was a great disappointment to those mem- 
 bers of the Assembly who sympathized with the Regulators. 
 A similar disappointment was felt generally by the people at 
 the west. They had counted much on their appeal to the 
 Assembly, and now the Assembly had passed without result. 
 
 In February the governor issued a proclamation for a new 
 election of assemblymen. In view of this election the leaders 
 of the Regulators at once entered on an active cam- 
 paign to gain members favorable to their interest. Large 
 parties visited the counties in the upper districts, and even 
 ili-treated those who refused to join their standard. As yet 
 they had not paid their taxes. For the year 1766 the sheriff 
 of Rowan reported 1833 of them delinquent. For the year 
 1768 only 205 paid taxes in that county, not being one in ten 
 of the inhabitants. On March 13th, the day after the elec- 
 tion, Judge Moore, who was holding court at Salisbury, 
 wrote to the governor that “there is no such thing as col- 
 lecting the public tax or levying a private debt,” and that 
 civil process could not be executed among the Regulators. 
 Early in April the governor therefore issued a proclamation 
 commanding the enforcement of the law and requiring that 
 all sheriffs obstructed in their office should attend at the next 
 meeting of the Assembly. 
 
 The rebellious action of the late Assembly, however, de- 
 termined the governor to postpone the meeting, and he pro- 
 rogued the Assembly until November. But proroguing the 
 Assembly did not deter the people. At a general meeting of 
 the Sons of Liberty of the six Cape Fear counties, held at 
 Wilmington on July 5th, Cornelius Harnett being the chair- 
 man, it was resolved to adhere to non-importation ; and as 
 Rhode Island had violated her faith, they resolved to have 
 no mercantile dealings with Rhode Island, and that “all mer- 
 
THE HILLSBORO RIOTS 
 
 355 
 
 chants who will not comply with the non-importation agree- 
 ment are declared enemies to their country.” And it was 
 asserted that not only the inhabitants of the six counties, but 
 of every county in the colony, were "firmly resolved to stand 
 or fall with them in support of the common cause of Ameri- 
 can liberty.” The temper of the people was firm and fixed 
 to maintain their rights and to resist British aggression ; and 
 Governor Tryon saw with uneasiness on the one hand the 
 resolute Sons of Liberty, and on the other the discontented 
 inhabitants of the interior agitating for desirable local reforms 
 and for a mitigation of local grievances which he was power- 
 less to remedy. 
 
 Early in June the palace was so near completion that the 
 governor removed from Brunswick and took up his residence 
 in it. 
 
 The superior court broken up 
 
 When the superior court was to meet at Hillsboro in Sep- 
 tember, Chief Justice Howard was absent. Judge Richard 
 Henderson opened the court on Saturday, September 22d. 
 On taking his seat a petition, addressed to the chief justice 
 and associate justices, was presented by James Hunter, in 
 which it was declared that the juries were illegally drawn and 
 were prejudiced, and that the county justices were parties 
 to the delinquencies of the sheriffs and other officers ; that the 
 officers still took illegal fees; that the sheriffs would not 
 settle, and their bondsmen were insolvent; that justice was 
 not administered in the courts, and that they had deter- 
 mined to obtain redress, but in a legal and lawful way. On 
 receiving this address Judge Henderson promised to make 
 an answer to it on Monday ; but on the opening of the 
 court on that day some one hundred and fifty Regulators, 
 at the head of whom were Husband, Hunter, Howell, But- 
 ler, Hamilton and Jeremiah Fields, came into the court- 
 house armed with clubs and whips. Fields, addressing 
 the court, declared that the Regulators did not propose 
 to have the cases against their leaders postponed, but 
 that the trials should proceed at once ; and as they ob- 
 jected to the jurymen drawn for that court, they would 
 have others appointed who would not be prejudiced against 
 their own party. The judge undertook to reason with 
 
 1770 
 
 Hillsboro, 
 Sept., 1770 
 C. R., VIII, 
 2 35 * 245 
 
 Cause of 
 discontent 
 
356 
 
 TRYON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 the crowd and addressed them, whereupon they with- 
 drew, but immediately fell on John Williams, an attorney, 
 who was coming into court, in such a furious manner that 
 it was with great difficulty his life was saved by his 
 escaping into a storehouse. Their blood being now up, they 
 seized Colonel Fanning, who had sought shelter on the 
 bench, and dragged him by the heels out of the door of the 
 court-house, and were dealing him furious blows when he, 
 too, succeeded in escaping and took refuge in a store, which 
 the mob then attacked, demolishing the wdndows with stones 
 and bricks, trying to force him from his shelter. During 
 the uproar several approached the judge on the bench, tell- 
 ing him with great oaths that his “turn should be next but 
 Hunter and others soon informed the judge that he should 
 not be hurt if he would proceed to hold the court till the end 
 of the term, requiring, however, that no lawyer should be 
 allowed to attend except alone the prosecuting officer, and 
 saying that “they would stay and see justice impartially 
 done.” In the meantime Thomas Hart, Alexander Martin, 
 Michael Holt and many others had been severely whipped, 
 and Colonel Gray, Major Lloyd, Francis Nash, John Cooke, 
 Tyree Harris and others fled for safety. The judge did not 
 disdain to resort to artifice. He agreed to hold the court as 
 required ; but after four or five hours, the rage of the crowd 
 having subsided a little, they permitted him to adjourn the 
 court for the day, and conducted him with great parade to 
 his lodgings. At ten o’clock that night the judge, thinking 
 discretion the better part of valor, escaped by a back way, 
 gained the woods and fled to his home in Granville. 
 
 Fanning, having surrendered to them, was allowed to re- 
 turn to his home on his word of honor to attend them the 
 next day. They decreed his death, but more humane coun- 
 sels prevailed, and he was permitted to take to his heels and 
 run until he should get out of their sight. They then de- 
 stroyed his residence and household effects. For two days 
 the riot continued, the merchants and inhabitants being run 
 out into the country, expecting their stores and houses to be 
 pillaged and laid waste. But besides breaking the windows 
 of most of the houses, not much substantial damage was 
 done, except to Fanning’s dwelling. 
 
THE ASSEMBLY OF 1770 
 
 357 
 
 Judge Henderson hastened to make a report of these pro- 
 ceedings to the governor, who convened his council ; and on 
 October 18th the governor issued his proclamation requir- 
 ing the justices to make diligent inquiry into the offences 
 committed and transmit the depositions of witnesses to be 
 laid before the next General Assembly. Judge Henderson’s 
 broken faith in not continuing to hold his court met with 
 severe retribution. On the night of November 12th his barns 
 and stables were destroyed, several horses being burned in 
 the conflagration, and two nights afterward his dwelling 
 house was set on fire and consumed. Contemporaneously 
 with the news of this destruction came the disquieting infor- 
 mation to the governor that the Regulators proposed to come 
 down to New Bern to intimidate and overawe the Assembly, 
 then about to meet or to prevent Colonel Fanning from tak- 
 ing his seat as a member. In the meantime some of the in- 
 habitants at the west, seeking self-preservation, entered into 
 a sworn association under the name of Redressers to assist 
 and protect each other. Among those thus associated were 
 Edmund Fanning, Francis Nash, Adlai Osborn, Alexander 
 Martin, Jesse Benton, John Hogan, Thomas Hart, James 
 Murphey, Will Mebane and others afterward prominent as 
 citizens in that region. 
 
 On December 5th the Assembly met. There was no great 
 change in membership. Hillsboro having been created a 
 borough town, Fanning was returned as its member. 
 
 John Harvey, who had been speaker during the last two 
 assemblies, was now ill at home, and in his absence Samuel 
 Johnston proposed for speaker Richard Caswell, who was 
 unanimously chosen. The governor received the Assembly in 
 the new mansion, which was then finished ; and considering 
 New Bern as the established seat of government he later, at 
 the request of the Assembly, ordered the secretary to remove 
 all the papers of the secretary’s office from Wilmington to 
 that town. 
 
 The governor in his address again repeated his earnest 
 recommendation for a new system of keeping the public ac- 
 counts and inveighed strongly against the loose methods that 
 had always been in vogue in the province. He also urged 
 the most scrupulous inquiries into the complaints against 
 
 1770 
 
 c. R., VIII, 
 
 a 53> a 54 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 258-264 
 
 The 
 
 Redressers 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 274 
 
 Dec., 1770 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 282 et seq. 
 
358 
 
 TRYON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1770 
 
 Tryon 
 transferred 
 to New York 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 317 
 
 Fanning 
 
 active 
 
 public officers, and that a clear statement should be made of 
 the fees to which they were legally entitled. Animadvert- 
 ing with great indignation on the mob who in contempt of 
 the resolve of the last house had torn "justice from her 
 tribunal and renounced all legislative authority,” he urged 
 the raising of a sufficient body of men to protect the magis- 
 trates and civil officers in the execution of the laws. He 
 nevertheless directed particular attention to the desirability 
 of establishing a public seminary in the back country, and 
 otherwise recommended that there should be general coop- 
 eration in measures for the public good. 
 
 The Earl of Hillsborough had some months before men- 
 tioned to the governor that he had had an opportunity of hav- 
 ing him transferred to New York and would have done so 
 had he thought that Governor Tryon desired it. The gov- 
 ernor expressed regret that the position had not been offered 
 him. He now informed the Assembly that he had received 
 leave of absence, but hoped that before his departure he 
 would be able to give stability to the interior police of the 
 country, and restore to the province the blessings of peace. 
 At the very time he was making this communication to the 
 Assembly, arrangements were being made in England for 
 his transfer to New York, and on December 12th he was 
 appointed governor of that province. In view of his ex- 
 pected departure for England, and there being no friction at 
 the moment over continental affairs, the relations between 
 the governor and the Assembly were most cordial. The As- 
 sembly warmly expressed its gratification and appreciation of 
 his valuable services as governor and their confidence in the 
 sincerity of his efforts to promote its prosperity and welfare, 
 and he repeatedly declared his unchangeable purpose to use 
 bis influence under all circumstances to advance the peculiar 
 interests of the province. ‘‘Neither time nor distance can 
 ever efface from my mind,” said he, "the just sense of the 
 obligations I owe you for your favorable opinion of my pub- 
 lic services.” On all sides there was a purpose to enter at 
 once on the consideration of the remedial legislation which 
 had been interrupted by the dissolution of the previous As- 
 sembly. Edmund Fanning, a close friend of the governor 
 and the greatest sufferer at the hands of the Regulators, 
 
REMEDIAL LEGISLATION 
 
 was among the foremost in this important work. He pre- 
 sented petitions from the Presbyterians asking that their 
 clergy might be authorized to perform the marriage cere- 
 mony according to their own rites, also petitions for the 
 division of Orange County, and he otherwise sought to pro- 
 mote the wishes of the people. A committee was raised to 
 consider the amendment of existing laws, and Mr. Fanning 
 from that committee reported that the laws establishing fees 
 of the various officers should be made more clear ; that the 
 Presbyterian clergy should be allowed to solemnize the rite 
 of marriage by a license, without any fee to the established 
 clergy ; that the law relative to the inferior courts should be 
 amended, and their jurisdiction and that of single magis- 
 trates should be enlarged ; and he suggested that the com- 
 mittee should be continued during recess. Colonel Ruther- 
 ford was similarly active, and introduced several bills for 
 the erection of new counties, which the people by their peti- 
 tions requested. The counties of Wake, Guilford, Chatham 
 and Surry were thus established. The fees of officers were 
 regulated, and the charges of attorneys-at-law were fixed 
 according to the service rendered. The amount in every 
 case was to be included in the bill of costs, and nothing 
 more than the law allowed was to be demanded by them ; 
 yet any client was permitted the privilege of paying more 
 after the matter was concluded if he felt so disposed ; and if 
 any lawyer neglected his case the court was to direct that he 
 should pay the costs. 
 
 Because of the scarcity of money sheriffs were forbidden 
 to sell property for less than two-thirds of the appraised 
 value. The fees of clerks were regulated, and those thereto- 
 fore allowed by law to the chief justice were abolished, and 
 an adequate salary was provided for him. To encourage 
 immigration, all persons who should come into the province 
 directly from Europe were exempted from the payment of 
 taxes for four years. In order to promote education Gov- 
 ernor Trvon in his address had recommended the establish- 
 ment of a public school in the western part of the province, 
 and Fanning brought in a bill for that purpose ; and an act 
 was passed incorporating Queen’s College at Charlotte, a 
 hamlet in Mecklenburg, so called in honor of her Majesty. 
 
 359 
 
 1770 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 322 
 
 The new 
 counties 
 
 S R . 
 
 XXIII, 789 
 
 S. R , 
 XXIII, 782 
 et seq . 
 
 Queen’s 
 
 College 
 
360 
 
 TRYON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1 77 1 
 
 Jan., 1771 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 481 
 
 Johnston’s 
 bloody bill 
 
 Drafts 
 
 ordered 
 
 These and various other acts were intended and calculated 
 to remove and redress the grievances of which the Regula- 
 tors had complained. 
 
 The riot act 
 
 But the Assembly was not willing to stop there. It pro- 
 posed that the peace of the province should not be disturbed. 
 It passed an act introduced by Samuel Johnston to prevent 
 tumultuous and riotous assemblies. It enacted that if ten or 
 more persons, being unlawfully, tumultuously and riotously 
 assembled together, to the disturbance of the public peace, 
 after being openly commanded by any justice or sheriff to 
 disperse, should notwithstanding remain together one hour 
 thereafter, they should be adjudged guilty of felony and suf- 
 fer death. And it was made the duty of such justice or 
 sheriff and such persons as should be commanded to assist to 
 apprehend the rioters ; and if any of them in resisting should 
 be killed the officers should not be held liable ; and it was 
 enacted that the prosecutions under that law might be in 
 any superior court in the province, and not necessarily in 
 the county or district where the offence was committed ; and 
 also if any bill of indictment was found for an offence under 
 that act, it was lawful for the judges of the superior court 
 to issue a proclamation to be put up at the court-house and at 
 each church or chapel of the county where the crime was 
 committed, commanding the indicted person to surrender 
 himself to the sheriff within sixty days ; and if the person did 
 not surrender himself according to the proclamation he 
 was to be deemed guilty of the offence as if he had been 
 convicted ; and it was made lawful for any one to slay such 
 outlaw. 
 
 In anticipation of further riots and insurrections the gov- 
 ernor was authorized to order out drafts from the different 
 regiments of militia, who were to be paid for their services, 
 and he was authorized to draw his warrant for the payment 
 of such sums of money as should be necessary, which the 
 treasurers were required to honor. And if any number of 
 men should in an armed and hostile manner oppose the 
 military force raised under the act, they were to be consid- 
 ered as traitors and treated accordingly. 
 
THE JOHNSTON ACT 
 
 361 
 
 Such was the measure of repression to vindicate “the hon- 
 or of government.” “Your absence,” wrote Iredell to Har- 
 vey, “at so critical a period is much to be regretted.” “This 
 bill, I believe, you would have thought expedient, though 
 severe ; but desperate diseases must have desperate rem- 
 edies.” 
 
 It was indeed a severe penal act, but was to remain in 
 force for only one year and no longer, and during that period 
 it was to be read by the justices at the court-house door in 
 every county on the second day of court, and by the minister, 
 clerk or reader at their place of public worship immediately 
 after divine service once every three months. 
 
 By it the Assembly proposed to maintain the authority of 
 government, to prevent riots and suppress insurrections even 
 at the cost of blood. 
 
 It had been said that the Regulators proposed to embody 
 and forcibly prevent Edmund Fanning from taking his seat. 
 Because of these threats the governor was so apprehensive 
 that he caused a ditch to be dug from Neuse to Trent River 
 enclosing the inhabited part of the town ; and the militia of 
 the neighboring counties were directed to oppose the insur- 
 gents should they come. During the sitting of the Assembly 
 James Hunter published a letter addressed to Judge Maurice 
 Moore in the New Bern Gazette, which was deemed slan- 
 derous. Moore was a member of the house, and the house 
 took notice of it, and it being understood that Hermon Hus- 
 band, also a member of the house, had caused it to be printed 
 a committee was appointed to investigate the matter. After 
 an examination the house resolved that Husband was guilty 
 of gross prevarication and falsehood ; and as he had in- 
 sinuated in conversation that, in case he should be confined 
 by order of the house, he expected down a number of peo- 
 ple to release him, he was adjudged in contempt of the 
 house, and was immediately expelled. The governor at once 
 convened the council, the chief justice being one of the body, 
 and it being considered that if Husband should rejoin the 
 Regulators fatal consequences might ensue, they unanimously 
 requested the chief justice to take depositions and issue his 
 warrant for apprehending Husband, who was committed to 
 jail and confined until he could be tried. 
 
 1771 
 
 C. R., VHI^ 
 
 270 
 
 New Bern 
 fortified 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 269, 331 
 
 Husband 
 
 arrested 
 
362 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1771 
 
 C. R., VIII. 
 495 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 490 
 
 Militia 
 
 moves 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 498 
 
 Husband 
 
 discharged 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 500-509 
 
 On January 15, 1771, the riot act was passed. A week later 
 the governor informed the Assembly that he had received in- 
 telligence that led him to apprehend that the insurgents were 
 preparing for some speedy act of violence— the liberation of 
 Husband by force. All now was in a flutter, and an appro- 
 priation was made to enable the governor to withstand the 
 expected assault. The public business was hurried to an 
 end, and on the 26th the Assembly was prorogued to meet on 
 May 10th. Governor Tryon apparently had a disposition to 
 try conclusions with the Regulators. He did not wish to 
 leave the province at the end of his term in a state of an- 
 archy and confusion, and so he rather courted a situation 
 that would result in the speedy suppression of disaffection. 
 The legislation of the session was calculated to disarm op- 
 position, and he hoped that it would disorganize the adher- 
 ents of the Regulator chieftains. After Husband had been 
 in jail a month reports were received that the people of 
 Orange were assembling, and on January 19th the governor 
 appointed a special court under the riot act to be held by the 
 chief justice on February 2d for the trial of Husband and 
 other alleged criminals. In anticipation of an attempt at 
 rescue, the governor ordered the militia of the neighbor- 
 ing counties to be in readiness to repulse the insurgent 
 force. The Wake regiment assembled at Colonel Hunter’s ; 
 that of Johnston County at Smithfield, while Colonel Caswell 
 held the Dobbs militia at Kingston. It was reported that the 
 march on New Bern would begin on the nth, and a procla- 
 mation was issued prohibiting for a reasonable time the 
 sale of firearms and ammunition, lest they should come 
 into the hands of the mob. On February 8th, however, the 
 grand jurv of the special court, having considered the bill 
 preferred against Hermon Husband for libel, found it not a 
 true bill and Husband was discharged. Being now free, he 
 leisurely returned to the back country. In the meantime the 
 Regulators had been active, and having embodied a large 
 force, crossed the Haw River, and proceeded to the eastward. 
 With that detachment were thirteen wagons, while four 
 wagons had not yet crossed the river, when Husband reached 
 Hunter’s Lodge in Wake County, where the Wake regi- 
 ment was assembled, and wrote assuring his friends of his 
 
THE REGULATORS DECLARE THEIR PURPOSE 363 
 
 release and safety. William Butler having received this 
 communication from Husband, hastened to the Regulator 
 camp and, the object being accomplished, the insurgents re- 
 tired. The danger being passed, on February 17th Colonel 
 Hinton discharged the Wake militia, and the other regiments 
 were likewise disbanded. There was a temporary lull ; but, 
 nevertheless, the governor and council thought it prudent 
 to perfect the defences at New Bern, where another term of 
 court was to be held early in March. 
 
 Notwithstanding the remedial acts so lately passed, the 
 Regulators were not at all content. They were inflamed by 
 the passage of the riot act. The power of government had 
 ceased to be feared, and the tyrannical and bloody features 
 of that act, instead of constraining obedience and restoring 
 quiet, only served to arouse their indignation and excite 
 their ire. Rednap Howell, a maker of popular ballads, 
 had moved much among the people, and his rhymes 
 doubtless contributed largely to give them good heart and 
 prepare them for action. There were at least some forty 
 of these popular pieces, although only a few have been 
 preserved. They were indeed well calculated to stir the dis- 
 affected and warm them up to patriotic ardor. On the re- 
 turn of the Regulators from their intended expedition to 
 release Husband, their purpose was announced to attend the 
 Salisbury court, then about to be held, and on March 6th 
 some five hundred of them encamped in the woods on the 
 banks of the Yadkin River, where were the Hamiltons, 
 Hunter, James Graham, Teague, Gillespie and other leaders 
 in command. Having arrested Waightstill Avery, a young 
 lawyer of that region, they carried him to their camp, and 
 declared their purpose of flogging Judge Moore, and of 
 killing all the clerks and lawyers. But such vaporings were 
 probably only vain boastings. On the same day Colonel 
 Alexander Martin and John Frohock, who had been officers 
 of Rowan, and who with others were charged with having 
 taken illegal fees, went to their camp and desired to know 
 their designs and purposes. To them they answered that 
 they had no intention to disturb the court or to injure any 
 person ; and that they were armed only to defend themselves 
 if assaulted. On being informed that their late behavior to 
 
 1771 
 
 Regulators 
 
 retire 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 5 * 9 - 521 , 
 
 534 , 535 
 
3 6 4 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1771 
 
 Adjustment 
 agreed on 
 
 March, 1771 
 C. R., VIII, 
 528-531 
 
 Indictments 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 53^-539 
 
 the judges had been such that no court would be held, they 
 seemed greatly concerned. A plan was then proposed for 
 accommodating matters between the people and the officers 
 of Rowan against whom they complained. The matters in 
 dispute were to be left to arbitrators, the Regulators ap- 
 pointing Husband, Graham, Hunter and Thomas Person to 
 act for them ; Martin and Frohock chose Matthew Locke, 
 John Kerr, Samuel Young and James Smith on their part. 
 The meeting of the arbitrators was fixed for the third Tues- 
 day in May, and the settlement was to extend not only to 
 the officers of Rowan County but to all those who would vol- 
 untarily join in the arbitration. The Regulators, evidently 
 pleased at this proposed adjustment, gave three cheers and 
 returned to their homes. Well had it been had this path to 
 peace been pursued, and by this settlement out of court the 
 tranquillity of the province been restored. But circumstances 
 were no longer favorable to such negotiations. 
 
 Alamance 
 
 On March nth another special court convened at New 
 Bern attended by the chief justice and Judges Moore and 
 Henderson. The grand jury on the 15th presented the in- 
 surgents as being enemies to government, and to the liberty, 
 happiness and tranquillity of the inhabitants of the province. 
 True bills were found against Husband, Hunter, Butler, the 
 Hamiltons, James Few, Rednap Howell and many other 
 leaders of the Regulators, there being thirty-one persons in- 
 dicted, and the witnesses were recognized to attend on May 
 nth, when the cases were to be tried. On March 18th, two 
 days after the court adjourned, the governor came into pos- 
 session of a letter written by Rednap Howell a month earlier, 
 from which it appeared that he had been sent to Halifax to 
 “raise the country,” and that he had “animated the people to 
 join the Regulation,” and he declared “if it once takes a start 
 here it will run into the neighboring counties of Edgecombe, 
 Bute and Northampton.” At the same time the governor 
 received a letter from the judges expressing their opinion 
 that they could not attend the superior court at Hillsboro 
 on March 226 with any hope of transacting the business of 
 the court, or indeed with any prospect of personal safety to 
 
TRYON RAISES TROOPS 
 
 365 
 
 themselves. The governor submitted these matters to the 
 council, and it was agreed with their advice to raise a suf- 
 ficient force to maintain order and reduce the insurgents to 
 obedience to the laws. The courts were to be held and the 
 administration of justice was not to cease. 
 
 Fearing the extension of the Regulation movement among 
 the inhabitants of the eastern section, an association paper 
 was printed and circulated through the counties for signa- 
 ture, in which those who signed it bound themselves to stand 
 with the government against the Regulators until the tran- 
 quillity of the province should be restored ; and the governor 
 at once issued orders for the militia to assemble, and called 
 for volunteers and drafts to form a force that would sup- 
 press the insurgents. From each county a number was 
 required, aggregating in all 2250 men. The governor 
 hastened to Wilmington and appointed General Waddell 
 general of the forces to be raised, with directions to march 
 through the western counties by way of Salisbury to Orange, 
 while he himself with the eastern militia would march direct 
 to Flillsboro. The governor’s authority for this movement 
 was founded on a clause of the riot act ; and he was upheld 
 by all of the gentlemen of the east. 
 
 Many of them at once volunteered to accompany him on 
 his intended expedition and none held back. Caswell was a 
 colonel, Ashe a general, Flarnett was particularly active, 
 while John Flarvey was detained by his continued illness. 
 His son, a member of the Assembly, was, like him, esteemed 
 by the governor. On March 19th, the day Governor Tryon 
 issued his orders to the colonels to collect their men, he en- 
 closed a copy to Harvey, saying: “If you . . . can pro- 
 cure from the counties of Pasquotank and Perquimans, with 
 the assistance of Colonel Taylor, a company of fifty men, 
 . . . and contrive so as they might be at Hillsboro 
 
 the sixth day of May, I should be glad to take them under 
 my command. I take this opportunity to thank you for 
 your kind present to me last winter. ... I wish your 
 son could command the company.” But the Albemarle sec- 
 tion was so remote from the scene of disturbance and had so 
 little intercourse with that part of the State that the people 
 took but little interest in the Regulation, and in a general 
 
 1771 
 
 The 
 
 governor 
 
 acts 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 540-549 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 548 
 
 Waddell in 
 command 
 
 C. R„ VIII, 
 
 6q8 
 
3 66 
 
 TRY ON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1771 way many of the inhabitants sympathized with the Regula- 
 
 tors in their distresses. Joseph Montfort, the northern 
 treasurer, had no money of the contingent fund in hand, 
 which under the riot act alone could be used to pay bounties 
 and the expenses of the troops, and so he did not honor the 
 c.^r.. viii, drafts made by Governor Tryon for bounties, and but few 
 volunteers from the Albemarle section participated in the 
 expedition. 
 
 c. r , viii, The southern treasurer, John Ashe, on the other hand, not 
 
 65 1 . •' 
 
 only paid out what public moneys lie had, but issued notes 
 \ to the amount of six thousand pounds to meet the expenses 
 of the expedition ; and so the same difficulty did not arise in 
 embodying and moving troops from the lower counties. 
 
 Frohock and Martin having communicated to the gover- 
 nor their agreement for settlement with the insurgents, the 
 arrangement was denounced by him as “unconstitutional, dis- 
 honorable to government, and introductive of a practice most 
 c. r., viii, dangerous to the peace and happiness of society.” Yet he 
 asserted his abhorrence of the conduct of any man who was 
 guilty of extortion, and declared it to be their duty to give 
 satisfaction and make restitution if they had abused their 
 trust. 
 
 courts the Earlier the governor might have rejoiced at this proposed 
 struggle settlement of differences, but to his mind the situation no 
 longer admitted such an adjustment. The leaders of the 
 Regulators had gone too far. The power of the insurgents 
 to overturn government was too apparent. The day for 
 temporizing had passed. The authority of the law was now 
 to be asserted. While the responses of the eastern militia 
 were far from general, yet a considerable force collected at 
 the call of the governor. Perhaps his greatest disappoint- 
 ment was the action of the P>ute militia, some eight hundred 
 of whom assembled, but when invited to volunteer they de- 
 clined to a man, saying that they favored the Regulators. 
 Almost equal was the attitude of the Wake militia, although 
 after some delay, with considerable efforts, Colonel Hinton 
 secured by draft fifty recruits from that county. Indeed 
 throughout the territory west of Smithfield the great bulk of 
 the inhabitants sympathized with the disaffected element. A 
 considerable proportion of those farther west had but recently 
 
MOVEMENTS OF WADDELL 
 
 367 
 
 come into the province, were unacquainted with the laws 
 and the system of government, had no association with the 
 eastern people, and knew but little of the leading men who 
 had habitually controlled public affairs. In a word, many 
 of them had so recently become inhabitants and were so un- 
 settled in their new homes, and were so cut off and secluded 
 in the frontier settlements that they were virtually strangers 
 within the commonwealth. 
 
 General Waddell in his progress to the west was joined by 
 a detachment of the Anson militia and parts of the regiments 
 of Mecklenburg and Tryon under their respective colonels, 
 and some companies from Rowan. Colonel Frohock, who 
 should have commanded the Rowan militia, was rather sar- 
 castically excused from attending by Governor Tryon be- 
 cause of his negotiations with the Regulators. Accompany- 
 ing Waddell’s force also was a detachment of artillery under 
 Colonel Robert Schaw of Cumberland. On May 5th General 
 Waddell with nearly three hundred men crossed the Yadkin 
 near Salisbury, and went into camp on Pott’s Creek. There, 
 finding himself confronted by a considerable number of in- 
 surgents, he halted and threw up entrenchments. On May 
 10th. at a council of war, under the advice of Colonel Ruth- 
 erford and his other officers, it was resolved that it was too 
 hazardous to engage the enemy, who were reported by Cap- 
 tain Alexander of Mecklenburg, to extend a quarter of a 
 mile, seven or eight deep, with a large body of horsemen, 
 extending one hundred and twenty yards, twelve or fourteen 
 deep. Nor was this formidable force the only peril that 
 threatened General Waddell, for it was apprehended that 
 many of his own troops would not fight the Regulators, but 
 rather, in case of a conflict, would join them. Under these 
 adverse circumstances General Waddell prudently retreated 
 across the Yadkin and took post near Salisbury, where he 
 strongly fortified himself and remained until May 28th. In 
 the meantime he had suffered a severe loss in the destruction 
 of a supply of powder and other munitions of war that were 
 being transported from Charleston for the use of the army. 
 A small band of Regulators under the direction of Major 
 James White and his brothers, William and John White, hav- 
 ing blackened their faces, from which they became known as 
 
 1 7 7i 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 6oi, 701 
 
 General 
 
 Waddell 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 608 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 610 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 623 
 
 The Black 
 Boys 
 
3 68 
 
 TRYON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1771 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 574 
 
 Supporters 
 of Try on 
 
 Feeling 
 of the 
 Regulators 
 
 the “Black Boys,” came up with the wagons midway be- 
 tween Charlotte and Salisbury (near the site of the present 
 town of Concord), and, having taken possession of them, 
 destroyed the blankets and fired the ammunition, making a 
 tremendous explosion of the powder. Such animosity to- 
 ward government was now the general feeling that per- 
 vaded all that region, and General Waddell found himself 
 hemmed in by forces too powerful to contend with. 
 
 Governor Tryon was more fortunate. Leaving New 
 Bern on April 23d, accompanied by the militia of Carteret, 
 Craven and adjoining counties, and two swivel guns mounted 
 on carriages, he moved toward Smithfield, where he was 
 joined by detachments from New Hanover, Dobbs and John- 
 ston. On May 4th he marched to Hunter’s Lodge in Wake, 
 where he remained four days awaiting other detachments 
 and organizing his forces. 
 
 On the 9th he encamped on the Enoe. Accompanying him 
 were volunteer detachments of horse from Bute and other 
 counties, and many of the leading gentlemen of the east, 
 among them Robert Howe, Alexander Lillington, John Ashe, 
 James Moore, Richard Caswell, Abner Nash, Willie Jones, 
 John Harvev, Jr., and others distinguished in the military 
 and civil annals of North Carolina ; while in like manner 
 with General Waddell were Moses Alexander, Thomas Polk, 
 Samuel Spencer, Griffith Rutherford, William Lindsay, 
 Adlai Osborn and many in later times honored for their 
 devoted patriotism. 
 
 In the meantime, while the forces of the government were 
 being thus collected, the disaffected inhabitants at the west 
 were all astir. The leaders gave information of the points 
 where they were to assemble. Every highway and byway 
 was filled with men hurrying to the front. Great crowds 
 passed rapidly from the extreme west through the quiet set- 
 tlement of Wachovia, and the men of Anson met those of 
 Surry and from the foothills of the mountains at the ren- 
 dezvous between the Haw and the Deep. So often had these 
 men assembled, so often had they met and boldly made 
 declaration of their purpose to right their wrongs, defying 
 the power of government, that now with enthusiasm they re- 
 sponded to the call of their leaders, and hastened to assert 
 
FEELING OF THE REGULATORS 
 
 their manhood. They were manly men, animated by a pur- 
 pose to fearlessly resist oppression, and were not to be over- 
 awed by a show of power. Probably no one thought of sub- 
 verting government ; no one thought of wresting the prov- 
 ince from the dominion of the British Empire ; they only 
 thought that they would stand up openly and with their own 
 strong hand prevent the operation of laws passed by the 
 Assembly, which, under the circumstance of their situation 
 and lives, they deemed unjust and found oppressive. With 
 little currency among them, lawful taxes bore hard and il- 
 legal taxes they would not pay ; and, smarting under the 
 exactions of greedy officials, which even the governor, the 
 courts and the Assembly had found to be illegal, they were 
 imbued with the determination to protect themselves from 
 the power of a government whose authority sat lightly on 
 them. Unawed by the reported march of the militia, they 
 themselves would assemble and once more assert their own 
 mastery. Many came unarmed, and but few probably re- 
 alized that there was really impending a conflict involving 
 life and death. They gathered in force between the Haw and 
 the Deep, and learning of the governor’s approach, went 
 forth to meet him. Tryon, hearing of their advance, on 
 May nth marched from Hillsboro, crossed the Haw, and 
 on the night of the 13th encamped on the Great Alamance. 
 There he prepared for battle. On the 13th the governor 
 had received an express from General Waddell informing 
 him that he was surrounded by about two thousand Regula- 
 tors and had been forced to retire ; and he also learned that 
 their rendezvous was to be at Hunter’s plantation on Sandy 
 Creek with the view of obstructing the junction of the two 
 government detachments, and later came the disquieting in- 
 telligence that they were preparing to attack his camp. In- 
 stead, however, of an attack, about six o’clock in the evening 
 the governor received, at the hands of James Hunter and 
 Benjamin Merrill, a communication from them desiring to 
 know if he would hear their petition for a redress of their 
 grievances. He laid this letter before a council of war, 
 and informed the Regulators that he would return an 
 answer by twelve o’clock the next day. That night 
 Captain John Walker and Lieutenant John Baptista Ashe, 
 
 369 
 
 1771 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 582 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 640 
 
 S. R., XIX, 
 845 
 
3/0 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1771 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 642 
 
 May 16, 1771 
 
 Martin, 
 Hist. North 
 Carolina, 
 
 II, 282 
 
 C. R.. VIII, 
 
 647, 648 
 
 who had been sent out to reconnoitre, were captured by the 
 insurgents, tied to trees, severely whipped, and detained as 
 prisoners. When the governor’s messenger was conveying 
 his answer to the camp of the Regulators they gave him 
 such insults that he returned without delivering it. Early on 
 the morning of the 16th, the two forces being about five miles 
 apart, the governor moved forward, and about ten o'clock 
 came within a half mile of the Regulator encampment, and 
 there formed a line of battle. He then sent forward Captain 
 Malcolm, one of his aides, and the sheriff of Orange with his 
 letter, requiring them to lay down their arms, surrender up 
 their outlawed leaders, and submit to the laws of the prov- 
 ince. These terms were rejected with disdain, and gradually 
 the two lines approached until the government forces occu- 
 pied the ground which the van of the Regulators had first 
 occupied, but from which it had fallen back to their main 
 body. Some communications now passed for the exchange 
 of Walker and Ashe for seven of the Regulators who had 
 been captured by the militia, and the proposition was agreed 
 to. The insurgents delayed and sent word that they would 
 comply within an hour. The governor, suspecting that the 
 delay was intended to enable the enemy to outflank him, de- 
 termined to wait no longer. 
 
 The battle begins, May 16, 1771 
 
 The governor sent word by his aide, Captain Philemon 
 Hawkins, that he would immediately give the signal for ac- 
 tion, and cautioned the Regulators to take care of them- 
 selves ; that if they did not directly lay down their arms 
 they would be fired on. “Fire and be d d !” was the an- 
 
 swer. The governor thereupon gave the order, which, not 
 being immediately obeyed, rising in his stirrups and turning 
 to his men, he called out: “Fire! fire on them or on me!” 
 Accordingly, the artillery began the fire, which was followed 
 by a discharge from the whole first line, and the action 
 almost instantly became general. 
 
 Of the militia there were about 1100. The number of the 
 Regulators has been variously estimated at between 2000 and 
 4000 ; but a considerable portion of them were unarmed, 
 and probably but few expected to engage in a battle. They 
 
THE BATTLE OF ALAMANCE 
 
 37i 
 
 were not marshalled in organized companies ; had no trained 
 captains to command ; and were a concourse of resolute citi- 
 zens rather than an army in battle array. Their chief com- 
 mander was James Hunter. 
 
 At the first fire many left the field, among them being 
 Hermon Husband. After the conflict had lasted half an hour 
 the Regulators occupied a piece of woods and fought from 
 behind the trees, as in Indian warfare. To dislodge them 
 Tryon advanced his first line and drove them from cover, 
 pursuing them half a mile beyond their camp. In one ac- 
 count of the battle preserved in the Moravian records, it is 
 said that “many had taken refuge in the woods, whereupon 
 the governor ordered the woods to be set afire, and in con- 
 sequence some of the wounded were ‘roasted alive.’ ” It is 
 to be observed, however, that in the middle of May a woods 
 fire progresses but slowly, even if it burns at all. 
 
 In the earlier stages of the battle, Robert Thompson, a 
 Regulator, who had been taken prisoner, defying the power 
 of his captors, undertook to make his escape, and it is said 
 that Governor Tryon shot him down with his own hand. 
 Thompson had been a strenuous agitator, and doubtless 
 was a bold, determined man. For slaying him Governor 
 Tryon was criticised. If no other means to prevent escape 
 was at the moment available, any soldier would have 
 been justified in taking a prisoner’s life, otherwise not. 
 While in the heat of battle one’s actions are not to be too 
 nicely weighed, life is never to be taken unnecessarily. 
 
 The loss of the militia was reported as nine killed and 
 sixty-one wounded. A detachment from Beaufort County 
 under Captain John Patten, being a part of the regiment 
 commanded by Colonel William Thompson, of Carteret, suf- 
 fered the greatest proportionate loss, fifteen killed and 
 wounded out of thirty. Those of the insurgents who par- 
 ticipated in the action stood up manfully. They were not 
 dismayed by the artillery, and indeed held their ground at 
 such short range that they silenced the artillery, requiring 
 particular efforts to dislodge them by advancing riflemen for 
 that purpose. Their loss was, according to one account, nine 
 killed and thirty missing, and according to another upwards 
 of twenty were killed. Their conduct under fire was as 
 
 1771 
 
 S R., XIX, 
 
 846 
 
 The woods 
 fired 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 520 
 
 Thompson 
 
 slain 
 
 The losses 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 634 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 585 
 
372 
 
 TRY ON’S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1771 
 
 Few hanged 
 May 17th 
 
 Caruthers, 
 Life of 
 Caldwell, 
 158 
 
 Haywood, 
 Life of 
 Tryon, 133 
 
 Clewell, 
 Hist, of 
 Wachovia 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 532 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 651 
 
 spirited as it was bold, and for two hours they protracted 
 the unequal conflict with the trained militia despite the 
 severe losses they suffered. The insurgents being driven 
 from the field, the militia advanced some little distance, 
 but finding the enemy dispersed, withdrew to their orig- 
 inal encampment. Thus closed that fateful and unhappy 
 day. The wounded on both sides were humanely cared 
 for, and the next evening the dead were interred, and 
 there were prayers and thanksgivings for the victory. 
 The ceremonies of the day were concluded by the hang- 
 ing of James Few, a prisoner — a proceeding that has 
 attached well-merited odium to the name of Governor Tryon. 
 Of Few it has been said “That he was of a fanatical turn of 
 mind, and believed himself raised up by the hand of God 
 to liberate his country.” “That he was sent by Fleaven to 
 relieve the world from oppression, and that he was to begin 
 in North Carolina.” An account of his execution given 
 in the Community Diary of the Moravians a week later says : 
 “A certain young man, a fine young fellow, had been cap- 
 tured, and when given the alternative of taking the oath or 
 being hanged he chose the latter. The governor wished to 
 spare his life, and twice urged him to submit. But the young 
 man refused. The messenger described how, with the rope 
 around his neck, he was urged to yield but refused, and the 
 governor turned aside with tears in his eyes as the young 
 man was swung into eternity.” 
 
 Few had been indicted for felony at the special court held 
 at New Bern on March 11, 1771. He was one of those 
 who refused to surrender themselves within the time limited 
 by the riot act. Under that act he was deemed guilty of the 
 offence charged as if he had been convicted thereof by due 
 course of law, and it was made lawful for any one to take his 
 life, but this outlawry was dependent on the required publica- 
 tions of the proclamation, a fact not ascertained as to Few. 
 But of this Governor Tryon seems not to have been advised. 
 He regarded Few, Hunter, Husband as outlaws. Still, the 
 contingency had not then arisen when Few could have been 
 lawfully slain as an outlaw, nor was Governor Tryon justi- 
 fied in dealing so summarily with a prisoner. He sought 
 to extenuate his needless act by saying : “This gave great 
 
TRYON SUBJUGATES THE INSURGENTS 
 
 373 
 
 satisfaction to the men, and at this time it was a necessary- 
 sacrifice to appease the murmurings of the troops, who were 
 importunate that public justice should be immediately exe- 
 cuted against some of the outlaws that were taken in the ac- 
 tion, and in opposing of whom they had braved so many dan- 
 gers and suffered such loss of lives and blood, and without 
 which satisfaction some refused to march forward while 
 others declared they would give no quarter for the future.” 
 Such might well have been the feelings of some of the 
 eastern militia, but it was not the part of a command- 
 ing officer to be swerved from his own sense of duty by the 
 intemperate passion of his soldiers. He was there to assert 
 the majesty of the law and to maintain the authority of 
 established government — not to blazon the power of success- 
 ful arms by a needless act of butchery. 
 
 Subsequent movements 
 
 The next day the wounded were sent to the plantation of 
 Michael Holt with a surgeon and medicines, and the main 
 army proceeded to Lewis’s mill, three miles beyond the field 
 of battle, where a detachment under Colonel Ashe that had 
 been advanced was surrounded by about three hundred of 
 the Regulators. Immediately after the battle a proclamation 
 had been issued granting pardon to all who should come 
 into camp, surrender up their arms, take an oath of alle- 
 giance to the king and an oath of obligation to pay their 
 taxes, and to support and defend the laws of the land.* Ex- 
 ceptions, however, were made of the outlaws and prisoners 
 taken and some fourteen others. Many now accepted these 
 terms and submitted. The army the next day marched to 
 James Hunter’s and destroyed his dwelling and outhouse, 
 and then took possession of Hermon Husband's plantation, 
 finding there “a large parcel of treasonable papers and, 
 the inhabitants continuing to come in, submitting themselves 
 to government, the proclamation of pardon was renewed and 
 the time extended ; but the exceptions now embraced the 
 
 *Governor Martin spoke of this ‘‘oath as one of allegiance, etc., 
 etc.” Atticus described it as “your new coined oath to be obedient 
 to the laws of the province, and to pay the public taxes.” To that 
 description the governor himself added, “to support and defend the 
 laws of the land,” as in the text. 
 
 1771 
 
 Tryon’s 
 
 apology 
 
 S. R., XIX, 
 845 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 649 
 
 Pardons and 
 exceptions 
 
374 
 
 i77i 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 651 
 
 S. R., XIX, 
 852 
 
 C R., VIII, 
 712 
 
 The 
 
 victims 
 
 TRY ON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 “Black Boys" and some others at first omitted, among 
 them being Thomas Person. The outlaws named were Hus- 
 band, Hunter, Howell and Butler, and on their heads a price 
 was set. Heavy rains, which had begun on May 20th and 
 continued until the 28th', added much to the discomfort of 
 the men, many of whom were seized with pleurisies. 
 
 The army remained a week in Sandy Creek, then passed 
 to Deep River, and on June 1st was in the Jersey settlement. 
 On June 4th, on Reedy Creek, General Waddell's forces 
 joined the main army, and they marched to Wachovia, where 
 they remained several days, and at Salem on June 6th they 
 celebrated the king’s birthday and the victory of the 16th. 
 During this march the houses and plantations of those who 
 were outlawed were laid waste and destroyed, and their 
 owners fled from the province. 
 
 The insurgents having been cpiieted on the Deep and the 
 Haw, and information being received that they were rising 
 to the south and west, General Waddell was detached on 
 June 8th with some five hundred men and artillery to move 
 into that section and suppress them; and on the same day 
 Governor Tryon began his return movement. 
 
 The army reached Hillsboro on the 14th, where the cattle 
 and horses were turned on the plantation of William Few, 
 the father of James Few, who was said to have been “very 
 active in promoting the disturbance of the country.” Hav- 
 ing taken some prisoners on May 13th. Governor Tryon 
 ordered that a special term of court under the riot act should 
 be opened at Hillsboro on the 30th of that month, but the 
 governor had kept the prisoners along with the army with 
 the view of parading them before the country, and the court 
 had been kept open awaiting their arrival for trial. 
 
 The trials 
 
 The trials began on June 14th and lasted until the 1 8th, 
 when twelve prisoners were sentenced to death on the charge 
 of high treason. Six of these were immediately executed. 
 The record of the court has not been preserved. Four of 
 those executed were Benjamin Merrill, Robert Matear, Cap- 
 tain Messer and James Pugh. The names of two are un- 
 known. Six were reprieved: Forrester Mercer, James Stew- 
 
PACIFICATION AND ITS RESULTS 
 
 375 
 
 art, James Emerson, Herman Cox, William Brown and 
 James Copeland, and later they were pardoned by the king. 
 The melancholy spectacle of the execution was accompanied 
 by a military parade,* and its terrors were augmented by the 
 impressiveness of the scene. The governor attended with 
 the entire army, and caused all of the prisoners to be brought 
 out to witness it. 
 
 The people, utterly subdued, their leaders fled or taken, 
 had continued to come in and ask for pardon, so that by 
 June 19th more than three thousand had submitted to the 
 government and taken the oath to pay their taxes and obey 
 the laws which Governor Tryon had exacted of them. 
 When, later, General Waddell had made his report, giving 
 the result of his excursion into the southwestern part of the 
 province, the entire number who had taken the oath aggre- 
 gated 6409, and about 800 guns had been turned into the 
 government by the malcontents. Apparently then the west- 
 ern counties were disarmed and thoroughly subjugated. 
 But the people were not pacified, and many moved from the 
 province, some passing the mountains and finding homes in 
 the forests of the Holstein settlement. 
 
 Governor Tryon, having on June 13th received informa- 
 tion that he had been appointed governor of New York, and 
 having instructions to repair without loss of time to that 
 province, communicated to the army that he would march 
 to the southward immediately after the executions, and that 
 he would leave the army under the command of Colonel 
 Ashe, he himself hastening to New Bern. On June 30th 
 he embarked for New York, where he arrived on July 7th 
 and assumed the administration. He carried with him the 
 esteem and good-will of the leading men of the eastern part 
 of the province, who commended his bravery and courage, 
 and approved his administration in the difficult circum- 
 stances that attended it. 
 
 *A gruesome memorial of this event is preserved in State Records. 
 XXII, 465 : 
 
 "The Public to Thomas Donaldson. Dr. — 19th June, 1771. To 
 hanging six men at Hillsboro Court of Oyer, etc., five pounds each — = 
 thirty pounds. P’r Thomas Donaldson.” 
 
 1771 
 
 The people 
 submit 
 
 C. R., IX, 78 
 
 Tryon 
 departs 
 from the 
 province 
 C. R., VIII, 
 675 
 
 June, 1771 
 C. R„ IX 
 9, 142 
 
3/6 
 
 TRYON'S ADMINISTRATION, 1765-71 
 
 1771 
 
 The riot 
 act in 
 England 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 285, 286 
 S. R., XI, 
 
 240 
 
 As the disturbances incident to the Regulation movement 
 were a marked feature of affairs during that period, so the 
 efforts of the government to suppress them were also un- 
 usual and remarkable. The riot act, passed by the Assembly, 
 of which Caswell was speaker, and Harnett, Johnston, Hewes, 
 Howe, the Moores and many others who led in the revolu- 
 tionary movement three years later, were members, and 
 which received the approval of the governor, was such a 
 stringent measure as to challenge criticism. That clause of 
 it which required indicted persons, after proclamation, to 
 surrender themselves within sixty days and stand trial on 
 pain of being deemed guilty and of being held outlaws sub- 
 ject to being killed by any one, was considered by the 
 Crown officers as “irreconcilable to the principles of the con- 
 stitution,” “full of danger in its operation” and “unfit for any 
 part of the British Empire although they mentioned that 
 “the circumstances of the province may excuse inserting 
 such clause in this act.” It was certainly a fierce and bloody 
 expedient, resorted to because the persons accused could 
 not be arrested. Other than that, the act received the ap- 
 proval of the Crown, and inasmuch as its operation was 
 limited to a single year, it was allowed to stand until its 
 expiration. James Few was the only person who suffered 
 death under it, as an outlaw, if indeed the governor justified 
 even his execution by that sanction. 
 
 The army, after Tryon’s departure from Hillsboro, pro- 
 ceeded to Colonel Bryan’s in Johnston County and there the 
 detachments separated, marching to their respective counties, 
 where they were disbanded. The cost of the expedition, 
 about f6o,ooo, had in part been met by notes issued 
 by Treasurer Ashe, which he announced would be received 
 by him in payment of taxes. These notes circulated as cur- 
 rency, and in some measure gave relief to the people in the 
 scarcity of a circulating medium. 
 
Evolution of Settlements and 
 down to 1776 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Social Life at the Opening of ti-ie Revolution 
 
 In the homes of the people. — Social conditions. — The state church. 
 —The Protestant dissenters. — The Baptist churches. — Pioneers of 
 Methodism. — Education and schools. — Taxation. — The lawyers. — 
 The Quakers and the militia. — Servants and slaves. 
 
 In the homes of the people 
 
 McRee, in his “Life of Iredell,” has given an admirable 
 portrayal of two communities in the province about the time 
 of Martin’s administration. Of the region of which Eden- 
 ton was the centre, he says : 
 
 It was of such remarkable fertility that it might well have been 
 styled the granary of the province ; it was also the place of concen- 
 tration and market-town for the opulent planters of a large district 
 of country. . . . The climate was humid and unhealthy, but soft 
 and luxurious. Game and fish were abundant, and cattle and sheep 
 and swine throve and multiplied upon the spontaneous fruits of the 
 earth. If there was little of the parade and pomp of older com- 
 munities, if many of the appliances of luxury were wanting, ease 
 and abundance were the reward of but a slight degree of frugality 
 and industry. No palatial dwellings existed — tapestry and plate were 
 wanting; but the homes of the planters were comfortable and ample 
 for all the purposes of hospitality, while their tables groaned beneath 
 dainties beyond the reach of wealth on the other side of the Atlantic. 
 He who supposes them an untutored people is grossly deceived. The 
 letters that will appear in the course of the narrative will demon- 
 strate that they were equal in cultivation, ability, and patriotism to 
 any of their contemporaries. The men were bold, frank, generous, 
 and intelligent; the females, tender and kind and polite. The 
 strength of the former was developed by manly labors. The taste of 
 the latter was improved and their imaginations exalted by the varied 
 forms of beauty that surrounded them. ... In 1769 the town of 
 Edenton was the court end of the province. Within its limits and 
 in its immediate vicinity there was, in proportion to its population, a 
 
 McRee’ 
 
 Iredell, 
 
 31-34 
 
37 ? 
 
 SOCIAL LIFE AT THE REVOLUTION 
 
 1771 
 
 Social 
 
 conditions 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 194 . 195 
 
 greater number of men eminent for ability, virtue, and erudition than 
 in any other part of America. Colonel Richard Buncombe was a 
 native of St. Kitts. He was educated in England and possessed a 
 large fortune. Of “Lawyer Pearson, an English gentleman,” little 
 is known save that he married the mother of Sir Nathaniel Dukin- 
 field, and thus became master of large estates. Colonel John Dawson 
 (a lawyer who married the daughter of Governor Gabriel Johnston) 
 resided at Eden House, noted for its splendid hospitality and the 
 refined society generally assembled there. Dr. Cathcart was a gentle- 
 man of extraordinarily fine sense and great reading. His two daugh- 
 ters “were possessed of the three greatest motives to be courted : 
 beauty, wit and prudence, and money ; great fortunes, and toasted in 
 most parts of the province.” 
 
 And so McRee continues with brief accounts of Joseph 
 Hewes, Thomas Barker, Thomas Jones, Jasper Carlton, 
 Stephen Cabarrus, Robert Smith, Charles Johnson, William 
 Gumming, Sir Nathaniel Dukinfield, the Harveys and the 
 Johnstons, who “possessed talents and attainments that, 
 when combined, not only enabled them to determine the 
 politics of their district, but gave them a potent influence in 
 the province.” 
 
 Of the lower Cape Fear he likewise says: 
 
 Mr. Hooper was a native of Boston and a graduate of Cambridge, 
 Mass. After studying law with James Otis, he became a citizen 
 of Wilmington. That town and its vicinity was noted for its un- 
 bounded hospitality and the elegance of its society. Men of rare 
 talents, fortune, and attainment united to render it the home of 
 politeness and ease and enjoyment. Though the footprint of the 
 Indian had as yet scarcely been effaced, the higher civilization of the 
 Old World had been transplanted there and had taken vigorous root. 
 There were Colonel John Ashe, the great popular leader, whose ad- 
 dress was consummate, and whose quickness of apprehension seemed 
 intuition, the very Rupert of debate ; Samuel Ashe, of stalwart 
 frame, endowed with practical good sense and a profound knowledge 
 of human nature ; Harnett, “who could boast a genius for music and 
 taste for letters,” the representative man of the Cape Fear; Dr. 
 John Eustace, “who united wit, and genius, and learning, and 
 science” ; Colonel Thomas Lloyd, “gifted with talents and adorned 
 with classical literature”; Howe, “whose imagination fascinated, 
 whose repartee overpowered, and whose conversation was enlivened 
 by strains of exquisite raillery”; Dr. John Fergus, of stately pres- 
 ence, with velvet coat, cocked hat, and gold-headed cane, a graduate 
 
LEADING FAMILIES 
 
 379 
 
 of Edinburgh and an excellent Latin and Greek scholar; William 
 Pennington, afterward master of the ceremonies at Bath, “an ele- 
 gant writer, admired for his wit and his highly polished urbanity’’ ; 
 Judge Maurice Moore, of versatile talents, and possessed of extensive 
 information ; as a wit, always prompt in reply ; as an orator, always 
 daring the mercy of chance; Maclaine, irascible but intellectual, who 
 trod the paths of honor nearly pari passu with Iredell and Hooper 
 and Johnston, and “whose criticisms on Shakespeare would, if they 
 were published, give him fame and rank in the republic of letters.” 
 
 And he continues to portray the social characteristics of 
 the Hills, Lillingtons, DeRossets, Moores, and others who 
 then adorned the Cape Fear region. 
 
 New Bern, as well, was a centre where refinement and 
 elegance abounded. It was the residence of the governor; 
 an emporium of trade, with wealthy merchants, enterprising 
 citizens and cultivated society. Originally settled by the 
 Huguenots, Palatines, and Swiss, by industrious Germans as 
 well as by Welsh and Englishmen, the region of which it 
 was the social metropolis was inhabited by a population 
 notable for their thrift, politeness and fine characteristics. 
 There the first academy had been established and main- 
 tained; there the first printing press was erected, and there 
 the first newspaper, the North Carolina Gazette, was pub- 
 lished — in December, 1755 — followed, at length, by another 
 at Wilmington, in September, 1764. 
 
 Among the earliest publications of Davis’s press, other 
 than provincial laws, was a sermon preached before the 
 General Assembly by Rev. James Reid, in 1762, “Recom- 
 mending the Establishing Public Schools for the Education 
 of Youth,” printed by the Assembly, that “the same might 
 be dispersed in the several counties within this province.” 
 
 Halifax had also become a nucleus of elegant society, with 
 rich planters and cultured citizens ; while at Hillsboro, where 
 the governors spent their summers, the simplicity of back- 
 woods life was giving place to the refining influences of 
 advanced social conditions. In all the counties were men 
 like Willie and Allen Jones, the Kenans, Dicksons, Battles, 
 Holmes, Hawkins, Haywoods, Harts, Alstons, Rowans, 
 Lloyds, Osborns, Polks — too numerous to specify, men of 
 education and culture, many of whom were native and “to the 
 
 1771 
 
 Social 
 
 conditions 
 
 W eeks, 
 Press of 
 North 
 Carolina in 
 Eighteenth 
 Century, 
 
 18. 29, 58 
 
 
38 ° 
 
 SOCIAL LIFE AT THE REVOLUTION 
 
 1771 
 
 At the west 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 
 630 
 
 Immigrants 
 
 The marts 
 of trade 
 
 manor born,” while others, like Caswell, Hooper, Hewes, 
 Avery, the Sumners, Martins and McDowells, had but re- 
 cently come from other communities, well educated, ener- 
 getic, enterprising, vigorous in mind and in body. 
 
 Along the Virginia border the people were chiefly of 
 colonial descent ; but on the upper waters of the Cape Fear 
 were congregated thousands of Highlanders, many of whom 
 were well educated. At Wachovia the Moravians had been 
 prosperous, had erected mills and had grown in importance ; 
 while the Scotch-Irish, who occupied the fertile regions 
 watered by the Catawba and tributaries of the Yadkin, were 
 interspersed with Germans, of whom there were some three 
 thousand families, likewise accompanied by their pastors, 
 men of learning, who taught the young while ministering to 
 their congregations. 
 
 And in their new homes the Scotch, Scotch-Irish and the 
 Germans preserved their former manners and customs and 
 their racial characteristics, and these have in some measure 
 been perpetuated so that after the lapse of a century and a 
 half their respective settlements can still be distinguished. 
 Similarly a settlement of Quakers, coming from Nantucket, 
 who located at New Garden, has preserved its peculiar char- 
 acteristics, while the Jersey settlement on the Yadkin near 
 Salisbury, so called because made by emigrants from New 
 Jersey, has retained its original appellation. 
 
 Facilities of communication were scant. This was a par- 
 ticular hardship with the settlers at the far west who, com- 
 ing from the north, located at a considerable distance be- 
 yond the frontier settlements extending from the coast. 
 There was a wide breadth of forest intervening between the 
 inhabitants of Sandy Creek, Wachovia, Salisbury and the 
 Catawba, and the marts of trade on the lower Cape Fear. 
 Easier roads led to the towns of Virginia and of South Caro- 
 lina, and those became the markets of the western counties. 
 There was no specie in the province, while the amount of 
 paper currency became entirely insufficient as the population 
 was rapidly augmented. 
 
 At the east both saw-mills and grist-mills had long been 
 established ; at the west the new settlers quickly began to 
 
 
PROGRESS AND INDUSTRY 
 
 38i 
 
 erect them on the streams where they located ; and these h 
 
 became important points in their social and business life. 
 
 Felling the forests, clearing the fields, building houses, 
 opening roads, constructing mills — in a word, making their 
 homes habitable in those secluded regions — called forth the 
 best exertions of those new settlers ; and fortunate was it for 
 them that their winters were mild, the summers temperate, 
 while their fields yielded rich harvests, and the bright sun- 
 shine brought buoyant hope, health and happiness. Many of 
 the families, observed Governor Dobbs, have ten children 
 in them, and experience has long since proved that the 
 natural increment of population in that favored region is no- 
 where exceeded in the world.* 
 
 The state church 
 
 It was contemplated in the original grant to the Lords Pro- 
 prietors that there might be a state church and presumably 
 that it would be conformable to the usage in England. The 
 first effort in that direction was made in 1701, when each 
 precinct was declared to be a parish, for which a vestry was 
 appointed, and the vestry was empowered to employ min- 
 isters and to lay a tax of not more than five shillings on the 
 poll for parish purposes, which included looking after the 
 poor as well as providing a place of worship. Ten years 
 later, when Governor Hyde met his first assembly, an act of 
 Parliament having been passed declaring the province a 
 
 *In 1810 the editor of the Raleigh Star received many communi- 
 cations from intelligent men residing in every part of the State, 
 throwing light on the commencement and progress of settlements in 
 North Carolina. This mass of manuscripts was subsequently deposited 
 in the library at Chapel Hill, but now cannot be found. Mr. Caruth- 
 ers, who examined it, said: “From it we learn that Edgecomb began 
 to be settled in 1726 by people from Virginia, who came there for 
 the sake of living at their ease, as the climate was mild, the range 
 good, and game in abundance: Wayne in 1735, but made little prog- 
 ress until 1750: Caswell in 1750, but had not more than ten families 
 until 1755, when the Leas, Graves, Kimbros, Pattersons and others 
 came from Orange and Culpepper counties in Virginia ; Rockingham 
 in 1750, by hunters, who were soon followed by a more substantial 
 population ; and Guilford about the same time, as appears from the 
 deeds of land obtained by the Nottingham company. That company, 
 by agents sent out for the purpose, purchased 33 surveys, or 21,120 
 acres, on the waters of North Buffalo and Reedy Fork; and one of 
 their deeds, which is now before me, is dated D 
 
 (Caruthers’ Life of Caldwell, 93.) 
 
382 
 
 SOCIAL LIFE AT THE REVOLUTION 
 
 1771 
 
 S R., XXIII, 
 187 
 
 The rite of 
 marriage 
 
 S.R., XXIII, 
 10, 158 
 
 member of the Crown of England, the Assembly enacted that 
 the laws of England “are the laws of this government so far 
 as they are compatible with our way of living’’ ; and that all 
 the statute laws of England made for the establishment of 
 the Church and for the indulgence to Protestant dissenters 
 were in force in the province. This enactment firmly estab- 
 lished the Church of England as the state church, and put 
 in force the Act of Toleration, which remitted all penalties 
 for non-conformity in the case of Protestant dissenters who 
 did not deny the doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 In 1729 apparently each parish was invested with the right 
 to elect its own vestrymen, who still had the privilege of 
 employing their ministers, being members of the established 
 church. ' U.p to that time there had been in tbe province no 
 other ordained . ministers of any denomination; but about 
 that time Paul 'Palnier and Joseph Parker organized Bap- 
 tist churches in the Albemarle section. In 1741 the vestry 
 law was amended requiring Vestrymen to declare ’that they 
 “would not oppose the liturgy of the Church of England.” 
 They still had the right to lay i tax on the poll fbr parish 
 purposes, and by a two-thirds vote they- could withdraw the 
 stipend agreed to be paid to any. minister. At that period 
 there were only four ministers of the established church in 
 the province, perhaps an equal number of Baptist ministers 
 and none of the Presbyterian faith. There was but little 
 room for clashing among the ministers. Later some differ- 
 ences arose in regard to the right of Presbyterian ministers 
 to perform the marriage service. Originally in 1666 certain 
 civil officers were empowered to perform the marriage cere- 
 mony, and “the persons violating this marriage shall be pun- 
 ished as if they had been married by a minister according to 
 the rites ... of England.” The Quakers married according 
 to their own rites. In 1715 it was again enacted that magis- 
 trates might perform the marriage service in parishes where 
 no minister was resident ; but in all cases a license or Jhe 
 publication of banns was required. The law remained un- 
 changed until 1741, when it was again enactqd that no min- 
 ister or justice should celebrate the rite of marriage without 
 or banns ; and that the parish minister, if one, should 
 led to the fee unless he neglected or refused to per- 
 
THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH 
 
 form the service. There were still no Presbyterian ministers 
 settled in the province and but very few Baptist ministers, 
 and it was nowhere the practice for Baptist ministers at that 
 time to perform the marriage service. About 1755 Hugh 
 McAden and James Campbell established themselves respec- 
 tively in Duplin and Cumberland counties, where they or- 
 ganized Presbyterian congregations. These were regularly 
 ordained ministers of that faith. A little later Rev. Henry 
 Pattillo, James Criswell, David Caldwell, Joseph Alexander 
 and Hezekiah Balch had charges of the same communion 
 further in the interior. In their respective settlements there 
 were but few adherents of the Church of England. Now, 
 however, some clashing because of religious differences be- 
 came observable. 
 
 Originally introduced in 1701 in an effort to secure some 
 religious services for the colony, at a later period the state 
 church was fostered by influences emanating from Great 
 Britain. It was a survival of former usages, and was not 
 then so inharmonious with the times as it subsequently be- 
 came. In every European country religion was the care of 
 the state ; and in England the established church was at 
 once the mainstay of the Crown and the support of the rul- 
 ing dynasty, while it had long been the bulwark protecting 
 Protestantism from the domination of Catholicism. When 
 the province became attached to the Crown, the king being 
 at the head of affairs, ecclesiastical as well as civil, and all 
 provincial laws requiring his concurrence, his officers sought 
 to strengthen and promote the state church, and such was 
 the tenor of the instructions given to the governors. Par- 
 ticular effort was to be made to that end — even schoolmas- 
 ters being required to be members of the established 
 church. Such was one of the results of the domination 
 of the Crown, of the close connection of the province 
 with the mother country. North Carolina was to be 
 fashioned after England — a consequence not so intoler- 
 able, for all the inhabitants were British subjects, reared 
 under existing institutions, and regarding their king as the 
 fountain of all honor and justice. 
 
 The freeholders of the east dominated the Assembly, and 
 they were largely in sympathy with the Church of England. 
 
 383 
 
 1771 
 
 S.R., XXIII, 
 
 679-823 
 
 New Bern 
 and Edenton 
 academies 
 
3§4 
 
 SOCIAL LIFE AT THE REVOLUTION 
 
 1771 
 
 The parish 
 taxes 
 
 Weeks, 
 Church and 
 State in 
 North 
 
 Carolina, 51 
 
 Weeks, 
 Church and 
 State in 
 North 
 
 Carolina, 48 
 
 Legislation therefore conformed to the wishes of the Crown. 
 Yet it was by no means onerous. But while the burdens im- 
 posed were not heavy, nevertheless the principle of taxation 
 for church purposes was offensive to many of the dissenting 
 inhabitants. How slight the tax was may be gathered from 
 the report of Quaker sufferings made annually “to the 
 Meeting for Sufferings” in London ; “in 1756, chiefly for the 
 maintenance ‘of an hireling priest,’ ” £10 14s. 5d. ; two years 
 later, £14 17s. 6d. ; 1759, £85 ; 1760, £23 ; 1761, no sufferings ; 
 nor in 1762, nor 1765. In 1768 fines were reported amount- 
 ing to £5 4s., “being for priests’ wages and repairing their 
 houses, called churches.” In 1772, 30s., church rates; none 
 in 1773 nor 1774. 
 
 The amount of tithes collected here, says Dr. Weeks, is 
 ridiculously small ; but in this small sum was wrapped the 
 whole principle of liberty of conscience. 
 
 At the west the Presbyterians concerned themselves but 
 little with the vestry laws. They either did not elect vestry- 
 men, or chose those who carried into operation only the pro- 
 visions relating to the poor of the parish, not providing any 
 stipend for “an orthodox minister.” Yet certainly some of 
 the incidents of the state church bore hard on the follow- 
 ers of Knox, as on the Baptists. 
 
 Since the assemblymen, North Carolinians, enacted the 
 laws, there was no infringement of any liberty of worship ; 
 there was no persecution. “There was no opportunity for 
 it under the existing laws, and the dissenters were aggres- 
 sive and powerful. The manuscript records of the Friends 
 show perfectly conclusively that while they suffered distraint 
 for tithes and military levies, they were not imprisoned. 
 They suffered no bodily violence.” “There was more re- 
 ligious liberty at the beginning than at the close of the 
 colonial life of North Carolina, but there is no well-authen- 
 ticated case of bodily persecution in our annals, unless we 
 count the imprisonment of the Quakers who refused to bear 
 arms in 1680 as such, and this seems to have been more 
 political than religious in its character.” 
 
 Yet the effort to maintain the state church system in a 
 province where so many were indisposed to support it was a 
 source of irritation, without any compensating advantages, 
 
INFLUENCE OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH 385 
 
 while fundamentally erroneous in principle. The estab- 
 lished church as a state institution was out of place in 
 America, where the people, bursting the bonds of the past, 
 had emerged into a new life, with greater freedom of 
 thought and action nurtured by their close contact with na- 
 ture ; and one of the chief objects in view, strengthening the 
 Crown, was defeated by its rendering the Crown antagonistic 
 to the dissenters in that relation of life which was dearest 
 to the people, their church affiliations. In 1762 provision 
 was made “for an orthodox clergy,” by which the salary of 
 clergymen was fixed at £133, and, as formerly, a fee for 
 marrying was allowed, although performed by another. The 
 vestry still had the right to select the clergyman, who, how- 
 ever, was required to have a certificate from the bishop of 
 London that he had been ordained in the Church of Eng- 
 land. In case of bad conduct he could be removed by the 
 governor and council. This last provision was objectionable 
 to the authorities in England, and for that reason the act was 
 not allowed. Three years later a similar act was passed, the 
 freeholders in every parish being required to elect twelve 
 vestrymen, and if they elected a dissenter who refused to 
 qualify he was fined. The vestry could levy a tax of ten 
 shillings on the poll for church purposes, for encouraging 
 schools, maintaining the poor, etc. To meet the objection 
 raised to the former act it was now provided that while 
 clergymen might be suspended by the governor for mis- 
 conduct, the suspension should be only until the bishop of 
 London passed on the cause.* The churches of that com- 
 munion in all the colonies were under the supervision of the 
 bishop of London. 
 
 Governor Tryon, with great connections, was very anxious 
 apparently to commend himself to the authorities at home, 
 and yet he declared that he was a zealous advocate of the 
 principles of toleration. It seems that the Presbyterian min- 
 isters in the settlements at the west had performed the mar- 
 riage ceremony without either license or publication of banns, 
 contrary to the law in England, and in the province since 
 1 7 1 1 . When the act of 1762 was on its passage, the council 
 proposed an amendment, “that no dissenting minister of any 
 
 *This act was re-enacted in 1768, and again in 1774 for ten years. 
 
 1771 
 
 The Vestry 
 Act 
 
 S. R., 
 
 XXIII, 956 
 
 C. R., VI, 
 881 
 
3 86 
 
 SOCIAL LIFE AT THE REVOLUTION 
 
 1771 
 
 The 
 
 Presbyterian 
 
 ministers 
 
 S. R„ 
 XXIII, 672 
 
 S. R., 
 XXIII, 826 
 C. R., VIII, 
 527; IX, 682 
 
 The 
 
 Episcopal 
 
 clergy 
 
 denomination whatever shall presume on any pretence to 
 marry any persons under the penalty of forfeiting £50 
 proclamation money for every such offence.” The house re- 
 jected that proposed amendment, and the act was passed 
 without such a provision. This action was doubtless consid- 
 ered as impliedly confirming the right of the Presbyterian 
 ministers to perform the marriage service, the Assembly 
 having pointedly declined to concur in a provision declaring 
 it unlawful. Still any marriage without license or banns was 
 irregular under the existing law. One of the first acts passed 
 in Governor Tryon’s time, reciting this irregularity, made 
 valid all such marriages and-made it lawful for Presbyterian 
 ministers, regularly called to any congregation, to celebrate 
 the rite of marriage in their usual and accustomed manner, 
 as any lawful magistrate might do, there having been issued 
 a license for the same. The fee for such service was, how- 
 ever, reserved to the minister of the Church of England in 
 that parish, if one, unless he refused to do the service. This 
 act did not allow Presbyterian ministers to marry by the pub- 
 lication of banns, and therefore it was not agreeable to the 
 Presbyterian communities, and they made bitter complaints. 
 To remedy this, at the session of December, 1770, an act was 
 passed allowing these ministers to perform the service with 
 publication. Governor Tryon was eager to please the Pres- 
 byterians, but Lord Dartmouth caused the act to be disal- 
 lowed, saying that he could not approve of the dissenters in 
 North Carolina having any greater privileges than allowed to 
 them in England, and that he was not at liberty to admit 
 a different mode of marriage in the colonies than required by 
 the act of Parliament. Such was one of the effects of 
 colonial dependence on the mother country — a Presbyterian 
 minister could perform the marriage ceremony only as al- 
 lowed by act of Parliament. 
 
 Under Tryon’s active management the clergy of the 
 Church of England in the province increased from five to 
 eighteen. These were distributed chiefly throughout the 
 eastern and northern counties. Some were supported solely 
 by the stipend received from the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel and the voluntary offerings of the people ; 
 others, being established in parishes, received the allowance 
 
GROWTH OF DISSENTERS 
 
 387 
 
 made for them by law. There was, however, but little fric- 
 tion between them and the Presbyterians, who were settled 
 chiefly at the west and dominated that entire section. In 
 1766, Rev. Andrew Morton, being sent from England as a 
 missionary to minister in Mecklenburg County, ascertained 
 when he reached Brunswick that that county was settled 
 by Presbyterians, and did not go there. In Rowan there 
 were some of the established church who asked for a min- 
 ister, and about 1770 Rev. Theodorus Drage was assigned to 
 that parish and undertook to have a vestry elected ; but the 
 Presbyterian element was too strong for him to contend 
 with, and after a year or two he gave up his charge. 
 
 From an early date there had been adherents of the Bap- 
 tist faith in the province. When in 1711 religious affairs be- 
 came governed bv the laws prevailing in England, the Tol- 
 eration Act came into force. By this all penalties were re- 
 mitted for non-conformity in the case of Protestant dissenters 
 who did not deny the doctrine of the Trinity upon their tak- 
 ing the oaths of allegiance and the test oath, declaring that 
 “I do believe that there is not any transubstantiation in the 
 sacrament of the Lord’s Supper or in the elements of bread 
 and wine at or after the consecration thereof by any person 
 whatsoever.” It required, however, that their places of wor- 
 ship should be registered in the county courts, and that the 
 doors of their place of meeting should be open during the 
 time of worship ;* and their ministers were to subscribe 
 the thirty-nine articles of religion, except those relating to 
 ecclesiastical government and infant baptism. At the time 
 of the adoption of this act of toleration, on the accession of 
 William and Mary to the throne and the expulsion of the 
 Stuart kings, it was understood that it relieved from penalties 
 all except alone the Roman Catholics and Unitarians. Every 
 other denomination was content with it. In North Carolina, 
 under that act, the Baptists as well as the Presbyterians were 
 required to register their churches, although probably the 
 requirement was not always observed. In 1770 the Pres- 
 byterians of Rowan registered two of their churches. 
 
 The first churches organized by the Baptists were Shiloh 
 and Meherrin ; the next, in i742,Kehukee ; Sandy Run, 1750 ; 
 
 *These requirements were aimed at the Catholics. 
 
 The test 
 oath 
 
 The 
 
 Toleration 
 
 Act 
 
 C. R., VIII, 
 227, 507 
 
 The 
 
 Baptists 
 
3 88 
 
 SOCIAL LIFE AT THE REVOLUTION 
 
 1771 
 
 1739 
 
 The 
 
 Methodists 
 
 Fishing Creek, 1755 ; also Reedy Creek, Sandy Creek in Ran- 
 dolph and Grassy Creek in Granville. After that others fol- 
 lowed fast, so that by 1771 there were twenty-two distinct 
 congregations, besides the branches springing from those 
 parent churches which they supplied. At the September term 
 of the county court of Edgecombe, “Jonathan Thomas, a non- 
 conforming preacher, produced an ordination writing signed 
 by George Graham and John Moore, the pastors of the Bap- 
 tists, ordaining him to go forth and preach the Gospel accord- 
 ing to the tenets of that church ; and he therefore took the 
 oaths of allegiance and subscribed the test appointed for that 
 purpose.” A similar proceeding was had at the June session 
 of 1740 of the county court of Craven, and the applicants 
 were given liberty to build a house of worship. It seems, 
 however, that some of them were accused of having violated 
 the Toleration Act and they were bound over to appear at 
 the next term of the general court.* 
 
 The present Methodist organization was not then in exist- 
 ence. Rev. Mr. Whitefield passed through the province in 
 1739 and again in 1764, and preached at Wilmington, New 
 Bern and perhaps elsewhere, but still regarded himself as a 
 minister of the Church of England. It was not till 1772 
 that Joseph Pilmoor, the first Methodist minister in North 
 Carolina, began his ministrations. The year following the 
 first society was formed by Robert Williams ; the first circuit 
 was formed in 1776. The next year John King, John Dick- 
 ens, LeRoy Cole and Edward Pride were appointed to the 
 North Carolina Circuit, and at the close of the year they re- 
 ported nine hundred and thirty members. King resided near 
 Louisburg, and later ten miles west of Raleigh. The first 
 conference was held near Louisburg on April 20th, 1785, 
 at which Bishops Asbury and Coke were present. 
 
 Education and schools 
 
 Educational facilities in Albemarle were from the begin- 
 ning greatly lacking. If there were schools and schoolmas- 
 ters in the earlier years no mention was made of them ; yet 
 as many of the inhabitants, born and bred in Albemarle, evi- 
 
 *A verbatim copy of the minutes of that court is to be found in 
 Vass’s “History of the New Bern Presbyterian Church.” 
 
EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES 
 
 389 
 
 dently received some training in their youth, there must have 'Jjl 
 been teachers among them. When the ministers of the estab- 
 lished church began to come in, about the opening of the 
 eighteenth century, there are traces of some local schools. 
 
 Charles Griffin was a school-teacher in Pasquotank, as well 
 as lay reader. There was a school taught by Mr. Mashburn 
 at Sarum, thought to be near Bandon, and about three miles 
 from Ballard’s Bridge. Perhaps there were others employed 
 as lay readers who also taught school. 
 
 When the province passed under the immediate control Schooi- 
 
 . ..... . masters 
 
 of the king and its institutions were m a measure con- to be licensed 
 formed to those of the mother country, Governor Burring- 
 ton was instructed in 1731 that no schoolmaster should 
 be permitted to come from England to North Carolina to 
 keep school without the license of the bishop of London ; 
 and “that no other person now there or that shall come 
 from other parts shall be admitted to keep school in North 
 Carolina without your license first obtained.”* This instruc- 
 tion was in aid of the general purpose to promote the 
 established church, to train children in that faith, and 
 strengthen the hold of the Crown on the people. Its natu- 
 ral efifect must have been to discourage educational work in 
 the province. We hear of no more schools except one 
 taught about 1745 at Brunswick and the act of 1745 to build 
 a school-house at Edenton. In 1749 John Starkey, himself 
 it is said an ordained Episcopal clergyman, introduced a bill 
 in the legislature to establish a public school, but the act did 
 not become operative. Later, in Governor Dobbs’s time, it £ 7 5 r v 
 
 was proposed to have a free school in every county ; but that 1 0 74 
 
 effort also miscarried. 
 
 Notwithstanding the instructions given to Burrington 
 were repeated to all later governors, it appears that the 
 Scotch-Irish and other settlers in the interior had fkeir local 
 schools soon after coming to the province, as Governor 
 Dobbs indicated when on a visit to his lands in Rowan and 
 
 *In 1714- an act known as the Schism Act was passed by Parliament 
 forbidding any person to teach school who was not a member of 
 
 the established church; this act was, however, repealed in 1719, 
 
 under the administration of the Whig party, which continued for 
 nearly sixty years. Apparently, the governor could license a teacher 
 who was not of the established church, if so disposed. 
 
390 
 
 SOCIAL LIFE AT THE REVOLUTION 
 
 1771 
 
 Foote’s 
 Sketches of 
 North 
 Carolina, 
 178 
 
 Rumple, 
 Hist, of 
 Rowan 
 County, 83 
 
 S. R., 
 
 XXIII, 678 
 
 S R 
 
 XXIII, 823 
 
 Foote’s 
 
 Sketches 
 
 Mecklenburg counties. They were probably not licensed by 
 him. Although Wilmington had no organized Presbyterian 
 church, Rev. James Tate, a Presbyterian minister, came 
 from Ireland about 1760 and opened a classical school 
 there, the first ever taught in that place. In the same year 
 Crowfield Academy was established at Bellemont, near the 
 site of Davidson College. 
 
 In 1764 it was proposed to erect a schoolhouse on some 
 church property in New Bern, Thomas Tomlinson, on the 
 first of January of that year, having opened a school there. 
 The school building was probably completed in 1766, when 
 an act of the Assembly incorporated the trustees, provided 
 a tax on rum to raise a salary of £20 per annum, and 
 required the admittance of ten poor pupils, tuition free ; 
 and the license of the governor was required. In 1770 
 an act was passed reciting that the inhabitants of Edenton 
 had erected a convenient schoolhouse. Trustees were 
 appointed to conduct the school, and the master, as in the 
 case of the school at New Bern, was required to be a mem- 
 ber of the established church, recommended by a majority 
 of the trustees and licensed by the governor. These two 
 academies at New Bern and Edenton afforded educational 
 advantages that were of great benefit, extending through 
 many years, to the people of the eastern counties. 
 
 In 1767 Dr. David Caldwell opened a classical school in 
 Guilford County that became famous, a large number of 
 eminent men receiving their education there. A year or two 
 later Rev. Henry Pattillo began to teach in Granville. One 
 of his pupils, Charles Pettigrew, then of the Presbyterian 
 faith , in 1773 became the principal of the Edenton Academy. 
 A little later Rev. Daniel Earl, who had been the minister at 
 Edenton, established a classical school in Bertie. 
 
 In 1771 the Lutherans on Second Creek, Rowan County, 
 sent Rintelmann and Layrle to Europe to obtain “help to 
 support a minister and school-teacher.” Their efforts re- 
 sulted in the establishment of Godfrey Arndt as the school- 
 master of that settlement. 
 
 In 1768 Joseph Alexander succeeded Mr. Craighead as 
 pastor of Sugar Creek ; “a fine scholar, he, in connection 
 with Mr. Benedict, taught a classical school of high excel- 
 
COLONIAL CLASSICAL SCHOOLS 
 
 39 r 
 
 lence and usefulness.” Indeed, there was probably a school 
 kept open in most of the seven Presbyterian settlements in 
 Mecklenburg County. 
 
 There was a grammar school at Charlotte before 1770, and 
 in that year Edmund Fanning introduced a bill to establish 
 a seminary of learning there under the name of Queen’s 
 College. Fanning. Pattillo, Abner Nash and other trustees 
 were directed to meet at the grammar school and elect a 
 president and tutors. The college was to have the right to 
 confer degrees. The president was to be of the established 
 church, and licensed by the governor, but that was not 
 required as to the trustees or tutors. To endow the college, 
 a tax of sixpence was laid on all liquors brought into the 
 county of Mecklenburg for ten years. The trustees met 
 and elected Fanning the president. Fanning, however, left 
 the province, along with Governor Tryon, in the summer 
 of 1771, and at the next session of the Assembly, in Decem- 
 ber, 1771, the charter was amended, enabling degrees to be 
 conferred in his absence. 
 
 The original act having been sent to England, the Board 
 of Trade reported “that this college, if allowed to be incor- 
 porated, will in effect operate as a seminary for the education 
 and instruction of youth in the principles of the Presbyterian 
 Church,” and the Board doubted whether the king should 
 give that encouragement to the Presbyterians in North 
 Carolina. The Board also objected to the looseness of the 
 wording of the tax clause ; but in particular it recommended 
 that the king should disallow the act because it came under 
 the description of those unusual and important acts which 
 were not to be passed without a suspending clause ; that is, 
 such acts were not to go into effect until the king had 
 assented to them. The king disallowed the act in April, 
 1772, but the college seems to have been continued; and in 
 April, 1773, the amendment being disallowed, a proclama- 
 tion was issued by Governor Martin in June declaring that 
 the amendment was of no effect. The school was maintained, 
 apparently without interruption, under the name of Queen’s 
 Museum, and in 1777 the state legislature incorporated it as 
 Liberty Hall, that act of Assembly then declaring that a 
 
 1771 
 
 S. R., XXV, 
 
 519 <i 
 
 Queen’s 
 
 College 
 
 S. R., XXV, 
 
 520 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 250, 251 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 596. 597 
 
 Graham, 
 Life of 
 Gen. Jos. 
 Graham, 
 18-25 
 S. R., 
 XXIV, 30 
 
39 2 
 
 SOCIAL LIFE AT THE REVOLUTION 
 
 1771 
 
 Land tax 
 
 Poll tax 
 
 S. R., 
 XXIII, 190 
 
 number of youths there taught had since completed their 
 education at various colleges in different parts of America. 
 
 That there were other schools at that period in other 
 settlements cannot be doubted ; while for higher education 
 the colleges of William and Mary, Harvard, Yale, Prince- 
 ton, in America, were patronized, and some of the youths 
 from the seacoast counties at least were educated in England. 
 
 Taxation 
 
 In those early days, when wealth found investment only 
 in lands and in negro property, the subjects of taxation were 
 few, and for general purposes the exclusive tax was on the 
 poll. The expenses of government had from the first been 
 cast on the Lords Proprietors, at least to a great degree. The 
 salaries of officers were paid from the quit rents by the 
 receiver-general and by fees. In 1715, however, a tax was 
 laid of 2s. 6d. on every one hundred acres of land, in addi- 
 tion to fifteen shillings tax on the poll ; but the land tax was 
 for that year only. 
 
 After the transfer to the Crown the same system was con- 
 tinued, and the Crown officers and provincial officers were 
 paid from the quit rents* and by fees. Many years passed 
 before the Assembly could he induced to make some little 
 provision for a salary for the chief justice and the attorney- 
 general. The chief current expense was in connection with 
 the assemblies. 
 
 As soon as Governor Johnston came in the Assembly 
 granted an aid to the king, striking off currency for that 
 purpose, and laying a tax on the poll to retire that currency. 
 From time to time similar action was taken, provision being 
 made to pay the provincial notes by a poll tax. 
 
 Similarly there was a county tax for bridges, court-houses, 
 jails, etc., which generally ran about one shilling on the poll ; 
 and there was a parish tax usually applied to the care of 
 the poor, and similar local purposes — and in some parishes 
 a part of the fund going for the minister’s salary, chapels, 
 glebes, etc. This tax was limited to ten shillings, and seems 
 to have run from one to three shillings generally. In 1768 
 the provincial tax aggregated seven shillings per poll. One 
 
 *A1I grants of land up to the Revolution were made subject to the 
 quit rent. 
 
TAXATION 
 
 393 
 
 shilling was still being collected to sink the aid to the king 
 granted twenty years earlier, and five shillings of the entire 
 tax was because of these aids. There was a tax for con- 
 tingent expenses of government — to pay the chief justice, 
 attorney-general, the expenses of the Assembly, etc. In that 
 year there was a further tax of eight pence, which had been 
 laid for two years to pay for the erection of the governor’s 
 palace. The county tax that year in Orange County was 
 one shilling and the parish tax three shillings. The poll tax 
 was levied on all male whites over sixteen years of age 
 and on all slaves, female as well as male, over twelve years 
 of age. By this distribution, property paid a tax, for as 
 the lands were held by quit rents, most of the accumulated 
 wealth was represented by slaves. For special purposes, 
 some other taxes were imposed. A tonnage tax on vessels 
 was collected for a fund to purchase powder. A tax on rum 
 and liquors was sometimes laid for a local purpose — as for 
 the New Bern Academy and Queen’s College. 
 
 In order to have the commodities marketed in a mer- 
 chantable condition, there were laws regulating how they 
 should be put up for the market ; and there were many 
 places specified where these articles of commerce could be 
 inspected by an officer appointed for that purpose, and they 
 were not to be shipped out of the province unless inspected. 
 Public warehouses for the inspection of tobacco were estab- 
 lished at Edenton, at a point on the Chowan and at Hertford ; 
 at Jones’s and Pitts’s Landing, in Northampton ; at Tarboro, 
 Halifax, Campbellton ; at Dixon’s, Kingston, and Shep- 
 herd’s, in Dobbs County. The inspectors at these ware- 
 houses, on receiving commodities, gave inspectors’ notes for 
 the same ; and these notes or receipts were receivable in 
 payment of public taxes at the following rates: Tobacco, 
 at fifteen shillings per hundredweight ; hemp, forty shillings ; 
 rice, twelve shillings ; indigo, four shillings a pound ; beeswax, 
 one shilling ; myrtle-wax, eight pence ; tallow, six pence ; 
 Indian-dressed deer skins, two shillings, six pence. Thus it 
 took rather more than a pound of tallow to pay the tax that 
 was levied to build the governor’s mansion, and fifty pounds 
 of tobacco paid the entire provincial tax of 1767-68. 
 
 1771 
 
 Quit rents 
 
 Inspectors’ 
 
 notes 
 
 S R 
 
 XXIII, 782 
 
394 SOCIAL LIFE AT THE REVOLUTION 
 
 >77i Lawyers 
 
 xxi i'l The law y ers were regulated, and by act of 1770 they were 
 
 not allowed to charge more than ten shillings for any advice 
 in a matter before the inferior court, where no suit was 
 brought ; nor more than £1 for advice in a matter cognizable 
 in the superior court. In suits for land they could charge no 
 more than £5. In no other suit in the superior court could 
 they charge more than £2 10s., and in the inferior court their 
 fee was just one-half of that. They were to be fined £50 if 
 
 xxii'i, 789 they demanded any larger compensation. Their fee was 
 embraced in the bill of costs in the suit, and if the attorney 
 neglected his case the court could order him to pay all costs 
 occasioned by his neglect. After any case was determined, 
 any client could, however, make further compensation, if he 
 chose to do so, to his lawyer. 
 
 Quakers and the militia 
 
 Quakers had been subject to a fine for not mustering; 
 in 1770 they were excused from mustering, but still they 
 were required to render military duty in time of peril. It 
 was provided that the colonel of the county should make a 
 list of all male Quakers between the ages of sixteen and 
 sixty, who should be under the command of some officer 
 appointed by the governor. In time of invasion or insur- 
 rection a proportionate number of this Quaker force might 
 be called into service, hut could provide substitutes or could 
 pay £10 instead. 
 
 Servants and slaves 
 
 Negro slavery was introduced into the colony at an early 
 date, and servants by indenture was an English institution 
 of long standing. Many persons came to America, paying 
 their way bv an agreement to render service for a definite 
 period of time, these being called redemptionists. There 
 were but few redemptionists brought to North Carolina, but 
 apparently there was a considerable number of indented ser- 
 vants. The law forbade the emancipation of negroes except 
 for meritorious services, to be passed on and allowed by the 
 justice’s court for the precinct or county. In 1723 such a 
 considerable number of free negroes, mulattoes, and other 
 
SERVANTS AND SLAVES 
 
 395 
 
 persons of mixed blood came into the colony, several of vm 
 
 whom intermarried with the whites against the law, that a 
 particular act was passed expelling them ; and no negro 
 set free was allowed to remain in the province longer than 
 six months. 
 
 In 1741 a further act was passed on the subject of Chris- 
 tian servants, by which indented servants were meant, and 
 of negro slaves, regulating their correction and punishment, 
 their diet, lodging, etc. ; these matters being under the super- 
 vision of the county justices. In case any Christian servant 
 should, during the time of his servitude, become diseased, 
 the church wardens had to see that he was cared for. 
 
 If any person should import a slave who had been free 
 in any Christian country, such slave was to be returned to 
 the country from which he was brought, and a penalty was 
 fixed for the offence. Slaves were required to remain on 
 the plantation, and only one of them was allowed to have a 
 gun to hunt for his master. 
 
 In the trial of slaves other slaves could give evidence, 
 but in no other cases. 
 
1771 
 
 August, 1771 
 
 C. R., X, 47 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Martin's Administration, 1771-75 
 
 Martin’s administration. — The Regulator chieftains. — Pardon 
 asked. — The Assembly meets. — Act of oblivion recommended. — The 
 line between the Carolinas. — The quarrel with the governor. — The 
 Assembly dissolved. — Sarah Wilson.— Purchase of Granville’s terri- 
 tory proposed.- — Governor Martin proposes reforms. — He confers 
 with the Regulators. — The province tranquil. — Martin’s view of the 
 commotion. — The house objects to the South Carolina line. — Dis- 
 agreement of the houses over James Hunter. — Fanning’s losses. — 
 Changes at the west. — The court bill. — The attachment clause. — 
 The house resolute. — It is dissolved. — Courts by prerogative. — 
 Quincy’s visit. — Martin to become Granville’s agent. — Colonial af- 
 fairs. — Committee of Correspondence. — The act of oblivion again 
 fails. — The house affronts the governor. — The courts cease. — The 
 governor seeks conciliation. — Temporary courts of oyer. — The one 
 shilling tax. — Harvey urges a convention. — Continental affairs. — Tea 
 destroyed at Boston. — Parliament closes the port of Boston. — The 
 McDonalds come to the Cape Fear. 
 
 Martin’s administration 
 
 After the hasty departure of Governor Tryon from the 
 province, at a meeting of the council held in New Bern on 
 July 1, 1771, James Hasell, the eldest councillor and the 
 president of the board, assumed the administration, requir- 
 ing all officials to qualify again, as if he had been appointed 
 governor. It was not until August nth that Josiah Martin, 
 the new governor, who had been detained in New York by 
 illness, arrived at New Bern and entered on the discharge of 
 his duties. Governor Martin, like Tryon, had been a lieu- 
 tenant-colonel of the British army, but had two years earlier 
 sold his commission and left the army because of ill health. 
 He was just thirty-four years of age, an accomplished gen- 
 tleman, a man of education, having strong connections in 
 England. He had enjoyed the advantage of consultation 
 with Governor Tryon at New York, receiving from him 
 much information in regard to the local affairs of the prov- 
 ince. His purpose seems to have been to continue in the 
 same line of conduct that Tryon had pursued. Pleased with 
 
THE REGULATORS SEEK PARDON 
 
 President Hasell, he took early occasion to recommend him 
 for the position of lieutenant-governor in place of Lieuten- 
 ant-Governor Mercer, who, it was rumored, had been ap- 
 pointed to a new government erected on the Ohio, but this 
 proved to be an error, for Lieutenant-Governor Mercer still 
 remained in England, enjoying the honors if not the emolu- 
 ments of his office. 
 
 Applications were speedily made for the pardon of many 
 of the leading Regulators. Husband had fled to Maryland, 
 and later located in Pennsylvania. Howell also took refuge 
 in Maryland, then moved to Virginia, but finally returned 
 to the home of his youth in New Jersey. Hunter, who had 
 strong connections in North Carolina, after some months’ 
 sojourn in Maryland, returned and took up his abode among 
 his people. The Assembly favored him, as well as the county 
 courts, much to the disgust of the governor. His friends 
 asked for his pardon, but it was never formally granted, yet 
 he remained undisturbed and was later regarded as a sup- 
 porter of Governor Martin’s administration. William 
 Butler made his petition for pardon, saying: “It is with the 
 utmost abhorrence that I reflect on the proceedings of the 
 people formerly called Regulators, being fully convinced that 
 the principles which they had espoused were erroneous, and 
 therefore most sincerely promise never to do the like again.” 
 The friends of the “Black Boys” in like manner petitioned 
 for mercy for them. Later the six convicted Regulators 
 were pardoned by the king, and no other proceedings were 
 instituted, although unavailing efforts were made to capture 
 Husband in his hiding place in western Maryland. 
 
 Governor Martin convened the Assembly on Novem- 
 ber 19th, being the second session of the body elected in 1770. 
 Husband had been expelled, and John Pryor, the other mem- 
 ber from Orange, being dead, McNair and Nash were elected 
 in their stead. Thomas Person, although excluded from 
 pardon by the proclamation of Governor Tryon shortly after 
 the battle of Alamance, appeared and took his seat, but 
 Benjamin Person, one of the members from Bute, had died. 
 General Waddell had been elected from Bladen County to 
 fill a vacancy. There were no other notable changes in the 
 body. 
 
 397 
 
 1771 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 5°* 2 77 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 268, 269 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 57i 99 
 
 1771 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 136 
 
398 
 
 MARTIN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 1771 
 
 November 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 269 
 
 Jan., 1771 
 
 Fire in 
 
 Wilmington, 
 
 South 
 
 Carolina 
 
 Gazette 
 
 Governor Martin’s opening address was very satisfactory 
 to the Assembly, and Maurice Moore, Samuel Johnston and 
 Abner Nash were appointed a committee to prepare an 
 answer to it. Their address was reported to the house by 
 Judge Moore, and it is notable in that it contains but little 
 of the laudation lavished by the council on Governor Tryon, 
 although it declared that “'his spirited conduct and the 
 bravery of the troops in the expedition against the insur- 
 gents deserve the acknowledgments of the whole country.” 
 Indeed, Judge Moore seems to have been at points with the 
 late governor, shortly after whose departure there appeared 
 a letter signed “Atticus,” attributed to Judge Moore,* 
 roughly handling him and holding him up to ridicule. The 
 house urged the governor to grant a general pardon to all 
 persons concerned in the insurrection except Husband, 
 Howell and Butler. The omission of Hunter from this 
 excepted list is remarkable, since he was the general of the 
 insurgent forces. Governor Martin, however, thought it be- 
 yond his power to grant pardons, and replied that he had 
 already offered such a measure for the consideration of the 
 king, and at a subsequent session he informed the house that 
 the king recommended it to pass a general act of pardon and 
 oblivion. 
 
 The house proceeded to address itself to local affairs, pass- 
 ing bills to establish new counties at the west, to construct a 
 public road from the western counties to Campbellton, to 
 amend the act in relation to fees for officers, and other legis- 
 lation calculated to promote the welfare of the people. Wil- 
 mington had suffered by a heavy fire, and an act was passed 
 regulating the affairs of that town, particularly in view of 
 possible conflagrations. A two-shilling tax was laid to retire 
 debenture bills to the amount of £60,000, directed to be issued 
 because of the expenses incurred in the Alamance campaign. 
 
 The line between the Carolinas 
 
 South Carolina had desired the line between the provinces 
 to be so established as to give her a large territory at the 
 west. On the other hand, Governor Tryon had urged that 
 the line from the Yadkin River should be extended direct 
 *Also attributed to Abner Nash. Perhaps it was their joint work. 
 
THE SOUTH CAROLINA BOUNDARY 
 
 399 
 
 to the Indian boundary, which he thought it would reach 
 somewhere near Reedy River. But South Carolina, claiming 
 that the original division before Brunswick was settled had 
 been the Cape Fear River and that when the line was run 
 to the Yadkin the surveyors had erroneously allowed North 
 Carolina eleven miles too much, now insisted that the boun- 
 dary should.be the Catawba River to its source in the moun- 
 tains. The king, however, decreed that the line should 
 follow the boundaries of the reservation allotted to the 
 Catawba Indians, and then up the Catawba River to its forks, 
 and from there a due west course. Such were the instruc- 
 tions given to Governor Martin, who asked for an appropria- 
 tion to carry them into effect. The Assembly demurred, 
 replying that it had no funds for the purpose, and with some 
 indignation it petitioned the king not to insist on that line. 
 After adjournment, however, Governor Martin ran that line, 
 much to the dissatisfaction of North Carolina. It deprived the 
 province of a wide breadth of valuable territory well settled, 
 for population had now extended to the mountains ; but 
 notwithstanding all remonstrances, it never was altered. 
 While the western part of the province was receiving these 
 accessions of population, immigrants were continually arriv- 
 ing at the ports, and in the winter of 1771 no less than one 
 thousand Highlanders disembarked on the Cape Fear. 
 
 1771 
 
 The line not 
 satisfactory 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 259 
 
 The clashing over the sinking fund tax 
 
 Among other business that the Assembly undertook was 
 the passage of a new court law. But the session was brought 
 to an unexpected close with that and much other business 
 unfinished. Besides the act for the issue of £60,000 of T>j/ y i 77 i 
 debenture notes, both houses passed a bill to issue £120,000 \/ 
 of proclamation money, which the governor considered 
 repugnant to the act of Parliament prohibiting the issue 
 of paper currency of legal tender, and did not assent to. 
 
 On the same day, Saturday, December 21st, a bill was The 
 passed to discontinue a tax of one shilling for the sinking dUcontin-* 
 fund, which appeared to have had full operation. The ued 
 governor was determined not to assent to that, saying that 
 it was a measure teeming with fraud and inconsistent with 
 the public faith ; but the leaders in the Assembly were equally 
 
400 
 
 1771 
 
 The 
 
 Assembly 
 
 firm 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 230* 233 
 
 The 
 
 Assembly 
 
 dissolved 
 
 C.R., IX, 
 234 
 
 Sarah 
 
 Wilson 
 
 Martin, 
 Hist, of 
 North 
 Carolina, 
 II, 292 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 determined in their resolution to relieve the people of what 
 they regarded an unnecessary burden. Despite the antag- 
 onism of the governor, they proposed to proceed. In view 
 of the fact that he would not ratify the act, the house passed 
 a resolution that the tax had accomplished its purpose and 
 should no longer be collected; and that it would indemnify 
 the sheriffs in not collecting it. This was similar action to 
 that taken in 1768, to which Governor Tryon objected, but 
 which, notwithstanding his objection, was successfully made 
 effective. On learning that this resolution had been adopted 
 by the house, Governor Martin hastily commanded their 
 attendance, and before it could be entered on their journal 
 of proceedings he immediately dissolved the Assembly. 
 Treasurer Ashe was a member of the body, as well as Treas- 
 urer Montfort, who had been elected at a bye-election as 
 the representative of the town of Halifax, and pursuant to 
 the resolution, they omitted that tax from the sheriffs’ lists. 
 
 The governor at once wrote to the treasurers, insisting 
 that they direct the sheriffs to collect the tax as usual. While 
 the treasurer of the northern district complied, the southern 
 treasurer refused and obeyed the mandate of the Assembly. 
 Thereupon the governor issued a proclamation commanding 
 the sheriffs to make the collection, but his order was not 
 generally obeyed. Thus came a breach between the new 
 governor and the people, on a local matter, which Governor 
 Tryon always had the address to avoid. 
 
 During the course of the winter an accomplished woman, 
 calling herself Lady Susanna Carolina Matilda, sister to the 
 queen of Great Britain, travelled through Virginia, being 
 entertained at the houses of the gentlemen, and many had 
 the honor of kissing her hand. To some she promised gov- 
 ernments, to others regiments or promotions of different 
 kinds in the treasury, army and navy, acting her part so 
 adroitly as to levy heavy contributions on persons of the 
 highest rank. At New Bern she received marked attention 
 from Governor Martin and his wife, and at Wilmington she 
 was also received with every distinction. Eventually, at 
 Charleston, where much attention was paid her, her 
 masquerade was discovered, and she was apprehended. Her 
 name was Sarah Wilson. She had been a maid of honor. 
 
GRANVILLE’S TERRITORY 
 
 401 
 
 Having access to the royal apartments, she rifled a cabinet 
 of many valuable jewels, for which she was tried and con- 
 demned to death. By an act of grace her sentence was 
 softened into transportation, and she had been landed in 
 Maryland during the preceding fall, where, as a convict, she 
 was purchased by a Mr. Duval. Shortly afterward she 
 effected her escape from her master, and when at a prudent 
 distance, assumed the name of the queen’s sister, and for a 
 brief season wore her borrowed plumage with fine effect. 
 
 Governor Martin proposes reforms 
 
 Governor Martin, in considering the situation of affairs 
 in the province, became greatly impressed with the desir- 
 ability of the Crown’s purchasing Earl Granville’s territory, 
 which was then offered for sale at a price between £60,000 
 and £80,000 sterling. The quit rents in 1766 exceeded £6,000 
 proclamation money. After that time the land office was 
 closed, but so many settlers had seated themselves without 
 grants in that domain that in 1772 it was estimated the rents 
 would yield half as much more, and could titles be obtained 
 it was thought that very shortly the rents would amount to 
 £12,000. Such had been the great progress of settlement. But 
 as no quit rents had been paid for five or six years, and the 
 accumulation of indebtedness was heavy, the tenants, even 
 those who had no titles, were very apprehensive concerning 
 the day of pavment, and there was a great ferment among 
 them, ready to break out with violence when payment should 
 be exacted. For these reasons the governor urged the pur- 
 chase by the king, and the Assembly held the same view, for 
 at the next session they solicited that the purchase should 
 be made. 
 
 The governor had been instructed to request for the 
 Crown the power of appointing the six clerks of the 
 superior court, theretofore vested in the chief justice, and he 
 now urged that the thirty-four clerks of the counties, the 
 appointment of whom was vested in the clerk of the pleas, 
 Mr. Strudwick, should likewise be appointed by the Crown. 
 These clerkships yielded the incumbents from £50 to £500 
 per year, and they paid an annual rent running from £4 to 
 £40 to Mr. Strudwick, who thus received £560 per annum, 
 
 1772 
 
 Quit rents 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 262 
 
 The clerks 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 264-266 
 
402 
 
 1772 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 266, 267 
 
 1772 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 a handsome income from this sinecure. Besides, Mr. Strud- 
 wick was also secretary of the province, which yielded a fine 
 income. Governor Martin dwelt on the evils of this system, 
 by which these clerkships were bestowed on the best bidders, 
 not persons chosen for loyalty, integrity or ability, who were 
 led to extortion upon the people to indemnify themselves for 
 that part of the profits which they had to pay for the appoint- 
 ment. With adroitness they managed the magistrates, who 
 became confederated with them, and thus arose oppression 
 and shameless conduct among those who ought to have been 
 ministers of justice. In addition, he called attention to the 
 facility with which the clerks found their way into the 
 Assembly, and, being independent of the administration, 
 opposed and embarrassed designs for the public good. He 
 therefore urged most strongly an improvement in the polity 
 of the province by the changes he recommended. 
 
 The governor at the west 
 
 Following the example of Governor Tryon, Governor 
 Martin proposed to pass the summer at Hillsboro. De- 
 parting from New Bern on June 21st, with twenty persons 
 accompanying him, forming quite a cavalcade, he was more 
 than ten days in making the journey, and when he 
 approached Wake Court House was met by a number of 
 gentlemen, who rode out from Hillsboro to escort him to 
 his residence. That summer proved so dry and the drought 
 was so prevalent that there was a notable failure of crops, 
 not only in western North Carolina, but in South Carolina, 
 as well as to the northward ; and the demand for breadstuffs 
 elsewhere was so great that it became necessary for the gov- 
 ernor by proclamation to forbid the removal of any grain 
 from the province. 
 
 At Hillsboro, the governor was waited on by many of 
 the Regulators, and then for the first time he comprehended 
 that the outlawed chiefs were so only by virtue of the 
 riot act, which had then expired — and that, besides, it had 
 not been ascertained by law that the proclamations had been 
 published in conformity with the act, and therefore it was 
 uncertain whether they were outlaws or not. He made a 
 
STATUS OF THE REGULATORS 
 
 403 
 
 tour to Salisbury and the Moravian settlement, and when in 
 Guilford County had a conference with large numbers of 
 the Regulators, among them James Hunter. They all ex- 
 pressed contrition, and the governor came to entertain very 
 different views concerning the regulation movement. He 
 extended his journey to the eastward as far as Halifax, 
 remarking the great superiority of the inhabitants of Gran- 
 ville and Bute in wealth and refinement over those to the 
 westward. In the course of his journey he reviewed the 
 militia of Orange, Guilford, and Chatham, bringing together 
 the people that he might reprehend them for their past 
 offences and exhort them to good behavior. 
 
 He submitted legal questions concerning the Regulators 
 to the judges and attorney-general, with a view of ascertain- 
 ing their status. In the opinion of the judges, the riot act 
 having expired, the people who had participated in former 
 disturbances were liable only under the previous law. Antici- 
 pating that there would be a general act of pardon passed 
 by the Assembly, he directed that the outlaws and others 
 should come into court and give their recognizances, which 
 they accordingly did, and he had the satisfaction of report- 
 ing to the Earl of Hillsborough that all confusion and disor- 
 der had passed away and that peace and tranquillity reigned 
 supreme. He also reported that the commotions were pro- 
 voked by the insolence and cruel advantages taken by merce- 
 nary, tricky attorneys, clerks and other little officers, who 
 practised every sort of rapine and extortion, bringing upon 
 themselves the just resentment of the outraged people; and 
 that they, by artful misrepresentations that the vengeance 
 which the wretched people aimed at them was directed 
 against the constitution, begat a prejudice against them, 
 which was craftily worked up until the people were driven 
 to acts of desperation. 
 
 That the governor’s heart was softened toward those who 
 had been associated as Regulators was apparent, and his 
 sympathies were so enlisted that he gained their good will, 
 and at a later period they were easily moulded to his pur- 
 poses. 
 
 1772 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 329 
 
 Martin's 
 
 views 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 349 
 
 C. R„ IX, 
 
 332 el seq . 
 
 C. R„ IX, 
 
 348 
 
 C. R„ IX, 
 330 
 
404 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION , 1771-75 
 
 in* 
 
 Morehead’s 
 
 James 
 
 Hunter, 
 
 2d ed., 44, 45 
 
 The out- 
 lawed men 
 
 Letter from James Hunter to William Butler 
 
 “November 6, 1772. 
 
 “Dear Friend: Sorry I am that I have not the good fortune to 
 see you. ... I took this journey into Maryland with no other view 
 but to see you, Harman and Howell, as I reckoned you were afraid to 
 come and see me ; but have had the bad fortune to see none of you— 
 only Howell, whom I saw in Augusta County, on the head of James 
 River. I expect you have seen Harman by this time, as he had gone 
 with his family to the Red Stone. But I would not have you 
 publish it. 
 
 “Things have taken a mighty turn in our unfortunate country. 
 This summer our new governor has been up with us and given 
 us every satisfaction we could expect of him, and has had our public 
 tax settled and has found our gentry behind in our, the public, tax, 
 66,443-9 shillings, besides the parish and county tax; and I think our 
 officers hate him as bad as we hated Tryon, only they don’t speak so 
 free. He has turned Colonel McGee out of commission for making 
 complaint against outlawed men — and he has turned out every 
 officer that any complaint has been supported against. In short, I 
 think he has determinated to purge the country of them. We peti- 
 tioned him as soon as he came, and when he received our petition 
 he came up amongst us and sent for all the outlawed men to meet 
 him at William Field’s, told us it was out of his power to pardon us 
 at that time because he had submitted it to the king, and the king’s 
 instruction was to leave it to the governor, council and Assembly 
 to pardon whom they saw fit. But assured us he had given strict 
 orders no man should be hurt or meddled with on that account, 
 which made us wish for you all back again. Though some are of 
 opinion Harman will not be pardoned, I am of a different mind. The 
 country petitioned for you — upward of 3000 signers ; his answer 
 was that he would recommend it to the Assembly, and freely gave 
 his consent that nothing might be left to keep up the quarrel. He 
 came to see us the second time, and advised, for fear of ill-designing 
 fellows, to go to Hillsboro and enter into recognizance till the 
 Assembly met, which eleven of us did. He bemoaned our case and 
 regretted that the indemnifying act had put it out of his power to 
 give us full redress. Our enemies, I believe, would be glad to see 
 you three pardoned, for some of them have gotten severely whipped 
 about your being kept away, and I think the country is as much 
 master now as ever. The outlawed men since they came home are 
 very ill-natured and whip them wherever they find them, and the 
 governor thinks it no wonder they do not take the law of them. 
 There is a great deal of private mischief done. The people want 
 you back, and I think you would be quite safe, though we can be 
 
HUNTER’S LETTER 
 
 405 
 
 better assured when the Assembly breaks up ; it sits December loth, '77* 
 
 when it is allowed that an indemnifying act will pass on all sides.* 
 
 Our governor has got Fanning to forgive the pulling down of his J u h t f awec j 
 
 house, and he has published it in print advertisements all over the men 
 
 country. The governor has published a statement of the public 
 accounts at every church and court-house in the province for seven- 
 teen years back, in print, with the sheriffs’ names and the sum they 
 have in hand for each year, and a great many of their extortionate 
 actions — a thing we never expected — to the great grief and shame of 
 our gentry. If you should go to that far country, I wish you would 
 come and see us first ; and let me assure you, you need not go on 
 
 that account. Morriss Moore and Abner Nash have been up to see 
 
 me, to try to get me in favor again, and promised to do all they 
 could for you, and I think they are more afraid than ever. I have 
 now some good news to tell you, which I heard since I left home. 
 
 I met John Husbands on his way to Maryland to prove his father’s 
 debt, which the governor told him, if he would, in order to prove 
 that Harman w : as in his debt, he should have all his losses made up, 
 and told me that McCollough was come and was in our settlement, 
 and w r as to have a meeting at my house the next Monday by a 
 message from the king. Jeremiah Fields and others had been with 
 him to know what it was, but he refused to tell them ; he came to 
 my house, only said that he had tidings of the gospel of peace to 
 preach to us all ; and was much concerned that I was not at home, 
 for he had particular business with me. I am much troubled, dear 
 brother, that I had not the good fortune to communicate my thoughts 
 to you by word of mouth, for I have so much to tell you that I could 
 not write it in tw'o days. The outlawed all live on their places 
 again, and, I think, as free from want as ever. I came home in ten 
 months after the battle, entered a piece of vacant land adjoining my 
 old place, and rented out my old place. I add no more, but subscribe 
 myself your loving friend and brother sufferer. 
 
 “James Hunter. 
 
 “P.S. — Your friends are all well and desire to' be remembered 
 to you.” 
 
 John Harvey speaker 
 
 A new Assembly, the members of which had been elected Jan., 1773 
 
 in the spring, was prorogued to December, and then to 
 
 January 18th following, but the attendance being small, the 
 
 session did not begin until the 25th. Because of Speaker 
 
 Caswell’s action in relation to the resolve forbidding the c. r., ix, 
 
 447 
 
 *C. R., IX, 877. Act of indemnity disallowed by home govern- 
 ment. 
 
406 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 1773 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 211, 563, 578 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 433i 547 
 
 collection of the one shilling tax, Earl Hillsborough had 
 directed Governor Martin not to assent to Caswell’s election 
 as speaker, should the house again elect him. But now John 
 Harvey was once more in his seat, and at Caswell’s instance 
 he was unanimously chosen speaker, Caswell himself having 
 fixed his eye on the southern treasuryship. The session 
 opened with every appearance of good will between the 
 governor and the Assembly, and at once the house addressed 
 itself to the passage of a large number of necessary bills. 
 During the session the robes for the speakers and the 
 maces having arrived, the treasurers were directed to pro- 
 vide suitable robes for the doorkeepers and mace bearers ; 
 and there was some disposition to have triennial assemblies, 
 conformably to the law in England. 
 
 The governor communicated to the Assembly the cost of 
 running the line from the Catawba nation to the mountains, 
 but that body refused to pay it, saying that the line was 
 very objectionable; that it was run in the interest of South 
 Carolina, and that this province would bear no part of the 
 expense. It was declared that a million acres of land had 
 been taken from the province, on which were located many 
 settlers ; that a large part of Tryon County had been thrown 
 into South Carolina, and the sheriff of Tryon County had 
 to be relieved because of the arrears of the taxes which he 
 had not collected. Notwithstanding the indignant remon- 
 strance of the last house, the governor now communicated 
 that any respectful petition would be considered by the 
 king, and the house directed its Committee of Correspon- 
 dence to require the agent to urge another line on the king’s 
 attention. 
 
 Act of oblivion defeated 
 
 There were echoes of the regulation movement. Many 
 were the applications for allowances because of the expense 
 suffered in connection with Tryon’s march. Among those 
 allowed by the house was the payment of £37 to William 
 Few for the destruction of his wheat and rye field by 
 Tryon’s horses and cattle. An act of oblivion being pro- 
 posed, among those excepted from its operation in the coun- 
 cil were James Hunter, Samuel Devinny, and Ninian Bell 
 
WESTERN EXPANSION 
 
 407 
 
 Hamilton. In the house these names were omitted from the 
 excepted list, and the bill fell because the council would not 
 concur with the house in granting pardon to Hunter. 
 
 Edmund Fanning had left the province and returned to 
 New York. His attorneys had been directed to institute 
 suit against those who had destroyed his house and prop- 
 erty. But Governor Martin, fearing that this proceeding 
 would revive animosities and produce some disturbance, 
 prevailed on Fanning to abandon his actions at law and rely 
 on the justice of the Assembly. His claim was for £1,500. 
 The amount was moderate, but the house refused to pay 
 it, saying that it could not appropriate public funds for 
 private purposes; and although some discontent might arise 
 from his suits, it would be local, while the inhabitants of 
 the whole province would object to having the public money 
 used that way. 
 
 This being the session for the election of treasurers, 
 Montfort was re-elected for the northern district, but by 
 means which Ashe’s friends hotly denounced as unjust, 
 he was defeated by Caswell. 
 
 Changes at the west 
 
 The development of the western section led to efforts to 
 furnish the inhabitants of the interior needed facilities for 
 transportation. At the little village of Charlotte, Queen’s 
 College had been established, although the act was dis- 
 allowed because it vested in the trustees the right of appoint- 
 ing the master. Now a bill was passed to make it the 
 county seat of Mecklenburg, but this, too, was rejected, as 
 it contained provisions relating to other subjects of legis- 
 lation. But in view of its growing importance, a highway 
 was ordered to be built from Charlotte to Bladen. 
 
 On the Cape Fear, the hamlet of Cross Creek found a 
 rival in Campbellton, less than a mile distant. Campbellton 
 had become the mart of the northwestern counties, and a 
 road was directed to be constructed from it to Dan River ; 
 also, in the superior court bill, it was proposed to discontinue 
 the court at Hillsboro and attach Orange and Granville to 
 the Halifax district, while Chatham and other counties were 
 grouped in a new circuit, the court to be held at Campbellton. 
 
 1773 
 
 Fanning 
 
 C. R.. II, 
 548, 561 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 1054 
 
 Charlotte 
 
 Campbell- 
 
 ton 
 
408 
 
 MARTIN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 1773 
 
 February 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 477 
 
 The sale of 
 clerkships 
 
 S R 
 
 xxi'ii, 872 
 
 The 
 
 attachment 
 
 clause 
 
 C.R., IX, 
 558 
 
 The bills 
 defeated 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 600 
 
 The court bill 
 
 The Assembly, in committee of the whole, directed that 
 a new court bill be drawn, providing for both superior and 
 inferior courts; for the retention by the chief justice of the 
 power to appoint the superior court clerks ; and prohibiting 
 the clerk of the pleas from selling or disposing of any county 
 clerkship for any gratuity or reward whatsoever, and mak- 
 ing any clerk who should give any gratuity or reward for 
 his clerkship incapable of holding the office. 
 
 The council sought to amend this bill in various par- 
 ticulars. While agreeing that there should be no sale of a 
 clerkship, it proposed to allow the clerk of the pleas to 
 reserve a proportion of the fees to himself ; and especially, 
 because of the king’s commands, it desired an amendment 
 that in all cases of attachment, where the defendant resided 
 in Europe, the proceedings should be stayed one year. The 
 house refused to concur, and the council finally passed the 
 bill, but with a clause suspending its operation until it 
 should be approved by the king. The old court laws, how- 
 ever, were about to expire, and some immediate provision 
 for maintaining a judicial system was imperatively neces- 
 sary. Under this stress, two other bills were at once intro- 
 duced, with the view of continuing the former laws in force 
 for six months, and until the next session of the assembly. 
 In the council both of these bills were so amended as to 
 exempt from attachment the landed property of persons 
 who were not residents of the province, and requiring 
 twelve months’ notice to the debtor. This was an innova- 
 tion in the law and usage which had ever prevailed in the 
 province, and as it would be attended with great incon- 
 venience, often resulting in the defeat of justice, the house 
 refused to concur. The action of the council was, however, 
 in conformitv with the governor’s instructions, and in the 
 contest much heat was evolved. Finally the council, con- 
 tent with defeating the superior court bill, passed that 
 continuing the inferior courts ; but the governor was not 
 so complacent, and he refused his assent even to that 
 measure. Thus neither bill became a law, while the general 
 act, passed earlier in the session, could have no operation 
 until the king had given his assent. And so it was that 
 
THE COURT BILL FAILS 
 
 the contingency had arrived upon which on the adjourn- 
 ment of the Assembly the entire judicial system of the 
 province was to fall. With hot animosity, the house, appeal- 
 ing to the judgment of mankind, passed a resolution that 
 there should be published in the gazettes copies of the gov- 
 ernor’s instructions and of the various communications 
 between the two houses, so that their conduct could be fully 
 understood. 
 
 On the day this action was taken, March 6th, the gov- 
 ernor having rejected the inferior court bill and sixteen 
 others of less importance, prorogued the Assembly until 
 the 9th, hoping by this act of discipline to bring the members 
 into a frame of mind more compliant with his wishes. But 
 the members had equal resolution, and, upon the proroga- 
 tion, most of them returned to their homes ; and although 
 fifteen, with the speaker, appeared on the 9th, and the 
 governor and council urged that, under the royal instruc- 
 tion given twenty years earlier, fifteen constituted a quorum, 
 Speaker Harvey communicated to the governor that the 
 members present would not make a bouse unless there 
 should be a majority in attendance ; and that he not only 
 had no expectation of the arrival of other members, but 
 those then at New Bern were preparing to depart. The 
 house had refused to obey the governor. Nothing was left 
 but its immediate dissolution, and writs were at once issued 
 for the election of new members, the Assembly to be held 
 on May 1st. 
 
 Prerogative courts 
 
 Without any laws providing for courts or juries, or direct- 
 ing how jurors should be drawn, with at least the ordinary 
 number of criminals in jail, and a necessity existing to 
 enforce the criminal laws for the preservation of peace and 
 order, Governor Martin now bethought himself of his 
 authority, under the king’s prerogative, to establish courts 
 of oyer and terminer, and on March 16th appointed Maurice 
 Moore and Richard Caswell commissioners, together with 
 the chief justice, to hold such courts. During the summer 
 they were held in several of the counties under the order 
 of the governor. 
 
 409 
 
 1773 
 
 No courts 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 581 
 
 March, 1773 
 
 The 
 
 Assembly 
 
 firm 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 599 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 595 
 
 C.R., IX, 
 
 607 
 
4io 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 Governor Martin having the previous year visited the 
 western counties, now spent some time in the Albemarle 
 section, and likewise in the counties bordering on South 
 Carolina; and in his report of these journeys he spoke 
 favorably of the fertility of the soil and the prosperous 
 condition of the people. 
 
 c. R., IX, 
 
 6lO 
 
 Granville's 
 land office 
 opened 
 
 Quincy’s visit 
 
 The policy of the ministry and of Parliament in regard to 
 the colonies had been a source of continual irritation, 
 especially with the more commercial communities of the 
 north ; and in their plans for resistance the Massachusetts 
 leaders deemed it expedient to have the united support of 
 all the inhabitants of America. To this end, early in 1773, 
 Josiah Quincy passed through North Carolina, seeking to 
 establish a plan of continental correspondence, which the 
 Virginia Assembly had recommended. At Wilmington he 
 dined with about twenty persons at Mr. William Hooper’s, 
 and spent the night with Cornelius Plarnett, whom he char- 
 acterized as “the Samuel Adams of North Carolina.” He 
 mentioned in his diary: “Robert Howe, Harnett and myself 
 made the social triumvirate of the evening. The plan of 
 continental correspondence, highly relished, much wished for 
 and resolved upon as proper to be pursued." He was sur- 
 prised to find that “the present state of North Carolina is 
 really curious ; there are but five provincial laws in force 
 through the colony, and no courts at all in being.” 
 
 Earl Granville being now desirous of having his terri- 
 tory cared for, offered to make Governor Martin his agent, 
 and the governor submitted the matter to Earl Hillsborough 
 and received permission to undertake that employment in 
 addition to his other duties. Granville’s land office had 
 been closed for several years. 
 
 During the summer the governor received instructions 
 from the king disallowing the court law passed at the last 
 session, but allowing attachments in a modified form. He 
 had determined not to convene the Assembly until he had 
 received these instructions, and prorogued it from time to 
 time until the last of November, when the new house met, 
 again electing Harvey as speaker. 
 
COMMITTEES OF CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 Colonial affairs 
 
 Immediately on its assembling, Speaker Harvey laid 
 before the house resolutions received from other colonies, 
 and a committee, composed of Johnston, Howe, and Har- 
 nett, was appointed to prepare appropriate answers. Among 
 these resolutions were those of the Virginia Assembly of 
 March 12th proposing a Committee of Correspondence, in 
 which the house concurred, and it appointed eight members 
 as a standing Committee of Correspondence, with directions 
 to obtain the most early and authentic intelligence of the 
 ministry’s plans that related to the colonies ; and, partic- 
 ularly were they required to report on a court of inquiry 
 lately held in Rhode Island, with powers to transmit persons 
 accused of offences to places beyond seas for trial. This 
 action — the appointment of committees of correspondence — 
 was the first step in the path that led to the union of the 
 colonies. It was significant of a purpose of co-operation, 
 and as time passed and event followed event, the bands of 
 union were forged and the colonies became welded together 
 in an indissoluble confederacy. 
 
 The house informed Governor Martin that in its opinion 
 he could not erect courts of oyer and terminer without the 
 concurrence of the legislature, and that it would make no 
 provision for defraying the expenses of the courts he had 
 instituted. Samuel Johnston was the leading spirit in the 
 Assembly. He was pronounced against courts of prerog- 
 ative and the house was unanimous in its action. Neces- 
 sarily the system fell and the courts ceased. New bills were 
 brought in for the establishment of courts, and for pardon 
 and oblivion for the Regulators, and to discontinue the poll 
 tax of one shilling. The council, however, objected to the 
 first, insisting that it should be drawn conformably to the 
 king's instructions, to which the house would not agree ; nor 
 did it act on the other measures. 
 
 The act of oblivion again fails 
 
 On December 21st the governor sent a verbal message 
 requiring the immediate attendance of the house at his palace. 
 Before complying, the house hastily passed a resolution 
 appointing a committee, composed of the speaker and seven 
 
 411 
 
 1773 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 737 * 740 
 Nov., 1773 
 
 C R , IX, 
 741 
 
 Prerogative 
 
 courts 
 
 overthrown 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 401 
 
412 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION , 1771-75 
 
 * 774 
 
 The aid of 
 Try on 
 asked 
 C. R., IX, 
 787 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 800 
 
 No courts 
 in the 
 province 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 83 1 
 
 March, 1774 
 
 C. R. f IX, 
 930 
 
 S R 
 
 XXIII, g 3 i 
 
 Temporary 
 court law 
 
 other members, to prepare an address to the king on the 
 subject of the court law, particularly relative to attachments, 
 and to address Governor Tryon requesting him to convey 
 the same to his Majesty, and “support our earnest solicita- 
 tions with his interest and influence, and that he will accept 
 of this important trust as testimony of the great affection 
 this colony bears him, and the entire confidence they repose 
 in him.” Governor Martin having found the temper of the 
 Assembly so firm in its opposition to his measures, prorogued 
 it until March 1st, and the session closed without the passage 
 of a single act. 
 
 When the governor learned of the address to Governor 
 Tryon, of New York, his mortification was unbounded, his 
 pride having received a severe blow, which he considered 
 extremely undeserved ; but he suppressed his anger and still 
 pursued a persuasive policy. 
 
 The governor’s prerogative courts having suddenly fallen, 
 there were in March, when the Assembly met again, 
 neither criminal nor civil courts in existence. The governor 
 made another earnest appeal for conciliation, and it was pro- 
 posed as a temporary measure of relief that there should be 
 three acts passed, one establishing courts of justice, one 
 relating to foreign attachments, and one relating to the fee 
 bill of 1748. On these measures, for the first time, the yeas 
 and nays were entered on the house journals. The house 
 refused to assent by large majorities, all the leading mem- 
 bers voting in the negative. 
 
 The house having again passed a court bill, which the 
 governor felt it his duty to reject, temporary acts were 
 passed to establish courts of oyer and terminer and inferior 
 courts, to last for one year, and then until the next session 
 of the Assembly, to which he gave a reluctant assent. The 
 friction between the Assembly and the governor was indeed 
 pronounced, for the assemblymen were immovable, and not- 
 withstanding Governor Martin was conciliatory to the last 
 degree, yet he was bound by his positive instructions and 
 could not meet the views of the popular leaders. On 
 March 24th he prorogued the body until May 25th. But 
 before its adjournment the house again resolved that the 
 one shilling tax should not be collected. This was more 
 
TEMPORARY COURTS 
 
 413 
 
 than the spirit of the governor could brook, and now giving 
 rein to his wrath and indignation, he immediately issued his 
 proclamation dissolving the Assembly with marks of his 
 censure and disapprobation. The original act having been 
 passed by the three several constituents composing the legis- 
 lative body, the governor held that the house “had assumed 
 the dangerous power of dispensing with the positive laws of 
 the country, and that it was a political enormity to abrogate 
 a solemn and important law by its single veto.” The session, 
 however, was not without avail, for provision was made for 
 establishing inferior courts and criminal courts ; of the latter, 
 Alexander Martin and Francis Nash were the judges of the 
 Salisbury and Hillsboro districts, respectively. So much at 
 least had been accomplished. 
 
 But this very important act was defective. It was cer- 
 tainly badly drawn. Governor Martin assented to it with 
 great reluctance, and always spoke of it contemptuously. 
 Under his instructions he could not assent to such a general 
 court law as the Assembly insisted on, but because of the 
 deplorable situation, in the absence of any courts of criminal 
 jurisdiction, he gave his assent to this temporary act, which 
 had been hastily passed by the Assembly. It authorized the 
 governor to commission the chief justice to hold courts of 
 oyer and terminer and general jail delivery, and to appoint 
 two other persons resident in each district to hold the courts 
 of their districts in the absence of the chief justice, but by 
 inadvertence the powers conferred on these judges were not 
 those probably intended, the draftsmen being unskilled. 
 Chief Justice Howard left North Carolina for the summer, 
 and James Hasell was appointed chief justice in his stead. 
 The summer terms were to be held in June and July and the 
 winter terms in December and January. When the court 
 convened at Wilmington, at the close of July, Maurice Moore 
 raised objections because of the defects in the act and in the 
 commission of the judge. Moore had been on the bench in 
 Governor Tryon’s time, and had been appointed by Gov- 
 ernor Martin one of the judges of his prerogative courts, 
 which the Assembly had repudiated as being illegal and 
 unconstitutional. The destruction by the Assembly of the 
 court of which he was a judge on the score of illegality and 
 
 1774 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 946 
 
 The 
 
 Assembly 
 
 dissolved 
 
 Courts of 
 oyer and 
 terminer 
 
 S R 
 
 XXIII, 945 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1060 
 
 Moore 
 attacks the 
 courts, 
 
 July, 1774 
 
414 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 1774 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 201 
 
 C. R., X, 1 
 
 April, 1774 
 
 C. R„ IX, 
 968 
 
 unconstitutionally seems to have inflamed the deposed 
 jurist, who had held his honors by the appointment of the 
 governor, and now with zest he made his legal exceptions 
 to the constitution of the Assembly’s court, “very indecently 
 reflecting upon the legislature, happy in the weakness of 
 the judge.” Because of his strictures, the court adjourned. 
 
 Nevertheless, these courts continued to be held, at least in 
 some if not all the districts, until the summer of 1775. 
 
 Harvey urges a convention 
 
 The condition of the province, although in the absence of 
 courts there were fewer disorders than might have been 
 anticipated, was, in 1774, a fruitful source of grave alarm 
 to thoughtful citizens. Something, they said, must be done 
 to save the country from anarchy. Biggleston, the gov- 
 ernor’s secretary, mentioned to Speaker Harvey that the 
 governor did not intend to convene another Assembly until 
 he saw some chance of a better one than the last. Promptly 
 Harvey replied that the people then would convene one them- 
 selves. On the night of April 4, 1774, a week after the 
 dissolution of the Assembly, Harvey and Johnston passed 
 the night with Colonel Buncombe, and Harvey was “in a 
 very violent mood, and declared he was for assembling a 
 convention independent of the governor, and urged upon us 
 to co-operate with him.” He declared that he would lead 
 the way and “issue hand-bills under his own name, and that 
 the Committee of Correspondence ought to go to work at 
 once.” Such a proceeding was not unknown. It had been 
 resorted to once, years before, in Massachusetts, but now it 
 was a revolutionary movement and was a bold departure. 
 Harvey had already spoken of it to Willie Jones, who prom- 
 ised to exert himself in its favor, and now Johnston wrote to 
 Hooper on the subject, and asked him to speak to Harnett 
 and Ashe and other leaders on the Cape Fear. 
 
 Continental affairs 
 
 But not only were the affairs of the province then acute, 
 continental matters also were agitating the people. The 
 agreement of the colonies not to give their assent to any 
 law taxing America had led to the disuse of taxed tea, 
 large quantities of which lay stored in the English ware- 
 
THE TAX ON TEA 
 
 415 
 
 houses of the East India Company. To counteract this, 
 Parliament allowed the export of teas from England with- 
 out the former export duty, so that the teas, even after 
 paying the American tax, could be sold at a cheaper price. 
 With the hope of speedy sales, the East India Company 
 shipped cargoes to New York, Philadelphia, Charleston and 
 Boston. Those for the two former ports were returned to 
 London. At Charleston the tea was unloaded, but stowed 
 away in cellars unsold. At Boston, where a considerable 
 illicit trade in tea was carried on by Hancock and other 
 merchants, which they did not wish interfered with, the gov- 
 ernment insisted that the tea should be landed and sold. To 
 prevent this, a number of the inhabitants, disguised as 
 Indians, on the night of December 18th boarded the ships, 
 broke open the chests and emptied the tea into the harbor. 
 Information of this proceeding caused great excitement in 
 England. American affairs engrossed the attention of Par- 
 liament. Four acts were passed. By the first the port of 
 Boston was closed, to take effect on June 4th, the custom 
 house being transferred to Salem. By the second the charter 
 of Massachusetts was abrogated and town meetings, except 
 for elections, declared unlawful. By the third all officers 
 of the Crown, in case of indictment, were to be sent to Eng- 
 land for trial. The fourth related to the quartering of 
 soldiers on the colonies. While these measures, aimed di- 
 rectly at the old colonies, excited indignation, a fifth, respect- 
 ing the government of the new province of Quebec, 
 occasioned even greater apprehension. In that, every limi- 
 tation of the constitution was disregarded. The legislative 
 power was vested in a council appointed by the Crown. 
 Roman Catholicism was established as the state religion. 
 Roman Catholics were eligible to office. There was to be 
 no writ of habeas corpus. The French civil law, without 
 jury trials, was ordained; and the bounds of the province 
 were extended south to the Ohio and west to the Mississippi, 
 hedging in the northern colonies. If charters could be abro- 
 gated, government by general assemblies abolished, Protes- 
 tantism supplanted by Catholicism and the writ of habeas 
 corpus ignored, America owed her liberties only to the 
 sufferance of her masters. 
 
 1774 
 
 Tea 
 
 imported 
 
 December 
 
 The Boston 
 Tea Party 
 
 Action in 
 England 
 
 Boston 
 
 closed, 
 
 June 4, 1774 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 IOOO 
 
 Quebec 
 
 Act 
 
416 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 1774 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 3°3 
 
 Arrival of 
 Highlanders 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1020 
 
 Under the changing condition there was to be a conflict 
 between the colonies and the mother country was apparent, 
 and in view of it the king regarded with apprehension the 
 wonderful growth of the colonies, and sought to check the 
 removal of his subjects from Great Britain to his American 
 dominions. Thus, in 1772, after James McDonald and his 
 associates of the Isle of Skye, proposing to settle in North 
 Carolina, had petitioned for an allotment of forty thousand 
 acres of land, the request was refused on the ground that too 
 many British subjects were removing to the colonies. Mc- 
 Donald was the head of that large and influential connection 
 of which Flora McDonald was a member — that admirable 
 woman whose picturesque career has given her a unique dis- 
 tinction among her sex. Notwithstanding this refusal, the 
 McDonalds did not relinquish their purpose but continued 
 their preparations to join the stream of Scotchmen who were 
 migrating to the Cape Fear. In the spring of 1774 three 
 hundred families came from the Highlands ; and although 
 the king in February of that year gave instructions which 
 virtually closed his land offices and withdrew his land from 
 entry, yet in the following winter some eight hundred other 
 Scotchmen disembarked at Wilmington. Among them were 
 the McDonalds. Flora and her husband, Allan, after a brief 
 sojourn at Cross Creek, resided temporarily at Cameron 
 Hill, near Barbecue Church, some twenty miles to the north- 
 ward of Campbellton, and then located in Anson County.* 
 
 *At Wilmington the inhabitants gave Flora McDonald a public 
 reception and ball ; she was received at Cross Creek with great 
 demonstration, martial music and the strains of the pibroch. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Martin’s Administration, 1771-75 — Continued. 
 
 Organized resistance.- — The Committee of Correspondence. — Will- 
 iam Hooper. — The Wilmington meeting. — The cause of Boston 
 the cause of all. — Parker Quince. — The first convention. — The 
 counties organize. — Governor Martin’s proclamation. — The conven- 
 tion held. — The resolution. — Non-importations. — Tea not to be used. 
 
 —The revolutionary government. — Committees of Safety. — In- 
 structions to delegates. — Governor Martin’s attitude. — Goes to 
 New York.— The Continental Congress. — The revolution pro- 
 gresses. — Cornelius Harnett. — The Edenton tea party. — Governor 
 Martin returns. — The Transylvania colony. — The second convention 
 called. — Proceedings on the Cape Fear.- — John Ashe. — Robert Howe. 
 
 — The Regulators disaffected. — The Highlanders. — Enrolled Loyal- 
 ists. — The Assembly and the Convention. — John Harvey presides. — 
 
 The American Association signed. — The governor’s address. — The 
 house replies resolutely. — The Assembly dissolved. — The last appear- 
 ance of Harvey. — North Carolina at court. — Thomas Barker. — 
 
 Governor Tryon. — North Carolina favored. — The battle of Lexing- 
 ton. — Martial spirit aroused. — The governor questioned by Nash. 
 
 — He is alarmed. — The negro insurrection. — He seeks refuge at 
 Fort Johnston. 
 
 Organized resistance 111 
 
 To the dissatisfied colonists was imputed by the advisers 
 of the king, from the very beginning of the controversy, a 
 purpose to sever their connection with the mother country ; 
 but while that idea doubtless occurred to the minds of philo- 
 sophic students as a remote possibility, it was not at all enter- 
 tained by the people at large, who, born British subjects, 
 had neither inclination nor purpose to change that relation. 
 
 Among those who were casting their eye to the future was c. r., ix, 
 William Hooper. Writing April 26, 1774, to James Iredell, 985 
 he said : ‘‘The colonies are striding fast to independence, and 
 ere long will build an empire upon the ruins of Great Brit- 
 ain,” but yet he was not agitating for a separation at that 
 time. 
 
 The plan proposed by Harvey for the people to convene 
 an assembly did not at once materialize ; but when the port 
 
418 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 1774 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 
 245, 246 
 
 June 
 
 The cause of 
 Boston the 
 cause of all 
 
 Movement 
 for a 
 
 convention 
 
 of Boston was closed, in North Carolina as in every other 
 part of America, there was a storm of indignation ; and the 
 proposition was revived. 
 
 On June gth the Committee of Correspondence received 
 sundry letters and papers from the northern colonies respect- 
 ing the oppressive proceedings against Boston. These, the 
 next day, they sent forward to the committee of South 
 Carolina, saying that they could only express their indi- 
 vidual sentiments, but believed that the inhabitants of the 
 whole province concurred with them ; that they thought that 
 the province ought to consider the cause of Boston as the 
 cause of America ; that they should concur and co-operate in 
 measures agreed on by their sister colonies ; that it was 
 expedient that deputies should be appointed to adopt 
 measures ; and that if assemblies could not meet, they should 
 pursue the laudable example of the house of burgesses in 
 Virginia — meet and form associations and put a stop to all 
 commercial intercourse with Great Britain. 
 
 Some ten days later, on June 21st, the committee replied to 
 the communication from Virginia, expressing the same senti- 
 ments as in their letter to South Carolina. Agreeing to the 
 call of a general congress, they said : “As this cannot be 
 effected but by a convention of the representatives of the 
 several provinces, we think that the conduct pursued by the 
 late representatives of Virginia is worthy of imitation when 
 the governors shall decline to convene the people in their 
 legislative capacity. . . . Should not our Assembly meet 
 on July 26th, to which time it now stands prorogued, we shall 
 endeavor in some other manner to collect the representatives 
 of the people.” These communications were signed by John 
 Harvey, Edward Vail, Robert Howe, John Ashe, Joseph 
 Hewes, Sam Johnston, Cornelius Harnett and William 
 Hooper. 
 
 Hooper was especially concerned for the distresses of his 
 kinspeople and friends, among whom he had been reared at 
 Boston, and doubtless was a moving spirit in subsequent 
 proceedings ; but the general sentiment that the time had 
 come for action was shared by Harvey and the other mem- 
 bers of the Committee of Correspondence, and doubtless by 
 the inhabitants generally. 
 
THE FIRST PROVINCIAL CONVENTION 
 
 419 
 
 Governor Martin, having on March 30th dissolved the 
 Assembly, the next day issued writs for an election of 
 new members, but informed the Earl of Dartmouth that he 
 did not propose another meeting of the Assembly until the 
 fall. And so the contingency arose requiring action by the 
 people in their own behalf. On July 21st the inhabitants of 
 the district of Wilmington held a general meeting, at which 
 William Hooper presided as chairman, the purpose being to 
 prepare the way for a convention of the people.* At that 
 meeting a resolution was adopted appointing eight gentle- 
 men of the Cape Fear to prepare a circular letter to the 
 counties of the province, urging that deputies should be sent 
 to attend a general convention at Johnston Court House on 
 August 20th to adopt measures that would avert the miseries 
 threatening the colonies ; and a resolution was adopted ex- 
 pressing concurrence in holding a continental congress on 
 September 20th. The voice of the meeting was “that we 
 consider the cause of the town of Boston the common cause 
 of British America.” 
 
 Already the distresses of the indigent inhabitants of the 
 closed port, whose business and industries were arrested and 
 whose workmen were without employment, had appealed to 
 the sympathies of the people of the Cape Fear, and liberal 
 contributions of money and provisions had been made, the 
 ladies equally with the men manifesting their sympathy by 
 generous donations. Parker Quince, a patriotic merchant, 
 tendered his vessel to transport these contributions, himself 
 going to deliver them. And now the meeting suggested that 
 other communities should make a similar demonstration of 
 their sympathetic and patriotic interest. 
 
 At once North Carolina resounded again with the cry 
 of “Liberty and Property.” Meetings were held in various 
 communities and provisions, contributed alike on the sea- 
 board and in the interior, were sent to Boston by Fdenton, 
 Wilmington and New Bern ; and the counties responded with 
 ardor to the circular letter of the Wilmington committee. 
 The meeting was finally fixed to be at New Bern on 
 August 25th. Every county except Edgecombe, Guilford, 
 
 “Governor Swain, in Appleton’s Cyclopedia, attributed this move- 
 ment largely to John Ashe. 
 
 1774 
 
 C. R„ IX, 
 
 IOl6 
 
 A 
 
 convention 
 
 called 
 
 Contribu- 
 tions sent to 
 Boston 
 
420 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION , 1771-75 
 
 1774 
 
 The voices 
 of the 
 counties 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1030 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1026 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 io 34 
 
 Hertford, Surrv, and Wake was represented by deputies 
 selected at meetings of freeholders, the members of the 
 Assembly being for the most part chosen as representatives 
 in the convention. At these county meetings patriotic reso- 
 lutions were adopted and committees of correspondence 
 were appointed, which became the first nucleus of the power 
 and authority of the respective communities in the manage- 
 ment of local affairs in antagonism with the established 
 government. 
 
 The discussions by James Iredell, Judge Moore and others, 
 in the public prints and elsewhere, of the constitutionality of 
 the courts by prerogative, which had been repudiated by 
 the Assembly that spring, had brought forward anew the 
 basic principles of the constitution, which now found ex- 
 pression in the declarations of the counties. The people of 
 Pitt resolved “that as the constitutional assembly of this 
 colony are prevented from exercising their rights of pro- 
 viding for the security of the liberties of the people, that 
 right again reverts to the people as the foundation from 
 whence all power and legislation flow.” A clearer declara- 
 tion of the sovereignty of the people and the sanction of 
 government had not theretofore been made. Echoes of the 
 same fundamental principles are to be found in most of the 
 proceedings, and generally it was declared “that it is the 
 first law of legislation and of the British constitution that no 
 man be taxed but by his own consent, expressed by himself 
 or by his legal representatives.” 
 
 The resolves of Rowan contained a further sentiment : 
 “That the African trade is injurious to this colony, obstructs 
 the population of it by freemen, prevents manufacturers and 
 other useful emigrants from Europe from settling among us 
 and occasions an annual increase of the balance of trade 
 against the colonists ;” and “that to be clothed in manu- 
 factures fabricated in the colonies ought to be considered 
 as a badge and distinction of respect and true patriotism.” 
 
 The freeholders of Granville resolved : “That those abso- 
 lute rights we are entitled to as men, by the immutable laws 
 of nature, are antecedent to all social and relative duties 
 whatsoever ;” and “that by the civil contract subsisting be- 
 tween our king and his people, allegiance is the right of 
 
THE PROVINCIAL CONVENTION MEETS 
 
 421 
 
 the first magistrate and protection the right of the people ; 
 that a violation of this compact would rescind the civil insti- 
 tution binding both king and people together." The very 
 frame and foundation of civil government had been exam- 
 ined and was then declared. The common sentiment found 
 expression in the Granville resolutions: “Blessed with free- 
 dom, we will cheerfully knee the throne erected by our 
 fathers, and kiss the sceptre they taught us to reverence," yet 
 “as freemen we can be bound by no law but such as we assent 
 to, either by ourselves or our representatives. That we de- 
 rive a right from our charters to enact laws for the regulation 
 of our internal policy of government, which reason and 
 justice confirm to us, as we must know what civil institutions 
 are best suited to our state and circumstances.” 
 
 The springs of patriotism were yielding now the first 
 streams that, uniting and swelling, in the course of time 
 became the mighty current that swept America into the 
 stormy seas of revolution. 
 
 On August 1 2th Governor Martin, greatly concerned at 
 the proposed revolutionary congress, convened his council 
 and issued his proclamation enjoining all of his Majesty’s 
 subjects from attending any illegal meetings, and command- 
 ing every officer in the province to aid and assist in dis- 
 couraging and preventing them ; and especially in prevent- 
 ing the proposed meeting of deputies at New Bern. But 
 nevertheless the convention was held, and the governor had 
 the mortification of observing that all the members of his 
 council except James Hasell freely mixed with the members, 
 giving them aid and countenance, and apparently being in 
 full sympathy with them. 
 
 At the meeting of August 25th* John Harvey was chosen 
 moderator. Hewes, one of the standing Committee of Cor- 
 respondence appointed by the last Assembly, presented let- 
 ters received by that committee from the other colonies, and 
 it was thereupon resolved to appoint three delegates to attend 
 the general congress to be held at Philadelphia. There was 
 much rivalry among some of the members to secure these 
 appointments. William Hooper, who was one of the leading 
 members and to whose pen the resolutions adopted by the 
 
 *A similar convention was held by Virginia on August 1st. 
 
 1774 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1029 
 
 C R., IX, 
 
 1056 
 
 Aug. 25,1774 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1063 
 
422 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION , 1771-75 
 
 1774 
 
 The dele- 
 gates to the 
 Continental 
 Congress 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1061 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 1250 
 
 The 
 
 intolerable 
 
 acts 
 
 convention are attributed, was the first selected, and with 
 him were Joseph Hewes and Richard Caswell. 
 
 Perhaps remembering how Parliament had yielded to the 
 demands of the colonists and their friends in Great Britain 
 eight years earlier, the provincial leaders may have con- 
 ceived that now similar influences would again prevail, and 
 that the mission of deputy to the general congress would be 
 only a temporary employment. Thus it may be that for 
 personal reasons this honorable post was particularly sought 
 by those selected — Hooper, deeply interested on behalf of his 
 Boston kindred ; Hewes, largely concerned in his mercantile 
 firm at Philadelphia ; and Caswell, desirous of revisiting his 
 old home in Maryland wearing the high honors he had won 
 in Carolina. But in any aspect, the selections were well 
 made. They were among the foremost men of the province, 
 possessing abilities equal to the station. Of the lofty devo- 
 tion of Hooper and Hewes there could be no doubt ; and 
 although Governor Martin conceived the idea that Caswell 
 was going with the current against his inclinations and judg- 
 ment, yet he, too, gave every pledge of devotion and zeal, 
 urging his son to take his musket and, exposing the secrets 
 of his heart, declared that he would shed his last blood “in 
 support of the liberties of my country.” That Caswell sprang 
 at once into the group of the most influential leaders and 
 made a lasting impression on his associates in the Conti- 
 nental Congress is beyond question. Indeed, it is to be 
 doubted whether any other colony sent a delegation of 
 superior merit to that body, whose amazing excellence ex- 
 torted the admiration of the world ! 
 
 Declaring themselves “his Majesty’s most dutiful and 
 loyal subjects,” the deputies entered into resolutions of the 
 most positive character. They asserted that any act of Par- 
 liament imposing a tax on the colonies was illegal and un- 
 constitutional ; that the Boston port act was a cruel infringe- 
 ment of the rights of the people ; that the act regulating 
 that province was an infringement of the charter; that the 
 bill empowering governors to send persons to Great Britain 
 for trial will tend to produce frequent bloodshed. And in 
 the way of enforcing a redress of grievances, the convention 
 resolved that after January i, 1775, they would import or 
 
STEPS IN REVOLUTION 
 
 423 
 
 buy neither East India goods nor goods of British manu- 
 facture ; nor would they export any products of the country ; 
 ror should any slaves be imported or brought into the prov- 
 ince ; and after September 10th they would not suffer any 
 East India tea to be used in their families, but would consider 
 all persons not complying with this resolve as enemies of the 
 country. 
 
 The revolutionary government 
 
 The convention then laid the foundation for a revolution- 
 ary government by providing that at every future meeting 
 the counties and towns shall be represented, and recom- 
 mended that a committee of five should be chosen in each 
 county to take care that the resolves of the congress should 
 be properly observed, and to act as a committee of corre- 
 spondence. These later became known as Committees of 
 Safety. 
 
 The convention gave directions to the deputies to the gen- 
 eral congress based on an unchangeable purpose to defend 
 their persons and property against all unconstitutional en- 
 croachments, and authorized them to enter into an agree- 
 ment that until there should be an explicit declaration and 
 acknowledgment of colonial rights, there should be a cessa- 
 tion of all imports and exports ; and to concur with the depu- 
 ties from other colonies in any regulation or remonstrance 
 that a majority might deem necessary measures for promot- 
 ing a redress of grievances. 
 
 In view of the precarious health of Colonel Harvey, Sam- 
 uel Johnston was empowered to convene the deputies of the 
 province at such time and place as he should think proper. 
 And so a positive step was taken toward the revolution that 
 was impending, provision being made for the orderly assem- 
 bling of deputies who should represent the people and exer- 
 cise the power of government over those who would assent 
 to be controlled by the resolutions, of congress. 
 
 Governor Martin’s attitude 
 
 The position of Governor Martin was now delicate in the 
 extreme. He realized that the power of government had 
 largely passed into the hands of the committees of corre- 
 
 1774 
 
 Non-impor- 
 
 tation 
 
 Retaliatory 
 
 measures 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1047 
 
424 
 
 1774 
 
 C. R„ IX, 
 
 i°53 
 
 The 
 
 Association, 
 Sept. 10th 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 227 
 
 MARTIN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 spondence and the provincial Assembly, and was greatly 
 mortified at the falling away from his support of the mem- 
 bers of his council and other gentlemen whom he thought 
 bound by the ties of duty and obligation to oppose the revo- 
 lutionary faction. He, however, ascribed the condition of 
 afifairs in North Carolina to the personal ambition of 
 aspirants for the treasuryship rather than to a more patriotic 
 design. At the election for treasurers in 1772 Johnston had 
 been defeated by Montfort and Ashe supplanted by Caswell. 
 Caswell had been one of his judges appointed by prerogative, 
 and the opposition to that court the governor attributed to a 
 purpose to render Caswell unpopular in the interests of a 
 combination between Johnston and Ashe — a conjunction 
 which he regarded as extremely formidable to the interests of 
 the country and productive of further and worse conse- 
 quences. The convention having adjourned, and there being 
 no other movement of the people on foot, Governor Martin, 
 in September, because of ill health, left the province for New 
 York; doubtless also he wished to confer with Governor 
 Tryon. In his absence the administration devolved on James 
 Hasell. 
 
 The Continental Congress 
 
 The action of the general congress was substantially on 
 the lines indicated by the resolutions of the Provincial Con- 
 vention of North Carolina. There were adopted resolutions 
 of non-importation and non-exportation, which, being signed 
 by the members on behalf of themselves and their constitu- 
 ents, became an association paper, which they agreed “to ob- 
 serve by the sacred ties of virtue, honor, and love of coun- 
 try.” It was recommended that committees should be chosen 
 in every county and town to see to the observance of the 
 association by the people, and that the committees of corre- 
 spondence should be active in disseminating information. 
 
 The post of deputy was one of honor, but also one of 
 danger. On the adjournment of the congress, Hewes wrote 
 to Iredell : “Our friends are under apprehension that admin- 
 istration will endeavor to lay hold of as many delegates as 
 possible, and have them carried to England and tried as 
 rebels ; this induced the congress to enter into a resolve in 
 
COMMITTEES OF SAFETY RULE 
 
 such cases to make a reprisal. I have no fears on that head ; 
 but should it be my lot, no man on earth could be better 
 spared. Were I to suffer in the cause of American liberty, 
 should I not be translated immediately to heaven as Enoch 
 was of old ?” Such was the general feeling — a spirit of sac- 
 rifice and self-immolation. The fires of patriotism were 
 indeed lighted, and an ardor to maintain the rights of 
 America animated the inhabitants of every province. 
 
 The revolution progresses 
 
 During the fall and early winter local committees con- 
 vened the freeholders in the several counties of North Caro- 
 lina, and, conformably to the resolutions of the provincial 
 and continental congresses, standing committees of safety 
 were appointed. The earliest proceedings of any committee 
 that have been preserved are those of Rowan County. On 
 September 23d the people there took action, led by William 
 Kennon and Adlai Osborn, and doubtless the inhabitants of 
 Mecklenburg County were equally forward under the influ- 
 ence of Tom Polk, the Alexanders and Brevards. On Octo- 
 ber 4th the freeholders of Pitt met, and on the same day 
 there was a general muster of Colonel Bryan’s regiment of 
 militia in Johnston. At Halifax, Willie Jones, Samuel Wel- 
 don and their associates on the committee in December de- 
 clared Andrew Miller, a merchant of Halifax, under the ban 
 for refusing to sign the association. In the Albemarle 
 region, Johnston, Hewes, and Harvey directed events, while 
 Richard Cogdell, Abner Nash, Alexander Gaston and other 
 patriots took strong and zealous action at New Bern. 
 
 The freeholders of Wilmington having appointed their 
 Committee of Safety, on November 23d that body immedi- 
 ately began to exert authority. Captain Foster informed the 
 committee that a quantity of teas had been imported in the 
 brig Sally by himself, Messrs. Ancrum, Brice, Hill and 
 others, and the importers did not know how to dispose of it, 
 and they desired the advice of the committee.* A letter was 
 
 *Extract from Letter Book of William Hill : 
 
 “Brunswick, July 26, 1774. 
 “Messrs. Kelly & Co., London, England: 
 
 “The tea, though repeatedly written for, is not come at all, but 
 I need not find fault or make any objections now; for the flame into 
 
 425 
 
 1774 
 
 Tea at 
 Wilmington 
 
426 
 
 MARTIN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 *774 
 
 November 
 
 addressed to Mr. Hill, making inquiry whether the tea might 
 not be regularly re-exported in the same vessel. To this 
 inquiry Hill replied that, in the absence of the collector and 
 the comptroller, he could not answer what they would de- 
 termine ; but, said he, “The safety of the people is, or ought 
 to be, the supreme law ; the gentlemen of the committee will 
 judge whether this law or an act of Parliament should, at 
 this particular time, operate in North Carolina. I believe 
 every tea importer will cheerfully submit to their determina- 
 tion.” Such was the sentiment that pervaded every breast — 
 
 which this whole continent is thrown by the operation of the Boston 
 port bill will presently show itself in a universal stop to all inter- 
 course between Great Britain and the colonies. . . . Though the 
 want of the tea has for some time past been a serious hurt to me, 
 yet 'tis now a lucky omission, as I am very doubtful our committee 
 would have ordered it back. But I hate politics, and your papers 
 are by this time filled with the resolutions of the different provinces, 
 towns, etc., in America. It may not be amiss to say that they are 
 sending large contributions from every port, on the continent to 
 Boston for the relief of the suffering poor.’’ etc., etc. 
 
 “Brunswick, August 17, 1774. 
 
 “The tea I am as much surprised to see now as I have been dis- 
 appointed in the want of it these eleven months past. Had it come 
 agreeably to my request, in July, 1773, it would have afforded a 
 profitable sale; but it is now too late to be received in America. If 
 I were ever so willing to take it, the people would not suffer it to 
 be landed. Poison would be as acceptable. 1 hope you. will not be 
 surprised, therefore, to receive it again by the same ship. By this 
 you will easily perceive how vastly mistaken your correspondents 
 have been, in their opinion of disunion among the American prov- 
 inces ; and I can venture to assure you that North Carolina will not 
 be behind any of her sister colonies in virtue and a steady adherence 
 to such resolves as the Continental Congress now sitting at Philadel- 
 phia shall adopt.’’ 
 
 Mr. Hill added that he would “decline, until the present diffi- 
 culties are happily over, further intercourse with Great Britain. ’ 
 
 “Brunswick, December 1, 1774. 
 
 “Gentlemen : 
 
 “The Mary luckily arrived two days before the importation limit 
 expired ; for, from and after this day, all goods imported from Great 
 Britain are to be vendued — the first cost and charges to be paid to 
 the importer; the profit, if any, to go to the relief of the sufferers by 
 the Boston port bill. 
 
 “The tea of Ancrum & Company and Hewes & Smith was in- 
 advertently landed ; but they delivered it to the ^collector for the 
 duties, and it is now lodged in the custom house.” 
 
 “Brunswick. June 3, 1 775- 
 
 “The whole continent seems determined, to a man, to die rather 
 than give up taxation to those over whom they can have no consti- 
 tutional check.” 
 
THE COMMITTEE IN WILMINGTON 
 
 427 
 
 that the safety of the people was the supreme law, and that 
 the committees were to determine how far any act of Par- 
 liament was to be operative. The people were asserting the 
 supremacy of their will over the authority of the mother 
 country. 
 
 At Wilmington the committee put a stop to horse racing, 
 to parties of entertainment, to the importation of negroes, 
 requiring them to be returned to the countries from which 
 they had been shipped ; forbade any increase in the price of 
 goods, sold the cargoes of merchandise that were imported, 
 paying the profit for the benefit of the Boston sufferers, and 
 particularly took action to secure a supply of powder. Its 
 leading spirit was Cornelius Harnett ; but with him were 
 associated not only the gentlemen of the country, but most of 
 the merchants of the town. Throughout every part of the 
 province there was similar action. The patriots were reso- 
 lute. The merchants refused to receive any more tea shipped 
 to them ; locked up their stock, never to be sold, and one even 
 threw his stock into the river. Nor were the women indiffer- 
 ent spectators of passing events. They sympathized with 
 the ardor of their fathers, husbands and brothers, and were 
 willing to make every sacrifice the situation demanded. At 
 Wilmington they had contributed most generously for the 
 Boston sufferers, and doubtless in every community they 
 were imbued with the same patriotism. 
 
 1774 
 
 November 
 
 Rule of 
 
 Safety 
 
 Committees 
 
 S. C. Gaz- 
 ette, April 
 1775 
 
 Spirit of 
 the women 
 
 The Edenton tea party 
 
 The Edenton ladies, shortly after the adjournment of the 
 convention, held a meeting on October 25th, and declared 
 that they could not be indifferent to whatever affected the 
 peace and happiness of their country; and that since the 
 members of the convention had entered into the particular 
 resolves adopted by that body, they themselves proposed to 
 adhere to the same resolves, and they therefore subscribed 
 an association paper as a witness of their solemn determina- 
 tion to do so. From that time East India tea was discarded 
 by the ladies of Edenton.* 
 
 Hn the earlier stages of the disagreement between the colonies and 
 the mother country the sympathies of a large part of the English 
 people were with the colonies, whose cause was strongly supported 
 by many newspapers and by leading cartoonists. The following 
 
428 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 *774 Governor Martin returns 
 
 On December 7th Governor Martin began his return jour- 
 ney from New York by land, reaching New Bern on Jan- 
 uary 15th. He observed the inhabitants everywhere greatly 
 aroused, and committees carrying into execution the measures 
 of the general congress. At Annapolis he saw with horror 
 his former companion in arms, General Charles Lee, then 
 a British half-pay officer, drilling the people ; while in North 
 Carolina he realized that the committees were completely 
 exercising the functions of government. To his distress at 
 the political situation there was to be added a sore personal 
 affliction, the loss of a little son, the third child of whom 
 he had been bereaved since his arrival in Carolina. He 
 found awaiting him at New Bern his appointment as agent 
 
 extracts are taken from a volume entitled “The Boston Port Bill as 
 Pictured by a Contemporary London Cartoonist,” by R. T. H. 
 Halsey, published by the Grolier Club, 1904: 
 
 “An account of a meeting of a society of patriotic ladies at Eden- 
 ton, in North Carolina, appeared in various English papers about the 
 middle of January, 1775. Possibly the imposing list of signatures 
 attached to the resolutions passed at this gathering caused our car- 
 toonist to select this incident as one fairly representative of the 
 moral and physical support the women of the colonies were con- 
 tributing to the common cause. No reader of English newspapers, 
 during the long protracted dispute between the king and the colonies, 
 could have remained ignorant of the political activities of the 
 colonial women. ... 
 
 “The above citations from the English press of the frugality, in- 
 dustry and cheerful abstinence from many of the comforts of life 
 displayed by the women of the American colonies, have been quoted 
 to demonstrate that the political activities of the colonial women 
 were well known to the public on whom our cartoonist depended 
 for a market for the sale of his prints. The especial incident, the 
 action of a society of patriotic ladies at Edenton, in North Carolina, 
 which he had selected as being typical of the attitude of the women 
 in the colonies, was described in several London papers about the 
 middle of January, 1775. 
 
 “The following extract from the Morning Chronicle and London 
 Advertiser (of January 16, 1775) tells of the association formed by 
 the women of Edenton, in their endeavors to assist in carrying out 
 the resolutions taken by the men of North Carolina, and furnished 
 the cartoonist for his illustration — extract of a letter from North 
 Carolina, October 27th (1774) — ‘The provincial deputies of North 
 Carolina, having resolved not to drink any more tea, nor wear any 
 more British cloth, etc., many ladies of this province have deter- 
 mined to give a memorable proof of their patriotism, and have ac- 
 cordingly entered into the following honorable and spirited associa- 
 tion. I send it to you to show your fair countrywomen how zealously 
 and faithfully American ladies follow the laudable example of their 
 
WESTERN EXPANSION 
 
 429 
 
 and attorney of Granville ; and there was at once need for 
 his action. 
 
 The Transylvania colony 
 
 Richard Henderson, an eminent attorney, who had served 
 on the bench a few years earlier, had arranged for the pur- 
 chase from the Cherokee Indians of a large portion of their 
 hunting grounds in Kentucky and Tennessee, and was pre- 
 paring to occupy that wilderness with a colony. This was 
 particularly in contravention of the king’s proclamation, and 
 of the acts of Virginia and of North Carolina. The territory, 
 extending from the Ohio southward, lay partly in the king’s 
 domain and partly within the lines of Lord Granville. Gov- 
 
 husbands, and what opposition your matchless ministers may expect 
 to receive from a people, thus firmly united against them’ : 
 
 “Edenton, North Carolina, October 25 (1774). 
 
 “As we cannot be indifferent on any occasion that appears nearly 
 to affect the peace and happiness of our country, and as it has been 
 thought necessary, for the public good, to enter into several par- 
 ticular resolves by a meeting of members deputed from the whole 
 province, it is a duty which we owe, not only to our near and dear 
 connections, who have concurred in them, but to ourselves, who are 
 essentially interested in their welfare, to do everything, as far as 
 lies in our power, to testify our sincere adherence to the same ; and 
 we do therefore accordingly subscribe this paper as a witness of our 
 fixed intention and solemn determination to do so: 
 
 Abagail Charlton, 
 Elizabeth Creacy, 
 Anne Johnstone, 
 Mary Woolard, 
 
 Jean Blair, 
 
 Frances Hall, 
 
 Mary Creacy, 
 
 Mary Blount, 
 Margaret Cathcart, 
 Jane Wellwood. 
 Penelope Dawson, 
 Susanna Vail, 
 Elizabeth Vail, 
 Elizabeth Vail, 
 
 J. Johnstone, 
 Elizabeth Patterson, 
 Margaret Pearson, 
 
 Sarah Beasley, 
 
 Grace Clayton, 
 
 Mary Jones, 
 
 Mary Creacy, 
 
 Anne Hall, 
 
 Sarah Littlejohn, 
 Sarah Hoskins, 
 
 M. Payne, 
 
 Elizabeth Cricket, 
 Lydia Bonner, 
 
 Anne Horniblow, 
 Marion 'Wells, 
 
 Sarah Mathews, 
 Elizabeth Roberts, 
 Rebecca Bondfield, 
 Sarah Howcott, 
 Elizabeth P. Ormond. 
 
 Sarah Valentine, 
 Mary Bonner, 
 
 Mary Ramsey, 
 
 Lydia Bennett, 
 Tresia Cunningham, 
 Anne Haughton, 
 Elizabeth Roberts, 
 Ruth Benbury, 
 Penelope Barker, 
 Mary Littledle, 
 Elizabeth Johnstone, 
 Elizabeth Green, 
 Sarah Howe, 
 
 Mary Hunter, 
 
 Anne Anderson, 
 Elizabeth Bearsley, 
 Elizabeth Roberts. 
 
 “ . . . Our cartoonist has pictured in the closing cartoon of the 
 series a living room of a colonial home, filled with women, both of 
 high and lowly station, matrons and maidens, all clothed in gar- 
 ments the materials of which bore no trace of having emanated from 
 the looms of Manchester or Birmingham.” 
 
4.30 
 
 MARTIN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 ernor Martin hastened to issue a strong proclamation for- 
 bidding- the proposed settlement from being made, and declar- 
 ing that all who should enter into any agreement with the 
 Indians would expose themselves to the severest penalties. 
 Still Henderson did not remit his exertions to carry his 
 design into execution. Daniel Boone blazed the way, and 
 a colony was successfully established on the dark and bloody 
 ground of Kentucky. 
 
 Proceedings on the Cape Fear 
 
 March 6, 
 
 1775 
 
 Troops 
 
 organized 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 48, I 4 Q 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1149-1157 
 March, 1775 
 
 C.R.,X, 38 
 
 C. R.,X, 4 S 
 
 The general congress recommended that another should be 
 convened on May ioth; and early in February Colonel 
 Harvey gave notice to the committees of safety to have elec- 
 tions of deputies to attend another provincial convention. On 
 the 20 th of that month the New Hanover committee in- 
 vited co-operation with that of Duplin, indicating that on 
 March 6th there would be several matters of much concern 
 to American welfare agitated. John Ashe, who had long 
 been colonel of New Hanover County, had declined to accept 
 a new commission from Governor Martin, thus disassociating 
 himself from the military organization of the constituted 
 authorities ; and the people of New Hanover had met and 
 chosen field officers for a regiment, he becoming the colonel. 
 Similar action was taken in Brunswick, and Colonel Robert 
 Howe was training the people to arms. On March 6th an 
 association paper was agreed to by the New Hanover com- 
 mittee and recommended to the committees of the adjacent 
 counties, by which the subscribers “most solemnly engage 
 by the most sacred ties of honor, virtue, and love of country” 
 to observe every part of the association recommended by 
 the Continental Congress. At the same time it appears that 
 there was a proposition to seize Fort Johnston, but it was 
 thought not advisable. Some of the inhabitants of Wilming- 
 ton were reluctant to sign the association paper, and Colonel 
 Ashe appeared in the town at the head of some five hundred 
 of his regiment and menaced the people “with military execu- 
 tions if they did not immediately subscribe.” Without doubt, 
 being now an active leader in the throes of a revolution, Ashe 
 used every influence that could he exerted to infuse zeal 
 among the people, to fix the wavering and to overawe those 
 
THE LOYAL ELEMENT 
 
 who were disinclined to cast their fortunes with the revo- 
 lutionists. The commanding figure on the Cape Fear, he was 
 at once stalwart, bold and determined. With him were his 
 kinsmen, and Harnett and Howe, Moore and Lillington ; 
 unhappily, DeRosset and Waddell, leaders in the stamp act 
 times, had passed away. For their resolute action, Harnett, 
 Ashe, Howe, and Abner Nash were particularly marked out 
 bv the governor as proper objects of proscription, because 
 “they stand foremost among the patrons of revolt and an- 
 archy.” 
 
 The disaffected in the interior 
 
 But amid these evidences of defection the governor found 
 some comfort. The Regulators had never been pardoned, 
 and were still fearful of punishment. From time to time, as 
 apprehensions arose, others would follow those who had 
 earlier removed from the province ; and many of the former 
 insurgents were yet uneasy. The king had recommended to 
 the Assembly to pass an act of oblivion, but session succeeded 
 session without bringing the comforting assurance that there 
 Avere to be no more prosecutions. Now some of the Regu- 
 lators presented addresses to the governor, much to his satis- 
 faction. Some two hundred inhabitants of Rowan and 
 Surry assured him of their determination to continue his 
 Majesty’s loyal subjects. More than one hundred residents 
 of Guilford, “being before an unhappy people, lying under 
 the reflection of the late unhappy insurrection,” declared 
 that they held a firm attachment to his Majesty. From An- 
 son came the assurance from more than two hundred to con- 
 tinue steadfast in the support of government. The governor 
 speedily took measures to attach these people to him, giving 
 them every encouragement ; and so hopeful was he of their 
 united support that on March 16th he wrote to General Gage, 
 at Boston, asking for arms and a good store of ammunition, 
 and promising, with the aid of the Regulators and High- 
 landers, to maintain the king’s sovereignty in North Caro- 
 lina. He had indeed ascertained that many of the High- 
 landers who had so recently settled in the province, and 
 others being, like the Regulators, oath bound, would enroll 
 themselves beneath his banner ; and he sent emissaries among 
 
 43 1 
 
 1775 
 
 C.R..X, 98 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1 160 et seq. 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1167 
 
432 
 
 MARTIN'S ADMINISTRATION , 1771-75 
 
 1775 
 
 C.R., IX, 
 
 II78 
 
 The two 
 bodies sit 
 together 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 1213 
 
 The 
 
 Association 
 
 signed 
 
 them and association papers for them to sign. To strengthen 
 this movement, he caused the several addresses received by 
 him to be published in the North Carolina Gazette, and soon 
 had the satisfaction of finding that some fifteen hundred 
 men were enrolled in his support. 
 
 The Assembly and the Convention 
 
 The Provincial Convention or congress was to meet at New 
 Bern on April 3d and the Assembly on the 4th, the two bodies 
 being composed substantially of the same members. On 
 April 2d Governor Martin issued a proclamation forbidding 
 the convention to be held, and exhorting members to with- 
 draw themselves and desist from such illegal proceedings. 
 Nevertheless the convention met, chose Harvey moderator and 
 proceeded to business ; and on the 4th the house met, Harvey 
 being chosen speaker. On the following day the governor 
 issued another proclamation, commanding all his Majesty’s 
 subjects to break up the illegal convention, but his warnings 
 were disregarded. Indeed, on that very day, the Assembly 
 being in session and Harvey in the chair as speaker, the mem- 
 bers of the convention who were not assemblymen, and there 
 were about twenty more of the former than of the latter in 
 attendance, took their seats in the house, which was then con- 
 verted into the convention ; and the body proceeded to the 
 transaction of business as such, later the business of the house 
 being resumed. On information of this proceeding, Gov- 
 ernor Martin’s wrath knew no bounds, and quickly changing 
 the upper house of the legislature into a council, he brought 
 the subject before them, but was advised that it was inexpedi- 
 ent to take notice of it. The convention signed the associa- 
 tion adopted by the general congress, thanked Hooper, 
 Hewes, and Caswell for their services as deputies and re- 
 elected them to attend the next congress, to be held on 
 May 10th, and invested them with power to bind the province 
 in honor by any act that they might do. It recommended 
 the encouragement of arts and manufactures, and that 
 premiums should be offered by the local committees to pro- 
 mote industries throughout the province. It declared that 
 his Majesty’s subjects have a right to meet and petition the 
 throne and to appoint delegates for that purpose, and that 
 
THE ASSEMBLY-CONVENTION 
 
 433 
 
 the governor’s proclamations commanding the convention 
 to disperse was a wanton and arbitrary exercise of power. 
 
 To the house the governor made a long and heated 
 address, inveighing against the illegal convention, pointing 
 out that it was dishonorable to the Assembly for such a body 
 to meet, and warning them of the dangerous precipice on 
 which they who had solemnly sworn allegiance to the king 
 then stood, and informing them of the satisfaction he had 
 received in the assurance of support by the inhabitants of 
 the interior. 
 
 The reply of the house was spirited and bold. It declared 
 that the members, with minds superior to private dissensions, 
 had determined calmly, unitedly, and faithfully to discharge 
 the sacred trust reposed in them by their constituents ; ac- 
 knowledging their allegiance to the king, they declared that 
 the same constitution which established that allegiance bound 
 his Majesty under as solemn obligations to protect his sub- 
 jects, making each reciprocally dependent. Asserting that 
 the king had no subjects more faithful than the inhabitants 
 of North Carolina, or more ready, at the expense of their 
 lives and fortunes, to protect and support his person, crown, 
 and dignity, they expressed their warm attachment to their 
 sister colonies and heartfelt compassion for Boston, and 
 declared the fixed and determined resolution of the colony 
 to unite with the other colonies to retain their just rights 
 as British subjects. They reiterated what the convention had 
 affirmed with regard to the legality of that body, approved 
 the proceedings of the Continental Congress, and resolved to 
 exert every influence to induce the inhabitants of North 
 Carolina to observe the rules it had recommended. They 
 thanked the North Carolina deputies for their faithful con- 
 duct, and approved of their re-election by the convention. 
 The governor, on the evening of Friday, the 7th, having 
 obtained information of the nature of the Assembly’s ad- 
 dress to him, early the next morning dissolved the body. 
 
 Although later Governor Martin called for the election 
 of new members to be held on June 23d, this was the last 
 Assembly ever convened under royal authority. It was also 
 the last appearance in public affairs of that sterling patriot, 
 John Harvey, whose health had long been delicate ; and now. 
 
 1775 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 II98, 1201 
 
 Reciprocal 
 
 duties 
 
 declared 
 
 April, 1775 
 The 
 
 Assembly 
 
 dissolved 
 
434 
 
 MARTIN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 1775 
 
 Death of 
 Harvey 
 
 Parker and 
 Elmsly 
 suppress 
 address to 
 king 
 
 C. R , IX, 
 1208 
 North 
 Carolina 
 excepted 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1214 
 
 wasted by disease, he bade farewell to those associates who 
 bad given him so many evidences of their esteem and con- 
 fidence, and who, under his guidance, had entered upon that 
 determined action which subsequently led to the indepen- 
 dence of the colony. About the middle of May he fell from 
 his horse and died, lamented by his compatriots. 
 
 North Carolina at Court 
 
 In England some conciliatory measures had been pro- 
 posed that, however, did not at all appeal to the colonists. 
 Thomas Barker, who twenty years earlier had been a lawyer 
 of influence in the Albemarle section, and once treasurer, 
 was now in England, and Alexander Elmsly, who also had 
 been a member of the Assembly and a man of influence in 
 that section, being also in London, to them it was given in 
 charge by the Assembly of 1774 to present the address of 
 the province to the Crown. They took the liberty of sup- 
 pressing that address as adopted by the Assembly and of 
 writing another, which was received with favor by the 
 Board of Trade ; and Governor Tryon, being also at London, 
 exerted himself in behalf of North Carolina; so that when, 
 about the middle of February, a bill was introduced into 
 Parliament forbidding trade with the colonists, North Caro- 
 lina and New York were excepted. This was regarded in 
 the province as an unenviable distinction, and was ascribed 
 to a purpose to detach North Carolina from the common 
 cause, while at the same time leaving open communications 
 by which Great Britain could continue to receive needed 
 supplies of naval stores so essential for naval operations. 
 This tender was at once rejected by the inhabitants with 
 disdain, and North Carolina, paying no attention to it, re- 
 mained faithful to the common cause. To the northward 
 military companies were forming, and the Virginia Assembly 
 provided for the raising of a company in each county. Such 
 a proposition was brought forward in the North Carolina 
 convention, but was then deemed inexpedient. 
 
 The battle of Lexington 
 
 But all hopes that the peace would not be broken quickly 
 vanished. On April 19th the first clash of arms occurred 
 
THE WAR BEGINS 
 
 435 
 
 at Lexington, and information of that battle was hurried 
 from Boston by successive couriers to Charleston. On 
 May 3d the courier from Nansemond reached Edenton ; on 
 May 6th, New Bern ; two days later, Wilmington and Bruns- 
 wick. On May gth, Montfort, at Halifax, despatched the 
 news to Burke at Hillsboro, and it spread rapidly through- 
 out the province. It created great excitement. The people 
 were stirred as never before. A new phase was now im- 
 parted to public affairs, the people feeling that they must 
 fight. Independent military companies at once began to be 
 organized. It was the same throughout all America. 
 Toward the end of April Caswell and Hewes left the prov- 
 ince to attend the Congress. In Virginia and Maryland 
 they were escorted through the several counties by the mili- 
 tary companies, and on reaching Philadelphia they found 
 twenty-eight companies organized and 2000 men drilling 
 morning and evening, and only martial music could be heard 
 in the streets. The change had been electrical. 
 
 On May 16th Nash and others had begun the formation 
 of companies at New Bern. The governor, fearing that some 
 mounted cannon on the palace grounds would be seized and 
 carried off, on May 23d caused them to be dismounted ; and 
 when Nash and a committee of citizens waited on him to 
 ascertain the cause of this action, the governor said that 
 the carriages were unsafe, and he was making preparations 
 to celebrate the king’s birthday ; but while he was indignant 
 at being called to account by the people, he was also alarmed 
 and prevaricated in order to quiet them. 
 
 Governor Martin seeks safety 
 
 A day or two later an emissary arrived from New York 
 and informed Governor Martin that General Gage was about 
 to send him the arms and munitions desired, and there was 
 reason to suppose that the shipment had been discovered. A 
 report also had been propagated that the governor had 
 formed a design of arming the negroes and proclaiming 
 freedom to those who should resort to the king’s standard, 
 and the public mind was much inflamed against him. Indeed, 
 there was then brewing a plot for a negro insurrection in 
 
 1775 
 
 C. R„ IX, 
 1234, 1239 
 
 May, 1775 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 I248 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1256 ; 
 
 X, 41, 43 
 
 The 
 
 governor 
 
 questioned 
 
 Martin, 
 Hist, of 
 North 
 
 Carolina, II, 
 353 
 
43 6 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1771-75 
 
 1775 
 
 July, 1775 
 
 C. R., X, 94 
 Negro 
 insurrection 
 planned 
 
 C. R., X, 41 
 
 Martin 
 leaves 
 New Bern, 
 May 31, 1775 
 
 C. R., X, 44 
 
 C R., X, 45 
 The last 
 election 
 
 the region near Tar River. By timely good fortune, on 
 July 7th the plot was discovered. 
 
 On the following night the negroes were to rise and mur- 
 der the whites, moving from plantation to plantation, and 
 then, having embodied, they were to march to the west, 
 where they expected to be received and protected by the 
 inhabitants who were still attached to the king. Companies 
 of light horse scoured the country, and the negroes were 
 speedily suppressed, but apparently not without some of 
 them' being killed. 
 
 The purpose was avowed in some of the colonies to seize 
 the royal governors and detain them, and Governor Martin, 
 fearing the discovery of the shipment of arms, especially in 
 connection with his alleged design to arm the negroes, be- 
 came very apprehensive for his personal safety. The mili- 
 tary companies formed at New Bern were a menace, and, 
 separated from the king’s forces, he had no friends to pro- 
 tect him. He hurried his private secretary to Ocracoke to 
 stop any vessel bringing in arms, ordering it to proceed to 
 Fort Johnston. The same night he despatched his wife and 
 family to New York, bearing letters to General Gage, and 
 he asked that a royal standard should be furnished him. 
 Being now entirely alone, on the last day of May he locked 
 the palace, left the key with a servant, and took his departure 
 southward. Giving out that he was going to visit Chief 
 Justice Hasell, he took flight for Fort Johnston, where he 
 safely arrived on June 2d. His flight perhaps gave a new 
 impulse to the popular movement, strengthening the hands 
 of Nash, Cogdell, and Gaston ; and on June 8th the associa- 
 tion was being signed in every part of the county, and the 
 militia were forming into companies and choosing their own 
 officers. 
 
 Elections were held for assemblymen on June 23d, and a 
 considerable number of inhabitants gathering at New Bern 
 on that occasion, they went to the deserted palace and took 
 possession of the six cannon there, and removed them to the 
 court-house. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 The Mecklenburg Resolves, May 31, 1775 
 
 The Mecklenburg declaration. — Historical statement. — Documents 
 and observations. — Conditions in May. — Mecklenburg aroused. — The 
 great meeting at Charlotte. — Colonel Polk proclaims the resolves. — 
 Independence declared. — The old government annulled. — The leaders 
 in Mecklenburg. — The effect elsewhere.— At Salisbury. — At New 
 Bern. — Bethania. — Reconciliation still desired. — Apprehensions.- — 
 Thomas Jefferson. — The Regulators. — The patriots in the interior. — 
 The clashing in Anson. — New Hanover acts. — Governor Martin’s 
 plans. — McDonald arrives. — New Hanover impatient. — -Fort Johnston 
 burned. — The Revolution progresses. — Dunn and Boote confined. 
 
 In May, 1775, the condition of public affairs was alarming. Boston 
 was occupied by a hostile British army, and “the cause of Boston 
 was felt to be the cause of all.” The situation having been dis- 
 cussed by some of the leading citizens of Mecklenburg County, and 
 several local meetings having been held at different points in the 
 county, Colonel Thomas Polk called for the election of two delegates 
 from each of the militia districts of the county “to take into con- 
 sideration the state of the country, and to adopt such measures as 
 to them seemed best to secure their lives, liberties, and property 
 from the storm which was gathering and had burst on their fellow- 
 citizens to the eastvvard by a British army” (statement of G. Graham 
 and others). The delegates, having been chosen, met at Charlotte. 
 The news of the battle of Lexington had arrived and the people 
 were much excited (ibid.). Resolutions were adopted that were 
 with great formality read by Colonel Polk to a large concourse of 
 citizens, composed of nearly one-half of the men of the county, 
 drawn together by their interest in the occasion (ibid.). 
 
 The manuscript records of these proceedings appear to have been 
 in the possession of John McKnitt Alexander until the year 1800. In 
 1794 he sent a copy of them to Dr. Hugh Williamson. In April, 
 1800, his residence was destroyed by fire and these original records 
 were then burnt. 
 
 Subsequently John McKnitt Alexander sought to reproduce the 
 burnt records. Apparently he made some rough notes as a basis for 
 reproduction on a half sheet of paper, which he preserved. Attached 
 to that half sheet, when discovered after his death in 1817, was a 
 
43 § 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 *775 
 
 The 
 
 Alexander 
 document of 
 1800 
 
 His 
 
 certificate 
 
 N. C. Uni. 
 Mag., 
 April, 1853, 
 *75 
 
 The Davie 
 copy 
 
 full sheet in a handwriting unknown to his son, Dr. Joseph McKnitt 
 Alexander, which contained an account of the proceedings in Meck- 
 lenburg, including a series of resolutions which has since been 
 known as “The Declaration of May 20th.” 
 
 In September, 1800, a copy of this “full sheet” was sent by John 
 McKnitt Alexander to General William R. Davie with the following 
 certificate appended to it: 
 
 “It may be worthy of notice here to observe that the foregoing 
 statement, though fundamentally correct, yet may not literally cor- 
 respond with the original record of the transactions of said delega- 
 tion and Court of Inquiry, as all those records and papers were 
 burned, with the house, on April 6, 1800; but previous to that time 
 of 1800, a full copy of said records, at the request of Dr. Hugh 
 Williamson, then of New York, but formerly a representative in 
 Congress from this State, was forwarded to him by Colonel William 
 Polk, in order that those early transactions might fill their proper 
 place in a history of this State then writing by said Dr. Williams 
 (sic) in New York. 
 
 “Certified to the best of my recollection and belief this 3d day of 
 September, 1800, by 
 
 “J. McK. Alexander, 
 
 “Mecklenburg County, N. C.” 
 
 This certificate fixes the character of “the full sheet” and of the 
 “Davie copy” to which it was annexed. They were not copies of any 
 record. In like manner, it is to be said of all other copies of the 
 resolutions purporting to have been adopted at Charlotte on May 
 20th, that they have only this origin and source, and are copies of the 
 Alexander document of 1800. 
 
 The remembrance of Mecklenburg’s patriotic action was cherished 
 locally, but no contemporaneous publication of the proceedings seems 
 to have been preserved in that county ; nor was the copy sent to Dr. 
 Williamson ever published; nor did General Davie give publicity to 
 the paper sent him. 
 
 John McKnitt Alexander died on July 10, 1817, and after his death 
 his son. Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander, found in his mansion house 
 a bundle of old pamphlets, and with them the “half sheet” and the 
 “full sheet” of manuscripts above mentioned. In 1818 inquiry was 
 made concerning the proceedings in Mecklenburg, and Dr. Joseph 
 McKnitt Alexander sent a copy of the “full sheet” to Hon. William 
 Davidson, then a member of Congress. On the 30th of April, 1819, 
 the following publication appeared in the Raleigh Register: 
 
 “It is not probably known to many of our readers that the citi- 
 zens of Mecklenburg County, in this State, made a declaration of 
 
RALEIGH REGISTER ARTICLE 
 
 439 
 
 independence more than a year before Congress made theirs. The ^ 
 
 following document on the subject has lately come to the hands 
 of the editor from unquestionable authority, and is published that 
 it may go down to posterity: 
 
 North Carolina, Mecklenburg County, May 20, 1775. 
 
 In the spring of 1775, the leading characters of Mecklenburg The 
 County, stimulated by that enthusiastic patriotism which elevates 
 the mind above considerations of individual aggrandizement, and 1800 
 scorning to shelter themselves from the impending storm by sub- 
 mission to lawless power, etc., held several detached meetings, 
 in each of which the individual sentiments were, “that the cause 
 of Boston was the cause of all ; that their destinies were indissolubly 
 connected with those of their Eastern fellow-citizens — and that they 
 must either submit to all the impositions which an unprincipled, and 
 to them an unrepresented, parliament might impose — or support 
 their brethren who were doomed to sustain the first shock of that; 
 power, which, if successful there, would ultimately overwhelm all in 
 the common calamity.” Conformably to these principles, Colonel 
 Adam Alexander, through solicitation, issued an order to each cap- 
 tain’s company in the county of Mecklenburg (then comprising the 
 present county of Cabarrus), directing each militia company to elect 
 two persons, and delegate to them ample power to devise ways and 
 means to aid and assist their suffering brethren in Boston, and also 
 generally to adopt measures to extricate themselves from the im- 
 pending storm, and to secure unimpaired their inalienable rights, 
 privileges and liberties, from the dominant grasp of British imposi- 
 tion and tyrannny. 
 
 In conforming to said order, on May 19, 1775, the said delega- 
 tion met in Charlotte, vested with unlimited powers ; at which time 
 official news, by express, arrived of the battle of Lexington on that 
 day of the preceding month. Every delegate felt the value and 
 importance of the prize, and the awful and solemn crisis which 
 had arrived — every bosom swelled with indignation at the malice, 
 inveteracy, and insatiable revenge, developed in the late attack at 
 Lexington. The universal sentiment was: let us not flatter our- 
 selves that popular harangues or resolves, that popular vapor will 
 avert the storm, or vanquish our common enemy — let us deliberate 
 — let us calculate the issue — the probable result; and then let us 
 act with energy, as brethren leagued to preserve our property — 
 our lives — and what is still more endearing, the liberties of America. 
 
 Abraham Alexander was then elected chairman, and John McKnitt 
 Alexander, clerk. After a free and full discusssion of the various 
 objects for which the delegation had been convened, it was unani- 
 mously ordained : 
 
440 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 17 7 s X. Resolved, That whoever directly or indirectly abetted, or in 
 
 any way, form, or manner, countenanced the unchartered and dan- 
 gerous invasion of our rights, as claimed by Great Britain, is an 
 enemy to this country — to America — and to the inherent and in- 
 alienable rights of man. 
 
 2. Resolved, That we, the citizens of Mecklenburg County, do 
 hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the 
 mother country, and hereby absolve ourselves from ail allegiance 
 to the British Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract, 
 or association with that nation, who have wantonly trampled on 
 our rights and liberties — and inhumanly shed the innocent blood of 
 American patriots at Lexington. 
 
 3. Resolved, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and inde- 
 pendent people, are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self- 
 governing association, under the control of no power other than 
 that of our God and the general government of the congress ; to 
 the maintenance of which independence we solemnly pledge to 
 each other our mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our 
 most sacred honor. 
 
 4. Resolved, That as we now acknowledge the existence and con- 
 trol of no law or legal officer, civil or military, within this county, 
 we do hereby ordain and adopt, as a rule of life, all, each and every 
 of our former laws, wherein, nevertheless, the Crown of Great 
 Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, im- 
 munities, or authority therein. 
 
 5. Resolved, That it is also further decreed, that all, each and every 
 military officer in this county is hereby reinstated to his former com- 
 mand and authority, he acting conformably to these regulations. 
 And that every member present of this delegation shall henceforth be 
 a civil officer, viz., a justice of the peace, in the character of a 
 committeeman, to issue process, hear and determine all matters 
 of controversy, according to said adopted laws, and to preserve 
 peace, and union, and harmony, in said county, and to use every 
 exertion to spread the love of country and fire of freedom through- 
 out America, until a more general and organized government be 
 established in this province. 
 
 A number of by-laws were also added, merely to protect the as- 
 sociation from confusion, and to regulate their general conduct as 
 citizens. After sitting in the court-house all night, neither sleepy, 
 hungry, nor fatigued, and after discussing every paragraph, they 
 were all passed, sanctioned, and declared, unanimously, about 2 a.m., 
 May 20th. In a few days, a deputation of said delegation con- 
 vened, when Captain James Jack, of Charlotte, was deputed as ex- 
 press to the congress at Philadelphia, with a copy of said Resolves 
 
RALEIGH REGISTER ARTICLE 
 
 441 
 
 and Proceedings, together with a letter addressed to our three rep- ^75 
 
 resentatives there, viz., Richard Caswell, William Hooper and 
 Joseph Hughes — under express injunction, personally, and through 
 the State representation, to use all possible means to have said pro- 
 ceedings sanctioned and approved by the general congress. On 
 the return of Captain Jack, the delegation learned that their pro- 
 ceedings were individually approved by the members of congress, 
 but that it was deemed premature to lay them before the house. A 
 joint letter from said three members of congress was also received, 
 complimentary of the zeal in the common cause, and recommending 
 perseverance, order and energy. 
 
 The subsequent harmony, unanimity, and exertion in the cause of 
 liberty and independence, evidently resulting from these regulations 
 and the continued exertion of said delegation, apparently tranquil- 
 lized this section of the State, and met with the concurrence and 
 high approbation of the Council of Safety, who held their sessions 
 at New Bern and Wilmington, alternately, and who confirmed the 
 nomination and acts of the delegation in their official capacity. 
 
 From this delegation originated the Court of Enquiry of this 
 county, who constituted and held their first session in Charlotte — 
 they then held their meetings regularly at Charlotte, at Colonel 
 James Harris’s, and at Colonel Phifer’s, alternately, one week at 
 each place. It was a civil court founded on military process. Be- 
 fore this judicature, all suspicious persons were made to appear, 
 who were formally tried and banished, or continued under guard. 
 
 Its jurisdiction was as unlimited as toryism, and its decrees as final 
 as the confidence and patriotism of the county. Several were ar- 
 rested and brought before them from Lincoln, Rowan and the ad- 
 jacent counties. 
 
 [The foregoing is a true copy of the papers on the above subject, 
 left in my hands by John McKnitt Alexander, deceased. I find it 
 mentioned on file that the original book was burned April, 1800. 
 
 That a copy of the proceedings was sent to Hugh Williamson, in 
 New York, then writing a "History of North Carolina,” and that a 
 copy was sent to General W. R. Davie. /. McKnitt.’’]* 
 
 Shortly after the publication of this document in the Register, in 
 i8iq. Colonel William Polk, being interested, obtained certificates 
 from General George Graham, William Hutchison. Jonas Clark, 
 
 Robert Robinson and others, residents of Mecklenburg, corrobora- 
 tive of its authenticity, and further certifying that within a few 
 days after the adoption of the Resolves Captain Jack went as a mes- 
 senger to bear them to the Continental Congress. 
 
 *Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander, son of John McKnitt Alexander, 
 used this signature. 
 
442 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 >775 
 
 George 
 Graham 
 and others 
 
 The 
 
 protracted 
 
 meeting 
 
 The public 
 meeting 
 
 Captain 
 
 Jack 
 
 They certified on honor that : 
 
 “We were present in the town of Charlotte, in the said county 
 of Mecklenburg, on May 19, 1775. when two persons elected from 
 each captain’s company in said county appeared as delegates, to take 
 into consideration the state of the country, and to adopt such meas- 
 ures as to them seem best. . . . 
 
 “The order for the election of delegates was given by Colonel 
 Thomas Polk, the commanding officer of the militia of the county, 
 with a request that their powers should be ample, touching any 
 measure that should be proposed. We do further certify and de- 
 clare that to the best of our recollection and belief, the delegation 
 was complete from every company, and that the meeting took place 
 in the court-house about 12 o’clock on the said day of May 19, 
 1775, when Abraham Alexander was chosen chairman, and Dr. 
 Ephraim Brevard, secretary. That the delegates continued in ses- 
 sion until in the night of that day; that on the 20th they again met, 
 when a committee, under the direction of the delegates, had formed 
 several Resolves, which were read, and which went to declare them- 
 selves, and the people of Mecklenburg County, free and independent 
 of the king and Parliament of Great Britain — and from that day 
 thenceforth all allegiance and political relation was absolved be- 
 tween the good people of Mecklenburg and the king of Great 
 Britain : which Declaration was signed by every member of the dele- 
 gation, under the shouts and huzzas of a very large assembly of the 
 people of the county, who had come to know the issue of the 
 meeting.” 
 
 On December 7, 1819, Captain Jack made the following affidavit: 
 
 “Having seen in the newspapers some pieces respecting the Dec- 
 laration of Independence by the people of Mecklenburg County, in 
 the State of North Carolina in May, 1775, and being solicited to state 
 what I know of that transaction : I would observe that for sometime 
 previous to and at the time those resolutions were agreed upon. I 
 resided in the town of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County ; was privy 
 to a number of meetings of some of the most influential and leading 
 characters of that county on the subject, before the final adoption of 
 the resolutions — and at the time they were adopted ; among those 
 who appeared to take the lead may be mentioned Hezekiah Alex- 
 ander, who generally acted as chairman; John McKnitt Alexander, 
 as secretary; Abraham Alexander, Adam Alexander, Major John 
 Davidson, Major (afterward General) William Davidson, Colonel 
 Thomas Polk, Ezekiel Polk, Dr. Ephraim Brevard, Samuel Martin, 
 Duncan Ochletree, William Willson, Robert Irvin. 
 
 “When the Resolutions were finally agreed on, they were publicly 
 
TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESSES 
 
 443 
 
 proclaimed from the court-house door in the town of Charlotte, and 1775 
 
 were received with every demonstration of joy by the inhabitants. 
 
 “I was then solicited to be the bearer of the proceedings to congress. 
 
 I set out the following month, say June, and in passing through 
 Salisbury, the general court was sitting. At the request of the court 
 I handed a copy of the Resolutions to Colonel Kennon, an attorney, 
 and they were read aloud in open court. Major William Davidson 
 and Mr. Avery, an attorney, called on me at my lodging the even- 
 ing after, and observed they had heard of but one person (a 
 Mr. Beard), but approved of them. 
 
 “I then proceeded on to Philadelphia and delivered the Mecklen- 
 burg Declaration of Independence of May, 1775, to Richard Caswell 
 and William Hooper, the delegates to congress from the State of 
 North Carolina.” 
 
 Other statements were made by men of the highest character, 
 all confirming the fact that there were proceedings in Mecklenburg 
 in May, 1775, relating to independence, and some giving the details 
 with great particularity. 
 
 On January 20, 1820, John Simeson wrote to Colonel William 
 Polk: ‘‘I have conversed with many of my old friends and others, 
 and all agree in the point, but few can state the particulars. . . . 
 
 Yourself, sir, in your eighteenth year and on the spot, your worthy 
 
 father, the most popular and influential character in the county, and 
 
 yet you cannot state much from recollection. Your father, as com- Simeson 
 
 manding officer of the county, issued orders to the captains to appoint 
 
 two men from each company to represent them in the committee. It 
 
 was done. Neill Morrison, John Flennigan, from this company; 
 
 Charles Alexander, John McKnitt Alexander, Hezekiah Alexander, 
 
 Abraham Alexander, Esq., John Phifer, David Reese, Adam Alex- 
 ander, Dickey Barry, John Queary, with others whose names I cannot 
 obtain. As to the names of those who drew up the Declaration, I 
 am inclined to think Dr. Brevard was the principal, from his 
 known talents in composition. It was, however, in substance and 
 form like that great National Act agreed on thirteen months after. 
 
 Ours was toward the close of May, 1775. In addition to what I 
 have said, the same committee appointed three men to secure all 
 the military stores for the county’s use — Thomas Polk, John Phifer, 
 and Joseph Kennedy. I was under arms near the head of the line, 
 near Colonel Polk, and heard him distinctly read a long string of 
 grievances, the Declaration and military order above.”* 
 
 *The accuracy of the memory of this witness, Mr. Simeson, in one 
 particular at least is remarkable. By the last of the resolves of 
 May 31st, Colonel Thomas Polk and Dr. Joseph Kennedy were 
 appointed to purchase ammunition, as the witness recollected after 
 the lapse of forty-five years. 
 
444 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 1775 
 
 Cummins 
 
 Davie copy 
 
 The State 
 Pamphlet 
 
 Joseph 
 McKnitt 
 Alexander’s 
 certificate, 
 Hoyt, 135 
 
 Francis Cummins wrote in 1819 to Mr. Macon: “At length, in the 
 same year, 1775, I think — at least positively before July 4, 1776 — 
 the males generally of that county met on a certain day at Charlotte, 
 and from the head of the court-house door proclaimed independence 
 on English government, by their herald, Colonel Thomas Polk. I 
 was present and saw and heard it.” 
 
 In November, 1820, General Davie died, and there was found 
 among his papers a manuscript copy of the proceedings at Charlotte, 
 in the handwriting of John McKnitt Alexander, to which was ap- 
 pended the note above printed to the effect that “the foregoing 
 statement, though fundamentally correct, yet may not literally cor- 
 respond with the original records, as all those records and papers 
 were burned with the house on April 6, 1800.” 
 
 This "Davie copy” was then sent to the son, Dr. Joseph McKnitt 
 Alexander, who preserved it. It was the same as the document 
 published in the Raleigh Register except some slight verbal differ- 
 ences. 
 
 The resolutions thus presented to the public as those adopted at 
 Charlotte in May, 1775, were without hesitation accepted in North 
 Carolina as authentic and genuine. But Mr. Jefferson and Mr. 
 Adams denied their authenticity. Therefore, other affidavits and 
 certificates were procured, and a committee of the General Assembly 
 was appointed “to examine, collate and arrange such documents as 
 relate to the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence” ; and at the 
 session of 1830-31 it reported that “by the publication of these papers 
 it will be fully verified that as early as the month of May, 1775, a 
 portion of the people of North Carolina . . . did by a public and 
 solemn act declare the dissolution of the ties which bound them to 
 the Crown and people of Great Britain, and did establish an inde- 
 pendent, though temporary government for their own control and 
 direction.” Their report was directed to be published by the State. 
 The original documents found by Dr. Joseph McKnitt (Alexander) 
 were submitted to this committee, passed into the hands of the state 
 authorities for a time, appear to have been returned, but subsequently 
 came into the possession of Governor David L. Swain. They consisted 
 of a torn half-sheet of paper, on which were written some notes in 
 the handwriting of John McKnitt Alexander, being apparently 
 rough first attempts to reproduce statements and resolutions : this 
 half-sheet being stitched to a full sheet (containing substantially the 
 paper published in the Raleigh Register, and also furnished to Gen- 
 eral Davie), which was in an unknown handwriting. These papers 
 were accompanied by a certificate as follows: “The sheet and torn 
 half-sheet to which this is attached (the sheet is evidently cor- 
 rected in two places by John McKnitt Alexander, as marked on 
 
THE DAVIE COPY 
 
 445 
 
 it — the half-sheet is in his own handwriting) were found after the 
 death of John McKnitt Alexander in his old mansion-house in the 
 centre of a roll of old pamphlets, viz. : ‘an address on public liberty, 
 printed Philadelphia, 1774'; one ‘on the disputes with G. Britain, 
 printed 1775’ ; one ‘on State affairs, printed at Hillsboro, 1788’; and 
 ‘an address on Federal policy to the citizens of N. C., a 1788' ; and 
 the ‘Journal of the Provincial Congress of N. C., a held at Hallifax, 
 the 4 of April, 1776,’ which papers have been in my possession ever 
 since. 
 
 “Certified November 25, 1830. 
 
 “J. McKnitt.”* 
 
 Among the certificates then published was one from Samuel Wil- 
 son: “I do hereby certify that in May, 1775, a committee or dele- 
 gation from the different militia companies in this county met in 
 Charlotte, and after consulting together they publicly declared their 
 independence on Great Britain and on her government. This was 
 done before a large collection of people who highly approved of it. 
 I was then and there present and heard it read from the court-house 
 door.” 
 
 John Davidson on October 5, 1830, wrote: “As I am perhaps the 
 only person living who was a member of that convention, and being 
 far advanced in years, and not having my mind frequently directed to 
 that circumstance for some years, I can give you but a very succinct 
 history of that transaction. There were two men chosen from each 
 captain’s company to meet in Charlotte to take the subject into 
 consideration. John McKnitt Alexander and myself were chosen 
 from one company; and many other members were there that I now 
 recollect whose names I deem unnecessary to mention. When the 
 members met and were perfectly organized for business, a motion 
 was made to declare ourselves independent of the Crown of Great 
 Britain, which was carried by a large majority. Dr. Ephraim Brevard 
 was then appointed to give us a sketch of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, which he did. James Jack was appointed to take it on to 
 the American Congress. . . . When Jack returned he stated that the 
 Declaration was presented to Congress, and the reply was that they 
 highly esteemed the patriotism of the citizens of Mecklenburg, but 
 they thought the measure too premature. I am confident that the 
 Declaration of Independence by the people of Mecklenburg was made 
 public at least twelve months before that of the Congress of the 
 United States.” 
 
 *W. H. Hoyt’s work on “The Mecklenburg Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence,” 1907, where both the notes on the half sheet and the 
 writing on the full sheet are reproduced from the Bancroft manu- 
 scripts. 
 
 1775 
 
 Wilson 
 
 Davidson 
 
446 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 177$ 
 
 1775 
 
 Joseph 
 
 Graham 
 
 The public 
 meeting 
 
 Out of 
 protection 
 
 The public 
 meeting 
 
 Hunter’s 
 
 statement 
 
 General Joseph Graham wrote October 4, 1830: “Agreeably to your 
 request I will give you the details of the Mecklenburg Declaration of 
 Independence on May 20, 1775, as well as I can recollect after a 
 lapse of fifty-five years. I was then a lad about half grown, was 
 present on that occasion (a looker on). 
 
 “During the winter and spring preceding that event, several popu- 
 lar meetings of the people were held in Charlotte, two of which I 
 attended. Papers were read, grievances stated and public measures 
 discussed. . . . On May 20, 1775, besides the two persons elected 
 from each militia company (usually called committee-men), a much 
 larger number of citizens attended in Charlotte than at any former 
 meeting — perhaps half the men in the county. The news of the bat- 
 tle of Lexington, April 19th preceding, had arrived. There appeared 
 among the people much excitement. The committee were organized 
 in the court-house by appointing Abraham Alexander, Esq., chair- 
 man and John McKnitt Alexander, Esq., clerk, or secretary to the 
 meeting. After reading a number of papers as usual, and much ani- 
 mated discussion, the question was taken, and they resolved to de- 
 clare themselves independent. 
 
 “One among other reasons offered, that the king or ministry had, 
 by proclamation or some edict, declared the colonies out of the pro- 
 tection of the British crown ; they ought, therefore, to declare them- 
 selves out of his protection and resolve on independence. That their 
 proceedings might be in due form, a sub-committee, consisting of 
 Dr. Ephraim Brevard, a Mr. Kennon, an attorney, and a third 
 person whom I do not recollect, were appointed to draft their dec- 
 laration. . . . The sub-committee appointed to draft the resolutions 
 returned, and Dr. Ephraim Brevard read their report, as near 
 as I can recollect, in the very words we have since seen them several 
 times in print. It was unanimously adopted, and shortly afterward 
 it was moved and seconded to have proclamation made, and the 
 people collected, that the proceedings be read at the court-house 
 door, in order that all might hear them. It was done and they were 
 received with enthusiasm. It was then proposed by some one aloud, 
 to give three cheers and throw up their hats. It was immediately 
 adopted and the hats thrown. ...” 
 
 In a memoir of his life Rev. Humphrey Hunter,* who was present 
 at the meeting in Charlotte, being then twenty years of age, and 
 deeply interested, says : “Orders were presently issued by Colonel 
 
 *“This memoir is dated in 1827 and appears to be a response to a 
 request made by Dr. Alexander (Joseph McKnitt), and thus loses, 
 in some degree, the authority to which it might otherwise have been 
 entitled had it been a contemporaneous production.” (Address of 
 R. M. Saunders, 1852.) Hunter was then seventy-two years of age. 
 He died August 21, 1827. 
 
STATEMENTS OF GRAHAM AND HUNTER 
 
 447 
 
 Thos. Polk to the several militia companies, that two men, selected 
 from each corps, should meet at the court-house on May 19, 1775- 
 in order to consult with each other upon such measures as might 
 be thought best to be pursued. Accordingly on said day a far larger 
 number than two out of each company were present. . . . Then a 
 full, a free, and dispassionate discussion obtained on the various 
 subjects for which the delegation had been convened, and the fol- 
 lowing resolutions were unanimously adopted : [Resolutions like 
 those published in the Register.] . . . Then a select committee was 
 appointed to report on the ensuing day a full and definite statement 
 of grievances, together with a more correct and formal draft of 
 the Declaration of Independence. These proceedings having been 
 thus arranged and somewhat in readiness for promulgation, the 
 delegates then adjourned until to-morrow, at 12 o'clock. May 20th, 
 at 12 o’clock, the delegation, as above, had convened. The select 
 committee were also present and reported agreeably to instructions, 
 viz. : a statement of grievances and formal draft of the Declaration 
 of Independence, written by Ephraim Brevard, chairman of the said 
 committee, and read by him to the delegation. The resolves, by- 
 laws and regulations were read by John McKnitt Alexander. . . . 
 There was not a dissenting voice. Finally, the whole proceedings 
 were read distinctly and audibly at the court-house door, by Colonel 
 Thomas Polk, to a large, respectable and approving assemblage of 
 citizens who were present and gave sanction to the business of the 
 day.” ‘ 
 
 The accuracy of the statements made in the manuscripts found 
 by Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander was for a generation unquestioned 
 in North Carolina. It was only after the discovery of the contem- 
 poraneous publication of other resolutions, adopted at Charlotte on 
 May 31, 1775, of similar import, that any suggestion of inaccuracy 
 arose. 
 
 In 1838 a Pennsylvania newspaper of 1775 was found containing 
 several resolutions adopted at Charlotte on May 31, 1775 ; and in 
 1847, a copy of the South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, 
 published at Charleston, of the date of June 16, 1775, was found. 
 It contained a full series of resolutions adopted at Charlotte, May 
 31, 1775. Later other papers were found containing, in part, the 
 same resolutions. No contemporaneous reference to any other res- 
 olutions than those of May 31st has ever been discovered. 
 
 After the Resolves of May 31st were brought to light in 1847 
 many persons believed that they were the only ones adopted at 
 Charlotte, while others adhered to their belief in the genuineness 
 of the “Declaration of May 20th.” The subject has been ably dis- 
 cussed by some of the most eminent of our citizens. The original 
 
 1775 
 
 The moving 
 cause 
 
 The public 
 meeting 
 
 Resolves of 
 May 31st 
 discovered 
 
448 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 1775 
 
 Hoyt, 
 
 The 
 
 Mecklen- 
 burg Dec. of 
 Ind., 276 
 
 The 
 
 Resolves of 
 May 31st fit 
 the 
 
 description 
 
 papers, the half sheet in the handwriting of John McKnitt Alexan- 
 der, the full sheet in the unknown handwriting, the Davie copy 
 with its certificate, and other documents connected with the subject 
 passed into the hands of Governor D. L. Swain, but are now lost. 
 
 Recently a copy of the North Carolina Gazette, published at New 
 Bern June 16, 1775, was found, containing the Resolves of May 31st, 
 and a transcript of the same Resolves, published in the Cape Feat- 
 Mercury, probably in the issue of June 23, 1775, sent to England by 
 Governor Josiah Martin, has been found and published. It is to 
 be observed that at the period of the first publication there was 
 no question as to the particular details, and the witnesses gave testi- 
 mony concerning the general subject that in May, 1775, there were 
 proceedings in Mecklenburg declaring independence. 
 
 Some described the public meeting at which the resolutions were 
 proclaimed by Colonel Polk ; others did not mention that meeting. 
 The Alexander document of 1800 states that the delegates met on 
 May 19th and continued in session until 2 o’clock on the morning 
 of the 20th, when the resolutions were adopted, and makes no 
 reference to any public meeting. Rev. Humphrey Hunter states 
 that the meeting was on the 19th, and on the 20th there was the 
 public proclamation. General George Graham and several others 
 testify, to the best of their recollection and belief, that the meeting 
 was on the 19th and that there was a public meeting on the 20th. 
 General Joseph Graham says that the delegates met on the 20th 
 and that the resolutions were adopted, and shortly afterward were 
 proclaimed. Other witnesses give an account of the public meeting. 
 Many merely say that the proceedings were in May, 1775. 
 
 The evidence shows that there were some meetings of the leading 
 citizens; that Colonel Polk caused the election of two men from 
 each militia district, who met in Charlotte in May; that there was 
 a protracted meeting extending into the night ; that the next day the 
 resolutions having been adopted were proclaimed at a large public 
 meeting by Colonel Polk and were received with enthusiasm. 
 
 General Joseph Graham says: "One among other reasons offered 
 was that the king or ministry had by proclamation or some edict 
 declared the colonies out of the protection of the British Crown.” 
 That idea finds expression in the preamble to the Resolves of May 
 31st published at the time, and is not referred to in the Alexander 
 document of 1800. 
 
 Mr. Simeson says: “In addition to what I have said, the same 
 committee appointed three men to secure all the military stores for 
 the county’s use — Thomas Polk, John Phifer and Joseph Kennedy. 
 I was under arms near the head of the line, near Colonel Polk, and 
 heard him distinctly read a long string of grievances, the declara- 
 
CONTEMPORANEOUS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 449 
 
 tion, and military order above.” The resolution appointing Colonel 
 Polk and Dr. Joseph Kennedy a committee to get ammunition, 
 as recalled by the witness, is the last of the Resolves of May 31st, 
 and is not a part of the document of 1800. The testimony of Gen- 
 eral Graham and Mr. Simeson connects the public meeting with the 
 Resolves of May 31st. 
 
 These and other circumstances lead to the belief that inasmuch 
 as none of the witnesses speak of two public meetings, at which 
 Colonel Polk proclaimed independence, there was but one such 
 meeting; and the Resolutions which he read were those of May 31st, 
 published on June 13th in Charleston; June 16th in New Bern and 
 June 23d at Wilmington, and in part, in the northern papers. If 
 there was any other public meeting, it is not mentioned by any one. 
 If there were any other Resolutions ever adopted and proclaimed, no 
 copy was preserved. 
 
 Governor Swain thus speaks of the Davie copy : “It was not taken 
 from the record ; it is not shown to be a copy of a copy, or that there 
 was a copy extant in September, 1800.” 
 
 The author in seeking to give effect to all statements as far as 
 they can be made to consist, follows those witnesses who state that 
 the delegates convened on the day previous to the public meeting. 
 
 He follows those who give an account of the public meeting, and 
 he accepts the contemporaneous publication of the proceedings as 
 fixing the day, and as containing the resolutions, or action taken, that 
 being the only contemporaneous evidence. 
 
 Variations in recollection, after the passage of forty or fifty years, 
 may be expected ; and no witness, after forty years had passed, 
 would probably undertake to repeat from memory a set of Resolu- 
 tions of which he had never seen a written copy. 
 
 The great leading fact is the public meeting and its incidents, the 
 Resolves adopted and ratified by the people and published to the 
 world as the action of Mecklenburg. 
 
 With reference to the difference in dates, it may be observed 
 that Rev. Mr. Hunter, who, when writing his memoirs, appears to 
 have copied from Alexander’s document of 1800, putting the meet- 
 ing on the 19th of May, states that on that memorable day he 
 was twenty years and fourteen days of age ; and he also states that 
 he was born on the 14th day of May, 1755. That would seem to 
 make the date the 28th day of May. 
 
 If when the Alexander document was being prepared, the date 
 was not ascertained from any record, but was calculated, and the 
 calculation was based on the birthday of a person born previous to 
 1752, perhaps the eleven days’ difference between the Old and 
 New Style may account for Alexander’s variation from the true 
 
 ■775 
 
 What the 
 evidence 
 proves 
 
 The day 
 not then in 
 question 
 
450 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 •775 
 
 The action 
 taken at the 
 public 
 meeting 
 
 date stated in the contemporaneous publications. Some of the wit- 
 nesses appear to have followed the Alexander document as to the 
 date — a matter then of minor importance. 
 
 It is further to be noted that while the Alexander document dif- 
 fers from the published resolutions in language, yet it embraces the 
 same subject matter, and the purpose seems to have been to give an 
 account of the same transaction and event. 
 
 The preamble of the resolutions of May 31st, “To provide in 
 some degree for the exigencies of the county in the present alarm- 
 ing period,” accords with the purposes of the election of the dele- 
 gates stated by the witnesses as leading to the meeting. 
 
 THE RESOLVES OF MAY 31ST. 
 
 (From the North Carolina Gazette, June 16, 1775. Published at 
 New Bern.) 
 
 Charlotte Town, Mecklenburg County, May 31st. 
 
 This day the committee met, and passed the following Resolves : 
 
 Whereas, By an address presented to his Majesty by both houses 
 of Parliament in February last, the American colonies are declared 
 to be in a state of actual rebellion, we conceive that all laws and 
 commissions confirmed by, or derived from, the authority of the 
 king or Parliament are annulled and vacated, and the former civil 
 constitution of these colonies for the present wholly suspended. To 
 provide in some degree for the exigencies of this county in the 
 present alarming period, we deem it proper and necessary to pass 
 the following Resolves, viz. : 
 
 I. That all commissions, civil and military, heretofore granted 
 by the Crown to be exercised in these colonies, are null and void, 
 and the constitution of each particular colony wholly suspended. 
 
 II. That the provincial congress of each province, under the direc- 
 tion of the great continental congress, is invested with all legislative 
 and executive powers within their respective provinces, and that no 
 other legislative or executive power does or can exist at this time in 
 any of these colonies. 
 
 III. As all former laws are now suspended in this province, and 
 the congress has not yet provided others, we judge it necessary for 
 the better preservation of good order, to form certain rules and 
 regulations for the internal government of this county, until laws 
 shall be provided for us by the congress. 
 
 IV. That the inhabitants of this county do meet on a certain day 
 appointed by this committee, and having formed themselves into 
 nine companies (to wit: eight for the county, and one for the town 
 of Charlotte), do choose a colonel and other military officers, who 
 
THE RESOLVES OF MAY 31, 1775 
 
 45 1 
 
 shall hold and exercise their several powers by virtue of this choice, *775 
 
 and independent of Great Britain, and former constitution of this 
 province. 
 
 V. That for the better preservation of the peace and administra- 
 tion of justice, each of those companies do choose from their own 
 body two discreet freeholders, who shall be empowered each by 
 himself, and singly, to decide and determine all matters of contro- 
 versy arising within the said company, under the sum of twenty 
 shillings, and jointly and together all controversies under the sum 
 of forty shillings, yet so as their decisions may admit of appeal to 
 the convention of the select men of the whole county ; and also, that 
 any one of these shall have power to examine and commit to con- 
 finement persons accused of petit larceny. 
 
 VI. That those two select men, thus chosen, do, jointly and to- 
 gether, choose from the body of their particular company two per- 
 sons, properly qualified to serve as constables, who may assist them 
 in the execution of their office. 
 
 VII. That upon the complaint of any persons to either of these 
 select men, he do issue his warrant, directed to the constable, com- 
 manding him to bring the aggressor before him or them to answer 
 the said complaint. 
 
 VIII. That these select eighteen select men thus appointed do 
 meet every third Tuesday in January, April, July, and October, at 
 the court-house in Charlotte, to hear and determine all matters of 
 controversy for sums exceeding forty shillings, also appeals; and 
 in cases of felony, to commit the person or persons convicted 
 thereof to close confinement until the provincial congress shall pro- 
 vide and establish laws and modes of proceeding in such cases. 
 
 IX. That these eighteen select men, thus convened, do choose a 
 clerk, to record the transactions of the said convention ; and that 
 the said clerk, upon the application of any person or persons ag- 
 grieved, do issue his warrant to one of the constables to summons 
 and warn the said offender to appear before the convention at their 
 next sitting, to answer the aforesaid complaint. 
 
 X. That any person making complaint, upon oath, to the clerk, 
 or any member of the convention, that he has reason to suspect 
 that any person or persons indebted to him in a sum above forty 
 shillings do intend clandestinely to withdraw from the county with- 
 out paying the debt ; the clerk, or such member, shall issue his war- 
 rant to the constable, commanding him to take the said person or per- 
 sons into safe custody, until the next sitting of the convention. 
 
 XI. That when a debtor for a sum above forty shillings shall 
 abscond and leave the county, the warrant granted as aforesaid shall 
 extend to any goods or chattels of the said debtor as may be found, 
 
452 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 and such goods or chattels be seized and held in custody by the 
 constable for the space of thirty days, in which term, if the debtor 
 fail to return and discharge the debt, the constable shall return the 
 warrant to one of the select men of the company where the goods 
 were found, who shall issue orders to the constable to sell such a 
 part of the said goods as shall amount to the sum due; that when 
 the debt exceeds forty shillings, the return shall be made to the 
 convention, who shall issue the orders for sale. 
 
 XII. That receivers and collectors for quit rents, public and 
 county taxes, do pay the same into the hands of the chairman of 
 this committee, to be by them disbursed as the public exigencies may 
 require. And that such receivers and collectors proceed no further 
 in their office until they be approved of by, and have given to this 
 committee good and sufficient security for a faithful return of such 
 moneys when collected. 
 
 XIII. That the committee be accountable to the county for the 
 application of all moneys received from such officers. 
 
 XIV. That all these officers hold their commissions during the 
 pleasure of their respective constituents. 
 
 XV. That this committee will sustain all damages that may ever 
 hereafter accrue to all or any of these officers thus appointed, and 
 thus acting, on account of their obedience and conformity to these 
 Resolves. 
 
 XVI. That whatever person shall hereafter receive a commission 
 from the Crown, or attempt to exercise any such commission here- 
 tofore received, shall be deemed an enemy to his country; and upon 
 information being made to the captain of the company where he 
 resides, the said captain shall cause him to be apprehended and 
 conveyed before the two select men of the said company, who, 
 upon proof of the fact, shall commit him the said offender into safe 
 custody, until the next sitting of the convention, who shall deal 
 with him as prudence may direct. 
 
 XVII. That any person refusing to yield obedience to the above 
 Resolves shall be deemed equally criminal, and liable to the same 
 punishment, as the offenders above last mentioned. 
 
 XVIII. That these Resolves be in full force and virtue until in- 
 structions from the general congress of this province, regulating 
 the jurisprudence of this province, shall provide otherwise, or the 
 legislative body of Great Britain resign its unjust and arbitrary pre- 
 tensions with respect to America. 
 
 XIX. That the several militia companies in this county do pro- 
 vide themselves with proper arms and accoutrements, and hold 
 themselves in constant readiness to execute the commands and direc- 
 tions of the provincial congress, and of this committee. 
 
THE DOCUMENT SENT TO ENGLAND 
 
 453 
 
 XX. That this committee do appoint Colonel Thomas Polk and '775 
 
 Dr. Joseph Kennedy to purchase 300 pounds of powder. 600 pounds 
 of lead, and 1000 flints; and deposit the same in some safe place 
 hereafter to be appointed by the committee. 
 
 Signed by order of the committee, 
 
 Eph. Brevard, 
 
 Clerk of the committee. 
 
 Extract from Report of Historical Manuscripts Commission, Four- 
 teenth Annual Report, Appendix, part X (1895); Presented to 
 both Houses of Parliament by Command of her Majesty. 
 
 (Manuscripts Earl of Dartmouth, vol. II., Amer. Papers, p. 323:) 
 
 North Carolina 
 
 N. D. (May 31, 1775) resolutions (20) of a committee of the county 
 of Mecklenburg in North Carolina, signed at Charlotte Town, by 
 order of the committee, Ephraim Brevard. Suspending all laws 
 and commissions given by the Crown, and proposing measures to 
 establish a government for the province. 
 
 Four folio pages. 
 
 Endorsed: In Governor Martin’s of June 30, 1775. No. 34. s^ntby PV 
 W. H. Hoyt, "The Mecklenburg Declaration,” at page 276, gives a Governor 
 copy of these Resolves, transmitted by Governor Martin. They are 
 the Resolves of May 31, 1775. 
 
 Extracts from the records of Mecklenburg County 
 
 April, 1775, \ At an Inferior Court of Pleas and Quar- 
 
 North Carolina, ^ ter Sessions begun and held for the 
 
 Mecklenburg County. ( county of Mecklenburg, on the third Tues- 
 ' day in April, 1775. 
 
 Present the Worshipful 
 
 Robert Harris, ) 
 
 Hezekiah Alexander, v Esqrs. 
 Robert Irwin. ) 
 
 July, 1775 . ) At an Inferior Court of Pleas and Quar- The king’s 
 
 North Carolina, V ter Sessions begun and held in the said Mecklen" 
 
 Mecklenburg County. ) county, on the third Tuesday in July, 1775. burg 
 Present the Worshipful 
 
 Robert Harris, I 
 
 Abraham Alexander, V Esqrs. 
 
 Robert Irwin. \ 
 
454 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 October, 1775, | 
 3d Tuesday. f 
 
 January, 1776, | 
 3d Tuesday. j" 
 
 April, 1776, 1 
 
 3d Tuesday. [ 
 
 Same as above. 
 Same as above. 
 Same as above. 
 
 Conditions in May 
 
 At Philadelphia the North Carolina deputies were carried 
 away by the enthusiasm that pervaded the northern colonies. 
 Hooper wrote to Harnett and to Sam Johnston urging the 
 necessity of having a provincial convention immediately after 
 the adjournment of the general congress, and apprehensions 
 were expressed lest North Carolina should delay too long 
 the organization of troops. But even then companies were 
 being formed throughout the province, and in Rowan, Meck- 
 lenburg, Tryon and in other counties public action emanated 
 from the militia districts. 
 
 Mecklenburg declares independence 
 
 Indeed, so far from the people of North Carolina being 
 indifferent or supine, a step forward was now taken 
 in Mecklenburg County that was far in advance of the 
 desires of either Hooper, Ilewes, or Caswell, or their asso- 
 ciates in congress. It was a declaration of independence, 
 In March and April there had been many meetings of the 
 Committee of Safety in Mecklenburg. The occupation of 
 Boston by a hostile British army was a thorn in the flesh. 
 The inhabitants of that town were suffering from their 
 adherence to the rights of America, and again the cry rang 
 throughout Mecklenburg that the cause of Boston was the 
 cause of all. In May came the exciting news that Parlia- 
 ment in its address to the king had declared the colonies in 
 rebellion, and therefore out of the protection of the law. 
 The leaders felt that a storm was about to burst on the 
 heads of the patriotic people. It was determined to prepare 
 for it. Public meetings were held in various parts of the 
 country, and the prevailing sentiment was found to be one 
 of resolution. After conference, Colonel Thomas Polk, the 
 commanding officer of the county, called for an election of 
 two representatives from each of the nine militia districts of 
 
MECKLENBURG ACTS 
 
 455 
 
 the comity to take into consideration the state of the country 
 and to adopt such measures as seemed necessary to safe- 
 guard their liberties. The election was held and amid great 
 excitement the delegates convened at Charlotte, and with 
 them came their friends and neighbors, so that nearly one- 
 half of all the arms-bearing men of the county assembled in 
 that little hamlet. As great as was the occasion, the excite- 
 ment was largely increased by the arrival of the news of the 
 battle of Lexington, which had swept through the country 
 like a whirlwind, stirring the people to the profoundest 
 depths. To the meeting came all the leading inhabitants, 
 the Polks, Alexanders, Brevards, Davidsons, and all who 
 were leaders in thought and action. They met on the 30th 
 day of May, in the court-house, and Abraham Alexander 
 was called to the chair. A number of papers were read. 
 Stress was laid on the action of Parliament declaring the 
 colonies in rebellion. As they were held to be rebels, the 
 leaders urged that they should renounce their allegiance 
 and declare themselves independent. An objection was 
 made: If we resolve on independence, how shall we be 
 absolved from the oath of allegiance we took after the Regu- 
 lation battle? With hot indignation the answer came — 
 That allegiance and protection were reciprocal ; when pro- 
 tection was withdrawn, allegiance ceased. Independence 
 was resolved on, and a committee composed of Dr. 
 Ephraim Brevard and others was appointed to prepare the 
 resolutions. The discussion continued far into the night, 
 and then the delegates adjourned to reassemble at noon. 
 At twelve o’clock the following day, the delegates again met 
 and the resolutions prepared by Dr. Brevard were read and 
 adopted. 
 
 It was resolved that all commissions granted by the 
 Crown were null and void ; that no other authority than that 
 of the Continental Congress and the provincial congresses 
 existed in any of the colonies ; that military officers should 
 be elected who should hold their offices independent of Great 
 Britain, and an independent local government was provided 
 for. 
 
 These bold resolutions having been adopted by the dele- 
 gates, it was determined that the action taken should be 
 
 1775 
 
 Statement 
 of Graham; 
 Preamble of 
 Resolves 
 
 The great 
 meeting 
 
 Statement 
 of General 
 Graham 
 
 May 31st, 
 Wednesday 
 
 Independ- 
 
 ence 
 
45 6 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 *775 
 
 May 
 
 Statements 
 of Si meson, 
 Cummins, 
 Graham, 
 Hunter 
 
 The 
 
 independent 
 
 government 
 
 proclaimed at the court-house door, and be formally an- 
 nounced to the people, who, animated by ardor, patriotism 
 and excitement, had come together in great numbers to par- 
 ticipate in the proceedings of the day. Colonel Polk, the 
 leader in the measure, standing on the high steps of the 
 court-house, read the resolutions to the eager crowd ; and the 
 people with much enthusiasm approved and endorsed this 
 first assertion of independence. As a manifestation of their 
 approval cheers were given, hats were thrown into the air, 
 and with enthusiastic applause the people ratified the great 
 action taken by the delegates. Mecklenburg thus first gave 
 expression to that spirit of independence which later 
 developed elsewhere, finally leading to a total abandonment 
 of all desire for reconciliation with the mother country. 
 
 By these Resolves all laws and commissions emanating 
 from the royal government were annulled, and the former 
 civil constitutions of the colonies were declared wholly sus- 
 pended ; and also it was declared that no other power existed 
 in any of the provinces but the provincial congresses under 
 the direction of the Continental Congress. 
 
 It being decreed that all laws, commissions, and authority 
 were abrogated, there was established a new government to 
 replace the old one. The plan provided that the inhabitants 
 of the county should form themselves into nine military com- 
 panies, and choose a colonel and other military officers, who 
 should hold their power by virtue of the people’s choice, and 
 independent of the Crown and of the former constitution of 
 the province ; that each of these companies should appoint 
 two freeholders to exercise judicial functions under the 
 name of “selectmen” ; that these eighteen “selectmen” should 
 hold a court for the county, and should meet at Charlotte 
 quarterly for that purpose. 
 
 It was further decreed that any person thereafter receiv- 
 ing any commission from the Crown, or attempting to exer- 
 cise any commission theretofore received, should be deemed 
 an enemy to the country and should be apprehended. All 
 public moneys collected were to be paid to the chairman of 
 the Committee of Safety ; the military companies were to 
 hold themselves in readiness to execute the commands of the 
 general congress and of the committee of the county, and 
 
THE IMPRESSION PRODUCED 
 
 457 
 
 Colonel Thomas Polk and Dr. Joseph Kennedy were directed 
 to purchase a supply of ammunition. 
 
 Those who appeared to take the lead in the proceedings 
 resulting in this action, according to the recollection of James 
 Jack, were Hezekiah Alexander, who generally acted as 
 chairman ; John McKnitt Alexander, as secretary ; Abraham 
 Alexander, Adam Alexander, Major John Davidson, Major 
 William Davidson, Colonel Thomas Polk, Ezekiel Polk, 
 Dr. Ephraim Brevard, Samuel Martin, Duncan Ochletree. 
 William Willson, and Robert Irvin. Others mentioned 
 were Waightstill Avery, William Kennon, William Graham, 
 John Flenniken, James Harris and David Reece. 
 
 These Resolutions of the people of Mecklenburg com- 
 pletely overthrowing the colonial government and establish- 
 ing a free and independent government founded on the will 
 of the people, were published on June 16, 1775, at New Bern, 
 in the North Carolina Gazette, and on June 13th in 
 the newspaper at Charleston, and in the Cape Fear Mer- 
 cury, published at Wilmington, probably in its issue of 
 June 23d. Their publication produced a profound impres- 
 sion. The action at Mecklenburg, indeed, stirred the hearts 
 of the patriot leaders and awoke enthusiasm in the breasts 
 of their associates throughout the colony, while they aroused 
 the ire of Governor Martin and caused dismay among the 
 adherents of the Crown. 
 
 Wright, the royal governor of Georgia, hastened, 
 June 20th, to transmit a copy of the Charleston paper to 
 England, and Governor Martin forwarded the Cape Fear 
 Mercury, saying: “I daily see indignantly the sacred majesty 
 of my royal master insulted, . . . his government set at naught 
 . . . and the whole constitution unhinged and prostrate, and 
 I live, alas ! ingloriously only to deplore it. The Resolves 
 of the committee of Mecklenburg, which your Lordship 
 will find in the enclosed newspaper, surpass all the horrid 
 and treasonable publications that the inflammatory spirits of 
 this continent have yet produced. ... A copy of these Re- 
 solves, I am informed, were sent off by express to the con- 
 gress at Philadelphia as soon as they were passed in the 
 committee.” And on June 25th, two days after the publica- 
 tion at Wilmington, and as soon as he could convene the 
 
 >775 
 
 Statement 
 of Simeson; 
 Resolution 
 XX 
 
 The actors 
 
 C R , X, 
 
 47, 48 
 
45 § 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 1775 council at Fort Johnston, he brought to its attention “the late 
 
 ' X ’ 38 most treasonable publication of a committee in the county 
 of Mecklenburg, explicitly renouncing obedience to his 
 Majesty’s government and all lawful authority whatsoever”; 
 and on August 8th, in a proclamation, he said : “I have also 
 seen a most infamous publication in the Cape Fear Mercury 
 importing to be resolves of a set of people styling themselves 
 a committee for the county of Mecklenburg most traitor- 
 ously declaring the entire dissolution of the laws, govern- 
 c. r„ x, ment, and constitution of this country, and setting up a sys- 
 tem of rule and regulation repugnant to the laws and sub- 
 versive of his Majesty’s government.” 
 
 The Mecklenburg committee, conscious of the important 
 advance they had made, determined to send a messenger post 
 haste with their resolutions to the congress at Philadelphia. 
 James Jack, young and vigorous, and a determined patriot, 
 undertook the task. At Salisbury, on Thursday, June 1 st, 
 Colonel Alexander Martin, who had been appointed by Gov- 
 ernor Martin a judge under the temporary act creating 
 courts of oyer and terminer, opened a term of his court.* 
 Colonel Martin was a deputy from Guilford to the second 
 provincial convention, which had recently adjourned, was an 
 earnest patriot, and, together with the other delegates, had 
 signed the association of the Continental Congress. On the 
 same day the Committee of Safety of Rowan also met at 
 c. r., x, Salisbury. Rowan differed from Mecklenburg, as a much 
 larger proportion of its inhabitants had been Regulators 
 and were bound by the oath imposed by Governor Tryon, 
 and the Rowan committee sought by moderate resolutions to 
 
 *The charge of Judge Alexander Martin at this term of the court 
 has been preserved (the South Carolina Gazette and Country Jour- 
 nal of July 11, 1775). In it he extolled the right of trial by jury, 
 “which our glorious ancestors waded through seas of blood to obtain, 
 and compelled even majes'ty to ratify by that sacred paladium of 
 British liberties, the Grand Charter. This, with other peculiar rights 
 and privileges, the sovereigns of Britain through a long series of 
 ages have plighted their faith by a most solemn oath to maintain; 
 and for this kingly protection the subject has bound himself by as 
 solemn a tie to hold allegiance and obedience to them so long as 
 they shall continue to hold forth, secure and defend these choice, 
 incalculable blessings to their people ; this is that great, that recipro- 
 cal union between the king and the people.” The judge inveighed 
 against popish recusants. “Let me dismiss you, then, gentlemen,” 
 he said, “with this serious injunction: to support and defend, as far 
 
RECEPTION OF THE RESOLVES 
 
 459 
 
 induce the co-operation of those not inclined to adhere to the 
 cause of the colonies. The committee, not yet having infor- 
 mation of any proceedings at Charlotte, wrote an elaborate 
 address to the committee of Mecklenburg requesting an ac- 
 count of their proceedings, promising a like return on their 
 part, and beseeching them by the ties of their common Prot- 
 estant religion to exert themselves for the maintenance of 
 their chartered rights. But before the court had ended, and 
 it adjourned on Tuesday, June 6th, Captain Jack reached 
 Salisbury on his way to Philadelphia. At the request of 
 the court, he handed a copy of the Resolutions to Colonel 
 Kennon, and they were read aloud in open court. That 
 evening Major William Davidson and Waightstill Avery 
 called at the lodgings of Captain Jack and informed him that 
 they had heard of but one person, Mr. Beard, a prominent 
 attorney and a cautious man, who did not approve of them. 
 Captain Jack proceeded to Philadelphia and delivered the 
 Resolutions to Caswell and Hooper, North Carolina delegates 
 in congress. 
 
 On the publication of the Resolves at New Bern, Richard 
 Cogdell, the chairman of the Committee of Safety, for- 
 warded the newspaper to Caswell, at Philadelphia, saying: 
 “You will observe the Mecklenburg Resolves exceed all other 
 committees or the congress itself.” About a week later, on 
 June 27th, Samuel Johnston, on whom rested the mantle of 
 the lamented Harvey, wrote to Joseph Hewes, at Philadel- 
 phia: “Tom Polk, too, is raising a very pretty spirit in the 
 back country (see the newspapers). He has gone a little 
 farther than I would choose to have gone, but perhaps no 
 farther than necessary.” That it was generally understood 
 that these Resolves constituted a declaration of independence, 
 while establishing a new government, is evident from the 
 records of the Moravian Church at Bethania of events 
 occurring during the year 1775. “I cannot but remark at 
 
 as in you lies, the constitution and the laws of your country, the 
 just prerogatives of the Crown and the declared rights of the people. 
 This is liberty, this is loyalty; do you thus, loyal gentlemen, and you 
 will be free.” The address, while asserting loyalty, touched on those 
 points that were particularly a cause of excitement among the Pres- 
 byterians of the west, and gave prominence to the idea of a reciprocal 
 union between the king and the people, which if broken on one side, 
 freed the other from allegiance. 
 
 1775 
 
 June 1st, 
 
 C. R., X, 11 
 
 Captain 
 
 Jack’s 
 
 statement 
 
 Letters at 
 Hayes 
 
460 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 *775 
 
 Moravian 
 
 annalist 
 
 In England 
 
 C. R., X, 57 
 
 the end of the 1775th year,” wrote the annalist, “during the 
 summer of this year, that in the month of May or June the 
 county of Meckdenburg, in North Carolina, declared itself 
 free and independent of England, and made such arrange- 
 ments for the administration of justice, which proceeding the 
 Continental Congress at this time considered premature ; 
 afterward, however, the Continental Congress later extended 
 same over the whole country.”* 
 
 The Mecklenburg Resolves carried to Philadelphia were not 
 officially brought to the attention of congress, and no ref- 
 erence was made to them in the proceedings of that body, f 
 The congress was not prepared for the step taken. As yet 
 the government of king and Parliament was recognized as 
 lawfully subsisting, and congress, the provincial assemblies 
 and conventions were still protesting in solemn form un- 
 swerving allegiance, as faithful subjects, to their king and 
 country. 
 
 The avowed purpose was still complete reconciliation ; 
 and this was not yet a forlorn hope, for America was not 
 without friends in England. As congress saw it on one 
 side stood the deceived monarch, his irate “ministers of state, 
 the profligate part of the nobility, and the corrupt majority 
 of the House of Commons ; these drag an army to blow up 
 the blaze of civil war.” On the other, a prince of the blood, 
 the most illustrious among the nobility, the most eloquent 
 and virtuous commoners, the city of London and the body 
 of the English nation — these being the affectionate friends 
 of America and of liberty. Distinguished officers retired 
 from the army rather than lift a hand to crush liberty in 
 America, saying the result must needs be the destruction 
 
 translation from the diary of Bethany Church, written in German, 
 furnished the author by Rev. J. H. Clewell, principal of Salem 
 Female Academy. The statement made, that the Continental Con- 
 gerss extended same over the whole country, must have reference 
 to the establishment of local government by committees independent 
 of the Crown, unless the annalist wrote after 1776. Miss Fries, of 
 Salem, who has investigated the subject, asserts that he wrote in 1782. 
 
 fAlthough the newspapers at Philadelphia were strongly for the 
 Whigs, they did not reproduce the Mecklenburg resolves from the 
 Carolina newspapers, while other papers at the north did. This leads 
 to the belief that Congress sought their suppression as being out of 
 harmony with its purposes. (Hoyt’s “The Mecklenburg Declara- 
 tion," 80.) 
 
MECKLENBURG AHEAD OF THE TIMES 
 
 461 
 
 of liberty in Britain and the establishment of tyranny and 
 despotism on the ruins of the British constitution. The 
 mayor and aldermen of London presented a remonstrance 
 to the king-, expressing their abhorrence of the measures 
 being pursued to the oppression of their fellow-subjects in 
 America; but his Majesty rolled under his tongue the word 
 “rebellion” — for the Parliament had declared that the col- 
 onies were in a state of rebellion — and the royal purpose 
 was to crush them into submission. 
 
 Yet congress still hoped by the aid of friends in England 
 to secure a restoration of former conditions with a recog- 
 nition of the traditional rights of the American colonies. 
 On July 8th, after a dutiful address to his Majesty, reassert- 
 ing their allegiance, congress issued an address to the inhab- 
 itants of Great Britain : “We are accused of aiming at inde- 
 pendence. . . . Give us leave most solemnly to assure you 
 that we have not yet lost sight of the object we have ever 
 had in view — a reconciliation with you on constitutional 
 principles. . . . We have . . . again presented an humble 
 and dutiful petition to our sovereign, and, to remove every 
 imputation of obstinacy, have requested his Majesty to direct 
 some mode by which the united applications of his faithful 
 colonists may be improved into a happy and permanent 
 reconciliation.” 
 
 The voice of Mecklenburg was thus out of harmony with 
 the solemn declarations of congress, and no notice was taken 
 of that first advance into the realm of independence — the 
 annulling of the old constitution and of colonial laws and the 
 ordaining of an independent government by the people 
 themselves as the only source of power and sovereignty. 
 
 But while congress hoped for peace, it was to be on terms 
 satisfactory to America. To wring concessions from the 
 imperious ministry, a bold and defiant front was necessary. 
 
 The North Carolina delegates in congress, fearing that 
 the people at home were too supine, on June 19th united 
 in a stirring address, which they sent to the committees of 
 all the counties: “We conjure you by the ties of religion, 
 virtue, and love of country to follow the example of your 
 sister colonies and form yourselves into a militia. The elec- 
 tion of the officers . . . must depend on yourselves. Study 
 
 '775 
 
 June 
 
 Reconcilia- 
 tion hoped 
 for, July 8th 
 
 C. R., X, 
 75-83 
 
 Apprehen- 
 
 sions 
 
 C. R., X, 20 
 
462 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 *775 the art of military with the utmost attention ; view it as 
 
 a science upon which your future security depends.” 
 
 June Daily it became more and more evident that the contest 
 
 tai army was to be decided on the battlefield. The men in arms 
 at Boston were local minute men, drawn together from the 
 adjoining provinces, commanded by their local officers. On 
 June 15th congress made a great step forward, and adopted 
 that army and placed it on a continental footing. Washing- 
 ton was chosen commander-in-chief. On the 20th he re- 
 ceived his commission, and the next day he departed from 
 Philadelphia for the seat of war. But while all eyes were 
 centred on Boston, congress, in view of Governor Martin’s 
 activity, became apprehensive for the safety of North Caro- 
 lina, and, like the delegates, urged the people to embody as 
 militia under proper officers ; and on June 26th it resolved 
 that if the provincial convention should think it necessary, 
 it might raise a thousand men in North Carolina, and con- 
 gress would consider that force a part of the American 
 army, and take it into the pay of the continent. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson 
 
 On June 21, 1775, while Captain Jack was still lingering 
 at Philadelphia, after presenting the Mecklenburg Resolves 
 declaring independence and establishing an independent gov- 
 ernment for that community, Thomas Jefferson, a newly 
 appointed delegate from Virginia, arrived and for the first 
 time took his seat in the Continental Congress. He had just 
 achieved fame as the author of the Virginia resolutions 
 rejecting the conciliatory proposition of Lord North. The 
 ink was hardly dry with which he had penned his earnest 
 appeal “to the even-handed justice of that Being who doth 
 no wrong, that we may again see reunited the blessings of 
 liberty and prosperity and the most permanent harmony with 
 Great Britain.” Like John Adams, Hancock, and all the 
 other members of the congress, Jefferson was expecting to 
 remain a British subject, and desired the “most permanent 
 harmony with Great Britain” ; and if he then heard of the 
 Mecklenburg Resolves, if he then knew of the mission of 
 Captain Jack to the congress, his thoughts were so far out 
 of harmony with the proceedings at Mecklenburg that he 
 
OVERTURES TO THE REGULATORS 463 
 
 dismissed them from his mind and forgot them ; he and his FJ 
 
 associates were not yet in favor of such revolutionary 
 action.* 
 
 The Regulators 
 
 Toward the end of June Caswell set off from Philadelphia 
 to attend the convention, which was to convene on July 12th. 
 
 After his departure congress received copies of General 
 Gage’s letter to Governor Martin, promising to send for- 
 ward ammunition, and of Governor Martin’s letter asking 
 for a king’s standard, and Hooper and Hewes became still 
 more alarmed because of the situation in North Carolina. 
 
 The reliance of Governor Martin was not only on the co- 
 operation of the Highlanders, but on expected aid from the 
 Regulators in the interior. From Dan River to the South 
 Carolina line, from the forks of the Yadkin to the Haw and 
 the Deep, there were thousands of inhabitants who had never 
 been pardoned and who still called themselves “an unhappy c. r., ix, 
 people,” subject to the penalties of their former insurrection. 11 122 
 
 It seemed necessary to remove their grounds of apprehen- 
 sion — to place before them considerations why they should 
 assist in maintaining the rights of the people as British sub- 
 jects, and to assure them that the movement was not a rebel- 
 lion with the object of seeking independence. To accomplish 
 this purpose, Hooper and Hewes enlisted the aid of the Pres- 
 byterian ministers at Philadelphia and also of the German 
 Lutherans and Calvinists. The Presbyterian ministers c. R., x, 
 joined in an address to the Presbyterian congregations in juiy 27 i 77 5 
 North Carolina, declaring that “there was no desire to sep- 
 arate from the parent state. Believe no man that dares to 
 say that we desire to be independent of our mother country.” 
 
 *In the correspondence of Adams and Jefferson in 1819 referring 
 to the Mecklenburg declaration both say in substance: “Would not 
 every advocate of independence have rung the glories of Mecklen- 
 burg in North Carolina in the ears of the doubting Dickensons who 
 hung so heavily on us?” They evidently had in mind a subsequent 
 period — when they themselves were advocating independence ; not 
 the summer of 1775, when they were still seeking reconciliation with 
 the mother country. The Mecklenburg Resolves appear to have been 
 suppressed in Philadelphia, not being admitted to publication there, 
 while published in whole or in part by papers at other points at the 
 north. 
 
464 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 1775 
 
 August 
 
 At the west 
 
 C. R., X, 
 i34, i35, i39 
 
 C R., X, 
 
 163 
 
 The advices from Philadelphia and the efforts made to 
 reconcile the disaffected element in the interior of the prov- 
 ince and to bring them to a support of the common cause 
 were calculated to arrest for a time the influences that 
 attended the action at Charlotte. The pendulum swung back- 
 ward.* Allegiance was not disavowed, although the people 
 prepared for war. Court proceedings continued to be held 
 in the name of the king, and notwithstanding on August 1st 
 the Rowan committee resolved “that one thousand volun- 
 teers be immediately embodied in this county, elect their 
 staff officers and be ready at the shortest notice to march 
 out to action,” and an earnest address was issued calling 
 on the people to “rouse like one man in defence of our 
 religion from popery, our liberty from slavery, and our lives 
 from tormenting death,” yet on the same day the inferior 
 court of Rowan County met and “his majesty’s commission 
 of the peace was publicly read,” and John Oliphant, W. T. 
 Coles, and William McBride, Esqs., took the oaths pre- 
 scribed by law, and proceeded to business ; and Waight- 
 still Avery, Esq., was appointed attorney for the Crown in 
 the absence of John Dunn, Esq., deputy attorney. Farther 
 to the west, however, the profession of loyalty was condi- 
 tional. The committee of Tryon County, at its meeting on 
 August 14th, adopted an association, which was also to be 
 signed by the other inhabitants of that county, “uniting 
 under the most sacred ties of religion, honor, and love of 
 country, and engaging to take up arms and risk our lives 
 and fortunes in maintaining the freedom of our country,” 
 and arranged to obtain powder and ball for the companies 
 of that county ; but resolving unanimously “that we will 
 continue to profess all loyalty and attachment to our sov- 
 ereign lord, King George III, his crown and dignity, so 
 
 *In Mecklenburg the inferior court of pleas and quarter sessions 
 continued to be held by the magistrates theretofore appointed by 
 Governor Martin, meeting on the third Tuesday in July, 1775 . and 
 the third Tuesday in October, and so on quarterly, the record show- 
 ing as “present the Worshipful Robert Harris. Abraham Alexander, 
 Robert Irwin, Esqrs.,” the proceedings continuing regularly from 
 April, 1775, till July, 1776, without interruption. On one occasion, 
 however, an acting magistrate was taken from the Bench and sent 
 to prison by order of the chairman of the committee. — Simeson’s 
 Statement. 
 
WHIG AND TORY IN ANSON 
 
 465 
 
 long as he secures to us those rights and liberties which 
 the principles of our constitution require.” 
 
 Elsewhere the action was not different — protesting loyalty, 
 but getting ready a supply of powder and ball. On July 1st 
 the committee of Pitt County resolved that, “We will pay 
 all due allegiance to his Majesty, King George III ; ... at 
 the same time, we are determined to assert our rights, . . . 
 and that, under God, the preservation of them depends on a 
 firm union of the inhabitants and a sturdy, spirited observa- 
 tion of the resolutions of the general congress.” “We do 
 hereby agree and associate under all ties of religion, honor, 
 and regard for posterity.” And the captains of the differ- 
 ent companies were directed to call their men together to 
 choose officers. 
 
 The clashing in Anson 
 
 In Anson, where there had been many Regulators, Colonel 
 James Cotton, the lieutenant-colonel of the county, remained 
 loyal to the government, and the people were much divided. 
 Under his influence the Loyalists signed a protest against 
 the proceedings of the Continental Congress, but the Com- 
 mittee of Safety and their friends were zealous. On 
 May 25th they began to seize some of the leading men 
 among the disaffected, confining them as prisoners and en- 
 deavoring to persuade them to abandon their allegiance. 
 Early in June Colonel Spencer was urging the people to sign 
 the association, saying that the king had broken his corona- 
 tion oath, and the people were absolved by his example. On 
 the second Tuesday of July about thirty of the committee 
 met at the court-house and elected Colonel Spencer captain- 
 general, and Thomas Wade and David Love and others were 
 chosen captains of their companies. Both sides were active, 
 Colonel Cotton ordering out the militia companies under the 
 officers who remained loyal, and maintaining communication 
 with Governor Martin, and, on July 7th, sending him a peti- 
 tion signed by many of the inhabitants ; while, on the other 
 hand, there were great meetings of the people who stood 
 by the Continental Congress, and large numbers enlisted on 
 the side of liberty. 
 
 In Surry County the committee, as a prelude to their pro- 
 
 1775 
 
 July “ Y ~ 
 Pitt County 
 
 C. R., X, 61 
 
 Anson 
 
 County 
 
 C. R.. X, 
 
 125-128 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 228 
 
466 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 1775 
 
 June 
 
 On the Cape 
 Fear 
 
 C. R., X, 16 
 
 C. R., X, 
 25, 26 
 
 The Asso- 
 ciation 
 
 C. R., X, 26 
 
 C. R., X, 29 
 
 C. R , X, 
 
 24-26 
 
 ceedings, indited the legend on their record-book, “Liberty 
 or death. God save the king!” 
 
 After the arrival of Governor Martin at Fort Johnston, 
 that point became still more of a storm centre. The situation 
 rapidly developed excitement and resolution. Captain Col- 
 lett, in command of the fort, was inciting negroes to leave 
 their masters and take refuge within his lines. He seized 
 corn and other supplies, and, inflamed by his conduct, the 
 people began to subscribe association papers, preparing 
 for action. On June 16th the governor issued his procla- 
 mation, warning every one that by such conduct they would 
 expose themselves not only to the forfeiture of their lands 
 and properties, but to the loss of life and everything they 
 held dear and valuable. Three days after this proclamation, 
 on June 19th, the inhabitants of New Hanover, by an asso- 
 ciation paper, “united themselves under every tie of religion 
 and honor to go forth and be ready to sacrifice their lives and 
 fortunes to secure the freedom and safety of their country.” 
 
 And the next day, June 20th, committeemen of Duplin, 
 Onslow, Bladen, Brunswick, and New Hanover assembled 
 in general meeting. They adopted the New Hanover 
 association, which they directed to be printed, with a 
 recommendation to the inhabitants of the district to sign 
 it as speedily as possible. It was signed in Cumberland 
 by Robert Rowan and his associates, and doubtless by 
 the other patriots of the district. A committee com- 
 posed of Howe, Maclaine, and Sam Ashe was appointed to 
 answer the governor’s proclamation. In the answer they 
 declared that the resolution respecting America introduced 
 by Lord North favoring North Carolina and New York, 
 which Governor Martin had commended, added insult to 
 the injury it intended; that by it it was hoped to divide the 
 colonies, and, bv breaking one link in their chain of union, 
 render their subjugation more easy; that it was a base, 
 flagitious, wicked attempt to entrap America into slavery, 
 which ought to be rejected with the contempt it deserved; 
 and it was a duty that the people owed to themselves, their 
 country, and posterity by every effort, and at every risk, 
 to maintain, support, and defend their liberties against any 
 invasion or encroachment whatsoever. On the 25th Gov- 
 
MOVEMENTS OF GOVERNOR MARTIN 467 
 
 ernor Martin brought these matters to the attention of the 
 council, and it was agreed to strengthen the fort, and also 
 to prorogue the Assembly, that had been called to meet on 
 July 1 2th, until September. 
 
 In May he had informed the king that fourteen hundred 
 or fifteen hundred persons in the interior had signed dec- 
 larations in favor of the government, and now he wrote that 
 he could collect among the Highlanders three thousand 
 effective men, and still more in the interior counties, where, 
 he declared, “the people are in general well affected and 
 much attached to me — at least two-thirds of the fighting 
 men of the whole country, which may be computed, accord- 
 ing to my best information, to exceed thirty thousand." 
 With such views, he projected, after being furnished with 
 ten thousand stands of arms by General Gage, raising the 
 king’s standard and forming an army for the subjugation of 
 the province. He recommended Allan McDonald, the hus- 
 band of Flora, for an appointment, and Alexander McLeod, 
 of the marines, and Lieutenant Alexander McLean, also a 
 half-pay officer, and other influential Highlanders for ap- 
 pointments. For himself he begged the restoration of the 
 rank he held in the army in 1769, asking permission to 
 command a regiment of Highlanders. Expecting to take 
 the field, he again wrote for a king’s standard and also for a 
 tent and camp equipage for his own use. His hope of a 
 military commission was, however, disappointed, for the 
 king had arranged differently. Determined to follow the 
 governor’s recommendation to embody a force of High- 
 landers, the king directed that they should be under the 
 command of Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander McLean ; but 
 about the middle of July General McDonald and Major 
 McLeod, bearing secret commissions, arrived at Ocracoke 
 from New York and proceeded to New Bern. Johnston, 
 learning of their arrival, instructed the committee at New 
 Bern to secure them, but they took an oath satisfactory to 
 the inhabitants and were allowed to proceed to the interior. 
 
 Emissaries were continually passing from the Loyalists to 
 the fort, which was being strengthened by new works, so 
 as to make its capture difficult. Under these circumstances 
 the people of the Cape Fear clamored for a new convention ; 
 
 177s 
 
 C R., X, 
 
 38-40 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 1256 ; X, 
 45) 46 
 
 C. R., X, 
 4<5, 47 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1174 
 
 C. R., X, 
 i»7 
 
4 68 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 1775 
 
 July 
 
 C. R., X, 92 
 
 C. R., IX, 
 
 1285 
 
 Johnston 
 calls the 
 convention 
 
 C. R., X, 
 XI 4 
 
 C. R., X, 93 
 
 Martin 
 retires to the 
 Cruizer 
 
 C. R , X, 
 
 97, 102, 108. 
 132 
 
 and the committee wrote to Johnston that “some enterpris- 
 ing men wished to make an effort to take the fort, but were 
 afraid of having their conduct disavowed by the convention.” 
 The committee thought that a number of men should be 
 raised and kept in pay for the defence of the country, and 
 that a convention alone could do that. 
 
 On May 31st, Howe, Harnett, and Ashe, knowing of the 
 death of Colonel Harvey, wrote urging Johnston to convene 
 a convention as soon as possible, and in this request the New 
 Bern committee concurred. But the Assembly was expected 
 to meet on July 12th, and Johnston deemed it best to wait. 
 When the Assembly was prorogued, he delayed no longer, 
 and on July 10th issued a call for a convention to be held 
 at Hillsboro on August 20th ; and he recommended a larger 
 representation of the people, not less than five, so that each 
 county elected at least five deputies, and the inequality 
 of representation which had so long been a matter of vari- 
 ance between the old and the new counties came to an end. 
 Elections were held for the convention, but the committee 
 at Wilmington could not wait for the body to assemble. 
 They concluded that Captain Collett should not be suffered 
 to remain in the fort, and communicated that opinion to the 
 officers and committees of the neighboring counties. A great 
 many volunteers immediately collected. On July 15th 
 Colonel Robert Howe set out with a detachment for Fort 
 Johnston, and the committee resolved that as many men as 
 would voluntarily turn out should be despatched to join 
 them, and that the officers of the several companies in New 
 Hanover should immediately equip those willing to go on 
 that service. On the 16th Colonel Ashe, in command, sailed 
 from Wilmington. 
 
 Rumors of this intended movement led Captain Collett 
 hastily to evacuate the fort, the governor himself taking 
 refuge on the sloop-of-war Cruiser, and he directed the 
 stores, small arms and ammunition to be transferred to a 
 transport that lay in the harbor, the heavy guns to be dis- 
 mounted and the fort dismantled. On the same day Colonel 
 Ashe, in the name of the people, addressed a letter to Gov- 
 ernor Martin, informing him of the purpose to carry the 
 cannon away from the fort. But Ashe also had another 
 
FORT JOHNSTON TAKEN AND BURNT 
 
 469 
 
 purpose. The design to seize the arms and munitions at the 
 fort being defeated by the quick action of Governor Martin, 
 it was in contemplation by the use of fire-rafts to drive the 
 Cruiser and the transport from the river, or burn them, and 
 preparations were made to that end ; but that design was 
 eventually abandoned. 
 
 The New Hanover detachment joining Howe at Bruns- 
 wick, the entire force, amounting to some five hundred men, 
 proceeded to Fort Johnston, and on the night of July 18th 
 took possession of the fort, to which Ashe set fire, burning 
 it so far as it was destructible ; and the next day he burned 
 the dwelling and outhouses belonging to Captain Collett, 
 who was so obnoxious because of his conduct, especially his 
 efforts to entice the negroes from their masters. The ring- 
 leaders of this savage and audacious mob, wrote Martin, 
 were Ashe and Harnett. 
 
 On the return of the men from the fort, they were met 
 by a detachment of some three hundred volunteers from 
 Bladen, who had turned out at a minute’s warning. There 
 was no hesitation. All were equally resolved. But the 
 movement was hasty, and the fort speedily destroyed. Such 
 was the first positive act in the way of military operations in 
 the drama of the Revolution in North Carolina. The flames 
 of Fort Johnston cast a lurid light throughout the province, 
 and another impulse was given to popular action. From that 
 date Governor Martin, expelled from the soil of the prov- 
 ince, remained on shipboard. From his vessel he beheld 
 with varying hopes and fears the progress of the Revolu- 
 tion. The action of Mecklenburg greatly disturbed him. 
 How far would the example be followed by other counties 
 in annulling British authority and establishing an indepen- 
 dent government? He was anxious to hear from the in- 
 terior, from the back country, where he hoped for so much 
 aid, and where he supposed the people were attached to 
 himself personally. He was disheartened by advices that 
 the “people of Bladen were pursuing the example of Meck- 
 lenburg,” and that in the seacoast counties the people had 
 chosen military officers, and were frequently assembling in 
 arms. But a considerable body of Germans, settled in 
 Mecklenburg, gave him comfort by sending a loyal declara- 
 
 1775 
 
 July 
 
 July 18,1775 
 
 C. R., X, 
 109 
 
 The 
 
 Revolution 
 
 progresses 
 
 C. R., X, 
 106 
 
470 
 
 THE MECKLENBURG RESOLVES, 1775 
 
 177s 
 
 cTr., X, 
 331 
 
 July 
 
 C. R., X, 86 
 
 Dunn and 
 Boote 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 g3, 136, 184, 
 306, 673-679 
 
 C. R., X, 
 127 
 
 tion “against the very extraordinary and traitorous resolves 
 of the committee of that county.” And the news from Anson 
 was encouraging. There the clashing among the people 
 was, even at that early date, so violent and bitter as to be 
 incipient civil war, and Colonel Cotton continued to send 
 assurances of the steadfast devotion of a large number of 
 Loyalists. 
 
 From his first arrival at the fort, 'Governor Martin con- 
 trived to maintain some correspondence with the loyal ele- 
 ment in the interior, and it being apprehended that he was 
 organizing the Highlanders, the Wilmington committee early 
 forbade any intercourse with him except by their permission. 
 On July 3d, it being reported that Allan McDonald in- 
 tended to raise troops to support the government, the com- 
 mittee addressed him on that subject, requiring him to 
 desist; and Joseph Hewes wrote emphatically on July 8th: 
 “If the governor attempts to do anything he ought to be 
 seized and sent out of the colony ; so should” Judge Howard. 
 
 Communications had been addressed by the governor to 
 staunch friends in the interior to enroll loyal adherents and 
 to sign association papers. Letters of that tenor had been 
 received by John Dunn and Benjamin Booth Boote, two 
 influential Loyalists at Salisbury. On July 18th they were 
 put under guard by the Rowan committee, were examined, 
 arrested, and, under the orders of Colonel Alexander Martin 
 (then judge), Adlai Osborn, Colonel Spencer and Colonel 
 Polk, they were, at the close of July, conveyed by a detach- 
 ment of light horse to South Carolina, where they were 
 confined by the South Carolina authorities. A year later, 
 while they were on parole, Boote took the oath as a supporter 
 of the American cause, and Dunn became a good patriot. 
 But in 1780 Boote joined Cornwallis’s forces on the invasion 
 of South Carolina. 
 
 At the time of the arrest of these men, August 1st, the 
 Rowan committee ordered that one thousand volunteers be 
 immediately embodied in that county, elect their staff officers 
 and be ready at the shortest notice to march out to action. 
 In Anson the zeal of Colonel Spencer, Wade and their asso- 
 ciates was irresistible, and Colonel Cotton and his loyal 
 militia were overpowered. Disheartened at the turn of 
 
WHIG SUCCESSES 
 
 47i 
 
 affairs. Cotton, with several of his most devoted friends, ^ 
 
 set out to report to the governor, and reached the Cruizcr 
 on August 13th, bearing evil tidings of their discomfiture. 
 
 On their attempted return they were apprehended by the 
 vigilant committeemen in Bladen, and subsequently, under 
 stress of circumstances, took the test oath and submitted 
 themselves to the authority of the congress. 
 
 At the end of July, it being learned that the governor The 
 himself intended going into the back country, the Wilming- bearresud 
 ton committee advised the committees of the different 
 counties of his design, and requested them to keep a strict 
 lookout and arrest him. The unremitting activity of the 
 patriots, however, rendered such a movement too hazardous ; 
 but still it was the cherished purpose of Governor Martin c. r„ x, 
 to penetrate into the interior and marshal the Loyalists, and, 
 confident of his military prowess, try conclusions with the 
 rebels. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 1775 
 
 August, 1775 
 
 C. R., X, 8S 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 145-150 
 
 The Provincial Council, 1775-76. 
 
 The spirit of resistance. — Martin's proclamation. — The Congress. — 
 The leaders.— The conditions. — The people divided. — Efforts to 
 gain the Regulators. — Proceedings of Congress. — Franklin’s confed- 
 eration. — Independence not the object. — The first battalions. — The 
 minute men. — County courts. — The test. — The money of the Revolu- 
 tion. — To provide necessaries. — Congress adjourns. — Enlistment of 
 troops. — The safety of Wilmington. — The plan of subjugation. — 
 Arrival of Highlanders.- — Provincial council. — Tories and Whigs.— 
 The Indians placated. — The Scovellites. — The Snow Campaign. — 
 Howe marches against Dunmore. — Norfolk destroyed. — Armed ves- 
 sels built. — The ministerial troops. — In England. 
 
 The spirit of resistance 
 
 In the meantime the spirit of resistance was nourished 
 by men like Hewes, who declared that “the powers of gov- 
 ernment must soon be taken into the hands of the people.” 
 “The administration,” said he, “has even tried to let loose 
 the Indians on our frontier, to raise the negroes against us, 
 . . . and have sent a formidable army to cut our throats, and 
 then abuse us with the names of rebels and cowards.” “I 
 consider myself now over head and ears in what the ministry 
 call rebellion. I feel no compunction for the part I have 
 taken, nor for the number of our enemies lately slain in the 
 battle at Bunker's Hill. I wish to be in the camp before 
 Boston, though I fear I shall not be able to get there till 
 next campaign.” 
 
 Martin’s proclamation 
 
 On August 8th Governor Martin issued a manifesto de- 
 nouncing the leaders of the sedition and treason, and warn- 
 ing the people against being seduced to their purposes. 
 Particularly were Hooper, Hewes and Caswell, John Ashe 
 and Robert Howe singled out for denunciation. His chief 
 design was to appeal to the people to remain loyal. He 
 
BOTH SIDES SEEK SUPPORT 
 
 473 
 
 realized that the approaching convention was to be held at 
 Hillsboro with the view of influencing the inhabitants of Au e ust 
 the interior, and this efifect he sought to counteract by skil- 
 fully playing on the fears and hopes of the people. He 
 dwelt on the faithful loyalty of those in the western counties, 
 who had theretofore "resisted all the black artifices of false- 
 hood, sedition, and treason,” and who, upon his representa- 
 tion, had "received the king’s most gracious approbation and c R ? 
 acceptance.” Particularly he mentioned those in "Dobbs, 
 Cumberland, Anson, Orange, Guilford, Chatham, Rowan, 
 and Surry,” who he declared had given him more “especial 
 and public testimonials of their loyalty, fidelity, and duty” ; 
 but he tendered to all his Majesty’s most gracious pardon on 
 their return to their duty to their king; and he offered 
 ample reward and encouragement to any who should deliver 
 up to him the few principal persons who had seduced them 
 to treasonable outrages. 
 
 The Provincial Congress* 
 
 Indeed, the efforts of the two contending parties were 
 now anxiously directed to obtaining popular support. Samuel 
 Johnston had counted on the influence the convention might 
 exert, and to popularize that body he had urged the elec- 
 
 *The names Convention and Congress are often applied indiffer- 
 ently to these bodies. It is to be observed that those of August, 
 
 1774. and April, 1775, called themselves conventions and were pre- 
 sided over by a moderator. That of September. 1775, called itself a 
 congress and elected a president. The first two claimed to be lawful 
 meetings of the people, assembled for a legal purpose under the con- 
 stitution. The object then was to remonstrate against an infringe- 
 ment of constitutional rights. By September, 1775, the character of 
 these bodies was changed. They were not mere lawful meetings of 
 the people to remonstrate. They were revolutionary bodies, ordain- 
 ing government and exercising administrative and legislative powers. 
 Perhaps they took the name of congress to conform to a new Ameri- 
 can system — making a difference between the former government and 
 that then established. The authority of the British Government was 
 no longer respected — that of the Continental Congress had taken its 
 place. The people no longer claimed to be acting under the constitu- 
 tion of the British Empire. 
 
 The Congress differed from the Convention in the manner of 
 voting. In the Convention the members voted as in the Assembly, 
 each casting a vote. In the Congress the counties voted, each county 
 having a single vote, without regard to the number of deputies in 
 attendance. In the Continental Congress each colony had one vote ; 
 in the Provincial Congress each county had a vote, and in the Pro- 
 vincial Council each district had a vote. 
 
474 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1775 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 165 
 
 August 
 
 tion of an increased delegation from each county, the number 
 not being limited. Bertie had sent eleven delegates, Chat- 
 ham ten, Dobbs, Wake, Rowan, Guilford, seven each ; Meck- 
 lenburg, Tryon, Bute, New Hanover, six each; and the 
 other counties five ; the entire membership numbering one 
 hundred and eighty-four. This enlarged representation re- 
 sulted in the attendance of many men of the first capacity, 
 who had not theretofore been employed in legislative 
 business. 
 
 Sunday, August 20th, opened with the straggling hamlet 
 of Hillsboro aglow with unusual excitement. Several stores, 
 an insufficient court room, a dozen widely separated resi- 
 dences, a church building and a small inn for the wayfaring 
 traveller constituted the village, where now were assembling 
 the representatives of the people. At noon those members 
 who had arrived assembled in the church, but immediately 
 adjourned until the next day. On Monday, the 21st, at 
 ten o’clock, one hundred and eighty-four delegates answered 
 to their names, and Richard Caswell, just from the Con- 
 tinental Congress, proposed Samuel Johnston for president 
 of the body, and Rev. George Micklejohn opened the con- 
 gress with prayer. 
 
 Events had moved rapidly since the last convention in 
 April — the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, the de- 
 struction of Charlestown, the formation of independent com- 
 panies, the organization of a continental army, the proceed- 
 ings at Charlotte, the flight of the governor, the burning of 
 Fort Johnston, and the expulsion of the royal governor from 
 the soil of the .province, and the cessation of the provincial 
 legislature. The established government had ceased to exist. 
 And so the convention was confronted with new conditions. 
 No light was shed upon the pathway by past experience, but 
 with resolution the members addressed themselves to the 
 great questions presented for their consideration. It was the 
 largest meeting of representative Carolinians that had ever 
 assembled. The last convention was composed of but sixty- 
 seven members ; this was near three times as numerous. The 
 two previous revolutionary bodies had been called conven- 
 tions ; this now assumed the name of the Provincial Congress. 
 The others had not entered on legislative action ; this pro- 
 
PERSONNEL OF THE CONGRESS 
 
 475 
 
 posed to make laws to bind the people under the sanction 
 of legitimate power, and to exert the authority of estab- 
 lished government. 
 
 The leaders 
 
 Although the thirteen counties that might be allotted to 
 the west sent some seventy deputies, the preponderance was 
 still with the east, and the vote was taken by counties. But 
 Person and Penn, the Martins, Polk, Avery and Spencer, 
 John McKnitt Alexander, Moses Winslow, Kennon and 
 Sharpe, Burke, the Williamses, Armstrong and Winston 
 were strong and mighty leaders, speaking the patriotic senti- 
 ments of the west. The northern counties and the eastern, 
 as well as the Cape Fear section, also sent their most trusted 
 and experienced men. Such a gathering of great North 
 Carolinians, forceful and determined, had never before 
 assembled to take counsel of their liberties. Although the 
 venerated form of John Harvey was missed, there were Sam 
 Johnston, the younger Harveys, the Nashes, Caswell, Howe, 
 Hewes, Harnett, Hooper, the Joneses, the Moores, the Ashes, 
 the Sumners, Kenan, Owen, Robeson, Guion, Bryan, Lamb, 
 Jarvis ; and, indeed, all the giants of that generation gath- 
 ered there to secure and maintain the freedom of their coun- 
 try. The future, full of personal peril, was veiled in obscur- 
 ity, but their hearts were brave, their course determined, and 
 they had at least some light from the assembled wisdom of 
 the Continental Congress. 
 
 The conditions 
 
 As yet hope of reconciliation was still entertained, and 
 they were to make a last appeal for their rights as British 
 subjects, professing allegiance and disclaiming any desire for 
 separation. 
 
 But war was flagrant, and every preparation was to be 
 made for the inevitable conflict. Proclaimed rebels and 
 traitors seeking independence, they were to organize resist- 
 ance to internal and external foes, while still asserting that 
 they sought only those chartered rights they had inherited 
 from their fathers as subjects of Great Britain. The old gov- 
 ernment having passed away, its head a fugitive, and the 
 Assembly suspended, the congress was to ordain some gov- 
 
 1775 
 
 August 
 
476 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 ernment to preserve peace and order, to administer justice 
 Au g U st and to conduct military operations. 
 
 The people were divided. Large bodies not conversant 
 with the causes of the revolt, strangers to the hopes and fears 
 of America, not in sympathy with North Carolina, had but 
 recently located in her borders, while many thousands of the 
 older inhabitants held aloof, not comprehending that their 
 liberties had been invaded and that the hour had struck to 
 resist British aggression. It was the computation of Gov- 
 ernor Martin that two-thirds of the inhabitants were yet 
 loyal and would rally to the standard of the king. To sever 
 these ties it was the part of Congress to demonstrate the im- 
 potency of the British Government and to manifest contempt 
 for the power and authority of its chief representative, 
 c. R.,x, 180 Among their first actions, therefore, was to denounce Gov- 
 ernor Martin’s recent proclamation and to order “that the 
 said paper be burned by the common hangman.” 
 
 In like manner, to counteract the blandishments and the 
 threats of Governor Martin, who, through his emissaries, 
 endeavored to persuade the Regulators that they remained 
 liable to punishment unless pardoned by the king, and that 
 their pardon could only be obtained by taking up arms 
 against those who were defending American liberty, the 
 congress at its first opening resolved that every one of 
 the late insurgents ought to be protected, and that it would 
 protect them from any attempt to punish them for engaging 
 in the late insurrection ; and a committee, composed of Maurice 
 c R ., x, Moore, Caswell, Thomas Person, Kennon, Locke, Rev. Mr. 
 
 Pattillo, Hunt, Burke, Penn, and others, was appointed to 
 confer with those inhabitants of the province who entertained 
 any religious or political scruples, and to induce them to 
 heartily unite with congress for the protection of consti- 
 tutional rights. This committee was to influence not merely 
 the Regulators, but the Quakers and others who had scruples 
 preventing their active co-operation. Person alone had 
 affiliated with the Regulators, unless, indeed, Memucan Hunt 
 had done so ; but Penn, although he had but lately come into 
 the province, doubtless was a favorite with them ; and Judge 
 Moore had in 1772 held as a judge that they were not liable 
 to punishment under the riot act; as “Atticus,” had severely 
 
OVERTURES TO THE DISAFFECTED 
 
 477 
 
 denounced Governor Tryon for his “inhuman conduct" in 
 relation to Few and the other Regulators ; had visited James 
 Hunter at his home and had sought “to get him into favor 
 again, and had promised to do all that he could for William 
 Butler" ; and doubtless had been instrumental in inducing 
 the Assembly to insist on embracing Hunter in the proposed 
 act of oblivion, the contest between the council and the 
 Assembly over his pardon leading to the failure of that 
 measure. Locke, Kennon, Pattillo, and Burke were, in like 
 manner, doubtless influential among those who were dis- 
 affected ; while the addition of Caswell, Thomas Jones, and 
 George Moore to the committee gave an assurance that the 
 congress was not merely seeking to persuade, but that it 
 would faithfully observe the obligations which it assumed 
 to give every protection in its power to those who would 
 co-operate with it. 
 
 A similar committee was appointed to confer with the 
 Scotchmen who had so lately arrived in the province, of 
 whom more than one thousand had reached the Cape Fear 
 within the past few months, and explain to them the nature 
 “of our unhappy controversy” ; and still another committee, 
 Judge Moore, Hooper, Caswell, Hewes, and Howe, was ap- 
 pointed to present the controversy in an easy, familiar style 
 to the inhabitants of the province. 
 
 These efforts were not without avail. Quickly following 
 the appointment of the committees, there was a conference 
 held with the chiefs of the Regulators. They had some 
 scruples about the oath administered to them by Governor 
 Tryon ; but some of them at once signed the test or associa- 
 tion, others from time to time gave in their adherence, and 
 others still agreed to neutrality, so that as early as Septem- 
 ber 9th apprehensions of danger from them were no longer 
 entertained. 
 
 By the middle of October Governor Martin realized the 
 success of these endeavors, and wrote to the Earl of Dart- 
 mouth : “According to my information, a committee was 
 appointed by this Provincial Congress to gain over the late 
 insurgents in the western counties, who had heretofore made 
 to me the strongest professions of their loyalty and duty to 
 the king and of their resolution to support his Majesty’s 
 
 1775 
 
 August 
 
 C. R., X, 
 J 73» !74 
 
 C. R., X, 
 243 
 
 C. R.,X, 266 
 
4/8 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1775 
 
 C. R., X, 
 265, 266 
 
 Caruthers’s 
 Caldwell, 
 283, 284 
 
 government, as also to treat with the Cherokee Indians ; and 
 my intelligence runs that this committee received assurances 
 from the former that they would observe a strict neutrality, 
 but I can learn nothing of its success with the Indians.” 
 
 In like manner, the efforts to influence the Highlanders 
 were attended with good results. Governor Martin continued : 
 “I have heard, too, . . . with infinitely greater surprise 
 and concern, that the Scotch Highlanders, on whom I had 
 such firm reliance, have declared themselves for neutrality” ; 
 and this result he attributed to Farquard Campbell, “who 
 has been settled from his childhood in this country, is an 
 old member of the Assembly, and has imbibed all the Ameri- 
 can popular principles and prejudices.” 
 
 Nor was the pulpit silent. Ministers of the gospel urged 
 their flocks to stand for their rights. In Guilford, 
 David Caldwell, the leading Presbyterian of the prov- 
 ince, from the pulpit raised a powerful voice for 
 unity of purpose and co-operation in maintaining American 
 liberty. Succinctly and graphically he portrayed existing 
 conditions and eloquently urged the duties of patriotism. 
 “We petitioned,” said he, “his Majesty in a most humble 
 manner to intercede with the Parliament on our behalf. Our 
 petitions were rejected, while our grievances were increased 
 by acts still more oppressive, and by schemes still more 
 malicious, till we are reduced to the dreadful alternative 
 either of immediate and unconditional submission or of re- 
 sistance by force of arms. We have therefore come to that 
 trying period in our history in which it is manifest that 
 the Americans must either stoop under a load of the vilest 
 slavery or resist their imperious and haughty oppressors ; 
 but what will follow must be of the utmost importance to 
 every individual of these united colonies. ... If we act like 
 the sluggard, refuse, from the mere love of ease and self- 
 indulgence, to make the sacrifices and efforts which the cir- 
 cumstances require, or, from cowardice or pusillanimity, 
 shrink from dangers and hardships, we must continue in our 
 present state of bondage and oppression . . . until life itself 
 will become a burden ; but if we stand up manfully and 
 unitedly in defence of our rights, appalled by no dangers and 
 shrinking from no toils or privations, we shall do valiantly. 
 
THE EXHORTATIONS OF CALDWELL 
 
 479 
 
 Our foes are powerful and determined on conquest ; but our ^ 
 
 cause is good, and in the strength of the Lord, who is August 
 mightier than all, we shall prevail. . . . If I could portray to 
 you . . . the results of your conduct in this great crisis in 
 your political destiny; or if I could describe . . . the feel- 
 ings which you will have of self-approbation, joy, and thank- 
 fulness, or of self-reproach, shame, and regret, according to 
 the part you act — whether as men and as patriots, or as 
 cowards and traitors — I should have no difficulty in persuad- 
 ing you to shake off your sloth and stand up manfully in a 
 firm, united, and persevering defence of your liberties. . . . 
 
 We expect that none of you will be wanting in the discharge 
 of your duty, or prove unworthy of a cause which is so 
 important in itself, and which every patriot and every Chris- 
 tian should value more than wealth, and hold as dear as 
 his life.” 
 
 Proceedings of the Provincial Congress 
 
 Realizing that the American colonies were embarked in a 
 common cause, the congress resolved that the inhabitants of 
 North Carolina should pay their full proportion of the ex- 
 pense of maintaining the army and conducting its opera- 
 tions ; and recognizing that the former government had 
 passed away, and that it was necessary to institute a new 
 one for the province, a committee of fifty members was ap- 
 pointed to prepare a plan of government to meet the exi- 
 gency of the occasion. 
 
 Mr. Hooper presented for the consideration of the con- 
 gress articles of confederation, which had been framed for 
 submission to the several provincial conventions, prelim- 
 inary to their adoption by the Continental Congress. This c - R - x - 
 instrument conferred on the general congress the power of 
 making war and peace; of entering into alliances; of deter- 
 mining on reconciliation with Great Britain ; of settling all 
 disputes between colony and colony, and of making ordi- 
 nances necessary to the general welfare. The proposed con- 
 federacy of the united colonies was to continue until the 
 terms of reconciliation proposed by congress should be 
 agreed to by Great Britain, until reparation should be made 
 for the injury done to Boston and the expenses of the war 
 
480 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL , 1775-76 
 
 1776 
 
 Proposed 
 articles of 
 confederacy 
 rejected 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, 
 I, 263 
 
 repaid, and until all British troops should be withdrawn from 
 America. On the failure of these requirements, the con- 
 federacy was to be perpetual. It could not have been ex- 
 pected that these demands would ever be assented to bv 
 Great Britain ; and thus, in effect, this proposition was to 
 establish a perpetual union or confederacy, on the basis of 
 independence. Such was the measure offered by William 
 Hooper to the convention on August 24, 1775. It was taken 
 into serious consideration. 
 
 Johnston, president of the convention, on September 5th 
 wrote to Iredell: “I was much afraid the plan contained in 
 it would have been adopted ; but in a committee of the whole 
 house, though they at first seemed inclined to receive it, 
 after hearing the reasons offered against it, it was almost 
 unanimously rejected.” By its provisions equality among 
 the colonies was abolished and the smaller ones placed at 
 the mercy of the larger; this doubtless caused its rejection. 
 When it was rejected, by the recommendation of Johnston 
 himself, the congress declared that ‘‘the present association 
 ought to be further relied on for bringing about a recon- 
 ciliation, and that a new confederacy ought to be adopted 
 only in case of the last necessity.” Through Johnston’s 
 wisdom they had escaped a danger ; and the delegates were 
 instructed not to consent to any plan of confederation until it 
 should be approved by the Provincial Congress.* 
 
 Independence not the object 
 
 As yet independence was not the purpose of the patriot 
 leaders, and the members of the congress signed a test pro- 
 fessing their allegiance to the king, while declaring them- 
 selves bound by the acts of the continental and provincial 
 c. r , x, congresses ; and they issued an address to the inhabitants of 
 the British Empire, saying: “We have been told that inde- 
 pendence is our object; that we seek to shake off all con- 
 nection with the parent state. Cruel suggestion! Do not 
 all our professions, all our actions, uniformly contradict 
 this?” They declared, in the presence of the Almighty 
 
 *This proposed constitution invested the Continental Congress 
 with power to regulate commerce, post roads, and the currency. 
 The representation was to be one delegate for every 5°oo polls, and 
 each delegate was to have a vote. 
 
TROOPS RAISED . 
 
 481 
 
 Being, who “knows our most secret intentions, that it is 
 our most earnest wish and prayer to be restored ... to the 
 state in which we were placed before the year 1763.” “This 
 declaration we hold forth as a testimony of loyalty to our 
 sovereign, and affection to our parent state, and as a sincere 
 earnest of our present and future intentions.” 
 
 In this the congress but followed the example of the gen- 
 eral congress of the colonies at Philadelphia. There was to 
 be no discord in the voice of America in seeking justice of 
 friends and kindred in Great Britain. 
 
 The design of Governor Martin to embody the Loyal- 
 ists was a constant peril, threatening the peace and repose 
 of the province ; while the Indians and negroes, aroused by 
 British emissaries, might at any time fall upon the whites. 
 Preparations to meet such contingencies were quickly made. 
 
 The Continental Congress having agreed to receive a thou- battllions tal 
 
 sand men raised by the province as a part of the continental 
 
 army, two regiments of continentals, of five hundred nien 
 
 each, were at once organized. Four hundred of them were 
 
 to be stationed in the district of Wilmington, one hundred 
 
 of these being located in the vicinity of Fort Johnston, two 
 
 hundred near Salisbury, two hundred near New Bern, and 
 
 two hundred near Edenton. Of the first regiment James 
 
 Moore was chosen colonel, his competitor being John Ashe, 
 
 who was defeated by a single vote ; Francis Nash, lieutenant- 
 
 colonel ; and Thomas Clark, major. Robert Howe, Alex- c.r.,x,i8 7 
 
 ander Martin, and John Patten were the field officers of the 
 
 second regiment. The captains, lieutenants and ensigns were 
 
 also appointed, and these at once became active in raising 
 
 their companies. 
 
 For an additional military force the province was divided 
 into six districts, and a battalion consisting of ten companies 
 of fifty men each was to be raised in each district. These Minute men 
 were known as minute men, and as soon as the com- 
 panies were filled the battalions were to be formed, and 
 they were to be trained at once for fourteen days, and after 
 that were to be mustered every fortnight in their counties. 
 
 The colonels of the minute men were, for the Edenton 
 district, Edward Vail; for that of Halifax, Nicholas Long; 
 
 Salisbury, Thomas Wade; Hillsboro, James Thackston ; New 
 
482 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1775 
 
 CR,X, 197 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 198 
 
 C. R., X, 
 208 
 
 Provincial 
 
 Council 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 2ix 
 
 Bern, Richard Caswell ; Wilmington, Alexander Lillington ; 
 and these officers were to take rank from the date of their 
 commissions, which was to be determined by the organiza- 
 tion of their respective battalions. 
 
 These minute men were to be enlisted for only six months, 
 and a bounty was allowed them of twenty-five shillings “to 
 buy a hunting shirt, leggings, or splatter-dashes, and black 
 garters,” which constituted their uniform. To promote the 
 organization of the minute men and regulars, congress 
 thought it well to disband the independent companies that 
 had been formed in the various counties. The militia, too, 
 was organized, field officers being appointed for each county. 
 
 The plan of government 
 
 The plan of temporary government devised provided for 
 town and county committees, elected by the freeholders ; 
 and that in each district there should be a Committee of 
 Safety consisting of a president and twelve members, who 
 should sit at least every three months, having a superin- 
 tending power over the town and county committees, direct- 
 ing the operations of the militia, and censuring and punish- 
 ing delinquents ; and there was to be a Provincial Council of 
 thirteen members, two selected from each district and one 
 by the congress at large ; this council to have full power 
 to do all matters and things to defend the colony, but not 
 to alter or suspend any resolution of the congress. The 
 Provincial Council and committees of safety had judicial 
 powers conferred on them and the right to give judgment for 
 all demands not in excess of £20. 
 
 It was further ordained that on the third Tuesday in 
 October in every year the freeholders in each county were 
 to choose committeemen and also five deputies to represent 
 them in congress, and that there should be annually held on 
 November 10th a Provincial Congress. Committees of 
 secrecy, intelligence, and observation were to be chosen by 
 the town and county committees, who had power to exam- 
 ine all suspected persons and send them to the district com- 
 mittees of safety. 
 
 The courts of oyer and terminer were held for the sum- 
 mer term of 1775, but then ceased. 
 
THE TEST AND ALLEGIANCE 
 
 483 
 
 The congress did not interfere with the organization of 
 the inferior courts, but recommended that the magistrates 
 appointed by Governor Martin should qualify and act ; how- 
 ever, it directed that after September 10th no suit should 
 be begun in any court or before any magistrate without 
 leave from the county committee. With the assent of the 
 local committees of public safety, judicial proceedings were 
 to continue, and the county courts were regularly held dur- 
 ing this chaotic period. 
 
 The congress also adopted a test, which was required to 
 be taken by all delegates to the Provincial Congress ; and 
 later it was required to be subscribed by all persons holding 
 any position of honor or trust ; and, still later, by all the 
 inhabitants generally.* 
 
 Hooper, Hewes, and Caswell were thanked for their ser- 
 vices in the Continental Congress, and were re-elected, and 
 they were invested with such powers that all acts done by 
 them not inconsistent with instructions should be obligatory 
 upon every inhabitant of the province ; but Caswell and 
 Johnston being elected treasurers, as they had formerly been 
 by the Assembly, Caswell declined to serve as a deputy. 
 Remaining in the province, besides being treasurer, he be- 
 came a colonel of minute men. To fill that vacancy, John 
 Penn, who had come to North Carolina from Virginia about 
 a year earlier, was chosen. Some dissatisfaction had been 
 felt originally that the three deputies were from the eastern 
 
 *[Adopted September 9, 1775, required to be subscribed by all vestry- 
 men and others holding places of trust.] 
 
 We, the subscribers, professing our allegiance to the king and 
 acknowledging the constitutional executive power of government, 
 do solemnly profess, testify and declare, that we do absolutely be- 
 lieve that neither the Parliament of Great Britain, nor any member 
 or constituent branch thereof, hath a right to impose taxes upon 
 these colonies, or to regulate the internal police thereof, and that 
 all attempts by fraud or force to establish and exercise such claims 
 and powers are violations of the peace and security of the people, 
 and ought to be resisted to the utmost, and that the people of this 
 province, singly and collectively, are bound by the acts and resolu- 
 tions of the continental and provincial congresses, because in both 
 they are freely represented by persons chosen by themselves ; and 
 we do solemnly and sincerely promise and engage, under the sanction 
 of virtue, honor, and the sacred love of liberty and our country, to 
 maintain and support all and every the acts, resolutions and regula- 
 tions of the said continental and provincial congresses to the utmost 
 of our power and abilities. 
 
 1775 
 
 C. R„ X?~ 
 
 2l6 
 
 August 
 
 The test 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 212 
 
4§4 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1775 part of the province, and Penn was now taken probably as a 
 
 September western man and as a friend of Thomas Person, both being 
 representatives of Granville County. 
 
 To provide means to sustain the new government, it was 
 ^ directed that a sum of $125,000 should be emitted in bills, 
 the standard being the Spanish milled dollar, departing from 
 the British currency of pounds and shillings for palpable 
 reasons ; and a tax of two shillings a year on every taxable 
 person was laid, to be collected in 1777 and for nine years 
 thereafter, to pay off this indebtedness ; and the congress 
 recommended that all public taxes due should be paid by 
 the people ; but, except the county and parish taxes, those 
 laid by the old government to accrue in the future were not 
 to be collected. 
 
 The congress took steps to obtain a supply of arms and 
 ammunition, and, realizing the necessities of the situation 
 because of the cessation of importations, it offered bounties 
 for the manufacture of the most important articles. Among 
 the commodities whose production it sought to stimulate 
 were saltpetre, sulphur, and gunpowder, common salt, linen 
 and woollen goods, hollow ironware, pins and needles, and 
 wire for cotton cards and woollen cards ; and a considerable 
 bounty was offered for the erection of rolling mills for the 
 production of nails, a furnace for the manufacture of steel 
 and of pig iron, and for a mill making various kinds of 
 paper. Not only were the needs of the army to be supplied, 
 but the necessities of the people were to be provided for. 
 
 Congress adjourns 
 
 Its business being now well completed, on Sunday, Sep- 
 tember 10th, at six o’clock in the morning, the congress met 
 in its last session. It had solved the momentous questions 
 of that eventful day. It had established a system of gov- 
 ernment, and had provided for its perpetuation. It had 
 raised troops for the defence of the province and created 
 a public fund. It had appealed to the mother country for 
 reconciliation, and had drawn to the support of the cause 
 many who had been wavering. With brighter hopes and 
 with greater confidence, and yet not without apprehension, 
 the members now returned to their homes. 
 
THE RAISING OF TROOPS 
 
 485 
 
 At once the many military officers, both continental and 
 of the minute men, whose rank was to be determined by 
 their promptness in the organization of their command, 
 entered with zeal upon the work of securing enlistments. 
 Throughout the province there was the greatest activity. 
 Especially was this so on the lower Cape Fear. John Ashe, 
 so long the military leader of his district, defeated in his 
 aspirations, mortified at his enforced separation from his 
 troops, determined not to be without a command. Gov- 
 ernor Martin wrote in October: “It is possible also that the 
 resentment of Mr. John Ashe, occasioned by his disappoint- 
 ment of the chief command of the military establishment 
 formed by the Provincial Congress, will cause some division 
 here, for it seems he and his friends are raising men of their 
 own authority, in opposition to Mr. James Moore, his 
 brother-in-law, who is appointed military chief under the 
 congress.” 
 
 Mr. George Hooper is quoted as saying “that he could 
 never forget General Ashe’s return from the convention of 
 Hillsboro in September, 1775. He was in a state of pro- 
 digious excitement. His object was to raise a regiment, and 
 he accomplished it. You cannot imagine what a commotion 
 he stirred up. He kindled an enthusiasm in New Hanover 
 and adjacent counties of which there is no parallel in the 
 traditions of the State. He struck the chords of passion 
 with a master hand. His words roused the soul like the roll 
 of the drum or the roar of artillery at the commencement 
 of an action. Every breast heaved, as if with the sentiment 
 of the Athenian orator, ‘Let us away ! Let us arm ! Let 
 us march against Philip !’ ” Not only was Ashe’s proposed 
 regiment in conflict with Moore’s regulars, but also with 
 Lillington's minute men. Their respective friends were all 
 activity. Wearing the legends on their hats, “Who will not 
 follow where Ashe leads?” “Who will not follow where 
 Lillington leads?” they dashed from community to com- 
 munity, from neighborhood to neighborhood, arousing the 
 people and securing enlistments for their corps. At his own 
 charges, Ashe raised a regiment, and for some time main- 
 tained it out of his private purse. The final organization 
 of Lillington’s battalion was perhaps delayed by this irreg- 
 
 1775 
 
 Recruiting 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 270 
 
 Hooper’s 
 Memoir of 
 John Ashe, 
 N. C. Univ. 
 Mag., Ill, 
 371, (1854) 
 
486 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1775 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 335. 336 
 
 Martin’s 
 
 activity 
 
 C. R., X, 
 306-308 
 
 Arrival of 
 Highlanders 
 
 C. R., X, 
 3*5 
 
 ular proceeding-. Moore was more successful, and soon had 
 his continental regiment fully organized, two companies of 
 which were stationed near Fort Johnston, where they were 
 fired on by the British cruisers in the harbor. 
 
 The hostile demonstrations of these ships of war led the 
 Wilmington committee to direct John Slingsby and others 
 to procure necessary vessels and chains to sink in such part 
 of the channel as they thought proper to prevent their ascent 
 up the river. 
 
 It had been Governor Martin’s expectation in July to re- 
 ceive a supply of arms and munitions, and with these he hoped 
 to equip a sufficient force of Highlanders and Regulators not 
 merely to subjugate the province, but also to hold South 
 Carolina and Georgia. Later he realized that the time for 
 that had passed, and, without aid from the British army, 
 he would be unable to carry out his cherished design. At 
 length his plan received the sanction of the ministry, and on 
 September 226 an expedition was arranged to subdue the 
 southern colonies. On November 7th Dartmouth wrote him 
 that seven regiments might be expected to reach the Cape 
 Fear about the time that letter would be received, and that 
 he should lose no time in sending emissaries among the 
 inhabitants with authority for raising and embodying as 
 many men as could be procured, bringing down with them 
 horses and wagons for the use of the army. 
 
 In the meantime Highlanders continued to arrive — about 
 the middle of October one hundred and seventy-two, a little 
 later another shipload, and early in December a shipload 
 reached Norfolk, who desired permission, which was given, 
 to pass by land to their destination in Carolina. On the 
 upper Cape Fear Major McDonald, who had recently 
 arrived, under the orders of General Gage, was forming a 
 battalion of Highlanders to be commanded by Colonel 
 McLean ; and Allan McDonald and Alexander McLeod, 
 each having commissions, were enrolling companies. Gov- 
 ernor Martin also became more hopeful of aid from the 
 Regulators on learning that many had become indignant 
 with the action of congress at Hillsboro ; and he was per- 
 suaded that the loyal subjects infinitely outnumbered the 
 
MISSIONS TO THE CREEKS AND CHEROKEES 487 
 
 seditious throughout all the very populous counties of the 
 west. 
 
 In the presence of these threatened dangers, the Provincial 
 Council held its first meeting at the court-house in Johnston 
 County on October 18th. Cornelius Harnett was unani- 
 mously elected president, perhaps because it was his section 
 of the province that was in peril, as well as because of his 
 capacity and zealous activity. It took measures to perfect 
 the defence of the province, exercising the high powers 
 with which it was invested. Each district had one vote. 
 
 The Indians placated 
 
 The Cherokee and Creek Indians, who had long been 
 under the direction of a very competent British officer, John 
 Stuart, w r ere being influenced to take sides against the col- 
 onists, and the Continental Congress had appointed a com- 
 mission, one of whom was Willie Jones, to secure their 
 neutrality. In October the Creeks met two of these com- 
 missioners at Augusta, and in November Willie Jones and 
 the other commissioners convened at Salisbury and sent a 
 “talk to the beloved red men in Georgia,” urging their 
 neutrality and promising the usual gifts which were annually 
 distributed among the Indians — powder, blankets, trinkets, 
 etc., etc. 
 
 On the other hand, Stuart and his agent among the 
 Indians, who had first also urged them to neutrality, now 
 began to influence them to active hostility. “I found no 
 argument,” said Stuart, “prevail so much among the Indians 
 as telling them that while the present disturbances continued 
 they could not expect to be supplied with ammunition and 
 other necessaries from Carolina and Georgia ; and that it 
 would be their own interest to join his Majesty’s faithful 
 subjects in restoring government and good order.” He 
 therefore recommended that all supplies should for the pres- 
 ent be stopped. That, he thought, would determine the 
 savages to engage on the side of the British. 
 
 Pursuant to the policy of congress, a supply of Indian 
 goods, embracing some powder, was despatched through 
 upper South Carolina as a present to the Indians. Several 
 years before, during the same period when the Regulators 
 
 1775 
 
 Provincial 
 Council 
 Oct., 1775 
 
 C. R., X, 283 
 
4 88 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL , 1775-76 
 
 1775 
 
 December 
 
 The 
 
 Scovellites 
 
 C. R., X, 
 408 
 
 Colonel 
 Martin 
 marches to 
 aid South 
 Carolina 
 
 The Snow 
 Campaign 
 
 C. R., X, 
 34°i 34 1 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 198 
 
 were active in North Carolina, a movement somewhat sim- 
 ilar had taken place in that part of South Carolina, society 
 being disorganized by a social disturbance. Courts and 
 lawyers having roused the animosity of the people, they 
 undertook to regulate matters without regard to existing 
 usages. Their chief leader was a man named Scovell, and 
 they were generally known as Scovellites. After they were 
 dispersed they were out of sympathy with the other inhab- 
 itants ; indeed, there was a wide stretch of unoccupied terri- 
 tory intervening between their habitations and the seacoast 
 counties. Most of them remained loyal to the king. It was 
 among them that David Fanning had found a residence, he 
 becoming, like them, an adherent of the Crown. Their 
 leaders resolved to intercept the powder and goods being 
 conveyed to the Indians under a small escort, and embody- 
 ing a sufficient force, they seized the pack horses, declaring 
 that the ammunition was being sent to the Indians to enable 
 them to make war upon themselves. At once Major Will- 
 iamson marched against them to recover the powder, but 
 the Scovellites were too strong for his force, and he was 
 compelled to retreat, taking refuge in a stockade fort at 
 Ninety-six, where they besieged him. The patriot author- 
 ities, aroused to the necessities of action, called on their 
 friends in western North Carolina for aid, and early in De- 
 cember Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Martin, of the Second 
 Continentals, who had in the Salisbury district two com- 
 panies of continentals, one of the First Regiment, Captain 
 George Davidson, and. the other of the Second Regiment, 
 Captain John Armstrong, proposed to march to their assist- 
 ance. He was joined by 200 men from Rowan under Colonel 
 Rutherford, 300 from Mecklenburg under Colonel Polk, and 
 100 from Tryon under Colonel Neal. This body of 700 
 North Carolinians reached General Richardson, of South 
 Carolina, and Colonel Thompson, of the Third South Caro- 
 lina Regiment, at Saluda River about December 16th, when 
 the Scovellites hastily abandoned their efforts on Ninety-six, 
 gave up the siege and returned to Saluda River. Unaware 
 of the near approach of this new patriot force, they were 
 surprised on December 22d and 400 of them taken prisoners. 
 In the engagement Colonel Polk was wounded. The powder 
 
HOWE AIDS VIRGINIA 
 
 4§9 
 
 which they had seized again fell into the hands of its lawful 
 owners, and was conveyed to the Indians. The weather dur- 
 ing this short but eventful campaign was so inclement and 
 stormy, with such heavy snows, that it was known to his- 
 tory as the “Snow Campaign.” 
 
 Still earlier than this expedition beyond the limits of the 
 State was a call from Virginia for aid in repelling British 
 operations in the vicinity of Norfolk, where Lord Dunmore 
 had begun a predatory warfare, burning houses, ravaging 
 plantations and carrying off negroes. By proclamation, he 
 declared that all indented servants and negroes who would 
 join his Majesty’s forces should be free; and several hun- 
 dred of the inhabitants, many of them negroes, repaired to 
 his standard. Taking possession of Norfolk, Dunmore con- 
 structed a fort on the highway from the south for its pro- 
 tection; and Colonel Woodford, in command of the Vir- 
 ginia troops, fortified at Great Bridge, a few miles distant. 
 The district committees of safety in North Carolina had 
 power to call into active service the organized troops of 
 the province. To assist the Virginians, the committee at 
 Halifax hurried Colonel Long with the minute men of that 
 district to Great Bridge, and on November 28th ordered 
 Major Jethro Sumner to raise what minute men and vol- 
 unteers he could and follow Colonel Long with the utmost 
 despatch ; and Colonel Howe, whose chief command was at 
 New Bern, was directed to lead his continentals also to 
 Norfolk. On December 7th affairs at Great Bridge were 
 reaching a crisis. Colonel Woodford wrote to Governor 
 Henry : “As to the Carolina troops and cannon, they are by 
 no means what I was made to expect ; sixty of them are here 
 and one hundred will be here to-morrow ; more, it is said, 
 will follow in a few days under Colonel Howe ; badly 
 armed, cannon not mounted, no furniture to them.” 
 
 Two days later Captain Fordyce, commanding a force of 
 British regulars and a detachment of sailors, assaulted the 
 Virginia fortifications. He and many of his officers were 
 killed, and the British were completely routed, with great 
 loss, retreating at once into Norfolk. Colonel Howe arrived 
 after Colonel Woodford had won this great victory. Wood- 
 ford was not a continental officer, and cheerfully yielded the 
 
 177s 
 
 November 
 
 Howe 
 marches to 
 aid Virginia 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 337 
 
490 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL , 1775-76 
 
 1775 
 
 Howe 
 commands 
 in Virginia 
 
 C. R., X, 
 37 2 
 
 Norfolk 
 
 burned 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 381, 387, 395 
 
 Jan. 1, 1776 
 
 command to Howe, as being of superior rank, perhaps the 
 more cheerfully as they had served together on the Holstein 
 in the French and Indian War. From that time until March 
 Flowe continued to direct military operations in lower Vir- 
 ginia ; the immediate command of his regiment devolving on 
 Major Patten, Colonel Armstrong being in western North 
 Carolina. 
 
 Pressing on after the battle of Great Bridge, Howe drove 
 the British and the Tories from Norfolk and took possession 
 of the town. 
 
 On December 30th Captain Bellew, commanding the Brit- 
 ish ships, notified Colonel Howe that he would not suffer men 
 in arms against their sovereign to appear before his 
 Majesty’s ships, and he warned Colonel Howe that his 
 sentinels must not be seen or the women and children might 
 suffer — a plain intimation that he proposed to fire on the 
 town unless the American sentinels should be withdrawn. 
 Howe’s reply was that he had given orders to his sentinels 
 not to fire on any boat unless approaching the shore in a 
 hostile manner. But Dunmore’s mind was made up. He 
 proposed to destroy Norfolk, even if it involved the slaughter 
 of women and children. Without further warning, about 
 three o’clock on the afternoon of the next day, a cannonade 
 of one hundred pieces opened on the devoted town and con- 
 tinued without interruption until ten o’clock that night. 
 Under cover of their guns, the British landed and set fire to 
 the houses at several places near the water. They landed 
 frequently, but were repulsed in every instance. Once, in- 
 deed, they reached the street with several field pieces, but 
 were driven back with considerable loss. In the meantime 
 the conflagration spread with amazing rapidity, and the 
 women and children, seeking to escape, were subjected to the 
 British fire and some of them were killed. For two days 
 the fire raged, and nine-tenths of the town was destroyed 
 before it was extinguished. A midshipman on board the 
 British ship Otter thus describes the event : “The detested 
 town of Norfolk is no more! Its destruction happened on 
 New Year’s Day. About four o’clock in the afternoon the 
 signal was given from the Liverpool } when a dreadful 
 cannonading began from the three ships, which lasted till 
 
NORFOLK DESTROYED 
 
 491 
 
 ’twas too hot for the rebels to stand on their wharves. Our o 
 
 boats now landed and set fire to the town in several places. 
 
 It burned fiercely all night and the next day ; nor are the 
 flames yet extinguished; but no more of Norfolk remains 
 than about twelve houses, which escaped the flames.” 
 
 A month later Colonel Howe, with the concurrence of his 
 officers, visited the Virginia convention, then sitting at 
 Williamsburg, and on his recommendation that body directed 
 that the remaining houses, only twelve in number, should be 
 destroyed. In Colonel Howe’s encounters with the British, 
 although his forces were under a long-protracted, heavy 
 cannonade, he lost only five or six men wounded and none 
 killed. It was his good fortune to bear himself so well that 
 notwithstanding local jealousies, he won high applause and 
 received the thanks of the Virginia convention, while gain- 
 ing merited distinction for himself and his North Carolina 
 troops. 
 
 Colonel Howe had with him some six hundred North 
 Carolinians on this duty in Virginia, and the aid given so 
 expeditiously and effectively at the same time against the 
 Scovellites at the south and Dunmore at the north estab- 
 lished for North Carolina an enviable reputation throughout 
 America. 
 
 Measures for defence 
 
 On December 18th the Provincial Council met at the R ’ x ’ 
 
 349 
 
 court-house of Johnston County in its second session. 
 
 It was now known that the province was to be invaded ; 
 and as the inhabitants were not well supplied with arms and 
 ammunition for defence, commissioners were appointed to 
 make and repair guns and to purchase munitions of war ; 
 and the delegates in the Continental Congress were directed 
 to send powder, drums, colors and fifes from Philadelphia c R x 
 for the use of the troops. 355 
 
 Waightstill Avery, one of the members, was directed to 
 repair to South Carolina and obtain twenty hundredweight 
 of gunpowder, a supply of which had been received from 
 abroad by that province. Powder and ammunition belong- 
 ing to the British Government had also been seized in South 
 Carolina, Georgia, and apparently Florida. 
 
49 2 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1775 
 
 C. R., X, 
 352, 3 62 
 December 
 
 Importa- 
 
 tions 
 
 Progress of 
 events 
 
 Hope of rec- 
 onciliation 
 
 C. R., X, 
 373 
 
 Because of the necessity to continue importations and 
 protect vessels engaged in such commerce, the council took 
 steps to fit out three armed ships, one at Wilmington, one 
 at New Bern, and one at Edenton, and gentlemen at each 
 of those towns were appointed to charter one or more vessels, 
 which they were to load with commodities and send abroad 
 to procure arms and ammunition for the province. And 
 renewed efforts were made to obtain at home an additional 
 supply of arms and equipments. It was ordered that two 
 battalions of minute men should be embodied in the district 
 of Salisbury, one of them to be under Griffith Rutherford, 
 as colonel, and the other to be commanded by Colonel 
 Thomas Polk. It was also directed that the test adopted by 
 the Provincial Congress should be signed by all the minute 
 men and militiamen, and it was recommended that no person 
 should be allowed any relief against a debtor unless ten days 
 previous to his application he should have subscribed the 
 continental association and the test. 
 
 Early in September the address of the Continental Congress 
 urging the king to point out some way for an accommoda- 
 tion was presented to the ministry by Governor Penn. 
 Three days later Dartmouth replied that to it no answer 
 would be given ; while in a speech from the throne it was 
 declared that the protestations of loyalty were meant only 
 to deceive, the rebellious war being carried on for the pur- 
 pose of establishing an independent empire. When informa- 
 tion came of this closing of the door to all hope of accom- 
 modation the colonists were profoundly moved. So far there 
 had been no purpose to separate. All that fall the chaplains 
 in Washington’s army were still leading their troops in 
 prayer “for the king.” In December, James Hogg, who was 
 attending the Continental Congress seeking recognition for 
 Transylvania, wrote that “the famous John and Sam Adams” 
 presented this difficulty : “There seems to be an impro- 
 priety in embarrassing our reconciliation with anything new ; 
 and the taking under our protection a body of people who 
 have acted in defiance of the king’s proclamations will be 
 looked on as a confirmation of that independent spirit with 
 which we are daily reproached.” As yet, even those aggres- 
 sive delegates from Massachusetts were unwilling to give 
 
THE GROWTH OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 493 
 
 color to the charge that they favored independence.* To 
 make a reasonable explanation of the resort to arms while 
 professing allegiance, the Whig leaders denounced the 
 efforts to deprive the colonists of their constitutional rights 
 as emanating from a profligate ministry, and stigmatized 
 those who opposed the American cause as “tools of the 
 ministers,” and the British troops were known as “minis- 
 terial troops.” It was sought to emphasize a distinction be- 
 tween the king and his ministry ; but, indeed, the king was 
 more determined than Lord North, an amiable man, who still 
 hoped for some accommodation. George III was of an 
 arbitrary disposition. Eeing intent to free himself from 
 the great Whig leaders, who had governed ever since the 
 house of Hanover came to the throne, he had placed at the 
 head of affairs Lord North, who was a Tory, and the admin- 
 istration at this period was conducted by Tories. The Par- 
 liament was subservient, but the people were greatly divided. 
 There were those who opposed the administration for politi- 
 cal reasons and others who favored America for industrial 
 and commercial purposes. Men like Horace Walpole con- 
 sidered that the constitution was in danger from the despot- 
 ism of the king, and that the preservation of British liberty 
 was involved in the struggle of the Americans for their rights 
 as British subjects; the merchants and manufacturers real- 
 ized that the prosperity of Great Britain required a cessation 
 of the disturbance. About November i, 1775, Walpole 
 wrote : “The ministers have only provoked and united, not 
 intimidated, wounded or divided, America. At this instant 
 they are not sure that the king has a foot of dominion left 
 on that continent.” “It is certain that the campaign has 
 answered none of the expectations of the administration. It 
 seems to be the opinion now that they will think of pacific 
 measures. They have even talked in Parliament of treating. 
 The Parliament grants whatever is asked ; and yet a great 
 alteration has happened in the administration. The Duke 
 
 *After the event John Adams claimed that he favored indepen- 
 dence as early as the summer of 1775. The question in such cases 
 is, when did he really begin by acts and measures to promote the 
 cause? When did he seek to disseminate views favorable to the 
 success of the cause? The above letter indicates that neither of 
 the Adamses was promoting independence early in December, 1775. 
 
 1775 
 
 The Tory 
 
 ministry 
 
 blamed 
 
 The Whigs 
 in England 
 
 Walpole’s 
 Letters, I, 
 39L 39a 
 
494 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 *775 of Grafton has changed sides, and was turned out last 
 
 Friday. Lord Dartmouth has quitted the American prov- 
 ince and taken the privy seal. Lord George Germaine is 
 made secretary of state for America, and Lord Weymouth 
 has taken the southern province. The town is impatient to 
 see whether this change of men implies any change of meas- 
 ures. I do not see why it should, for none of the new 
 ministers have ever inclined to the Americans ; and I doubt 
 whether the success of the latter will make them have a 
 better disposition toward the present administration. They 
 have felt their strength, and experienced how much less hurt 
 we can do them than we imagined. If they have such ideas 
 of independence as have been imputed to them, and as prob- 
 ably some ambitious men among them may have, we have 
 done nothing to convince them that their plan is impracticable. 
 . . .We must exhaust our men, money, navies and trade. 
 These are the four trifling articles we pay to the old scheme 
 of arbitrary power. When will the kings of England learn 
 how great they may be by the constitution ; how sure of 
 ruin if they try to be despotic? Cannot the fate of the 
 Stuarts teach even the house of Hanover to have common 
 sense ?” 
 
 Tories and Whigs 
 
 On December 24th the council resolved that, “Whereas, 
 Governor Martin hath distributed great numbers of Tory 
 pamphlets in the western parts of this province, where the 
 people are not well informed,” the delegates in congress be 
 desired to secure the best pamphlets to counteract and frus- 
 trate the wicked and diabolical tools of a corrupt ministry. 
 Anterior to this era there had been no political differences 
 . among the colonists. The king and the ministers had since 
 1688 been Whigs and the colonists were in full sympathy 
 with the administration. But when George III broke with 
 the Whigs and formed the first Tory ministry under Lord 
 North, and the measures oppressive to America were de- 
 vised, those who adhered to the ministry and allied them- 
 selves with the Tory party became Tories. 
 
 The other inhabitants, being in the opposition, naturally 
 called themselves Whigs, for the Whigs in England violently 
 
WHIGS AND TORIES 
 
 495 
 
 opposed the administration. Thus these English party names 
 were, in 1775, applicable in America. 
 
 Once introduced they became fixed ; and even after inde- 
 pendence and separation became the object of the struggle, 
 the revolutionists still called themselves Whigs. Likewise 
 the adherents of the Crown continued to be known as Tories, 
 and the name Tory became a term of odium and reproach, 
 synonymous with detested enmity to the country : the Tories 
 being considered traitors and hated as men aiding to de- 
 prive the people of their rights and liberties. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 1775 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 407, 652, 653 
 
 C. R„ X, 
 397 , 487-489 
 
 Plans to 
 embody the 
 Loyalists 
 
 The Provincial Council, 1775-76 — Continued 
 
 Martin prepares to act. — He sends commissions. — The rising. — The 
 Western patriots. — Caswell marches. — At Wilmington. — At Cross 
 Creek. — The Tories embody. — Moore at Rockfish. — AlcDonald 
 marches. — Moore’s Creek. — The battle. — Death of Grady. — The 
 Spoils. — Trouble in Currituck. — The effects of the victory. — In Vir- 
 ginia. — In North Carolina. — Mary Slocumb’s ride. — Reports of 
 Caswell and Moore. 
 
 Martin prepares to act 
 
 Early in December Governor Martin sailed for Charles- 
 ton, where he was detained a month, returning to the Cape 
 Fear only in January. Doubtless his conferences there 
 strengthened his purpose to embody the Loyalists in the 
 interior. His original design had been to send a British 
 battalion to Cumberland as a nucleus around which the 
 Highlanders and Regulators should centre ; but no British 
 force had reached him, although he had been advised that a 
 large expedition was now on the way to the Cape Fear. 
 On his return from South Carolina some of the Loyalists 
 of Brunswick County solicited him not to delay longer, rep- 
 resenting “that the rebel troops were weak ; that one-third 
 of them had not been provided with arms ; that they were 
 equally deficient of ammunition, and that the people were 
 sore under their new-fangled government and had a dispo- 
 sition to revolt ; and that they would engage in a month’s 
 time to raise two or three thousand men.” Major McLean 
 had gone into the interior with instructions to ascertain the 
 number of men that might be relied on ; and now the 
 anxious governor confided a commission to a confidential 
 messenger, recommended by the Brunswick Loyalists, to 
 establish the concert he proposed and to carry necessary 
 instructions to the people of the more distant counties. At 
 length Major McLean brought gratifying assurances that 
 two or three thousand men, one-half of them well armed, 
 would quickly respond to his call. This organization extended 
 
COMMISSIONS TO THE LOYALISTS 
 
 497 
 
 from Surry County to Brunswick, and the plan promised 2 
 
 good hope of success. Again McLean was despatched with 
 powers to proper persons to raise and embody men and 
 with orders to press down to Brunswick by February 15th; 
 and soon came a verbal message “that the Loyalists were in 
 high spirits and very fast collecting ; that they assured them- 
 selves of being six thousand strong, well furnished with 
 wagons and horses ; that they intended to post one thousand 
 at Cross Creek, and with the rest would take possession of 
 Wilmington by February 2^th at farthest.” By these emis- The Tory 
 saries commissions were conveyed to the McDonalds and 
 other Scotch leaders in Cumberland and Anson ; to John c. r., x, 
 Pyle, of the county of Chatham; to William Fields, James 441 
 Hunter, Saymore York, and others, of Guilford; Samuel 
 Bryan and others, of Rowan; Gideon Wright and James 
 Glyn, of Surry; Paul Barringer,* of Mecklenburg; Michael 
 Holt, of Orange ; and Philemon Hawkins, of Bute.* These 
 and their associates were to erect the king’s standard and 
 array his Majesty’s faithful subjects in their respective 
 counties, forming them into companies of fifty men each, 
 and with authority to commission the company officers. The 
 preliminary arrangements having been secretly made, the 
 Loyalists soon were all astir. 
 
 Now the mission of Donald McDonald and Alexander 
 McLeod, who had reached New Bern the previous June, 
 became known. The first had an appointment as brigadier- 
 general and the latter as colonel in the British army, and 
 they had been sent by General Gage to organize not merely 
 an insurrectionary force, but a division of Loyalists in the 
 interior of North Carolina for service in any part of 
 America. At this crisis General McDonald took the chief 
 command, by virtue of his commission. Allan McDonald, 
 the husband of Flora, was appointed by Governor Martin 
 to a subordinate position, but the highest in his gift. He 
 was a man of great influence and high station among his 
 countrymen. As Boswell saw him on his native heath, just 
 prior to his departure for America, he was the bean ideal 
 of a Highland chieftain — of graceful mien and manly looks ; 
 
 *Barringer and Hawkins did not accept these commissions, but 
 were Whigs. Holt and Hunter later took the oath. 
 
498 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1776 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 British 
 
 Invasion, 
 
 Flora 
 
 McDonald 
 
 Ibid., hi 
 
 C. R., X, 
 594 et seq. 
 1 he rising 
 
 C. R., X, 
 443 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 440 
 
 “he had his tartan plaid thrown about him, a large blue 
 bonnet, with a knot of blue ribbons, . . . and brown coat, 
 . . . and tartan waistcoat with gold buttons, ... a bluish 
 filibeg, and tartan hose; ... jet black hair tied behind; 
 ... a large, stately man, with a steady, sensible counte- 
 nance,” then near fifty years of age; a man, indeed, who 
 might well have swayed his countrymen to any enterprise. 
 His wife, who beyond her romantic career had also a pres- 
 ence both notable and attractive, vied with her husband in 
 manifestations of enthusiasm and devoted loyalty. She ac- 
 companied McDonald on horseback in arousing the Scotch 
 to action, visiting the camp and exerting all of her persuasive 
 powers in rallying the people to the standard. 
 
 The entire territory between the Cape Fear and Haw on 
 the east and the waters of the Yadkin on the west, inhab- 
 ited largely by the Highlanders and Regulators, was per- 
 meated by loyal influences, and a close association existed 
 between the chieftains of the Scotchmen and the leaders of 
 those whom Governor Martin distinguished as “the country 
 people.” Both responded with alacrity to the call of the 
 governor, and there was general co-operation throughout 
 that entire region. The Tories of Bladen and Surry and 
 Guilford as well as the Highlanders of Cumberland and 
 Anson prepared for the march and were organized into 
 companies by their local officers. 
 
 At length, on February 5th, there having been a confer- 
 ence of the leaders, Donald McDonald issued his manifesto 
 as the commanding general, inviting all to repair to his 
 Majesty’s royal standard to be erected at Cross Creek. 
 
 The movement then began. Secret at its inception, it now 
 was open, and was at once discovered by vigilant Whigs. 
 Messengers were immediately despatched to give warning to 
 the patriot leaders. It was quickly known in Salisbury, 
 where the district Committee of Safety met on February 6th 
 and issued orders to the county committees to embody and 
 send forward their minute men and militia. 
 
 The western patriots act 
 
 The committee of Rowan, meeting on the same day, urged 
 the disaffected in the forks of the Yadkin to peace, now 
 
LOCAL WHIGS. EMBODY 
 
 499 
 
 at this time, ‘‘when the friends of American liberty in these 
 southern colonies are determined, by the assistance of 
 Almighty God, at the hazard of their lives and fortunes, to 
 quell an insurrection of the blackest nature, fomented and 
 supported by the arts of wicked and abandoned men in the 
 very bosom of this country” ; and the committee “appointed 
 Monday, February 14th, as a day of public fasting, humilia- 
 tion and prayer in this country, and recommended that it be 
 religiously observed.” 
 
 Three days later the Tryon committee hastily convened, 
 and, pursuant to the directions of the district committee, 
 resolved that each captain should detail one-third of the 
 effective men in his district and march to suppress the insur- 
 rection. In every part of the province the same zeal was 
 manifested. There was no hesitation. The action of the 
 Whigs was quick and determined. At the west they collected 
 at Charlotte, Salisbury, and Hillsboro. 
 
 Thomas Person wrote from Hillsboro on February 12th, 
 saying: “Things move very well in this place. The advo- 
 cates for liberty seem very numerous, and by what we hear, 
 their enemies are likely to prove but few in number. In 
 short, we hear that they are mostly dispersed up ahead. . . . 
 ’Tis said that the Scotch in Cumberland are making head. 
 . . . The forces will move from here, 'tis thought, to-morrow 
 for Chatham County, toward Cross Creek.” 
 
 The Loyalists in Surry appear to have been speedily dis- 
 persed by the active Whigs of that county. In Guilford, 
 Colonel James Martin assembled the Whigs at the “Cross 
 Roads,” but the Tories resolutely pressed on. A company 
 of which Samuel Devinny, one of the former Regulators, was 
 the head, being opposed by Captain Dent, killed him. James 
 Lowe and Robert Adams were particularly charged with 
 firing the fatal shots. It thus appears that Captain Dent 
 was the first North Carolinian to fall in the contest. 
 
 An express carrying intelligence that the Loyalists were 
 embodying, and had on the 5th begun to march to Cross 
 Creek, was received by the district Committee of Safety of 
 New Bern on the 10th. The committee immediately directed 
 Colonel Caswell to march with his minute men to suppress 
 the insurrection, and the colonels of Dobhs, Johnston, Pitt, 
 
 1776 
 
 C. R., X, 
 434 
 
 February 
 
 C. R., X 
 
 440 
 
 C. R., X, 
 450 
 
 Captain 
 Dent killed 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 560, 599 
 
 The Whigs 
 in motion 
 
 C. R., X, 
 444 
 
500 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1776 
 
 February 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 465 et seq. 
 At 
 
 Wilmington 
 
 and Craven were ordered to raise the militia of those 
 counties and join Caswell. Similarly, the patriot forces in 
 Mecklenburg and Rowan, in Granville and Bute, in the 
 Hillsboro district and on the Cape Fear, were put in rapid 
 motion. The militia and minute men of Surry, Guilford, 
 Orange, and Chatham, under Colonel Thackston, also hur- 
 ried to the scene of operations. 
 
 On the 9th the express conveying the intelligence of the 
 insurrection reached Wilmington. There the greatest ac- 
 tivity prevailed. All vied in enthusiastic ardor. Colonel 
 Moore issued orders to prepare for marching against the 
 insurgents. The artillery was to be equipped, the companies 
 armed, wagons supplied for transporting the provisions. For 
 eighty hours there was severe, unremitting service, night and 
 day, making preparations. At length, being ready, Colonel 
 Moore, with his regulars and artillery, moved toward Cross 
 Creek, being joined on his route by the Bladen militia. Four 
 days later he was followed by the two companies of minute 
 men of New Hanover under Colonel Lillington and Colonel 
 Ashe’s independent rangers, while Colonel Purviance re- 
 mained with his militia for the defence of the town. On the 
 14th the Cruiser sloop-of-war with a tender passed Bruns- 
 wick, and, fearing an attack, many inhabitants of Wilming- 
 ton moved out, carrying the women and children, and breast- 
 works were thrown up on the principal streets and wharves 
 and on the hills above and below the town. Quickly there 
 came Captain Clinton’s company of minute men from 
 Duplin, a minute company from Onslow, and a part of the 
 militia from Onslow under Colonel Cray, and fifty men from 
 Brunswick under Major Quince. These all assisted in com- 
 pleting the breastworks, mounting the swivels and pre- 
 paring fire rafts. The Cruiser, however, made no attack on 
 the town, but tried to pass up the Clarendon River into the 
 Northwest, with the intention of meeting the Loyalists on 
 their way down and protecting their provision boats from 
 Cross Creek. 
 
 The attempt, however, was abortive. Riflemen on shore 
 attacked the men from the Cruiser whenever they landed, 
 and the water not being sufficient for the vessel to pass, she 
 again fell below the island. 
 
LOYALISTS RENDEZVOUS 
 
 At Cross Creek 
 
 Cross Creek had for months been greatly disturbed. 
 There a few sterling Whigs lived in the very midst of the 
 Tory element. In the early stages of the movement Rob- 
 ert Rowan had formed an independent company, and patri- 
 otically sought to determine the action of the community. 
 But there the Tory leaders held their meetings and resolved 
 upon their course. The first rendezvous was appointed at 
 Cross Hill, near Carthage, in Moore County, on Feb- 
 ruary 5th ; and thence the companies moved to Campbellton. 
 Colonel Thomas Rutherford, who at the previous congress 
 had been chosen colonel of the county, proved unfaithful, 
 and gave in his adherence to the royal cause. He called for 
 a general muster on the 12th. Many, however, would not 
 obey. To arouse them, on the next day he issued a flaming 
 manifesto, entreating, beseeching, and commanding the 
 people to join the king’s army. On the 16th the converging 
 columns began to arrive, and Peter Hay bore the royal 
 standard from Campbellton to Cross Creek, where it was 
 formally erected. Now regiments came in from Anson, 
 Chatham, Guilford, and Bladen, and companies from Orange 
 and Rowan and other communities. The entire number of 
 Loyalists then assembling at Cross Creek was variously esti- 
 mated at between thirty-five hundred and five thousand men. 
 Colonel Cotton, of Anson, and other leaders asserted that 
 there would be five thousand of the Regulators in addition to 
 the Highlanders. But it had been given out that Governor 
 Martin was at Campbellton with a thousand British regulars 
 to receive them, and this report had given an impetus to the 
 movement. On approaching their encampment the state- 
 ment was found to be without foundation, and large num- 
 bers abandoned the cause. Deceived in one matter, the Reg- 
 ulators lost confidence in all other representations made by 
 their leaders, and hundreds retired. 
 
 General McDonald, who had fought at Culloden and at 
 Bunker Hill, was, however, resolute, and, notwithstanding 
 this defection, marshalled his forces, preparing to take up 
 his route to the seacoast. There were two main roads, one 
 on the south of the river to Brunswick and the other crossing 
 Corbett’s Ferry on the Black and leading to Wilmington. 
 
 501 
 
 1776 
 
 Cross Hill 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 429, 452, 4 Qi 
 The royal 
 standard 
 erected 
 
 The 
 
 Regulators 
 
 withdraw 
 
502 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1776 
 
 Moore at 
 Rockfish 
 Creek 
 
 Moore’s 
 
 Report 
 
 McDonald 
 
 moves 
 
 McDonald moved forward some four miles on the former 
 and rested, awaiting developments. On reaching the vicin- 
 ity, Colonel Moore, understanding that the Loyalists would 
 proceed by the former, took post at Rockfish Creek, four 
 miles below McDonald's camp, and held that pass. There 
 he was quickly joined by Rowan and sixty Whigs from 
 Cross Creek, and later was reinforced by Lillington and 
 Ashe and by Colonel Kenan with the Duplin militia, increas- 
 ing his numbers to fifteen hundred. In the meanwhile 
 Colonel Thackston and Colonel Martin were rapidly ap- 
 proaching from the west with still larger reinforcements. 
 On February 19th General McDonald addressed a communi- 
 cation to Moore enclosing the governor’s proclamation, 
 offering free pardon and indemnity for all past transgres- 
 sions if the colonel and his officers would lay down their 
 arms and take the oath of allegiance, “otherwise he should 
 consider them as traitors and take necessary steps to con- 
 quer and subdue them.” Moore replied that he would give 
 a more particular answer the next day, when he would per- 
 haps have an opportunity of consulting with Colonel Mar- 
 tin,* then in the neighborhood. It appears that he sought to 
 prolong the correspondence that Martin and Thackston 
 might arrive. On the night of the 20th, the defection of 
 the Loyalists continuing — indeed, two companies of Cotton’s 
 regiment deserted in a body and McDonald having infor- 
 mation of Caswell’s near approach from the east, the astute 
 British general resolved to wait no longer, and under cover 
 of darkness he crossed the river and took the upper road for 
 Wilmington. At best he would have only Caswell to con- 
 tend with, and he thought to easily overcome that detach- 
 ment. Moore, on learning of the movement, directed 
 Thackston and Martin to take possession of Cross Creek, 
 and ordered Caswell to return and hold Corbett’s Ferry over 
 the Black, while Lillington and Ashe were hurried by a 
 forced march to reinforce Caswell if possible, but if not, to 
 take possession of Moore’s Creek Bridge on the same road, 
 but nearer to Wilmington. In the meantime, as it was ap- 
 prehended that McDonald might attempt to pass through 
 
 *Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Martin, of the Regulars. Lieu- 
 tenant-Colonel James Martin, of the militia, was with Thackston. 
 
BATTLE OF MOORE’S CREEK BRIDGE 
 
 503 
 
 Duplin, pursuing a route still farther to the eastward, the 
 bridges in that county were partly demolished, Colonel Cray 
 holding back Salter’s company for that duty, and the inhab- 
 itants being ready to destroy the others if necessary to 
 obstruct the march of the Tories. At Wilmington, Colonel 
 Purviance was all activity, and to arrest their boats, should 
 they descend the river, he threw a boom across the stream 
 at Mount Misery, four miles above the town, and stationed 
 one hundred and twenty men there, while with another de- 
 tachment he held the pass of Heron’s Bridge, ten miles out 
 on the northeast branch. Having despatched his orders to 
 intercept the progress of the Tory column, Moore hastened 
 to Elizabethtown, hoping to strike McDonald on his route 
 to Corbett’s Ferry or to fall in his rear and surround him. 
 McDonald was a very competent commander, resourceful, 
 and determined. Failing to overtake Caswell, he departed 
 from the regular road, raised a flat that had been sunk in 
 Black River some five miles above Corbett’s Ferry, quickly 
 erected a bridge and passed that stream. Because of this 
 movement, Moore ordered Caswell to retire to Moore’s 
 Creek, and himself hurried toward that point. 
 
 The battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge 
 
 Fillington, unable to make a junction with Caswell, fell 
 down the river in boats, and took post at Moore’s Creek 
 Bridge, and threw up some entrenchments near by ; but later 
 he abandoned that position, moved farther back, and erected 
 other entrenchments, which he strengthened with a few 
 pieces of light artillery. Toward the evening of Feb- 
 ruary 26th Caswell also arrived at the bridge, and after 
 he had crossed it the planks were removed. He placed his 
 troops in a position farther off than that occupied by Filling- 
 ton, who remained on the ground where he had entrenched. 
 The Highlanders and some two hundred Regulators reached 
 the same vicinity that night. General McDonald lay ill at a 
 farmer’s house, and in camp a council was held to determine 
 whether an assault should be made or a detour attempted. 
 McLeod, a trained soldier, who had left his bride (a 
 daughter of Flora McDonald) at the altar in haste to do duty 
 for his king, doubted ; McLean, adventurous, spirited, a 
 
 Caswell’s 
 
 Report 
 
 Uni. Mag., 
 11,305 (18531 
 
504 
 
 1776 
 
 Feb. 27, 1776 
 
 The victory 
 
 The spoils 
 
 C. R., X, 
 485^5591 560, 
 595 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 veritable “spitfire,” emphatically demanded courageous 
 action. “Well,” exclaimed McLeod, as he closed the council, 
 “at dawn to-morrow we will prove who is the coward.” In 
 the early morning their advance crossed the stream, and 
 observing the first entrenchments unoccupied, supposed the 
 road was open. Their commander, McLeod, loudly calling 
 on them to follow, dashed forward ; but the artillery and 
 riflemen at once opened a murderous fire, and the unexpected 
 and destructive volley drove back the head of the column, 
 thirty falling on the ground and a number of others into 
 the stream. The gallant McLeod himself was pierced by 
 twenty balls. McLean survived, in after life sedate, sad- 
 dened by the unhappy fate of the bridegroom of an hour. 
 A detachment was now thrown by Caswell, the commanding 
 officer, across the creek, and it resolutely attacked the dis- 
 ordered Tories, who, having lost their leaders, soon gave 
 way and fled. In a few moments the battle was over. A 
 great victory was won. The insurrection was suppressed 
 by one sharp blow and the peril that threatened the province 
 was averted. Happily, the patriot force escaped with but 
 little loss. Two men were wounded, one of them, however, 
 to the death — John Grady, of Duplin, the first North Caro- 
 linian recorded in history to yield his life on a contested 
 battlefield in the war for independence. 
 
 Routed, the Highlanders quickly dispersed, leaving their 
 general, then quite ill, in the hands of his enemies. Eight 
 hundred and fifty of the insurgents were captured, among 
 them many of their officers. Besides there fell into the 
 possession of the Whigs three hundred and fifty guns and 
 shot bags, one hundred and fifty swords and dirks, fifteen 
 hundred excellent rifles, two medicine chests, fresh from 
 England, one of them valued at £300 sterling; a box of 
 guineas, found secreted in a stable at Cross Creek, reported 
 to be worth £15,000 sterling, and thirteen wagons with their 
 horses — a fortunate addition to the slender supplies of the 
 provincial army. For some days detachments of the Whig 
 troops were occupied in scouring the country, arresting the 
 Loyalists and disarming them. Among those taken were 
 Colonel John Pyle, four of the Fields family, James Hunter, 
 Savmore York, Rev. George Micklejohn, Colonel Ruther- 
 
AGGRESSIVE MOVEMENTS 
 
 ford, of Cumberland, and many of the leaders of the Regu- 
 lators, as well as the McDonalds and other chiefs of the 
 Highlanders. 
 
 The council in session 
 
 President Harnett, in view of the insurrection, had con- 
 vened the Provincial Council at New Bern on February 27th, 
 and the body was in session when information was received 
 of the death blow given to the movement of the Loyalists. 
 Colonel Caswell, being senior in rank to Colonel Lillington, 
 despatched information of his victory, and Colonel Moore 
 made a detailed report to President Harnett of the entire 
 campaign. At once the council adopted resolutions return- 
 ing thanks “to Colonel James Moore and all the brave 
 officers and soldiers of every denomination for their late 
 very important services rendered their country in effectually 
 suppressing the late daring and dangerous insurrection of 
 the Highlanders and Regulators.’’ Equally good accounts 
 being received of Howe’s fine conduct in Virginia, the coun- 
 cil, with just pride in the glorious achievements of North 
 Carolinians, rendered thanks “in the fullest and most hon- 
 orable terms to Colonel Howe and all the brave officers and 
 soldiers under his command for their spirited conduct, hav- 
 ing acquitted themselves greatly to the honor and good of 
 their country.” But in that hour of rejoicing there was 
 also need for action. The scattered insurgents were to be 
 apprehended, and all suspected of Toryism were required 
 to take an oath that they would not under any pretence what- 
 ever oppose the measures of the continental or provincial 
 congresses. 
 
 Almost simultaneously with the rising on the Cape Fear, 
 disaffection manifested itself in Currituck, doubtless stimu- 
 lated by the efforts of Governor Dunmore in Virginia. The 
 militia of Bertie, Martin and some other counties were 
 marched to suppress it ; and the council on March 2d re- 
 turned the warmest thanks to Colonel William Williams 
 and the other gentlemen, officers, and soldiers from the 
 counties of Martin and Bertie for their readiness and spirited 
 conduct in marching against the enemies of their country ; 
 and the congress later made a considerable appropriation to 
 
 505 
 
 1776 
 
 C. R., X, 469 
 
 Moore and 
 
 Howe 
 
 thanked 
 
 C. R., X, 
 472, 571 
 
 Rising in 
 Currituck 
 
5°6 
 
 1776 
 
 Frothing- 
 ham, Rise 
 of the 
 Republic, 
 5°3 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 pay the militia of Bute, led by Colonel Hawkins against the 
 insurgents during the “late Currituck expedition.” 
 
 It being known that a British army was on its way to 
 the South, the Continental Congress had recommended the 
 Provincial Council to confer with the authorities of Vir- 
 ginia and of South Carolina to devise means of defence ; 
 and Sam Johnston, Thomas Jones, and Thomas Person were 
 directed to go to Virginia, and Abner Nash and John 
 Kinchen to Charleston, to consult on measures for the secur- 
 ity of these colonies. As additional troops would certainly 
 be needed, Colonel Polk and Major Phifer were directed to 
 recruit seven hundred and fifty men to form a new con- 
 tinental regiment ; and congress was called to meet at Hali- 
 fax on April 2d. 
 
 The effects of the victory 
 
 Governor Martin was greatly disconcerted by this ending 
 of the movement from which he had hoped so much ; but he 
 was not discouraged, and attributed the falling off of the 
 country people from the enterprise to their disappointment 
 in finding that a deception had been practised on them by 
 the representation that he himself with one thousand regu- 
 lars was at Cross Creek. He still expected that if such a 
 force were to penetrate into the interior thousands of Loyal- 
 ists would flock to his standard, and he represented to the 
 ministry “that the little check the Loyalists have received 
 will not have any extensive ill consequences. All is recover- 
 able by a body of troops penetrating into the country.” 
 
 And so, indeed, it was. The Loyalists, though disheart- 
 ened, generally remained faithful to the Crown. Disarmed 
 and deprived of their leaders, many of whom had been cap- 
 tured and confined, they had no heart to undertake any new 
 movement, but thousands of them continued during the long 
 years of the struggle unfriendly to the American cause and 
 devoted adherents of Great Britain. 
 
 On the Whigs the victory had a potent effect. It animated 
 them with hope, established confidence in their prowess, and 
 added fuel to the fires of patriotism. Their spirit ran high. 
 “You never knew the like in your life for true patriotism,” 
 wrote a North Carolinian to his correspondent in Philadel- 
 
THE RESULTS OF VICTORY 
 
 phia, and the newspapers teemed with the details of the 
 brilliant victory. Another Carolinian, writing to the 
 Remembrancer, said : 
 
 It is inconceivable to imagine what joy this event has diffused 
 through this province ; the importance of which is heightened by 
 Clinton and I.ord William Campbell’s being now in Cape Fear. . . . 
 How amazingly mortified must they prove in finding that ... in 
 less than fifteen days [we] could turn out more than ten thousand 
 independent gentlemen volunteers. . . . Since I was born I never 
 heard of so universal an ardor for fighting prevailing, and so per- 
 fect a union among all degrees of men. ... I think the province 
 will and ought to call for hostages from the Regulators and High- 
 landers to be safely kept in some other province, beyond the possi- 
 bility of a rescue, during the present commotions. 
 
 Independence 
 
 Ten months had passed since the clash of arms at Lexing- 
 ton had roused the passion of the patriots, and now Moore’s 
 Creek brought joy throughout the colonies. 
 
 The ease with which a well-devised and widely extended 
 insurrection had been quelled excited an ardor that stirred 
 the Revolutionists from the seaboard to the mountains. The 
 iroa had entered into their souls in the time of peril, and 
 now in the exultation and rejoicing there was mingled a 
 higher resolve, and suddenly the nature of the contest 
 changed. Theretofore reconciliation had been desired ; now, 
 as if by magic, the watchword became independence, and 
 the thoughts and aspirations of the people were centred on 
 entire and final separation. No longer as British subjects, 
 but as American freemen, they dared the hazard of the 
 struggle. 
 
 Similar experiences, perhaps, worked a like result in Vir- 
 ginia. In April a great change was noted in that province. 
 Whereas in March the Virginians were not favorable to 
 independence, in April they were almost unanimous for it. 
 A letter written from Halifax about the middle of April, 
 which may be attributed to Hooper, who had just arrived 
 from Philadelphia, says : 
 
 I arrived here after a tedious journey. As I came through Vir- 
 ginia, I found the inhabitants desirous to be independent from 
 Britain. However, they were willing to submit their opinion on the 
 
 507 
 
 1776 
 
 The spirit of 
 the Whigs 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 286, 287 
 
 The change 
 in purpose 
 
 Frothing- 
 
 ham, 
 
 Rise of the 
 
 Republic, 
 
 503 
 
5°8 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1776 
 
 N. C. Uni. 
 Mag , II, 
 157,158(1853) 
 
 Mrs. Ellet’s 
 Women of 
 Am. Rev., 
 II, 361 
 
 subject to whatever the general congress should determine. North 
 Carolina by far exceeds them, occasioned by the great fatigue, 
 trouble and danger the people here have undergone for some time 
 past. Gentlemen of the first fortune in the province have marched 
 as common soldiers, and, to encourage and give spirit to the men, 
 have footed it the whole time. Lord Cornwallis with seven regiments 
 is expected to visit 11s every day. Clinton is now in Cape Fear with 
 Governor Martin, who has about forty sail of vessels, armed and un- 
 armed, waiting his arrival. The Highlanders and Regulators are 
 not to be trusted. Governor Martin has coaxed a number of slaves 
 to leave their masters in the lower parts; everything base and 
 wicked is practised by him. These things have wholly changed 
 the temper and disposition of the inhabitants, that are friends to 
 liberty. All regard or fondness for the king or nation of Britain is 
 gone ; a total separation is what they want. Independence is the 
 word most used. They ask if it is possible that any colony, after 
 what has passed, can wish for a reconciliation. The Convention 
 have tried to get the opinion of the people at large. I am told that 
 in many counties there is not one dissenting voice. * 
 
 Mary Slocumb’s ride 
 
 There is recorded a picturesque narrative that illustrates 
 the furor which pervaded the entire Whig section when the 
 fathers, husbands, and brothers of the families hurried out 
 to meet the Tories in February, 1776. War had never be- 
 fore visited that section, but now was at their very doors. 
 Its unknown terrors inflamed the imagination and disturbed 
 every household. Anxiety pervaded every heart. The men 
 courageously marched to the front, the women suffered 
 dreadful solicitude. Mrs. Mary Slocumb, the wife of 
 Captain Ezekiel Slocumb, gave this account of the experi- 
 ence that befell her. Their residence was on Neuse River, 
 in what is now Wayne County : “The men all left on Sunday 
 morning. More than eighty went from this house with my 
 husband. . . . They got off in high spirits, every man step- 
 ping high and light. And I slept soundly and quietly that 
 night, and worked hard all the next day ; but I kept thinking 
 where they had got to — how far, where, and how many 
 Regulators and Tories they would meet ; and I could not 
 keep myself from the study. I went to bed at the usual 
 
 *The name of the writer of this letter is not stated, but from 
 internal evidence the author attributes it, without doubt, to Hooper. 
 
MARY SLOCUMB'S RIDE 
 
 5°9 
 
 time. ... As I lay — whether waking or sleeping I know 
 not — I had a dream, yet it was not all a dream. I saw dis- 
 tinctly a body wrapped in my husband’s guard cloak, bloody, 
 dead, and others dead and wounded on the ground. ... I 
 saw them plainly and distinctly. I uttered a cry and sprang 
 to my feet on the floor ; and so strong was the impression on 
 my mind that I rushed in the direction the vision appeared. 
 . . . The fire in the room gave little light, and I gazed in 
 every direction to catch another glimpse of the scene. . . . 
 If ever I felt fear it was at that moment. Seated on the bed, 
 I reflected . . . and said aloud, ‘I must go to him.’ ... I 
 went to the stable, saddled my mare — as fleet and easy a nag 
 as ever travelled — and in one minute we were tearing down 
 the road at full speed. ... I knew the general route our 
 little army expected to take, and had followed them without 
 hesitation.” All night long she rode through the pinev for- 
 ests of Duplin and New Hanover counties. Then continuing, 
 she said : “About sunrise I came upon a group of women 
 and children standing and sitting by the roadside, each one 
 of them showing the same anxiety of mind I felt. . . . 
 Again was I skimming over the ground through a country 
 thinly settled, and very poor and swampy, . . . when I 
 heard a sound like thunder, which I knew must be cannon. 
 It was the first time I ever heard a cannon. I stopped still, 
 when presently the cannon thundered again. The battle 
 was then fighting. ... I could hear muskets ; I could hear 
 rifles ; I could hear shouting. I spoke to my mare, and 
 dashed on in the direction of the firing and the shouts, now 
 louder than ever. ... A few yards from the road, under a 
 cluster of trees, were lying perhaps twenty men. They were 
 the wounded. I knew the spot, the very trees, and the posi- 
 tion of the men I knew as if I had seen it a thousand times. 
 I had seen it all night. I saw all at once ; but in an instant 
 my whole soul was centred in one spot, for there, wrapped 
 in his bloody guard cloak, was my husband’s body! How 
 I passed the few yards from my saddle to the place I never 
 knew. I remember uncovering his head and seeing a face 
 clotted with gore from a dreadful wound across the temple. 
 I put my hand on the bloody face; ’twas warm, and an un- 
 known voice begged for water ... it was Frank Cogdell. 
 
5 TO 
 
 1776 
 
 Caswell, 
 the victor 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 . . . Just then I looked up, and my husband, as bloody as a 
 butcher and as muddy as a ditcher, stood before me.” It 
 is said that Slocumb’s company was of the detachment that 
 forded the creek and, penetrating the swamp, made the 
 furious charge on the Tory rear that decided the fate of 
 the day. 
 
 Colonel Caswell’s report to President Harnett: 
 
 Camp at Long Creek, Feb. 29, 1776. 
 
 Sir : I have the pleasure to acquaint you that we had an engagement 
 with the Tories, at Widow Moore’s Creek Bridge,* on the 27th cur- 
 rent. Our army was about one thousand strong, consisting of the 
 New Bern battalion of minute men, the militia from Craven, John- 
 ston, Dobbs and Wake, and a detachment of the Wilmington battalion 
 of minute men, which we found encamped at Moore’s Creek the 
 night before the battle, under the command of Colonel Lillington. 
 The Tories, by common report, were 3000 ; but General McDonald, 
 whom we have a prisoner, says there were about fifteen or sixteen 
 hundred. He was unwell that day, and not in the battle. . . . 
 
 The Tories were totally put to the route, and will certainly disperse. 
 Colonel Moore arrived at our camp a few hours after the engagement 
 was over. His troops came up that evening, and are now encamped 
 on the ground where the battle was fought. And Colonel Martin 
 is at or near Cross Creek, with a large body of men. Those, I pre- 
 sume, will be sufficient effectually to put a stop to any attempt to 
 embody again. I therefore, with Colonel Moore’s consent, am re- 
 turning to New Bern with the troops under my command, where I 
 hope to receive your orders to dismiss them. There I intend carry- 
 ing the general. t If the council should rise before my arrival, be 
 pleased to give order in what manner he shall be disposed of. Our 
 officers and men behaved with the spirit and intrepidity becoming 
 
 freemen, contending for their dearest privileges. _ „ 
 
 Richard Caswell. 
 
 Report of Colonel Moore to President Harnett: 
 
 Wilmington, March 2, 1776. 
 
 Sir: On the earliest intelligence that the Tories were collecting and 
 embodying at Cross Creek, which I received on February 9th, I pro- 
 
 *“Widow Moore’s,” on Black River, was a well-known plantation 
 as early as 1737. The line dividing the Welsh Tract from Rocky 
 Point began on Black River at “Widow Moore’s.” From there the 
 Welsh Tract district extended to the bounds of the precinct or 
 county. It was so called, apparently, because laid off by the Evanses 
 for a settlement of Welshmen. (Records of New Hanover, A.D. 
 1 737-) 
 
 tGeneral McDonald. 
 
MOORE'S REPORT 
 
 ceeded to take possession of Rockfish Bridge, within seven miles of 
 Cross Creek, which I considered as an important post. This I effected 
 on the 15th with my own regiment, five pieces of artillery, and a 
 part of the Bladen militia ; but as our numbers were by no means 
 equal to that of the Tories, I thought it most advisable to entrench 
 and fortify that pass, and wait for a re-enforcement. By the 19th 
 I was joined by Colonel Lillington with 150 of the Wilmington 
 minute men. Colonel Kenan with 200 of the Duplin militia, and 
 Colonel Ashe with about one hundred of the volunteer independent 
 rangers, making our numbers, then, in the whole about eleven hun- 
 dred; and from the best information I was able to procure the Tory 
 army under command of General McDonald amounted to about 
 fourteen or fifteen hundred. On the 20th they marched within four 
 miles of us, and sent in by a flag of truce the governor’s proclama- 
 tion, a manifesto and letter from the general, copies of which, to- 
 gether with another letter and my answers, you have enclosed. I 
 then waited only until Colonel Martin and Colonel Thackston, who 
 I had certain intelligence were on their march, should get near 
 enough to cut off their retreat, and then determined to avail myself 
 of the first favorable opportunity of attacking them. However, con- 
 trary to my expectations, I learned on the 21st that they had the 
 night before, and that morning, crossed the Northwest river at 
 Campbellton with the whole army, sunk and destroyed all the boats, 
 and taken their route the most direct way to Negro-head Point.* 
 I then despatched an express to Colonel Caswell, who was on his 
 march to join us with about eight hundred men, and directed him 
 to return and take possession of Corbett’s Ferry over Black River, 
 and by every means to obstruct, harass and distress them in their 
 march. At the same time I directed Colonel Martin and Colonel 
 Thackston to take possession of Cross Creek, in order to prevent 
 their return that way. Colonel Lillington and Colonel Ashe I 
 ordered by a forced march to endeavor if possible to re-enforce 
 Colonel Caswell ; but if that could not be effected to take possession 
 of Moore’s Creek Bridge, while I proceeded back with the remainder 
 of our army to cross the Northwest at Elizabethtown, so as either 
 to meet them on their way to Corbett’s Ferry, or fall in their rear 
 and surround them there. On the 23d I crossed the river at Eliza- 
 bethtown, where I was compelled to wait for a supply of provisions 
 until the 24th at night, having learned that Colonel Caswell was 
 almost entirely without. Just when I was prepared to march, I 
 received an express from Colonel Caswell, informing me that the 
 Tories had raised a flat which had been sunk in Black River, about 
 
 *The point opposite Wilmington between the two branches of 
 the Cape Fear River. 
 
 511 
 
 1776 
 
 Moore’s 
 
 campaign 
 
512 
 
 1776 
 
 Moore's 
 
 campaign 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 five miles above him, and by erecting a bridge had passed it with 
 the whole army. I then determined as a last expedient to proceed 
 immediately in boats down the Northwest River to Dollerson’s Land- 
 ing, about sixty miles, and to take possession of Moore’s Creek 
 Bridge, about ten miles from thence; at the same time acquainting 
 Colonel Caswell of my intentions, and recommending to him to 
 retreat to Moore’s Creek Bridge if possible, but if not to follow on 
 in their rear. The next day by four o’clock we arrived at Dollerson's 
 Landing, but as we could not possibly march that night, for the 
 want of horses for the artillery, I despatched an express to Moore’s 
 Creek Bridge to learn the situation of affairs there, and was in- 
 formed that Colonel Lillington. who had the day before taken his 
 stand at the bridge, was that afternoon reenforced by Colonel Cas- 
 well, and that they had raised a small breastwork and destroyed a 
 part of the bridge. 
 
 The next morning, the 27th, at break of day, an alarm gun was 
 fired, immediately after which, scarce allowing our people a mo- 
 ment to prepare, the Tory army, with Captain McLeod at the head, 
 made their attack on Colonel Caswell and Colonel Lillington, and 
 finding a small entrenchment next the bridge, on our side, empty, 
 concluded that our people had abandoned their post, and in the most 
 furious manner advanced within thirty paces of our breastwork and 
 artillery, where they met a very proper reception. Captain McLeod 
 and Captain Campbell fell within a few paces of the breastwork, 
 the former of w r hom received upward of twenty balls in his body; 
 and in a very few minutes their whole army was put to flight, and 
 most shamefully abandoned their general, who was next day taken 
 prisoner. The loss of the enemy in this action from the best ac- 
 counts we have been able to learn, is about thirty killed and 
 wounded, but as numbers of them must have fallen into the creek, 
 besides many more that were carried off, I suppose their loss may 
 be estimated at about fifty. We had only two wounded, one of 
 whom died this day. . . . 
 
 In order to avoid as much as possible the heavy expense unavoid- 
 ably incurred by this expedition, I sometime ago directed Colonel 
 Martin to disband all the troops under his command, except one 
 thousand, including the regulars, and with those to secure the per- 
 sons and estates of the insurgents, subject to your further orders, 
 and then to proceed to this place, unless otherwise directed. How- 
 ever, as I do not think the service just now requires such a number 
 of men in arms, I shall immediately direct them to disband all ex- 
 cept the regulars, and with those to remain in and about Cross 
 Creek until further orders, . . . etc. 
 
 James Moore. 
 
THE SIXTH EPOCH— 1775-83 
 
 THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 The Provincial Council, 1775-/6 — Continued 
 
 The Provincial Congress. — The spirit of independence. — In the 
 Continental Congress. — At Halifax. — The committee. — The un- 
 daunted spirit to declare independence. — The delegates instructed. 
 — North Carolina leads the way. — The captured Tories. — The 
 drums and colors. — War measures.- — On the water. — The Tories. 
 — Four new battalions. — For defence of Cape Fear. — Militia 
 drafts. — Civil affairs. — The members of the congress. 
 
 The Provincial Congress 
 
 Called to meet on April 2d, it was not until Thursday, 
 the 4th, that a majority of the members of the congress 
 assembled at Halifax. Seldom has a body met under similar 
 circumstances. The insurrection of the Highlanders and 
 Regulators and the movement of the Tories in many parts 
 of the State were in themselves causes of inquietude. It 
 was evident that in many counties, indeed, in nearly every 
 community, there was a considerable element of disaffected 
 persons not only unwilling to sustain the revolutionary move- 
 ment but so far attached to the royal cause as to take up 
 arms against their neighbors. Besides, the province stood 
 in the shadow of a great peril. It was well known that a 
 large British force was on its way to the Cape Fear and 
 had been detained only by protracted storms, and its arrival 
 was now daily expected. Dunmore, from the Chesapeake, 
 was also sending expeditions along the coast to harass the 
 inhabitants, capture vessels, and interrupt commerce. Within 
 and without there was cause for foreboding. The jail at 
 Halifax was filled with officers of the insurgent force and 
 promoters of the insurrection, of whom some disposition 
 had to be made to render them harmless, while policy and 
 
 1776 
 
 April, 
 
 C. R., X, 
 499 
 
 The 
 
 situation 
 
5H 
 
 1776 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 275 
 
 The 
 
 development 
 of the 
 purpose 
 
 C. R.,X, 
 
 446, 447 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 wise statesmanship required that a conciliatory course should 
 be pursued reconciling the Loyalists at least to an acqui- 
 escence in the measures of the congress. The period for 
 which the minute men had been enrolled was expiring, and 
 the great need for additional troops, for arms, ammunition, 
 and equipments was a cause of anxious solicitude, while the 
 province was absolutely without funds. The condition of 
 affairs, too, seemed to demand a more efficient system of 
 government, one that could direct military operations and 
 conduct the civil administration with more despatch than 
 the temporary arrangement that had been adopted by the 
 previous convention. Such a pressure of important matters 
 demanding immediate consideration and prompt action had 
 never before been experienced by North Carolina statesmen. 
 But the courage of the congress rose equal to the occasion, 
 and with brave hearts the patriots addressed themselves to 
 devising measures required by the exigency of their novel 
 situation. 
 
 The spirit of independence 
 
 Not only were they strengthened by their overwhelming 
 and glorious victory, but now they were animated by the 
 spirit of independence. In this they were unanimous. Sam 
 Johnston, the wise, prudent, and cautious, the counsellor and 
 guide, was again chosen president without dissent, and he 
 joyfully wrote at once to his brother : “All our people here 
 are up for independence.” A fortnight later, when Hooper 
 and Penn came from Philadelphia, they learned that “in 
 many counties there was not a dissenting voice.” 
 
 The Continental Congress and the people of the other 
 provinces were dilatory, dallying with a delusive hope of 
 reconciliation. Early in January Paine had published in 
 Philadelphia a pamphlet, “Common Sense,” that arrested 
 attention. Among the deputies it seems to have been re- 
 garded “as a curiosity.” Save a few individual expressions 
 in local papers, it was the first cry for independence since 
 Mecklenburg had raised her voice in May, 1775. A month 
 later Penn, always among the boldest, sent a copy to Person 
 without comment; and Hewes forwarded one to Johnston, 
 saying only: “It is a curiosity. We have not put up any 
 
THE CRY FOR INDEPENDENCE 
 
 515 
 
 to go by the wagon,* not knowing how you might relish 
 independency. The author is not known ; some say Dr. 
 Franklin had a hand in it; he denies it.” Hewes’s spirit led 
 him to say : “All accounts from England seem to agree that 
 we shall have a dreadful storm bursting on our heads 
 through all America in the spring. We must not shrink 
 from it ; we ought not to show any symptoms of fear ; the 
 nearer it approaches and the greater the sound, the more 
 fortitude and calm, steady firmness we ought to possess. If 
 we mean to defend our liberties, our dearest rights and 
 privileges against the power of Britain to the last extremity, 
 we ought to bring ourselves to such a temper of mind as to 
 stand unmoved at the bursting of an earthquake. Although 
 the storm thickens, I feel myself quite composed.” 
 
 At the close of October the king had from the throne 
 charged the colonies with levying war for the purpose of 
 establishing an independent empire ; but he proposed, while 
 employing a hireling force from the continent to subdue 
 them, to send commissioners with power to grant pardons 
 and receive the submission of the several colonies. He would 
 not, however, treat with the Continental Congress. That 
 was resolutely determined. By two to one the Parliament 
 was of the same mind. Such was the information that came 
 across the seas early in January. And yet the congress and 
 the people waited — anxiously waited for the arrival of the 
 commissioners. On February 14th Penn wrote to Person : 
 “Our dispute with Great Britain grows serious indeed. 
 Matters are drawing to a crisis. They seem determined to 
 persevere, and are forming alliances against us. Must we 
 not do something of the like nature ? Can we hope to carry 
 on a war without having trade or commerce somewhere? 
 
 . . . The consequence of making alliances is perhaps a total 
 separation with Britain, and without something of that sort 
 we may not be able to provide what is necessary for our de- 
 fence. My first wish is that America may be free ; the 
 second, that we may be restored to peace and harmony with 
 Britain upon just and proper terms.” 
 
 Two days later, on February 16th, it was proposed to open 
 the ports and renew commerce with all the world except 
 *For general distribution. 
 
 1776 
 
 February 
 
 nth 
 
 In the 
 
 Continental 
 
 Congress 
 
 C. R„ X, 
 
 455 ? 456 
 
 Foreign 
 
 alliances 
 
 At Philadel- 
 phia 
 
THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 5*6 
 
 1776 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 289 
 
 C R , X, 
 494i 495 
 
 At Halifax, 
 April 4th 
 
 C. R., X, 
 5°4 
 
 The 
 
 undaunted 
 
 spirit 
 
 Great Britain. In the discussion, Wythe, of Virginia, said : 
 “How, as subjects of Great Britain — as rebels? No; we 
 must declare that the colonies have a right to contract alli- 
 ances with foreign powers !” The eloquent Virginian struck 
 the same chord as Penn ; but the question of opening the 
 ports, involving this difficulty, was destined to remain unde- 
 cided for more than two months. 
 
 Later Hewes wrote to Johnston: “I see no prospect 
 of a reconciliation ; nothing is left now but to fight it out. 
 Nor are we unanimous in our councils. Jealousies, ill- 
 natured observations, and recriminations take place of 
 reason and argument. Some among us urge strongly for 
 independency and eternal separation, others wish to wait a 
 little longer and to have the opinion of their constituents on 
 that subject. You must give us the sentiments of your prov- 
 ince when your convention meets.” And on March 1 st, the 
 North Carolina deputies wrote to the Provincial Congress 
 asking directions concerning forming alliances. 
 
 On the organization of the Provincial Congress, Johnston 
 was unanimously called to preside, and committees were at 
 once appointed to map out the business of the body. 
 Now it was determined to arrange for at least one year of 
 actual war, and a committee of ways and means was directed 
 to devise measures for supporting troops to be raised for 
 that period. A committee of secrecy was appointed, of 
 which Johnston was the head, to whom all intelligence was 
 first submitted, and it was their province to determine what 
 should be imparted to the congress itself. And on the 
 fourth day of the session, April 8th, a committee composed 
 of Harnett, Allen Jones, Burke, Nash, Kinchen, Person, and 
 Thomas Jones was appointed to take into consideration the 
 usurpations and violences attempted and committed by the 
 king and Parliament of Britain against America, and further 
 measures to be taken for frustrating them and for the better 
 defence of the province. 
 
 The congress — all the members — were unanimous for sep- 
 aration, for declaring themselves no longer British sub- 
 jects, but citizens of a new-born nationality. It was a mo- 
 mentous matter. It would change the nature of the struggle. 
 Not as subjects rebelling against the oppressions of Par- 
 
APRIL 12, iy/6 
 
 liament, but as freemen asserting the right of self-govern- 
 ment, were they now to invoke the arbitrament of arms. The 
 congress took steps to sound the people. It was ascertained 
 that the popular heart was strong for independence. In 
 many counties there was not a dissenting voice. Ominous 
 was the war cloud now gathering and expected soon to 
 burst on the devoted province. Already forty sail had 
 anchored in the harbor of the Cape Fear. There Clinton 
 with his detachment from the aiorth waited the arrival of 
 Cornwallis with his seven regiments to subjugate the people. 
 The prospect was full of peril. But the hearts of the 
 patriots did not quail. Under the lead of Johnston, Harnett, 
 Ashe and their associates their spirit rose to loftier heights 
 as dangers thickened. 
 
 On the night of April 12th the congress having received 
 some very important intelligence,* at once took up for con- 
 sideration the letter of March ist, from Hooper, Hewes and 
 Penn, asking instructions in regard to forming alliances. 
 
 Harnett’s committee was resolute and ready to report ; 
 short and vigorous was the conclusion of the matter. What- 
 ever of doubt there had been was now cast aside. The 
 bonds binding the people to the past were to be broken, and 
 a new purpose, a new hope, that of independence, was to 
 animate them to action. The question Wythe had thun- 
 dered at Philadelphia was answered by the congress at 
 Halifax. 
 
 To declare independence 
 
 Early Saturday morning Johnston wrote to his brother : 
 “The house, in consequence of some very important intelli- 
 gence received last night, have agreed to empower their 
 delegates at Philadelphia to concur with the other colonies 
 in entering into foreign alliances, and declaring an indepen- 
 dence on Great Britain. I cannot be more particular.” 
 
 On the night before, Friday, April 12th, the committee 
 brought in its report, reciting the acts of the British min- 
 istry and of the king and Parliament and authorizing the 
 delegates to the Continental Congress to concur in declaring 
 independence. 
 
 *Apparently from General Moore. (S. R., XI., 276.) 
 
 5U 
 
 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 276 
 
 C. R., X, 
 495 
 
1776 
 
 C. R., X, 
 5»2 
 
 To concur 
 in declaring 
 independ- 
 ence 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 They reported as follows : 
 
 “It appears to your committee that pursuant to the plan 
 concerted by the British ministry for subjugating America, the 
 king and Parliament of Great Britain have usurped a power 
 over the persons and properties of the people unlimited and un- 
 controuled ; and disregarding their humble petitions for peace, 
 liberty, and safety, have made divers legislative acts, ■ denouncing 
 war, famine and every species of calamity against the continent in 
 general : the British fleets and armies have been and still are daily 
 employed in destroying the people and committing the most horrid 
 devastations bn the country : that governors in different colonies 
 have declared protection to slaves who should imbrue their hands 
 in the blood of their masters : that the ships belonging to America 
 are declared prizes of war, and many of them have been violently 
 seized and confiscated. In consequence of all which, multitudes of 
 the people have been destroyed, and from easy circumstances reduced 
 to the most lamentable distress. 
 
 “And whereas the moderation hitherto manifested by the united 
 colonies and their sincere desire to be reconciled to the mother 
 country on constitutional principles, have procured no mitigation 
 of the aforesaid wrongs . . . and no hopes remain of obtaining re- 
 dress by those means alone which have been hitherto tried, your 
 committee are of opinion that the house should enter into the fol- 
 lowing resolve, to wit : 
 
 “Resolved, That the delegates of this colony in the continental 
 congress be empowered to concur with the delegates of the other 
 colonies in declaring independency, and forming foreign alliances, 
 reserving to this colony the sole and exclusive right of forming a 
 constitution and laws for this colony, and of appointing delegates 
 from time to time (under the direction of a general representation 
 thereof), to meet the delegates of the other colonies for such pur- 
 poses as shall be hereafter pointed out.’’ 
 
 Night had already closed in ; but doubtless with burning 
 words Harnett, accomplished and silver-tongued, urged the 
 adoption of the resolution presented by the committee with 
 all his powers. It was unanimously accepted as the voice 
 of North Carolina. No other business was transacted, but 
 the session of the day closed with this great performance. 
 The next day President Johnston wrote to Hooper, Hewes, 
 and Penn in great haste : “The congress have likewise taken 
 under consideration that part of your letter* requiring their 
 
 *Of March 1st. 
 
NORTH CAROLINA LEADS 
 
 instructions with respect to entering into foreign alliances, 
 and were unanimous in their concurrence with the enclosed 
 resolve, confiding entirely in your discretion with regard to 
 the exercise of the power with which you are invested.” 
 
 But Hooper and Penn were then in Virginia on their 
 route to Halifax, where they arrived in time to take their 
 seats on Monday, the 15th. They had the gratification of 
 finding the congress responsive to the sentiment of the 
 people, pronounced for independence, and earnest and 
 zealous for defence. 
 
 The first action 
 
 Indeed, this resolution for independence was the first 
 utterance for separation that had been made on behalf of any 
 colony in America. Mecklenburg’s voice and action in May, 
 1775, annulling all the commissions and powers derived from 
 the Crown and establishing an independent government, was 
 then premature and out of harmony with the spirit of the 
 times; even now the people “of the other colonies from New 
 England to Virginia were in solid array against indepen- 
 dence.” This first voice of any province leading the way 
 gave heart to the patriots and strengthened the independent 
 spirit which was beginning to manifest itself in other com- 
 munities. “It was warmly welcomed by the patriots and 
 commended for imitation.” In Virginia the idea of inde- 
 pendence was said to have been alarming in March, but was 
 welcome in April ; and a month after North Carolina had 
 acted the Virginia convention met and adopted a similar 
 resolution, directing its delegates in congress to propose 
 independence and separation. But it is the crowning glory 
 of North Carolina that her sons had the manhood and spirit 
 to desire independence, the wisdom to perceive that the 
 change in the purpose of the contest would add to the prob- 
 abilities of a successful achievement and the boldness to lead 
 the way. 
 
 The captured Tories 
 
 One of the first questions that claimed the attention of 
 congress was the disposition of the prisoners taken at 
 
 519 
 
 1776 
 
 C. R., X, 
 5>6 
 
 Frothing- 
 ham’s 
 Rise of the 
 Republic, 
 504, 509 
 
 Virginia acts 
 in May 
 
520 
 
 '776 
 
 Care of the 
 prisoners 
 
 C. R., X, 
 560 
 
 Policy 
 towards the 
 Tories 
 
 C. R., X, 
 548 , 549 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 Moore’s Creek. They had been confined in the Halifax jail. 
 Because his health was suffering, General McDonald was 
 immediately paroled to the town, and a day or two later 
 Allan McDonald was also admitted to parole. A committee 
 was appointed to examine into the cases of the different 
 prisoners, about fifty of whom were paroled to return home, 
 while some were directed to be removed to other communi- 
 ties within the province, being allowed reasonable time to 
 arrange their affairs at home, and with the privilege of 
 removing their families, as they should prefer. George 
 Micklejohn was paroled to Perquimans, and James Hunter 
 to Bute. James Lowe and Robert Adams, who shot Captain 
 Dent, were ordered to Halifax jail. Persons were appointed 
 in the several counties to look after the families of the insur- 
 gents at their old homes or in their new ones. 
 
 Eventually, toward the end of April, it was determined 
 that fifty-three of the number, including General McDonald 
 and other influential Highlanders, should be removed to 
 Pennsylvania, and others to Virginia and Maryland, where 
 they were confined until exchanged or discharged by con- 
 gress.* In view of the rigorous measures which the con- 
 gress felt constrained to take with regard to these insur- 
 gents, on April 29th it issued a declaration lamenting the 
 necessities and hardships of the occasion, and declaring to 
 those who still remained in the State that, “We administer 
 this consolation — that they may rest assured that no wanton 
 acts of cruelty, no severity, shall be exercised to the prison- 
 ers. . . . We have their security in contemplation, not to 
 make them miserable. In our power, their errors claim our 
 pity, their situation disarms our resentment. We shall hail 
 their reformation with increasing pleasure, and receive them 
 to us with open arms, . . . and shall bless the day which 
 shall restore them to us friends to liberty, to the cause of 
 America, the cause of God and mankind. . . . Much de- 
 pends upon the future demeanor of the friends of the insur- 
 gents who are left among us as to the treatment our pris- 
 oners may experience. Let them consider them as hostages 
 for their own good behavior, and by their own merits make 
 kind offices to their friends a tribute of duty as well as 
 *They were confined at Reading, Pa., and Staunton, Va. 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR WAR 
 
 52f 
 
 humanity from us who have them in our power.” The 
 declaration from which this is extracted was directed to be A P ril 
 translated into Erse, and the committees appointed in the 
 several counties to take care of the families of the insurgents 
 were directed to see that there was no suffering. 
 
 The drums and colors 
 
 On the day the convention met there arrived at Halifax McRee’s 
 the wagon sent by the delegates at Philadelphia with powder, J 7 e 5 e ’ ’ 
 drums and colors, as ordered by the council in December. 
 
 Up to this time, as far as appears, the troops of the province 
 had used no colors. At Charleston a flag bearing a crescent 
 was in use. At Boston, the Massachusetts troops used a 
 flag with a pine tree, the pine tree having for a century been 
 the emblem of that colony. On the sea, the early flag bore a xhe flag 
 rattlesnake, with the legend, “Don’t tread on me.” The first 
 flag of the united colonies was made at Philadelphia and 
 sent to General Washington, who raised it on January 2, 
 
 1776, at his headquarters at Cambridge. This flag consisted 
 of seven red and six white bars or stripes and a field of 
 the king’s colors, red and white crosses on a blue ground. 
 
 It has been said that until 1777 the snake flag was used by 
 the southern states; but as the colors received in April were T heredand 
 sent by the North Carolina deputies from Philadelphia after wlllte bars 
 the striped flag had been made and used by Washington as 
 the continental colors, it is surmised that they were of that 
 pattern. 
 
 To supply the money needed in the military operations, 
 
 congress directed the issue of $1,000,000 in notes, and re- 
 solved that a tax should be laid on the poll, beginning in the 
 year 1780, to retire that issue; and appropriations were made 
 to pay all the soldiers, militia and others that had been in 
 the service of the province, and for arms and equipments. 
 Commissioners were also appointed to procure sulphur, salt- 
 petre, and salt, and to establish ironworks and foundries on 
 Deep River. 
 
 On the water 
 
 The Cape Fear and Chesapeake Bay being closed, and 
 Beaufort frequently visited by British cruisers, the impor- 
 tance of Ocracoke Inlet as a channel of commerce became 
 
522 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1776 
 
 cCr., X, 
 353> 636, 637 
 64O-642 
 
 Importa- 
 
 tions 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 550 
 
 The war 
 the water 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 593, 594 
 
 greatly increased. The enterprising merchants of Edenton 
 and New Bern and of the village of Washington on the 
 Pamlico despatched vessel after vessel abroad, whose return 
 cargoes of salt, powder, cannon and other munitions of war 
 and necessaries contributed largely to supply the needs of 
 the public. The firms of Hewes & Smith, at Edenton, and 
 John Wright Stanly, at New Bern, took the lead in this 
 hazardous enterprise. Their patriotism and unremitting ac- 
 tivity proved of great advantage to the American cause. 
 Others also engaged in the same work, and besides trading 
 vessels, there were fitted out privateers to prey on British 
 commerce, while the State itself constructed armed cruisers 
 for the public service. At Wilmington the George Washing- 
 ton was built; at New Bern, the Pennsylvania Farmer; at 
 Edenton, King Tammany ; while the Heart of Oak , the 
 Polly and other vessels were granted letters of marque as 
 privateers. 
 
 In order to interrupt importations through Ocracoke, Dun- 
 more sent two armed sloops, the Lily and the Fincastle, to 
 seize such vessels as might be there ; and on April 14th the 
 Lily captured the schooner Polly, removed part of her cargo 
 and left a prize crew in charge of her. But the patriots were 
 not idle. Three days later a number of armed men, in five 
 whaleboats, captured the Lily and retook the Polly, the 
 Whigs showing as much enterprise and skill on the water 
 as on the land. 
 
 Because considerable importations were made through 
 this channel for the benefit of Virginia as well as for the 
 Continental Congress, of which Hewes was one of the most 
 efficient agents, it was thought that Virginia should aid in 
 keeping Ocracoke open. Application was therefore made to 
 that province to fit out two armed vessels to act ip conjunc- 
 tion with those equipped by North Carolina. The sugges- 
 tion was acted on promptly, and two large row-galleys were 
 built at South Quay by Virginia, one of which afterward 
 came into possession of North Carolina. 
 
 The Tories 
 
 In different parts of the province the disaffected element 
 made manifestations of their Toryism. In Edgecombe a 
 
ACTIVITY OF THE TORIES 
 
 523 
 
 body was dispersed by a party of Whigs under John John- 
 ston ; and the Committee of Safety of Rowan thought it well 
 to disarm some of the inhabitants of Muddy Creek. But, 
 on the other hand, that committee was cheered by patriotic 
 resolutions signed by a number of ladies of Rowan, as had 
 been the committee of Mecklenburg by resolutions entered 
 into somewhat earlier by the young ladies of that county, 
 that they would not receive the addresses of young gentle- 
 men except the brave volunteers who had served in the expe- 
 dition against the Scovellites. The women of the west 
 were as resolute as the men. 
 
 The difficulties of enrolling the militia who were to turn 
 out and supplying them with arms was forcibly stated by 
 Colonel William Bryan, of Johnston, who was almost in 
 despair from the adverse circumstances that surrounded him. 
 He added : “We have several obstinate persons in this 
 county, and I believe they are great Tories in their hearts ; 
 they are constantly sowing sedition in the minds of the 
 people. I should be glad if the light horse could be directed 
 to take a turn through our county. I believe if there could 
 be a few of the heads of them subdued it would be of great 
 service to the county. I have so little dependence in the 
 militia that I don’t think convenient to undertake to subdue 
 them that way.” 
 
 1776 
 
 Foote, 
 Sketches of 
 North 
 Carolina, 
 5ii 
 
 C. R., X, 
 611 
 
 Four new battalions 
 
 In view of the pressing necessity for more troops, the con- Additional 
 gress now raised four additional continental regiments, mentT 
 assigning to their command Jethro Sumner, Thomas Polk, 
 
 Edward Buncombe, and Alexander Lillington. The period 
 for which the minute men were enlisted having expired, 
 some of the officers of that organization were transferred 
 to these new regiments, among them Colonel James Thack- 
 ston becoming lieutenant-colonel under Colonel Polk. Three 
 companies of light horse were also raised, commanded re- 
 spectively by John Dickerson, Martin Phifer, and James 
 Jones. An artillery company was directed to be organized 
 by Captain John Vance. To protect the coast, five companies 
 were embodied and stationed from Currituck to the Cape 
 Fear. Two battalions of militia, seven hundred and fifty men 
 
THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 524 
 
 1776 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 561 
 
 The militia 
 
 C. R., X, 
 563 
 
 The forces 
 embody 
 
 C R., X, 
 563 
 
 Vestrymen 
 to take the 
 test oath 
 
 C. R., X, 
 554 
 
 each, were directed to be raised in the eastern districts, one 
 to be under the command of Colonel Thomas Brown and the 
 other under Colonel Philemon Hawkins. These battalions, 
 the Second Continental Regiment, and all the recruits en- 
 listed for the new regiments were ordered to report imme- 
 diately to General Moore on the Cape Fear. 
 
 A new system was devised for the militia. The com- 
 panies of the militia in the several counties were to consist 
 of not less than fifty men. Each company was divided into 
 five divisions. One of these consisted of the aged and infirm, 
 the other militiamen being apportioned to four divisions, 
 that drew lots to ascertain when they should go on duty, 
 and were severally known as number one, two, three, and 
 four, accordingly. Each county had its militia field officers ; 
 and the province was divided into six military districts, a 
 brigadier-general being appointed for each. In his own 
 district the brigadier took rank of the others. The militia 
 was not to be under continental officers, except when ordered 
 by the civil power to join the continental troops, and then 
 the continental officer of equal rank took command. 
 
 On May 6th, because of information from General Moore, 
 the congress directed the generals of the province to call 
 out their militia and hasten to join General Moore, and or- 
 dered General Ashe to take command of the re-enforce- 
 ments upon their arrival in his district. The generals 
 elected by the congress were Allen Jones, for the Halifax 
 district ; John Ashe, Wilmington ; Edward Vail, Edenton ; 
 Griffith Rutherford, Salisbury ; Thomas Person, Hillsboro ; 
 and William Bryan, New Bern.* 
 
 Notwithstanding the military matters that were pressing 
 on the attention of congress that body realized the necessity 
 of making provision for the civil life of the province. On 
 May 1 st it resolved that all vestries elected in every parish, 
 having taken the test adopted on August 23, 1775’ should 
 proceed to parochial business, and where no election had 
 taken place on Easter Monday, April 8th, the freeholders 
 were directed to meet in July and elect vestrymen, who 
 should qualify themselves by subscribing the test. Con- 
 
 *Richard Caswell was at first chosen brigadier-general of the New 
 Bern district, but did net serve. 
 
PERSONNEL OE THE CONGRESS 
 
 5 2 5 
 
 formably to this resolution, the vestry of Edenton on 
 June igth met and signed the test, as probably did all the 
 other vestrymen chosen throughout the province, and as all 
 the committees and other officers were required to do. It 
 was the duty of the vestrymen in every county or parish 
 to look after the poor and attend to much business not of 
 an ecclesiastical nature. 
 
 Members of the congress of April, 1776, that declared for inde- 
 pendence, April 12, 1776 
 
 For Anson County — Daniel Love, Samuel Spencer, John Craw- 
 ford, James Picket and John Childs. 
 
 Beaufort — Roger Ormond. Thomas Respis, Jr., and John 
 Cowper. 
 
 Bladen — Nathaniel Richardson, Thomas Robeson, Maturan Col- 
 vill, James Council and Thomas Amis. 
 
 Bertie — John Campbell, John Johnston and Charles Jacocks. 
 
 Brunswick — 
 
 Bute — Green Hill, William Alston, William Person, Thomas 
 Sherrod and Philemon Hawkins. 
 
 Craven — James Coor, Lemuel Hatch, John Bryan, William Bryan 
 and Jacob Blount. 
 
 Carteret — William Thompson, Solomon Shepard and John Black- 
 house. 
 
 Currituck— Samuel Jarvis, James White, James Ryan, Gideon 
 Lamb and Solomon Perkins. 
 
 Chowan — Samuel Johnston, Thomas Benbury, Thomas Jones, 
 John Bap. Beasly and Thomas Hunter. 
 
 Cumberland— David Smith, Alexander McAlister, Farquard 
 Campbell, Thomas Rutherford and Alexander McCoy. 
 
 Chatham — Ambrose Ramsay. John Thompson, Joshua Rosser, 
 Jeduthan Harper and Elisha Cain. 
 
 Duplin — Thomas Gray and William Dickson. 
 
 Dobbs — Richard Caswell, Abraham Sheppard, George Miller, 
 Simon Bright and William McKinnie. 
 
 Edgecomb — William Haywood, Duncan Lemon, Elisha Battle, 
 Henry Irwin and Nathaniel Boddie. 
 
 Granville — Thomas Person, John Penn, Memucan Hunt, John 
 Taylor and Charles Eaton. 
 
 Guilford — Ransom Southerland. William Dent and Ralph Gorrill. 
 
 Hyde — Rotheas Latham, Joseph Hancock, John Jordan and Ben- 
 jamin Parmele. 
 
526 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL, 1775-76 
 
 1776 Hertford — Robert Sumner, Matthias Brickie, Laurence Baker, 
 
 William Murfree. 
 
 Halifax — John Bradford. James Hogan, David Sumner, Joseph 
 John Williams and Willis Alston. 
 
 Johnston — Samuel Smith, Jr., Needham Bryan, Jr., and Henry 
 Rains. 
 
 Mecklenburg — John Phifer, Robert Irwin and John McKnitt 
 Alexander. 
 
 Martin — William Williams, Whitmill Hill, Kenneth McKenzie, 
 Thomas Wiggins and Edward Smythwick. 
 
 New Hanover — John Ashe, John Devane, Samuel Ashe, Sampson 
 Moseley and John Hollingsworth. 
 
 Northampton — Allen Jones, Jeptha Atherton, Drury Gee, Samuel 
 Lockhart and Howell Edmunds. 
 
 Onslow — George Mitchell, Benejah Doty, John Spicer, John King 
 and John Norman. 
 
 Orange — John Kinchen, James Saunders, John Butler, Nathaniel 
 Rochester and Thomas Burke. 
 
 Perquimans — Miles Harvey, William Skinner, Thomas Harvey, 
 Charles Blount and Charles Moore. 
 
 Pasquotank — Thomas Boyd, Joseph Jones, William Cuming, 
 Dempsey Burgess and Henry Abbott. 
 
 Pitt — John Simpson, Edward Salter and William Robson. 
 
 Rowan — Griffith Rutherford and Matthew Locke. 
 
 Surry — Joseph Williams. Joseph Winston, Charles Gordon. 
 
 Tyrrell — Archibald Corrie. 
 
 Tryon — Charles McLean, James Johnston. 
 
 Wake— Joel Lane, John Hinton, John Rand, William Hooper and 
 Tignal Jones. 
 
 Town of Bath — William Brown. 
 
 New Bern — Abner Nash. 
 
 Edenton — Joseph Hewes. 
 
 Wilmington — Cornelius Harnett. 
 
 Brunswick — 
 
 Halifax — Willie Jones. 
 
 Hillsborough — William Johnston. 
 
 Salisbury — David Nisbet. 
 
 Cambellton — Arthur Council. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 The Council of Safety, 1776 
 
 Attempt to frame the Constitution. — Fundamental principles. — The 
 problems involved. — The temporary government. — Congress ad- 
 journs.— The first invasion. — General Lee. — Clinton’s disappointment. 
 
 — The fleet arrives.— The ardor of the Whigs. — Clinton offers par- 
 don.— No hostile movement. — The descent on Brunswick. — The regi- 
 ments land. — The fleet sails. — The Council of Safety. — The attack 
 on Fort Moultrie. — North Carolina’s gallant troops. — Affairs at 
 home. — The Continentals. 
 
 Attempt to frame a constitution 
 
 On April 13th the congress, now flushed by the desire UJl 
 
 of independence, appointed a committee composed of C- R -> x ’ 
 Johnston, Harnett, Thomas Jones, Nash, Burke, Allen Jones, 
 
 John Johnston, Thomas Person, Sam Ashe, Samuel Spencer 
 and nine others to prepare a temporary civil government. April 
 The committee seems to have at once undertaken to cast a 
 permanent constitution. A majority of the committee demJcra y 
 favored the establishment of a purely democratic form of advocaud 
 government, the governor, judges, and all other officers 
 being chosen by the people, and every freeman having the 
 right of suffrage. They were probably led to urge this Jones’s 
 
 i Defence 
 
 departure from the old system not merely from the advo- 277, 278 
 cacv of the “inherent and unalienable rights of man,” but 
 with the hope and expectation that it would gain for the 
 new government the support of the landless Highlanders and 
 of others not freeholders, and of the Regulators, who were 
 dissatisfied with the colonial regulations that had proved 
 so oppressive in their practical operation. 
 
 This desire to extend suffrage is said to have been the rock 
 on which the public men split. As yet there was no curb to 
 the will of the legislative body. Never had a court declared 
 any legislative action a nullity. Once elected and in pos- 
 session of power the Assembly could extend its sessions and 
 
528 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF SAFETY, 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 Divergen- 
 
 cies 
 
 Apprehen- 
 
 sions 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 276 
 
 Jones’s 
 Defence, 
 278, 279 
 
 exert arbitrary sway, ignoring all limitations and every 
 restriction that might be embodied in the constitution ; and 
 it was apprehended that a judiciary dependent on the will 
 of the people would lack that stability and independence 
 which constitute the safeguard of personal rights and of 
 property. The fundamental principles on which the new 
 government was to be founded thus became a matter of the 
 gravest concern. Divergencies at once arose. There were 
 those who proposed to give the fullest recognition to the 
 rights of the people as a source of all power, and others 
 who deemed it wiser and more prudent not to inaugurate 
 such a change in the administration of affairs as this would 
 necessarily involve. Theretofore suffrage had been limited 
 to freeholders; and the judiciary was appointed. Samuel 
 Johnston, who had been the most influential man in the 
 province, felt that the despotism of a democracy was to be 
 feared, and that a judiciary resting on the popular will, with 
 the judges not independent, but courting popularity, would 
 be intolerable ; and he was determined in his opposition to 
 the establishment of a government without any practical 
 limitation to its powers, and with the tenure of all the great 
 offices dependent on the favor of the inhabitants generally. 
 In his view those who advocated this system were “already 
 entering on the race for popularity,” and he apprehended 
 that the greatest evils would result from such a plan of 
 government. Instead of a pure democracy, he urged the 
 establishment of a representative republic, with annual elec- 
 tions to hold the legislature in check. Educated in New 
 England, he was a thorough republican. But he agreed 
 with John Adams, who had written a dissertation on gov- 
 ernment advising the establishment of new constitutions on 
 the very principles that Johnston advocated. He would not 
 yield. On April 17th he wrote: “I must confess our pros- 
 pects are at this time very gloomy. Our people are about 
 forming a constitution. From what I can at present collect 
 of their plan, it will be impossible for me to take any part 
 in the execution of it.” 
 
 Being overborne, on the 18th he withdrew from the 
 committee; but the next day Thomas Jones, also a con- 
 servative, but not so avowed in his principles as Johnston, 
 
CONSERVATIVE vs. RADICAL 
 
 529 
 
 notified him that the disagreeable difficulty which had inter- 1771 
 
 rupted the harmony of the committee had been adjusted, 
 and invited him to meet the other members that evening. 
 
 And again, on April 20th, Johnston wrote: “We have not 
 yet been able to agree on a constitution. We have a meeting 
 on it every evening, but can conclude on nothing ; the great 
 difficulty in our way is how to establish a check on the 
 representatives of the people, to prevent their assuming 
 more power than would be consistent with the liberties of 
 the people, such as increasing the time of their duration, 
 and such like. . . . Some have proposed that we should take McRee’s 
 up the plan of the Connecticut constitution for a ground- 276,277 
 work, but with some amendments, such as that the- great of- 
 ficers, instead of being appointed by the people at large, 
 should be appointed by the Assembly ; that the judges of our 
 courts should hold their offices during good behavior. After 
 all, it appears to me that there can be no check on the repre- 
 sentatives of the people in a democracy but the people them- 
 selves ; and in order that the check may be more efficient, I 
 would have annual elections.” 
 
 Up to that time there had been no new constitution 
 adopted in any province except alone South Carolina. The 
 people of Connecticut were then living, and continued to 
 live until 1818, under the charter granted in 1662 by 
 Charles II, by which the governor and twelve assistants 
 and the general assembly were chosen by a majority of the 
 freemen of the colony; but the governor and his assistants 
 were empowered to erect courts and appoint judges and 
 otherwise administer public afifairs. On March 26th South The 
 Carolina had adopted a constitution to regulate the internal of n s S outh lon 
 polity of the colony “until an accommodation of the unhappy Carohna 
 differences between Great Britain and America can be ob- 
 tained.” By it the electors were to be the same as under the 
 old laws, and they were to choose members of the general 
 assembly, who were to select out of themselves a legislative 
 council to form a separate and distinct house, with equal leg- 
 islative power as the Assembly itself ; and these two houses 
 were to choose a president of the province and a council 
 of state. A printed copy of this constitution was obtained 
 by the North Carolina congress. On April 28th Thomas 
 
530 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF SAFETY, 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 277, 278 
 
 The first 
 outline 
 
 The con- 
 stitution 
 postponed 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 
 2 7 Q 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 579 
 
 The Council 
 of Safety 
 
 Jones wrote : "The constitution goes on but slowly. The 
 outlines of it made their appearance in the house for the 
 first time yesterday, and by the last of this week it probably 
 may be finished. The plan as it now stands will be subject 
 to many alterations ; at present it is in the following manner : 
 First, a house of the representatives of the people, all free 
 householders of one year’s standing to vote ; and second, a 
 legislative council, to consist of one member from each 
 county in the province, to sit as an upper house ; and these 
 two houses are to be a check on each other, as no law can 
 be made without the consent of both, and none but free- 
 holders will have a right to vote for the members of this 
 council. Next, an executive council, to consist of the presi- 
 dent and six councillors, to be always sitting, to do all 
 official business of government. . . . The president and 
 council to be elected annually, as also the Assembly and leg- 
 islative council.” The judicial system apparently had not 
 been agreed on. 
 
 Johnston had so far prevailed that there were to be annual 
 elections of assemblymen ; and at least one branch of the 
 Assembly was to be elected by freeholders. For two days 
 this outline was debated by the convention in committee of 
 the whole, but the divergencies were pronounced and other 
 matters required attention, so on April 30th the subject was 
 postponed until November ; and a new committee, com- 
 posed, however, of some of the same members, was directed to 
 report a temporary form of government until the end of the 
 next congress. Although Johnston was not a member of the 
 new committee, his relations with it were so close that on the 
 second day after its appointment he wrote : “Affairs have 
 taken a turn within a few days past. All ideas of forming 
 a permanent constitution are at this time laid aside. It is 
 now proposed for the present to establish a council to sit 
 constantly, and county committees to sit at certain fixed 
 periods, but nothing is concluded.” Ten days elapsed before 
 the report of the new committee was considered by the 
 house. Then, as Johnston had indicated, a Council of Safety 
 was appointed to sit from day to day at such places as they 
 should think prudent and proper. The Provincial Council 
 and the district committees were abolished. 
 
CONSTITUTION OF COUNCIL OF SAFETY 
 
 53 1 
 
 As before, the members from each district selected two 
 members and the congress one. But now Willie Jones, a 
 leader among those who differed with Johnston, was selected 
 by the congress in his stead. The other changes were : 
 Nash, Kinchen, Spencer, and Avery gave place to Simpson, 
 Rand, Hezekiah Alexander, and William Sharpe, while J. J. 
 Williams filled the vacancy for Halifax. 
 
 Having on May 12th made this provision for the admin- 
 istration of provincial affairs, two days later the congress 
 adjourned. Although it was a reasonable inference that 
 those who opposed the views of Samuel Johnston were in 
 the majority in the body, yet when it became necessary for 
 him to leave the chair, on May 2d, Allen Jones, also a con- 
 servative, was elected vice-president; and on its adjournment 
 the congress, in tendering thanks to its president for bis 
 faithful discharge of his duties, was particular to add that 
 he had “in that, as in all other stations, approved himself 
 the firm and liberal patron of liberty and a wise and zealous 
 friend and asserter of the rights of mankind.” But when 
 Johnston left the hall it was not to return as a representa- 
 tive until the differences of that period had faded from 
 memory. 
 
 1776 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 581 
 
 Samuel 
 
 Johnston 
 
 C. R., X, 
 59 ° 
 
 The first invasion 
 
 Toward the end of January General Clinton was detached 1776 
 from the British army at Boston with a small command to 
 conduct operations elsewhere. When his departure became 
 known, General Charles Lee was directed to repair to New 
 York, his supposed destination. They arrived at that point 
 on the same day, February 4th, but Clinton openly avowed 
 that his expedition was intended for North Carolina. Such 
 an avowal was received with doubt. On his sailing from 
 New York, the Continental Congress created the Southern 
 Department, assigned the command to General Lee, and on Mooreand 
 March 1st, appointed Moore and Howe brigadier-generals. J!™ e bri e a - 
 Lee hastening to Virginia reached Williamsburg simultane- 
 ously with Clinton’s arrival in the Chesapeake. The British Lee joins 
 general lingered with Dunmore until early in April, when he Virginia 
 joined Governor Martin below Brunswick; still it was appre- 
 hended that the real point of attack would be Virginia, 
 
532 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF SAFETY, 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 May 
 
 C R., X, 
 556 
 
 Lee re- 
 ceived at 
 Halifax 
 
 The fleet 
 arrives 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 296 
 
 and Lee remained there a month making preparations to 
 meet it. 
 
 Already were there many vessels in the Cape Fear harbor, 
 drawn together in connection with the intended invasion, 
 but week after week passed without the arrival of Sir Peter 
 Parker’s fleet bringing Cornwallis and his seven regiments 
 of regulars. A succession of disastrous storms had delayed 
 the vessels. Nor was this the only disappointment of the 
 British commander. Instead of the promised support from 
 the interior, instead of an army of Loyalists ready to co- 
 operate, he found a hostile force awaiting him, and that the 
 unexpected catastrophe that had befallen McDonald neces- 
 sitated an entire change of plans. 
 
 Lee, following Clinton, had himself started southward, 
 preceded by General Howe, directing Howe’s North Caro- 
 linians under Major Patten and Muhlenberg’s Virginia 
 regiment to follow. On May 2d Howe reached Halifax, 
 and on the floor of the house, pursuant to a resolve of the 
 congress, the president returned him thanks for his con- 
 duct during the whole of the late dangerous, important, 
 and critical campaign, and more especially for the reputation 
 the North Carolina troops acquired under his command. 
 General Lee was then approaching the border, and Colonel 
 Long was directed to receive him at the boundary with a 
 detachment of troops and escort him to the congress. From 
 Halifax the general passed on to New Bern, making himself 
 acquainted with the condition of affairs in the province. 
 
 At length, about May 1st, the grand fleet began to arrive 
 in the harbor, and all doubt about its destination being now 
 removed, Moore despatched the news to the congress at 
 Halifax. That body at once ordered all the continental 
 battalions to report to General Moore, and in addition to 
 the battalion that had been raised for Colonel Brown, a draft 
 of fifteen hundred more militia was made from the eastern 
 districts, those from Halifax and Edenton being assigned 
 to the command of Colonel Peter Dauge. No drafts were 
 made from the western districts, because of a particular 
 purpose of importance at that time, but the western regi- 
 ments were to hold themselves in readiness. This doubt- 
 less was to have a reserve force near at hand to suppress 
 
THE BRITISH INVASION 
 
 533 
 
 any further rising by the Tories. The Whigs of North 
 Carolina now displayed a glorious ardor, and rushed with 
 impetuosity to the scene of the expected conflict. Soon it 
 was estimated that the patriot force collected on the Cape 
 Fear numbered ninety-four hundred men, all but the con- 
 tinentals being under the command of General Ashe. The 
 approaches to the town were fortified, and vessels were sunk 
 in the channel a few miles below to prevent an attack by 
 water. Every preparation was made for stubborn resistance. 
 
 It had been announced that the king, ignoring the Con- 
 tinental Congress, would send commissioners to treat with 
 each province separately, and it was thought that these 
 commissioners might come with the fleet. North Carolina, 
 spurning the suggestion that she could be detached from 
 the general cause of America, resolved that “if such com- 
 missioners should arrive in this province, unless with a 
 commission to treat with the Continental Congress, they 
 should be required to return immediately to their vessel ; and 
 if at any time thereafter they should be found on shore they 
 should be seized and sent to congress.” But these commis- 
 sioners did not come with Sir Peter Parker. Later they 
 landed at the north after independence was declared, but 
 their errand was bootless. 
 
 After full consultation with Governor Martin, and, indeed, 
 with Governor Tryon at New York, as to the best course to 
 be pursued to detach the people from the revolutionary gov- 
 ernment in North Carolina, General Clinton on May 5th 
 issued a proclamation inveighing against the tyranny of the 
 congresses and committees and entreating the people to avoid 
 the miseries attendant on civil war by a return to the bless- 
 ings of a free government. He offered pardon to all who 
 should submit to the laws except alone Cornelius Harnett 
 and Robert Howe. Howe had given great offence to Martin 
 by preparing the address to the king in 1774 and procuring 
 it to be sent through Governor Tryon instead of Governor 
 Martin ; he had also been among the very first to form com- 
 panies and train the people to arms, and had expelled Dun- 
 more from the soil of Virginia as the previous year he had 
 assisted in driving Martin from the soil of North Carolina. 
 In this last enterprise Harnett also had been a conspicuous 
 
 1776 
 
 Pref. Notes, 
 C. R., X, 
 xiii 
 
 May 
 
 Prepara- 
 tions for 
 defence 
 
 The king’s 
 commis- 
 sioners 
 
 C. R., X, 
 59 1 
 
 Clinton’s 
 
 proclama- 
 
 tion 
 
 Harnett and 
 Howe ex- 
 cepted from 
 pardon 
 
534 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF SAFETY, 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 The badge 
 of honor 
 
 Moore and 
 Ashe ready 
 
 Jones’s 
 
 Defence, 
 
 261 
 
 The burning 
 of Orton 
 mill 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 39 6 i 39 8 
 
 Martin, 
 Hist. North 
 Carolina, II, 
 39°, 39i 
 
 actor, and now lie was the president of the State when 
 congress was not in session and at the head of the revolu- 
 tionary government. The exception of these two patriots 
 from the tender of pardon served only as a badge of hon- 
 orable distinction, endearing them still more to the patriots 
 of North Carolina. Two days after issuing this proclama- 
 tion Clinton landed two regiments and made a recon- 
 noissance in force into the interior, without, however, bring- 
 ing on any engagement. Moore and Ashe held their forces 
 well in hand ready for any emergency. They prepared to 
 contest any advance Clinton might make ; but days passed 
 without any hostile movement. Besides the direct route into 
 the interior, there was another, which it was feared the 
 British might take, and three hundred and fifty horsemen 
 guarded that road to give warning of such a movement and 
 to impede it should Clinton make the venture. A hundred 
 vessels lay at the entrance of the harbor opposite Fort 
 Johnston, and a detachment of continentals, a hundred and 
 fifty men, under Major William Davis, of the First Bat- 
 talion, was stationed near Brunswick to hold marauders in 
 check. Their headquarters were established at the mill of 
 the Orton plantation, in the vicinity of the town. On Sun- 
 day, May 1 2th, between two and three o’clock, Cornwallis 
 hastily threw ashore nine hundred troops, with the purpose 
 of surprising and capturing that post. Vigilant sentries, 
 however, watched the enemy, and these resolutely opened 
 fire, giving the alarm, and Major Davis removed his stores 
 and provisions and withdrew his detachment by a timely 
 movement. Cornwallis, nevertheless, lost one man killed, 
 several wounded, and a sergeant of the Thirty-third Regi- 
 ment, who was taken prisoner. Foiled in his purpose, his 
 lordship burned the empty mill, and after remaining some 
 hours in the village of Brunswick, he ravaged the neighbor- 
 ing plantation of General Howe, carrying off some twenty 
 bullocks as the reward of his enterprise. Three days later 
 five of the British regiments went into quarters at Fort 
 Johnston and one on Baldhead, leaving one on board the 
 ships. The larger part of the American forces remained 
 near Wilmington ready for any movement, while a consider- 
 able body was encamped some two or three miles from the 
 
BRITISH LEAVE THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 535 
 
 enemy near Fort Johnston. Thus matters stood day after 
 day during that period of apprehension and anxiety, but 
 Clinton made no movement. 
 
 It being known that the Tories had been disarmed, no aid 
 was expected from them should a column be thrown into 
 the interior ; and it was apprehended that any attempt at 
 subjugation would result in a protracted campaign, which 
 might not be terminated before the troops would be needed 
 for more important movements then in contemplation. And 
 in that event the withdrawal of the force, with subjugation 
 not completed, would have the appearance of defeat, entail- 
 ing worse consequences than would attend making no imme- 
 diate effort to subdue the inhabitants. Influenced by these 
 considerations, General Clinton deemed it inadvisable to be- 
 gin at that time operations in North Carolina, and deter- 
 mined to use the army in connection with the war vessels 
 to reduce Charleston. So toward the end of May the fleet 
 sailed, coming to anchor off that harbor on June 7th. 
 
 Governor Martin accompanied Clinton, but there were left 
 on the station several vessels, one of which, the Jenny , was 
 the abiding place of a considerable number of Tories, who, 
 deserting their habitations, had sought protection with the 
 fleet. Among these were persons instructed by the gov- 
 ernor to maintain a correspondence with the Loyalists of 
 the interior and give them every possible encouragement 
 during his absence. Governor Martin continued with Gen- 
 eral Clinton during the siege of Charleston, and accompanied 
 him later on his return to the north. 
 
 The Council of Safety 
 
 While the British army was still in the harbor, it was 
 considered that the Council of Safety should convene at 
 Wilmington, and the members met there on June 5th, and 
 Cornelius Harnett was unanimously chosen president.* The 
 immediate danger had then passed. But affairs were in a 
 
 *Some writers have erroneously supposed because Sam Johnston 
 and Willie Jones were chosen to represent the province in the 
 Council of Safety that they presided in the council, but not so. 
 Harnett was chosen to preside over both bodies. He was president of 
 the Sons of Liberty in the six counties of the Cape Fear in 1770, and 
 doubtless from their organization in 1765. 
 
 1776 
 
 Operations 
 
 abandoned 
 
 C. R., X, 
 653 
 
 The fleet 
 sails 
 
 The Jenny 
 
 C. R., X, 
 653, 654 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 619 
 
536 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF SAFETY, 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 C. R., X, 
 6.18 
 
 To suppress 
 dissatisfac- 
 tion 
 
 Coal and 
 iron on 
 Deep River 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 649 
 
 Armed 
 vessels fitted 
 out 
 
 turmoil. There were some outlying malcontents, concerned 
 in the insurrection, now in the swamps of Bladen, who sent 
 information to General Ashe that they were desirous of 
 submitting themselves to the council ; and it was resolved 
 that they would be allowed to return to their homes on taking 
 an oath to fight when called on in the American cause. 
 
 Efforts to inflame the minds of the people in Edgecombe 
 and Dobbs were so important that Colonel Sheppard was 
 directed to call out as many of the militia as were necessary 
 to arrest those who were endeavoring to dissuade the people 
 from sustaining the congress ; similar action was taken with 
 regard to Johnston County, while in Cumberland two com- 
 panies of light horse were placed under the control of 
 Colonel Folsome to maintain the authority of the congress. 
 
 The council continued its efforts to provide munitions of 
 war, and also a supply of salt, so absolutely necessary for 
 the soldiers as well as the inhabitants ; and an arrangement 
 was made for the use of Wilcox’s bloomery and forge on 
 Deep River, some thirty miles south of Hillsboro, where 
 good iron was produced from ore beds. The presence of 
 coal in the immediate vicinity and the great profusion of nat- 
 ural supplies led the commissioners to report : “Upon the 
 whole, nature has poured out with a bountiful hand on that 
 part of our country everything necessary for the establish- 
 ment of an extensive iron manufactory.” 
 
 The brig Pennsylvania Fanner, which had been equipped 
 under the orders of congress, lay then at New Bern, and the 
 council directed that she should be armed with eight of the 
 cannon lately imported; and Richard Ellis, of New Bern, 
 applied for letters of marque and reprisal for his armed 
 sloop, the Heart of Oak, of seventy tons burden ; and George 
 Dennison, the captain of the vessel, was given letters per- 
 mitting him to act against the enemies of the thirteen united 
 colonies ; and Edward Tinker, captain of the armed schooner 
 Johnston, belonging to John Green and others, of New Bern, 
 was also given letters of marque. Vessels were constantly 
 arriving through Ocracoke with arms and munitions, one, 
 the Little Thomas, having brought in twenty pieces of 
 cannon. 
 
 Several of the prisoners who had been sent to Philadelphia 
 
BRITISH ATTACK CHARLESTON 
 
 537 
 
 and Virginia having made their escape and returned to 
 their homes, now began using their utmost influence to infect 
 others with their Tory principles ; among them were 
 Dr. Pyle and his son John. Colonel Folsome, in command 
 in Cumberland, was directed to march with a party of horse, 
 with the utmost secrecy, and to arrest them again. There 
 were many other evidences of disaffection, and to counter- 
 act those influences required prompt action on the part of 
 the busy members of the council, who were under a great 
 strain because of the public affairs, much being of a delicate 
 nature, that pressed upon them. 
 
 The attack on Fort Moultrie 
 
 On the departure of the fleet from the Cape Fear, Lee 
 hastened to Charleston, accompanied by Howe, where he 
 arrived early in June. Moore remained at Wilmington, but 
 two continental regiments under Nash and Martin reached 
 Charleston on June nth, followed later by the Virginia regi- 
 ment and the Third and Fouth Continentals, not then needed 
 at Cape Fear. A rifle regiment raised at the west likewise 
 repaired to Charleston. Felix Walker, afterward long a 
 member of congress from the Buncombe district, says in his 
 “Autobiography”: “I was appointed lieutenant in Captain 
 Richardson’s company in the rifle regiment. I returned to 
 Watauga and recruited my full proportion of men and 
 marched them to Charleston in May, 1776, joined the regi- 
 ment, and was stationed on James Island.” 
 
 When the fleet dropped anchor off the bar the Charles- 
 tonians barricaded their streets and prepared to defend the 
 wharves of the city, and soon troops were stationed on the 
 outlying islands enclosing the harbor. Colonel Moultrie be- 
 gan working night and day constructing a fort on the end 
 of Sullivan’s Island by bolting palmetto logs together for 
 walls, with sixteen feet of sand between them. Week after 
 week passed and no attack was made, so that toward the 
 end of June the front of his fort was well finished and thirty 
 odd guns were mounted in it. But powder was scarce, and 
 there were hardly twenty-five rounds of ammunition for the 
 guns. On the northeast of that island lay Long Island, a 
 naked sand bank, and there Clinton landed more than three 
 
 1776 
 
 C. R., X, 
 631 
 
 Dr. Pyle 
 
 escapes 
 
 June 
 
 North 
 
 Carolina 
 
 Continentals 
 
 at 
 
 Charleston 
 
 Fort 
 
 Moultrie 
 
 begun 
 
THE COUNCIL OF SAFETY, 1776 
 
 538 
 
 1776 
 
 Clark’s 
 
 battalion 
 
 June 28th, 
 Battle of 
 Fort 
 
 Moultrie 
 
 A glorious 
 victory 
 
 C. R., X, 
 618c 
 
 Conduct of 
 the North 
 Carolina 
 troops 
 
 thousand troops, intending to cross the narrow intervening 
 waters and thus gain possession of Sullivan Island. To re- 
 sist his advance Colonel Thompson, of South Carolina, was 
 stationed at that end of Sullivan’s Island with three hun- 
 dred of his own riflemen, two hundred of Clark’s North 
 Carolina regiment, two hundred more South Carolinians 
 under Horry, and with some light pieces on his flank ; while 
 Nash, for whom Lee had conceived a high opinion, was 
 placed to defend the rear of the fort, which was unfinished, 
 and a post of great consequence. 
 
 After much fortunate delay, in the early morning of 
 June 28th the fleet approached the fort and the battle be- 
 gan. The British brought into action ten times the number 
 of guns that Moultrie could use, but made no impression 
 on the palmetto fort. A flag of blue with a white crescent 
 emblazoned with the word “Liberty” proudly floated over 
 the rampart. In the torrent of balls the staff that bore it 
 was severed, but as it fell Sergeant Jasper heroically seized 
 the standard and again raised it on the bastion next to the 
 enemy. The attempt to pass from Long Island was no more 
 successful than the attack on the water. The brave Ameri- 
 cans drove the infantry back on two occasions, and the 
 assault both on land and sea was a signal failure. The slow 
 and skilful fire of Moultrie drove off the fleet and destroyed 
 several frigates, the Bristol losing 40 men killed and 
 7 1 wounded and the Experiment 23 killed and 56 wounded; 
 while the American loss, after ten hours of incessant conflict, 
 was but 11 killed and 26 wounded. Repulsed, defeated, the 
 army re-embarked on the vessels and the contest was over. A 
 more glorious victory was hardly ever won, and the tidings 
 flew from colony to colony, reaching Philadelphia just after 
 the deputies in congress had signed the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, and causing great joy throughout America. 
 
 While Moultrie’s gunners were heroes the infantry like- 
 wise won great applause. Of the gallant conduct of Clark’s 
 North Carolinians, Lee expressed himself in the highest 
 terms, saying: “I know not which corps I have the greatest 
 reason to be pleased with, Muhlenberg’s Virginians or the 
 North Carolina troops ; they are both equally alert, zealous, 
 and spirited.” Twice the enemy attempted to land, “and 
 
MOVEMENTS OF TROOPS 
 
 twice they were repulsed by a Colonel Thompson, of the 
 South Carolina rangers, in conjunction with a body of North 
 Carolina regulars. Upon the whole, the South and North 
 Carolina troops and the Virginia rifle battalion we have here 
 are admirable soldiers.” 
 
 The Council of Safety had directed the county committees 
 to call on every person suspected of Toryism to render an in- 
 ventory of his estate, and in case of neglect, the commanding 
 officer of the county was ordered to bring the suspected per- 
 son before the board. This order, contemporaneous with the 
 glorious news of the repulse of General Clinton at Charles- 
 ton, which created wild enthusiasm among the Whigs, caused 
 a great commotion among the Loyalists, and they flocked in 
 to sign the test and association. 
 
 After the repulse of the British fleet by Fort Moultrie, 
 General Clinton still lingered at Charleston, threatening 
 Savannah, and it was apprehended he might yet return to 
 the original plan of subjugating North Carolina. Toward 
 the end of July, however, he abandoned his design against 
 the southern colonies and sailed northward. When this be- 
 came known, early in August, General Ashe discharged the 
 militia brigade from the districts of New Bern, Halifax, and 
 Edenton, reserving only a part of the Wilmington brigade in 
 active service. A British force of fifteen vessels still occu- 
 pied the lower harbor and held Baldhead, remaining there 
 all summer, watched, however, by General Moore and by the 
 continentals and the militia remaining in the service. Hardly 
 had Clinton departed before General Lee began to organize 
 an expedition into Florida, being accompanied by General 
 Howe, the Virginia regiment, the Third North Carolina 
 Continentals, and some companies of the First and Second 
 regiments. But in September, having been ordered north, 
 General Lee departed, leaving Howe in command. The 
 troops in lower Georgia suffering much from sickness, four- 
 teen or fifteen men dying every day, Howe thought it best 
 to relinquish the enterprise, and returned to Charleston. 
 During the fall the other continental regiments were held 
 by General Moore on the North Carolina coast, and efforts 
 were made to complete the organization. 
 
 539 
 
 1776 
 
 Tories dis- 
 mayed 
 
 C. R., X, 
 666 
 
 C. R., X, 
 858 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 Independence 
 
 1776 
 
 May 27th, 
 The North 
 Carolina 
 resolution 
 presented 
 
 June 7th, 
 Independ- 
 ence 
 proposed 
 
 Independence declared. — Lee’s resolution. — The declaration. — 
 The North Carolina deputies. — The declaration proclaimed. — The 
 address of the council. — Religious teachings in Anson.— James Hun- 
 ter a patriot. — The Indians hostile. — Rutherford crosses the moun- 
 tains. — Washington district annexed. — The movement against the 
 Indians. — Rutherford successful. — The Surry regiment. — Moore’s 
 expedition. — The Tories active. — Salt-making. — The British abandon 
 Cape Fear. — A winter campaign threatened. 
 
 Independence declared 
 
 Some three weeks after North Carolina had instructed 
 her deputies to concur in declaring independence the Vir- 
 ginia convention met, and on May 15th adopted a resolution 
 directing her deputies to propose independence. On the 
 same day Boston and a majority of the other towns in 
 Massachusetts, in their town meetings, instructed their local 
 representatives to the same effect. On May 27th Joseph 
 Hewes, then the only North Carolina deputy in attendance 
 on the Continental Congress, presented the North Carolina 
 resolution, and immediately the Virginia instructions were 
 also presented. These resolves and the action of the Con- 
 tinental Congress on May 15th, declaring that it was irrecon- 
 cilable with good conscience for the people to take oaths 
 to support government under the Crown, and that the powers 
 of government should be exerted under the authority of the 
 people, brought the subject f independence sharply to the 
 attention of the other colonies, and the leaven had begun 
 to work. Yet nearly two weeks elapsed before there was 
 any movement. Then, on June 7th, Richard Henry Lee 
 offered in congress a resolution “That these united colonies* 
 are and of right ought to be free and independent States.” 
 
 *The expression “hath, and of right ought to have,” the original 
 of this phrase, is found in the reply which the English Commons 
 made to King James I when he communicated his unsatisfactory 
 answer to their “Remonstrance de droit.” Rushworth was studied 
 by the American leaders for precedents. 
 
INDEPENDENCE AGREED ON 
 
 54i 
 
 This resolution, so fraught with momentous consequences, 
 was not considered that day ; but, postponed until the next 
 morning, it was debated until the 10th. Hewes, speaking for 
 North Carolina, was unalterably fixed and urgent in favor 
 of immediate action. 
 
 A bare majority of the colonies favored Lee’s resolution. 
 New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mary- 
 land, and South Carolina were not prepared to support it, 
 and its further consideration was, by a vote of 7 to 5, 
 postponed until July 1st, Hewes casting the vote of North 
 Carolina against the postponement. By that date it was 
 hoped that new instructions might be received from the 
 provinces that still held back. To lose no time, a committee 
 was appointed to prepare a declaration of independence, 
 and another committee was directed to draft a plan of con- 
 federation, Hewes being a member of the latter. 
 
 Seventeen days slowly passed, and then, on June 28th, a 
 draught of the Declaration was reported to the house, where 
 it lay on the table awaiting the decision on Lee’s resolution. 
 At length July 1st arrived, and that resolution was again 
 taken up for consideration. Maryland and New Jersey had 
 in the meanwhile given in their adherence. From Delaware 
 only two members were present, and they divided, so the 
 voice of that colony could not be recorded. The delegates 
 from New York, having no instructions, asked leave to 
 retire. Pennsylvania and South Carolina alone voted in the 
 negative. At the request of Rutledge, of South Carolina, 
 hoping for unanimity, the decision was postponed until the 
 next day. 
 
 When the congress met the following morning a third 
 member had arrived from Delaware, casting the vote of that 
 province for the resolution ; changes had been made in the 
 Pennsylvania delegation with a like result, and the South 
 Carolina delegates no longer withheld their assent. New 
 York still preferred to remain silent awaiting instructions, 
 which, however, were freely given on the 9th of that month. 
 
 Thus on July 2d was finally determined, by virtually the 
 unanimous voice of all the colonies, the great question which 
 North Carolina had proposed on April 12th. At that time 
 Penn, who had left Philadelphia early in April, had returned, 
 
 1776 
 
 June 10th, 
 Bancroft’s 
 Hist. U. S., 
 IV, 424 
 
 Jefferson’s 
 Works, I, 12 
 et seq. 
 
 July 1st, 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 resolution 
 
 July 2 ( 1 , 
 Independ- 
 ence agreed 
 on 
 
542 
 
 INDEPENDENCE, 1776 
 
 1 7 Ct and voted with Hewes for independence, but Hooper was 
 
 still detained in North Carolina. 
 
 The declaration 
 
 Thursda' Jefferson s draught of a Declaration, which had lain on the 
 table since June 28th, awaiting the vote on Lee’s resolution, 
 was now taken up for discussion. Every word of it was duly 
 weighed, and the instrument was perfected. During 
 July 2d, 3d, and until the afternoon of the 4th, the con- 
 sideration of the Declaration continued, and then the instru- 
 ment was agreed to. Very considerable changes were made 
 Changes in in the draught reported by the committee, among them being 
 draught the incorporation into the text of the words used by Lee 
 that the united colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free 
 and independent States.” 
 
 The North Carolina delegates 
 
 As this glorious consummation was at the instance of 
 North Carolina, and was accomplished measurably through 
 the cordial and zealous support of her delegation, so there 
 was no time when her delegates were not fixed and forward 
 in the important work of the Continental Congress. Caswell 
 had been the soul of energy, and gained for himself the 
 high opinion of the body. Penn, who succeeded him, was 
 equally active and zealous. Hooper had long since cast his 
 Hooper’s philosophic eye to the future, and beheld America “fast 
 
 spirit A . . A 
 
 striding to independence.” Plis sympathies, his sentiments, 
 and his talents placed him in the front rank of its influential 
 members. In April he gladly announced that he had found 
 the people of Virginia desirous of independence, and that 
 North Carolina far exceeded Virginia; that in many counties 
 there was no dissenting voice — a condition and situation so 
 harmonious with his own personal views that he hastened 
 to send the information back to Philadelphia, where it was 
 published. 
 
 Hewes differed from his colleagues in being a trained 
 business man and not having followed a professional career. 
 Yet he had been longer engaged in public affairs than either 
 of his associates, and for years had been one of those who 
 
THE WORK OF JOSEPH HEWES 
 
 543 
 
 had given direction to political events in North Carolina. II 
 
 Thoroughly acquainted with commerce, connected with a 
 mercantile house at Philadelphia, as at Edenton, familiar 
 with affairs of the seas, he was early assigned to the 
 Marine Committee, of which he became the principal mem- 
 ber, discharging practically the duties of a secretary of the 
 navy; and his mercantile houses rendered efficient aid, not 
 merely in the course of ordinary business but in making 
 advances for the benefit of congress. His spirit was such Hewes-s^ 
 that he wanted to take the field, to be in camp, but his work 
 in congress was too important for him to use the good 
 musket and bayonet with which he had provided himself. 
 
 Four days after the Declaration was signed he wrote : “What 
 has become of my friend Hooper ? I expected to have seen 
 him ere now. My friend Penn came time enough to give 
 his vote for independence. I send you the Declaration of 
 Independence enclosed. I had the weight of North Caro- 
 lina on my shoulders within a day or two of three months. 
 
 The service was too severe. I have sat some days from six 
 in the morning till five or sometimes six in the afternoon 
 without eating or drinking. Some of my friends thought 
 that I should not be able to keep soul and body together to 
 this time. Duty, inclination, and self-preservation call on 
 me now to make a little excursion into the country to see 
 my mother. This is a duty which I have not allowed myself 
 time to perform during the almost nine months I have 
 been here.” And indeed it was time, for this devoted patriot 
 had exhausted his strength and prepared the way for his 
 early grave. 
 
 On March 28, 1813, John Adams in the course of a letter Adams in 
 drew a picture in which Hewes was presented as changing 
 his attitude toward independence. That, as related, was 
 evidently founded on imagination, tinted by the passage 
 of many years. The circumstances seem to show that the 
 portrayal lacked reality. The matter of independence was 
 not brought positively before congress until May 27th, and 
 then by Hewes presenting the instructions of North Carolina 
 to concur in declaring independence; and North Carolina, 
 represented alone by him, consistently voted for inclepen- 
 
544 
 
 INDEPENDENCE, 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 The delay in 
 Congress 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 494, 498 
 
 Bancroft’s 
 Hist. U. S., 
 IV, 316 
 
 Jones’s 
 Defence, 
 325^ 326 
 
 dence from the time the subject was first introduced into 
 congress.* 
 
 Probably when Hewes broke the monotony of congress 
 by presenting the instructions of North Carolina, there was 
 a great and startling sensation, for congress was by no means 
 prepared to act on the measure. Later in the day the Vir- 
 ginia instruction was likewise presented ; but so out of 
 harmony was it with the prevailing sentiment that ten days 
 elapsed before the Virginia delegates found resolution to 
 obey their instruction ; and then, against the voice of Hewes, 
 the matter was again deferred for three weeks longer. 
 
 It appears that as early as March 1st, Hooper, Hewes, 
 and Penn wrote to the Provincial Congress asking in- 
 structions with respect to entering into foreign alliances, 
 and it does not appear that any other delegates had at that 
 time made a similar application. They seem to have been 
 the first to move the waters. Their application on this 
 subject utterly negatives Mr. Jefferson’s aspersion, made in 
 his old age, “that we had not a greater Tory in congress 
 than Hooper.” Mr. Jefferson imputed to Mr. Adams a 
 failure of memory, and confessed that his own was not to 
 be relied on. In this doubt of his own accuracy he evidently 
 was entirely correct. 
 
 Mr. Hooper proposed in the Provincial Congress of 
 August, 1775, the articles of confederation, and, being over- 
 borne, in the Continental Congress, contrary to his own 
 wishes, obeyed the instructions of North Carolina. That 
 he favored independence in April, 1776, is evident. Writing 
 to Johnston six months later, when affairs were very gloomy, 
 he expresses the feelings of his inmost heart : “The successes 
 of Howe have given a strange spring to Toryism. Men 
 who have hitherto lurked in silence or neutrality seem will- 
 ing to take a side in opposition to the liberties of their 
 country. . . . Were I to choose a motto for a modern Whig 
 it should be, ‘Whatever is, is right,’ and on the reverse, 
 ‘Nil desperandum.’ ” Such was Hooper’s spirit, to sustain 
 all measures, to be steadfast in hope and constant in effort. 
 
 * Adams must have had in mind Rutledge, of South Carolina, who 
 changed on July 2d, deciding the measure, to the dismay of those 
 members who still feared to take this final step. 
 
INDEPENDENCE PROCLAIMED 
 
 In the congress he, with Franklin, Morris and Lee, formed 
 the Secret Committee of Foreign Intercourse elected by the 
 suffrages of the members. No higher testimonial of implicit 
 confidence was afforded to any of his associates. 
 
 The declaration proclaimed 
 
 The council had thought it best to hold sessions at differ- 
 ent points in the province and from Wilmington it removed 
 to Dobbs County, and then proceeded to Halifax, opening 
 its session there on July 21st. And now came the joyful 
 news that independence had been declared, and the colonies 
 were free and independent states. The day following its 
 meeting, a copy of the Declaration of Independence was 
 received, and the council directed that it should be read on 
 August 1st in the town of Halifax, and that it should be 
 proclaimed by the committees of every town and county in 
 the most public manner. 
 
 When Thursday, August 1st, came, an immense concourse 
 of people assembled at Halifax to witness the ceremony of a 
 public proclamation of independence. The militia com- 
 panies of the county were all drawn up in full array. At 
 midday Cornelius Harnett, the president of the Council of 
 Safety, ascended a rostrum erected in front of the court- 
 house, and the enthusiasm of the vast crowd was mani- 
 fested with tremendous rejoicing. Harnett, who had ever 
 been among the foremost in leading the way to indepen- 
 dence, now “read the declaration to the mute and impas- 
 sioned multitude with a solemnity of an appeal to heaven. 
 When he had finished all the people shouted with joy, and 
 cannon after cannon . . . proclaimed the glorious tidings 
 that the thirteen colonies were now free and independent 
 states. The soldiers seized Harnett and bore him on their 
 shoulders through the streets of the town, applauding him as 
 their champion, and swearing allegiance to the instrument 
 he had read.” 
 
 In Cumberland County the members of the Committee of 
 Safety had either retired from the province or had resigned 
 and refused to act. In that county alone the order to read 
 the declaration appears not to have been observed, so that 
 on August 6 th the Council of Safety directed Colonel Fol- 
 
 545 
 
 1776 
 
 In North 
 Carolina 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 682, 688 
 
 August 1st 
 
 Jones’s 
 
 Defence, 
 
 269 
 
 August 
 
546 
 
 INDEPENDENCE, 1776 
 
 1776 some or Colonel David Smith to call a general meeting 
 
 of the inhabitants of Cumberland and proclaim the declara- 
 c. r., x, tion to the people and to the regiment stationed at Cross Creek. 
 
 Elsewhere independence was proclaimed with great dem- 
 onstrations of joy. As North Carolina had been the first 
 colony to propose it, the people now hailed it with gladness. 
 It was the consummation of their earnest desire ; and it 
 imparted to the contest a new character. The leaders well 
 knew that they had burned their bridges behind them ; and 
 the people, animated by a great hope, and determined to be 
 free, with unbounded enthusiasm threw the banner of inde- 
 pendence to the breeze. 
 
 Because the province was now declared a free and inde- 
 pendent State, the test prescribed by the congress in August, 
 1 775, was changed by omitting the profession of allegiance; 
 and the oath to be taken by witnesses was amended so as 
 to read, “Between the independent State of North Carolina 
 c. r., x, and the prisoner to be tried.” The council also issued an 
 704 address to the inhabitants, saying that as the congress had 
 
 declared the thirteen united colonies free and independent 
 states, “it be recommended to the good people of this now 
 independent State of North Carolina to pay the greatest at- 
 tention to the election ... of delegates to represent them 
 in congress, and to have particularly in view this important 
 consideration.” Not only were laws to be made, but a con- 
 stitution, the cornerstone of all law, and “according as it is 
 c. r., x, well or ordered, it must tend in the first degree to pro- 
 
 696 mote the happiness or misery of the State.” 
 
 The council had been sorely tried by the disaffection of 
 the Regulators, who continued to regard themselves as a 
 separate people not allied with their fellow-citizens. Now 
 in Anson County this defection took a novel form. James 
 Childs, a preacher of the New Light Baptist persuasion, 
 clothed his disloyalty in the garb of religion. He declared 
 699 ” " ’ that it was one of the tenets of his church not to bear arms, 
 either offensively or defensively ; and he preached this doc- 
 trine in all the churches of his communion, and inculcated it 
 by the terrors of excommunication ; and he refused to take 
 an oath of allegiance to the State. Arrested in Anson and 
 sent to the council, he stood firmly by his doctrine. There- 
 
TORIES SUBMIT TO THE STATE 54 7 
 
 upon the council resolved that he must be considered as an ^ 
 
 enemy to the State, and he was sent to Edenton on his parole. 
 
 In view of such religious teachings, General Person and 
 Joseph John Williams were directed, each of them, to agree 
 with a proper person to go among the inhabitants of Anson 
 and other western parts of the State and instruct them “in 
 their duty to Almighty God, and explain to them the justice 
 and necessity of the measures pursued by the United States 
 as the only means under God of supporting and maintaining 
 our civil and religious liberties.” The remedy, however, 
 was not entirely efficacious. In October James Perry, one 
 of the same persuasion, having great influence among the 
 people, from being a preacher, had likewise to be arrested 
 in the same count}- and conveyed to Plalifax. 
 
 But while the council was in session at Salisbury earlv in J ames 
 September a favorable change was observed, and James £ a jj ot x 
 Hunter and Joseph Dobson made their appearance, and 793. 797. 826 
 asked the “privileges of free citizens,” declaring that they 
 were willing to take an oath of allegiance to the State, and 
 the council resolved that they should be considered as “free 
 citizens and members of this State.” So also Booth Boote, 
 who, with John Dunn, had been paroled to Salisbury, having 
 taken the oath, was admitted to citizenship ; and later Dr. 
 
 John Pyle and other prominent malcontents took the oath 
 of allegiance, among them Rev. George Micklejohn, who had 
 been paroled to Perquimans. Other action was constantly 
 taken in the way of arresting and putting under bond or 
 confining Tories or having them released from durance on 
 their submission to the state authorities. 
 
 The Indians become hostile 
 
 Governor Martin’s plan for the subjugation of North 
 Carolina contemplated aid from the Indians, and John Stuart, 
 the Indian superintendent, spent several months in the 
 spring of 1776 with the governor awaiting the arrival of 
 General Clinton’s troops. As yet he had had no instructions 
 to employ the Indians on the frontier, but he was keeping 
 them in readiness to act when required. Later he departed 
 for Pensacola to be in close communication with them ; and 
 arrangements were in progress for all the tribes from the 
 
548 
 
 INDEPENDENCE, 1776 
 
 T776 
 
 The Indians 
 in arms 
 
 C. R., X, 
 657 et seq. 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 
 333 
 
 They cross 
 the 
 
 mountains 
 
 C. R„ X, 
 662, 66g 
 
 The massa- 
 cre on the 
 Catawba, 
 July 10-11 
 
 Ohio to Alabama to begin hostilities against the western 
 borders. 
 
 Toward the end of June fifteen Shawnees, Delawares, and 
 Mingoes brought the war belt to the Cherokees, and it was 
 received by the young men against the wishes of the older 
 chiefs. Before measures had been fully arranged, bands of 
 Cherokees, inflamed by the encroachments of the whites on 
 the Holstein and Nolachucky, and eager for spoils, began 
 their forays. 
 
 While the council was still at Halifax this proposed in- 
 cursion of the Indians became known. In the first week in 
 July the Cherokees had fallen on the inhabitants in South 
 Carolina, plundered houses, killed some settlers and carried 
 off several prisoners. Others attacked the forts on the 
 Holstein and Watauga. Most of the settlers, however, 
 escaped, having been warned by Nancy Ward, from Echota, 
 she being the “beloved woman” of that Indian capital, and 
 always, like her kinsman, Attakullakulla (the Little Car- 
 penter), friendly to the whites. Some twenty women and 
 children were victims of the tomahawk. Only Mrs. Bean, 
 perhaps the wife of William Bean, the first white man to 
 erect a cabin in that wilderness, and a boy named Moore 
 were taken alive. The latter was burned at the stake, and 
 Mrs. Bean was also bound to the stake ready for the burning 
 when Nancy Ward interfered and saved her life. Unsuc- 
 cessful in their assault on the forts, the Indian warriors 
 crossed the mountains and fell on the unsuspecting families 
 on Crooked Creek (near Rutherfordton), and, coming up 
 the Toe, invaded the frontier of Rowan. The unheralded 
 appearance of these murderous bands caused great conster- 
 nation. On July 1 2th Rutherford wrote to the council that 
 he had received an express the week before that forty 
 Indians were ravaging Crooked Creek, and that appeals were 
 made to him for relief. He pleaded for expedition. Before 
 twenty-four hours had elapsed he despatched another ex- 
 press that the Indians were making great progress in de- 
 stroying and murdering in Rowan. “Thirty-seven persons,” 
 he said, “were killed last Wednesday and Thursday on the 
 Catawba,” and “I am also informed that Colonel McDowell 
 and ten men more and one hundred and twenty women and 
 
RUTHERFORD ATTACKS THE CHEROKEES 549 
 
 children are besieged in some kind of a fort, and the Indians 
 around them ; no help to them before yesterday, and they 
 were surrounded on Wednesday. I expect the next account 
 to hear is that they are all destroyed. . . . Three of our 
 captains are killed and one wounded. This day I set out 
 with what men I can raise for the relief of the district.” 
 “Pray, gentlemen, consider our distress; send us plenty of 
 powder, and I hope under God we of Salisbury district are 
 able to stand them.” 
 
 Rutherford acted with that energy that ever distinguished 
 him. Within a week he was on the frontier with near 
 twenty-five hundred men, for the western Carolinians had 
 sprung to arms at the first call, animated by a consuming 
 purpose to inflict heavy punishment upon their murderous 
 foe. Among those with him were Colonel Adam Alexander 
 and the Mecklenburg regiment, protecting the settlers on the 
 Catawba. Leaving the main body at Old Fort, then called 
 Davidson’s, on July 29th, with a detachment of five hundred 
 men Rutherford crossed the mountains and dislodged some 
 two hundred braves, who had established themselves on the 
 Nolachucky. 
 
 On August 13th the council adjourned to meet at the 
 house of Mr. Joel Lane, in Wake County, where it con- 
 vened on the 2 1st. Cornelius Harnett being absent with 
 leave, Samuel Ashe was unanimously chosen president. A 
 petition was received from the settlements on the Watauga 
 and Holstein, called by the inhabitants there “the Washing- 
 ton district,” setting forth that about six years earlier they 
 had begun to locate in that territory, and finding themselves 
 outside of Virginia, had formed a court and adopted the 
 Virginia laws, and had enlisted a company of riflemen under 
 Captain James Robertson, stationing them on the frontier 
 to guard against an attack by the Indians. They asked that 
 they might be annexed to North Carolina, promising to be 
 governed by the council and to lack nothing in the glorious 
 cause of America. This petition was signed by JohnCarter, 
 John Sevier, William Bean and others as a committee, and 
 to it were attached more than a hundred names of settlers 
 on the Watauga and Nolachucky, among them being David 
 Crockett. The council directed that they should hold an 
 
 1776 
 
 July 
 
 Rutherford 
 crosses the 
 mountains 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 338 
 
 Washington 
 district 
 annexed 
 C. R., X, 
 701, 708-711 
 
55 ° 
 
 INDEPENDENCE, 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 The 
 
 movement 
 against the 
 Indians 
 
 Colonel 
 Williams 
 on the 
 Holstein 
 
 C. R„ X, 
 78 g 
 
 Sept. 1st, 
 Ruther- 
 ford’s march 
 
 Biog. Hist. 
 N. C., II, 
 384 
 
 election on October 15th and choose five delegates to repre- 
 sent Washington district in the congress of the State, to 
 meet at Halifax on November 10th. 
 
 President Rutledge, of South Carolina, had earlier sug- 
 gested a joint movement on the part of Virginia and North and 
 South Carolina against the Indians. He proposed to send 
 Major Williamson with eleven hundred men against the lower 
 Cherokees, and that a force from North Carolina should 
 attack the Middle towns, and, joining Williamson, should 
 proceed against Valley River and the Hiwassee, while the 
 Virginians should come down the Holstein and attack the 
 Over-hill towns. The council agreed to this proposition, and 
 directed the militia from the Hillsboro district and from 
 Surry County to join Rutherford, while a regiment of three 
 hundred men under Colonel Joe Williams was to cross the 
 mountains and join Colonel Christian and his Virginians 
 at Big Island, on the Holstein. On August 23d General 
 Person was despatched to Rutherford’s camp with par- 
 ticular directions, and on September 1st Rutherford, with a 
 great cavalcade of horses bearing his provisions and ammu- 
 nition, entered Swannanoa Gap and pressed forward. He 
 took with him two thousand privates and eighty light horse, 
 with supplies for forty days carried by fourteen hundred 
 pack horses. To defend the frontier in his absence, he 
 ordered three captains with a hundred and thirty men to 
 range in Tryon, one hundred and seventy-five in Rowan, 
 and a hundred in Surry, that then extended to the Indian 
 line in the mountains. Among those accompanying the 
 expedition were Colonel Martin Armstrong, Colonel Adam 
 Alexander, Captain Benjamin Cleveland, William Lenoir, 
 and William Gray. The Orange regiment, under Colonel 
 Joseph Taylor, had reached his camp, but its assistance not 
 being needed, it returned home. 
 
 Rutherford’s course lay down the Swannanoa and French 
 Broad and up Hominy Creek to Pigeon River, then to Rich- 
 land Creek, and over the dividing ridge to the head of Scott’s 
 Creek, which he followed to the Tuckaseegee. He moved 
 with such rapidity and secrecy that he passed fifty miles 
 into the wilderness without being discovered by the Indians. 
 The journey through the mountains was an arduous and 
 
RUTHERFORD’S EXPEDITION 
 
 55i 
 
 difficult performance. Without a road and sometimes with- 
 out even an Indian trail, he led his army over tremendous 
 mountains and across rapid streams, pursuing his way in 
 momentary danger of ambuscade by his wily foe. But so 
 sagacious were his movements that he had penetrated two- 
 thirds of the distance into the forests without interruption. 
 At length, when only thirty miles from the Middle Settle- 
 ments on the Tuckaseegee, he detached a thousand men to 
 surprise the Indians by a forced march. Soon, however, in 
 their quiet but rapid journey, they came upon some thirty 
 of the savages, who disputed their progress, and sent in- 
 formation to the settlement, which thus was evacuated when 
 Rutherford reached it. Immediately he began the work of 
 destruction, and speedily devastated the fields and burned 
 every house. Then, with a detachment of nine hundred 
 men and ten days’ provisions, he hurried along the Little 
 Tennessee and moved on towards Valley River and the 
 Hiwassee. 
 
 Williamson was to have met him at Cowee, but after 
 devastating the Indian towns at the foothills, the South 
 Carolinians were detained, and Rutherford proceeded alone. 
 Missing the usual trail through Waya Gap, he crossed 
 the Nantahala at an unaccustomed place. Five hundred 
 braves lay in ambush at Waya, hoping to destroy his force 
 as twenty years before they had Montgomery’s. While they 
 awaited his coming, Rutherford, pressing on, reached the 
 head waters of Valley River. Every town on that stream 
 was destroyed in turn, and it was as if a besom of destruc- 
 tion had swept over those settlements, so sudden and rapid 
 were his movements. He had the good fortune to avoid 
 a pitched battle, killed but twelve Indians, and captured 
 nine. He also took seven white men, with whom he got 
 four negroes, much leather, about a hundredweight of gun- 
 powder and a ton of lead, which they were conveying to 
 Mobile. His own loss was but three men. 
 
 While in the midst of this devastation they encamped, on 
 Sunday, September 15th, at Nuckesseytown (doubtless 
 Tuckaseegee), and there, after a sermon by Rev. Mr. James 
 Hall, they buried one of Captain Irwin’s men with due 
 solemnity. A fortnight after Rutherfo r d had begun his 
 
 1776 
 
 September 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 860 
 
 Indian 
 
 settlements 
 
 destroyed 
 
 C. R., X, 
 712, 861 
 
 Hunter’s 
 
 Western 
 
 North 
 
 Carolina, 
 
 198 
 
55 2 
 
 INDEPENDENCE, 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 C. R., X, 
 882 
 
 C. R , X, 
 837, 844, 8' 
 
 Q 12 
 
 march the Council of Safety, which had adjourned to Salis- 
 bury to be in proximity to the scene of operations, despatched 
 Colonel Waightstill Avery, with an escort, with directions 
 to the general to send, if possible, a detachment to aid 
 Colonel Christian against the Over-hill towns, and on his 
 return to cut a road through the mountains for future use. 
 A juncture was made by Colonel Williamson on Septem- 
 ber 26th on the Hivvassee ; but then Rutherford’s work had 
 been thoroughly done, and the Valley . Settlement had been 
 obliterated. It was deemed impracticable to cross the 
 Smokies and assist Colonel Christian, and they turned their 
 faces homeward. The Indians, driven from their valleys, 
 homeless refugees without food or raiment, sought the dark 
 recesses of the Nantahala, some fleeing to the Over hills, but 
 the greater number finding a temporary home with the 
 Creeks on the Coosawatchee River. Others made their 
 painful way to their British allies in Florida, where five 
 hundred of them were received and supplied with food dur- 
 ing that winter. Rutherford on his return marked his road 
 through the mountains, which has since been known as 
 Rutherford’s Trace. Within a month from his departure he 
 returned to Old Fort, reaching Salisbury early in October. 
 
 The Surry regiment 
 
 Beyond the mountains the Surry regiment, under Colonel 
 Joseph Williams, Colonel Love and Major Winston, having 
 joined Colonel Christian, moved cautiously along the great 
 Indian warpath until the Little Tennessee was reached, 
 where town after town was destroyed. So swift had been 
 the action that the Indians, unable to resist, soon sought 
 terms of peace. Some of the Indian head men came into 
 camp, agreed to surrender all prisoners and to cede to the 
 whites all the territory occupied in the Tennessee settle- 
 ments. On their solemn promise that such a treaty should 
 be made, Christian agreed to suspend hostilities. An excep- 
 tion was made, however, as to two towns which had been 
 concerned in burning the Moore boy, but the peace town 
 of Echota was not disturbed. Colonel Williams was not 
 pleased with Colonel Christian’s action, attributing his 
 
MOORE’S EXPEDITION 
 
 leniency to the Cherokees to a settled policy on the part 
 of Virginia to absorb their trade ; and he recommended to 
 the council that as the frontiers of North Carolina were 
 inhabited far beyond the colony line, commissioners should 
 be appointed to run the line farther west. By treaties soon 
 afterward made the lower Cherokees surrendered all their 
 territory in South Carolina except a narrow strip, and the 
 middle and upper Cherokees ceded all their possessions east 
 of the Blue Ridge, together with the disputed territory on 
 the Nolachucky, Watauga, and New rivers. 
 
 After reaching Old Fort, General Rutherford, to destroy 
 some towns not on his route, and perhaps to aid Colonel 
 Christian, directed Captain William Moore and Captain 
 Harden, with the light horse of Tryon County, a hundred 
 in number, to return to the Indian country. Leaving 
 Cathey’s fort on October 29th, they penetrated to the towns 
 on Cowee Mountain. A detachment, pursuing the fleeing 
 Indians to Soco Creek, “crossed prodigious mountains, which 
 were almost impassable, experiencing there a severe shock 
 of an earthquake, reached Richland Creek Mountains, and 
 then returned to Pigeon River.” 
 
 The Tories active 
 
 Tory emissaries during the summer, and especially in 
 August, were active, and seem to have expected that they 
 would be joined by a great number of Indian allies. Ruther- 
 ford could not take the second battalion from Rowan, “the 
 current of Tories running strong in Guilford and Anson”; 
 and Colonel Folsome wrote: “It is most certain they wish 
 for nothing more . . . than an opportunity of making a 
 head, . . . numbers would fly to join the Indians, as it is 
 their professed declaration” ; while in Bladen, there were a 
 number of deserters from the regular troops, Tories and 
 other disaffected persons collected, whose action was so 
 threatening that General Ashe despatched two companies 
 under Colonel Brown to disperse them. Before Brown 
 reached their settlement they killed Captain Nathaniel Rich- 
 ardson and committed other outrages, and then many of 
 them fled into South Carolina. 
 
 553 
 
 1776 
 
 The Indian 
 cession 
 
 Moore’s 
 expedition 
 C. R., X, 
 895-898 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 725, 732, 744 
 
554 
 
 INDEPENDENCE, 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 7O4, 720, 724, 
 739, 798, 840 
 
 C. R., X, 
 787, 824, 840 
 
 A Loyalist 
 regiment 
 
 Salt making on the coast 
 
 Salt being such an indispensable necessity, unusual efforts 
 were made to obtain a supply for the public, and Robert 
 Williams was employed to set up salt works at Beaufort, 
 where pans for that purpose were erected. Conferences 
 were held with Dr. Franklin at Philadelphia as to the best 
 process of manufacture, and salt pans were ordered from 
 that city. All along the coast the inhabitants began with 
 their pots and kettles to make a supply. Early in October 
 Sam Ashe wrote from the Cape Fear: “Tc Dcum Laudamus 
 we here at present joyfully chant forth. The vessels of 
 war . . . took their departure a few days since, first burning 
 two of their tenders. We have now an open port. . . . 
 The humor of salt boiling seems to be taking place here. I 
 have seen some boiled . . . the cleanest and whitest of any 
 ... I ever saw in my life ; every old wife is now scouring 
 her pint pot for the necessary operation. God send them 
 good luck.” The council gave directions for supplying the 
 people. The quantity being limited, it was doled out. Con- 
 ner Dowd was to sell salt in his possession ‘‘to the Whigs 
 who bore arms on the late expedition against the Tories at 
 Moore’s Creek at ten shillings per bushel, not selling more 
 than a half bushel to each man.” 
 
 The British abandon Cape Fear 
 
 During the summer General Moore remained at Wil- 
 mington. There still lingered several British vessels in 
 the lower harbor, while a detachment of their troops was in 
 possession of Baldhead. Toward the last of August Moore 
 took three hundred men and departed on a secret expedi- 
 tion, no one having the slightest conjecture what was his 
 purpose, unless to attack the enemy on that island. The 
 result of the expedition is not recorded ; but a month later 
 the vessels departed, burning their tenders and the British 
 sloop Cruizer, which had been on that station for several 
 years, was the refuge of Governor Martin when driven from 
 Fort Johnston, and now was probably so unseaworthy that 
 she could not be removed. The ship Jenny, where the 
 Tories seeking protection had found a resting place, also 
 sailed for New York; and as these Loyalists had been or- 
 
LOCATION OF THE TROOPS 
 
 555 
 
 ganized into companies with officers by Governor Martin, ^ 
 
 on their reaching New York they were assigned to a Loyalist 
 regiment then formed at the north. 
 
 Toward the end of September the council again convened ' c, R ., X- ’ 
 at Halifax, and in the absence of the president, Samuel 
 Ashe, Willie Jones was chosen to preside. 
 
 A winter campaign threatened 
 
 The Continental Congress having directed that two of the 
 continental regiments should be conducted by General Moore 
 to join General Washington, subsequently, in view of a 
 probable winter campaign at the south, left it in the dis- 
 cretion of the Council of Safety to retain them in the State. 
 
 The council thought it best that they should not go north at 
 that time, and the order was countermanded. 
 
 It being believed that a southern campaign was in con- 
 templation by the British commander, preparations were 
 made to meet it. It was considered that the invasion would 
 be either in Virginia or South Carolina, and North Carolina 
 would protect herself by aiding in the defence. General c. r., x, 
 Moore had with him in North Carolina five continental regi- 858 
 ments, except about one hundred and fifty of the First and 
 Second, these companies and the Third Regiment being with 
 General Howe in Georgia. They were distributed at differ- 
 ent points in the eastern part of the State, while a small 
 detachment of the Third was at Salisbury with Colonel 
 Martin. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 The Constitution of 1776 
 
 Making the constitution. — Divergencies. — The conservatives. — The 
 results of the election. — Johnston burned in effigy. — The congress 
 meets. — The committee moves slowly. — Proceedings in the conven- 
 tion. — Citizenship established. — The principles of government. — 
 Sovereignty of the people.- — The Orange instructions. — Those of 
 Mecklenburg. — Hooper urges the Delaware plan. — In the committee 
 room. — The draught reported. — The bill of rights. — The religious 
 test. — Thoroughly considered. — The Virginia constitution. — A rep- 
 resentative republic. — Public schools. — The religious test adopted. 
 — The instrument conservative. — A new administration installed. 
 
 Hardly had the Indians been subdued before the sombre 
 shadow of a British invasion cast itself over the seaboard 
 of the southern states, and toward the end of the year, as at 
 its opening, the people of North Carolina looked to the future 
 with painful forebodings of grave perils and devastation. 
 In the midst of these disquieting anticipations they were 
 now to ordain a constitution and government for the inde- 
 pendent State and start out the new commonwealth on its 
 voyage through unknown and uncertain seas. Happy would 
 it be for themselves and for posterity were the foundations 
 of the political edifice well and strongly laid ; deplorable in- 
 deed if tyranny and despotism should find a crevice through 
 which they might enter. 
 
 Divergencies 
 
 The first effort to frame a constitution made apparent in 
 the summer pronounced divergencies among the public men. 
 Johnston, Hewes, Hooper, Thomas Jones, Iredell, Allen 
 Jones and probably Nash, Caswell and possibly Harnett and 
 Sam Ashe might be ranked as conservatives, with varying 
 shades of difference between them. Willie Jones, Person, 
 Burke, Penn, Avery, the Alexanders, John Ashe, Polk, and 
 Dr. Caldwell might be classed as advocates of a pure democ- 
 racy. But there is so little on which to hazard a conjecture, 
 
THE PARTIES 
 
 55 7 
 
 except uncertain tradition, that one hesitates to assign many 
 of those mentioned to either side. All realized that they 
 were severed forever from the past and were to establish 
 a government for themselves and posterity on a republican 
 basis. The Conservatives, Johnston and others, believed that 
 the general features of the British system, with which they 
 were familiar, offered the best government, freer from pos- 
 sible evils than any other known to history. They preferred 
 a stable and independent judiciary, controlled only by the 
 principles of law established by the decisions of the courts ; 
 justices of the peace and court officers also to have a stable 
 tenure ; the great officers to be appointed by the Assembly 
 rather than by popular election, and the Assembly itself kept 
 within bounds by annual elections. 
 
 The other extreme view looked to uprooting every vestige 
 of the old government and the establishment of a pure 
 democracy, with annual election of judges, clerks, and jus- 
 tices of the peace by the freemen of the commonwealth. 
 Between these two extremes there were many shades of 
 opinion. In view of the necessity of framing a constitution, 
 on August gth the council had prepared an address to the 
 people, recommending that each county should choose five 
 delegates particularly suited to represent them in this great 
 work. Davis, the printer, was dilatory in printing this 
 address for distribution, and Harnett expressed himself as 
 anxiously awaiting the copies. ‘'The advice of the council to 
 the inhabitants has not yet got abroad,” he said. ‘‘Davis 
 ought to be hurried.” Evidently he had the matter much 
 at heart. 
 
 The election was held on October 15th. While there does 
 not appear to have been any attempt at the organization of 
 parties, yet here and there throughout the province oppo- 
 sition was manifested to the election of particular persons. 
 At New Bern, Tisdale unsuccessfully opposed Abner Nash. 
 Hewes was returned from Edenton as usual ; Penn was not 
 elected from Granville, strange to say ; while Hooper was 
 returned from Perquimans, as well as from Wilmington. 
 Hewes and Hooper stood on the same line as Johnston and 
 Iredell, while Penn was an ultra-democrat, in line with 
 Thomas Person. Harnett was so desirous of the election 
 
 1776 
 
 October 
 
 The Con- 
 servatives 
 
 The 
 
 Radicals 
 
 C. R., X, 69 6 
 
 C. R.,X, 7 8 7 
 
 C. R., X, 914 
 
55 § 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 October 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 334 
 
 C. R., X, 914 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 335 > 33 6 
 
 of Hooper that he himself stood in Brunswick County, sur- 
 rendering his hold on the borough of Wilmington that 
 Hooper might be assured of a seat in the congress. Samuel 
 Spencer, a strong democrat, was not returned from Anson. 
 Mecklenburg added to her delegation Waightstill Averv, and 
 Guilford, David Caldwell. There was considerable change 
 in the personnel of the deputies, but except the changes 
 above mentioned there was only one other notable leader 
 not returned — Samuel Johnston. Allen Jones, John John- 
 ston, and Thomas Jones and all the other conservatives were 
 elected. For some reason a great effort was made to defeat 
 Johnston, who had always been unanimously chosen to pre- 
 side over the previous congresses, was in strong sympathy 
 with the Continental Congress, and an ardent promoter of 
 every measure tending to sustain independence ; no man was 
 more fixed than he in his American principles. No means 
 were spared to poison the minds of the people against him 
 personally ; “to inflame their prejudices, excite alarm, and 
 sow in them by indefinite charges and vague whispers the 
 seeds of distrust.” There was a hot and spirited canvass, 
 resulting in Johnston’s defeat; and the triumph was cele- 
 brated with riot and debauchery, the orgies being con- 
 cluded by burning Johnston in effigy. While Hewes was 
 elected from the borough, and Thomas Benbury and Thomas 
 Jones were returned from the county, James Blount, Luke 
 Sumner, and Jacob Hunter replaced Sam Johnston, John B. 
 Beasly, and Thomas Hunter. Apparently James Blount was 
 the opponent of Johnston, and succeeded in displacing him. 
 The election and its result in Chowan led to the character- 
 ization of Johnston’s opponents by Mr. Iredell as “rioters,” 
 to whom he ascribed such principles as these: “I despise 
 every man who differs from me. I am sure he must be 
 a Tory. I think a man more liable to be a Tory who has 
 hitherto been most earnest in the cause.” “I impute to gen- 
 tlemen all our present difficulties.” “I am a sworn enemy 
 to all gentlemen.” “I believe it honorable and proper to per- 
 secute poor distressed individuals when we have them in our 
 power, provided we want courage to prove in any other 
 manner the alacrity of our zeal against those we suppose 
 enemies of our country.” This “creed of a rioter' would 
 
PERSONNEL OF THE CONGRESS 
 
 559 
 
 indicate that the principal charges against Johnston were 
 personal, based on his wealth and lofty bearing and on some 
 kindness to distressed persons, perhaps Tories, which was 
 imputed to him as Toryism. There is found in it no trace of 
 disagreement between him and his countrymen on the funda- 
 mental principles of government. The strenuous opposition 
 to him has been attributed to Willie Jones and his friends, it 
 being suggested that they desired to remove Johnston from 
 his dominant position in public affairs, the more readily to 
 secure the adoption of an ultra-democratic form of govern- 
 ment, which he opposed ; if so, his defeat was without avail. 
 
 The congress meets 
 
 The congress met on November 12th, at Halifax, and 
 Allen Jones proposed Richard Caswell for president, who 
 was accordingly unanimously chosen. Theretofore all votes 
 in the several congresses, as also in the council, had been 
 by counties and towns ; now it was determined, against the 
 vote of the Albemarle section and the towns of Brunswick 
 and New Bern alone, that all questions should be determined 
 by the voice of the several members. A majority of the 
 members were to govern, not a majority of the counties. 
 At once the congress appointed a committee composed of 
 the president, Thomas Person, Allen Jones, John Ashe, 
 Abner Nash, Willie Jones, Thomas Jones, Simon Bright, 
 Christopher Neale, Samuel Ashe, William Haywood, Griffith 
 Rutherford, Henry Abbott, Luke Sumner, Thomas Respis, 
 Archibald Maclaine, James Hogun, and Hezekiah Alex- 
 ander to frame a constitution. In the formation of this 
 committee the eastern members largely predominated, there 
 being from the west only one member each from Granville, 
 Rowan, and Mecklenburg, while Dobbs, Craven, Chowan, 
 and New Hanover each had two members. Subsequently, 
 however, as other members came in, there were added to 
 that committee Waightstill Avery, Whitmel Hill, Thomas 
 Eaton, John Birdsong, Robert Irwin, Joseph Hewes, Cor- 
 nelius Harnett, William Sharpe, and John Spicer, four of 
 whom were from the west. It would seem that where one 
 conservative was appointed on the committee he was im- 
 mediately followed by a democrat, the committee being about 
 
 1776 
 
 November 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 913 
 
560 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF i;?6 
 
 1776 
 
 Proceedings 
 in the 
 congress 
 C. R., X, 
 903 
 
 Additional 
 
 battalions 
 
 Criminal 
 
 courts 
 
 Bayard 
 
 vs. 
 
 Singleion, 
 1 North 
 Carolina 
 Reports 
 
 evenly divided, and doubtless well representing the senti- 
 ments of the congress. It at once began its work, but weeks 
 were to elapse before it completed its plan of government. 
 
 An attack on South Carolina being feared, for a large 
 fleet bearing a considerable number of troops had sailed from 
 New York supposed to be destined for Charleston, the 
 congress ordered General Moore to march with the con- 
 tinentals for the relief of that city, and a committee was 
 raised to consider the most speedy method of embodying 
 five thousand militia to aid in defence. Three additional 
 regiments of continentals were also provided for, to be com- 
 manded respectively by James Hogun, James Armstrong, 
 and John Williams. Hooper and Hewes were re-elected 
 delegates to the Continental Congress, but Penn now gave 
 place to Dr. Burke, of Orange County. It is to be observed, 
 however, that although Penn was not chosen a member by 
 his county, nor retained in the Continental Congress, he was 
 appointed one of the committee “to revise and consider all 
 such statutes and acts of assembly as are in force in North 
 Carolina, and to prepare bills to be passed into laws con- 
 sistent with the new form of government." He was not 
 entirely ignored. And Sam Johnston was named second 
 on this very important committee, the first being Thomas 
 Jones. A seal of State being necessary, the congress di- 
 rected Hooper, Hewes, and Burke to procure one ; and in 
 the meantime the private seal of the governor was to be 
 affixed to all grants and other public acts of the State. 
 
 To enforce the criminal laws, temporary courts of oyer 
 and terminer were established to be held in the several dis- 
 tricts of the State, two persons learned in law in each 
 district being appointed by the governor to hold them. It 
 was enacted that all of the former statutes and such parts 
 of the common law as were not inconsistent with the free- 
 dom and independence of the State should continue in force 
 until the next Assembly. 
 
 The royal government being subverted and a new State 
 erected on its ruins, the people felt as if “they had been 
 marooned on some desert island,” without a constitution, 
 government or laws, and the congress addressed itself to 
 organizing civil affairs. All glebes and lands formerly held 
 
ACTION OF THE CONGRESS 
 
 56i 
 
 by any religious society were declared vested in their 
 owners ; and the congress ordained that all regular ministers 
 of every denomination should have power to celebrate 
 matrimony according to the rites and ceremonies of their 
 respective churches, they, however, observing the rules and 
 restrictions provided by law. It was particularly necessary 
 to establish citizenship. The congress directed the governor 
 to offer free pardon and protection to all persons who should 
 within ninety days take the oath of allegiance to the State, 
 and those who refused to take the oaths were declared in- 
 capable of bringing any suit, or purchasing any lands, or 
 transferring their lands, which were declared forfeited to 
 the State. All persons residing within the limits of the State 
 were held to owe allegiance ; and it was declared that any one 
 who should thereafter levy war against the State or adhere 
 to its enemies or give them aid and assistance or intelli- 
 gence shall be adjudged guilty of high treason and suffer 
 death, and forfeit his property; but on conviction the judge 
 might make provision out of the forfeited estate for the 
 wife or children of the criminal ; and it was declared that 
 any person owing allegiance to the State who should deny 
 the supreme authority of the people, or assert that those who 
 had taken up arms were rebels, or deny the lawfulness of 
 defending the State, or do any act tending to propagate and 
 spread sedition, should be adjudged guilty of a misde- 
 meanor. 
 
 The principles of government 
 
 The matter of ordaining a new government had received 
 thoughtful attention.* In every colony much consideration 
 had been bestowed on fundamental principles. The people 
 were embarking on unknown seas, and the principles of gov- 
 ernment were much discussed. Articles on the subject were 
 widely circulated. It seems to have been generally consid- 
 ered that the legislative power ought to be vested in two 
 
 ^Apparently after the failure to agree on a constitution at the 
 previous session some one wrote to John Adams for an expression 
 of his views, and his reply is preserved in Governor Caswell’s letter- 
 book. Governor Swain said it was addressed to Burke. We should 
 think that it was addressed to Caswell. The constitution contains 
 some of the principles he advocated. (N. C. Uni. Alag., 1856, 232.) 
 
 1776 
 
 S. R„ 
 XXIII, 
 
 996, 997 
 
 Citizenship 
 
 established 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 321 
 
562 
 
 1776 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 870/ 
 
 C. R., X, 
 239, 870 a } 
 870^ 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF 1776 
 
 bodies, not one, as in Pennsylvania ; while there was differ- 
 ence of opinion as to whether the executive should have any 
 legislative function. Other points of difference were as to 
 the election of the chief executive and other great officers, 
 whether by the people themselves or by the Assembly ; and 
 particularly as to the election and term of office of the 
 judges; also as to the qualification of the electors. In some 
 of the colonies all freemen could vote ; in North Carolina 
 only freeholders had enjoyed that right. 
 
 Sovereignty of the people 
 
 The fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the people 
 was universally accepted. It was held that political power 
 is of two kinds— one the principal and supreme, the other 
 the derived and inferior ; the first possessed only by the 
 people, the other by their servants ; that what is ordained by 
 the people cannot be altered but by them ; that the legislature 
 must observe the limitations and restrictions imposed by the 
 supreme power ; and that the executive, legislative, and 
 judicial powers are distinct and independent. These prin- 
 ciples were embraced in a set of maxims, which doubtless 
 were extensively disseminated throughout all the colonies. 
 They were embraced in the instructions given by the people 
 of Mecklenburg and of Orange for the guidance of their 
 delegates in the congress ; and, indeed, the exact agreement 
 of the seven principles first declared in these instructions 
 indicates that they had a common source. 
 
 The Orange instructions 
 
 Among the Orange instructions was one to the effect 
 that all officers should give an assurance that they “do not 
 acknowledge supremacy, ecclesiastical or civil, in any for- 
 eign power, or spiritual infallibility, or authority to grant the 
 divine pardon.” This was in the handwriting of Dr. Burke, 
 himself a Roman Catholic. Similarly, Mecklenburg in-' 
 structed that no atheist nor any one who denied any of the 
 Persons of the Holy Trinity, or the divine authority of the 
 Old and New Testament, or who should be of the Roman 
 Catholic religion, should hold any office in the State. 
 Orange County provided for two branches of the Assembly, 
 
HOOPER'S VIEWS 
 
 563 
 
 one to be elected by the freeholders and householders and 
 the other by freeholders only ; while Mecklenburg, whose 
 instructions were in the handwriting of Avery, required that 
 both branches of the legislature should be elected by “the 
 good people of the State’’; and further, that “all judges 
 should be appointed by the General Assembly, and that their 
 term of office should be for one year only.” Mecklenburg 
 also directed that there should be a land tax, and that all 
 should be taxed according to their estates ; and that a college 
 should be handsomely endowed in that county. 
 
 Both Hewes and Penn returned to North Carolina at that 
 time, and Hooper, feeling constrained to remain in atten- 
 dance on the Continental Congress, wrote his views for the 
 consideration of the congress. “Let us consider,” said he, 
 “the people at large as a source from which all power is to be 
 derived. . . . Rulers must be conceived as the creatures of 
 the people. ... A single branch of legislation is a many- 
 headed monster, . . . and its members become a tyranny, 
 dreadful in proportion to the numbers which compose it. 
 ... I am now convinced that a third branch of legislation 
 is at least unnecessary. But for the sake of execution we 
 must have a magistrate solely executive.” He urged that 
 the constitution of Delaware, which had been promulgated 
 in September, had great merit: “I admire,” said he, “no 
 part of the Delaware plan more than the appointing judges 
 during good behavior. Limit their political existence, and 
 make them dependent upon the suffrages of the people, that 
 instant we corrupt the channels of public justice. Rhode 
 Island furnishes an example too dreadful to imitate.” Be- 
 sides the Delaware plan, the congress had also the new con- 
 stitutions of Virginia, South Carolina, and New Jersey for 
 reference. The committee doubtless availed themselves of 
 every aid in performing their important duty ; but the pre- 
 vailing ideas were, not unnaturally, .similar to those that 
 found expression in the bill of rights* and constitution of 
 the adjoining State of Virginia. 
 
 *The Bill of Rights of Virginia was written entirely by Thomas 
 Jefferson, while the body of the constitution was prepared by George 
 Mason. (Wirt’s Life of Patrick Henry, 215.) 
 
 1776 
 
 The Meck- 
 lenburg in- 
 structions 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 867, 868 
 
564 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF 1776 
 
 1776 
 
 xvii’i, 139 
 
 The framers 
 of the 
 constitution 
 
 Debates in 
 convention 
 in 1835, 
 
 43. 3 l8 
 
 S. R., XI. 
 504 ; 
 
 XIII, 31 
 
 Although some members exercised more influence than 
 others, it would seem that the work of the committee was 
 the joint product of the intelligence of all of the members. 
 In 1787 Judge Ashe said to the legislature: “If my opinion 
 of our constitution is an error, I fear it is an incurable one, 
 for I had the honor to assist in the forming- it, and confess I 
 so designed it, and I believe every other gentleman con- 
 cerned did also” ; from which it would be inferred that the 
 constitution was the joint product of the members who 
 “designed it.” 
 
 Although Thomas Jones was the chairman, the president 
 of the convention, Caswell, was perhaps the most influential 
 member. Of him the venerable Nathaniel Macon said : “He 
 was certainly one of the most powerful men that ever lived 
 in this or any other country”; and Judge Toomer said: 
 “Such was his influence in the convention that tradition says 
 he dictated the principles, if not the terms, of the instru- 
 ment.” On that committee were also Harnett, Thomas Jones, 
 Willie and Allen Jones, Maclaine, Avery, John and Sam 
 Ashe, Thomas Person and Abner Nash. 
 
 These and others as well, members of the committee, were 
 men of decided convictions and were not overshadowed by 
 any of their associates. Still Caswell, being president of the 
 convention, probably exerted a strong influence not only in 
 the committee, but in the congress, and as he had apparently 
 sought the views of John Adams and preserved Adams’s 
 letter in his executive letter-book, it is an inference that he 
 agreed with the sentiments of the New Englander, which 
 were conservative. 
 
 That Dr. Burke had a principal hand in devising the legis- 
 lative plan may be gathered from Johnston’s writing to him 
 of it as "your plan”; while Caswell said if there is any 
 blame to be fixed on those who formed the constitution, his 
 good friend, Mr. Harnett, ought to take a very considerable 
 part of it to himself for cramping so much the powers of 
 the executive. To Harnett also, by tradition, is assigned 
 the authorship of the thirty-fourth article, placing all denom- 
 inations on the same footing, granting entire liberty of 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 worship, but not exempting preachers of sedition from legal 
 punishment.* 
 
 Mr. Wilson, of Perquimans, remarked in the convention 
 of 1835 that the “constitution is thought to have been as 
 much or more the work (the thirty-second section excepted) 
 of Willie Jones than any other one individual.” But if so, 
 Willie Jones was not such a radical democrat as some have 
 supposed. 
 
 Doubtless there were many concessions and compromises. 
 
 The draught reported 
 
 For three weeks the committee was framing the instru- 
 ment; and then, on Friday, December 6th, Thomas Jones 
 informed the house that the committee had prepared the 
 form of a constitution, which he read in his place and sub- 
 mitted to the house. It was thereupon ordered that a copy 
 should be made for each county and for each district, and it 
 should be taken under consideration the following Monday. 
 
 Of the first draught we have no copy and but little infor- 
 mation of its provisions, for the instrument as perfected was 
 probably much amended by the congress itself. It may be 
 conjectured that the committee followed the plan indicated 
 by Thomas Jones in the preceding congress and provided 
 for two branches of the legislature, one elected by the free- 
 holders and the other by the freemen. The justices were to 
 be elected by the people. Johnston on December 7th wrote: 
 “There is one thing in it which I cannot bear, and yet I 
 am inclined to think it will stand. The inhabitants are em- 
 powered to elect the justices in their respective counties, 
 who are to be the judges of the county courts. Numberless 
 inconveniences must arise from so absurd an institution.” 
 This was changed by the congress. There was no religious 
 test for office in the committee’s report, but one was inserted 
 by the congress. On Monday and Tuesday the house con- 
 sidered the constitution, when it was read paragraph by 
 paragraph, amended and passed the first reading. On 
 Thursday it was again read and debated paragraph by para- 
 
 *It is said that Governor Swain once mentioned that a large part 
 of the original draft of the constitution was in the handwriting of 
 Waightstill Avery. 
 
 565 
 
 1776 
 
 Debates in 
 convention, 
 
 183s. 394 
 
 C. R., X, 954 
 
 C. R., X, 
 
 IO4O 
 
566 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF 1776 
 
 graph and passed its second reading. Thomas Jones then 
 reported the bill of rights, which he read in his place ; and 
 this was taken up on Saturday, debated paragraph by para- 
 graph, amended and passed its first reading. 
 
 On December 13th Johnston wrote: “One of the members 
 from the back country introduced a test by which every 
 person before he should be admitted to a share in the legis- 
 lature should swear that he believed in the Holy Trinity 
 and that the scripture of the Old Testament was written by 
 divine inspiration. This was carried after a very warm 
 debate, and has blown up such a flame that everything is in 
 danger of being thrown into confusion. They talk of having 
 all the officers, even the judges and clerks, elected annually, 
 with a number of other absurdities.” This was the talk in 
 the house, not in the committee. It was a departure from 
 the Virginia constitution and from the committee's plan, and 
 it precipitated a contest. 
 
 The following Tuesday the bill of rights was read para- 
 graph by paragraph, amended, passed and engrossed. It 
 contains many of the principles of Magna Charta. For sev- 
 eral days the constitution was yet further considered, the 
 house reading it paragraph by paragraph and amending it. 
 Finally it was perfected, passed, engrossed, and ordered to 
 c.r.,x,97 + p e immediately printed and distributed. The committee was 
 appointed November 13th, reported on December 6th, and 
 the constitution was under consideration by the entire body 
 for twelve days, when it was adopted on December 18th. 
 Each word in it was often weighed, debated, and passed on 
 by the house itself. 
 
 Whatever may have been the particular zeal of this man 
 or that in the committee, or in the house, every principle 
 contained in the instrument and every provision of it was 
 responsive to the will of the majority of the members, 
 similarity to As perfected, it nearly approached the Virginia consti- 
 confutution tution with its bill of rights. The second branch of the 
 legislature, which in every other province but Virginia was 
 known as the council, was denominated the senate, Virginia 
 being the first to introduce that word in American history. 
 Senators were to be elected only by freeholders, while 
 assemblymen were to be voted for by all citizens who had 
 
 1776 
 
 McRee’ft 
 Iredell, I, 
 339 
 
PROVISIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 paid their public taxes. The governor and other great 
 officers were to be elected by the General Assembly, and the 
 judges were to hold their offices during good behavior, as in 
 Virginia. The justices of the peace were to be recommended 
 to the governor by the representatives in the Assembly, and 
 when commissioned by him were to hold their offices during 
 good behavior, and were not to be removed from office by 
 the General Assembly unless for misbehavior. 
 
 Thus was established a representative republic far re- 
 moved from the pure and simple democracy which some 
 have said that Willie Jones advocated. Indeed, the Consti- 
 tution conformed in many respects to the views of Johnston, 
 although he was not a member of the congress. There were 
 to be annual elections of assemblymen, and a governor 
 annually elected and ineligible after three years of service 
 until a like period had elapsed ; and the judiciary was entirely 
 independent. Still Johnston remained opposed to the plan 
 for constituting the legislature, and became discontented, 
 perhaps the more because the people had burned him in 
 effigy. 
 
 Mecklenburg’s voice for the establishment and endow- 
 ment of a school in that county seems to have been answered 
 by a provision that a school or schools should be established 
 by the legislature for the convenient instruction of youth, 
 with such salaries to the masters, paid by the public, as may 
 enable them to instruct at low prices ; and all useful learning 
 should be duly encouraged and promoted in one or more 
 universities. The western member who offered in the house 
 that legislators should swear that they believed in the Holy 
 Trinity, as recpffred by the Mecklenburg instructions, may 
 have been Rev. Dr. David Caldwell, of Guilford, who was 
 not a member of the committee. The introduction of that 
 test raised a flame. Many of the public men of that era were 
 deists ; some were atheists. It is said that some of the lead- 
 ing members of the convention were of that mind, and it 
 was for that reason, perhaps, that this proposed section 
 caused such excitement. Besides, if the original proposition 
 followed the Mecklenburg instructions throughout, it ex- 
 cluded from office all Roman Catholics, and Burke was of 
 that faith, as well, perhaps, as others of the congress. The 
 
 567 
 
 1776 
 
 A represen- 
 tative 
 republic 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 504 
 
 Public 
 
 schools 
 
 The 
 
 religious 
 
 test 
 
5 68 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF 1776 
 
 1776 
 §32 of 
 
 Constitution 
 
 The 
 
 instrument 
 
 conservative 
 
 C R., X, 
 991 
 
 Mecklenburg proposition was, however, somewhat altered 
 before adoption ;* but still no one who denied the truth of 
 the Protestant religion or the divine authority of the Old 
 and New Testament, or should hold religious principles in- 
 compatible with the freedom and safety of the State, was 
 to be admitted to office. This apparently was not thought 
 to exclude Roman Catholics, who from the first held office 
 unquestioned. It did exclude atheists and infidels, but none 
 of the public men of North Carolina appear to have fallen 
 within that category, although tradition attributes to some 
 of them a little laxity in their religious beliefs. No public 
 man, Roman Catholic or of atheistical inclinations, ceased to 
 hold office. 
 
 The congress was apparently more conservative than the 
 committee, for the committee’s plan of electing the justices 
 of the peace, who were to hold the county courts, by a vote 
 of tbe inhabitants, was rejected by the congress. 
 
 From first to last the instrument as perfected by the con- 
 gress was conservative, and the government it established 
 must have been a great disappointment to those who favored 
 a pure democracy. Nor did the congress submit it to the 
 people for their approval, and it took effect immediately on 
 its adoption. It, however, was well received by the people, 
 and was the subject of eulogy for many years. It remained 
 unchanged for two generations, although in the course of 
 time complaints began to be made at the west against the 
 plan of representation, and in 1835 the people preferred to 
 choose their own governors, and twenty years later the re- 
 quirement of a freehold to constitute a senatorial elector was 
 abolished. 
 
 The constitution being adopted, two days later the con- 
 gress chose Richard Caswell to be governor of the State un- 
 til the next session of the General Assembly ; and Cornelius 
 Harnett, Thomas Person, William Dry, William Haywood, 
 Edward Starkey, Joseph Leach, and Thomas Eaton mem- 
 bers of the Council of State ; and in case of the death 
 or other disability of the governor, the president of the 
 
 *A writer in the Wilmington Herald of 1844 ascribed that article 
 as written to Cornelius Harnett. Harnett doubtless amended 
 Dr. Caldwell's first proposition. 
 
OFFICERS ELECTED 
 
 569 
 
 council was to succeed him. The congress having provided 
 for the establishment of courts of oyer and terminer in the 
 several districts of the State, proceeded to appoint justices 
 of the peace, sheriffs and constables for the several counties, 
 and establish county courts until the Assembly should meet. 
 As Caswell, on becoming governor, resigned his office as 
 treasurer of the southern district, John Ashe was elected to 
 that office ; and Cornelius Harnett was elected vice-president 
 of the congress. The common law and the laws of the 
 province that were not inconsistent with the freedom and 
 independence of the State were declared in force. Having 
 performed its work, the congress, after sitting all day Sun- 
 day, on Monday, December 23d, adjourned sine die. 
 
 1776 
 
 Di cember 
 S. R . 
 XXIII, q?2 
 
 C. R„ X, 
 
 988 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 1777 
 
 January 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 
 
 880, 907 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 
 393 
 
 Indians 
 
 hostile 
 
 Caswell’s Administration, 1776-80 
 
 Caswell’s administration.— Military movements. — Political power. 
 — The first Assembly. — Tories banished. — Sheppard's regiment. — 
 Conditions within the State. — The task of the patriots. — Johnston 
 dissatisfied. — Loyalists depart. — Arrival of Lafayette. — Trade 
 through Ocracoke inlet. — The Continental Line joins the Grand Army. 
 — Brandywine. — Germantown. — Death of Nash. — New battalions. 
 
 Caswell’s administration 
 
 On the adjournment of congress Richard Caswell found 
 himself in power as the first governor of the sovereign State 
 of North Carolina. His title was “his Excellency.” Shortly 
 after the Christmas holidays he seems to have taken pos- 
 session of the governor's palace at New Bern, and there 
 on January 16th he held his first council, Cornelius Harnett 
 being chosen president of the board. On the same day 
 judges were appointed to hold the courts of oyer and 
 terminer. Among those appointed were John Penn, Samuel 
 Spencer and Sam Ashe ; and the criminal courts again began 
 to be held. Penn, however, declined to serve, so no court 
 was held in the Orange district. His action in this matter, 
 disappointing Governor Caswell, was the probable cause of 
 an estrangement between them. 
 
 A few days later the fine furniture and effects of Gov- 
 ernor Martin with which the palace was filled were sold at 
 auction under an order of the congress, and his Excellency 
 bought largely of them, doubtless to furnish the palace. 
 
 Notwithstanding the treaty of peace that had in the fall 
 of 1776 been informally agreed on with the Indians, in 
 February they again became hostile, and a detachment of 
 militia was ordered to range in the district of Washington 
 to prevent depredations, and General Rutherford was di- 
 rected to raise eight independent companies, four for Wash- 
 ington and four for Tryon, Burke, and Surry, to be employed 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1. Maurice Moore 
 3. Alexander Martin 
 
 2. Abner Nash 
 4. Robert Howe 
 
MOVEMENT OF TROOPS 
 
 57i 
 
 in building stockades, in scouting and in protecting the 
 people. 
 
 William Sharpe and Waightstill Avery were appointed com- 
 missioners in conjunction with representatives of Virginia to 
 make a treaty with the Over-hill Cherokees and fix the boun- 
 dary between their hunting grounds and the white settlement, 
 and during the summer they accomplished this purpose, ex- 
 tending the boundary line into the Great Iron Mountains. 
 
 Military movements 
 
 In anticipation of a southern campaign, General Moore 
 marched his entire command to South Carolina, being like- 
 wise accompanied by two battalions of militia under the 
 command of General Allen Jones, appointed by the congress 
 when in session at Halifax. On January 14th General 
 Moore’s continentals were at Charleston, and the appre- 
 hension of a southern campaign having passed away, and 
 Washington’s army being hard pressed, on February 6th the 
 Council of State directed that the ranks of three of his 
 regiments should be filled by transfers from the others and 
 he should lead them to the north. The considerable number 
 of inhabitants in western North Carolina led to the belief 
 that that was a favorable region for securing recruits. In- 
 deed, General Rutherford made a return of over ten thou- 
 sand men for his militia brigade in the Salisbury district 
 alone, and Nash, who on February 5th was promoted by the 
 Continental Congress to be brigadier-general, was directed 
 to repair to the western part of the State and superintend 
 the recruiting for the new regiments ; but rapidly succeeding 
 this first order came a second directing that Moore and 
 Nash should proceed with all the continentals to the aid of 
 General Washington. Moore was then at Charleston in com- 
 mand of the department. On receiving these orders he 
 returned to North Carolina to arrange for the long march 
 of the troops, ordering Nash to follow him with the regi- 
 ments. In April they reached Wilmington and went into 
 camp temporarily. There, unhappily, on April 15th, Gen- 
 eral Moore died from an attack of gout in the stomach. On 
 the same day his brother, Judge Maurice Moore, also died 
 
 >777 
 
 The Indian 
 boundary 
 
 1777 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 375 
 
 Nash 
 
 appointed 
 
 general 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 454 
 
 Death of 
 Moore 
 
CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 0/- 
 
 1777 
 
 Nash 
 
 marches 
 
 north 
 
 May 
 
 J 777 
 
 Political 
 
 power 
 
 The first 
 Assembly 
 
 S. R., XII, 
 
 in the same house. General Nash assumed command and 
 marched to the north. A camp was established at Halifax, 
 where were concentrated the continental battalions then 
 forming, whose ranks were not yet filled ; and another camp 
 and hospital were located at Georgetown, Md., where all the 
 North Carolina troops who had not had the smallpox were 
 inoculated before joining the army. The brigade reached 
 the Potomac toward the close of May, and while many 
 were detained there to be vaccinated, two hundred were 
 found to have already had the dread disease, and these were 
 hurried forward to reinforce Washington. Under Colonel 
 Sumner, they joined the army at Morristown on July 5th. 
 
 The new constitution apportioned the political power of 
 the State very differently from what had been the custom 
 in colonial times. In former assemblies the Albemarle 
 counties had each five representatives and the others but 
 two. In the revolutionary bodies each county and borough 
 had but a single vote without regard to the number of rep- 
 resentatives they sent. Under the new constitution every 
 county was entitled to one senator and two representatives 
 and the borough towns to a representative. By this innova- 
 tion the counties were all put on the same footing. 
 
 The division of the legislature into two houses, each con- 
 sisting of a relatively small number of members, resulted 
 in lessening the influence of many of the old leaders. When 
 the Assembly, elected in March, met in April, the personnel 
 of the representatives was greatly changed. Many of the 
 prominent public men were either in the military or civil 
 service, occupying positions that rendered them ineligible 
 as members. Sam Johnston, being one of the treasurers, 
 was not a member ; nor was Harnett, who was a member of 
 the council. In the senate, Archibald Maclaine, Allen Jones, 
 Griffith Rutherford, and Sam Ashe were men of the most 
 influence. In the house, Abner Nash, Avery, Benbury, John 
 Butler, Alexander Lillington, Willie Jones and William 
 Hooper, and John Penn were among the leaders ; but the 
 disappearance from the legislative halls of many who had 
 exerted a controlling influence in former years was very 
 observable. 
 
WORK OF THE LEGISLATURE 
 
 5 73 
 
 Legislative action 
 
 It does not appear that there were any party lines. Ten 
 days after the session opened Abner Nash wrote: “We are 
 all harmony, and a perfectly good agreement, as far as I 
 can see, is likely to prevail in our houses of legislature.” 
 Nash was elected speaker of the house of commons and 
 Sam Ashe was chosen to preside over the senate. 
 
 A mass of important business, much of it of a delicate 
 nature, confronted the Assembly ; and despite the absence 
 of so many men of experience who had been accustomed 
 to manage public affairs, the laws passed at that and the 
 adjourned session attest the industry and high capacity of 
 the assemblymen. Maclaine in the senate and Hooper in the 
 house were probably the most influential in managing busi- 
 ness. The former was in particular a strong, learned and 
 painstaking lawyer and a patriot of the first water. The 
 Assembly now levied an ad valorem tax on land, negroes, and 
 all other property, thus inaugurating a great change in the 
 system of taxation. It established two new counties at the 
 west, one named in honor of the governor and the other for 
 Dr. Burke, “a compliment never before paid to a private 
 citizen,” so high was the popular regard for the talented 
 Irishman, who was then representing the State in the Con- 
 tinental Congress with much ability. At the east, also, a 
 county was created and called Camden, in grateful recog- 
 nition of that nobleman’s efforts in Parliament to befriend 
 the colonies. 
 
 The election of officers by the congress in December had 
 been merely for a temporary purpose, and now the Assembly 
 re-elected Caswell and the members of the council. County 
 courts were provided for, and courts of oyer and terminer 
 were established, and Samuel Spencer was chosen to hold 
 these courts in four districts, while Bonfield and James Davis 
 were appointed for the Edenton and New Bern districts. 
 Associated with these were others not lawyers. Because 
 of the uncertainty of the times, it was considered best to 
 postpone the establishment of civil courts until the next 
 session, and the senate rejected the bill introduced to create 
 them. Courts of admiralty were established and collectors 
 of customs appointed for the various ports. 
 
 1777 
 
 April 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 720 
 
 S. R., 
 XXIV, 6 
 
 Property tax 
 
 Caswell, 
 Burke, and 
 Camden 
 Counties 
 
 S. R., XII, 
 
 io 9; 
 
 XXIV, 39 
 
574 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 Wl An act was passed regulating the militia, dividing each 
 
 company into four classes, which should in turn be called 
 out when the necessity arose for making a draft. The brig- 
 S-R-xii, adiers-general were all re-elected except Thomas Person, 
 who was succeeded by John Butler;* but General Vail 
 dying soon, General Simpson was appointed by the council 
 xbu'v, to ta ^ e place. A particular act was passed to encourage 
 volunteers in the existing Indian war, and a premium of 
 Lio was offered for each scalp taken from and “fleeced off 
 the head of an Indian man” by a captor being in the service 
 of the State, and £40 for each scalp taken by one not in 
 the pay of the State, “who shall voluntarily undertake to 
 make war upon the said Indians.” Particular efforts were 
 also made to promote recruiting for the continental service. 
 To suppress the Tories, the county courts were authorized 
 to require every inhabitant who should refuse to take the 
 oath of allegiance to depart from the State in sixty days. 
 For this purpose the counties were to be laid off into small 
 districts, in which a justice of the peace was to warn the 
 inhabitants to come and take the oath, and on the failure -of 
 any to do so, they were to be banished. Banished persons 
 had the right to sell their property before leaving, but in 
 case they did not, their property became forfeited to the 
 State. The patriots of that day realized the necessity of 
 reducing the number of the disaffected within the limits 
 of the State as far as practicable, and although these were 
 harsh and rigorous exactions, yet they seem to have been 
 necessary and wise. 
 
 Sam Johnston and John Ashe were re-elected treasurers, 
 and apparently there was no particular contest over any 
 appointment, except alone for one of the delegates to the 
 Continental Congress. Penn was a member of the house, 
 and desired to replace Hewes. Pie made a determined and 
 personal effort, alleging that Hewes, who as a member of 
 the Marine Committee was transacting very important busi- 
 ness for the congress, was holding two offices, a method of 
 
 *General Butler, like Rutherford, had been one of those county 
 officers of whose excesses the Regulators complained. He was 
 sheriff of Orange in December, 1770, although his brother William 
 was one of the Regulators. 
 
PENN DEFEATS HEWES 
 
 575 
 
 electioneering that greatly disgusted Hewes and his friends. 
 A warm struggle ensued, and Penn succeeded by ten votes. 
 The delegates chosen were Burke, Hooper, and Penn. 
 Hooper declined, for the expense had been too heavy for 
 his purse, and his friend Harnett was chosen to fill the 
 vacancy. It was, however, said that had Hewes then been 
 willing to accept he would have been chosen unanimously 
 to replace Hooper, but his friends asserted that he would 
 not accept under the circumstances. If his great and patri- 
 otic service at Philadelphia was not appreciated by the 
 Assembly, he was content to attend to his private affairs. 
 
 At that time the militia battalions sent to South Carolina 
 were still in that State, one of them being commanded by 
 Colonel Abraham Sheppard. It being resolved to raise a 
 new continental battalion, Sheppard was appointed colonel 
 of it, and he was directed to select his own officers and 
 recruit his men. He had been Caswell’s lieutenant-colonel 
 at Alamance, had commanded the Dobbs militia with Cas- 
 well at Moore's Creek, and was in service on the Cape Fear 
 under General Ashe. He was regarded as particularly effi- 
 cient, and Caswell reposed the highest confidence in him. 
 
 Eventually, after a session of a month, in the course of 
 which the new State was launched with its officers and laws, 
 suited to the changed conditions, the Assembly adjourned. 
 
 1777 
 
 April 
 
 McRee's 
 Iredell, I, 
 359 
 
 Sheppard’s 
 regiment 
 S. R., XI, 
 457 
 
 Conditions within the State 
 
 The counties now became organized with their courts, s^r’Jxi 7 , 
 justices, clerks, sheriffs, registrars and other officers, and 526 
 there was a general feeling of stability, and that the new 
 government was permanently established. But yet the 
 inhabitants were by no means of one mind on the subject 
 of independence. Disaffection manifested itself more or 
 less in every community. In July there were Tories in 
 arms in Surry, and trouble in Guilford ; and in that month 
 the Council of State, writing to General Rutherford, told 
 him that they could not send any troops from the Hillsboro 
 brigade, as he “well knew how many disaffected persons 
 reside in that district and neighborhood.” 
 
 Indeed, this was a time of fearful commotion and anxious 
 solicitude in many parts of the State. A test oath being 
 
5/6 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 1777 
 
 May 
 
 The Tories 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 534» 560 
 
 S R , XI, 
 
 527. 533 
 et seq. 
 
 June 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 
 560 
 
 required of all citizens, and those refusing to take it being 
 ordered to depart the State within sixty days, a dread alter- 
 native was presented that brought sorrow and lamentations. 
 Deplorable in the extreme was the situation of a great num- 
 ber of inhabitants who determined to abandon their homes 
 and become wanderers on the face of the earth rather than 
 engage in what they considered unjustifiable rebellion. A 
 very large part of Cumberland, estimated at two-thirds of 
 the county, prepared to leave the State, and in other com- 
 munities considerable numbers had the same gloomy pros- 
 pects. The Scotch refused to take the oath almost to a 
 man. They preferred exile to renouncing their allegiance ; 
 and being much exasperated, they became very troublesome. 
 
 The salt riots 
 
 The interruption of regular commerce resulted in general 
 privation of the necessaries of life. Chief among the indis- 
 pensable articles for domestic use was salt, and of this there 
 was a scarcity. The first highways known to history were 
 made by the denizens of the interior seeking the seashore 
 for this commodity. The human system hungers for it, and 
 when the supply among the inhabitants of the interior ran 
 short they fell into great commotions — the people demanded 
 salt and would have it ; and now began a disturbance that 
 might well be denominated the salt riot. The State had 
 a quantity stored at Cross Creek for the use of the public, 
 and thither bodies of men began to congregate. It was 
 reported that a thousand assembled in Orange alone, and 
 crowds gathered in Duplin, Guilford, Chatham and other 
 counties with such a threatening aspect that an alarming 
 insurrection was feared. It was apprehended that the ulti- 
 mate purpose was to seize the military stores at Wilmington. 
 Colonel Williams, in command of the continentals at Hali- 
 fax, and Colonel Sheppard, whose Tenth Regiment was at 
 Kinston, were directed to move on Cross Creek, and Gen- 
 eral Ashe was ordered to call out the militia of that district. 
 The rising, however, seems only to have been with a view 
 of taking the salt, and it was that which drew together the 
 crowds in the disaffected territory. 
 
 On July 30th a mob of one hundred and forty persons 
 
TORY UPRISINGS 
 
 5 77 
 
 from Duplin and Johnston entered Cross Creek, but Robert 
 Rowan met them with his company, and having required 
 them to take the oath, sold them salt at $5 per bushel. Five 
 hundred more came in somewhat later, and probably were 
 appeased in the same way. 
 
 The task of the patriots 
 
 Just at the same time, July, 1777, a conspiracy was dis- 
 covered among the eastern Tories to rise and fall upon their 
 neighbors. “I am sorry to inform you,” wrote Colonel Irwin 
 to Governor Caswell, “that many evil persons in Edgecombe 
 and the neighboring counties have been joined in a most 
 wicked conspiracy. About thirty of them made an attempt 
 on Tarboro, but luckily I had about twenty-five men to op- 
 pose them, and I disarmed the whole and made many take 
 the oath.” 
 
 Had there been more unanimity, the task of the patriot 
 leaders had been easier ; but their daring, their constancy, 
 and fortitude would not have entitled them so thoroughly 
 to the gratitude and admiration of succeeding generations. 
 Notwithstanding the division in sentiment of the inhabitants, 
 it is to the honor of the public men of that period that no 
 man who had been honored with the confidence of the people 
 flinched when the test came or failed to move forward 
 through the gloom and obscurity of the doubtful and hazard- 
 ous issue. They doubtless felt as Franklin in the Conti- 
 nental Congress expressed it, “we must all hang together, or 
 we will be sure to hang separately.” 
 
 There were, however, two Englishmen who, after the 
 formation of the State government, withdrew their support 
 from the cause. One, William Brimage, of Edenton, was 
 appointed by Governor Caswell to hold the court of oyer in 
 March. He declined, and not long afterward planned an 
 insurrection, proposing to join the British vessel at Ocra- 
 coke. For this he was arrested. The other prominent in- 
 habitant who fell from the cause was John Slingsby, a mer- 
 chant of Wilmington, who at first entered zealously into the 
 revolutionary measures, but subsequently adhered to the 
 Crown, and in 1781 was colonel of the Loyalist militia of 
 Bladen, and lost his life at the battle of Elizabethtown. 
 
 1777 
 
 July 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 521 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 
 539 
 
 Brimage 
 
 Slingsby 
 
CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 5?S 
 
 1777 Johnston dissatisfied 
 
 J" ly Samuel Johnston, although always true to the cause, was 
 
 much dissatisfied with the form of government, and doubt- 
 less suffered mortification at his treatment by the people of 
 Chowan. Governor Caswell offered to appoint him to hold 
 the court of oyer in the Edenton district, but Johnston ques- 
 tioned Caswell’s right to make the appointment. The legis- 
 
 s R XI lature in April re-elected him one of the state treasurers, but 
 
 488,504 he declined, saying: “In the infancy of our glorious struggle, 
 when the minds of many were unsettled and doubtful of 
 the event, I joyfully accepted every appointment that was 
 offered by my fellow-citizens, and readily stood forth to give 
 testimony of my concurrence and approbation of every meas- 
 ure which tends to the security of the most inestimable 
 rights of mankind ; at this period, when the constitution of 
 this State is happily, and, I flatter myself, permanently es- 
 tablished, when all doubts and apprehensions are entirely 
 removed, . . . I . . . request . . . the favor of being per- 
 mitted to decline that very honorable and lucrative appoint- 
 ment.” The cause of his declination was deep-seated. He 
 was dissatisfied, mortified, and doubtless animated by resent- 
 ment. The people had framed a government without his 
 aid, and he had been treated by the inhabitants of his own 
 county as if he were an odious character. Two months 
 after he declined the treasureship he wrote to Dr. Burke : 
 “I have had an opportunity of seeing an experiment of the 
 new legislature, and am as little pleased with it in practice 
 as I was formerly in theory, and am still of opinion that 
 though your plan might, for aught I know, be well adapted 
 to the government of a numerous, cultivated people, it will 
 by no means be attended with those salutary ends which 
 were in the contemplation of its framers.” He characterized 
 many of the representatives as “fools and knaves, who by 
 their low arts have worked themselves into the good graces 
 of the populace.” “I saw with indignation such men as 
 Griffith Rutherford, Thomas Person, and your colleague, 
 J. Penn, . . . principal leaders in both houses, you will not 
 expect that anything good or great . . . from the counsels 
 of men of such narrow, contracted principle, supported by 
 
TORIES EXPELLED 
 
 579 
 
 the most contemptible abilities. Hewes was supplanted . . . 
 in congress by the most insidious arts and glaring falsehoods, 
 and Hooper, though no competitor appeared to oppose him, 
 lost a great number of votes.” He concludes: “I am now 
 out of office and totally abstracted from all political con- 
 cerns.” But in less than two years his resentment was molli- 
 fied, and he again took his place in the Assembly as senator 
 from Chowan, and in the dark days of the war he put forth 
 his best efforts for success. 
 
 Loyalists depart 
 
 Throughout the province, however, there were large num- 
 bers of local standing who remained fixed in their opposi- 
 tion to the new government. These malcontents interfered 
 with the recruiting and were a menace to the public peace, 
 threatening the magazines in the different sections of the 
 State, and it was desirable to free the inhabitants from their 
 influence. Toward the last of July a large vessel sailed from 
 New Bern having on board a great number of Tories with 
 their wives and families, chiefly Scotchmen. Among the 
 passengers were Martin Howard, the late chief justice of the 
 province, and his wife and daughter. Since the beginning 
 of hostilities he had been living quietly in seclusion on his 
 plantation, Richmond, in Craven County. October 27th an- 
 other transport sailed from New Bern for Jamaica, hav- 
 ing on board John Hamilton and his brother Archibald, of 
 Halifax, and many other Scotchmen. In January Governor 
 Martin wrote from New York that many refugees from 
 North Carolina had arrived there, “among them John Hamil- 
 ton and Mr. MacLeod, the former a merchant of considerable 
 note, long settled there, and the latter a Presbyterian clergy- 
 man of good character, who have formed a very spirited 
 . . . and well-concerted plan by drawing out of that prov- 
 ince for his Majesty’s service the loyal Highlanders, of 
 whom they have two hundred and seventy odd men actually 
 under the most solemn engagements to join them on a sum- 
 mons.” Later these men were embodied in a regiment un- 
 der Hamilton’s command, and were actively engaged during 
 the war. 
 
 1777 
 
 July 
 
 s. R., XI, 
 
 656, 765; 
 XIII, 368 
 
 The 
 
 Hamiltons 
 
58 ° 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 1777 
 
 July 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 524 
 
 Lafayette 
 
 The 
 
 blockade 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 532 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 624 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 733; XV, 
 
 702 
 
 The brigade 
 joins 
 
 Washington 
 
 Arrival of Lafayette 
 
 In July, while the continental battalions were being filled 
 at Halifax, there passed through that village a bevy of 
 French officers who had just landed at Georgetown, S. C., 
 and were making their way to the headquarters of Gen- 
 eral Washington, being the first practical indications of 
 French sympathy with the colonies in their struggle for inde- 
 pendence, the forerunners of that great assistance which 
 later brought the war to its glorious close at Yorktown. On 
 July 1 8th Major Ashe wrote to Caswell : “I haven’t any news 
 to write your Excellency, only th’t one of the royal bloods 
 of France (the Marquis de Lafayette), recommended by 
 Mr. Franklin, passed this (place] a few days since, on his 
 way to the Grand Army.” Lafayette at that time was not 
 twenty years of age, but at once he burst on the American 
 horizon as a star of the first magnitude, and the glory of his 
 name approaches that of the great Washington. 
 
 Ocracoke Inlet 
 
 British cruisers undertook to close the channel of com- 
 merce through Ocracoke Inlet, but many vessels still came 
 in bringing salt, ammunition, and other needed supplies, and 
 privateers were constantly sallying forth to prey on British 
 commerce. Among those fitted out at New Bern were the 
 Sturdy Beggar and the Nancy, while at Wilmington the 
 General Washington was equipped as an armed vessel for 
 the State. 
 
 In the middle of September two large English frigates 
 suddenly appeared at Ocracoke, where many vessels lay 
 ready to sail. They took several, particularly a large French 
 brig, but the most of the fleet escaped by returning into 
 Neuse River. The British tars then made capture of the fat 
 mutton on the banks ; but the Sturdy Beggar, fourteen guns, 
 and Pennsylvania Farmer, sixteen guns, at once sailed to 
 clear the harbor. 
 
 The Continental Line joins the Grand Army 
 
 On July 1st the long march of Nash’s brigade came to 
 an end, and it went into quarters at Trenton. This addition 
 to Washington’s army was important, adding largely to its 
 strength and enabling him to present a bold front to Corn- 
 
DEATH OF GENERAL NASH 
 
 58i 
 
 wallis, who threatened Philadelphia from the Elk. To form l 2H 
 
 a corps to hover about the enemy and give him all the annoy- J u >y 
 ance possible, Washington now organized a light division, 
 composed in part of a hundred men taken from the North 
 Carolina brigade, under Colonel Martin, the command being 
 bestowed on Major-General Maxwell. The brigade itself Ugh7 ells 
 was assigned to General Sullivan’s division, and participated Dlvlslon 
 in the battle of Brandywine, September nth; but the man- 
 agement was so wretched that none of the brigades in Sul- 
 livan’s division won great renown. Colonel Martin’s de- 
 tachment had better fortune. Maxwell held his position at 
 Chad’s Ford with remarkable tenacity, and particularly did 
 Captain Jacob Turner, of the Third Battalion, greatly dis- 
 tinguish himself, bringing honor to his corps.* 
 
 At the battle of Germantown, October 4 th, the brigade o 77 4 th, 
 had a better opportunity of displaying its courage, and its ^™ an ‘ 
 vigorous conduct was highly honorable to the State. Nash’s 
 and Maxwell’s brigades supported those of Sullivan and 
 Wayne that led the attack on the centre. They were sue- s g R g - xi, 
 cessful from the beginning, drove the enemy pell-mell 
 in their front and pressed on resolutely through the long and 
 straggling village of Germantown. Eventually they routed ^ n h f n s g 
 the British left, which had made a stand against their on- ton > ^ 
 slaught. Nash’s brigade was on the extreme right, and 
 gained a more advanced position than any other of the 
 American troops. The victory was won when an untoward 
 incident changed the face of affairs. A great fog prevailed, 
 and at a point some three miles from where the engagement 
 began Wayne’s division, on Nash's left, mistook some of 
 General Greene’s troops, who formed Washington’s left 
 wing and were approaching from that direction, for a large 
 British force on their flank. Alarmed at their supposed 
 peril, they broke and could not be rallied. Their flight from 
 the front turned victory into disaster. The British renewed 
 the contest with spirit. The brigades of Nash and Sullivan, 
 far in advance, unsupported and threatened on both flanks, 
 were compelled to withdraw. The army retired many miles, 
 pursued by the enemy. 
 
 *Hugh McDonald, whose diary has been preserved, was apparently 
 a member of Colonel Martin’s detachment with General Maxwell. 
 
5?2 
 
 CASWELL’S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 1777 
 
 Death of 
 Nash 
 
 Biop. Hist 
 N. C., Ill, 
 
 301 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 605, 729, 738 
 
 The North Carolinians suffered heavily. How many of 
 the rank and file were killed and wounded was not reported, 
 but the loss was great. Among the higher officers, General 
 Nash, Colonel Polk, Colonel Buncombe, Colonel Irwin, Cap- 
 tain Jacob Turner, and Captain Lucas, adjutant of the 
 Third, fell on the field of battle. Colonel Polk, although 
 badly wounded, fortunately recovered. Colonel Hogun, who 
 particularly distinguished himself, escaped. Colonel Bun- 
 combe, badly wounded, was conveyed from the field, where 
 he was found by an acquaintance in the British army, to 
 Philadelphia, and died from his wounds shortly afterward. 
 A cannon ball passed through the horse General Nash was 
 riding, and tore through his leg, also killing Major James 
 Witherspoon, an aide of General Maxwell. As he fell, Nash 
 called to his men : “Never mind me, I’ve had a devil of a 
 tumble ; rush on, my boys ; rush on the enemy ; I will be after 
 you presently.” He was borne fainting from the field and 
 died, after lingering in great agony for three days. He 
 was interred in the Mennonite Churchyard at Culpsville, Pa. 
 His death was truly lamented. It was a sad blow to his 
 brigade, the men and officers alike having the greatest con- 
 fidence in him and affection for him. At home, when the 
 legislature met, it put on record a memorial of his worth 
 and virtues, made an appropriation to erect a marble monu- 
 ment in his honor, and created a county, called by his name, 
 to perpetuate his memory. On Nash’s, death, congress not 
 being ready to appoint additional generals, the command 
 of the brigade was assigned by Washington to General Mc- 
 Intosh, of Georgia. 
 
 The new battalions 
 
 After Nash moved north, the first efforts of the authorities 
 were directed to filling the ranks of the older regiments, but 
 these efforts were measurably checked by the activity of those 
 officers who were seeking to enlist men for the Seventh, 
 Eighth and Ninth battalions, upon whose prompt completion 
 depended their commissions. While the officers of Shep- 
 pard’s Tenth battalion offered the additional inducement 
 that that battalion was for local service, and would not have 
 to leave the State, numerous recruiting officers, represent- 
 
RECRUITING 
 
 583 
 
 ing every regiment and company, were scouring the State. 
 The first impulse of patriotic ardor had somewhat subsided, 
 and recruiting for the war proceeded but slowly. The camp 
 at Halifax was left in charge of Colonel John Williams, and 
 as rapidly as possible recruits were collected and sent for- 
 ward in detachments, and eventually, on September 1st, 
 Colonel Williams broke camp and moved the entire force 
 northward to join the Grand Army. In July, likewise, 
 Colonel Sheppard's regiment was taken into the pay of the 
 Continental Congress and also ordered north. 
 
 1776 
 
 Williams’s 
 
 Battalion 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 Caswell’s Administration, 1776-80 — Continued. 
 
 Nov., 1777 
 S. R., XII, 
 
 114, 418 
 
 XXIV, 128 
 
 S. R„ XI, 
 380-389, 417 
 
 The second session of the Assembly. — Articles of confederation. — 
 Valley Forge. — Supplies from North Carolina. — The North Carolina 
 line destitute. — Feeling in England. — Treaty with France. — The sec- 
 ond Assembly. — Dr. Burke in congress. — The battalions consolidated. 
 — Nine months’ Continentals. — Defection prevalent. — The North 
 Carolina brigade. — The judges appeal to the people. — At the ad- 
 journed session. — For the southern campaign.- — Importations con- 
 tinued. — The fall of Savannah. — Militia for the South. — Ashe sur- 
 prised at Briar Creek. — Boyd's defeat. — Eight horse at the North. 
 - — Sumner and Hogun brigadiers. — The hardships of the officers. — 
 Prices and taxes. — Internal perils. — Movements of troops.— Battle 
 of Stony Point. — The second Assembly. — Efforts to increase the Con- 
 tinental force. — Tory movements. — Battle of Stono. — Davie wounded. 
 — Battle at Savannah. — Hogun’s brigade ordered South. 
 
 The second session of the Assembly 
 
 The Assembly reconvened in November and again sat a 
 month. It established superior courts, electing Samuel 
 Ashe, Samuel Spencer, and James Iredell the judges, and 
 Waightstill Avery the attorney-general. Courts for the 
 trial of civil causes that had been suspended since 1773 were 
 thus reopened in the spring of 1778. Many important 
 measures engaged the attention of the Assembly. It being 
 represented that a large force would probably be needed 
 at the north, the legislature empowered the governor to 
 draft five thousand militia, and to command them himself, 
 or to appoint a major-general in his place. 
 
 In the Continental Congress Dr. Burke had been par- 
 ticularly active and very efficient. He communicated to the 
 governor full details of the proceedings of the congress 
 and of his action on the various measures proposed, his 
 letters being in the highest degree creditable to him. He 
 participated largely in the discussion upon the articles of 
 confederation and transmitted a brief of the argument. 
 These articles were laid before the General Assembly at its 
 
WORK OF THE LEGISLATURE 
 
 585 
 
 November session, and that body declined to ratify the 
 entire instrument. As the Provincial Congress had rejected 
 Franklin’s plan two years earlier, so now the Assembly was 
 careful about entering into any agreement with the other 
 states that might injuriously affect the rights of the people. 
 Indeed, the permanency of the connection with the other 
 colonies was so far from being regarded as finally estab- 
 lished that in the state constitution it was provided that the 
 delegates to the Continental Congress, “while necessary,” 
 should be annually chosen. 
 
 Although Johnston ascribed to General Person a con- 
 trolling direction of the house, yet the few records of the 
 ayes and nays preserved in the journals of that body indicate 
 that that leader of the democrats was frequently in the 
 minority. He proposed without avail a tax reduction and a 
 reduction in the compensation of the governor ; and sim- 
 ilarly other movements in the way of seeking popular favor 
 appear to have been defeated. Honors were paid to Gen- 
 eral Nash, for whom a new county was named; and a 
 county also was named in honor of Wilkes ; and W ashing- 
 ton district beyond the mountains, which had been accorded 
 representation in the Provincial Congress and in that 
 Assembly, was now converted into a county. For purposes 
 of intercourse with it a public road was directed to be 
 constructed across the mountains leading into Burke. 
 
 A fort was built at Ocracoke, and one of the row-galleys, 
 named the Caszvell, was purchased from the State of Vir- 
 ginia for the better protection of the commerce through that 
 inlet. Commissioners were appointed also to repair Fort 
 Johnston and build a new fort commanding the bay at Point 
 Lookout. The academy at Charlotte was revived under the 
 name of Liberty Hall, and early in 1778 trustees were ap- 
 pointed to establish a similar academy in the neighborhood 
 of Hillsboro. Toward the end of the session some friction 
 appears to have arisen between the two houses, especially 
 over the election law, but eventually the house concurred 
 with the senate and passed the act fixing the time of the 
 annual meeting on April 1st and rendering ineligible dele- 
 gates to the general congress and certain other officers. To 
 take the place of the old-time vestries, the freemen in the 
 
 1777 
 
 November 
 
 S. R., XII, 
 4'i 
 
 S. R„ XII. 
 441 ; XXIV, 
 141-144 
 
 S. R., 
 XXIV, 79 
 
5 86 
 
 1777 
 
 December 
 
 S. R., XII, 
 i34 
 
 1777-1778 
 
 S. R., XI, 
 688, 689, 703 
 
 Supplies 
 from North 
 Carolina 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 
 367 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 counties were directed to elect overseers of the poor and 
 county wardens, and this change marked the final separa- 
 tion of church and State. 
 
 Colonel Sheppard had been so dilatory in moving the 
 Tenth Regiment to the north that a legislative committee 
 investigated the causes of his inaction, and although some 
 excuse was found in the dearth of supplies, on the whole 
 the committee reported that his reasons were frivolous and 
 insufficient; and toward the end of November he was again 
 instructed to join the Grand Army. 
 
 Valley Forge 
 
 That winter, the British having occupied Philadelphia, 
 General Washington went into winter quarters at Valley 
 Forge, twenty-three miles west of that city. There the nine 
 North Carolina battalions passed the winter subjected to 
 the most trying vicissitudes. Terrible, indeed, were the 
 sufferings of all the troops in that famous encampment. 
 While for the most part the army remained in their canton- 
 ments, a special corps was organized for rapid march to 
 harass the British outposts and keep in check their forag- 
 ing parties. The returns show that about one-half the 
 North Carolinians fit for duty were engaged in these com- 
 mands outside of the regular quarters. As the season ad- 
 vanced with its unusual severity, the unhappy situation and 
 destitute condition of the North Carolina line called for 
 vigorous measures of relief. The only communication was 
 to the southward, and except such provision and clothing as 
 could be obtained from the unwilling Pennsylvanians, the 
 army had to be furnished from Virginia and North Caro- 
 lina, and Governor Caswell was unremitting in his endeavors 
 to provide needed supplies. Now the value of Ocracoke 
 became still more apparent. Governor Martin wrote in 
 January from New York to Lord Germain: “The contempt- 
 ible port of Ocracoke . . . has become a great channel of 
 supply to the rebels. . . . They have received through it 
 very . . . considerable importations.’’ To close that inlet a 
 British ship of war, two sloops, a brig, and privateersmen 
 from New York and England hovered along the coast, 
 charged with the duty of capturing American vessels. But, 
 
DOMESTIC ACTIVITY 
 
 58 7 
 
 on the other hand, efforts were made to drive them off, and 'JDL 
 in addition to the fortifications and state vessels, the New December 
 Bern merchants fitted out the Bellona, carrying eighteen 
 guns, and the Chatham to make reprisals. To pay for im- 
 ported goods, tobacco was shipped to foreign countries, the 
 State purchasing and sending out large quantities of that 
 commodity. Salt brought in by the State was exchanged for 
 pork, and Caswell employed men in every section packing 
 pork for Washington’s army. All sorts of skins and f“ ppli ® t s for 
 leathers and all cloths fit for blankets were likewise ob- Valley 
 tained for the soldiers, sometimes resort being had to im- * " rke 
 pressment. In the Albemarle section, where there were so 
 many industrious Quakers, large quantities of shoes were 
 manufactured, and these were purchased not only for the 
 army, but by northern merchants, who paid high prices for 
 them. Importations were also made on account of the Con- ^ ^ * ri1 ^ 
 tinental Congress, and these supplies were stored at South 
 Quay, on the Blackwater. From there they were moved by 
 wagons to Valley Forge. Means of transportation were 
 limited, and at length four brigades of wagons were sent 
 from Pennsylvania to haul stores from Edenton and South 
 Quay for the use of the army, and these supplies contributed 
 to relieve the sufferings which the soldiers had so unmur- 
 muringly endured. On February 15th Caswell wrote: "I 
 find our nine regiments . . . very far . . . short of their 
 complement of men, and those in camp almost destitute of 
 clothing. . . . The officers of the Sixth Battalion are 
 
 sent home as supernumeraries. ... I am to buy leather, 
 skins, shoes and other clothing, procure manufacturers, set 
 them to work, purchase salt and provisions, and procure 
 boats and wagons for sending those articles on. All this I 
 am constantly, almost busily, employed about myself, re- 
 ceiving very little assistance.” 
 
 Early in March General McIntosh reported that of the 
 North Carolina line at Valley Forge since January 50 had s 7 r., xiii, 
 died in camp ; that 200 were then sick in camp, and an equal 377, 428 
 number were in hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The North 
 The number then at V alley forge was 900 ; in May there troops 
 were 1100 privates, while of rank and file there were 1450. 
 
 Colonel Sheppard’s regiment, having lingered in North 
 
588 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 1 777 
 
 December 
 
 Treaty with 
 France 
 
 Dec., 1777 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 
 425 
 
 1778 
 
 S. R., XII, 
 549 
 
 New 
 
 counties 
 
 Carolina until cold weather set in, spent the winter in the 
 smallpox camp at Georgetown, Md., where more died with 
 measles than from the effects of innoculation. 
 
 That winter was indeed terrible to the patriots ; but it 
 was also discomforting to the British. Burgoyne’s entire 
 army having surrendered in October, that general reached 
 England in December, and such was the gloom and de- 
 spondency in Great Britain that there was much sentiment 
 in favor of a cessation of the war. In the House of 
 Commons only 33 majority was cast against assenting 
 to the independence of America. Lord North, in urging 
 money for another campaign, declared as the alternative 
 that they would have to furnish money to bring the troops 
 home. This favorable news gave great hope throughout the 
 colonies; and then in May came the treaty with France, 
 followed quickly by the declaration of war by France against 
 England and the promise of an immense fleet and four thou- 
 sand veteran troops to end the struggle. When a copy of 
 this treaty reached New Bern it was immediately published 
 under a display of American and French colors and a triple 
 discharge of thirteen pieces of cannon by the town company 
 of militia, mustered for that purpose. And as the Gazette 
 quaintly remarked: “Universal joy appeared in every coun- 
 tenance, great plenty of liquor was given to the populace, 
 and the evening concluded with great good humor and social 
 mirth.” 
 
 The second Assembly 
 
 The new Assembly met on April 14th at New Bern, Whit- 
 mel Hill being chosen speaker of the senate and Judge John 
 Williams speaker of the house. Among the new members 
 was James Hunter, who now co-operated heartily with the 
 Whigs. Governor Caswell gave a full account of public 
 matters in a message to the legislature. He was again 
 elected governor, and the other members of the council were 
 re-elected, Richard Henderson taking the place vacated by 
 Harnett. A new county was formed and named in honor 
 of the victor over Burgoyne, General Gates ; another in 
 honor of Willie Jones; others for Montgomery and Ran- 
 dolph, while the names of Bute and Tryon were obliterated, 
 
INDEPENDENCE OF BURKE 
 
 589 
 
 and those counties were respectively divided into Franklin 
 and Warren and Lincoln and Rutherford. 
 
 On the death of General Moore, Dr. Burke, instead of 
 recommending one of the North Carolina colonels to fill the 
 vacancy, urged the appointment of Colonel Hand, of Penn- 
 sylvania, a gallant Irishman, his action in that matter calling 
 forth a vigorous protest and remonstrance from the North 
 Carolina officers. At the annual election in April he was 
 not chosen a deputy, Abner Nash being elected in his place. 
 Nash, however, declined, and John Williams, of Granville, 
 the speaker, was then elected, Thomas Benbury becoming 
 speaker. 
 
 But if Burke lost favor because of this incident, he soon 
 re-established himself in the affections of North Carolinians. 
 At the very time he was denied a re-election his action at 
 Philadelphia was so patriotic that he gained renewed favor. 
 A majority of the congress had drawn a communication to 
 General Washington which Dr. Burke thought contained 
 an unmerited reflection on that general, and he combated 
 it with great warmth, and with indignation retired from 
 the chamber, his withdrawal breaking the quorum. On 
 being sent for, he expressed himself so vehemently to the 
 messenger that congress considered his action a contempt 
 of that body. He explained that he did not understand that 
 the congress had sent for him, and offered some apology. 
 His explanations, however, did not satisfy the irate mem- 
 bers, and then Burke manfully reasserted his position, 
 caused the matter to be fully spread on the records, and 
 claimed that he was responsible only to the legislature of 
 North Carolina. The record of the proceedings being sub- 
 mitted to the next session of the Assembly, that body ap- 
 proved his course, and again elected him a delegate in 
 congress. For a time, however, he was retired, and when 
 the articles of confederation were ratified on behalf of North 
 Carolina, on July 21, 1778, they were signed by John 
 Williams, John Penn, and Cornelius Harnett. 
 
 The Assembly took measures for filling up the continental 
 battalions ; but on May 29th congress resolved that the bat- 
 talions in camp should be consolidated, and a call was made 
 on the State to raise four additional ones, which, however. 
 
 1778 
 
 S. R„ XI, 
 
 562 , 750 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 87, 105, 209 
 
 Dr. Burke 
 at Phila- 
 delphia 
 
 A rticles of 
 Confedera- 
 tion ratified 
 
590 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-S0 
 
 1778 
 
 S? R., XI, 
 761 
 
 The 
 
 battalions 
 
 consolidated 
 
 S. R., 
 XXIV, 154 
 
 The nine 
 
 months’ 
 
 continentals 
 
 S. R., XII, 
 
 862 
 
 were to remain at home until ordered elsewhere. Pursuant 
 to this resolution, the battalions in service were reduced to 
 four. The Sixth, originally commanded by Lillington, and 
 later by Colonel Lamb, was merged with the First, of which 
 Thomas Clark was colonel. The Fourth, commanded 
 by Colonel Polk, was merged with the Second, Colonel 
 Patten remaining colonel. The Fifth was merged with 
 the Third, Colonel Sumner continuing in command. 
 Colonel Martin had resigned the previous fall ; Colonel 
 Polk now resigned, and Colonel Hogun and the super- 
 numerary officers, of whom there were a large num- 
 ber, were directed to return to North Carolina for service 
 in the new battalions when raised. Efforts to obtain re- 
 cruits under the system of volunteering, even with the large 
 bounties offered, proved unavailing, and the legislature di- 
 rected that twenty-six hundred men should be detached from 
 the militia to serve in the continental army for nine months. 
 These were known as the “nine months’ men.” A certain 
 quota was apportioned to each county, and this number was 
 again apportioned by the colonel of the county among the 
 militia companies, so that every militia company in the State 
 had to furnish its proper share of these troops. It was the 
 same system that had been devised for calling out militia- 
 men. Volunteers from each company were first to be called 
 for, and to these a bounty of $100 was offered; and then, to 
 make up the deficiency in its quota, each company by ballot 
 selected the other men, and these were to receive a bounty 
 of $50. Every one so selected became a continental, and 
 those who faithfully served for nine months were to be 
 exempt from any military service for a period of three years. 
 All through May and June the militia companies were as- 
 sembling in the various counties and making their selec- 
 tions of nine months’ men, and thus again the war was 
 brought to the very homes of the people. In many com- 
 munities there was great opposition, for defection was pain- 
 fully prevalent. In Rowan Captain Johnston was appointed 
 to adminster the oath of allegiance to the inhabitants of his 
 district. They attended at the time and place advertised, 
 but when the oath was read and proposed to them, one of 
 the company hurrahed for “King George,” whereupon about 
 
MOVEMENT OF TROOPS 
 
 59i 
 
 a hundred withdrew in a riotous, turbulent manner ; and 
 when the captain undertook to raise the quota of men re- 
 quired of his company he found that the majority were 
 Tories, and that the disaffected element controlled the draft. 
 In many other sections the condition was not far different. 
 It was with difficulty that the law could be enforced, and 
 the drafted men responded but slowly. Those from the 
 eastern counties were to assemble at Halifax, while those 
 from the west were to proceed to Paytonsburg, in Virginia, 
 where Colonel Thackston was in command. Boards of con- 
 tinental officers convened at Halifax and Moore’s Creek to 
 arrange officers for the new battalions, and Colonel Hogun 
 was elected to command the first that should be organized. 
 In July his regiment was sufficiently organized at Halifax 
 for him to march, and he moved northward with six hundred 
 men. 
 
 The three consolidated regiments and Colonel Sheppard’s 
 Tenth Regiment had been thrown into “the North Carolina 
 Brigade,” Colonel Clark being in command, and were with 
 Washington when, at the end of June, he attacked Sir Henry 
 Clinton at Monmouth. They did not form a part of Lee’s 
 advanced corps that made the disorderly retreat at the be- 
 ginning of the engagement, but under Lord Sterling they 
 held the left of the second line and repulsed the enemy, and 
 later were thrown forward close to the British right to renew 
 the engagement. Night, however, closed in, and under cover 
 of darkness Clinton escaped. 
 
 During that fall and winter the brigade remained with 
 Washington at Fredericksburg, near the Connecticut line, 
 while Colonel Hogun with his new regiment of six hundred 
 men was engaged in throwing up fortifications at West 
 Point, which afterward became the fort so famous in history. 
 
 The other companies of nine months’ men in the summer 
 of 1778 went into camp, some at Duplin Court House, some 
 at Salisbury, at Hillsboro, and at Paytonsburg ; but, con- 
 gress having failed to send the bounty money, most of them 
 were placed on furlough to remain at home until the ensuing 
 March. 
 
 As the clergy had urged the people forward, so now the 
 bench sought to enforce constancy. Judge Iredell forcibly 
 
 1778 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 
 190 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 531 
 
 The 
 
 brigade at 
 Monmouth 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 496 
 
 Hogun at 
 West Point 
 
592 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 1778 
 
 S. R„ XIII, 
 442 . 443 
 
 Reanimat- 
 ing the 
 people 
 
 1778 
 
 The 
 
 delegation 
 
 urged patriotism; and at the June term of the Wilmington 
 district Judge Ashe, in calling the attention of the grand 
 jury to crimes against the State, adverted to the spirit of 
 disaffection, saying: “When 1 consider our present temper 
 and conduct and compare them with our past, I lament our 
 depravity. When the accursed plan to enslave us was first 
 formed and ready to be enforced against us, a noble spirit 
 animated us, our resentment kindled, every age and order 
 of men glowed with zeal ; each became emulous who should 
 succeed in resisting the encroachment ; to effect it all seemed 
 determined to venture everything ; no danger was thought 
 too hazardous, no difficulty was too great. Then were com- 
 panies formed and trained in every neighborhood ; . . . the 
 example was forcible, our youths catch noble passion ; nay, 
 our children of a few years old imbibe it. But, alas ! how 
 are we changed of late ; that noble spirit no longer inspires 
 us ; the celestial fire is extinguished, the flame ceases, it 
 glows no more. We have suffered a fascinating spirit of 
 avarice and extortion to take place instead. . . . Lamentable 
 defection ! Strange infatuation ! Can we think the eager 
 pursuit of riches will preserve us ? . . . Or is there no dan- 
 ger because the enemy are not instantly at our doors? . . . 
 Our fate is inseparably linked with our sister States. If 
 they fall we perish. America united must stand or fall 
 together. . . . For God's sake, then, let us rouse from our 
 supineness ! Let that spirit which at first animated us re- 
 vive. . . . Let the love of our country rise superior to the 
 . . . base passion for gain. In a word, let us adopt an equal 
 spirit, an equal love of liberty and firmness, with the brave 
 Corsicans, who, oppressed by Genoese tyranny, in their mili- 
 tary oath thus solemnly swore : ‘That we will sooner die than 
 enter into any negotiation with the Republic of Genoa or 
 return under its yoke.’ ” Every opportunity to impress the 
 people was seized by the patriots to strengthen the cause. 
 
 In August there was a short session of the Assembly held 
 at Hillsboro. Because attendance on the congress brought 
 so many deprivations, it was resolved to increase the num- 
 ber of deputies to five, requiring that three should always 
 be present, while the other two could be on leave at their 
 homes. Whitmel Hill, the speaker of the senate, and Thomas 
 
NEW INVASION OF THE SOUTH 
 
 593 
 
 Burke were elected as additional members, and Allen Jones 
 succeeded Hill as speaker of the senate. James Iredell, 
 one of the judges, having resigned, Richard Henderson was 
 elected in his stead, but he did not accept, and Archibald 
 Maclaine was then chosen. A new issue of £850,000 was 
 ordered to discharge all debts, and with the hope of counter- 
 acting the efforts made by disaffected persons to depreciate 
 the bills of credit, which were now rapidly falling in value. 
 
 In the early autumn it became evident that the southern 
 campaign threatened the year before was to become a reality, 
 and South Carolina called loudly for assistance, and urged 
 that congress should ask Caswell himself to command the 
 troops sent by North Carolina to her aid. In response con- 
 gress called on the State for three thousand men for service 
 at the south ; and Caswell, with his accustomed zeal, at once 
 entered on the work of organizing 1 and preparing this force. 
 He ordered out the nine months’ continentals, who were 
 then on furlough, and called on the generals of the militia 
 brigade to send forward their quotas for this expedition. 
 
 General Allen Jones, however, and many others as well, 
 interposed objections, saying that Caswell had no authority 
 to send the militia from the State ; and the want of harmony 
 led to great delay in drafting the men. 
 
 Importations continued, and in January there were 
 brought in on the ship Holy Heart of lesus twenty-three 
 pieces of heavy cannon, to pay for which a hundred and 
 forty hogsheads of tobacco were necessary, and the agent of 
 the State, Robert Salter, was directed to buy enough tobacco 
 for that purpose. 
 
 Indeed, privateering as a commercial venture was carried 
 on with great energy. In the spring of 1779 Captain Biddle 
 sent out the Eclipse, fourteen guns ; Captain Snoaye, the 
 Rainbozv and the Fanny, each fourteen guns ; while Captain 
 Ellis had three ships at sea taking prizes ; and about the 
 middle of May it was reported that five vessels had come into 
 New Bern with valuable cargoes. The more readily to im- 
 port military supplies, the Assembly appointed commissioners 
 to purchase and hire swift ships for the State, and Colonel 
 Benjamin Hawkins was empowered as state agent to con- 
 duct that business. He was to buy and export tobacco and 
 
 1778 
 
 The South 
 threatened 
 
 Oct. 16, 1778 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 246 
 
 Importa- 
 
 tions 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 
 6q2 
 
594 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 1778 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 225 
 
 Howe in 
 Georgia 
 
 Lincoln 
 
 takes 
 
 command 
 
 1779 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 3°, 55, 256, 
 289 
 
 pork, and, going abroad, was to purchase the needed military 
 supplies. Notwithstanding the doubtful issue of the struggle 
 at that time, the State already had some credit abroad, and 
 Colonel Hawkins was directed to borrow £20,000 sterling in 
 the West Indies for state purposes. 
 
 General Howe, who had been promoted by congress to the 
 rank of major-general, still remained in command of Georgia 
 and South Carolina ; but he was not agreeable to the South 
 Carolina authorities, who found it irksome to be defended 
 by a North Carolinian, and application was made for his 
 removal. So in September he was ordered to join Washing- 
 ton, General Lincoln being directed to relieve him. In No- 
 vember, as he was about to depart from Charleston, he, 
 however, received an express from Georgia urging the im- 
 minent danger of that State, and requesting his aid. Send- 
 ing forward what troops could be spared, he hurried to 
 Savannah to meet the invasion. He could muster but seven 
 hundred and fifty men besides the Georgia militia. With 
 these he took a position, deemed impregnable, about half a 
 mile below the town, and was sanguine of repulsing the 
 enemy. But the British commander, Colonel Campbell, 
 directed a body of seven hundred infantry, under the guid- 
 ance of a negro, to penetrate a swamp that had been thought 
 impassable, and suddenly Howe found his position untenable. 
 A brisk engagement ensued, and the Americans were com- 
 pelled to retire. In this retreat the Georgia brigade ignored 
 their general’s orders and suffered severely. Driven from 
 Savannah, Howe recrossed into South Carolina, intending 
 to protect Charleston. General Lincoln reached North Caro- 
 lina in November, and urged that the intended reinforce- 
 ments for the southern army should be hurried forward, 
 indicating that arms and equipments, of which there was a 
 great scarcity, could be furnished at Charleston. He arrived 
 at Howe’s camp on January 2d, and Howe went north to 
 the Grand Army. 
 
 Caswell offered the command of the detachment about to 
 be raised to General Ashe, who expressed a disinclination 
 to accept it. But the governor insisted, saying that one or 
 the other must go, and that the situation in the State ren- 
 dered his own presence imperative. To remove an objection. 
 
MOVEMENT OF TROOPS 
 
 595 
 
 he promised to perform personally Ashe’s duties as treasurer. 
 Ashe finally accepted the commission of major-general, and 
 proceeded to organize the detachments as they reached 
 Elizabethtown, where the drafts were directed to assemble. 
 To fill the vacancy made by Ashe’s promotion, on January ist 
 Alexander Lillington was appointed brigadier-general of the 
 Cape Fear district. 
 
 It becoming apparent that the British were to make a 
 great effort at the south, congress called on North Carolina 
 to increase her re-enforcements to five thousand, and Caswell 
 ardently sought to respond. In addition to the eastern levies. 
 General Rutherford was directed to call out his brigade and 
 reinforce Lincoln. The Indians had become hostile at the 
 west, so that no troops could be drawn from beyond the 
 mountains, but Rutherford hastily assembled some seven 
 hundred men, and toward the close of November began his 
 march. 
 
 Colonel Lamb was collecting the nine months’ continentals 
 at the east and Major Lytle at the west, while Sumner, the 
 senior officer then in the State, had general supervision. 
 Early in December Major Lytle, with a contingent of con- 
 tinentals, joined Rutherford ; but it was a month later before 
 Colonel Lamb crossed the Neuse with two hundred more, 
 and then he was detained at Kingston* several weeks waiting 
 for other detachments to come in ; while Ashe was still de- 
 layed at Elizabethtown, as only one-half of the militia drafts 
 had assembled. Rutherford, being the first to reach Charles- 
 ton, was fortunate in obtaining a fair supply of arms, but 
 the other militia detachments were so ill supplied as to give 
 great concern. Caswell was convinced ‘‘that little service 
 could be expected from them with what they have.” When 
 the Assembly met, about the middle of January, he reported 
 to that body that of the five thousand troops desired by 
 congress, he was fearful that not more than half had marched, 
 and those badly armed. The continentals were in better 
 plight. They were formed into two battalions, Sumner being 
 in command. 
 
 "'This name was afterward changed to Kinston. 
 
 1779 
 
 John Ashe, 
 
 major- 
 
 general 
 
 Aid for the 
 South 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 3*7 
 
 Rutherford 
 
 Ashe 
 
 The nine 
 
 months’ 
 
 continentals 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 
 629 
 
 XIV, 48 
 
596 
 
 1779 
 
 February 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 
 33> 39i 5i 
 et seq. 
 
 February 
 
 1779 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 Ashe defeated at Briar Creek 
 
 The British, having taken Savannah, had established posts 
 at Augusta and at various intermediate points on the river. 
 Toward the close of February, Lincoln, with a considerable 
 force, was on the South Carolina side, near Savannah. 
 Above him was Moultrie’s camp, while Rutherford’s brigade 
 was twenty miles below the point where Briar Creek empties 
 into the river on the Georgia side. General Williamson, with 
 twelve hundred South Carolina militia, was higher up toward 
 Augusta. Notwithstanding Ashe’s force was so badly 
 equipped and only raw militia, Lincoln selected it to make 
 the first movement. By his direction Ashe marched rapidly 
 from the vicinity of Charleston, passed the other detach- 
 ments, and, leaving his baggage, hastened toward Augusta. 
 On his approach the British evacuated that post and fell 
 down the west bank of the river. Lincoln having ordered 
 him to take position at Briar Creek, because of information 
 as to the insecurity of that position Ashe advised him that 
 it was hazardous. But, crossing on the 25th, he vigorously 
 pursued the retreating enemy, reaching Briar Creek on 
 the 27th. His swift march and energetic action was well 
 in keeping with his decision of character. In the swamp 
 at the forks, as ordered, he made his camp. He directed 
 his baggage to cross at a point some eight miles above, 
 sending six hundred men under Colonel Smith to guard it, 
 and he despatched four hundred men under Colonel Caswell 
 beyond the creek to surprise an outlying British post. Sum- 
 moned by Lincoln to attend a council of war at Rutherford’s 
 camp, he left his army, now reduced to about six hundred 
 men, under the command of General Bryan, with whom was 
 Colonel Elbert, an experienced continental officer of Georgia, 
 and Major Lytle, equally experienced. At the council it was 
 decided that Williamson should cross and join Ashe and 
 they should press down the west bank of the river and clear 
 the way for Rutherford and Lincoln to cross into Georgia. 
 
 On Ashe’s return at noon of March 2d he found vague 
 rumors that the British were in his vicinity, and that Bryan 
 was apprehensive. There had been friction between General 
 Bryan and himself from the beginning of the march from 
 Elizabethtown, almost resulting in a rupture, and Ashe made 
 
ASHE'S DEFEAT AT BRIAR CREEK 
 
 59 7 
 
 light of Bryan’s apprehensions. Two small parties of horse 
 had been sent out to reconnoitre, and a strong line of pickets 
 had been established three-quarters of a mile from the camp. 
 Discrediting the rumors that could be traced to no definite 
 source, and receiving no information from the reconnoitring 
 parties, Ashe made no preparations to resist an attack, 
 but busied himself in preparing for the forward movement. 
 He was arranging to cross the creek some two miles south 
 of his camp when, to his dismay, on the next afternoon 
 Colonel Smith, who was guarding the baggage up above, 
 despatched information that a large British force had passed 
 around the swamp and was approaching from the north. 
 Almost immediately the pickets became engaged ; but the 
 British column, consisting of nine hundred regulars, brushed 
 them aside, advancing rapidly with fixed bayonets to sur- 
 prise the camp before preparations could be made to receive 
 them. In the absence of preparation there was almost no 
 hope of a successful defence. Nor was there any road open 
 for retreat. The position assigned the North Carolina force 
 by Lincoln was a cul de sac, from which there was no escape. 
 The drums beat an alarm, the outlying detachments on the 
 creek were ordered in, and the troops were hastily formed 
 into two lines and served with cartridges ; but it was too late. 
 “We marched out to meet the enemy, some carrying the 
 cartridges under their arms, others in the bosoms of their 
 shirts, and some tied up in the corners of their hunting 
 shirts.” The first line, with a few Georgia continentals under 
 Colonel Elbert, and Colonel Perkins’s regiment on the right, 
 resolutely engaged the enemy. The Halifax regiment on the 
 left of the second line almost at the beginning of the en- 
 gagement broke and took to flight. The Wilmington and 
 New Bern regiments after two or three rounds followed 
 their example. The Edenton regiment remained on the 
 field, but after two or three more discharges they, too, gave 
 way just as Major Lytle with his command of light infantry 
 and a brass piece came up. That the first line and a part 
 of the second firmly stood their ground is attested by the 
 heavy loss of one hundred and fifty killed and wounded 
 on the battlefield. 
 
 The six hundred raw militia were not able to withstand 
 
 1779 
 
 s. r., xiv, 
 33 
 
 Ashe 
 su rprised 
 March 3d 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 52 
 
 The battle 
 
59 8 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 Ramsay, 
 Hist. U. S., 
 II, 296 
 S. R., XIV, 
 45 > 275 
 et seq. 
 
 The 
 
 Loyalists 
 
 defeated 
 
 nine hundred British regulars. The sight of the gleaming 
 bayonets was too much for the untrained militia, hurriedly 
 assembled and taken by surprise. The panic-stricken second 
 line fled, and the others soon following, Elbert and his thirty- 
 five continentals alone remained, fighting desperately; but 
 these were quickly overcome.* The militia sought safety in 
 the swamp, but one hundred and sixty-two privates and 
 twenty-four officers were captured. The loss in killed was 
 about one hundred and fifty. Those who succeeded in cross- 
 ing the river, about two hundred, Ashe marched into Ruther- 
 ford’s camp ; but as most of them had thrown away their 
 arms they were now an incumbrance rather than of further 
 use to Lincoln. The others who escaped through the swamp 
 toward Augusta, about two hundred and fifty, were long 
 collecting. Ashe asked for a court of inquiry, which found 
 much to his mortification, that he had not taken all the pre- 
 cautions proper to secure his camp. But considering the 
 position in which Lincoln had placed him, and the great 
 superiority of the attacking force, in any event only discom- 
 fiture awaited him. As the North Carolina militia were to 
 be discharged on April 10th, on that day they began their 
 return home, although their general and many of the officers 
 sought unavailingly to persuade the men to voluntarily re- 
 main. This detachment was, however, immediately replaced 
 by another under General Butler. 
 
 When Hamilton was organizing his Loyalist regiment in 
 Florida, as he had prior to his departure arranged with lead- 
 ing Tories in the State to join him, his adherents were 
 watchful of his movements. His regiment formed a part of 
 the force that captured Savannah, and on the fall of that 
 town the Tory leaders became active. Colonel Boyd, a 
 resident of the lower Yadkin, collected a force of Loyabsts, 
 and, marching through South Carolina, was joined by others, 
 who as they proceeded plundered the defenceless settlements 
 through which they passed. Colonel Pickens, determined 
 on revenge, hastily embodied some three hundred men and 
 
 *Colonel Elbert, desperately wounded, had fallen, and a British 
 soldier was in the act of bayonetting him when he made a masonic 
 sign, and his life was saved. He recovered, became greatly distin- 
 guished, and later was governor of Georgia. 
 
BOYD DEFEATED BY PICKENS 
 
 599 
 
 came up with them near Kettle Creek as they were making 
 their way to Augusta. In an action that lasted three-quarters 
 of an hour the Tories were routed, about forty of them being 
 killed, among whom was Colonel Boyd, and the others dis- 
 persed. Seventy of them were tried for treason by the South 
 Carolina government and condemned to death, but this whole- 
 sale sentence was respited, and only five of the ringleaders 
 were executed. General Prevost had counted much on the 
 aid of the Tories of upper Georgia and of the two Carolinas, 
 and the quick suppression of this first rising somewhat dis- 
 concerted his plans. 
 
 Dickerson's company of light horse had been taken into 
 the service of congress soon after its organization, and 
 served in New York and later in Pennsylvania, and always 
 as a very efficient corps ; but toward the close of the year 
 1778 its numbers were so reduced that by direction of con- 
 gress it was returned to the State, and early in 1779 was 
 discharged from further service. Major Phifer’s light horse 
 and Vance’s artillery also were at the north with the Grand 
 Army, and served at Brandywine and elsewhere. 
 
 In December, 1778, Colonel Hogun was directed to march 
 his regiment from West Point to Philadelphia, as its time 
 was soon to expire. The weather was very severe, but after 
 a trying march he went into barracks at Philadelphia early 
 in January. While he was there, on January 9, 1779, con- 
 gress found time to make a tardy appointment of brigadiers 
 for North Carolina. Sumner and Hogun were appointed, 
 these being the senior colonels.* The former was directed to 
 return to the south, organize the continental force then being 
 raised in North Carolina, and join General Lincoln; while 
 General Hogun was assigned to the command of the brigade, 
 which continued during the winter and summer in the 
 vicinity of West Point under the immediate command of 
 Washington. 
 
 Although congress and the state authorities made pro- 
 
 1779 
 
 The 
 
 continentals 
 at the North 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 15 
 
 Sumner and 
 Hogun made 
 brigadiers 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 
 3 6o > 374 
 
 *Colonel Clark had long been in command of the brigade, while 
 Hogun had only his own battalion ; and the Assembly urged Clark’s 
 appointment as brigadier, but Hogun’s commission as colonel was 
 two months older than Clark’s, and he had so greatly distinguished 
 himself at Germantown that Congress did not heed the wishes of the 
 Assembly. 
 
CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 600 - 
 
 The distress 
 of the 
 officers 
 
 Pref. Notes, 
 S. R., XIV; 
 viii, 302 
 
 vision for the continental soldiers, the officers had to depend 
 on their pay for supplies ; and because of the depreciation 
 of the currency and the scarcity of cloth, their condition 
 became insupportable. They complained bitterly that the 
 legislature paid no attention to their distresses ; and at length, 
 in the spring of 1779, they held a meeting at West Point 
 and resolved that they would resign to a man unless the 
 General Assembly supplied tbeir needs. This action was not 
 without effect. The Assembly directed that they should have 
 provisions furnished them at the following prices : Rum, 
 8 shillings per gallon ; sugar, 3 shillings per pound ; 
 tea, 20 shillings ; soap, 2 shillings ; and tobacco, 1 shil- 
 ling ; and that they should have a complete suit of clothing 
 at what it would have cost at the time they first went into 
 service; and, moreover, that they should have half pay for 
 life, and that the lands granted to them, as well as to the 
 soldiers, should be exempt from taxation while owned by 
 them or their widows. This provision was accepted as satis- 
 factory, and the storm that was brewing passed away. 
 
 In the Assembly it is to be noted that General Person was 
 still proposing low salaries without avail ; the house was 
 /largely against him. The paper currency, which at the be- 
 Currency \ / gi 1111 ” 1 ? °f 1 777 was at par, a year later was three for one, 
 depreciation/ and in 1 779 opened six for one. To mitigate the hardships 
 of taxation, commodities were to be received for one-half of 
 each assessment. The price of corn was fixed at 33 cents 
 per bushel ; wheat, 43 cents; rice, 81 cents; pork, 3$ cents; 
 beef, 2 \ cents ; tallow, 9 cents ; Hour, 2-]- cents ; salt, 2 J cents 
 per pound ; tobacco, $3 per hundred ; salt pork, $9.37 per 
 barrel. The money of that period was so bulky that Treas- 
 urer Skinner made a remonstrance to the Assembly that it 
 was unsafe to carry large cartloads of currency through the 
 country without a guard. 
 
 The better to supply the troops, each county was required 
 to supply a certain number of hats and shoes and stockings, 
 yards of woollen or cotton cloth and of linen, apportioned 
 according to their population. Rowan’s contribution was 
 124 hats, 248 pairs of shoes and stockings, 248 yards of 
 woollen cloth, and 524 yards of linen ; there was no cotton 
 cloth to speak of made at that time. There were thus to be 
 
 s. R., XIII, 
 
 8Z2 
 
 Taxation 
 
 S. R., 
 255 
 
 XIV, 
 
TORY MOVEMENTS 
 
 601 
 
 collected about 3000 hats, twice that number of shoes and 1779 
 
 stockings and yards of woollen, and more than 12,000 yards |^ R > XII > 
 of linen for the use of the troops. The value of these articles 
 was to be ascertained by three freeholders in each county, 
 the amount being deducted from the taxes assessed. 
 
 There had been much opposition to the movement of 
 troops to the southward, but when the legislature assembled 
 in the middle of January events of such importance had 1779 
 happened that there was no longer any opposition to Cas- 
 well's patriotic course. The governor was empowered to 
 order out at any time so many of the militia as he should 
 deem necessary, and to march them wherever needed. I11 
 addition to preparing against foreign invasion, the Assembly 
 now had to apprehend domestic insurrection. British ernis- s. r., xiii, 
 saries were actively stirring the people up to sedition. As 
 a part of their plan for invasion, George Carey, a British 
 naval officer, came in a vessel to the Cape Fear, under a flag 
 of truce, to distribute manifestoes offering terms of settle- 
 ment to the people, without regard to continental or state 
 authorities. He was promptly seized and thrown into jail 
 by Francis Clayton and John Walker. The vigilance of 
 the Whigs detected movements in the central counties that 
 excited grave apprehension. Realizing the danger, the 
 Assembly directed Governor Caswell to embody with all 
 possible expedition two hundred and fifty infantry and 
 twenty-five horsemen to take possession of Cumberland 
 County, and to disarm all persons in Cumberland, Anson, 
 
 Guilford, Tryon, and other counties, who might give trouble 
 to the cause. 
 
 Before any action could be taken, early in February Colonel mjj 
 John Moore, a Tory of Tryon County, raised three hundred 261 
 men, and he claimed that there were two thousand more 
 ready for enrolment. Caswell, now fully authorized, acted 
 with his customary decision. A force of seven hundred and 
 fifty light horse was called out, Allen Jones being appointed 
 to command it, and two thousand militia were drafted to meet 
 at Salisbury on March 25th. 
 
 The command of this corps, whose ultimate destination s. r.. xiv, 
 was to replace the detachment at the south, then about to 273 * 7 
 return home, was bestowed on General John Butler, of the 
 
602 
 
 CASWELL’S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 1779 
 
 Gen. Butler 
 
 Gen. 
 
 Sumner 
 
 July 16. 1779 
 S. R., XIV, 
 327 
 
 Stony Point 
 
 Hillsboro district. Calling his council together, the gov- 
 ernor proceeded with them, along with the troops from the 
 east, first to Campbellton and then to Charlotte, where he 
 arrived early in April. The disaffected inhabitants were 
 readily overawed, Moore fleeing the country and joining 
 Colonel Hamilton’s regiment, and on April 11th General 
 Butler took his departure with seven hundred militia for 
 Augusta. General Sumner likewise reached Moultrie's camp 
 about the end of March, and in May reported seven hun- 
 dred and fifty of the nine months’ men on his rolls, of whom 
 four hundred and twenty were present fit for duty, divided 
 into two regiments designated as the Fourth and Fifth Con- 
 tinentals, commanded by Colonel Gideon Lamb and Major 
 Lytle. 
 
 In April the nine months expired for which the regiment 
 organized by General Hogun at Halifax* bad enlisted, and 
 Colonel Mebane was directed to march it from Philadelphia 
 back to the State. He reached Halifax on May 10th, and 
 the regiment was soon disbanded. The time for which Gen- 
 eral Butler’s detachment was called out was to expire in 
 July, and when the Assembly met in May it directed that 
 two thousand new men should be sent to replace that force. 
 
 On May 31st the British had captured Stony Point, about 
 thirty miles below West Point, and Washington resolved to 
 retake it. General Wayne was selected for this purpose. In 
 organizing a force for the secret expedition he chose, among 
 others, the Second North Carolina Continentals. It was to 
 be a night attack, and the approach was over a quagmire 
 crossed by a single causeway. A forlorn hope was neces- 
 sary, and Major Hardy Murfree volunteered with two of 
 his companies for this post of honor. Just before midnight, 
 with unloaded muskets, the assault was made. A deadly 
 discharge of grape and musketry swept through the ad- 
 vancing column, but without avail. The enterprise was 
 successful, and the entire garrison were either killed or 
 
 *The four new battalions sent to the North were raised for twelve 
 months, and on the termination of their enlistment many joined 
 the other battalions. But these in time came to be so reduced that 
 the brigade consisted of only two battalions, Clark’s and Patton’s. 
 Hogun’s battalion thus was at first spoken of as the seventh, but 
 later as the third. 
 
WORK OF THE LEGISLATURE 
 
 603 
 
 captured. General Wayne himself was wounded, and Cap- 
 tain John Daves, second in command under Murfree, was 
 dangerously wounded, but eventually recovered. This most 
 brilliant feat of arms brought great credit and honor to all 
 engaged in it, and none deserved higher commendation than 
 the North Carolinians. 
 
 The new Assembly was to meet at New Bern, but the 
 smallpox was raging so violently in that vicinity that Gov- 
 ernor Caswell suggested that it should assemble at Smith- 
 field, where it convened May 3d. Allen Jones and Thomas 
 Benbury were again chosen speakers, and in the senate 
 Samuel Johnston reappeared as senator from Chowan. 
 Caswell was continued as governor. Maclaine declined the 
 judgeship, deprecating his own abilities, and recommended 
 the appointment of John Williams, who, having served a 
 year in the Continental Congress, was now willing to aban- 
 don a post of honor whose compensation was so insufficient ; 
 and he was elected to the vacancy on the bench. As honor- 
 able as was the service in the Continental Congress, the great 
 expense attending it rendered the position undesirable, and 
 those chosen delegates were not eager to go to Philadelphia. 
 Indeed, for long periods, only one delegate from North 
 Carolina was in attendance. The congress therefore 
 recommended an increase in the delegation, and Burke, 
 Sharpe and Hewes were added to the other delegates, the 
 Assembly agreeing to pay their actual expenses and to leave 
 their compensation to the next Assembly. General Bryan, 
 on his return from Briar Creek, having resigned, Colonel 
 William Caswell was chosen to succeed him ; and in the 
 absence of General Butler at the south, Ambrose Ramsay 
 was appointed to serve temporarily in his stead. The 
 legislature, considering that it would be well for the General 
 Assembly to meet at some fixed place near the centre of the 
 State where the offices could be kept, appointed a commis- 
 sion to select the most convenient places in Johnston, Wake, 
 and Chatham counties, and report a description of each place 
 to the next Assembly. Thomas McGuire was chosen attor- 
 ney-general in the place of Waightstill Avery, who had re- 
 signed that appointment, and John Pugh Williams was 
 elected brigadier-general in the place of General Skinner, 
 
 1779 
 
 May, 1779 
 S. R., XIII, 
 
 784, 792 
 
 John 
 
 Williams 
 
 succeeds 
 
 Iredell 
 
 Changes in 
 officers 
 
 S. R., XIII, 
 753 
 
604 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 XXIV, 254 
 
 Efforts to 
 enlist 
 
 continent. ils 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 
 319,320 
 
 July, 1779 
 S. R., XIV, 
 181 
 
 The Tories 
 active 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 
 321 
 
 June, 
 
 S. R., 
 
 1779 
 
 XIV, 
 
 129, 137 
 Lee’s 
 Memoirs, 
 130 
 
 Stono 
 
 who resigned ; and the State being divided into six treasury 
 districts, William Skinner, William Cathey, William Johns- 
 ton, Green Hill, Richard Cogdell, and John Ashe were 
 chosen treasurers of their respective districts. 
 
 It being evident that continental troops, trained and dis- 
 ciplined in long continuous service, would be more effective 
 than short-time militia called from their fields to action and 
 anxious to return to cultivate their farms, unusual efforts 
 were made to enlist continentals. To that end it was pro- 
 posed that any ten militiamen who should furnish one con- 
 tinental recruit to serve eighteen months should themselves 
 be exempt from all military service for that period, except 
 only in case of actual invasion or insurrection. By this 
 means, together with a liberal bounty, it was hoped that two 
 thousand continentals could be recruited by July. But all 
 these hopes were disappointed, and only about six hundred 
 were raised, so that in July Governor Caswell was obliged 
 to make another call on the militia districts for a force to 
 relieve General Butler, the command of the new levies being 
 conferred on General Lillington. As the detachments were 
 being collected, however, a large force from Virginia passed 
 through the State to the aid of General Lincoln, relieving 
 his necessities ; so for a time Lillington’s drafts returned 
 to their homes. And, indeed, there were other considera- 
 tions that pressed Governor Caswell to defer this expedi- 
 tion. In Edgecombe, Nash, and Johnston Tory leaders were 
 harboring deserters who had signed articles of association 
 to prevent the militia from being drafted, and who inaugu- 
 rated a reign of lawlessness, requiring a military force to 
 restore civil authority. While at the west the Tories were 
 again active, and Rutherford reported that there was an 
 organized band in Burke publicly robbing the friends of 
 America and murdering them, and that a conspiracy was 
 forming for a rising immediately. 
 
 On June 20th General' Lincoln attacked Colonel Maitland 
 at Stono, in the vicinity of Charleston. General Butler’s 
 militia composed the right and General Sumner’s con- 
 tinentals the left of the attacking force. In the front of the 
 British line was Colonel Hamilton with his regiment of 
 Loyalist North Carolinians. Both militia and continentals 
 
BATTLE OF STONO 
 
 605 
 
 behaved admirably. General Butler, much gratified, reported 
 to Governor Caswell that he could with pleasure assure him 
 that the officers and men under his command behaved better 
 than could have been expected of raw troops. Lieutenant 
 Charlton, of the continental brigade, was killed and Major 
 Hal Dixon was wounded, as also was Major William R. Davie. 
 It was the twenty-third birthday of this young officer, des- 
 tined in after vears to attain eminence both in military and 
 civil life. He was in command of a detachment of cavalry. 
 In a cavalry charge he was wounded and fell from his horse. 
 His company soon began to retire, when a private, although 
 the enemy were but a few yards distant, deliberately placed 
 the wounded officer on his horse and led him from the field. 
 Davie never knew the name of his deliverer. The wound 
 in his leg was so severe that the major was incapable of 
 further service during that year. 
 
 In July, the British having retreated from their demon- 
 stration against Charleston, General Sumner marched his 
 continentals to Camden, and being in ill health, he returned 
 to North Carolina and addressed himself to securing more 
 continental recruits. The enlistment of many of his men 
 expired in August, but others were constantly being sent to 
 his camp, and about August 1st Colonel Lamb led a large 
 detachment from the east to Camden, where he was joined 
 by others from Salisbury. The sand hills of the Peedee 
 were found to be most healthful and admirably located for 
 a camp, and the continentals remained there until the last 
 of the month, when they marched to Charleston. 
 
 But hardly had they reached Charleston when a French 
 fleet, bearing an army of thirty-five hundred men, arrived 
 in the Savannah to co-operate with Lincoln in an attack on 
 the British garrison of that post. The allies concentrated 
 there early in September, but a month passed before the 
 French were ready to attack, and North Carolina militia 
 were hurried forward, but were detained at Charleston by 
 General Moultrie. In the attacking column were the North 
 Carolina continentals ; with the defenders were Hamilton’s 
 Loyalist regiment. Though ultimately unsuccessful, the 
 attack was made with great resolution, and for a time the 
 standard of the North Carolinians floated over the parapet 
 
 1779 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 3 I2 i 3*5 
 
 Death of 
 Charlton 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 *57i 3 2 5> 338 
 
 The 
 
 continentals 
 on the 
 sand hills 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 344 
 
 Savannah. 
 October 9th 
 
 McRee's 
 Iredell, I, 
 435 
 
6o6 
 
 CASWELL'S ADMINISTRATION, 1776-80 
 
 J779 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 142 
 
 Hogun’s 
 
 brigade 
 
 Feb., 1780 
 S. R., XIV, 
 
 798 
 
 of the Spring Hill redoubt. The French lost 700 men and 
 the continentals 240 out of a corps of 600. 
 
 As the British plans developed, the invasion of the South 
 wore such a threatening aspect that toward the close of 
 September congress directed the North Carolina brigade 
 to reinforce General Lincoln, but Washington detained them 
 for a time, and it was not until November 23d that the 
 brigade broke camp on the Hudson and began its long 
 march to South Carolina. About the middle of February 
 General Hogun reached Wilmington with about seven hun- 
 dred men, and on March 3d went into camp at Charleston. 
 A little later Washington also sent all of the Virginia con- 
 tinentals south. 
 
 In 1779 the counties of Wayne, Montgomery and Rich- 
 mond were established, the last named for the Duke of Rich- 
 mond, while its county seat was called Rockingham, in honor 
 of two friends of the colonists in Parliament-. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 Nash’s Administration, 1780-81 
 
 The confiscation act. — Lillington’s brigade. — The fall of Charles- 
 ton. — The prisoners suffer. — Death of Hogun. — The delayed rein- 
 forcements. — Tarleton’s quarters. — Invasion apprehended. — Caswell 
 major-general. — De Kalb’s reinforcements arrive. — Gates to com- 
 mand. — Activity of Rutherford. — Ramseur’s Mill. — Rutherford pur- 
 sues Bryan. — Plans of Cornwallis. — De Kalb encamps on Deep 
 River. — Davie’s enterprise. — Gates advances. — Battle of Camden. — 
 Death of De Kalb. — Gallantry of Gregory and Dixon. — Gates’s ride. 
 —The disaster. — At Charlotte. — Sumter’s negligence. — Davie in ad- 
 vance. — The spirit of the people. — New supplies. — Preparations for 
 defence. — The Assembly acts. — The Board of War. — Smallwood 
 supersedes Caswell. 
 
 The confiscation act 
 
 The Assembly convened about the middle of October. 
 The members felt that they had temporized long enough with 
 the malcontents, and a bill was passed to carry into effect the 
 act of 1776, confiscating the property of Tories. It was a 
 strong and sweeping act of confiscation. Willie Jones and 
 a dozen other representatives entered a vigorous protest 
 against it. “It involves such a complication of blunders and 
 betrays such ignorance in legislation as would disgrace a 
 set of drovers,” protested Jones, with emphasis. At that 
 time, as later, hundreds of hogs were driven in droves from 
 one part of the State to another where a market could be 
 found, and the men so employed were known as “drovers.” 
 But notwithstanding Jones’s disgust, the measure was 
 passed, although later its severity was tempered, and it 
 was not carried into full operation. Many of those who 
 would not take the oath of allegiance were allowed to re- 
 main in the enjoyment of their homes, but became known 
 even in the acts of the Assembly as “non-jurors.” 
 
 General Jones having been appointed a delegate to con- 
 gress, William Eaton became brigadier of the Halifax dis- 
 
6o8 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1779 
 
 November 
 
 Gen. 
 
 Lillington 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 223 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 336 
 
 1780 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 148 
 
 trict, and, John Pugh Williams declining in the Edenton 
 district, Colonel Isaac Gregory was also promoted. 
 
 To aid General Lincoln, a detachment of three thousand 
 men was ordered to be embodied and sent to South Carolina, 
 and toward the end of December General Lillington led it 
 southward. This brigade served at Charleston. The period 
 of the enlistment expired just as Charleston was being closed 
 up by the besieging British, and for the most part these 
 troops remained and were surrendered. 
 
 From the first there had been a law that continental 
 officers were not to command militia, and although there 
 were in the State many fine officers trained in the con- 
 tinental army unemployed, this regulation debarred them 
 from service with the militia detachments. But somehow 
 Major Hal Dixon and Major Nelson served with Lillington, 
 who during the campaign wrote to the governor: “I think 
 myself very happy” in their appointment, “and could freely 
 wish your Excellency would recommend these gentlemen 
 to the Assembly if there should be more militia sent to the 
 southward.” That recommendation was followed, and Major 
 Dixon subsequently had command of a militia regiment that 
 did great credit to the State. 
 
 The fall of Charleston 
 
 The British being in possession of Savannah, it was appre- 
 hended that Charleston would be their next point of attack, 
 and strenuous efforts were made to put that city in a state 
 of defence. On February 10th Sir Henry Clinton, having 
 arrived with an additional force from New York, disem- 
 barked on John’s Island, and at the end of March he passed 
 the Ashley River above Charleston, taking possession of the 
 Neck, across which Lincoln had, as defensive measures, cut 
 a canal, constructed abattis, and built strong redoubts and 
 batteries. It was thought that the British fleet could be 
 successfully opposed ; but on April 9th it passed the bar, 
 ran by Fort Moultrie, and took possession of the harbor. 
 To prevent its ascent, the channel of Cooper River was hur- 
 riedly obstructed by sinking there the entire American fleet, 
 and so the way was still open for General Lincoln to retire 
 from the city if he had chosen to do so. 
 
SUFFERINGS OF PRISONERS 
 
 But the citizens entreated him to hold the city, and in 
 the vain hope of relief, he yielded to their earnest appeals. 
 It was expected that the Virginia continentals, as well as 
 militia from that State and the two Carolinas, would come 
 to his aid, and that he would be able to raise the siege when 
 these succors came. On April 6th Colonel Harrington, with 
 some of the North Carolina militia, arrived, having entered 
 the city by way of Addison’s Ferry, and Governor Rutledge 
 was collecting the South Carolina militia on the Peedee, and 
 awaiting the arrival of the Virginia troops and Caswell’s 
 brigade. 
 
 Day by day the enemy approached nearer and nearer, until 
 at length, on April 24th, Lincoln made a determined sortie 
 to drive off their working parties. The detachment for this 
 assault numbered three hundred men, composed of Hogun’s 
 North Carolinians, Woodford’s Virginians, and twenty-one 
 South Carolina continentals. The interruption to the opera- 
 tions of the enemy was ineffectual ; and other than this one 
 effort, Lincoln simply endured the trying ordeal of his un- 
 fortunate predicament. The fire of the British along the 
 lines was continuous, and daily a few of the brave de- 
 fenders fell at their posts. In all, the American loss 
 was 89 killed and 140 wounded ; that of the besieging 
 force being about the same. At length, all hope of 
 relief having faded away, and all avenues of escape being 
 closed, and the citizens wearying of the siege, General 
 Lincoln convened a council of his officers, and by their ad- 
 vice agreed to surrender. The capitulation took place on 
 May 12th. His army at that time numbered two thousand 
 continentals, five hundred of whom were then in the hos- 
 pitals. In addition, there were more than a thousand militia, 
 nearly all North Carolinians, for there were but few South 
 Carolina militia in the city. 
 
 By the surrender the entire North Carolina line, embracing 
 the new battalions as well as Hogun's brigade, was elim- 
 inated from the contest, all that were left being those on 
 sick leave and such officers as were at home unemployed. 
 Included in the surrender were General Hogun, Colonels 
 Clark, Patten, and Mebane and fifty-nine other officers and 
 eight hundred and fourteen rank and file. Under the terms 
 
 609 
 
 i7°o 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 24-46 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 39 8 
 
 May 12 
 
 Marsh all’s 
 
 Washington, 
 
 333 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 816, 817, 821 
 
 Destruction 
 of the 
 Continental 
 Line 
 
6io 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 The 
 
 prisoners 
 
 suffer 
 
 Pref. Notes, 
 S. R., XV, 
 xiv, 297 
 
 Death of 
 General 
 Hogun 
 Biog. Hist. 
 N. C., IV, 
 
 196 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 386 
 
 of capitulation the militia were paroled and allowed to re- 
 turn to their homes, but the continentals were kept in the 
 harbor. 
 
 The officers were located on Haddrell’s Point, opposite 
 the city, while most of the men were confined on the prison 
 ships. The privates were subjected to horrible ill-usage, and 
 many died from confinement on shipboard in that hot climate 
 without suitable provision being made for them. The con- 
 dition of the officers was somewhat better.* But while the 
 officers had some conveniences, and engaged in gardening 
 and had some amusements among themselves, still they 
 underwent great privations. Notwithstanding some supplies 
 furnished by North Carolina under a flag of truce, food was 
 very scarce, and a petition to fish, in order to add to their 
 limited supply, was refused by the British commander. To 
 relieve the pressure of feeding these prisoners, Lord Ger- 
 main, writing to Cornwallis, said : “What appears to me the 
 most practicable measures for the purpose are the inducing 
 the prisoners to enter on board the ships of war or privateers, 
 or to go as recruits to the regiments in the West Indies, or as 
 volunteers to serve upon the expedition against the Spanish 
 settlements from Jamaica; and your Lordship will there- 
 fore take the proper steps for dispersing as many of them 
 as possible in these several ways, or in such other ways as 
 may occur to you as more practicable and effectual.” Con- 
 formably to these directions, a considerable number of the 
 prisoners were sent to the West Indies and were in a 
 measure forced by the British into their service. 
 
 General Hogun sought to counteract the influences ex- 
 erted by the authorities to detach the prisoners from the 
 American cause, and although offered leave to return home 
 on parole, he refused to be separated from his men. He 
 knew that his absence would facilitate the efforts of the 
 
 *On March 27th, Colonel Washington while reconnoitering had 
 come up with a party of the British, and in the engagement that 
 ensued killed seven and took several prisoners, among whom was 
 Colonel Hamilton. Thus it happened that Colonel Hamilton was 
 a prisoner in Charleston at the surrender and was retaken by his 
 friends. Of a kindly and generous disposition, he rendered much 
 service to the North Carolinians, whose misfortunes appealed to his 
 sympathy. 
 
DEATH OF HO GUN 
 
 6n 
 
 British in seeking recruits among the half-starved prisoners, 
 and he fell a victim to his sense of duty. He died at Had- 
 drell's Point January 4, 1781, a striking illustration of devo- 
 tion and self-sacrifice. Of the eighteen hundred regulars 
 who went into captivity on May 12, 1780, only seven 
 hundred survived when they were paroled. After an im- 
 prisonment of twelve months an exchange of officers was 
 agreed on ; those who had not died in captivity were landed 
 on James River and those exchanged returned to the army. 
 
 General Lincoln, in determining to hold Charleston, was in 
 expectation that great efforts would be made to relieve him. 
 The South Carolina militia were collecting; continentals 
 were ordered to his aid from Virginia, and North Carolina 
 sent forward a brigade of seven hundred men under Brig- 
 adier William Caswell. As Caswell marched from Cross 
 Creek, the advance of the expected reinforcements, four 
 hundred Virginia continentals under Colonel Buford reached 
 the Santee, but the entrance to the city was then closed, 
 and toward the end of April these detachments went into 
 camp near Lanier’s Ferry, on the Santee, where President 
 Rutledge was then concentrating the South Carolina militia. 
 
 Quickly after the fall of Charleston the British occupied 
 Augusta and Ninety-six, and Cornwallis led a heavy force 
 toward Rutledge’s camp, Caswell and Buford falling back 
 before him toward Camden. There they separated, and 
 Caswell retreated to Cross Creek, where he arrived June 2d, 
 while Buford took the upper route to Charlotte. 
 
 On reaching Camden Cornwallis despatched Colonel 
 Tarleton with his cavalry and some mounted infantry in 
 pursuit of Buford, who was overtaken at the Waxhaws, 
 thirty-five miles from Charlotte. Tarleton demanded 
 an immediate surrender on the same terms agreed on 
 at Charleston. These Buford refused. While the flags 
 were passing Tarleton made his disposition for an assault. 
 The instant the truce was over his cavalry made a furious 
 charge upon the unsuspecting continentals, who had no 
 orders to engage. In dismay and confusion, they offered 
 no effective resistance, but threw down their arms and asked 
 for quarter. No quarter was given. More than 100 were 
 butchered on the spot, and 150 were so badly hacked up that 
 
 1780 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 451 
 
 The delayed 
 reinforce- 
 ments 
 
 Pref. Notes, 
 S. R., XIV, 
 
 xi 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 164 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 
 827 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 165 
 
 Buford’s 
 
 defeat 
 
6l2 
 
 1780 
 
 April, 1780 
 
 Abner 
 
 Nash, 
 
 governor 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 they could not be removed and for that reason had to be 
 paroled where they fell. Only 53 were preserved as prison- 
 ers. Buford, with a few cavalry and less than 100 of the 
 infantry, being the advance guard, managed to escape. He 
 fled to Charlotte, where Colonel Porterfield, of Virginia, had 
 arrived with a detachment of cavalry and artillery as well as 
 infantry. Alarmed at the situation, Porterfield withdrew his 
 force at once to Salisbury, and Tarleton returned to Camden. 
 This butchery at Waxhaw aroused great indignation, and 
 was commonly spoken of as ‘‘Tarleton’s Quarters.” While it 
 created some dread of falling into his hands, and made him 
 and his corps particularly odious, it inflamed the passions 
 of the Americans and added increased animosity to the 
 conflict.* 
 
 Invasion apprehended 
 
 South Carolina being, like Georgia, occupied by the Brit- 
 ish, the inhabitants generally were subjugated; and it was 
 expected that Cornwallis would make no delay in invading 
 North Carolina, which lay defenceless at his feet. A fleet 
 was daily looked for to take possession of Wilmington, and 
 it was apprehended that columns from Camden would pene- 
 trate to Cross Creek and Charlotte ; but happily Cornwallis 
 postponed further operations until he had established civil 
 government in South Carolina. 
 
 While the siege of Charleston was in progress the new 
 Assembly met at New Bern on April 17th. Governor Cas- 
 well being no longer eligible as governor, Abner Nash was 
 chosen to succeed him. For three years Caswell had been 
 the most important man in the commonwealth. He had 
 discharged with great zeal and efficiency every patriotic duty. 
 Probably no other man could have done so well. Unfortu- 
 nately, under the constitution he could not be longer re- 
 
 *Banastre Tarleton was then less than twenty-six years of age. A 
 student of the law, this was his first military service. _ He was 
 below middle size, but muscular and active, and was a daring officer, 
 capable of great endurance. Of a dark complexion and piercing 
 black eye, he became noted for the violence of his temper and his 
 sanguinary disposition. In his warfare he disregarded every prompt- 
 ing of humanity. 
 
MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH 
 
 613 
 
 tained in the discharge of executive functions. But he was 
 not to remain unemployed. 
 
 So urgent now was the necessity for prompt and decisive 
 action that the Assembly at once created him commander-in- 
 chief of the militia, with the rank of major-general, and 
 ordered a draft, in addition to that commanded by William 
 Caswell, of four thousand men. As usual, the men were 
 slow in turning out, some declaring that they would not 
 leave their homes until their bounty was paid, and no money 
 had been provided for that purpose. His son having re- 
 turned to Cross Creek, Major-General Caswell ordered the 
 eastern drafts to assemble there, and he also hastened to 
 that point. 
 
 On the departure of Clinton from New York on his 
 southern expedition, congress, realizing the importance of 
 making determined resistance, ordered south, in addition 
 to the unfortunate corps of Colonel Buford, detachments 
 under Colonel William Washington and Colonel Armand 
 and the First and Second Maryland regiments and a regi- 
 ment of artillery, all to be under the command of Major- 
 General De Kalb. 
 
 These troops were too late to save General Lincoln, but 
 their appearance in North Carolina was timely. The sur- 
 render of the southern army at Charleston and the destruc- 
 tion of Buford’s corps caused great dismay among the patri- 
 ots, while, on the other hand, the Tories were jubilant. The 
 arrival of De Kalb with his regulars, well supplied with 
 ammunition, tended in some measure to restore confidence ; 
 but yet all military movements were delayed and hampered 
 by the want of provisions, that could not be immediately 
 supplied. 
 
 On the surrender of Lincoln, as De Kalb was not thought 
 equal to the command of the department, Gates, wearing high 
 honors as the victor over Burgoyne, was despatched to direct 
 affairs at the south ; and Colonel Morgan, who had achieved 
 a great reputation by his operations with his corps of light 
 infantry, but who had been temporarily in retirement from 
 illness, was urged to again enter upon active service and aid 
 in defending the southern states. 
 
 1780 
 
 May 
 
 S. R , 
 XXIV, 
 
 33 T > 339i 34i 
 
 De Kalb’s 
 reinforce- 
 ments arrive 
 
 Gates in 
 command 
 
614 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 June 
 
 Graham’s 
 Graham, 
 213 et seq. 
 
 Tories rise 
 
 Activity of Rutherford 
 
 Although the interior of North Carolina was now open to 
 the victorious British, Cornwallis found it necessary to de- 
 vote some attention to affairs in South Carolina. Nor did 
 he desire to enter on a campaign until a plentiful supply of 
 provisions could be assured from the maturing crop. So 
 while relying much on the assistance of the Tory inhab- 
 itants, he directed them to remain quiet in their homes until 
 he should call them to action. Thus for a time there was 
 a period of quietude. 
 
 But because of the proximity of the enemy, early in June 
 General Rutherford, always zealous and resolute, called out 
 his brigade, of whom eight hundred promptly assembled, and 
 on the 14th of that month, at Mallard's Creek, somewhat 
 to the east of Charlotte, he organized his command. A 
 battalion of light infantry was committed to Colonel Will- 
 iam L. Davidson, a continental officer, and two small troops 
 of cavalry under Captains Simmons and Martin were 
 assigned to Major Davie. On that evening Rutherford re- 
 ceived information that the Tories were embodying in 
 Tryon County, some forty miles to the northwest, and fear- 
 ing to reduce his own force, he directed Colonel Locke and 
 Captains Falls and Brandon, of Rowan, and Major Wilson, 
 of Mecklenburg, to make every effort to disperse them. He 
 himself advanced to the south of Charlotte. 
 
 Ramseur’s Mill 
 
 Colonel John Moore, whose family resided near Ramseur’s 
 Mill, on the south fork of the Catawba, had joined the 
 British army the preceding winter, and now had returned 
 home, announcing himself as lieutenant-colonel of Hamil- 
 ton’s regiment. He was soon joined by Nicholas Welch, a 
 major of the same regiment, and the Tory inhabitants, feel- 
 ing certain that the time had come for a rising, on June 20th 
 nearly thirteen hundred of them assembled at Ramseur’s 
 Mill.' 
 
 In view of this movement, Rutherford made such dis- 
 positions that Colonel Locke felt strong enough to attack 
 Moore and his followers. The Tories were encamped on 
 a hill half a mile north of the present village of Lincolnton, 
 
BATTLE OF RAMSEUR’S MILL 
 
 615 
 
 with a gentle slope in front and a clear fire for two hundred 
 yards. Locke having reached their neighborhood at day- 
 break, the attack was made by the mounted companies of 
 Captains Falls, McDowell, and Brandon, the infantry under 
 Colonel Locke being near at hand. The Whigs got the better 
 of the battle. At times the two parties, having no distinctive 
 uniforms, mingled without being aware of it. Eventually 
 the Whigs obtained possession of the ridge at first occupied 
 by the Tories, who, however, reformed across the neighbor- 
 ing creek, being- much more numerous than their assailants. 
 Rutherford, however, had advanced into that vicinity, and 
 after some parley the Tories dispersed. Moore sought safety 
 in flight, and with thirty men succeeded in reaching the 
 British camp at Camden ; the others returned to their homes. 
 The loss on each side was about the same. Fifty-six lay 
 dead on the ridge where the battle was hottest, with others 
 scattered on the flanks. In addition, a hundred of each 
 party were wounded. Fifty of the Tories were taken prison- 
 ers. "In this battle between neighbors,” says General Gra- 
 ham, "near relations and personal friends fought on either 
 side, and as the smoke would from time to time rise from 
 the field they could recognize each other engaged in deadly 
 contest. In the evening and on the next day the relations 
 and friends of the dead and wounded came in, and a scene 
 was witnessed of affliction and distress quite indescribable. 
 Of the Whigs, Captains Falls, Dobson, Smith, Bowman, and 
 Armstrong were killed, and Houston and McKissick 
 wounded; while of the Tories, Captains Cumberland, Murry, 
 and Warlick were killed and many well-known inhabitants 
 wounded. So distressing was the result of this first en- 
 counter between the Whigs and Tories of that immediate 
 section that from that time onward the Loyalists never 
 actively engaged against their Whig neighbors.” 
 
 On the second day after the dispersal of Moore's Tories 
 at Ramseur’s Rutherford received information that a con- 
 siderable number were embodying in the forks of the Yad- 
 kin, at the north end of Rowan, near Surry, some seventy- 
 five miles distant, under the command of Colonel Bryan. 
 He immediately despatched Davie with his cavalry to Wax- 
 haw Creek to watch the British, while he himself hastened to 
 
 1780 
 
 June 20th 
 
 Tories 
 
 dispersed 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 226 
 
 Rutherford 
 
 pursues 
 
 Bryan 
 
6i6 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 June 
 
 S R., XV, 
 252 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 5 QI , 5°2 
 
 De Kalb 
 encamps on 
 Deep River 
 
 attack Bryan. That active commander, however, crossed 
 to the east of the Yadkin and continued his route through 
 those settlements which were much disaffected, being joined 
 so generally by the inhabitants that by the time he passed 
 Abbott’s Creek his force had swollen to seven or eight hun- 
 dred men. Rutherford hoped to intercept him, but Bryan, 
 panic-stricken by the result of the affair at Ramseur’s, 
 marched night and day until he was able to form a junction 
 with a British force under Major McArthur, whom Corn- 
 wallis had thrown forward, and who advanced to Anson 
 Court House. 
 
 Cornwallis’s plans 
 
 These movements of the Tories were premature. Corn- 
 wallis wrote on June 30th that he had established satisfac- 
 tory correspondence, and had seen several people credit 
 from North Carolina, and they all agreed in assuring him 
 of the “good disposition of a considerable body of the 
 inhabitants,” but that it would be impossible to subsist troops 
 there until after the harvest. He therefore had sent emis- 
 saries, recommending in the strongest terms that they should 
 attend to their harvest and remain quiet until the king’s 
 troops should enter the province. He referred to Moore's 
 rising as having been “excited by the sanguine emissaries 
 of the very sanguine and imprudent Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Hamilton,” and hoped that no evil would result from 
 that “unlucky business.” Although advised of every detail 
 of the American movement, Cornwallis had no apprehensions 
 but that North Carolina would at his pleasure be “perfectly 
 reduced.” Expecting an immediate invasion of North 
 Carolina, following the complete pacification of South Caro- 
 lina, the American troops had been concentrated well to the 
 north, to give time for the arrival of reinforcements ; but 
 toward the end of June De Kalb determined to move for- 
 ward, and established a camp on Deep River, awaiting a 
 supply of provisions to carry him into the Peedee section. 
 
 There was a sandy barren, virtually destitute of provisions, 
 as of inhabitants, lying between the Deep River and Cross 
 Creek, and extending to the west and south toward the 
 South Carolina line; but in the Peedee section supplies were 
 
AFFAIR AT HANGING ROCK 
 
 617 
 
 generally very abundant. About the middle of July De Kalb 
 took post at Coxe’s Mills, on the Deep River, where General 
 Caswell with the militia joined him, while General Ruther- 
 ford and General Harrington moved cautiously down near 
 the Cheraws, Sumter and Davie being still further in ad- 
 vance. 
 
 Davie’s enterprise 
 
 In the meantime, Davie, with his small body of cavalry, 
 was manifesting a spirit of enterprise that has rarely been 
 equalled in partisan warfare. Being in the vicinity of Hang- 
 ing Rock, one of the British outposts, on July 20th he inter- 
 cepted a convoy of provisions and clothing intended for that 
 garrison. The dragoons and Loyalists who guarded the 
 convoy were captured and the horses and arms safely brought 
 off, but the wagons of provisions had to be destroyed. A 
 few days later he unexpectedly appeared at Hanging Rock, 
 intercepting three companies of mounted infantry who were 
 returning from an expedition, and in plain view of the garri- 
 son cut them to pieces, securing one hundred good muskets 
 and sixty horses by that adventure. His own loss so far 
 had not been a single man. He and Colonel Sumter, of 
 South Carolina, and Colonel Irwin, of North Carolina, 
 now arranged for a combined attack on Hanging Rock, 
 to be undertaken on August 5th. Davie’s force had 
 increased to about five hundred men and Sumter’s to 
 three hundred. Among the garrison were Hamilton’s 
 regiment and Bryan’s Tories, and North Carolinians again 
 faced each other on the battlefield. Just after break of day 
 the assault was made, and the Americans took the garrison 
 by surprise. At first they routed the enemy and possessed 
 themselves of the camp ; but the pursuit and the plunder of 
 the camp threw the Whigs into great confusion, and the 
 enemy rallying, a retreat became necessary. An hour was 
 spent in plundering the camp, taking the paroles of British 
 officers and attending to the removal of the wounded, and 
 then the men, loaded with plunder, marched off cheering 
 for the American cause. 
 
 1780 
 
 S. R , XIV, 
 
 512 
 
 July 
 
 Lee’s 
 Memoirs, 
 169, 176 
 
 Wheeler, 
 Hist, of N. 
 C., II, 189 
 et seq. 
 
6i8 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 August 
 
 Schenck, 
 
 North 
 
 Carolina, 
 
 1780-81, 
 
 76-79 
 
 Activity at 
 the West 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 522, 528, 530 
 
 Musgrove’s Mill 
 
 While Davie was active in that quarter, the mountain men 
 were operating farther to the west. Colonel Charles 
 McDowell, having been joined by Colonel Shelby and Lieu- 
 tenant-Colonels Sevier and Clarke at his camp near Cherokee 
 Ford, on Broad River, despatched them with some six 
 hundred men to attack the Loyalist leader, Patrick Moore, 
 who had a fortified post on Pacolet River. They were suc- 
 cessful, Moore surrendering some ninety-three Loyalists and 
 two hundred and fifty stands of arms. Immediately after- 
 ward Colonel Ferguson arrived in their vicinity, and a 
 skirmish took place at Cedar Springs, the Americans retreat- 
 ing, but carrying off some fifty prisoners from the field. 
 McDowell, learning that there were five hundred Tories 
 encamped at Musgrove’s Mill, on the Enoree, some forty 
 miles distant, again detached Shelby, Clarke, and Williams, 
 with seven hundred horsemen, to surprise them. Skilfully 
 avoiding Ferguson, they reached the Tory camp at dawn 
 on the morning of August 19th, and meeting a strong patrol 
 party, a skirmish ensued. At that juncture Shelby learned 
 that the Tories had been heavily reinforced by a regiment 
 of British regulars. Shelby at once constructed some breast- 
 works, and sent forward a small party to lure the advancing 
 force into ambush. The stratagem succeeded. The British, 
 hastily pursuing the retreating party, rushed in disorder to 
 where the Whigs were concealed, and their commander, 
 Colonel Innes, and all the other British officers except one 
 subaltern having been killed or wounded, the pursuit was 
 turned into a rout, and the Americans drove them beyond 
 the Enoree. The British loss was 63 killed and 160 wounded 
 and taken, while that of the Americans was only 4 killed and 
 9 wounded. General McDowell, having now received in- 
 formation of the disaster at Camden, withdrew his forces, 
 and Colonel Shelby retired beyond the mountains, while 
 Colonels Clarke and Williams conveyed the prisoners to 
 Virginia. 
 
 Gates advances 
 
 On July 31st General Caswell united his forces, com- 
 posed of the eastern brigade under General Isaac Gregory 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DEFEAT AT CAMDEN 
 
 619 
 
 and that of General John Butler, with Rutherford’s at the 
 Cheraws, and General Gates, who had joined De Kalb, was 
 about to make a junction with him. Colonel Porterfield, of 
 Virginia, with three hundred Virginia continentals, was also 
 coming up, while General Stevens, with seven hundred Vir- 
 ginia militia, was at Coxe’s Mills getting supplies to subsist 
 his troops while en route to the advanced forces. By 
 August 7th Gates reached Caswell, and a week later the 
 combined forces encamped at Rugeley’s Mills, in the vicinity 
 of Camden, where the British had established their head- 
 quarters. Since the defeat of Buford all that region had 
 been harried by strong bands of Loyalists. The Tories had 
 joined their partisan leaders, and those inhabitants who 
 sympathized with the American cause had either fled from 
 their homes or had been captured and carried away by their 
 enemies. The country was deserted and was a scene of 
 desolation. It was with the greatest difficulty that food 
 could be obtained for man or beast from day to day. 
 
 Being informed by General Sumter that a convoy of stores 
 for the army at Camden was approaching from Ninety-six, 
 and that he could intercept it at the ferry, one mile below 
 Camden, if supplied with artillery, Gates now detached four 
 hundred men under Colonel Woolford, of the Maryland line, 
 with two light pieces to aid Sumter in that service. 
 
 Gates having brought together his remaining troops 
 determined to take an advantageous position, which had been 
 carefully selected, about five miles from Camden, and on 
 the night of August 15th moved his army forward for the 
 purpose of occupying it. 
 
 The battle of Camden 
 
 In the meantime Cornwallis, having been apprised of the 
 advance of the American army, left Charleston with a large 
 re-enforcement, and reached Lord Rawdon at Camden on 
 the 14th. In that extremely hot season it was convenient 
 to make military movements at night rather than in the day. 
 At ten o’clock on the night of the 15th Cornwallis set his troops 
 in motion with the purpose of attacking Gates at early dawn. 
 Gates had ignored the value of cavalry, and knew nothing 
 of Cornwallis's movements. Assuming that Rawdon’s force 
 
 1780 
 
 August 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 179 
 
 Aug. 16,1780 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 18 x et seq. 
 
620 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 August 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 383 
 
 Ramsay’s 
 Hist. U. S., 
 11, 350 
 Gen. 
 Gregory 
 
 was largely inferior to his own, on the same night, the 15th, 
 he marched with confidence, taking no precautions. About 
 half-past two o’clock that night, while leisurely on the 
 march, his army came unexpectedly in collision with the 
 British force that had moved out to surprise him. The 
 meeting was unexpected to both. The British quickly 
 routed Armand’s troop of a hundred horse, in the advance, 
 which recoiled at the unexpected discharge, became dis- 
 ordered and retired. Close behind were Porterfield’s corps 
 on the right and Major Martin Armstrong’s light infantry, 
 North Carolina militia, on the left. These resolutely with- 
 stood the enemy and brought them to a halt, but unhappily 
 the gallant Colonel Porterfield fell in this first encounter. 
 Prisoners being taken on both sides, the commanding gen- 
 erals soon became aware of the unexpected situation. The 
 two armies remained through the night, excited, ardently 
 looking for the approach of day, anxious for the conflict. 
 Gates arrayed his army promptly, Maryland and Delaware 
 continentals under Gist on his right, North Carolina militia 
 under Caswell in the centre, Virginia militia under Stevens 
 on the left. The First Maryland Brigade under Small- 
 wood formed the reserve. De Kalb took post on the right, 
 while Gates placed himself between the line of battle and 
 the reserve. Cornwallis’s right wing under Webster, com- 
 posed of disciplined regulars, at dawn made a furious assault 
 on the Virginia militia, and the brave Stevens had to endure 
 the mortifying spectacle of his brigade seeking safety in 
 flight, throwing away their arms without exchanging more 
 than one fire with the enemy. Caswell’s militia in the centre, 
 now threatened both in front and flank, soon followed this 
 shameful example. Stevens, Caswell, and Gates struggled 
 hard to rally the fugitives, but in the entire absence of 
 cavalrv the attempt was hopeless and the panic continued. 
 General Rutherford acted with distinguished gallantry, 
 but received a musket ball through his thigh, which disabled 
 him, and he fell prostrate on the field. General Butler vainly 
 endeavored to keep the centre of the North Carolina line 
 in position, but it quickly gave way. General Gregory on 
 the right was more fortunate. His courageous example was 
 followed by a large part of his brigade, and he stoutly 
 
DEFEAT AT CAMDEN 
 
 621 
 
 maintained his position and adhered to the Maryland line ; 
 but he, too, was wounded in the thickest of the fight. In- 
 deed, twice was he wounded by the bayonet, and many of 
 his brigade had no other wounds than from the bayonet. But 
 the odds were too heavy. On the American right the 
 continentals and Major Hal Dixon’s regiment of North 
 Carolina militia stood their ground with devoted courage. 
 They made stubborn resistance. Indeed, they not only re- 
 pelled the attack, but drove the enemy back from their 
 first advanced position. Although greatly outnumbered, 
 resorting to the bayonet, they rushed the enemy before 
 them, taking many prisoners. Smallwood, advancing, cov- 
 ered their left flank, but soon was borne down by Corn- 
 wallis’s heavy columns. De Kalb made one last resolute 
 attempt for victory, and fell with eleven wounds. Again 
 the bayonets of bloody butchers were about to pierce him, 
 when his aide-de-camp, Colonel Du Buysson, covered the 
 prostrate general with his own body and received the bayonets 
 thrust at his friend. The old hero poured out his life blood 
 for American liberty and shortly expired, honored by his 
 foes and lamented by his friends. The Delaware regiment 
 was nearly annihilated. More than one-third of the con- 
 tinentals were killed and wounded and a hundred and sev- 
 enty taken prisoners. A hundred of the North Carolina 
 militia also fell on the field, and three hundred were cap- 
 tured. Rutherford, badly wounded, was taken, and for a 
 time North Carolina lost his valuable services. As resolute 
 and courageous as were this brave man and General Greg- 
 ory, neither won higher commendation than Major Dixon. 
 ‘‘None,” says Lee in his “Memoirs,” “can withhold applause 
 from Colonel Dixon and his North Carolina regiment of 
 militia. Having their flank exposed by the flight of the 
 other militia, they turned with disdain from the ignoble 
 example. ... In every vicissitude of the battle this regiment 
 maintained its ground, and when the reserve under Small- 
 wood, covering our left, relieved its naked flank, forced 
 the enemy to fall back.” Dixon’s troops emulated the noble 
 ardor of their leader. 
 
 Dr. Hugh Williamson, who was surgeon-general on 
 Caswell’s staff, attended the prisoners, of whom, however, 
 
 1780 
 
 August 
 
 Hal Dixon 
 
 The fall of 
 De Kalb 
 
 Lee's 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 186 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 166 
 
622 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 Booth Boote 
 
 Gates’s ride, 
 Wheeler, 
 Hist. North 
 Carolina, II, 
 194 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 a 43 
 
 The 
 
 disaster, 
 Ramsay’s 
 Hist. U. S., 
 
 11,351 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 
 569, 570 
 
 no satisfactory returns could be obtained, as the British 
 commissary of prisoners was, says the doctor, “one Booth 
 Boote, whose character does not appear to be diversified 
 by a single virtue, and who would never do anything that 
 would prove acceptable to us.” 
 
 General Gates hardly waited to learn the issue of the 
 battle. Not succeeding in rallying the Virginia militia, al- 
 though he and General Caswell made a third and last at- 
 tempt, more than half a mile distant from the battle, he 
 made no new dispositions, gave no further orders, but aban- 
 doning his army and his stores, he made such hot haste that 
 at only a few miles from the field he was the first, except 
 alone one frightened horseman, to meet Major Davie, then 
 advancing to unite with the army. He was the first to give 
 Davie information of the disaster. Davie proposed to pro- 
 ceed and bury the dead. “Let the dead bury the dead !” 
 exclaimed the excited hero of Saratoga as he resumed his 
 speedy way, attended by General Caswell and some mem- 
 bers of his staff. About eleven o’clock on the night of the 
 1 6th Gates reached Charlotte, seventy-two miles distant from 
 the battle ground, bringing the news of his sad reverse. He 
 did not stop, but pressed on to Salisbury, and thence to 
 Hillsboro. 
 
 Caswell, however, remained a day at Charlotte, giving 
 some directions for the movements of the eastern regiment, 
 that fortunately had not reached his camp in time to join 
 the army, and ordering out the militia of Mecklenburg and 
 Rowan and Lincoln counties ; and then, like Gates, he rode 
 on to Hillsboro. 
 
 In the action every corps was broken and dispersed. The 
 fugitives, pressing down the main road, were pursued some 
 miles by Tarleton’s legion, and the way was covered with 
 arms, baggage and wagons. Many took to the woods and 
 sought to escape into the swamps. It was a painful rout, 
 the men without officers, without provisions or baggage, and 
 great numbers without arms, the wounded and sick borne 
 along without conveniences, and the weather extremely op- 
 pressive. The suffering was intense. Indeed, the horrors 
 of that fearful rout cannot be adequately portrayed. 
 
 Soon Charlotte became crowded with troops in retreat 
 
DEFEAT AT CAMDEN 
 
 623 
 
 from the disaster and with militiamen who were hastily col- 
 lecting'. Neither the officers nor soldiers of Gates’s army, 
 however, remained at Charlotte, but kept moving toward 
 Salisbury. General Smallwood, whose brigade was the last 
 on the field, being hotly pressed, turned from the road, and 
 it was supposed that he was either killed or taken, but on 
 the third day after the battle he arrived in Charlotte, to the 
 great joy of every one. His conduct gained for him the con- 
 fidence not merely of the regulars, but of the militia, and he 
 was at once consulted as to what action should be taken. 
 He encouraged the militia to embody and to make strenuous 
 resistance if the enemy should advance. On the 20th, how- 
 ever, he and all the other officers and men who had come in 
 set out for Hillsboro. 
 
 On learning the woeful news, Davie, realizing Sumter’s 
 danger, at once despatched a courier to inform that kindred 
 spirit, who had been so recently associated with him in dar- 
 ing enterprises, of the catastrophe. Sumter had been en- 
 tirely successful in his last undertaking, and had captured 
 forty wagons of booty and nearly three hundred prisoners. 
 He immediately decamped, but Cornwallis hurried Tarleton 
 in pursuit. On the night of the 17th Sumter halted at Rocky 
 Mount, thirty miles from Camden, and the next morning 
 proceeded eight miles farther, when, because of the heat 
 and the fatigue of his troops, he again rested, ignorant of the 
 pursuit. His arms were stacked, his troops scattered, many 
 asleep, he himself asleep under a wagon, when Tarleton, 
 having gained his rear unperceived, fell upon the unsus- 
 pecting Americans, who were seized with consternation at 
 the assault. There was but slight resistance and then gen- 
 eral flight. Out of eight hundred men, only three hundred 
 and fifty escaped; while Tarleton recovered the British 
 wagons, stores, and provisions, and took Sumter's artillery, 
 arms, and baggage, killed many and preserved some 
 prisoners. 
 
 When information was received of the catastrophe that 
 had befallen Sumter’s corps, the people of Mecklenburg, 
 alarmed at their exposed position, held a meeting to deter- 
 mine on a course of action. It was resolved that Colonel 
 Irwin, the colonel of that county, should form a camp some 
 
 1780 
 
 August 
 
 Smallwood 
 
 Sumter 
 
 routed 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 188 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 246 
 
624 
 
 NASITS ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 seven miles to the south of Charlotte, and Davie’s cavalry 
 should patrol toward Camden. In a few days Colonel Locke 
 arrived with some militia from Rowan ; and Governor Nash, 
 learning that Rutherford was a prisoner, commissioned 
 Colonel Davidson as temporary brigadier-general and Major 
 Davie as colonel of cavalry, and every exertion was made to 
 offer resistance. 
 
 The spirit of the people 
 
 Severe indeed was the disaster, and for it Gates was vig- 
 orously condemned. “There are three capital . . . errors 
 ascribed” to General Gates, wrote Davis to Willie Jones. 
 “First, in not ordering a place of rendezvous in case of a de- 
 CaroUna feat : secondly, in not having the baggage secured, it re- 
 UnL Ma g ., maining all the while with the army ; and thirdly, in quitting 
 (1855) the field of action some time before the regulars gave way, 
 and riding post to Hillsboro, two hundred and thirty miles 
 in seventy-five hours. He is . . . execrated by the officers, 
 unrevered by the soldiers and hated by the people.”* 
 
 Not only was the large army that had been collected at 
 great pains and expense destroyed, but all the artillery, two 
 thousand stands of arms and nearly all the military stores 
 sent to the south by congress fell into the hands of the 
 enemy. Following so swiftly on the loss of the entire con- 
 tinental line at Charleston, this blow was an immeasurable 
 calamity to the State. The dark hours that try men’s souls 
 had indeed come. The loss of brave and courageous soldiers 
 at the north and the annihilation of the continental bat- 
 talions robbed the State of thousands of her choicest spirits. 
 But those who remained did not falter ; the resolution of the 
 North Carolina patriots never wavered, and their courage 
 rose higher and higher under the calamities that had be- 
 fallen them. As deplorable and distressing as the situation 
 was, it was bravely met. Immediate preparation was made 
 
 *On the other hand, consider the opinion of Lee, a soldier, and 
 compare it with Davis, the civilian : “This rapid retreat of General 
 Gates has been generally supposed to diminish his reputation. Not 
 so, in truth. It does him honor, as it evinced a mind capable, amidst 
 confusion and distress, of discerning the point most promising to 
 renew with expedition his strength ; at the same time incapable of 
 being withheld from doing his duty, by regarding the calumny with 
 which he was sure to be assailed.” (Lee’s Memoirs, 100, ed. 1827.) 
 
SUPPLIES FROM ABROAD 
 
 625 
 
 to resist the invasion that was now imminent ; but for the 
 moment North Carolina was defenceless and lay open to the 
 conqueror. 
 
 Fortunately, other supplies were within reach. Trade 
 between our ports and the West Indies was never entirely 
 arrested, and many valuable cargoes continued to be im- 
 ported ; nor had the practice ceased of sending out privateers 
 to prey on British commerce and make prizes of merchant- 
 men. So it happened that several vessels came in just about 
 the time Gates lost his stores, bringing cargoes tending to 
 supply those losses. In particular, on September 4th there 
 arrived in the Cape Fear two prizes made by the privateer 
 General Nash, one cargo being invoiced at £10,000 and the 
 other at £40,000 sterling, the latter being one of the most 
 valuable captures made during the war, and having on board 
 nearly everything desired for the soldiers. About the same 
 time the Marquis of Bretigny also reached New Bern, bring- 
 ing a quantity of powder, four hundred stands of arms, 
 pistols, saddles, and accoutrements ; while Dr. Guion’s 
 schooner likewdse arrived with additional supplies. In fact, 
 the enterprise displayed by the merchants was no less 
 remunerative to them than beneficial to the State. It was 
 also harassing to the enemy. Governor Nash in December 
 mentioned in a letter to General Washington : ‘‘The enemy 
 have not been entirely free of trouble off Charleston ; and 
 on the coast in that quarter during this summer they have 
 suffered very considerably by our privateers, particularly 
 by open rowboats. These boats, with forty or fifty men 
 aboard, take almost everything that comes in their way. 
 Two that went out in company returned here this week after 
 a leave of about twenty days, in which time they took and 
 sent in twelve valuable prizes, besides burning, I think, 
 four.” 
 
 All now was activity in the State. Smallwood established 
 a camp at Salisbury, where the sick and wounded were 
 assembled. Such ammunition and stores as remained at 
 Mack’s Ferry were speedily brought to the same point, and 
 there began the nucleus of a new organization. General 
 Harrington, with several companies of militia from Duplin, 
 Onslow, Bladen, Cumberland and some of the Albemarle 
 
 1780 
 
 Importa- 
 
 tions 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 70, 72 
 
 Enterprise 
 on the water 
 
6 26 
 
 1780 
 
 Sumner 
 given a 
 brigade 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 573 
 
 S R.. 
 XXIV, 344 
 
 NASH’S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 counties, aggregating in all four hundred and fifty men, kept 
 a vigilant watch and guarded the stores at Fayetteville. In 
 his front, toward the coast, was Marion with a few horse- 
 men, and over in Anson Colonel Kobb,* while down the 
 Peedee the brave and energetic Kenan, of Duplin, patrolled 
 with his squadron of horse. Farther to the west Davie and 
 Davidson kept watch and ward. 
 
 Governor Nash had called the Assembly together to meet 
 at Hillsboro on August 12th, but a quorum of members 
 had not reached there on the 23d. Time being precious, the 
 members who had convened united in recommending that 
 the governor should call out one-half of the militia of the 
 State and direct the commanding officers to appoint com- 
 missioners to obtain the necessary supplies, either by pur- 
 chase or impressment. Accordingly, the militia was directed 
 to assemble at Hillsboro, Salisbury, and Charlotte. Gen- 
 eral Caswell despatched messengers to intercept the militia 
 regiments of Jarvis, Exum, and Pasteur, and to direct them 
 to Ramsey’s Mills, in Chatham, where a few days later he 
 himself arrived, the strength of the brigade being some eight 
 hundred men. To command it Governor Nash assigned 
 General Sumner, as the most experienced officer of the State. 
 On September 3d Caswell and Sumner proceeded with the 
 brigade by way of Pittsboro to the encampment at Salisbury. 
 
 The Assembly acts 
 
 When the Assembly met, and it was not until Septem- 
 ber 5th that a quorum was assembled, it addressed itself 
 with vigor to preparations of defence. Responding to the 
 recommendation of the governor, it levied a tax in kind to 
 be at once collected out of the abundant harvest. For every 
 £100 value of property each inhabitant was required to fur- 
 nish one peck of Indian corn or three pounds of good pork, 
 
 *Colonel Kobb was afterward murdered by the Tories. “Among 
 the many murders and house burnings perpetrated by this banditti,” 
 says Lee in his Memoirs, page 553, “that of Colonel Kobb was 
 singularly atrocious. A party of them, led by a Captain Jones, 
 surprised the colonel on a visit to his family. He defended his house 
 until he was induced by a promise of personal safety to surrender 
 as a prisoner of war, when he was immediately murdered in the 
 presence of his wife and children and his house burned.” 
 
BOARD OF WAR ORGANIZED 
 
 627 
 
 or other provisions enumerated in the act, except that the 1780 
 inhabitants of Carteret might deliver instead a gallon of September 
 salt; and the Quakers, Moravians and "non-jurors” were to 
 pay their entire tax in provisions. A loan of £1,000,000 
 was also directed to be made, while for the present the 
 confiscation act was suspended. Many persons being in 
 custody on the charge of opposing the State in its defence, if"?*®* 
 for the “speedy trial of traitors” the magistrates of the 
 different counties were given authority to try them, no 
 counsel being allowed either for or against any prisoner, 
 who, however, was at liberty to make his own defence, and 
 should have reasonable time to prepare for trial ; and there 
 was to be no arrest of judgment in any case if the proceed- 
 ing: was of sufficient substance to convict. 
 
 The Board of War 
 
 Governor Nash had reported to the Assembly that the 
 members of his council did not attend its meetings and gave 
 him no aid ; and he urged that other appointments should 
 be made; and he also recommended that a Board of War 
 should be created, who would share with him the responsi- 
 bility of conducting military matters when the Assembly 
 was not in session. Accordingly the Assembly created a 
 Board of War, composed of Colonel Alexander Martin, 
 John Penn, and Oroondates Davis, investing it with great 
 powers, especially for concerting a general plan of opera- 
 tions for the defence of the State and carrying it into execu- 
 tion. General Harrington had somewhat earlier been ap- 
 pointed brigadier-general of the Salisbury district during the 
 absence of General Rutherford, and now that Rutherford 
 had fallen into the hands of the enemy the Assembly elected 
 Colonel Davidson to that position. Harrington promptly 
 tendered his resignation, but nevertheless, because of the 
 emergency, he continued to act under his commission as 
 brigadier, rendering efficient service on the southeastern 
 border. General Smallwood, of the Maryland line, was en- 
 joying a high reputation because of his admirable conduct 
 at Camden, quite in contrast with the prevalent idea of the 
 conduct of Gates and Caswell ; and the Assembly tendered 
 him the position of major-general and commander-in-chief 
 
 Board of 
 War 
 
 S. R., 
 
 XXIV, 3S 5 ; 
 
 XIV, 376; 
 
 XV, 139-141 
 
 Gen. 
 
 Davidson 
 
 Smallwood 
 
 supersedes 
 
 Caswell 
 
628 
 
 1780 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 '3i 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 of all the militia of the State, thus superseding Caswell, and 
 giving Smallwood precedence over all the officers in the 
 southern army except alone General Gates. This action 
 virtually retiring him, Caswell indignantly resented ; and 
 he returned to his home at Kingston. A month later he 
 wrote to Governor Nash, reminding him that “in the spring 
 he had not only been appointed major-general to command 
 the militia, but as well a member of the board to conduct 
 trade in behalf of the State ; and that as the Assembly had 
 been pleased to dismiss him from the command of the militia, 
 it is probable it would have dismissed him also from the 
 Board of Trade had it occurred to them that he had been 
 appointed a member of that board" ; and so with some 
 warmth he tendered his resignation of this latter position. 
 For a time he remained entirely quiet. 
 
1. Joseph Winston 2. Joseph Graham 
 
 3. Joseph McDowell (Quaker Meadows) 4. William Polk 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 Nash’s Administration, 1780-81 — Continued 
 
 Cornwallis moves to Charlotte. — Davie’s gallant defence.— The 
 activity of the Mecklenburgers. — Governor Martin’s proclamation. — 
 Movement on Augusta. — Ferguson marches westward. — The fron- 
 tiersmen assemble. — Battle of King’s Mountain. — Death of Chronicle. 
 — The victory gives great joy. — Its effects. — Cornwallis retires.— His 
 gloomy outlook. — Leslie in Virginia.— Moves to Camden. — Gates 
 moves forward. — Cornwallis’s disappointment. — Arrival of Greene.— 
 His activity.— His forward movement. — The new year. — The Council 
 Extraordinary. — Caswell reinstated. — Four new continental battal- 
 ions. — No party divisions. — During Caswell’s administration. — Nash’s 
 administration. — Dr. Burke’s zeal to correct abuses. — Sam Johnston 
 declines the presidency of congress. 
 
 Cornwallis moves to Charlotte 
 
 After the rout of Gates’s army Cornwallis occupied him- 
 self at . Camden arranging for the administration of civil 
 and military affairs in South Carolina, and then the time 
 being at hand for him to invade North Carolina, he moved 
 to Waxhaw on September 8th, resting there for the Tories 
 to embody and join him. Tarleton was thrown on his left 
 toward Ferguson, who was operating on the frontier. At 
 first while the British army lay at Waxhaw Colonel Davie 
 alone was at its front. With a command not exceeding 
 one hundred and fifty men, that enterprising officer on Sep- 
 tember 20th, by a circuitous march, fell on a detachment of 
 some three hundred of the enemy at Wahab’s plantation, 
 routed them and brought off ninety-six horses, a hundred 
 and twenty stands of arms, returning to his camp that same 
 evening, having marched in less than twenty-four hours no 
 less than sixty miles. On the same day Sumner and David- 
 son reached his camp with a thousand militia. Four days 
 later Cornwallis renewed his movement, advancing on 
 Charlotte, and Sumner and Davidson fell back toward 
 Salisbury. 
 
 1780 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 193-196 
 
 Wahab’s 
 
 Sumner at 
 the front 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 
 647 
 
630 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 389, 410, 681, 
 778 ; XV, 89 
 
 New forces 
 concentrate 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 412 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 251 
 
 Sept., 1780 
 
 At Charlotte 
 
 Locke killed 
 
 Davidson turned to the west, while Sumner took post at 
 McGowan’s Creek, where early in October General Butler’s 
 brigade of seven hundred joined him. General Jones with 
 the Halifax brigade had been ordered to join Harrington 
 in front of Campbellton, but he, too, was now marching with 
 all haste to Sumner’s camp. Colonel William Washington 
 had enlisted some hundred troopers also in the eastern 
 counties, and he with other partisan leaders were concen- 
 trating at Salisbury. General Smallwood and Colonel Mor- 
 gan already in high reputation on October 7th, left Hillsboro 
 for the front. Everywhere there was displayed the same 
 energy and spirit. It was estimated that there were five 
 thousand men concentrating for defence. The Board of 
 War, however, was emphatic in directions that a general 
 engagement was to be avoided, for a second defeat at that 
 time would have had a most disastrous effect on the inhabi- 
 tants and on the spirit of the militia, who had now in some 
 measure rallied from the depression caused by the disaster 
 at Camden. 
 
 Davie’s gallant defence 
 
 Davie with his troop of horse, now augmented by a few 
 volunteers under Major Joseph Graham, remained to ob- 
 serve the enemy. On the night of the 25th he took a num- 
 ber of prisoners, and then himself retired to Charlotte. 
 Early the next morning Tarleton’s legion with some light 
 infantry was seen advancing, followed by the main body. 
 Determined to make a defence, Davie disposed of his small 
 force advantageously at the court-house, and when the 
 enemy, sounding a charge, advanced at a full gallop, he 
 opened fire and drove them back with great precipitation. 
 A second and third charge was similarly repelled ; but at 
 length the infantry turned his flank, and in good order 
 Davie withdrew his companies, each in turn covering the 
 other, and made a successful retreat. The enemy followed 
 cautiously for some distance, when they ventured to charge 
 the rear guard. They were stubbornly resisted and driven 
 off, but unfortunately not without loss ; Lieutenant Locke 
 and four privates were killed, and Major Graham and five 
 
DAVIE’S DEFENCE OF CHARLOTTE 
 
 631 
 
 others were wounded.* The following day after this brilliant 
 affair at Charlotte Davie joined the army at Salisbury, but 
 on the union of some mounted infantry from Granville under 
 Colonel Taylor with his corps he felt strong enough to 
 return to the immediate front of Cornwallis, who estab- 
 lished himself at Charlotte. 
 
 The activity of the Mecklenburgers 
 
 As trying as were the difficulties which beset the Ameri- 
 can commanders for the want of provisions, the troubles of 
 Cornwallis on the same score were much greater. His 
 foraging parties brought in but little, and they were so 
 sorely harassed by Davie that the British army fell into 
 sore distress for want of forage and supplies. 
 
 At Charlotte there were but a few houses, but it was a 
 desirable location for an army because of the numerous 
 mills in the immediate vicinity, at which corn and wheat 
 could be ground for the use of the troops. At Polk’s Mill, 
 two miles distant from Charlotte, Cornwallis stationed a 
 detachment of fifty men, and on September 28th Major 
 Dickson with sixty cavalrymen made the entire circuit 
 around Charlotte and attacked that post. He was repulsed, 
 but the- assault added to the disagreeable position of the 
 British commander. Five days later he despatched a de- 
 tachment of four hundred and fifty infantry, sixty cavalry 
 and forty wagons under Major Doyle toward the fertile 
 fields of Long Creek, some ten miles to the northwest of 
 Charlotte, to bring in forage and supplies. At McIntyre’s 
 farm a party of a hundred men and ten wagons was left 
 to gather forage, while the others continued on. Captain 
 James Thompson and thirteen of his brave neighbors reso- 
 lutely attacked this party, and so vigorously that eight of 
 them were killed and twelve wounded. Doyle was so 
 alarmed by this unexpected assault that he hastened back, 
 picked up his dead and wounded and then fled precipitately, 
 having obtained only forage enough to load four wagons. 
 
 *In this encounter at the Cross Roads, St. George Locke, a son of 
 General Matthew Locke, was literally cut to pieces in a most bar- 
 barous manner, while Captain Joseph Graham, in addition to being 
 wounded three times with balls, received six sabre cuts and was 
 left on the field for dead. 
 
 1780 
 
 September 
 
 Graham’s 
 Graham, 
 258, 260 
 
 Polk’s Mill 
 
 McIntyre’s 
 
632 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 October 
 
 Graham’s 
 Graham, 
 264, 265 
 
 Joseph 
 
 Martin 
 
 Lee’s 
 Memoirs, 
 198, 200 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 94 
 
 Garden Hill 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 
 424 
 
 Governor Martin’s proclamation 
 
 Accompanying Cornwallis was the royal governor, Josiah 
 Martin, who now entered the State for the first time since 
 he departed from the Cape Fear in May, 1776. Hoping 
 much from the Tories and disaffected inhabitants, who he 
 conceived were attached to him personally, on October 3d 
 he issued an earnest address seriously and solemnly calling 
 on the faithful subjects of his Majesty with heart and hand 
 to join and unite with the army, and exhorting all the 
 young men to testify their loyalty and spirit by enlisting in 
 a provincial corps to be under his immediate command ; and 
 offering a bounty of three guineas, full pay and free grants 
 of land at the end of the rebellion. Couriers were at once 
 sent off to disseminate this proclamation both to the west 
 and the east, but before it could have operation came the 
 news of the destruction of Ferguson’s corps, which 
 effectually suppressed all Tory risings. 
 
 Movement on Augusta 
 
 Although the southern Indians adhered to the British, 
 looking to the king of Great Britain for protection against 
 the inroads of the colonists, intercourse with them was con- 
 stantly maintained by Colonel Joseph Martin, specially em- 
 ployed in that service, and he managed with such skill, 
 wisdom and prudence, that during that critical period of the 
 war, they remained quiet, and the western borders were not 
 menaced with the peril of a savage warfare. 
 
 This fortunate circumstance left the frontiersmen free to 
 take the field away from home when called upon. Some- 
 what earlier than Cornwallis’s advance several detachments 
 had embodied under local leaders with the purpose of attack- 
 ing Augusta, where a large supply of arms, ammunition, 
 blankets, salt and other commodities intended as the annual 
 present to the Indians was then stored. Eventually all these 
 united under Colonel Clarke, who marched toward Augusta. 
 The British commander, Colonel Browne, having informa- 
 tion of their approach, retired toward Ninety-six, but was 
 overtaken at Garden Hill, where he fortified and gallantly 
 defended himself, awaiting relief. After four days of siege 
 relief came, and Colonel Clarke was forced to retire, carry- 
 
DEFEAT OF FERGUSON 
 
 633 
 
 ing v 'th him, however, a large amount of the Indian goods 
 that had fallen into his hands. In the meantime other 
 movements had been made among the frontiersmen, even 
 as remote as Watauga and western Virginia. 
 
 Ferguson marches westward 
 
 To counteract these movements Cornwallis had detached 
 Major Ferguson, an accomplished officer, with three hun- 
 dred regulars and a small body of Loyalists, to proceed 
 toward the frontier, arouse the Tories, collect provisions 
 and suppress the Whig inhabitants. He was not only 
 supplied with ammunition, but carried with him a thousand 
 stand of arms for the Loyalists who were expected to join 
 his force. Marching through upper South Carolina and 
 then into North Carolina, Ferguson himself stopped at Gil- 
 bert Town, but a detachment penetrated as far as Morgan- 
 ton, and word was spread that he proposed to destroy all 
 the Whig settlements. This information, instead of acting 
 as a deterrent, aroused the Whigs of the frontier, who were 
 already embodied ready for action. On September 14th 
 Gen. William Lee Davidson ordered Armstrong, Cleveland 
 and Locke to unite their forces and arrest Ferguson’s prog- 
 ress ; and the other Whig leaders were also moving. They 
 resolved on Ferguson’s destruction. Campbell, from Virginia, 
 joined Shelby and Sevier at Watauga, their united forces 
 numbering nine hundred men, and on September 25th 
 crossed the mountains, where they were met by Colonel Mc- 
 Dowell with a hundred and sixty others, and on the 30th, 
 on the banks of the Catawba, they were reinforced by Cleve- 
 land with three hundred and fifty men of the counties of 
 Wilkes and Surry. Marching south on the evening of Octo- 
 ber 6th, they were joined near Cowpens by Colonel Wil- 
 liams's force of four hundred. There information was re- 
 ceived that Ferguson was near the Cherokee ford of Broad 
 River, about thirty miles distant. A council of the principal 
 officers was held, and it was thought advisable to set out 
 that night with nine hundred of the best horsemen, leaving 
 the others to follow as fast as possible. Marching all night, 
 at three o’clock the next afternoon they reached the vicinity 
 of Ferguson’s corps. 
 
 1780 
 
 September 
 
 S. R , XV, 
 163 
 
 Davidson’s 
 
 orders 
 
 S R., XIV, 
 
 615 
 
 The corps 
 unite 
 
 S. R.. XV, 
 94 
 
 S. R., XV 
 
 106 
 
634 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 King’s 
 Mountain, 
 Oct. 7th 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 116, 164 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 164 
 
 Death of 
 Ferguson 
 
 The victory 
 
 Ferguson, having information of the approach of a Whig 
 column, had taken a strong position on the top of King’s 
 Mountain, twelve miles distant from the ford, and in full 
 confidence that he could not be forced from a post possess- 
 ing such natural advantages. The assailants were formed 
 into three divisions, and coolly ascended the mountain from 
 different directions. The day was wet, and their approach 
 being fortunately undiscovered, the Whigs easily took the 
 British pickets. As the column was arranged, the Washing- 
 ton and Sullivan regiments, gaining their positions first, 
 began the attack on the front and left flank ; to the North 
 Cardlinians under Winston, Sevier and Cleveland was 
 assigned the attack on the rear and other flank. Campbell 
 on the centre opened a destructive fire, but Ferguson re- 
 sorted to the bayonet and forced him back. At that instant, 
 however, Shelby poured in a volley, alike effective. Fergu- 
 son turned furiously on this new foe, advancing with the 
 bayonet ; but Shelby, having reached the summit of the 
 eminence, drove the British along the ridge to where Cleve- 
 land commanded, and his brave men stopped them in that 
 quarter. Undismayed by this unexpected resistance, Fergu- 
 son now made a grand rally, his men fighting desperately ; 
 but all the Whig divisions acting in co-operation, the Tory 
 force could make but slight impression. Ferguson used the 
 Shelby, Sevier, Hambright, and Winston, and Major Shelby, 
 and for an hour the battle raged without abatement. At 
 length the British commander sought to escape on horse- 
 back, but fell dead trying to force his way. 
 
 The fire of the beleaguered Tories now slackened, and 
 soon there was unconditional surrender. Of Ferguson’s 
 force 300 were killed or wounded; 100 regulars and 700 
 Loyalists were taken, and 1500 stands of arms fell into the 
 possession of the Whigs. The loss of the assailants was 
 small, but among the killed was Colonel Williams,* of South 
 Carolina, distinguished as one of the most active and reso- 
 
 *Colonel James Williams, a native of Granville County, N. C., 
 then resident in South Carolina, on application had been allowed by 
 North Carolina $25,000 to raise troops for the defence of North 
 Carolina. He had under him troops raised in North Carolina, as 
 well perhaps as in South Carolina. (S. R.. XXI, 75; Graham’s 
 Graham, 263.) 
 
DEFEAT OF FERGUSON 
 
 lute of the partisan leaders, and Major William Chronicle, 
 whose loss was greatly lamented. It was night before the 
 prisoners were all secured, and the victors slept on the bat- 
 tlefield ; but early the next morning they set off northward 
 with their prisoners under the command of Colonel Camp- 
 bell. 
 
 Later, General Gates directed that the eight hundred 
 prisoners should be conveyed to Fincastle, Va. ; but on 
 reaching Surry County they were turned over to Colonel 
 Martin Armstrong, and within two months all but a hun- 
 dred and thirty of them were either dismissed, paroled or 
 enlisted in the military service for three months. There 
 was great hope of using these prisoners for the purposes 
 of exchange to set free an equal number held by the British, 
 and much disappointment was felt when this design was 
 frustrated by Colonel Armstrong’s inexpedient conduct ; nor 
 did he escape without severe and indignant criticism, and 
 the Assembly deprived him of his commission. 
 
 The victory gives great joy 
 
 The movement of the Whigs at the west was not unknown 
 to Davie, Sumner, and Gates, and they were in anxious 
 expectancy. 
 
 Three days after the battle the news of the victory was 
 brought by a courier to Sumner at his camp on the Yadkin, 
 who forwarded it to Gates at Hillsboro. Whatever com- 
 ment might be made on General Gates’s course up to this 
 period, and he was thoroughly execrated by the people, it 
 appears that in adversity he rose to the height of the occa- 
 sion. With resolution and promptness he was preparing 
 to renew the conflict. With joy and hope he hurried an 
 express to Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, bearing 
 “the great and glorious news’’ ; and, urging forward prom- 
 ised help, he said : “We are now more than even with the 
 enemy. The moment the supplies for the troops arrive ... I 
 shall proceed with the whole to the Yadkin.” Smallwood 
 and Morgan were already on their way, Morgan with his 
 light infantry then eighteen miles beyond Guilford Court 
 House and Smallwood with the cavalry was following fast. 
 
 A new inspiration pervaded every heart, and when the 
 
 635 
 
 1780 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 ”5 
 
 The 
 
 prisoners 
 
 S. R.,XVII, 
 668 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 
 685; 
 
 XV, 117 
 
 Gates’ spirit 
 
 S. R., 
 XVII, 697 
 
6 3 6 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 Effects of 
 the victory 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 692-8 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 £ 8 5 
 
 Assembly met, with grateful eulogium on their patriotism 
 and heroism, it resolved that Colonels Cleveland, Campbell, 
 Shelby, Sevier, Hambright, and Winston, and Major Shelby, 
 should each receive an elegantly mounted sword for their 
 voluntary, distinguished and eminent services. 
 
 Indeed, the victory at King’s Mountain was no less ex- 
 traordinary as a feat of arms than potent in its results. 
 That undisciplined and unorganized volunteers operating 
 under neither state nor continental authority should have 
 achieved such a victory over a force equal in numbers, amply 
 supplied with ammunition, ably commanded and so advan- 
 tageously posted, attested the fighting qualities of the un- 
 trained inhabitants and gave new hope to those who had 
 been disappointed at the conduct of the militiamen on other 
 fields. It buoyed the hearts of the patriots in that dark 
 hour and nerved them to greater efforts for resistance ; 
 while, on the other hand, not merely were the eight hundred 
 Tories who had joined Ferguson eliminated from the con- 
 test, but all of the disaffected inhabitants west of the 
 Catawba were suppressed during the remainder of the war. 
 Ramseur’s Mill was a disaster to the western Loyalists, but 
 King’s Mountain was their conquest. 
 
 Nor was this the only catastrophe that befell them. 
 Colonel Wright, a zealous Loyalist, embodied three hundred 
 of the disaffected at Richmond, in Surry County, and began 
 his march to unite with Cornwallis at Charlotte ; but Sumner 
 and Davidson hurried detachments against them, routed 
 and dispersed them. 
 
 Cornwallis retires 
 
 Cornwallis was so hemmed in at Charlotte that for some 
 days he received no information of the battle of King’s 
 Mountain. Indeed, he was also in utter ignorance of what 
 was passing in South Carolina, as for nearly three weeks 
 he had no intelligence from Camden, every express for him 
 having been taken by the active partisan bands in his rear. 
 No wonder he declared Mecklenburg “the most rebellious 
 section of America,” and that Tarleton spoke of it as “a 
 veritable hornet's nest.” 
 
 When the information reached him of Ferguson’s death 
 
EFFECTS OF FERGUSON'S DEFEAT 
 
 637 
 
 and the complete annihilation of that corps, he was no less 
 shocked than grievously disappointed. Not only did it un- 
 settle all his plans, but it rendered his own situation alarm- 
 ing. Realizing that he could not rely on the assistance from 
 the inhabitants which he had confidently expected, and 
 apprehending that Ninety-six would be at once attacked, he 
 determined to immediately retire from North Carolina. 
 Sc on the evening of October 12th he abandoned Charlotte 
 and turned toward the south. So far the tide of good for- 
 tune had rushed on without interruption, bringing him vic- 
 tory and well-earned fame, but now began a series of 
 mishaps that led step by step to irretrievable disaster and 
 ultimately to the final abandonment of British hopes of sub- 
 jugation and an acknowledgment of the independence of the 
 colonies. 
 
 Forced by untoward circumstances to retire from his ad- 
 vanced position, Cornwallis found South Carolina ready to 
 rise against British rule. In its dire extremity that State 
 had offered to remain neutral during the contest and to abide 
 by the general result of the struggle elsewhere. Clinton, 
 not content with such a submission, required the subdued 
 inhabitants to enroll themselves as Loyalist militia and take 
 up arms for the king. Many now determined to throw off 
 this yoke and fight, if they must, for the success of the 
 American cause ; and partisan leaders were drawing around 
 themselves corps of determined patriots that were a menace 
 to British occupancy. 
 
 Contemporaneously with the departure from Charlotte a 
 rainy season set in, and the troops suffered severely from 
 sickness, while Cornwallis himself became so ill that he 
 had to relinquish the command of his army, committing 
 it to the care of Lord Rawdon. It was not until Oc- 
 tober 29th that he reached the country lying between 
 Camden and Ninety-six, making his camp at Winnsboro 
 the more readily to support those two principal posts. 
 
 Leslie in Virginia 
 
 As there was expectation that North Carolina would be 
 subjugated and held, as had been the fate of Georgia and 
 South Carolina, it was designed that after that event Corn- 
 
 1780 
 
 October 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 288, 289 
 
 Lee’s 
 Memoirs, 
 162, 163 
 
 Partisan 
 
 corps 
 
 Sumter 
 
 Marion 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 287 
 
6 3 8 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 Albemarle 
 
 threatened 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 * 43 > 149 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 285, 286, 
 292-299, 307 
 
 Leslie 
 sails for 
 Wilmington 
 
 Oct. 21, 1780 
 
 wallis would continue his victorious march into Virginia. 
 To keep the Americans from concentrating against the Earl, 
 General Leslie with a considerable force had been despatched 
 from New York to the Chesapeake. During the month of 
 October Leslie had penetrated down the Blackwater to 
 South Quay, and, nearer the coast, to the Great Bridge. 
 General Benbury at once embodied his brigade and marched 
 to oppose him. After the battle of Camden General 
 Gregory returned home to the Albemarle section, and now 
 he gallantly took the field with his militia and checked Les- 
 lie’s advance, repulsing the British with some loss on 
 November 8th at Great Swamp. 
 
 Defeated in his purposes, Cornwallis now desired Leslie’s 
 aid at the south, but hesitated to order him to come to 
 his relief. Clinton, however, left him free to co-operate 
 with the southern army, especially as he had been sent to 
 the Chesapeake to make a diversion in favor of Cornwallis’s 
 operations. Leslie, knowing that Cornwallis hoped much 
 from the Loyalists on the upper Cape Fear, and that taking 
 possession of Wilmington would encourage them to rise, 
 determined to transfer his operations to that region. He 
 therefore sailed from the Chesapeake on November 23d for 
 Wilmington. Cornwallis being ill and the situation of his 
 army dangerous, Rawdon, in temporary command, des- 
 patched vessels to intercept the fleet at Frying Pan Shoals 
 and direct Leslie to come to his immediate assistance. So 
 it happened that the corps lately operating near Norfolk 
 made an unexpected appearance at Camden. Still further 
 to ease Cornwallis, Clinton now hurried a new army under 
 General Benedict Arnold to the Chesapeake ; but for per- 
 sonal reasons, as he was obnoxious to the people, Arnold 
 soon retired, leaving the command with General Phillips. 
 
 s. r„ xv, 
 
 151, 160 
 
 Gates moves forward 
 
 Quickly following Cornwallis’s withdrawal, Gates moved 
 his continentals, numbering a thousand, to Charlotte, while 
 Smallwood, who had superseded Sumner, much to the 
 latter’s disgust,* took post with the militia and Morgan some 
 
 *Sumner, like Caswell, resented the appointment of Smallwood as 
 major-general of the militia and declined to serve under him, so 
 when Smallwood reached his camp Sumner returned home. 
 
MILITARY MOVEMENTS 
 
 639 
 
 fifteen miles farther to the front, calling his camp New 
 Providence. General Stevens with five hundred Virginia 
 troops, almost naked and unarmed, remained at Hillsboro. 
 
 In the meantime, as the consequence of Gates’s misfortune 
 at Camden, congress had directed Washington to commit the 
 Southern Department to another general, and Washington 
 appointed Nathanael Greene to that command. Accom- 
 panying Greene to the south were Baron Steuben and Light 
 Horse Harry Lee with his corps of dragoons, three hundred 
 in number. The baron was, however, left in Virginia to 
 conduct operations in that State, which was within Greene’s 
 department. 
 
 The Board of War organized at Hillsboro on Septem- 
 ber 12th, but soon all the members left except John Penn, 
 who for some time conducted military afifairs without any 
 aid. The board relieved Governor Nash largely of his re- 
 sponsibilities, and in a measure encroached on his powers. 
 It was active in giving direction and stimulating the county 
 officers to renewed exertions, and zealously co-operated with 
 General Gates and afterward with General Greene in pre- 
 paring for defence. 
 
 Cornwallis was thoroughly disappointed with the result 
 of the campaign. He had been led to invade North Caro- 
 lina at that time because of the difficulties of a defensive 
 war, and the hope that the Tories in North Carolina, who 
 were said to be very numerous, would be active in aiding 
 him. The defeat at King’s Mountain, however, suppressed 
 all Tory risings at the west, while to the east Harrington 
 and the state militia kept the disaffected much in check; so 
 Cornwallis found that their friendship was only passive, 
 and he derived little assistance from their co-operation. He 
 reported that only about two hundred had been prevailed on 
 to join his camp. His chief difficulty, however, was the 
 absence of supplies. These could not be furnished from 
 abroad, and his army necessarily had to subsist on the 
 country; and in this matter such Loyalists as engaged with 
 him were found very efficient and a great help to his dis- 
 tressed troops. 
 
 1780 
 
 Smallwood 
 at New 
 Providence 
 
 Greene 
 
 S. R.,XIV 
 
 376 
 
 Board of 
 War 
 
 Cornwallis’s 
 
 disappoint- 
 
 ments 
 
 Tories 
 
 passive 
 
640 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1780 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 i73 
 
 Greene in 
 command 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 173, 174, 185 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 184 
 
 Arrival of Greene 
 
 General Greene reached Charlotte on December 2d, and 
 at once Gates departed northward. The new general imme- 
 diately began to take measures for the organization and 
 efficiency of his army. 
 
 His presence inspired zeal and confidence. Colonel Lee, 
 who accompanied him, in his “Memoirs” says: “This illus- 
 trious man had now reached his thirty-eighth year. In 
 person he was rather corpulent, and above the common size. 
 His complexion was fair and florid ; his countenance serene 
 and mild, indicating a goodness which seemed to shade and 
 soften the fire and greatness of its expression.” Every ele- 
 ment combined to commend him to the good-will and affec- 
 tions of his soldiers. 
 
 The neighboring country was so bare that General 
 Greene’s first step was to request the Board of War not to 
 call out any more militia until satisfactory arrangements 
 were made to subsist the troops. Writing to Washington, 
 he reported that: “Nothing can be more wretched and dis- 
 tressing than the condition of the troops, starving with cold 
 and hunger, without tents and camp equipage. Those of the 
 Virginia line are literally naked. A tattered remnant of 
 some garment, clumsily stuck together with the thorns of the 
 locust tree, forms the sole covering of hundreds, and we 
 have three hundred men without arms, and more than a 
 thousand are so naked that they can be put on duty only in 
 case of desperate necessity.” To facilitate his purpose of 
 transporting supplies he caused the Dan, the Yadkin, and 
 the Catawba to be explored, hoping to utilize water trans- 
 portation. He established a hospital at Salisbury, and the 
 osnaburgs and sheetings in store were distributed among 
 the women to be made into shirts for the soldiers. Colonel 
 Polk, who was the commissary-general, retired, and Greene 
 asked the Board of War to appoint Colonel Davie to that 
 most important position. 
 
 Desiring to cover Cross Creek, Greene directed Colonel 
 Kosciusko, of the engineers, to select a camp on the Peedee 
 where provisions could be obtained, and after some delay, 
 caused by terrible rains and bitter cold, on December 20th 
 
MILITARY MOVEMENTS 
 
 641 
 
 he broke camp and moved his army to a location at the 
 Cheraws. 
 
 Morgan had already been advanced beyond the Broad 
 with a detachment of three hundred Maryland regulars and 
 the Virginia militia and Washington’s dragoons, along with 
 some four hundred militia embodied in the adjacent counties 
 of North Carolina and some others from South Carolina and 
 Georgia. General Smallwood, whose appointment to the 
 command of the militia had resulted in the retirement of 
 Caswell and Sumner, now himself returned to Maryland in 
 order to hasten on re-enforcements and supplies from that 
 State, and also to have settled a question of rank between 
 himself and Baron Steuben. 
 
 The opening of the new year was not without a bright 
 lining to the clouds that had overcast the skies. There was 
 at least a rainbow of hope in the heavens. Greene was now 
 in command, Morgan in the advance, the State was again 
 free from the presence of a hostile army, and renewed zeal 
 was apparent among the inhabitants of every section. 
 
 The General Assembly was to have met at Halifax early 
 in January, but the members arrived so slowly that it was 
 the 26th before a quorum appeared. The Board of War, 
 however, was in session and had control of military affairs. 
 The army had suffered much from the inefficiency of the 
 commissary department In each district there was a com- 
 missary to obtain supplies, but no general head. General 
 Greene had urged the appointment of Colonel Davie to be 
 commissary-general for the State, but the Board hesitated 
 to make such an innovation, not warranted by the act of 
 Assembly; but finally, on January 16th, it conferred on that 
 active and accomplished young officer the office of “super- 
 intendent commissary-general.” Difficult as was the task 
 imposed on Colonel Davie he performed it with a capability 
 that rendered him one of the most useful men in the army, 
 but it removed him from that branch of the service where 
 he had won much fame by his daring exploits. 
 
 The Council Extraordinary 
 
 On the meeting of the legislature, Governor Nash com- 
 plained bitterly that the Board of War had encroached on 
 
 1781 
 
 January 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 184, 185 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 490 
 
 Davie 
 
 commissary- 
 
 general 
 
 Jan., 1781 
 S. R.,XVII, 
 653, 720 
 
642 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1781 
 
 Sv, 37 8 
 
 S. R., XVII, 
 
 786 
 
 S. R., 
 XVII, 662 
 
 S R., XV, 
 
 425, 426 
 
 his powers and duties as governor, and he offered to resign. 
 The Assembly thereupon dispensed with that board and sub- 
 stituted a Council Extraordinary, electing Governor Caswell, 
 Colonel Alexander Martin, and Allen Jones as members. 
 Caswell was now a member of the house, and Smallwood 
 having left the State, it was proposed to restore Caswell to 
 his former command as major-general of the militia. Indig- 
 nant at his former treatment, he, however, was not in- 
 clined to be complacent ; and to placate him the Assembly 
 passed a resolution declaring the reasons which had induced 
 the appointment of General Smallwood, “and the high sense 
 the Assembly then had and still have of the merits of General 
 Caswell, and of the singular services by him rendered this 
 State” ; and he was appointed again to command the militia, 
 and as president of the Council Extraordinary to conduct 
 military affairs. 
 
 His health, however, was poor, and his operations lacked 
 his former energy. He established a camp near Halifax, 
 and ordered out the various militia brigades, but the zeal 
 and force that earlier distinguished his actions were not now 
 so apparent. 
 
 He was directed by the Assembly to raise a regiment of 
 light horse in the Wilmington and New Bern districts, and 
 General Butler one in the Hillsboro district. Colonel Mal- 
 medy was appointed to command the latter and Colonel Read 
 the former. Both of these officers later served in South 
 Carolina. 
 
 There were many continental officers in the State unem- 
 ployed, and as Sumner was the ranking continental Greene 
 urged him to have these officers to repair to the camp and 
 assist Caswell in organizing the militia. Sumner tendered 
 his own services, and Colonel Ashe and Major Murfree also 
 reported to Caswell and placed themselves at his disposal. 
 But in addition to the indisposition to put the militia under 
 the continental officers, the militia officers themselves held 
 out for their own privilege of commanding their organi- 
 zations ; so that while a few experienced officers were em- 
 ployed, such as Major Dickson as inspector-general, Major 
 Armstrong with the forces at Salisbury, and Colonel Read 
 as commander of a regiment of horse, the services of many 
 
DOMESTIC AFFAIRS 
 
 643 
 
 of the most efficient regulars were not utilized by the State. 1781 
 
 Sumner hoped for the command of a brigade of militia, but 
 met with disappointment. The General Assembly, however, 
 made provision for four new regiments of continentals, and 
 extraordinary measures were devised for filling up the ranks. 
 
 In order to raise these battalions, the Assembly offered xbfiv, 369 
 a bounty of £2,000, and promised to every person who should / 
 enlist and serve one year “one prime slave . . . and six hun- / 
 dred and forty acres of land” ; and provision was made for a y 
 draft from the body of the militia for the continental ser- 
 vice. A tax in kind was levied, a large issue of bills was 
 authorized, and the confiscation act was further suspended. 
 
 No party divisions 
 
 All seemed to vie in patriotic resolve. Indeed, during the 
 period of the war, when every nerve was strained to ac- 
 complish success, all the public men were in accord, and 
 there does not seem to have been any party divisions, except 
 between Whigs and Tories. That there were differences in 
 council based on policy and expediency is probable, extend- 
 ing to matters of finance and of taxation and to the treat- 
 ment of the disaffected inhabitants ; and certainly there were 
 clashings arising from the natural ambitions of the leading 
 men. But amid the turmoils and alarums of war it is not 
 likely that there were discussions between candidates on 
 the hustings, and no newspapers were published at that time newspapers 
 in North Carolina. One of the differences among the *778-83 
 people arose from the uncertain value of the currency, which 
 depreciated because of excessive issues. Traders and spec- 
 ulators took advantage of the condition of affairs, still fur- 
 ther depreciating it, and these became odious among the 
 more patriotic inhabitants ; but probably none of the public 
 men were concerned in such proceedings. 
 
 The course of political action appears to have been influ- 
 enced merely by natural considerations. If any divisions 
 were evolved at the time of the formation of the State 
 constitution, they do not seem to have been fostered and 
 perpetuated. They passed away. Caswell and his council 
 tendered appointments to Sam Johnston and other con- 
 servatives, as well as to their Democratic friends. Allen 
 
644 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1781 
 
 S. R., XIV, 
 34 
 
 The public 
 men 
 
 Jones was year by year honored by the Assembly, while his 
 brother, Willie, received no particular mark of its confi- 
 dence, although Jones County was named for him. Iredell 
 was appointed to the bench, and when he retired Maclaine, 
 certainly a conservative, was elected. He declined, recom- 
 mending John Williams, who was in high favor with the 
 Assembly. On Avery’s resigning the office of attorney- 
 general, Iredell was elected to that position. The officers 
 first appointed were generally re-elected to the same posi- 
 tions. The senate continued year after year of the same 
 mind, while Benbury was constantly re-elected speaker of 
 the house. In 1780 Willie Jones and Sam Johnston, sup- 
 posed to be in antagonism, were elected delegates to the 
 Continental Congress. Caswell, while governor, was not on 
 good terms with Penn, nor later with Governor Nash. The 
 Assembly, after Camden, deprived him of his command, 
 and creating a Board of War, made Penn a member of it; 
 and Caswell indignantly withdrew from all public employ- 
 ment. Six months later the Assembly smoothed his ruffled 
 feathers, displaced Penn from the board and restored Cas- 
 well to power as major-general commanding the state forces 
 and as president of the Council Extraordinary charged with 
 the direction of military affairs. Next to him, Colonel 
 Alexander Martin was apparently the favorite among the 
 representatives. On the promotion of Howe he had become 
 colonel of the Second Battalion, but was charged with bad 
 conduct in battle, of which, however, he was subsequently 
 acquitted. He resigned, and was chosen speaker of the 
 senate, next in succession to the governor, and made presi- 
 dent of the Board of War. 
 
 Harnett, one of the prime favorites earlier, had been com- 
 pelled to withdraw from public employment because of 
 impaired health; and General Ashe, still more advanced in 
 years, likewise was a great sufferer, but continued as treas- 
 urer until 1781. Many of the first men in talents and in 
 energy, having entered the military service, had become 
 separated from the civil administration, while death had 
 made considerable inroads in the ranks of the patriot leaders. 
 
 During Caswell’s administration three years passed with- 
 out invasion ; and except local manifestations of disaffection 
 
DOMESTIC AFFAIRS 
 
 645 
 
 and the great efforts made to sustain the army and to send 
 assistance to South Carolina, it was a period of repose, if 
 not of peace. The inhabitants were measurably engaged in 
 their customary vocations, the fields were tilled, the courts 
 were held, the churches were open, schools kept, and the 
 people lived much as usual. In general, the inhabitants Life m the 
 reared in the forests had always been dependent on their 1776 to 1780 
 own exertions for the comforts of life. But few articles 
 had been imported from abroad, and the isolation of war 
 brought no great change in the mode of living. Indeed, com- 
 merce was still continued, and necessary goods to some ex- 
 tent were imported; the spinning-jenny and the hand-loom 
 were constantly employed, and the people were dressed in 
 fabrics of their own manufacture. Salt was made on the 
 coast, and iron, another essential, was forged at the Gulf, 
 in Chatham County, in Johnston, in Nash, in Surry, Lincoln 
 and other counties. The dividing line between Virginia and 
 North Carolina had been run to the mountains by commis- 
 sioners, those on the part of Virginia being General Joshua 
 Fry and Peter Jefferson, and on the part of North Caro- 
 lin, Daniel Weldon and William Churton ; but population 
 had extended into the wilderness beyond that line, and in 
 1779 commissioners were appointed to continue the line, sep- 
 arating Washington County from Virginia, and later Sul- 223, 2 2 ' 4 , 3O0 
 livan County was laid off. These two counties were to 
 extend west to the Tennessee or Ohio River — for even then 
 the course of those streams was not accurately known. 
 
 James Davis continued to publish his newspaper at New i 77 6- 7 8 
 Bern, to print the laws and disseminate information ; and 
 for the speedy transmission of intelligence posts were estab- 
 lished between New Bern and the several counties, while s. r., xv, 
 on special occasions horsemen were employed to carry news 223 
 with despatch. 
 
 During Nash’s administration the surrender of Charleston Nash’s 
 and the disaster at Camden and the invasion of Mecklenburg tion’ nistra 
 caused distress, and the extraordinary efforts made to or- 
 ganize a new army and sustain the troops in the field bore 
 hard on the people and brought them to realize more fully 
 than ever the dire calamities of war and the doubtful nature 
 of the struggle in which they were engaged. As the years 
 
646 
 
 1781 
 
 S. R.. XV, 
 769, 771 
 
 July, 1780 
 
 S R., XV, 
 772 , 773 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 passed many began to despair and grow weary of the sacri- 
 fices they were constantly called on to make. The successive 
 drafts, the heavy taxes, the worthless currency, the impress- 
 ments and the privations of the war disheartened hundreds 
 who had once been zealous in the American cause. 
 
 Dr. Burke’s zeal to correct abuses 
 
 In July, on the return of Dr. Burke to his home in Orange 
 County from the Continental Congress, he found the troops 
 who had recently arrived from the north in great distress 
 for the want of food and forage, and that the quarter- 
 masters were committing the most wanton destruction of 
 property.' “Every mouth was filled with complaints, every 
 countenance expressing apprehension, dejection, indigna- 
 tion, and despair had the place of the animated zeal” which 
 he had before observed. Immediately he interposed to 
 check the abuses, and he undertook that all who should vol- 
 untarily furnish supplies should be paid without depreciation 
 and should be protected from all violence and injury. Much 
 of the situation he attributed to ill-advised acts of the 
 Assembly passed to restrain speculation, which prevented 
 retailers from purchasing from the merchants and put a 
 stop to importations. Natural trade and commerce, made 
 the more necessary by the prevalent conditions, were totally 
 arrested, and this evil he sought to remedy. 
 
 The State had ordered out eight thousand militia, one 
 division of which was already in the field, and the other was 
 on its march to the general rendezvous ; but the men were 
 without arms, and none were procurable. At that time Gov- 
 ernor Nash was at the east, and Dr. Burke urged him to 
 come to Hillsboro, attended by his council, where he would 
 be in more close communication with the army and could 
 better deal with the important matters of the day. Even 
 after the return of General Gates from Camden Dr. Burke 
 was pressing on that general to correct the irregidarities of 
 his quartermasters in their dealings with the people. His 
 interposition to protect the inhabitants from unnecessary 
 exactions was greatly appreciated, spread his fame and in- 
 creased his popularity, and at the next election he reaped his 
 reward by being chosen governor. 
 
JOHNSTON IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 647 
 
 Sam Johnston declines the presidency of Congress ^ 
 
 In the fall of 1780 Willie Jones attended the Continental 
 Congress, but returned home on the opening of winter. On 
 December 29th Samuel Johnston took his seat. The articles 
 of confederation, having been agreed to by all the other 
 States, were finally accepted by Maryland on March 1, 1781, 
 and on the day following they were ratified in the Continen- 
 tal Congress by all the delegates from the several states, who 
 then signed them on behalf of their respective states, and 
 the confederation went into effect. For North Carolina they 
 were signed by Burke, Sharpe, and Johnston. Samuel 
 Huntington, of Connecticut, had been the president of the 
 congress under the old system. On July 9th an election 
 for president took place under the new system. Although 
 Samuel Johnston had been but six months a member of the 
 body, such was his recognized capacity, his learning and 
 high patriotism that he was chosen by the Continental Con- 
 gress its first president under the articles of confederation. 
 Unfortunately, circumstances forbade his accepting the high congress, ° f 
 honor, and on the following morning he declined “for such VI1, ,,s 
 reasons as the congress regarded satisfactory.” The day 
 following Johnston found himself constrained to return to 
 North Carolina. His family had fled from Edenton, and 
 the inhabitants of his immediate section were in such dis- 
 tress that he felt compelled to hasten home and share their 
 fortunes or aid in repairing them. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 Nash's Administration, 1780-81 — Continued 
 
 The battle of Cowpens. — Cornwallis pursues Morgan. — The death 
 of Davidson. — Invasion of the State.— Greene crosses the Dan. — 
 The endurance of the troops. — Cornwallis at Hillsboro. — On the 
 Cape Fear. — The movements of the armies. — Pyle’s massacre. — 
 Greene at Troublesome Creek. — Battle of Guilford Court House. 
 — Cornwallis moves east and Greene pursues. — Cornwallis reaches 
 Wilmington, Greene goes to South Carolina. — Craig occupies 
 Wilmington. — Death of Harnett. — Cornwallis’s plans. — Cornwallis 
 marches to Virginia. — The inhabitants distressed. — At Edenton. — 
 The Whigs rally.— Greene in South Carolina. — Death of Major 
 Eaton. — Cartel of exchange agreed on. — Atrocities lead to threats 
 of retaliation. — Gregory defends the Albemarle region. 
 
 The battle of Cowpens 
 
 Strengthened by the arrival of Leslie’s regiments, and 
 Memoirs pressed for provisions, Cornwallis with the opening of the 
 222-225, 227 new year determined on renewing his campaign. Engaging 
 s. r^xvii, Greene’s attention with Leslie’s corps, he threw Tarleton 
 on Morgan, while he prepared to advance, hoping to sep- 
 arate the American columns and beat them in detail. On 
 January 17th Tarleton, confident of easy victory, came up 
 with Morgan at the Cowpens, near the North Carolina line, 
 some forty miles west of Charlotte ; but after a stubborn 
 contest of fifty minutes his famous corps, that had been 
 regarded as invincible, was broken and dispersed and the 
 larger part of it taken prisoners. In arranging for the 
 battle Morgan established at his front two light parties of 
 militia, one hundred North Carolinians under Major 
 McDowell, of Burke County, and about fifty Georgians 
 under Major Cunningham. To these picked riflemen were 
 given orders to feel the enemy as he approached and to 
 maintain a well-aimed fire, and then, when they fell back, 
 to renew the conflict along with the first line of battle. This 
 main line was composed of about two hundred North Caro- 
 
1. Banastre Tari.eton 2. Horatio Gates 
 
 3. Daniel Morgan 4. Charles, Marquis Cornwallis 
 
THE VICTORY AT COW PENS 
 
 649 
 
 lina militia and near a hundred South Carolinians, and was 
 under the command of General Andrew Pickens. Further 
 to the rear, on the crown of an eminence, were posted the 
 three hundred Maryland regulars and two companies of 
 Virginia militia and a company of Georgians, all commanded 
 by Colonel Howard, of Maryland. Washington’s cavalry, 
 reinforced by a company of mounted militia, was held in 
 reserve. The field of battle was a sparse, open pine forest, 
 and the bright beams of the rising sun heralded the opening 
 of a glorious day. 
 
 Tarleton on reaching the ground impetuously rushed on 
 to strike his prey. On being attacked, the advanced riflemen, 
 after some skirmishing, fell back and joined the main line 
 under Pickens. The enemy, shouting, rushed forward, but 
 were received by a close and heavy volley ; their advance 
 was not checked, however, and resorting to the bayonet, they 
 drove Pickens’s line from its position. A part of that corps 
 took post on Howard’s right, and as Tarleton pushed for- 
 ward he was received with unshaken firmness. The contest 
 became obstinate, each party, animated by the example of 
 its leader, nobly contending for victory. Outflanked, how- 
 ever, Howard's right began to yield, and the line retiring, 
 Morgan directed it to retreat to the cavalry. There a new 
 position was assumed with promptness. Mistaking this 
 movement for flight, the British rushed on with impetuosity 
 and disorder. As they drew near Howard faced about and Howard 
 poured in a close and murderous volley. Stunned by this 
 unexpected shock, the advance of the enemy recoiled in con- 
 fusion, and Howard’s continentals rushed upon them with 
 the bayonet. The British reserve, having been brought close 
 to the front, shared in the destruction of the American fire, 
 and there was no rallying point ofifered for the fugitives. 
 
 At the rear the battle also went well. Two companies of 
 Tarleton’s cavalry having made a detour to cut off the 
 Americans, Washington struck them with his dragoons and 
 drove them before him. Thus simultaneously the British 
 infantry and cavalry engaged were routed. Morgan with 
 promptness and resolution urged his victorious troops to 
 renewed efforts, and the pursuit became vigorous and gen- 
 eral. Colonel Washington having dashed forward fully 
 
650 
 
 1781 
 
 Wheeler, 
 Hist. N. C. 
 II, 186 
 
 Lee T s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 233 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 thirty yards ahead of his troops, Tarleton, in the rear of his 
 own, attended by two officers, turned and advanced to meet 
 him. Here a personal contest ensued between these two 
 heroes of the battlefield. Both, however, escaped the im- 
 minent peril. An anecdote has been preserved that some 
 months later, when Tarleton was at Halifax, he remarked 
 to the wife of Willie Jones that he understood that redoubt- 
 able leader, Washington, could not write, whereupon Mrs. 
 Jones replied : “You at least, sir, can bear witness that he 
 can make his mark,” referring to a wound Tarleton re- 
 ceived on his hand in that encounter. Turning then to Mrs. 
 Ashe, the colonel said that he had never had the pleasure of 
 meeting Washington, and she answered quickly: “Had you 
 looked behind you at Cowpens you would have seen him.” 
 
 The loss of the Americans was comparatively small, the 
 British, it was supposed, shooting too high — only 1 1 killed 
 and 61 wounded. The British suffered much more severely; 
 150 were killed, 200 wounded, and 400 prisoners, chiefly 
 infantry. The artillery, 800 muskets, 2 standards, 35 bag- 
 gage wagons and 100 dragoon horses, besides the prisoners, 
 fell into Morgan’s possession. 
 
 A part of Tarleton’s horse that had early fled from the 
 field of battle carried information of the disaster to Corn- 
 wallis. That general fully realized the reverse following so 
 quickly the destruction of Ferguson’s corps. A peer of the 
 British realm, trained from early youth to arms, now in his 
 forty-second year, a man of great ability and self-poise, 
 always accustomed to independent action and relying on his 
 own judgment, he was quick to decide the course to be 
 pursued. He resolved by celerity of movement to regain 
 his prisoners or to cut off Morgan’s force before it could 
 be joined by the other part of Greene’s army. On being 
 joined by Leslie he moved with despatch toward the fords 
 of the Catawba. 
 
 Cornwallis pursues Morgan 
 
 Immediately after the engagement Morgan had hurried 
 a messenger to Greene with news of his victory, and that 
 general, comprehending the situation, on the 25th directed 
 General Huger to conduct the army to Salisbury, while he 
 
MOVEMENTS OF CORNWALLIS 
 
 himself with a few dragoons hastened to the scene of active 
 operations. 
 
 Morgan, intent on evading pursuit, despatched his prison- 
 ers under guard of General Stevens and the militia north- 
 ward beyond the South Mountains toward Morganton. 
 Reaching the state road, Stevens turned eastward, crossing 
 the Catawba at Island Ford ;* and thence the prisoners were 
 conveyed beyond the Dan into Virginia. The general him- 
 self with his continentals pursued a lower route, and forded 
 the Catawba at Sherrill’s. On the 28th Cornwallis reached 
 the vicinity of Beattie’s Ford, ten miles below, and there 
 rested. He now determined to convert his army into light 
 troops by destroying his baggage. He set the example him- 
 self by committing to the flames the baggage of head- 
 quarters. Everything save a small supply of clothing, hos- 
 pital stores, salt, ammunition, and conveniences for the sick 
 was destroyed. 
 
 On the afternoon of the 31st General Greene arrived at 
 Beattie’s Ford, where by appointment General Morgan was 
 waiting for him. By Greene’s direction, General Davidson, 
 who had collected about five hundred militia, divided his 
 force and stationed some at different fords, of which there 
 were several to be guarded. He himself with about two 
 hundred infantry took post at a horse ford some two miles 
 distant from Cowan’s Ford, where a small picket force was 
 stationed. 
 
 The death of Davidson 
 
 At dawn of February 1st the British army began to cross. 
 The first movement was by way of Cowan’s Ford, and the 
 pickets there gave speedy notice by their prompt firing. 
 Davidson hurried to the scene with his infantry, he himself 
 being on horseback. The enemy's vanguard had already 
 reached the eastern bank before his arrival, and there was 
 desultory firing while he was placing his men in position. 
 The British advance now pressed on Davidson’s unformed 
 line, and that practised officer ordered his men to withdraw 
 about fifty yards to the cover of some trees, where they could 
 fight to better advantage. Hardly had he given his order 
 
 *In the vicinity of Statesville. 
 
 65 1 
 
 1781 
 
 s. R., XVII, 
 997 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 286 
 
 S. R..XVII, 
 998 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 293 
 
652 
 
 NASH’S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1781 
 
 Cornwallis’s 
 Order Book 
 in 
 
 Caruthers’s 
 Old Morth 
 State, II, 
 
 391 et seq. 
 
 when he fell, pierced by a rifle ball. He was a trained con- 
 tinental officer, courageous, efficient and enterprising, and 
 he was much beloved by the inhabitants of his section and 
 greatly esteemed throughout the State. His death was a 
 great loss to the American cause and was widely lamented, 
 the Continental Congress itself ordering a monument to be 
 erected as a memorial of his distinguished worth. 
 
 The invasion of the State 
 
 Having effected a crossing, Cornwallis hurried toward 
 Salisbury, hoping to overtake Morgan, who had moved the 
 evening before. While the opposition to his crossing had 
 not delayed him, it had been so strenuous that the next day 
 in general orders he made his warmest acknowledgments 
 to the cool and determined bravery of the advance column 
 in accomplishing it. 
 
 On entering North Carolina his Lordship issued frequent 
 orders forbidding excesses by any of his troops. No negro 
 was to be allowed to have arms. The strictest discipline was 
 to be enforced, and there was to be no wanton destruction 
 of property or any unnecessary exactions from the inhab- 
 itants. He came, he said, to establish and maintain the 
 rights of the people as British subjects, and his army should 
 not be disgraced by any outrages. He required the punish- 
 ment of any soldier or camp follower who should disobey 
 his orders in this respect. 
 
 In the meantime Huger had been directed by Greene to 
 move on to Guilford Court House or the fords of the Yad- 
 kin and there await further orders. At midnight of the 1st 
 Greene left the Catawba for Salisbury. An anecdote is 
 related in Johnson’s “Reminiscences” that on his arrival at 
 the tavern in that hamlet, in reply to inquiries of Dr. Read, 
 the general could not refrain from answering: “Yes, 
 fatigued, hungry, alone and penniless.” The benevolent 
 landlady, Mrs. Steele, overheard this remark, and hardly 
 was the general seated at a comfortable breakfast when 
 she presented herself, closed the door, and exhibiting a small 
 bag of specie in each hand, said: “Take these, for you will 
 want them, and I can do without them.” Such was the 
 
MOVEMENTS OF GREENE 
 
 spirit that had ever animated the patriotic women of 
 Salisbury. 
 
 There had been heavy rains on February ist, and Mor- 
 gan's continentals passed the Yadkin at Trading Ford, 
 seven miles from Salisbury, just before the stream rose 
 rapidly from the flood. 
 
 Some of the militia, being the rear detachment, were over- 
 taken after night at the river bank by General O’FIara, who 
 was in hot pursuit, and a slight skirmish ensued. While 
 the Americans succeeded in escaping, the wagons and bag- 
 gage of that detachment fell into the hands of the enemy. 
 The river being impassable, Greene, now safe, rested on the 
 eastern bank and then moved toward the upper fords, where 
 he knew Cornwallis must go in order to cross. The British 
 commander, debarred from crossing lower, also turned 
 northward and pursued the road on the western side of 
 the river. Time having been thus afforded for Huger’s 
 arrival, Greene marched eastward and reached Guilford 
 Court House on the 7th, where Huger joined him later on 
 that day. 
 
 Greene crosses the Dan 
 
 The united force of Americans, including five hundred 
 militia, somewhat exceeded twenty-three hundred men, 
 of whom nearly three hundred were excellent cavalry. 
 Cornwallis’s army was estimated at twenty-five hundred 
 trained veterans. At a council of war held by Greene 
 it was determined not to give battle, but to cross the Dan 
 and await the arrival of more militia. Colonel Carrington 
 was directed to collect boats for the passage at Irwin’s Ferry, 
 some seventy miles distant and well to the eastward ; and 
 in order to delay pursuit a light corps of seven hundred 
 men was organized, the command of which was offered to 
 General Morgan. General Morgan had been in retirement 
 from illness when, at the instance of congress, in October 
 he accepted employment at the south, and the exposure to 
 which he had been subjected now resulted in an attack of 
 rheumatism, which incapacitated him for this active duty. 
 He therefore declined the command, and retired to his home 
 in Virginia. Colonel Otho Williams was then selected to 
 
 653 
 
 1781 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 300 
 
 Huger 
 unites with 
 Greene 
 
 Lee’s 
 Memoirs, 
 236 et seq . 
 
654 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 I ? 81 conduct the operations of that corps. He so manoeuvred 
 
 that the British commander mistook his detachment for 
 Greene’s main body, and he delayed the pursuit until 
 Greene on February 13th succeeded in crossing- the Dan. 
 
 The pursuit More than once was Williams’s rear guard, Lee’s legion, 
 within musket shot of O’Hara’s van, and it was with diffi- 
 culty that the men were restrained from bringing on an 
 engagement ; but that was no part of Williams’s purpose. 
 Eventually he, too, about three o’clock on the evening of 
 the 13th, reached the vicinity of the ferry, and by sunset 
 his infantry gained the river and were transported. Lee 
 had been left to keep the enemy in check, and about dark 
 he succeeded in withdrawing his cavalry, and between eight 
 and nine o’clock that night his men embarked in the boats, 
 making the horses swim the stream. Thus ended this long, 
 arduous and eventful retreat. “No operation during the 
 war,’’ says Lee in his “Memoirs,” “more attracted the public 
 attention than this did; not only the toils and dangers en- 
 countered by a brave general and his brave army interested 
 the sympathy of the nation, but the safety of the South 
 hanging on its issue, excited universal concern.” “When 
 we add the comfortless condition of our troops in point of 
 clothing — the shoes generally worn out, the body clothes 
 much tattered, and not more than one blanket for four men — 
 the rigor of the season, the inclemency of the weather, our 
 short stock of ammunition and shorter stock of provisions — 
 the single meal allowed 11s was always scanty though good in 
 quality and very nutritious, being bacon and corn meal — 
 and contrasted with the comfortable raiment and ample equip- 
 ment of the enemy, . . . we have abundant cause to honor 
 the soldier whose mental resources smoothed every difficulty, 
 and ultimately made good a retreat of two hundred and 
 thirty miles . . . without the loss of either troops or stores. 
 This tribute to General Greene is but the expression of 
 the universal praise which has been bestowed upon that 
 great commander, not only by his countrymen but by the 
 agreeing voices of all men ; and yet something, too, is to 
 be said of those suffering patriots who constituted the rank 
 and file of his gallant army. Their endurance, their un- 
 flagging zeal, their spirit of self-sacrifice, entitle them to 
 
CRAIG OCCUPIES WILMINGTON 
 
 unstinted praise and the grateful remembrance of pos- 
 terity. 
 
 Writing to Washington immediately on his arrival at 
 Irwin’s Ferry, Greene himself said : “The miserable situa- 
 tion of the troops, the want of clothing, has rendered the 
 march the most painful imaginable, many hundreds of the 
 soldiers tracking the ground with their bloody feet. Your 
 feelings for the sufferings of the soldiers, had you been with 
 us, would have been severely tried.” 
 
 Cornwallis, baffled in his purpose, yet apparently master 
 of the situation, took post at Hillsboro, where he erected 
 the king's standard with great formality, saluting it with 
 twenty-one guns, and Josiah Martin, who had accompanied 
 him, once more essayed to enter upon the administration of 
 his office as royal governor. But neither the commander nor 
 the governor was to receive much comfort. 
 
 The British on the Cape Fear 
 
 While these matters of moment were passing at the west, 
 the east as well had become greatly disturbed. Although 
 General Leslie had in November been diverted from occupy- 
 ing the lower Cape Fear, that purpose was not abandoned, 
 and contemporaneously with Arnold’s invasion of the Chesa- 
 peake and Cornwallis’s advance, such a movement was 
 undertaken. With a fleet of eighteen sail, carrying four 
 hundred regulars, artillery and dragoons, Major James H. 
 Craig was despatched to occupy Wilmington. His vessels 
 reached the harbor toward the last of January, and on 
 the 28th he approached the town. Taking possession, he at 
 once began to fortify by erecting batteries on the hills to 
 the north and south, and so strengthened himself that he 
 could not be attacked with any hope of success. At that 
 time it was also apprehended that there would be a move- 
 ment in the interior from Camden, and such stores as the 
 Americans had to the southward were moved across the 
 Cape Fear River. Aroused by the presence of their British 
 friends, the Tories of Bladen and Anson became active, and 
 it required strenuous efforts on the part of the local leaders 
 to suppress them. General Lillington at once called out the 
 militia of that section, but so many of them had been taken 
 
 655 
 
 1781 
 
 Cornwallis 
 at Hillsboro 
 
 1781 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 423 
 
6 5 6 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1781 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 3 ix 
 
 S R., 
 XXII, 123 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 317 
 
 S R., 
 XXII, 141 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 253 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 124 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 3*9 
 
 at Charleston and were on parole, and the country had been 
 so drained of adherents of the Whig cause, that but a small 
 force could be collected. To keep Craig in check, General 
 Caswell was ordered with the New Bern brigade and Gen- 
 eral Butler with the Hillsboro brigade to the assistance of 
 Lillington. Such was the situation when Cornwallis was 
 pursuing Greene across the western part of the State and 
 invading the western counties. 
 
 Movements of the armies 
 
 After Davidson's death, although the militia of the west- 
 ern district had no commander, some seven hundred of them, 
 all horsemen, collected in the rear of the British army, and 
 in the absence of a brigadier chose General Andrew Pickens, 
 of South Carolina, as their commander. In the troop was 
 a company under Captain Graham that subsequently became 
 greatly distinguished. They followed the route taken by 
 Cornwallis through Salem and Guilford Court House, and 
 reached Hart’s Mills, near Hillsboro, about the time that 
 Cornwallis established himself at that place. 
 
 There, on February 22d, Lee’scorpswasjoined to Pickens’s 
 brigade, all under the command of the brigadier-general. 
 Other re-enforcements of North Carolina militia were also ex- 
 pected, and to facilitate their union and re-establish confidence, 
 three days after Cornwallis entered Hillsboro Greene himself 
 crossed the Dan and passed to the west of his adversary. In 
 response to Cornwallis’s call, the Tories began to embody, and 
 some two hundred of them were collecting under Dr. Pyle 
 in Chatham and western Orange when Lee and Pickens were 
 advancing into that section. Tarleton, hearing that the 
 Whigs proposed to suppress the Tory rising, moved out 
 to protect Dr. Pyle and his recruits. Ignorant of the move- 
 ment of the Tories, Lee pursued his way to the southward, 
 and on the 24th, at a point south of the Haw, near the site 
 of the present town of Burlington, accidentally met the 
 Tories in the road, who, expecting Tarleton, and with no 
 information of the presence of any Whig force, arranged 
 themselves along the road to allow their supposed friends 
 to pass. As soon as Lee’s dragoons had reached the ex- 
 tremity of the Tory line, the character of the Loyalists being 
 
RE-ENFORCEMENTS FOR GREENE 
 
 657 
 
 discovered, a signal was made for an onslaught, and Pyle’s 
 unsuspecting men were quickly despatched. Ninety of them 
 were killed outright and most of the survivors were 
 wounded. Those not thrown to the ground dispersed in 
 every direction, but were not pursued. Lee lost in this 
 slaughter only one horse — not a single man. At the time 
 Tarleton was hardly a mile distant, but he was not advised 
 of the encounter or of the presence of a Whig force until 
 some fugitives brought him information. 
 
 Greene established himself between Troublesome Creek 
 and Reedy Fork, in the vicinity of Guilford Court House, 
 having his light corps interposed between his main army 
 and Cornwallis. His report of men fit for duty on the 17th 
 indicated a thousand continentals, less than two hundred 
 cavalry and a hundred mounted infantry — an effective force 
 of some fourteen hundred men ; but he was expecting a 
 regiment of regulars from Virginia that had been hurried 
 forward and several thousand militia to join him. Gen- 
 eral Butler's brigade, that had been despatched to the assist- 
 ance of Lillington was ordered to return to the west, and 
 the Halifax brigade was collecting for the march. Gen- 
 eral Allen Jones, having to return, invited Sumner to take 
 command, but General Eaton claimed the right and refused 
 to relinquish it. Colonels William Campbell and Preston, 
 of Virginia, were also hurrying to Greene’s camp, as well 
 as smaller detachments under Majors Winston and Arm- 
 strong. General Stevens, too, who had conveyed the prison- 
 ers taken at Cowpens to a place of security, was now return- 
 ing with his brigade of Virginia militia. To prevent the 
 junction of these re-enforcements and to strike Greene before 
 he was further strengthened, on February 26th Cornwallis 
 himself marched to the westward, establishing his head- 
 quarters at Hawkins’s, to the west of Alamance Creek. 
 Doubtless he also hoped for accessions from the Tories. One 
 band of Loyalists from Deep River, consisting of about a 
 hundred, approached his camp on a night march. But 
 Graham's company had been so bold and daring, even in 
 the vicinity of the British headquarters, that a troop of Tarle- 
 ton’s dragoons, discovering the approach of an unknown 
 body of men at night, thought them Graham’s troop, and fell 
 
 1781 
 
 February 
 
 Massacre of 
 
 Pyle’s 
 
 Tories 
 
 Greene at 
 Trouble- 
 some Creek 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 427 
 
 Re-enforce- 
 
 ments 
 
 Tee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 269 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 339 
 
6 5 8 
 
 1781 
 
 S. R., XVII, 
 2011 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 3 2 9 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 265 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 272 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 on them and hacked up about thirty of the Loyalists before 
 the mistake became known. As Pyle's Tories had suffered 
 by mistaking Lee for Tarleton, so this party from Deep 
 River suffered at Tarleton's hands by being mistaken for 
 Graham’s company. These mishaps tended to dissipate the 
 zeal of the Tories, so that but few united with the British 
 army. Indeed, Cornwallis was so disappointed at the luke- 
 warmness of the Regulators, from whom he had expected 
 much aid, that he wrote to Clinton : “I could not get one 
 hundred men in all the Regulators’ country to stay with us 
 even as militia.” 
 
 To avoid a battle until ready, Greene directed the several 
 detachments of his army to be constantly in motion, chang- 
 ing their location every night, so that Cornwallis would not 
 know where to strike. During the period of manoeuvring 
 there were several affairs between the cavalry and Tarleton’s 
 legion : one at Clapp’s Mill on March 2d, followed by sev- 
 eral minor collisions the next day ; and at Whitsell’s Mill 
 on March 6th there was a hotly contested battle. In these 
 encounters Pickens’s brigade, embracing Graham’s troopers, 
 participated with much credit. 
 
 But the time of that brigade expired on the 3d, and after 
 remaining a few days longer, the men were dismissed and re- 
 turned to their homes. 
 
 Battle of Guilford Court House 
 
 Finally, about March 7th, the British commander moved 
 farther west, near the Quaker settlement at New Garden; 
 and four days later Greene, having been joined by sufficient 
 reinforcements, prepared to give him battle. Several im- 
 portant highways met at Guilford Court House, and on the 
 14th Greene took post on the New Garden, or Salisbury, 
 road leading to the west from that hamlet. He had carefully 
 selected his ground ; indeed, it is thought that on his hasty 
 march some weeks before he had chosen that battlefield. 
 For his first line he placed on the right of that road Eaton’s 
 militia, and on the left Butler’s, both being protected by a 
 rail fence that skirted an open field which lay in their front. 
 On either flank there were stationed some three hundred 
 regulars to give stability to the militia. In the rear of this 
 
1. Guilford Court House Battlefield To-day 
 2. Nathanael Greene 
 
NASH’S CONTINENTALS 
 
 659 
 
 line there was a woodland, in which three hundred yards 
 distant he posted the Virginia militia under Lawson and 
 Stevens ; while the continentals were reserved for his main 
 line some five hundred yards still farther to the rear. 
 
 The British moved with precision, being well-trained vet- 
 erans. Cornwallis’s own regiment was renowned and had 
 fought many battles. The Welsh Fusiliers, distinguished by 
 having the Prince of Wales nominally for its colonel, was 
 commanded by Colonel Webster, one of the most accom- 
 plished officers in the army. The Seventy-first Scotch High- 
 landers, known in the annals as the Black Watch, had a 
 record of great glory ; and the Queen’s Guards, com- 
 manded by Colonel Stuart, was a famous corps. The 
 field pieces, as usual, began the engagement. As the 
 British regulars advanced with fixed bayonets, they gained 
 the open field and approached within forty yards before 
 perceiving the North Carolina militia behind the fence. For 
 a moment the two lines stood in silence, then Webster, as 
 gallant in action as wise in counsel, ordered a charge, and 
 his troops rushed forward, receiving a hot fire from the 
 American line. Dreadful was the havoc on both sides at 
 this initial point of the conflict. The fire on the right was 
 deadly, some of the Americans fighting like heroes. The 
 militia, however, speedily broke before the British bayonets, 
 Eaton first, then Butler's, and retreating, passed through the 
 Virginians posted in their rear, throwing them into con- 
 fusion. Lawson’s Virginians likewise gave way, but 
 Stevens’s brigade made a firm stand. Eventually they, too, 
 were pressed back on the continentals. Here the Second 
 Maryland Battalion, a new organization, never before under 
 fire, followed the example of the militia ; but the First Mary- 
 land, after a well-directed volley, charged with the bayonet, 
 routed the enemy and pursued them. Bloody and fierce now 
 was the battle, the continentals and Washington’s cavalry 
 fighting with courage and resolution seldom surpassed. The 
 British loss bears witness to the valor of their foe. Greene’s 
 army had, however, been severed into detached fragments, 
 and he feared to risk a prolongation of the contest. The 
 enemy rallying and threatening his rear, he prudently and 
 skilfully withdrew his forces from the field. 
 
 1781 
 
 March 15th 
 
 Lee’s 
 Memoirs, 
 277, 280 
 
 Lamb’s 
 Hist. Am. 
 Rev., 361 
 
 Schenck’s 
 North 
 Carolina, 
 1780-81, 345 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 493 
 
 S. R., XVII, 
 
 1003 
 
66o 
 
 1781 
 
 Great 
 
 slaughter 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 284 
 
 The terrible 
 night 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 A similarity is to be observed on the American side be- 
 tween the arrangement of the troops in this and in the battle 
 of Cowpens, and also in the course of events during the 
 progress of the battles up to the breaking of the Second 
 Maryland Continentals. But on the British side there was 
 much difference. At Cowpens the action of Tarleton’s corps 
 was not comparable to the steady conduct of the regulars 
 in this great battle, comprising some of the most famous or- 
 ganizations in the history of the British army. Apparently 
 they might have been destroyed, but could not have been 
 driven from the field. 
 
 The American loss was 14 officers and 312 of the con- 
 tinental troops killed, wounded and missing. Many of the 
 militia were missing, although no prisoners were taken. Of 
 the militia, 4 captains and 17 privates were reported killed, 
 a dozen officers and 60 privates wounded, as was also Brig- 
 adier-General Stevens. The slaughter of the British was 
 much greater. The official report states their loss at 532, of 
 whom 93 were left dead on the battlefield. Colonel Stuart 
 and Lieutenant O’Hara, brother to the general, and many 
 other officers, were killed outright ; but few escaped without 
 wounds. Many, among them Colonel Webster, died of their 
 wounds. Seldom has an army suffered so severely. At the 
 outset there was terrible slaughter, the Highlanders being 
 piled upon each other. In the progress of the battle Corn- 
 wallis himself was unhorsed, his guards lay weltering in 
 their blood, the gallant Webster on the ground, O’Hara 
 disabled by bis wounds, Tarleton with a rifle ball through 
 his hand, Howard borne off the field, and Stuart still in 
 death. The rank and file suffered alike. But the culmina- 
 tion of the carnage was in the final encounters of that fate- 
 ful day. It was the immolation of an army of veterans 
 intent on victory. The battle being joined, Cornwallis re- 
 solved on destruction rather than defeat ; and while he 
 gained the victory, he lost his army. 
 
 The night succeeding this day of blood was dark and 
 cold, much rain falling. The dead lay unburied, the wounded 
 unsheltered, and the groans of the dying and the shrieks 
 of the living cast a deeper shade over the gloom of nature. 
 Fatigued as the British troops were, without discrimination 
 
CORNWALLIS’S RETREAT 
 
 they took the best care of the fallen soldiers the situation 
 admitted ; but without tents and the houses being few, many 
 of both armies were exposed to the deluge of rain, and it 
 was said that not less than fifty died during the night. The 
 next morning was spent in burying the dead and in provid- 
 ing comfort for the wounded, Cornwallis paying equal atten- 
 tion to friends and foes. He was a man of generous and 
 lofty spirit, and rancor was foreign to his nature. In Parlia- 
 ment he had been a friend of America and had opposed the 
 measures of the ministry. Now he treated the fallen with- 
 out discrimination. The dead being buried, he returned to 
 New Garden, leaving some seventy of his wounded, incapa- 
 ble of being moved, to the humanity of General Greene. 
 There on the 18th he issued a proclamation calling on the 
 Loyalists to return actively to their duties and contribute to 
 the restoration of government.* 
 
 On the 1 8th he began to move eastward by easy marches, 
 having care for the comfort of his wounded, and being 
 obliged to subsist on the country. Greene at once notified 
 Colonel Lee: “I mean to fight the enemy again, and wish 
 you to have your legion and riflemen ready for action on 
 the shortest notice.” But it was not until the 20th that he 
 could move, for ammunition had to be supplied, cartridges 
 made and provisions collected. In the meantime Lee’s legion 
 and Campbell’s riflemen pressed the rear of the British 
 commander, who dared not hazard another encounter. 
 
 Willie Jones, who after the battle was appointed lieu- 
 tenant-colonel of Read’s militia regiment, while on the pur- 
 suit wrote : “We expect to come up with them in a day or two 
 and to take a part, if not the whole British army.” The 
 men were now in fine spirits, and were so resolute that 
 had Greene overtaken Cornwallis the British army would 
 doubtless have been destroyed and Ramsey’s Mills would 
 have been an historic spot. 
 
 On the night of the 22d the British army lay at Dixon’s 
 Mills, on Cane Creek, in Chatham County. From there it 
 
 *Cornwallis wrote to Clinton: “Many of the inhabitants rode into 
 camp, shook me by the hand, said they were glad to see us, and to 
 hear that we had beat Greene, and then rode home again.” 
 
 661 
 
 I781 
 
 S.R., XVIII, 
 1007 
 
 Greene 
 
 pursues 
 
 Cornwallis 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 499 
 
 S. R., XVII 
 1061 
 
662 
 
 1781 
 
 London, 
 Revo. Hist. 
 Chatham 
 County 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 290 
 
 S. R.,XVII, 
 
 ion 
 
 1781 
 
 Greene goes 
 south 
 
 McRce's 
 Iredell, I, 
 497 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 434, 440, 443 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 marched to Pittsboro, and thence to Ramsey’s Mills.* Here 
 Cornwallis found it necessary to build a bridge and to collect 
 supplies to carry him across the barrens to Campbellton. So 
 quick had been his pursuers on the track that while he was 
 yet at Ramsey’s Greene reached Rigsden’s Ford, on Deep 
 River, twelve miles above, but hesitated to cross, uncertain 
 of Cornwallis’s intentions. The bridge completed, the Brit- 
 ish commander, finding himself in peril, decamped with such 
 speed that he left some of his dead unburied, and was unable 
 to burn the bridge behind him. The next day, the 28th, 
 Greene’s main force arrived ; but it was considered impos- 
 sible to subsist his army in the wake of Cornwallis’s, and the 
 pursuit was reluctantly discontinued. 
 
 At Cross Creek Cornwallis suffered another disappoint- 
 ment in finding that his Loyalist friends were yet passive 
 and had not brought in supplies for his army. He remained 
 there several days, and then departed for Wilmington, where 
 he arrived on April 7th. On the way it became his painful 
 duty to bury the remains of the lamented Colonel Webster, 
 who, borne on a litter between two horses, was found dead 
 near Elizabethtown. The interment was on the plantation of 
 Colonel Waddell. 
 
 Greene rested his army for a week, dismissed nearly all 
 of his militia, and just as Cornwallis was entering Wilming- 
 ton set out to recover South Carolina. At his camp on 
 Deep River he left General Butler, who remained for some 
 weeks on duty at that post. But notwithstanding Greene’s 
 departure from North Carolina, there was no relaxation in 
 efforts to strengthen his army. The council ordered that 
 those of Butler’s and Eaton’s brigades who had abandoned 
 their posts at the battle of Guilford Court House should be 
 drafted into the continentals for twelve months ; and four 
 days after Greene marched Butler sent forward two hun- 
 dred and forty of these twelve months’ continentals, and 
 on the same day Major Pinketham Eaton received in Chat- 
 ham a hundred and seventy of Eaton’s brigade and con- 
 ducted them to the south. This corps, reduced somewhat 
 by desertions, under Major Eaton, later performed excellent 
 service, especially at Augusta. 
 
 *Now Lockville. 
 
BRITISH IN WILMINGTON 
 
 Arriving in South Carolina, Greene, divining the probable 
 movement of Cornwallis, directed Sumner that if the British 
 general should come south to the relief of Rawdon he should 
 hurry with every available man to his assistance; but if 
 Cornwallis marched to Virginia, then Sumner with his con- 
 tinental drafts should go to the aid of Baron Steuben. 
 Greene, as commander of the department, had direction of 
 operations in Virginia as well as in the Carolinas, and he 
 ordered Steuben to be very cautious and conservative and 
 not to hazard a battle unless under very favorable cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 Craig at Wilmington 
 
 The approach of the British fleet bearing Major Craig’s 
 detachment caused the greatest consternation among the 
 Whigs of Wilmington, and many families hastened to leave 
 the town, seeking safety with friends in the country, while 
 others thought it more prudent to trust to the humanity 
 of the British officers. At that time Brunswick, which con- 
 tained about sixty houses, was entirely deserted, and Wil- 
 mington, where there were about two hundred houses, con- 
 tained but a thousand inhabitants. At the first information 
 of peril Bloodworth, the receiver of the tax in kind, stored 
 his commodities on a vessel, which he hurried up the North- 
 east Branch of the Cape Fear; but Craig made pursuit, over- 
 took and burned the vessel some twenty miles from the 
 town. Of the inhabitants a considerable proportion were 
 disaffected, and soon a petition was circulated for all to sign, 
 praying to be received as British subjects, and those who 
 declined this abasement fell under the ban of displeasure. 
 
 Hardly had Craig settled himself on shore before squads 
 of troopers were scouring the country to arrest those who 
 were particularly obnoxious to the British, and the leading 
 patriots fled for safety. Harnett had withdrawn to Onslow 
 County. He had a considerable quantity of public funds 
 in his care, and he hastened to place it in safe hands, and 
 then proceeded to Colonel Spicer’s. There he was seized 
 with a fit of his malady, the gout, and became unable to 
 travel farther. His place of refuge was betrayed by some 
 Loyalist, and he speedily was captured and, notwithstanding 
 
 663 
 
 1781 
 
 S. R., XXI, 
 694 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 543 
 
 Death of 
 Harnett 
 
 Biog. Hist, 
 of N. C., II, 
 162 
 
66q 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1781 
 
 Lillington at 
 
 Heron 
 
 Bridge 
 
 Dickson’s 
 Letters, 3 
 
 S. R., XXI, 
 829 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 53i 
 
 Bloodvvorth 
 
 his illness, was conveyed with indignity to the British quar- 
 ters. He suffered much ill-treatment, which his enfeebled 
 frame could not endure, and a few weeks later died, about 
 April 30, 1781. Thus passed away “the Pride of the Cape 
 Fear,’’ who from the beginning had been the ardent advo- 
 cate of his country’s freedom. 
 
 Similar efforts were made to capture every Whig of con- 
 sequence, and many were taken by the Tories and British 
 dragoons. But the patriot leaders, while beset by difficulties, 
 were not dismayed. General Lillington, having embodied 
 his militia, took post at Heron Bridge, ten miles up the 
 Northeast River, where he was joined by Kenan with the 
 Duplin militia and Moore with a detachment from Bruns- 
 wick and some companies from Onslow ; while Colonel 
 Brown sought to hold in check the Tories of Bladen. The 
 brigades of Caswell and Butler were at first ordered to his 
 aid, but Cornwallis’s operations at the west required that 
 all the militia possible should be withdrawn to reinforce 
 General Greene, and for a time Lillington was left to his own 
 resources. 
 
 About the end of February Craig advanced to dislodge 
 him, making a night attack. Lillington’s advanced guard 
 was surprised and dispersed, and a smart skirmish occurred 
 at the bridge, the British using their artillery on the Whig 
 entrenchments on the farther side of the river. The militia, 
 however, maintained their position, and at the end of two 
 days Craig retired to Wilmington. Fie had occupied the 
 McKenzie place, known as Mount Blake, and when he with- 
 drew a party of the Whigs crossed the river and burned that 
 residence. Lillington continued quietly in his camp, with 
 headquarters at the Mulberry plantation, near by, keeping 
 watch and ward. For a time Craig busied himself in con- 
 structing fortifications around Wilmington ; but numerous 
 were the forays of the British troopers, and often murderous 
 in their execution. Tradition still survives of the massacre 
 at the “eight-mile house,” where butchery as a pastime added 
 to the horrors of warfare. Some of the Whigs, too, dis- 
 played boldness and enterprise. Bloodworth had kept the 
 ferry from Point Peter across the mouth of the Northeast 
 River in the outskirts of Wilmington, and was familiar with 
 
CORNWALLIS'S PLANS 
 
 that locality. Taking post within a large hollow tree on the 
 Point he fired day after day, across the river, at the troopers 
 as they brought their horses to water, several victims fall- 
 ing at the unerring hand of their unseen and mysterious foe. 
 Finally a party being sent to dislodge him, Bloodworth suc- 
 cessfully escaped.* 
 
 Cornwallis’s plans 
 
 When the wounded of Cornwallis’s army reached Wil- 
 mington the church building there was converted into a 
 hospital, and later it is said was used by Craig’s cavalry. 
 
 Although Cornwallis had succeeded in avoiding a second 
 battle with Greene, he now found himself in a fearful 
 dilemma. The generalissimo at the south could not remain 
 inactive. He must move either in one direction or the other. 
 Conflicting indeed must have been his emotions when reflect- 
 ing on his painful situation. He found himself under the 
 necessity of abandoning Lord Rawdon to his fate, and almost 
 in despair he resolved to seek his own safety in Virginia. 
 “By a direct move toward Camden,” he wrote, “I cannot 
 get time enough to relieve Lord Rawdon ; and should 
 he have fallen [back] my army would be exposed to the 
 utmost danger.” He dwelt on the exhausted state of the 
 country, the numerous militia, the almost universal spirit 
 of revolt and the strength of Greene’s army, whose con- 
 tinentals alone were as numerous as his own force. Still 
 he hoped to draw Greene back from the game of war in 
 South Carolina by threatening the interior of North Caro- 
 lina. He resolved to march by Duplin Court House, point- 
 ing toward Hillsboro, expecting that this might lead to 
 Greene’s return ; and yet with his depleted ranks he feared 
 to meet Greene again in battle. Ultimately he had in view 
 to form a junction with General Phillips. But he realized 
 that the attempt would be exceedingly hazardous and might 
 prove wholly impracticable, and he warned that commander 
 not to take any steps “that might expose your army to the 
 danger of being ruined.” 
 
 On April 23d he wrote to Clinton : “Neither my cavalry 
 
 *According to the tradition as the author heard it in 1847, Blood- 
 worth, a gunsmith, used a long conical ball for his rifle on that 
 occasion. The minie ball came into note some years later. 
 
 665 
 
 1781 
 
 S. R., XVII, 
 1019, 1020 
 
666 
 
 NASH’S ADMINISTRATION , 1780-81 
 
 178 t 
 
 S. R.,XVII, 
 
 1018, 1019 
 
 The effects 
 of Guilford 
 Court 
 House 
 
 S. R.jXVII, 
 1921 
 
 Cornwallis 
 marches to 
 Virginia 
 
 or infantry are in readiness to move ; the former are in want 
 of everything, the latter of every necessary but shoes ; . . . I 
 must, however, begin my march to-morrow. . . . My present 
 undertaking sits heavy on my mind ; I have experienced the 
 distresses and dangers of marching some hundreds of miles 
 in a country chiefly hostile, without one active or useful 
 friend, without intelligence and without communication with 
 any part of the country. The situation in which I leave 
 South Carolina adds much to my anxiety, yet I am under 
 the necessity of adopting this hazardous enterprise hastily 
 and with the appearance of precipitation, as I find there is 
 no prospect of speedy reinforcement from Europe and that 
 the return of General Greene to North Carolina . . . would 
 put a junction with General Phillips out of my power.” To 
 Phillips he said : “My situation here is very distressing. 
 Greene took advantage of my being obliged to come to this 
 place, and has marched to South Carolina.” 
 
 Indeed, Cornwallis’s discomfiture at Guilford Court Plouse 
 altered the situation so greatly that Clinton wrote to Phil- 
 lips that, it has “considerably changed the complexion of 
 our affairs to the southward, and all operations to the north- 
 ward must probably give place to those in favor of his 
 Lordship, which at present appear to require our more im- 
 mediate attention.” Phillips had with him in Virginia thirty- 
 five hundred men, and Clinton embarked seventeen hundred 
 more to strengthen that corps for the benefit of Cornwallis. 
 
 After a fortnight’s rest at Wilmington, the remnants of his 
 shattered regiments again fell into ranks and began their 
 march to the northward. Gloomy indeed must the outlook 
 have been to the commander-in-chief of the British armies 
 at the south when, baffled, disappointed, defeated, and dis- 
 tressed, in the closing days of April he bade farewell to 
 Major Craig and Josiah Martin, the whilom governor of 
 North Carolina, and with a heavy heart once more essayed 
 the chances of doubtful war. 
 
 His progress was unopposed. When information of this 
 movement was despatched to Governor Nash at New Bern 
 he directed Lillington to fall back to Kinston, where Major- 
 General Caswell, the commander-in-chief, had his head- 
 quarters, and the governor sent Baron Glaubeck to the front 
 
CORNWALLIS MOVES NORTH 
 
 66 7 
 
 to watch the enemy. He ordered the militia of Halifax and 
 of the neighboring counties to assemble at Tarboro, and he 
 himself hastened to that point. 
 
 On reaching Kinston, presumably under the orders of 
 Major-General Caswell, Lillington disbanded his militia, ex- 
 cept one company retained to guard the artillery and stores, 
 and the men returned to their respective homes to protect 
 their families from marauders. 
 
 The inhabitants distressed 
 
 The march of the British column was slow and delib- 
 erate. The Whigs, unable to resist, scurried into the swamps 
 or fled to a distance. The disaffected rose in numbers and 
 gave every manifestation of loyalty. They now wreaked 
 vengeance on their neighbors for all they had suffered since 
 the beginning of the Revolution. The track of the army was 
 a scene of desolation, and the Whig settlements were 
 scourged as by the plagues of Pharaoh. 
 
 In Duplin the whole country was struck with terror, 
 almost every man leaving his habitation and his family to the 
 mercy of the merciless enemy. Horses, cattle and every kind 
 of stock were driven off from every plantation, corn and 
 forage taken, houses plundered, chests and trunks broken, 
 and the clothing of women and children, as well as that of 
 the men, was carried away. These outrages were com- 
 mitted for the most part by the camp followers, who, under 
 the protection of the army, plundered the distressed inhab- 
 itants. There were also many women who followed the 
 army in the character of wives of the officers and soldiers, 
 a certain number of women being allowed for each company. 
 These were generally mounted on fine horses and were 
 dressed in the best clothes that could be taken from the 
 inhabitants as the army marched through the country. 
 
 On May 6th Cornwallis reached Peacock’s Bridge, on 
 the Cotechney, and there was the first clash of arms. Colonel 
 Gorham with four hundred militia made a stand at the 
 bridge, but Tarleton by a bold dash drove him off, and there 
 was no further opposition. All the stores and the men 
 drafted for the continentals and the militia were moved to 
 the westward, and Governor Nash and General Sumner, in 
 
 1781 
 
 n. c. urn. 
 
 Mag., IV, 
 
 83 (>855) 
 
 Dickson’s 
 Letters, 15 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 456 
 
668 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1781 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 461 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 514 
 
 Warren, listened for news of the British progress. Glau- 
 beck, trained from early youth a soldier, was seeking to 
 procure arms for the men assigned to his command, and in 
 the absence of swords, improvised weapons made of hickory 
 clubs. With these he hung on the outskirts of the British 
 lines and kept in check the barbarous camp followers. In 
 Nash a squad of Tories, who had risen on their neighbors, 
 were roughly handled and hotly pursued. 
 
 “Not a man of any rank or distinction, or scarcely any 
 man of property,” wrote Colonel Seawell, “has lain in his 
 house since the British passed through Nash County. We 
 are distressed with all the rogues and vagabonds that Corn- 
 wallis can raise to pest us with. ... A certain Robert Beard 
 with fifteen others on Friday last seized the person of John 
 Ferrell, Isham Alford and Robert Melton, together with 
 seven horses and I think three guns, . . . and carried them 
 all off. Our men after collecting, pursued them ; but night 
 coming on, and drawing near the enemy’s lines, they re- 
 turned without any luck.” 
 
 On May 10th Cornwallis entered Flalifax, and after a 
 short rest marched on to Petersburg, where he arrived on the 
 20th, finding to his sorrow that a week earlier General Phil- 
 lips had died from disease. Idis departure, however, was 
 not followed by a calm. From Heron’s Bridge to Halifax 
 the Tories had their day of rejoicing, and the Whigs fled 
 to hiding places, their farms ravaged and the sanctity of 
 their homes often violated. For days and weeks the Tory 
 bands held high carnival, and no Whig dared sleep in his 
 house for fear of capture. Many were seized and carried 
 to Wilmington, where some were thrown into irons and sub- 
 jected to cruel indignities. 
 
 Terrible were the reports that were spread of the horrible 
 misdeeds of the soldiers and camp followers. Plantations 
 were despoiled, women outraged, even members of some of 
 the best-known families of the State. The most painful 
 apprehensions were excited because of their shameful con- 
 duct. The culmination of these outrages occurred in the 
 vicinity of Halifax, where, says Stedman, “some enormi- 
 ties were committed that were a disgrace to the name of 
 
WAR IN THE EAST 
 
 669 
 
 man”; and Tarleton states that there “a sergeant and a 
 dragoon were executed” for their crimes against society. 
 
 At Edenton 
 
 The Albemarle region was swept over by a storm of fears. 
 The near approach of the British from the Chesapeake, 
 the passage through neighboring counties of Cornwallis, 
 rumors that a body of two thousand negroes had been sent 
 to forage and collect supplies for the British army, the in- 
 vasion of the sound by boats belonging to privateersmen 
 too strong to be resisted, caused widespread alarm, and the 
 inhabitants of Edenton dispersed. Edenton itself was 
 raided, vessels taken, some burned and others carried off. 
 But quickly the people recovered their resolution, and parties 
 were formed to rid the sound of the raiders. The enemy 
 was driven out, one of the British galleys taken and some of 
 the vessels recaptured. “The inhabitants in general and the 
 sailors turned out unanimously. I never saw, nor could even 
 hope to see,” wrote Charles Johnson in the midst of that 
 turmoil and confusion, “so much public spirit, personal cour- 
 age and intrepid resolution. I am convinced that was the 
 measure adopted of fitting out one or two armed vessels 
 we might laugh at all attempts of the enemy’s plundering 
 banditti.” 
 
 The Whigs rally 
 
 In other sections also the same spirit was displayed, and 
 the Whigs rallied and beat down the Tories and re-estab- 
 lished the authority of the State. 
 
 James Armstrong, writing from Martinboro at the end 
 of May, said : “We have been alarmed for ten days past by 
 the Tories embodying about us, but they seem to drop off. 
 Thirty horse from this county and a few from Craven . . . 
 went up to Edgecombe, took Benjamin Vichous, one of their 
 ringleaders, and twenty-one head of cattle, which they had 
 collected for the British army ; since, they wrote to me for 
 peace, and was granted it provided they gave up their arms.” 
 
 In Duplin, wrote Mr. Dickson, “the Tories rose and took 
 several of our leading men and carried them to Wilmington. 
 There were numbers of our good citizens, thus betrayed, 
 
 1781 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 4i3 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 506-511 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 5i5 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 467 
 
6/0 
 
 NASH’S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1781 
 
 May 
 
 Death of 
 Ashe 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 337 
 
 Hobkirk’s 
 
 Hill 
 
 who perished on board prison ships. This so alarmed the in- 
 habitants that none of us dared to sleep in our houses for fear 
 of being surprised. Matters being thus in confusion, there 
 was no subordination among men, but all the proprietors 
 raised and commanded their own little parties and defended 
 themselves as they could. At length, however, Colonel 
 Kenan embodied some four hundred of the militia, and quiet 
 was restored.” Many inhabitants because of these disturb- 
 ances removed their families to the west, and even to Vir- 
 ginia, abandoning their plantations entirely. In New Han- 
 over it was still worse. That county was measurably de- 
 populated and a scene of universal desolation. It was at 
 this time that General Ashe was wounded and captured and 
 imprisoned at Wilmington, where he contracted the small- 
 pox. This plague generally accompanied the British camp 
 and became a fearful scourge. When convalescent, broken 
 in health, Ashe was paroled in October only to die a few 
 days later at Colonel Sampson’s in Duplin County. The 
 first to take up arms in North Carolina, he passed away 
 ignorant of Cornwallis's surrender, and without a view of 
 the promised land of independence. 
 
 Greene in South Carolina 
 
 After breaking camp on Deep River, Greene hurried across 
 the barrens and soon reached the bountiful region of the 
 Peedee. He lost no time in striking his blows. On 
 April 20th he approached Camden, taking post at Hobkirk’s 
 Hill, where on the morning of the 25th Lord Rawdon 
 attacked him, both suffering severely. The loss of each was 
 somewhat more than two hundred and fifty, about one-fourth 
 of their respective commands. In this battle, except those 
 attached to Colonel Washington’s cavalry, there were only 
 about two hundred and fifty North Carolinians, being a 
 militia battalion commanded by Colonel James Read; and 
 these, having been placed in the reserve, although they gal- 
 lantly and bravely marched forward to relieve the retreating 
 continentals, were not in the thickest of the engagement. 
 Their conduct, however, won them encomiums. 
 
 On May 10th, by Greene’s strategy, Rawdon was com- 
 pelled to abandon Camden, so that only Ninety-six and 
 
RAWDON FORCED INTO CHARLESTON 
 
 Augusta were retained as British posts in the interior. 
 Quickly Greene determined to drive the enemy entirely 
 from the country and to hedge them in at Charleston. With 
 this view, he detached Colonel Lee’s and Major Eaton’s con- 
 tinentals, who had just joined him, to attack Augusta, then 
 held by Colonel Browne and Colonel Grierson, in whose 
 honor one of the forts was named. Fort Grierson was 
 the one first attacked. In the assault the American loss 
 was trivial, a few wounded and fewer killed. But unhappily 
 among the latter was Major Eaton, who had endeared him- 
 self to both officers and soldiers, and who fell gallantly at 
 the head of his battalion in the moment of victory.* The 
 siege of Augusta was then continued until June 5th, when 
 Colonel Browne capitulated. During its continuance the 
 North Carolina continentals behaved with the utmost gal- 
 lantry. Greene’s prisoners now numbered eight hundred, 
 and he sent them to Salisbury, guarded by a detachment 
 under the command of Major Armstrong and other con- 
 tinental officers. 
 
 In May Greene had himself undertaken the siege of 
 Ninety-six, a strong fort admirably defended. Lord Raw- 
 don, having received considerable re-enforcements at Charles- 
 ton, now pressed forward to relieve that garrison, and on the 
 near approach of this superior force Greene resolved if 
 possible to carry the fort by assault. 
 
 On June 18th he led his army to the attack. A desperate 
 conflict ensued, but without avail, and the next morning 
 Greene withdrew beyond the Saluda, proposing if pressed 
 to seek safety in North Carolina. Rawdon, however, deter- 
 mined to abandon Ninety-six and retire to Charleston, and 
 Greene returned, taking post on the high hills of the Santee 
 awaiting re-enforcements from North Carolina, for North 
 Carolina was now his only dependence. 
 
 Cartel of exchange agreed on 
 
 On the Peedee on May 3, 1781, Colonel Carrington, on 
 the part of General Greene, and Captain Cornwallis, on the 
 
 *Major Eaton commanded the new continentals, composed largely 
 of men from Butler’s and Eaton’s brigades who had behaved badly at 
 Guilford Court House. 
 
 671 
 
 I781 
 
 Augusta 
 
 taken 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 357 
 
 Death of 
 Eaton 
 
 Ninety-six 
 
 besieged 
 
 June 18 
 
6/2 
 
 NASITS ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 part of the Earl, had a meeting and agreed on an exchange 
 of all prisoners. Pursuant to their action, the commissaries 
 of prisoners at once gave notice that all militia taken on 
 either side were absolutely exchanged, and were liberated 
 from their paroles. This set free such of the North Caro- 
 lina militia as had been captured at Charleston, at Camden 
 and elsewhere, and tended somewhat to strengthen the militia 
 force of the State. The continentals, officers and men, had 
 to suffer longer delay, but it was agreed that the delivery 
 would begin toward the end of June, and these prisoners 
 were to be conveyed to the James River and then be at 
 liberty to return to military service. 
 
 Painful indeed had been the period of their captivity and 
 distressing the mortality among the men, which perhaps was 
 quite equal to that horrid record of the hulks off Long 
 Island, which shocked humanity. Many of the exchanged 
 officers late in the summer were able to take their places 
 in the continental battalions and served with Greene until the 
 end of the war. 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 5 J 7 
 
 S R 
 
 xxi i, 1024 
 
 Atrocities lead to threats of retaliation 
 
 The excesses and atrocities of the Tories were intolerable, 
 and the animosity which was felt against them assumed the 
 character of ferocity. Many of them, when taken, were 
 summarily executed as murderers and robbers. “I heard,” 
 wrote Mrs. Blair toward the end of May, “that some of the 
 people about New Bern who had intended joining Lord Corn- 
 wallis had been taken and nine executed. The man who 
 brought the account said he saw one of them hanged. Cap- 
 tain Pasteur, one of the party who made the capture, while 
 riding with a prisoner behind him, was fired at in passing 
 through a swamp and so badly wounded that he survived 
 but three days.” On June 20th Major Craig addressed 
 Governor Nash on “the inhuman treatment” of the king’s 
 friends, the deliberate and wanton murders committed on 
 them, which called for vengeance. “Had I listened only to 
 the first emotions excited by the account of Mr. Caswell’scon- 
 duct in murdering five men at Kinston, . . . Mr. Samuel Ashe 
 and his comrades, who were put in irons for the purpose, 
 would have become the immediate victims to his unwarrant- 
 
CRUELTIES AND RETALIATION 
 
 673 
 
 able cruelty.” Major Craig threatened that if the acts he ^ 
 
 described were continued he would give the people who J ,,ne 
 had taken arms in the king’s favor ample revenge, and 
 "I shall not hesitate to deliver over to them those prisoners 
 who from character or situation are most likely to gratify 
 them in those sentiments.” This communication was re- 
 ceived by Governor Burke, who had just been elected suc- 
 cessor to Governor Nash. It appears that Major Ashe, his 
 younger brother and others taken by scouting bands of 
 Tories, had been thrown into irons, confined on shipboard 
 and threatened to be delivered up to the Tories for their 
 vengeance. Burke answered with resolution : “Should you . . . 
 continue your treatment of those citizens or listen to any 
 emotions which may dictate any measure against them on 
 the ground of retaliation, ... I shall find myself under the s. R., 
 
 0 t J % XXII, 1020 
 
 unhappy necessity of taking similar measures against British 
 prisoners, though all such measures are utterly repugnant 
 to my disposition.” “There are at present,” he added, 
 
 “some prisoners in my power.” 
 
 Burke’s threatened retaliation resulted in checking Craig 
 in his measures of revenge. Many of these prisoners, not 
 taken on the field of battle, were, however, conveyed to 
 Charleston and paroled to James Island, where were congre- 
 gated a large number of Tory refugees, men driven from 
 their homes, animated by a relentless hostility toward the 
 Whigs, some of desperate and despicable characters, who 
 were a menace to the lives of these unfortunate captives. 
 
 But Craig, foiled in his purpose as to Major Ashe, con- 
 ceived the design of wreaking vengeance on the person of 
 Burke himself should the occasion arise. He devised the 
 capture of the governor, and planned to hold him for pur- 
 poses of retaliation in case any of his Tory lieutenants 
 should fall into the hands of the Whigs and be severely 
 dealt with. 
 
 Gregory defends the Albemarle region 
 
 While attention was centred on the larger movements at 
 the south and west, the Albemarle region was constantly 
 threatened. 
 
 In the fall of 1780 there was sharp skirmishing, with some 
 
674 
 
 NASH'S ADMINISTRATION, 1780-81 
 
 1781 
 
 Biog. Hist. 
 N. C., IV, 
 
 144 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 507, 508, 618 
 
 loss of life, between Leslie’s foraging parties and the militia 
 under General Gregory, who had taken post near the Great 
 Bridge. And early in 1781, when Arnold’s corps arrived, 
 Gregory again was quickly in service. It was about the end 
 of February that a circumstance occurred from which it ap- 
 peared that a British officer sought to place the American 
 general in the light of a traitor, but the affair afterward was 
 shown to be a joke and without foundation. Still, to have 
 been suspected of being a traitor grated terribly on the feel- 
 ings of that sterling patriot. Despite his mortification, he 
 continued to hold his camp at the Northwest Landing, and 
 although once compelled to withdraw, he soon occupied it 
 again. One of the few who won honor at Camden, his good 
 fame was never tarnished by an unworthy action. 
 
 “During the winter and spring,” wrote Dr. Hugh Will- 
 iamson, “I had not so much as an assistant ... in General 
 Gregory’s camp.” “Nothing but frenzy could have tempted 
 the general to . . . remain a minute in his camp, after the 
 enemy had arrived at McPherson’s” ; but he added : “Gen- 
 eral Gregory has again taken possession of his camp with all 
 his cannon and stores.” All the spring and summer the 
 general remained on guard, but toward the end of August, 
 the British having abandoned Portsmouth and proceeded to 
 Yorktown, General Gregory deemed it unnecessary for the 
 militia to continue in service longer than t6 reduce some of 
 the disaffected to terms, and then he dismissed his men, 
 who had so effectively protected the Albemarle region. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 Burke’s Administration, 1781-82 
 
 Conditions in North Carolina. — Major Craig at Wilmington.— The 
 Assembly meets. — Burke governor. — Action of Assembly. — Governor 
 Burke’s zeal.— Fanning embodies the Tories.— Pittsboro taken.— Con- 
 ditions in Bladen. — Wade's victory. — Cornwallis’s plans. — South Quay 
 captured. — New continental battalions. — Craig invades the eastern 
 counties.— Lillington forbidden to fight. — New Bern taken. — Tory 
 atrocities. — Battle of Elizabethtown. — Governor Burke’s plans. — Fan- 
 ning defeats Wade. — The governor captured. — The battle of Cane 
 Creek. — Butler surprised at Brown Marsh. — The battle of Eutaw 
 Springs. — The gallantry of the North Carolinians. 
 
 Conditions in North Carolina 
 
 General Sumner had been directed by General Greene to I ? Sl 
 
 remain in North Carolina and organize the men drafted into 
 the continental service, and he was during the spring active April, 
 in the performance of this duty. Every thirtieth man had 
 been called out for this service, but they were to be selected 
 in their respective neighborhoods and clothing provided for s R XVj 
 them, and progress was slow. In April these drafts were 4 6 5 
 assembled at Harrisburg,* doubtless with the view of co- 
 operating with Steuben in Virginia ; but later General 
 Greene ordered such as were then ready to join him in South 
 Carolina, and May 26th Major Armstrong sent forward one 
 hundred and eighty from Salisbury. There was much delay 
 incident to the fearful times. About the middle of June 
 Captain Doherty, writing from Duplin Court House, said 
 that the “tumults in this part of the country have been the 
 cause of the delay in collecting the men, but at present some 
 little respite from the cursed Tories, but cannot say they are 
 entirely subdued. More than half the draft made in Duplin 
 have been among the Tories, or of men so disaffected that 
 they will not appear. The men have been so harassed by 
 
 Near Oxford. 
 
676 
 
 1781 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 487 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 5 “ 
 
 Ruther- 
 ford’s Mills 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 496 
 
 Craig in 
 Onslow 
 
 BURKE’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-82 
 
 being kept in arms that hitherto they could not attend to 
 providing the clothing, and without clothing they cannot 
 march.” 
 
 Colonel Joseph Hawkins, a zealous officer, with his regi- 
 ment of light horse was at the same time on the head of 
 Black River among the Tories; the people there, except 
 one family, he reported “as being all disaffected.” “The 
 Tories,” he said, “continued to carry great quantities of 
 beef from that part to the enemy at Wilmington.” He 
 himself sent a detachment in and brought off fifty-two 
 beeves and six prisoners. 
 
 Major Craig at Wilmington 
 
 Major Craig was a very efficient officer. He sought by 
 strenuous endeavors to restore royal authority. Proclaiming 
 that the inhabitants, being British subjects, were Loyalist 
 militiamen, early in July he directed that they should be 
 enrolled as such, and he issued commissions to zealous 
 Tories as officers of their counties. He fixed August 1st 
 as the last day of grace for those who would not obey, and 
 all not then returning to their allegiance were to be harried 
 as rebels. While the Whigs had measurably neither arms 
 nor ammunition, he bountifully supplied the Tory bands 
 with both, and inspired them to zealous activity by giving 
 them special marks of favor. 
 
 The Scotch especially responded to his calls and up the 
 Northwest strong detachments of Loyalists held the coun- 
 try. To the northward he threw out the British dragoons, 
 and he established a post at Rutherford’s Mills, some seven 
 miles east of Burgaw, and there he constructed a bastion 
 fort, whose outline still remains in perfect preservation, a 
 memorial of those historic times. Lillington, who had after 
 the passage of Cornwallis returned to the vicinity of Heron 
 Bridge, now stationed himself at Richlands, in Onslow 
 County; and on June 28th, when a British column advanced 
 in that direction, called on the Duplin horse and foot 
 to assemble at the rendezvous with despatch. However, 
 before opposition could be made, Craig’s troopers penetrated 
 into Onslow, and secured in that fertile section needed sup- 
 plies ; but when the people collected, finding that warm work 
 
DOMESTIC AFFAIRS 
 
 677 
 
 was to be expected, they hastily returned to their strong- 
 hold. 
 
 The movements of Cornwallis, the perils threatened by 
 Craig, the defection of the Loyalists, and the drafting of 
 men in every part of the State caused a deep gloom to en- 
 shroud the people, and public affairs were thrown into 
 great confusion. 
 
 In the midst of all this turmoil and distress the General 
 Assembly met on June 23d at Wake Court House. The ses- 
 sion was held in the old Lane residence, still standing in 
 the suburbs of Raleigh. So threatening were the bands of 
 Tories that a regiment of militia was stationed in the 
 vicinity to protect the body during its sitting. Alexander 
 Martin was chosen speaker of the senate, and Benbury 
 again presided over the house. Governor Nash declined a 
 re-election because of ill health, but perhaps there were other 
 reasons as well. The creation of the Board of War and 
 later of the Council Extraordinary had divided power and 
 responsibility and had resulted unfortunately, so that the 
 government had lost much of its efficiency. The council had 
 ordered that one-fifth of the provisions upon every farm 
 should be taken for the public use, and heavy taxes in kind 
 had been imposed. Impressments having been resorted to, 
 Major Murfree toward the end of May impressed, at Pitch 
 Landing, two thousand gallons of rum, nine hundred weight 
 of sugar, a thousand of coffee, six or seven hundred yards 
 of canvas, a small quantity of ammunition and other com- 
 modities, which the merchants had imported. Much dis- 
 satisfaction resulted from these measures, tending to ren- 
 der the administration unpopular, while the currency, both 
 continental and state, had become almost worthless, and the 
 feebleness of the military arm in checking the Tories and 
 the scarcity of ammunition, guns and clothing for the 
 soldiers were causes of adverse comment and grave appre- 
 hensions. To succeed Governor Nash, the Assembly chose 
 Dr. Burke, who qualified on June 26th. 
 
 On accepting the office of governor, Burke communicated 
 to the Assembly with emphasis that he did not wish a con- 
 tinuance of the Council Extraordinary, but that he himself 
 would discharge the functions of commander-in-chief. The 
 
 1781 
 
 s. R., XVII, 
 
 877 
 
 The Assem- 
 bly meets at 
 Wake Court 
 House 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 497 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 475 
 
 S R., 
 XXII, 
 
 1038, 1041 
 
 Burke 
 
 governor 
 
678 
 
 BURKE'S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-82 
 
 Measures of 
 defence 
 
 1781 council therefore ceased, but General Richard Caswell re- 
 
 J une mained nominally as major-general in command of the 
 
 state forces. The Assembly acted with promptness and 
 ,f I vigor. The Marquis of Bretigny, having offered his ser- 
 N vices to the State, was appointed a special agent to procure 
 a fast sailing vessel, and go to the French islands in the 
 West Indies and obtain five thousand stands of arms, ten 
 thousand pounds of powder and other military supplies, 
 twenty thousand pounds of tobacco being placed at his dis- 
 posal for the purpose. A regiment of state troops was di- 
 rected to be raised, and Benjamin Williams was chosen the 
 commander, Joel Lewis first major, and Baron de Glaubeck, 
 who had been so active and efficient, was appointed major 
 of horse. In view of the condition of affairs in Chatham, 
 Cumberland, and Randolph, it was resolved that a company 
 of light horse should be raised for two months in each of 
 those counties. An exception was made in the operation of 
 the confiscation act of all persons, theretofore disaffected, 
 who should serve with General Sumner in the continental 
 battalions for the term of ten months. 
 
 The militia that had acted badly at Guilford Court House 
 having been drafted into the continentals, the Assembly now 
 requested the governor to recommend to General Greene to 
 discharge them “whenever the situation of affairs would 
 admit of such an act of benevolence.” Samuel Johnston, 
 Charles Johnson, William Sharpe, and Ephraim Brevard 
 were on July 12th elected delegates to the Continental Con- 
 The value of the currency had now fallen so low 
 currency * that the Assembly rated a day’s work at $250, allowed Joel 
 Lane £15,000 for the use of his house and pasturage for one 
 month, and paid $12,000 for a single horse. On July 14th, 
 the body adjourned to meet again in November at Salem, 
 more removed from the seat of war. 
 
 s. r., xv, 
 533; xvii, 
 930-975 
 
 T he • . ; erress. 
 
 depreciated^ 0 
 
 Governor Burke’s zeal 
 
 Undismayed by the adverse circumstances of that unhappy 
 period, when Burke assumed the reins he was all activity. 
 Three days after his election he directed General Butler to 
 post five hundred men between the Cape Fear and the 
 Neuse, covering the lowest fords on each, and to patrol with 
 
CIVIL WAR 
 
 6/9 
 
 cavalry toward the enemy’s lines, requiring daily reports of 
 the situation. He lost no time in urging the Assembly to 
 action. “I perceive,” said he, “the country everywhere un- 
 prepared for defence ; without arms, without discipline, with- 
 out arrangements, even the habits of civil order and obedi- 
 ence to laws changed into a licentious contempt of authority 
 and a disorderly indulgence of violent propensities. Indus- 
 try is intermitted, agriculture much decayed, and com- 
 merce struggling feebly with almost insuperable difficulties. 
 The public money is unaccounted for, the taxes uncollected 
 or unproductive,” the individual creditors of the public un- 
 paid for years, “and the treasury totally unable to make 
 payment.” Dark indeed was his portrayal of the situation. 
 And to that were to be added the perils and dangers of that 
 gloomy period when the British were threatening the State 
 from the north, the sounds and coast infested with pri- 
 vateersmen bent on spoils, and from Guilford to Brunswick 
 civil war raged, its horrors heightened by passion, butcheries 
 on either side being of daily occurrence. 
 
 Even before the adjournment of the Assembly Governor 
 Burke began to move from point to point in the State, in- 
 spiring confidence by his presence and assuming direction. 
 He had full power to act, and his known energy and reso- 
 lute will brought new hope to the Whigs in the terrorized 
 sections. While urging the Assembly on he busied himself 
 supervising operations ; and he began to plan a movement 
 not merely to suppress the Tories, but to drive Craig out of 
 his stronghold on the Cape Fear. Indeed, he was aroused 
 to the utmost exertions by the earnest appeals that con- 
 stantly came for immediate assistance. 
 
 General Lillington, writing from the Trent on July 6th, 
 complained most bitterly that no aid had been furnished his 
 district by the other counties. He represented that the 
 Whigs of that region, distressed as they were, felt that they 
 were to fall a sacrifice to the enemy ; expelled from their 
 homes, their plantations ravaged, their negroes carried off, 
 and those caught compelled to accept allegiance or to go 
 into captivity. His own immediate section was desolate and 
 deserted, and doubtless the iron had entered into the soul 
 
 1781 
 
 S. R., XVII, 
 
 910 
 
 June 
 
 The 
 
 depressing 
 
 conditions 
 
 Burke’s 
 
 activity 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 540 
 
 The Cape 
 Fear region 
 
68o 
 
 BURKE’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-82 
 
 of the old veteran, whose heart bled for the misfortunes 
 of his friends and kindred. 
 
 From Bladen, Cumberland, and the upper Cape Fear, 
 also, came cries for help that appealed most strongly to the 
 governor for prompt and effective action. 
 
 Fanning embodies the Tories 
 
 Fanning’s 
 Narrative in 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 180 
 et seq. 
 
 1781 
 
 Although Cornwallis suffered continuous disappointment 
 while at the south from the passiveness of the North Caro- 
 lina Loyalists, yet after his departure from the State they 
 became very active. While many of their partisan leaders 
 attained great prominence, chief among them was David 
 Fanning, a native of Johnston County, but from boyhood a 
 resident of South Carolina. In the fall of 1780 he came to 
 Deep River and made himself acquainted with many ^per- 
 sons who had received commissions from Colonel Hamilton 
 the preceding July. He watched and waited. He was con- 
 cerned with Dr. Pyle in the raising of that band of Tories 
 that Lee cut to pieces in February, 1781, but was not him- 
 self present at the massacre. Immediately afterward he be- 
 gan to collect another body, and he gave information to 
 Cornwallis, and was with him on his march to Ramsey’s 
 Mills, accompanying him to Cross Creek. At that time 
 Cornwallis’s plans were not matured, and he expected that 
 he might return to Hillsboro. Fanning established himself 
 with some seventy Loyalists at Coxe’s Mill* and interfered 
 with Greene’s communications in North Carolina. Shortly 
 afterward he attacked a detachment under Colonel Dudley, 
 of Virginia, coming from Greene’s camp with baggage, 
 drove off the guard, capturing the baggage and nine horses. 
 Colonels Collier and Balfour, of Randolph, embodied one 
 hundred and sixty men, and on June 8th reached his vicinity, 
 but he made a night attack on them, and then sought safety 
 in concealment. A few days later Fanning contrived a gen- 
 eral meeting of the Loyalists, who selected him as their 
 commander. Accordingly he repaired to Wilmington and 
 obtained on July 5th from Major Craig a commission as 
 
 *Coxe’s Mill is on the western side of Deep River, at the mouth 
 of Mill Creek, in Randolph County, about five miles from the 
 Chatham line. 
 
THE RISE OF DAVID FANNING 
 
 68 1 
 
 colonel of the Loyalist militia of Randolph and Chatham 
 counties. A week later he had a general muster at Coxe’s 
 Mill and organized a force of a hundred and fifty men. 
 There had been appointed by Colonel Hamilton captains and 
 other officers for seven companies in Randolph County, for 
 six in Chatham, two in Orange, four in Cumberland, and 
 three in Anson. These all were more or less in touch with 
 Colonel Fanning, affording means of embodying men and 
 directing their movements that rendered his operations very 
 effective. On the same day that he held his muster on Deep 
 River there was a court martial and Whig muster at Pitts- 
 boro, some twenty-five miles distant. Fanning determined 
 to strike them a blow. By seven o’clock the next morning 
 he reached the hamlet and surrounded it. The members of 
 the court had dispersed for the night to country homes. As 
 they approached the village in the early morning Fanning 
 successively took them prisoners, among them being all the 
 militia officers of the county except two, a captain of the 
 continentals and three members of the General Assembly, his 
 captives numbering fifty-three. He paroled most of them, 
 but conducted fourteen of the most prominent and influential 
 Whigs to Major Craig, at Wilmington. Among those taken 
 were Herndon Ramsey and James Williams. Excesses com- 
 mitted by Major O'Neal, Colonel Robeson, of Bladen; 
 Wade, of Anson ; Phil Alston, and other vigorous patriot 
 leaders, which the Tories complained of as being “barbarous 
 murders,” led Fanning and his associates to practise retalia- 
 tion, and these Chatham prisoners, when they reached Raft 
 Swamp, were threatened with execution. They apprehended 
 they were to fall victims to partisan rancor. Accordingly, 
 their “situation being very unhappy,” from that point they 
 addressed a letter to Governor Burke detailing the com- 
 plaints made by the Tories and asking that Tory prisoners 
 “may be well treated in future.” In view of this interces- 
 sion, their lives were spared, and after a month’s detention 
 at Wilmington some of them were paroled, while others 
 were conveyed to Charleston. 
 
 On his return to Deep River Fanning received informa- 
 tion that Colonel Alston with a party of twenty-five was 
 watching for him. He surprised Alston at his house, and 
 
 July 
 
 1781 
 
 Pittsboro 
 
 taken 
 
 July 18, 1781 
 N. C. Uni. 
 
 Mag., II, 
 80 
 
 (■853) 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 550 
 
 N. C. Uni. 
 Mag., II, 
 83 
 
 (>853) 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 
 
 2 ° 3 > 557 
 
682 
 
 BURKE'S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-82 
 
 in an action lasting several hours killed four and wounded 
 
 July all the rest except three, when they surrendered. His own 
 loss was but two men killed and four wounded. Again 
 did Colonel Balfour make an effort to capture him, but 
 without success. 
 
 While Fanning was operating in the Deep River country 
 two active Tories in Bladen, McNeil and Ray, collected the 
 Loyalists lower down, and proved much too strong for the 
 local Whig leaders. 
 
 xxii’. On July 10th Colonel Robeson wrote to Governor Burke 
 
 in 3 Biaden 548 °f th e situation in Bladen : Distressed by a large body of 
 Tories and robbers, who range through the county from 
 Wilmington up to Drowning Creek and the waters of the 
 Little Peedee as far as Richmond — a hundred miles in 
 length and fifty across — a country much encumbered with 
 very large swamps and thick places, difficult for a small 
 party of troops to be of much service ; and the friends to 
 their country that live in this part so distressed by their 
 property being taken from them daily, and they in constant 
 danger of their lives by a set of Tories and robbers protected 
 by the British, that if we can’t have assistance, we must 
 unavoidably fall a prey to those villains — must in a very 
 short time be obliged to leave our homes ; and at this time 
 obliged to leave our habitations every night to take our rest. 
 The inhabitants of the county consisted of fifteen com- 
 panies, and now there can’t be raised more than seventy or 
 eighty men that dare move in behalf of their country. 
 Five days later he again wrote to the governor that there 
 were but fifty men to oppose some four hundred under 
 McNeil and Ray, and McLaurin Colvill* appointed colonels 
 of Bladen County ; that Colvill had said he would have three 
 hundred more men from the lower part of the county and 
 one hundred from Brunswick; that August 1st was the 
 time limited for the people to come in by the proclamation 
 of General Clinton and Arburthnot, which had been indus- 
 triously spread among the people, and if they did not go 
 in they were to be destroyed. McNeil was encamped at 
 McFalls Mill, between Drowning Creek and Raft Swamp, 
 and Colvill was ordering a general muster at Elizabethtown. 
 
 Walled by Dickson Maturin and generally so written. 
 
CIVIL WAR ON THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 683 
 
 Colonel Brown was the commanding officer of Bladen 
 County, but it was impossible to get men to join him with- 
 out assistance. Colvill, however, did not live long to enjoy 
 his new honors. Colonel Emmett wrote to the governor on 
 the 19th : “A small party of our people in Bladen, . . . with- 
 out orders, went to the house of Mr. Colvill, who had ac- 
 cepted from the English a colonel’s commission, killed him, 
 and plundered the house of what property was to be found 
 in it." 
 
 On July 30th Colonel Brown and Colonel Robeson joined 
 in a pathetic letter to Governor Burke, which was borne 
 by Colonel Owen himself, urging help. For six months they 
 said they had been seeking to defend themselves and prop- 
 erty, but the Tories were largely increasing, and robbers 
 were “daily plundering and destroying our stock of cattle 
 and our houses of everything, . . . and now at this time old 
 Hector McNeil is encamped with a large body of men 
 within eight or ten miles of our court-house, and is increas- 
 ing in number very fast, and Colonel Duncan Ray is en- 
 camped in another part of our county with a large body of 
 men and is giving out notice to the inhabitants that all that 
 do not come in by August 1st will have all their properties 
 destroyed and laid waste ; and we, being but few in number 
 that stand in behalf of our country, are not sufficient or able 
 to stand in our own defence without immediate assistance. 
 . . . Our number is not one hundred ... to oppose be- 
 tween four and five hundred. . . .We shall be all broke 
 up and obliged to give way and leave the place, which will 
 be greatly to the advantage of our enemy and will still in- 
 crease their number.” 
 
 Wade’s victory 
 
 As Colonel Owen passed through Campbellton, Colonel 
 Emmett, commanding in Cumberland, sent by him a similar 
 letter advising the governor that there were four or five 
 hundred Tories embodied at McFall’s Mill, on Drowning 
 Creek, thirty-five miles from Campbellton, and that unless 
 Campbellton itself were occupied by the State, the Tories 
 would take it. In the meantime, however, Colonel Wade, 
 of Anson, was not inactive. Ascertaining that these Loyal- 
 
 1781 
 
 July 
 
 S. R„ 
 XXII, 1043 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 590 
 
684 
 
 BURKE’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-82 
 
 1781 
 
 August 4th 
 
 Wade’s 
 
 Report, 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 376 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 508 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 549 , 550, 551, 
 
 556, 557 
 
 South Quay 
 captured 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 560 
 
 S R., XV, 
 535 
 
 ists were engaged in disarming the settlers within twenty 
 miles of the Peedee and carrying off men fit for duty and 
 driving off all stock over Drowning Creek into what they 
 called “protected land,” where McNeil and Ray had their 
 “flying army,” Colonel Wade called out half his regiment, 
 and was joined by parties from Montgomery and Richmond, 
 and proceeded into that territory. On Saturday, August 4th, 
 he came up with them at Beattie’s Bridge, on Drowning 
 Creek, and after a sharp engagement, lasting until twelve 
 o'clock at night, the Tories drew off. A dozen of them 
 were killed and some fifteen wounded, while Wade suffered 
 no other loss than four men wounded. 
 
 Cornwallis’s plans 
 
 In the middle of July news came from Virginia that was 
 at once disquieting and hopeful. Lafayette wrote that a part 
 of the British troops were designed to embark for New 
 York ; the rest “will garrison Portsmouth ; but from their 
 number of cavalry 1 imagine they will push to the south- 
 land.” Other developments led to the belief that Tarleton 
 with a large force of cavalry would pass through the in- 
 terior of the State to the aid of Rawdon. And preparations 
 were made to harass if not destroy him should the movement 
 be undertaken. 
 
 Governor Burke at once directed the commanding officers 
 of Granville, Orange and Caswell to collect all their rifle- 
 men and march to Boyd’s Ferry, on the Dan, and Kemp’s 
 Ferry, on Roanoke, to drive back Tarleton’s cavalry. But 
 Cornwallis changed his plan, were it ever contemplated to 
 send that corps to the southward. 
 
 A party of the enemy pushed from Suffolk to South Quay 
 on July 16th and destroyed all the stores and warehouses 
 at that place. The next day they came within twelve miles 
 of Murfree’s Landing, burning dwellings and storehouses; 
 and also at Weyanoke they destroyed large quantities of 
 rum, sugar, coffee, and other articles stored by the mer- 
 chants. They threatened Pitch Landing, but Major Murfree 
 having raised some seventy men and taken post at Skinner’s 
 Bridge, on Meherrin River, they retired to Suffolk. 
 
 At the south, Craig, too, was displaying energy. He 
 
RE-ENFORCEMENTS TO GREENE 
 
 685 
 
 rebuilt the Heron Bridge, and announced his intention of 
 giving no more paroles, but would seize and sell the prop- 
 erty of every man who did not join him. Many of the 
 Whigs were overawed. From Cumberland came the report: 
 “We had a muster on Monday last, where the third and 
 fourth numbers were ordered to meet in order to march 
 after the Tories; but there were neither officers nor men 
 met- — only eight or ten ; the colonel never came at all.” 
 
 And Lillington reported to the governor that he had not 
 three rounds of ammunition, and knew not where to apply. 
 
 New continental battalions 
 
 In South Carolina General Greene, always prudent, was 
 chafing at his enforced inactivity because his force was in- 
 adequate to renew hostilities. He was anxiously awaiting 
 the arrival of more men before risking another battle. 
 Urged by his repeated calls, Major Armstrong hurried for- 
 ward two hundred of the continental drafts ; while on 
 July 14th General Sumner wrote to Greene from Salisbury : 
 “I arrived here Wednesday last with about five hundred 
 rank and file badly equipped ; however, I have ... re- 
 ceived near three hundred good arms, . . . which I have 
 put in the hands o-f some good men, who will march to join 
 you under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Ashe early 
 to-morrow morning.” To Colonel Ashe he gave orders that 
 on his arrival at General Greene’s camp he was to take 
 charge of all the continental troops of this State and incor- 
 porate them as the First Regiment. 
 
 Ten days later Sumner himself marched, leaving Arm- 
 strong, Hogg, and Blount to organize and bring forward the 
 drafts from the districts of New Bern, Halifax, Edenton, 
 and Wilmington, all of whom were still delayed. When as- 
 sembled, these were formed into the Second Battalion. 
 
 At that time General Greene had in contemplation the re- 
 lief of North Carolina by carrying the garrison of Wilming- 
 ton, and then to hasten on to Virginia, and to once more try 
 conclusions with Cornwallis. With this view, on August 2d 
 he gave orders for Lee’s Legion, Kirkwood’s Delawares, 
 and Handy’s Maryland continentals, to prepare for an ex- 
 pedition against Wilmington. Secrecy and despatch were 
 
 1781 
 
 August 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 569 
 
 S R., XV, 
 530 , 533 
 
 Greene 
 proposes to 
 take 
 
 Wilmington 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 447 
 
686 
 
 BURKE'S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-82 
 
 1781 
 
 August 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 569, 593 
 
 Battle of 
 Rock Creek 
 
 Dickson’s 
 Letters, 17 
 
 Aug. 2, 1781 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 568 
 
 necessary elements of success. Captain Rudolph, with a 
 small party of the legion, was hurried to the Cape Fear to 
 acquire information and to collect boats to cross that river. 
 His mission was entirely successful ; but at the moment when 
 Greene was about to strike the blow he received information 
 from General Washington that required a change of plans. 
 Ordering Lafayette to continue his cautious conduct, he 
 again addressed himself to driving the British into Charles- 
 ton. Washington planned to capture Cornwallis himself. 
 
 Craig invades the eastern counties 
 
 All inhabitants had been required by Major Craig to come 
 into the British camp and give in their adhesion by August 
 1st, and those failing to do so were to be regarded as enemies 
 subject to the death penalty and to having their homes plun- 
 dered. The alternative was fearful to those within his 
 power. The dog-days of August indeed ushered in a period 
 of horror and relentless warfare. The British commander 
 issued his proclamation that the Loyalists should be ready 
 to march with him, and on August 1st he began a tour 
 through the eastern counties. Colonel Kenan with a hun- 
 dred and fifty of the Duplin militia had taken post at Rock 
 Creek (some two miles east of Wallace), and now was 
 joined by a detachment of a hundred and eighty from the 
 brigade of General Caswell, and two hundred under Colonel 
 Brown of Bladen. On the approach of Major Craig with 
 two hundred and fifty regulars and about eighty Tories, 
 Kenan proposed to contest his passage. His ammunition, 
 however, was soon exhausted ; and on being charged the 
 militia broke and fled, closely pursued by the British light 
 horse, who succeeded in taking some twenty or thirty 
 prisoners. 
 
 For ten days the British column lingered in Duplin, living 
 on the country, embodying the Tories, exacting allegiance 
 of the people and carrying out the programme announced 
 in Craig’s proclamation. The moderate and conservative 
 policy of Cornwallis at his entrance into the State was no 
 longer enforced ; on the contrary, fire and sword now took 
 the place of conciliation and regard for the inhabitants as 
 subjects of Great Britain. Those who did not attach them- 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE EAST 
 
 68 7 
 
 selves to the British camp were held outside of the pale of 
 protection and given over to the vengeance of the Tories. 
 
 Having thoroughly harried Duplin, the column, now in- 
 creased by the accession of three hundred Loyalists, turned 
 its head toward New Bern, and General Lillington, who 
 was encamped at Limestone Bridge, in Duplin, moved his 
 force on the road to the Trent to intercept its progress. 
 
 Lillington forbidden to hazard a battle 
 
 General William Caswell with a party of one hundred and 
 sixty horse operated on the enemy’s lines, and before Craig 
 had reached Kinston had a skirmish with about fifty of the 
 dragoons. He found, however, that his mounted militia 
 could not stand a charge ; the gleaming swords of the enemy 
 terrified them. Craig hastened on to surprise Lillington, 
 who would have given him battle if permitted. But under 
 orders, he avoided a meeting. Yet again were the British 
 horse attacked, and with some loss. Caswell reported to the 
 governor on the 17th: “General Lillington is between New 
 Bern and the enemy, and I am fearful will risk an action. 
 ... I have done everything in my power to prevent it, and 
 have let him have a sight of your Excellency’s letter, wherein 
 you mention that no general action must take place.” Gen- 
 eral Lillington’s force was about six hundred, drawn from 
 Onslow, Jones, Craven, Dobbs, and Pitt, while Caswell com- 
 manded one hundred and fifty horse. The crying need was 
 for ammunition, and arms were very scarce. It is probable 
 that the want of ammunition determined Governor Burke 
 to order that no general engagement should be risked. Lil- 
 lington had taken position at Webber’s Bridge, on the 
 Trent, had removed the planks and had placed a strong 
 guard to hold it. At that point there was a slight collision 
 with a reconnoitring party, three of the enemy being killed 
 and five wounded. On the evening of the 19th Craig 
 reached New Bern. In his progress he had ravaged every 
 Whig plantation and brought ruin and distress on the in- 
 habitants of the country. On leaving Wilmington he had 
 with him only about eighty Tories, but as their route lay 
 through a country much disaffected, many inhabitants 
 
 1781 
 
 August 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 
 564. 565 
 
 New Bern 
 occupied 
 Aug., 1781 
 S. R.. 
 XXII, 
 
 564, 566, 568, 
 569 
 
688 
 
 BURKE'S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-82 
 
 1781 
 
 August 
 
 Death of 
 Gaston 
 
 Biog. Hist, 
 of N. C., II, 
 99; VII, hi 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 623 
 
 S. R., ' V, 
 
 . 626 
 
 joined them. Those above fifty years of age were required 
 to take an oath of allegiance, while the younger men were 
 prevailed on to enroll in their ranks, and their numbers were 
 augmented by hundreds. General Caswell was apprehensive 
 that almost all of the inhabitants in the vicinity of New Bern 
 and most of those in Beaufort and Hyde counties would 
 enlist with Craig. “What force we can raise and arm,” 
 he said, “will not be superior to the Tories,” and arms could 
 not be had for the men they could raise. He proposed to 
 establish a post at Webber’s Bridge and at Bryan’s Mills, on 
 the Neuse. General Lillington, now quite old and much 
 fatigued, was to leave the camp the next day. 
 
 Lillington was resolute, and doubtless eager for a battle, 
 but it appears that he was restrained by the prudent orders 
 of the governor from making a stand against the British 
 force. His plantation and those of his friends at Rocky 
 Point had been desolated, their negroes carried off, and 
 themselves reduced to poverty. Some of his friends had 
 been captured and subjected to inhuman ill-usage, and he 
 doubtless chafed that he was not permitted to strike a blow 
 at the enemy, even though he might not hope for absolute 
 victory. 
 
 On entering New Bern, the British met with a cordial re- 
 ception from some, but the patriotic citizens sought to es- 
 cape. As Dr. Alexander Gaston with his wife and two small 
 children were about to depart in a boat one of the Tories 
 ruthlessly shot Dr. Gaston down, and the son, afterward 
 the eminent jurist, was literally baptized into patriotism in 
 the blood of his murdered father. After despoiling the 
 town, robbing the citizens, burning vessels and committing 
 other excesses, Craig with his Tory followers departed 
 toward Kinston. 
 
 Tory atrocities 
 
 He rapidly advanced to Bryan Mills, on the Neuse, where 
 Colonel Gorham commanded a detachment. There a skir- 
 mish ensued, but Gorham was easily driven off. 
 
 The British remained at that point one night, burning the 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE EAST 
 
 689 
 
 houses of General Bryan, William Heritage, William Coxe, 
 and Longfield Coxe, and much distressed and abused their 
 families. Their intention was to proceed further into the 
 interior, but General Wayne with a body of continental 
 troops, who was operating against the British near Suffolk, 
 now drew near to North Carolina, and a report spread that 
 he was at Halifax. Craig, receiving this information, turned 
 to the southward, crossed the Trent and moved to Rich- 
 lands, thence returning to his fortifications at Wilmington. 
 His loss on this raid was about fifteen killed and captured 
 and about the same number wounded. The great scarcity 
 of ammunition prevented much skirmishing on the part of 
 the Americans. The destruction of the residences at Bryan 
 Mills led to severe retaliation ; the inhabitants who had suf- 
 fered raised a party and burned up all the houses of the 
 Tories in that vicinity. General Caswell ordered such 
 troops as could be raised in Duplin, Wayne and Onslow to 
 fall in the rear of the retreating enemy, and to annoy them 
 on their return to Wilmington. But without serious opposi- 
 tion Craig regained his fortifications. In this foray he 
 carried into effect the terms of his proclamation. The Tories 
 especially were jubilant. They burned houses, seized many 
 negroes and destroyed many farms. In retaliation, the 
 Whigs devastated the plantations of their Tory neighbors, 
 and a reign of terror and relentless warfare was inaugurated. 
 William Dickson, of Duplin, writing three years later, says : 
 ‘‘The enemy stayed several days in Duplin — the first week 
 in August, 1781. The Royalists gathered together very fast, 
 and we were now reduced again to the utmost extremity. . . . 
 Some men collected and formed a little flying camp, and 
 moved near the enemy’s lines, and made frequent sallies on 
 their rear flanks. . . . The Tories in Duplin and other coun- 
 ties . . . become more insolent than ever ; but Craig having 
 returned to Wilmington, the Whigs again resumed their 
 courage, and determined to be revenged on the Loyalists, 
 our neighbors, or hazard all. Accordingly, we collected 
 about eighty light horse and . . . marching straight into the 
 neighborhood where the Tories were embodied, surprised 
 them ; they fled, our men pursued them, cut many of them 
 to pieces, took several and put them to instant death.” 
 
 1781 
 
 S. R., xv7 
 
 627; XXII, 
 593 
 
 August 
 
 Craig 
 returns to 
 Wilmington 
 
 Retaliation 
 
 Dickson’s 
 
 Letters, 
 
 17-19 
 
 Tories 
 
 massacred 
 
690 
 
 BURKE’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-82 
 
 1781 
 
 S? R.. 
 
 XXII, 
 
 204, 205, 567 
 
 Dickson’s 
 Letters, 19 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 205 
 
 Wheeler, 
 Hist. N. C., 
 II, 41 
 
 N. C. Uni. 
 M.ig., IV, 
 328 (1855) 
 
 Battle of Elizabethtown 
 
 While Major Craig was harrying the Whigs of the eastern 
 counties, Fanning and the other Tory leaders were devastat- 
 ing the settlements on the Northwest Branch of the Cape 
 Fear. On August nth Fanning, Slingsby, McNeil, and 
 Ray all met, with their respective forces, at Cross Creek, 
 and together they scourged the country on either side of 
 the river, taking prisoners, ravaging plantations and desolat- 
 ing the Whig settlements. Colonel Slingsby on the assassi- 
 nation of Colvill had been appointed to command the Bladen 
 Loyalists, and when Fanning, toward the last of August, re- 
 turned from Wilmington, he found Slingsby with his com- 
 mand at Elizabethtown in possession of many Whig pris- 
 oners. 
 
 Colonels Brown, Owen, Robeson, Morehead, Irwine and 
 others who had been forced to abandon their homes by these 
 Tory bands, had been anxiously seeking aid and re-enforce- 
 ments to return and drive them from Bladen. But the 
 people of Duplin and the neighboring counties were them- 
 selves harassed by troopers from Wilmington and the 
 Tories of their own section, so that assistance could not be 
 obtained. At length, however, they collected some one hun- 
 dred and fifty Bladen men, who like themselves had been 
 expelled from their homes, and on the night of August 29th 
 they forded the river in the vicinity of Elizabethtown, and 
 just before daybreak made an attack on Slingsby’s post. 
 Although the garrison, consisting of four hundred, largely 
 outnumbered the small party of assailants, this night attack 
 resulted most fortunately. In the camp were many Whig 
 prisoners, and this circumstance probably contributed to in- 
 duce the early flight of the garrison. The Whigs, by a sud- 
 den and violent onslaught, just before daybreak, threw the 
 surprised Tories into disorder; and as their principal officers 
 sought to marshal them, they soon fell before the unerr- 
 ing fire of the resolute assailants. Deprived of their leaders, 
 the Tories, in consternation, precipitately fled, many of them 
 leaping pell-mell into a deep ravine, which has since been 
 known as “Tories’ Hole.” “In this action,” wrote Archi- 
 bald Maclaine from Sampson Hall some three weeks later, 
 “we had only one man wounded ; killed, wounded and taken 
 
BATTLE OF ELIZABETHTOWN 
 
 691 
 
 of the enemy, nineteen. Slingsby since dead of his wounds.” 
 Colonel Godden fell dead in his tracks, as did most of the 
 other officers of the garrison. Knowing that their small 
 numbers could not successfully resist the Tories in an open, 
 pitched battle, the Whigs collected the arms and stores in 
 the camp and retired to the other side of the river, carrying 
 their booty with them. 
 
 This battle of Elizabethtown,* as it was one of the most 
 daring in conception, was one of the most brilliant in the par- 
 tisan warfare of that region, so remarkable for its many bold 
 encounters. In its results it was equally important as it 
 was successful. Not only were the Loyalists of Bladen dis- 
 heartened and suppressed, but the supply of arms and ammu- 
 nition obtained by the Whigs equipped them for larger 
 operations, and the Tories of that part of Bladen made 
 head no more. 
 
 Governor Burke’s plans 
 
 During all that heated season the efforts of the governor 
 were untiring. In August he was mollifying the outraged 
 merchants of Edenton, whose commerce had been arrested 
 by the impressment of their cargoes, and then at Halifax he 
 was preparing to delay the progress of Cornwallis should 
 he again turn southward, escaping from Virginia to reunite 
 with Rawdon in South Carolina. Certain information had 
 come that in consequence of the arrival of the French fleet, 
 Cornwallis was moving from York to Jamestown, intending 
 to cross the James River, and hoping to pass unopposed 
 through North Carolina. Perhaps it was to facilitate that 
 possible movement that Craig had made his inroad into the 
 eastern counties somewhat earlier. Now Burke was busy 
 securing the boats on the lower Roanoke and embodying the 
 militia to obstruct the expected march of the enemy until 
 
 *There has been some confusion as to the date of this battle. It 
 was evidently after Major Craig had passed through Duplin; and 
 Fanning says in his Narrative that it was two days before the defeat 
 of Colonel Wade, which was on September 1st. Dickson says 
 Colonel Brown was in command of the attacking party (Dickson’s 
 Letters, pp. 17 and 19. Maclaine’s Letter, Univ. Mag., 1855. Fan- 
 ning’s Narrative). Fanning, ignorant of the assault by the Whigs 
 under Brown and Robeson, ascribed the affair to the uprising of the 
 Whig prisoners Slingsby had in his camp. 
 
 1781 
 
 August 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 
 
 578, 573-88 
 
 S. R„ XV, 
 
 63O 
 
692 
 
 BURKE'S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-82 
 
 1781 
 
 September 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 542 
 
 S. R , XV, 
 595 
 
 The 
 
 situation 
 
 Lafayette and Steuben and Wayne might bring him to battle. 
 On August 24th he ordered out the militia of all the coun- 
 ties ; those in the east to oppose Cornwallis ; those of the 
 centre and west to suppress the Tories on the Cape Fear. 
 The detachments from Granville and W ake were to assemble 
 at Wake Court House; from Caswell, Randolph, Chatham, 
 and Orange, at Ramsey’s Mills. It is said he was projecting 
 a great movement and intended to lead the militia himself. 
 
 The danger of Lord Cornwallis’s situation being evident, 
 it was not doubted that he would endeavor to make good his 
 retreat through the State. Governor Burke resolved to put 
 the whole force of North Carolina in motion to act as the 
 occasion might require, either to oppose Cornwallis or to 
 attack Craig or to re-enforce General Greene so as to give 
 him a decisive superiority. Realizing that everything de- 
 pended upon prompt execution, he gave his personal exer- 
 tions, influence and authority to accomplish his design, and 
 early in September moved toward Salisbury, where he 
 proposed to complete the dispositions he had directed at the 
 West. 
 
 He spent the early days of September in Granville and 
 then set out on his journey to Salisbury. On the way he 
 stopped a day or two at Llillsboro. He was constantly re- 
 ceiving and answering appeals for military aid made by 
 the distressed inhabitants of the Cape Fear section. But 
 insurmountable obstacles and difficulties met him on every 
 side. There was pressing need for the continental drafts to 
 be hurried to Greene’s aid in South Carolina, and calls were 
 made by General Steuben for both continentals and militia 
 to assist him in Virginia. General Rutherford and Colonel 
 Isaacs, who had been conveyed as prisoners to Florida, had 
 just returned from their confinement; Davidson was dead, 
 Colonel Locke had marched a detachment to the southward. 
 William Caswell in the east and General Butler at the west 
 were the main reliance for active work. Butler early in 
 September was gathering a force on the Haw and the Deep 
 to hold in check the formidable bands of Tories that were 
 scourging that region. Next to Rutherford he was the 
 most efficient of the brigadiers. 
 
CIVIL WAR ON THE CAPE FEAR 
 
 693 
 
 Fanning defeats Wade 
 
 On his return from Wilmington, with a fresh supply of 
 ammunition, Colonel Fanning after passing Slingsby at 
 Elizabethtown continued to McFall’s Mills, about sixty 
 miles distant. There he received information of the disaster 205.584 
 to his friends at Elizabethtown, and he despatched ninety of 
 his men back to render assistance ; but it was too late, the 
 Whigs had gathered their booty and had retired. He like- 
 wise received information that Colonel Wade was marching 
 to attack Colonel McNeil in the vicinity of Raft Swamp, and 
 he set out to re-enforce that Loyalist partisan, whom he joined 
 in the morning of September 1st. 
 
 He found that Wade had crossed the bridge to the eastern 
 side of Drowning Creek, and had taken post on the highland 
 near a mile distant from the bridge, the intervening road 
 being a narrow causeway. Fanning directed McNeil to 
 turn down the swamp to cut off Wade’s retreat in that direc- 
 tion, and, confident of victory before midday, began the 
 battle. At Wade’s first fire eighteen horses of Fanning’s men 
 were killed, but the Tories at once dismounted and made 
 a deadly assault, continuing to fire as they advanced ; and 
 when they approached to within twenty-five yards of Wade’s 
 line the Whigs broke and fled in the utmost confusion. Had 
 McNeil obeyed directions closely Wade’s force would have 
 been entirely destroyed ; but he did not take the position 
 assigned him, and the causeway and bridge were open for a 
 safe retreat. Fanning pursued some seven miles, and took 
 fifty-four prisoners, four of whom died that night, while 
 nineteen of the Whigs lay dead on the ground. He states 
 his own loss at only one killed and a few wounded. Having 
 taken two hundred and fifty horses, he distributed them 
 among those of his troops who were not mounted in the 
 action. The prisoners were paroled, except thirty, who were 
 sent to Wilmington; and then Fanning returned to McFall’s 
 Mills, where he was joined by the detachment he had sent 
 to Slingsby’s assistance. The misfortune that befell Wade’s 
 force in this encounter had a dampening effect on the ardor 
 of the Whigs ; but General- Butler, Colonel Balfour, Colonel 
 Mebane, Colonel Collier and their associates redoubled their 
 
694 
 
 1781 
 
 September 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 207 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 12 et seq. 
 
 At Hillsboro 
 
 Sept. 12,1781 
 
 BURKE'S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-82 
 
 efforts to restore confidence and bring the militia together 
 to make head against the aggressive Loyalists. 
 
 The governor is captured 
 
 While Fanning was at Wilmington toward the end of 
 August, that bold partisan agreed with Craig that Gov- 
 ernor Burke should be captured ; and after defeating Wade, 
 Fanning resolved to carry the design into execution. 
 On September 9th he was joined by Colonel McDougal, of 
 Cumberland, with two hundred men, and Hector McNeil 
 with a detachment from Bladen, and more than four hun- 
 dred others had responded to his call for the Loyalists to 
 embody. He thus found himself at the head of several hun- 
 dred active partisans. Marching directly toward Coxe’s Mill 
 as if to attack General Butler, who was in that vicinity, he 
 suddenly changed his route, pushed on during Septem- 
 ber nth and all the following night, and reached Hillsboro 
 in the early morning. His presence in that vicinity was not 
 at all suspected. 
 
 Governor Burke on September 10th received information 
 of the movement of Fanning toward Butler’s camp, and 
 sent a warning to the general to be on bis guard. Little did 
 he suspect that the object of the enterprising partisan was 
 nothing less than his own capture. On the night of the nth 
 no particular precautions were taken by the detachments at 
 Hillsboro. The little hamlet was rejoicing in the presence 
 of his Excellency and those who attended him, and its sense 
 of security was not at all disturbed by the movements of 
 the enemy. Hillsboro was in a measure the seat of govern- 
 ment, and there were stored some cannon, supplies and pro- 
 visions, and it was the headquarters of the continentals at 
 that time, a number of whom were congregated there pre- 
 paring to march to the southward. Suddenly the next morn- 
 ing, a foggy, disagreeable morning, it was rudely awakened 
 from its peaceful repose. A clap of thunder from a clear 
 sky would have been no greater surprise. At seven o’clock 
 on the morning of the 12th Fanning’s Tories entered the 
 town in three divisions. Several shots were fired from dif- 
 ferent houses upon the invaders, but without inflicting any 
 
FANNING CAPTURES BURKE 
 
 695 
 
 serious loss. “We killed fifteen of the rebels,” said Fan- 
 ning, “and wounded twenty, and took upward of two hun- 
 dred prisoners. Among them was the governor, his council, 
 a party of continental colonels, captains and subalterns, and 
 seventy-one continental soldiers taken out of a church. We 
 proceeded to the jail and released thirty Loyalists and British 
 soldiers, one of whom was to have been hanged on that day.” 
 He took the guns from the guard and put them in the 
 hands of the prisoners, and turned the guard into the prison 
 quarters. It was there that most of the Whigs were killed. 
 
 Battle of Cane Creek 
 
 Colonel Mebane made good his escape during the 
 melee, and hastened to advise General Butler. Seeking to 
 intercept Fanning on his return, Butler took post at John 
 Alston’s mill, near Lindsay’s, on Cane Creek. 
 
 The Tory commander, having secured the object of his 
 expedition, hastened away with his prisoners, thinking by 
 celerity of movement to escape without molestation. By 
 twelve o’clock he began his march. That night he reached 
 the vicinity of Cane Creek, and the next morning the march 
 was resumed. His force was composed chiefly of two 
 bodies, one, several hundred Scotchmen, under McNeil and 
 McDougal ; the other, loyal inhabitants, not Scotch, under 
 Fanning and militia officers. The Scotchmen were in the 
 advance, while Fanning’s Tories were in the rear with the 
 prisoners. Butler had posted his men along the high banks 
 on the south side of the stream, where the road coming from 
 the ford skirted through a narrow piece of low ground. As 
 McNeil advanced along this open roadway the Whigs from 
 the brow of the hill delivered a deliberate fire with murder- 
 ous effect. The Scotchmen, utterly surprised, at once re- 
 coiled. Fanning hastened to send his prisoners off under a 
 detachment so as to secure them at all events, and then 
 crossed the stream higher up, and a desperate and bloody 
 conflict ensued. By Fanning’s attack from an unexpected quar- 
 ter the Whigs were thrown into momentary confusion, but 
 soon rallied, and nearly every Whig killed in the action fell 
 at this time. The engagement lasted four hours, resulting in 
 
 1781 
 
 xxi i’, 207 
 
 Caruthers, 
 Old North 
 State, I, 
 207-219 
 
 S. R , 
 XXII, 207 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 545 
 
696 
 
 BURKE’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-82 
 
 1781 
 
 September 
 
 Fanning 
 
 disabled 
 
 Caruthers, 
 I, 214 
 
 S. R., XV, 
 651 
 
 Butler 
 surprised at 
 Brown 
 Marsh 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 365 
 
 Biog. Hist, 
 of N. C., V, 
 36 
 
 Martin 
 
 acting 
 
 governor 
 
 the retreat of the Whigs. The loss of the Tories was twenty- 
 seven killed, sixty so badly wounded that they could not be 
 moved, and thirty others wounded, who, however, con- 
 tinued with the main body. The loss of the Whigs, while 
 great, was not so heavy. Several of the highest officers on 
 both sides were killed. Among the slain were Colonel Lut- 
 terell and Major John Nalls; while on the Tory side John 
 Rains, Edward Edwards, Colonel Dushee Shaw, and Colonel 
 Hector McNeil, the elder, fell dead on the field. At the 
 very end of the battle Colonel Fanning received a wound in 
 his arm that shattered the bone and disabled him. It is 
 related that Colonel Robert Mebane signalized himself by a 
 bold and deliberate act of courage in the hottest of the battle. 
 The ammunition of the Whigs was about expended, and he 
 advanced along the line slowly distributing powder and ball 
 to the men as needed, a target for every man in the Ton- 
 ranks. Fanning, being unable to travel, was conveyed to a 
 secret place on Brush Creek, and for some weeks was dis- 
 abled by his wounds. At his request, Colonel McDougal 
 assumed command and hurried toward Wilmington, suc- 
 cessfully delivering, on September 23d, the person of Gover- 
 nor Burke to Major Craig, who had advanced to Livingston 
 Creek to receive his distinguished and valuable prisoner. 
 Fearing to be overtaken, the Tories made such haste that 
 although General Butler hotly pursued them even to the 
 vicinity of Wilmington, it was without avail. However, 
 he had a slight engagement at Hammond Creek, and he then 
 took post at Brown Marsh, in Bladen County. There about 
 October 1st the British marching from Wilmington in the 
 night surprised him, attacking his camp with some suc- 
 cess ; and he retired toward Campbellton. And now for a 
 time the State was left without a head, but Colonel Alex- 
 ander Martin, as speaker of the senate, quickly assumed the 
 reins of government and began an energetic administration. 
 
 Governor Burke was regarded as a political prisoner and 
 not a prisoner of war. He was denied the right of exchange, 
 and was held at Major Craig’s suggestion as a hostage for 
 the safety of Fanning, should that venturesome Tory fall 
 into the hands of the Whigs. 
 
GREENE FIGHTS AT EUTAIV 
 
 697 
 
 The battle of Eutaw Springs 
 
 Greene had now received considerable re-enforcement from 
 North Carolina. The continentals led by Colonel Ashe were 
 formed into the First Battalion; those brought by Major 
 Armstrong and General Sumner about the close of July be- 
 came the Second Battalion ; and toward the middle of 
 August Major Blount arrived with such other continental 
 drafts as had then been embodied and provided with arms. 
 These became the Third Battalion. They were all thrown 
 into a brigade commanded by General Sumner in person. 
 There had also reached camp two battalions of North 
 Carolina militia commanded by Colonel Malmedy, a French 
 nobleman, trained to arms, who was appointed bv the As- 
 semblv early in July for that purpose. Taking into account 
 those North Carolinians who had enlisted with Colonel Will- 
 iam Polk, of Mecklenburg, Colonel Wade Hampton, and 
 Colonel Hill, and in other corps then with Greene, North 
 Carolinians formed one-half of Greene’s entire army. 
 
 Strengthened by these accessions, Greene resolved to take 
 the initiative and put an end to his enforced inactivity. At 
 last, at the very time when Fanning was compassing his 
 great stroke against his enemies — the capture of the gover- 
 nor, Greene brought on the battle of Eutaw Springs on Sep- 
 tember 8th. As before, the militia was placed at the front; 
 those from North Carolina, under Colonel Malmedy. The 
 second line was composed of continentals, the North Caro- 
 linians now under Sumner on the right. The British army 
 was drawn up in a single line. The militia advanced with 
 alacrity, and the battle became warm. The fire ran from 
 flank to flank, the American line still advancing ; but after a 
 fierce contest the militia, having fired seventeen rounds, 
 eventually gave way, and Greene instantly ordered Sumner 
 to fill the chasm. He came handsomely into action, and the 
 battle grew hotter and hotter, the British being driven back 
 to their first position. The American line persevered and 
 advanced, and the fire became mutually destructive, when 
 General Greene, determining to strike a conclusive blow, 
 brought up his reserves, and all pressing forward with a 
 shout, the battle raged with redoubled fury. The conquer- 
 ing Americans pressed the advantage they had gained, pur- 
 
 1781 
 
 September 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 467 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 468 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 553 
 
6g8 
 
 BURKE'S ADMINISTRATION, 17S1-S2 
 
 1781 
 
 The bloody 
 battle 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 554i 555 
 S. R., XV, 
 
 638 
 
 suing the foe, and possessed themselves of the British camp, 
 which was yielded without a struggle. The British line gave 
 way, and in the pursuit the Americans took three hundred 
 prisoners and two pieces of artillery. The British general, 
 however, later restored his broken line and advanced ; and 
 the action was renewed, the battle terminating in the British 
 re-possessing their camp, taking two field pieces, the Ameri- 
 cans in turn retreating. For three hours it was a fierce con- 
 test, every corps in each army bravely supporting each 
 other. It was one of the bloodiest of the great conflicts in 
 the course of the war. More than one-fifth of the British and 
 one-fourth of the American army were killed and wounded. 
 The British took sixty prisoners, while the Americans cap- 
 tured about live hundred. Of the six commandants of con- 
 tinental regiments, only Williams and Lee escaped unhurt. 
 
 The gallantry of the North Carolinians 
 
 When Sumner moved forward, the battalions of Ashe, 
 Armstrong and Blount so promptly filled the gap with such 
 admirable and soldierly precision that Greene in a burst of 
 enthusiasm exclaimed : “I was at a loss which most to ad- 
 mire, the gallantry of the officers or the good conduct of their 
 men.” These men had just been raised as new drafts, and 
 were in part the very militia who under adverse circum- 
 stances had retired disorderly at Guilford Court House, and 
 had been enrolled by the Council Extraordinary into the 
 continental service for one year on that account. Now they 
 were drilled and disciplined, themselves had bayonets and 
 had been taught how to use them. They had officers trained 
 and experienced, and they gave to the world an example of 
 courage and endurance that reflected the highest credit on 
 American soldiery. The loss of North Carolina was particu- 
 larly heavy in that sanguinary battle. Of her continentals, 
 three captains and one lieutenant were killed, and one cap- 
 tain and five lieutenants were wounded. Major James Ruth- 
 erford, son of General Griffith Rutherford, was killed, and 
 Captains Goodwin, Goodman, Porterfield, and Lieutenants 
 Dillon and Polk, and Ensign Lamb were killed. The militia 
 as well as the continentals suffered severely both in killed 
 and wounded. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 Martin’s Administration, 1781-83 
 
 Rutherford marches to Wilmington. — Cornwallis surrenders. — 
 Wilmington evacuated. — Rutherford disbands his army. — Fanning not 
 suppressed. — The Assembly at Salem.— The Tories active. — Governor 
 Martin’s action. — The return of Burke. — He assumes the administra- 
 tion. — Fanning’s brutality. — Progress of events. — Burke seeks a 
 re-election. — Alexander Martin chosen. — New legislation. — The Mora- 
 vians. — Depreciation of the currency. — The Continental Line. — Indian 
 hostilities renewed. — Leslie remains at Charleston. — The deplorable 
 condition of the army. — Charleston evacuated. — The number of troops 
 furnished by North Carolina. — The capture of Lord Montague. — The 
 condition in 1783. — Governor Martin’s address. — The sovereign State. 
 
 Rutherford marches to Wilmington 
 
 Although the abduction of the head of the commonwealth 
 disorganized the administration and threw matters of state 
 into disorder, it did not entirely disarrange the plans Gov- 
 ernor Burke had set on foot to subdue the Tories and expel 
 the British from Wilmington. In August General Ruther- 
 ford, having returned from his captivity in Florida, resumed 
 command in his district. His zeal had not been quenched by 
 his misfortunes, but rather the remembrance of the suffer- 
 ings he had endured inspired him with a firmer resolution. 
 Conformably to the governor’s programme, he quickly called 
 out a part of his brigade, and asked volunteers to meet him 
 at Little River, in Montgomery County, by September 15th, 
 urging as many as possible to bring their horses and act 
 as cavalry. Governor Burke was on his way to Salisbury in 
 connection with this movement when he was captured, and 
 doubtless this startling, shocking event caused some delay 
 in the assembling of Rutherford’s troops. A fortnight was 
 passed in organizing the companies and in training the cav- 
 alry, the command of the horsemen being assigned to 
 Colonel Robert Smith, assisted by Major Joseph Graham 
 and Captain Simmons and others who had served under 
 
 Graham 
 
 Graham 
 
 356 
 
700 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-83 
 
 1781 
 
 October 
 
 Biop. Hist. 
 N. C., Ill, 
 35 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 209 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 363 
 
 Major Davie in previous operations. Rutherford, intent on 
 victory, took every precaution to bring his raw levies up to 
 a state of efficiency. On October 1st he broke camp and 
 moved by slow marches toward Campbellton, being joined 
 constantly by new accessions. At that time General Butler, 
 who had shortly before suffered discomfiture at Brown 
 Marsh, had withdrawn from below and was in the vicinity 
 of Cross Creek ; and later he united his force with the new 
 levies. On reaching Rockfish on October 15th, Rutherford’s 
 cavalry had a slight engagement with a detachment of 
 Tories, and from prisoners information was obtained that 
 a body of six hundred Loyalists under Colonels Elrod, Ray, 
 McNeil, and McDougal then lay in Raft Swamp. Fanning 
 was still in hiding on Brush Creek, in the Deep River sec- 
 tion, his wounds not yet healed; but he had so far regained 
 his strength that somewhat earlier he despatched messengers 
 to Wilmington for a supply of ammunition, which Major 
 Craig sent him on October 13th, and he was preparing to 
 take the field again. The corps of Tories then at Raft 
 Swamp was, however, a part of those who had been with 
 him in the expedition for the capture of the governor and 
 their leaders were wily and astute. In order to expel them 
 from their stronghold, Rutherford arranged his men in a 
 single line, five steps apart, and beat through the swamp, 
 but without avail. The game had flown. The vigilant 
 Tories made good their escape. 
 
 Rutherford encamped at Brown Marsh, some fifteen miles 
 south of Elizabethtown and thirty miles from Wilmington, 
 as General Butler had done several weeks before. While 
 there, Colonel Alexander Martin, who had succeeded to the 
 office of governor, visited the camp, remaining several days 
 with the soldiers, and enthusing them by his presence. Gen- 
 eral Rutherford now determined to divide his force, leaving 
 on the south side of the river Colonel Robert Smith with the 
 mounted infantry and dragoons, some three hundred in num- 
 ber ; while with the infantry he himself should invest Wil- 
 mington on the north side. Carrying this plan into effect, 
 on October 23d he crossed the Cape Fear at Waddell’s 
 plantation and proceeded into New Hanover. Colonel Smith 
 at once drew near to Wilmington, had several brushes with 
 
RUTHERFORD ATTACKS WILMINGTON 
 
 701 
 
 parties of the enemy, and found that some fifty of the regu- 
 lars occupied a brick house about two miles from the town, 
 while a hundred Tories were encamped at Moore’s planta- 
 tion close by. He proceeded to attack the latter, and was so 
 favored by fortune that twelve of them were killed outright 
 and some thirty wounded ; while on the part of the Whigs 
 neither man nor horse was hurt. Finding the brick house* 
 well garrisoned, protected by abattis, and the doors and win- 
 dows barricaded, Colonel Smith despaired of reducing it 
 without heavy loss, and after a fruitless attack retired be- 
 yond Livingston Creek. 
 
 When Rutherford reached the bridge over the North- 
 east River, ten miles north of Wilmington, he had a slight 
 engagement with a British garrison established there, easily 
 driving them off. He established his camp on the adjacent 
 sand-hills, near the river swamp, and cut off all approach 
 to the town from the northward. While investing Wilming- 
 ton on the north and west Rutherford received information 
 that Craig was obtaining provisions by boats from Lock- 
 wood’s Folly. f He therefore directed Major Graham to 
 make an excursion to cut off that source of supplies. Major 
 Graham having proceeded in that direction, encamped after 
 a cold, rainy day at Seven Creeks, not far from the South 
 Carolina line. During the night his detachment was aroused 
 by a full volley discharged into their camp by a band of 
 Tories under Major Gainey, a noted partisan of that section. 
 The enemy, however, fired too high, and only one of the 
 men was wounded. Quickly the Whigs turned out and a 
 night encounter ensued, but the attacking party successfully 
 escaped into the neighboring swamp. The loss to the Whigs 
 was Lieutenant Clark killed and three others wounded. Of 
 the Tories, only one was killed. 
 
 On November 17th, while Rutherford was still hemming 
 
 *The brick house was still in existence in 1857, its walls indented 
 by balls, within sight of the town, on the rise of the hill just beyond 
 Brunswick River, on the right of the Fayetteville road leading over 
 Eagles Island from Wilmington (McRee’s Iredell, I. 562). 
 
 fLockwood’s Folly, some ten miles west of Southport, was the 
 scene of a settlement made by a man named Lockwood many years 
 before the permanent settlement of the Cape Fear. But he incurred 
 the enmity of the Indians, and the settlement had to be abandoned. 
 
 I781 
 
 November 
 
 Moore’s 
 
 plantation 
 
 Seven 
 
 Creeks 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 37i 
 
702 
 
 MARTIN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-83 
 
 1781 
 
 Oct. IQ, 1781 
 Surrender of 
 Cornwallis 
 
 Wilmington 
 evacuated, 
 Nov. 18,1781 
 
 The 
 
 rejoicing 
 
 McRee’s 
 Iredell, I, 
 
 563 
 
 in the British garrison, Light Horse Harry Lee* arrived in 
 camp on his way to General Greene, bringing the great news 
 that on October 19th Cornwallis and his entire army had 
 surrendered at Yorktown; and that General Wayne and a 
 considerable number of troops were marching to the south to 
 aid in bringing the war to a close. With joy and gladness 
 the news was proclaimed, and Rutherford drew up his army 
 and peal after peal of musketry resounded through the 
 neighboring country as he heralded the glad tidings in a 
 ‘‘feu de joie.” On the same day came the information that 
 Major Craig was evacuating Wilmington, and Rutherford 
 moved down to Shaw’s, four miles from the town. The fol- 
 lowing morning, November 18th, all the British troops 
 boarded the vessels which were then falling down the river. 
 While they were yet in sight General Rutherford and a part 
 of his troops arrived and took possession. Thus swiftly fol- 
 lowing Cornwallis’s surrender, the last British soldier was 
 expelled from the soil of North Carolina and the dominion 
 of the enemy was over. 
 
 It is impossible to describe the enthusiasm and happiness 
 these events diffused among the Whig inhabitants of the 
 State. It is narrated that when the news that Cornwallis was 
 taken was announced to the congress, an officer of that 
 body fell dead with joy. Throughout the State there was a 
 season of great rejoicing. Even grave and reverend seignors 
 gave a loose rein to hilarity. “One reason why I did not 
 come to Edenton last term, as I promised,” wrote Judge 
 Williams to Iredell, “was that upon the confirmation of the 
 news of the capture of Cornwallis we were all so elated that 
 the time elapsed in frolicking.” In the Cape Fear region, 
 where there had been such a protracted reign of terror, the 
 exaltation of the Whigs must have been unbounded. 
 
 *Early in October General Greene, hoping that after Cornwallis 
 should have been taken Washington would despatch a force to his 
 aid, sent Colonel Lee to Virginia to represent the situation of affairs 
 in South Carolina. Washington assented to the suggestion and pro- 
 posed that the French admiral should convey a detachment under 
 Lafayette to the Cape Fear ; but eventually the admiral found it 
 inconvenient to delay his departure from the coast longer, and the 
 plan was abandoned. General Wayne, however, marched some troops 
 from Virginia to the south and operated in Georgia (Lee’s Memoirs, 
 p. 518). 
 
EXCESSES IN WILMINGTON 
 
 703 
 
 But the distresses of the people of Wilmington were not 
 quite over. They had grave complaints to make of the 
 spoliation of their property at the hands of Rutherford’s 
 militia, who appear to have regarded that the town had been 
 captured and was subject to plunder. The depredations 
 were inexcusable. When requested, however, guards were 
 placed by the general to protect the homes of the inhabi- 
 tants. Such salt as the British had left was seized, and that 
 being insufficient to load all the wagons, an additional supply 
 was taken from the storehouses of the merchants, for that 
 was a commodity of prime necessity, and was greatly 
 needed at the west. When the army returned home, as it 
 arrived at the place where a company was mustered out, the 
 salt was distributed, one bushel to each man as his com- 
 pensation, and it was of more real value than the auditor’s 
 certificates which they subsequently received for their ser- 
 vices. General Rutherford, quiet being restored, marched 
 his army to the interior, having first given orders to Major 
 Graham to take all the dragoons and mounted infantry and 
 effectually disperse such Tories as were still embodied along 
 the South Carolina line. 
 
 While the investment of Wilmington was in progress, 
 Fanning, having received a supply of ammunition, toward 
 the close of October gathered around him a hundred Tories 
 and renewed his operations on Deep River. The Whigs, 
 however, soon embodied and marched against him. On their 
 approach he gave them battle, at first driving them off, 
 but on their returning to the attack he himself retreated, and 
 made good his escape. Fearing utter discomfiture if he 
 maintained a large camp, he then separated his men into 
 small parties, and these bands passed here and there through 
 the Whig settlements, committing many depredations. 
 
 The Assembly at Salem 
 
 The Assembly had adjourned to meet at Salem in Novem- 
 ber, and on the 8th of that month Colonel Martin, the act- 
 ing governor, arrived, bringing with him two companies 
 of soldiers. General Caswell and sixty-three members of 
 the legislature also appeared, but twenty-eight members of 
 the house and ten members of the senate were absent. Two 
 
 1781 
 
 November 
 
 Graham’s 
 
 Graham, 
 
 374 
 
 Fanning re- 
 news opera- 
 tions 
 
704 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-83 
 
 1781 
 
 November 
 
 Clewell’s 
 
 Wachovia, 
 
 158 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 211 
 
 Tories not 
 suppressed 
 
 S R 
 
 xxi i’ 608 
 
 weeks passed in listless inaction. Then on the night of 
 November 24th the alarming news was received that a large 
 body of Tories was approaching with the purpose of seizing 
 the person of Governor Martin. It was a cold November 
 night, rain falling; and all night long the two companies 
 were in anxious expectancy. 
 
 However, no attack was made ; but the peril and the hope- 
 lessness of profiting by longer delay led to an adjournment, 
 and on November 27th, without having transacted any busi- 
 ness, the legislature adjourned to meet again on Jan- 
 uary 25th. 
 
 Deep River was still the scene of great disturbance, for 
 although Fanning had certain intelligence of Craig’s depar- 
 ture, he and his lieutenants continued their depredations and 
 murders, until at length on December 10th Colonel Elijah 
 Isaacs, who had been taken at Camden and was Rutherford’s 
 companion at St. Augustine, “came down from the moun- 
 tains” with a party of three hundred men and established his 
 camp at Coxe’s Mill, in the settlement where the Tory bands 
 had their headquarters. For some weeks he remained there, 
 but although his presence had some effect, he was unable to 
 entirely suppress the roving bands, whose appetite for blood 
 and plunder seemed insatiable. Nor, notwithstanding the 
 departure of Craig’s regulars and the operations of General 
 Rutherford, were the Tories of the lower Cape Fear entirely 
 subdued. In Bladen they still gave trouble. General Marion 
 had made a truce with Colonel Gainey, a South Carolina 
 Tory, in June, 1781, establishing a large truce-ground ad- 
 joining Anson and Bladen, in which the Tories could live in 
 a state of neutrality, not to be interfered with, they under- 
 taking to commit no depredations. Toward the end of 
 January many coming from Gainey’s truce-land did much 
 mischief in Bladen, and Colonel Robeson wrote to Governor 
 Martin that the worst of the Bladen Tories continued to 
 stand out and would not surrender, “and I am of the opinion 
 won’t until they can be beaten or killed.” Further, about 
 a hundred of these irrepressible sympathizers of the British 
 had gone over to the truce-land, and were a menace to that 
 part of North Carolina. Colonel Robeson urged that the 
 State regiment should be stationed on Raft Swamp and 
 
TRIALS FOR TREASON 
 
 Ashpole, as a means of repressing them, but that regiment 
 was not then fully organized, and was not sent. 
 
 Governor Martin’s action 
 
 In order to hasten a restoration of normal conditions, 
 Governor Martin, considering that an end ought to be put 
 to all hostile operations now that there was no longer any 
 British force to contend with, determined to enforce the civil 
 law while offering the olive branch of peace. 
 
 He ordered that special terms of court should be held for 
 the trial of the prisoners in jail, and such other criminals as 
 might be captured ; and on Christmas day he issued a 
 proclamation pardoning all who had taken up arms against 
 the State who should surrender before March ioth, on con- 
 dition that they would enlist in the continental battalions for 
 a term of twelve months ; but such as had been guilty of 
 murder, robbery or housebreaking were excepted from this 
 offer. 
 
 Those inhabitants who had taken sides against their coun- 
 try were regarded by the administration as mere law- 
 breakers and amenable to punishment in the courts. On 
 January 17th a session of the court was begun at Hillsboro. 
 Four culprits were arraigned for high treason, and con- 
 victed ; one of them, Thomas Dark, had figured as a captain 
 in Fanning’s band, and was as enterprising and nearly as 
 dangerous as Fanning himself. From his cruelty to pris- 
 oners, in cutting, hacking and wounding them, he had ac- 
 quired among his followers the name of “young Tarleton.” 
 At that term of the court Colonel Alfred Moore conducted 
 the prosecutions on behalf of the State, and gained great 
 reputation for legal acquirements. At Wilmington court 
 others were tried and convicted ; and at the March term 
 of Salisbury court Samuel Bryan, John Hampton, and 
 Nicholas White were likewise found guilty of high treason 
 and condemned to death. These men were the leaders in 
 the Tory movement in June, 1780, escaping Rutherford and 
 joining Major McArthur with the British dragoons at An- 
 son Court House, then occupied as a British post. The 
 judges in a statement made to the governor said that 
 Bryan and Hampton were generally considered as very 
 
 7 ° 5 
 
 1782 
 
 1782 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 910 
 
 Tories tried 
 and 
 
 convicted 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 
 268, 270 
 
706 
 
 1782 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 15 et seq.\ 
 178, 181 
 
 Burke 
 
 escapes, 
 
 Jan. 16, 1782 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION , 1781-83 
 
 honest men ; and it did not appear to the court that they 
 had on their march through the State committed any unusual 
 violence, there being no proof that they had been guilty of 
 any murder, or house-burning, or even plundering except for 
 the use of the army. Governor Burke at once reprieved the 
 prisoners until May 10th, when the Assembly might deter- 
 mine on the proper course to pursue with regard to them, 
 or they might be exchanged ; and as some of the people about 
 Salisbury were threatening violence against these prisoners, 
 he directed Major Lewis, who was in command there, to be 
 very attentive and prevent any interference with them. 
 
 The return of Governor Burke 
 
 Toward the close of October, Governor Burke, who had 
 been held a close prisoner at Wilmington, was conveyed to 
 Charleston, and was at first confined in a fort on Sullivan’s 
 Island; but on November 6th he was paroled to James 
 Island, then infested by desperate refugees, full of hatred 
 toward those who had expelled them from their homes. 
 They had been accustomed to murder Whigs without com- 
 punction, and Governor Burke was often threatened and 
 considered himself every moment in danger of assassination. 
 At length a party of revengeful Loyalists fired on a small 
 group who were at the governor’s quarters, killing one man 
 on one side and wounding another standing on the other side 
 of him. The next morning the governor wrote to General 
 Leslie portraying the perils of his position and requesting 
 a parole within the American lines, or that he might be re- 
 moved to a place of safety. General Leslie took no notice 
 of this reasonable request. Finding that he was to be sacri- 
 ficed to the rage of the exasperated Tories, whenever his 
 assassination could be effected, and that he was not held as 
 a prisoner of war, Governor Burke determined that he was 
 perfectly released from all obligations to remain on James 
 Island. His situation involved mutual obligations to which 
 General Leslie seemed indifferent. Having resolved to es- 
 cape, he succeeded in doing so on January 16th. He reached 
 General Greene’s headquarters safely, and at once wrote 
 to General Leslie asking to be exchanged, and saying that 
 he would return on parole provided General Leslie would 
 
BURKE RESUMES THE ADMINISTRATION 
 
 707 
 
 pledge himself to treat him not differently from the conti- ^j 82 
 
 nental officers. General Leslie acceded to neither of these 
 propositions. At the end of January the governor there- 
 fore returned to North Carolina. 
 
 On the day fixed for the meeting of the Assembly, Gov- cieweii’s 
 ernor Martin and a number of members arrived at Salem ; i 59 c ° v ‘ a ’ 
 but a quorum did not attend. Five days later, January 30th, 
 while the members were still lingering in hope of additional 
 arrivals, Governor Burke unexpectedly appeared on the 
 scene. At the election in March, Colonel Martin would 
 cease to be the speaker of the senate and therefore it was 
 argued he could not act as governor after that date. This 
 consideration induced Governor Burke to assert his right to 
 resume the administration; and the next day, January 31st, 
 
 Colonel Martin delivered to him all the papers in his pos- 
 session as governor, and gave him all the information possi- 
 ble about public matters. As no quorum appeared, the As- 
 sembly then adjourned. 
 
 He resumes the administration 
 
 Entering promptly on the administration, Governor January 3 m 
 Burke immediately undertook to remedy the great derange- 
 ment of public affairs, and applied himself to the work of 
 establishing peace in the State and making the people secure 
 in their homes. His attention was first given to the condi- 
 tion of supplies and provisions for the army, and to the 
 accounts of those in charge of public property. But he was 
 not unmindful of the Tory bands. On February 5th he di- 
 rected General Butler to send parties into the disaffected 
 settlements, for Fanning was gaining strength and it was 
 feared that he would seize Butler himself and other prin- 
 cipal officers. To form the nucleus of an army Burke di- s r., xvi, 
 rected the state drafts to rendezvous immediately at Hillsboro. 500 
 Indeed he was now all energy and acted with spirit. Having 
 ordered Glaubeck to meet him at Halifax, and Glaubeck not 
 attending, he at once put him under arrest ; and similar ac- 
 tion was taken as to others who were not prompt in observ- r xvj 
 ing his directions. Calling his council together, it was deter- 181, 196, 54° 
 mined that the general plan the governor had in mind at the 
 time of his capture should be now carried into effect, and a 
 
70 8 
 
 1782 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 560-562 ' 
 
 BURKE’S ADMINISTRATION, 17S2 
 
 strong and efficient force should be marched into the dis- 
 affected region and the Tories quieted or expelled from the 
 State. And inasmuch as it was thought that the regulations 
 restricting exportations had worked to the injury of the 
 State, he by proclamation gave permission for the free and 
 unlimited exportation of all commodities, and otherwise 
 sought to re-establish commerce in its natural channels. 
 Some of those who had been convicted of treason by the 
 courts he allowed to be executed, but he pardoned others on 
 condition that they should serve twelve months in the con- 
 tinental service, they being thereafter regarded as citizens 
 of the State. 
 
 Major Bennet Crofton was the senior officer of the state 
 battalion authorized by the last Assembly, among the other 
 officers of that battalion being Captain George Farragut, 
 a native of Minorca.* Governor Burke did not think 
 Major Crofton equal to the command of the expedition 
 which he had in mind, and so selected Major Hogg of the 
 continentals for that duty. Major Crofton, however* refused 
 to abdicate, and although the governor placed him under ar- 
 rest, his disobedience of orders interfered so seriously with 
 the collection of the drafts that the proposed expedition came 
 to naught. 
 
 Fanning’s brutality 
 
 To the proclamation of Governor Martin offering pardon, 
 Fanning made some objections, and proposed other terms, 
 saying that if his terms were not agreed on his sword 
 would be continually unsheathed, as he was determined he 
 would not leave one old offender alive that had injured any 
 of his Majesty’s friends. The general conduct of this re- 
 lentless partisan at this time is well illustrated by some ex- 
 tracts from his diary : “We wounded two of them mortally 
 and several slightly. . . . The day following we pursued them 
 to Cumberland County, and on my way I burned Captain 
 Coxe’s house and his father's. On my return to Little 
 River, . . . fell in with one of Captain Golson’s men who had 
 been very assiduous in assisting the rebels. I killed him . . . 
 And I went with a design of burning Captain Golson’s 
 
 ^Afterward the father of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut. 
 
DAVID FANNING 
 
 709 
 
 house, which I did, and also two others. In my way I fell 
 in with a man, . . . and on observing me that day he at- 
 tempted to escape, but I shot him.” Pending negotiations, 
 however, Fanning remained more quiet ; and eventually in 
 February he and his officers made a proposition for a truce 
 to last at least six months, and not to exceed twelve, similar 
 in terms to the truce granted to Colonel Gainey in South 
 Carolina by Marion the preceding June : the truce-land to 
 be from Cumberland County twenty miles north and south, 
 and thirty east and west, to be kept totally clear of light 
 horse. Every man who had been in arms in bebalf of the 
 British Government was to have a right to withdraw him- 
 self into that district, and to have free trade with any port, 
 but not to carry arms. 
 
 After making his proposition for a truce, for a time Fan- 
 ning remained passive ; but having heard of the execution of 
 some of his men under the sentence of the court, he could 
 control himself no longer, and wrote to the governor : ‘‘I 
 understand that you have hung three of my men, and have a 
 captain and six men under sentence. If the effusion of blood 
 is not stopped and the lives of these men saved, I will retal- 
 iate, blood for blood, and tenfold for one ; and there shall 
 never an officer or private of the rebel party escape that falls 
 into my hands hereafter, but they shall suffer the pain and 
 punishment of instant death. If my request is not granted 
 by March 8th, I shall fall upon the severest and most inhu- 
 man terms imaginable.” March 8th came and his proposi- 
 tion for a truce-ground had not been agreed to ; and, more- 
 over, he had heard that Colonel Balfour, of Randolph 
 County, had said that there should be no “resting place for 
 a Tory’s foot on the face of the earth.” This excited his ire, 
 and, accepting the challenge, he wreaked a fearful vengeance. 
 Having equipped a party, he set out for Balfour’s plantation. 
 Margaret Balfour, the colonel’s sister, has preserved an ac- 
 count of that affair: “On March 10 th,” she wrote, “about 
 twenty-five armed ruffians came to the house with the inten- 
 tion to kill my brother. Tibbie and I endeavored to prevent 
 them, but it was all in vain. The wretches cut and bruised 
 us both a great deal, and dragged us from the dear man. 
 Then before our eyes the worthless, base, horrible Fan- 
 
 1782 
 
 S. R., 
 XXII, 213 
 
 Negotia- 
 tions with 
 Fanning, 
 Feb., 1782 
 
 Balfour 
 
 killed, 
 
 Mar. 10, 1782 
 
 Biog. Hist. 
 N. C., II, 18 
 
710 
 
 BURKE'S ADMINISTRATION, 17S2 
 
 1782 
 
 March 
 
 ning shot a bullet into his head, which soon put a period to 
 the life of the best of men and most affectionate and duti- 
 
 Fanning’s 
 
 butcheries 
 
 ful husband, father, son and brother. The sight was so 
 shocking that it is impossible for tongue to express any- 
 thing like our feelings ; but the barbarians, not in the least 
 touched by our anguish, drove us out of the house, and took 
 everything they could carry off, except the negroes, who 
 happened to be all from home at the time.” Fanning, de- 
 tailing the adventures of that raid, writes in his diary : ‘‘We 
 also wounded another of his men. We then proceeded to 
 their colonel’s (Collier), belonging to the said county of 
 Randolph. On our way we burned several rebels’ houses, 
 and catched several prisoners. ... It was late before we got 
 to Collier’s. He made his escape, having received three balls 
 through his shirt. But I took care to destroy the whole of 
 his plantation. I then . . . came to one Captain John Bryan’s. 
 ... I told him that if he would come out of the house, I 
 would give him parole, which he refused. . . . With that I 
 immediately ordered the house to be set on fire. ... As soon 
 as he saw the flames increasing, he called out to me, and 
 desired me to spare his house for his wife’s and children’s 
 sake, and he would walk out with his arms in his hands. 
 I immediately answered him that if he walked out his house 
 should be saved for his wife and children. When he came 
 out he said, ‘Here, damn you, here I am.’ With that he re- 
 ceived two balls through his body. He came out with his 
 gun cocked and his sword at the same time. ... I proceeded 
 on to one Major Dugin’s house, and destroyed all his prop- 
 erty, and all the rebel officers’ property for a distance of 
 forty miles.” 
 
 Such were some of the scenes of the barbarous warfare, 
 waged even after the surrender of Cornwallis, in the Deep 
 River region. 
 
 1782 
 
 April 
 
 Progress of events 
 
 A new election occurred in March, and the Assembly con- 
 vened at Hillsboro on April 13th. Conditions had greatly 
 changed. The surrender of Cornwallis, the successes of 
 Greene, and the departure of Craig, put a new aspect on the 
 face of affairs. The end of the long struggle was now in 
 
EFFORTS FOR PEACE 
 
 sight. Indeed, although then unknown in America, Parlia- 
 ment had declared for peace. On February 27, 1782, it was 
 moved and carried in the British House of Commons that 
 the war ought to cease. The king, however, was not of that 
 mind. He was still eager to press hostilities notwithstand- 
 ing the apparent hopelessness of victory, and his answer to 
 the address of the House was so unsatisfactory that on 
 March 4th that body solemnly resolved that “it would con- 
 sider as enemies to the king and to the country all who 
 should advise a further prosecution of the war.” This lan- 
 guage could not be misunderstood. Sullenly and reluctantly 
 George III yielded when he could contest no further. Lord 
 North resigned, the ministry was changed, and Rocking- 
 ham came into power on the principles of a restoration of 
 peace. Unhappily he soon died, but his policy had prevailed, 
 and now it was only a matter of negotiation. His atti- 
 tude toward the colonies struggling for independence had 
 been so humane and based on such high principles, that three 
 years after his death North Carolina erected a memorial in 
 his honor by creating a new county and bestowing upon it 
 his name. 
 
 But while it seemed that the victory had been won, North 
 Carolina did not abate her efforts to maintain an army in the 
 field so long as any British troops remained on the borders 
 of the State. 
 
 Indeed both General Washington and the Continental 
 Congress apprehended from information received from Eu- 
 rope that King George was seeking to form foreign alliances, 
 and would again prosecute an active campaign ; and great 
 pressure was made on the State to fill up her continental bat- 
 talions. Moreover, General Greene gave alarming intelli- 
 gence that a force consisting of four vessels was preparing 
 in Charleston to plunder and destroy the town of Beaufort, 
 where there was a large quantity of public and private 
 stores, and then perhaps intending to enter the sound and 
 take New Bern and Edenton. Apprehensions of this in- 
 vasion led to renewed activity ; and Governor Burke ordered 
 General Caswell and General Jones each to raise five hun- 
 dred men and protect the coast. 
 
 7 11 
 
 1782 
 
 Parliament 
 constrains 
 the king 
 
 Rocking- 
 
 ham 
 
 honored in 
 
 North 
 
 Carolina 
 
 Apprehen- 
 
 sions 
 
712 
 
 BURKE'S ADMINISTRATION, 1782 
 
 1782 
 
 March 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 553 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 
 558 
 
 Fanning 
 departs, 
 May, 1782 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 534 
 
 Besides, in March the Tories to the southward gave signs 
 of renewed hostility. They embodied to the number of five 
 hundred, and were very bold. They threatened to march on 
 Wilmington, and it was supposed that their purpose was to 
 plunder the inhabitants of that town. The Whigs quickly 
 embodied, and Colonel Kenan hastened with the Duplin 
 militia to the aid of Colonel Robeson, and together they con- 
 fronted the hostile malcontents. It developed, however, 
 that the object of the Tories was merely to possess them- 
 selves of some vessels in the river and make their escape 
 from the country. Defeated in their purpose, they retired to 
 the truce-ground in South Carolina, and this was the last of 
 their formidable demonstrations in that quarter. 
 
 Further in the interior Fanning continued his operations, 
 and was irrepressible. Indeed his audacity was such a men- 
 ace that Governor Burke deemed it necessary to have a party 
 of both horse and foot at Hillsboro to secure the safety of 
 the Assembly when it should meet. When the Assembly 
 convened, it was therefore protected by a military force un- 
 der the command of Major McCauley. Quietude reigned 
 until April 30th, when a report gained credence that the fear- 
 ful Fanning was approaching, and the members and the gov- 
 ernor thought themselves in danger of being carried off into 
 captivity. In the emergency the members took arms and 
 bravely paraded ; but happily the alarm was without founda- 
 tion, and the session of the Assembly was not interrupted by 
 any untoward event. Fanning’s proposition for a truce 
 land was rejected by the Assembly, and in May he deter- 
 mined to abandon the contest and leave the State. He mar- 
 ried a girl on Deep River, whose father had been useful to 
 him when in distress, and found a refuge in the truce land 
 in South Carolina.* 
 
 As the election for governor was coming on, Colonel Mar- 
 tin began to court popularity with great avidity. Burke had 
 gained popular favor the preceding year by the stand he had 
 taken against the excesses of forage masters and those im- 
 
 *In June this redoubtable partisan leader, whose boldness, enter- 
 prise and resolution, had he been on the patriot side, would have 
 ranked him high in American annals, made his way to Charleston, 
 and later he passed some time in Florida, but eventually settled in 
 Nova Scotia, where he lived to a green old age. 
 
MARTIN DEFEATS BURKE 
 
 713 
 
 pressing and seizing provisions for the army ; now Martin 
 sought popularity by a severe attitude toward disaffected 
 persons. Governor Burke apparently desired a re-election. 
 Major McCauley was a -friend of the governor’s, and on 
 Sunday morning, April 14th, he visited the different rooms 
 occupied by the members of the Assembly, and gathered 
 from their conversation their views about the approaching 
 election. He reported to the governor that Samuel Johns- 
 ton. William Sharpe, and Colonel Martin, as well as him- 
 self, were much talked of ; but that he was supposed to be 
 still under parole, and that the way he had left Charleston 
 was much debated. However, he said : “Your friends are 
 very steadfast, and with a little of your assistance when a 
 house is made I doubt not but to have success.” 
 
 But Burke saw that sentiment was against him. He 
 ceased his efforts to secure the election, and when the As- 
 sembly was organized, in an elaborate address he referred 
 to his financial embarrassment and the necessity he was 
 under of devoting his attention exclusively to his private 
 affairs. However, doubtless with the hope of softening the 
 adverse opinion that prevailed because of his breach of his 
 parole of honor, he laid before the Assembly all the corre- 
 spondence relative to his flight from Charleston. Although 
 some steadfast friends still adhered to him, he was not a 
 candidate for the office. Samuel Johnston, William Sharpe, 
 and John Williams were among those voted for, but Colonel 
 Alexander Martin, who had so recently been the acting gov- 
 ernor, won the prize. 
 
 On being elected governor, Colonel Martin on April 22d 
 made a spirited address to the Assembly, declaring that 
 “British pride, long supported by riches and power, late 
 drunk with the idea of conquest of these states, with reluc- 
 tance at last must bend to superior force.” But he called 
 on the Assembly to maintain the army, and be prepared for 
 any emergency. He recommended mercy to those citizens 
 who having been in revolt had surrendered themselves to 
 the justice of the State ; and in particular he said : “The edu- 
 cation of your youth demands your serious attention ; savage 
 manners are ever attendant on ignorance, which, without 
 correction in time, will sap the foundation of civil govern- 
 
 1782 
 
 April 
 
 Burke 
 desires a 
 re-election 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 
 593 
 
 Alexander 
 
 Martin 
 
 chosen 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 295-297 
 
714 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-83 
 
 1782 
 
 April 
 
 Courts of 
 Equity 
 
 S R 
 
 XXIV, 441 
 
 S R 
 
 XXIV, 474 
 
 The 
 
 Moravians 
 
 ment. Those states who want knowledge and wisdom in 
 their councils have generally fallen a prey to their wiser 
 neighbors, or require their guardianship. This will never 
 be our fate while those seminaries of learning now estab- 
 lished be further supported by your authority, and others 
 created when they are wanting.” Although not the father 
 of the university, he broke ground in favor of education 
 before the echoes of the war had even subsided. 
 
 New legislation 
 
 The Assembly now proposed to carry into effect its pur- 
 pose of establishing a permanent seat of government near 
 the centre of the State, and resolved that thereafter the legis- 
 lature should always hold its sessions at Hillsboro ; but a 
 year later this action was annulled. The paLce at New 
 Bern was directed to be repaired, rented out, or sold. 
 
 When the superior courts were established in 1777, equity 
 jurisdiction was denied to the judges on the ground that all 
 issues of fact should be tried by a jury. Session after ses- 
 sion the lawyers combated this view and urged that the 
 judges should have the powers of a chancellor, and now at 
 the end of the war this change was made, and the title of 
 the courts became “Superior Courts of Law and Equity.” 
 A new judicial district was created, embracing Washington 
 and Sullivan counties across the mountains, and Lincoln, 
 Burke, and Wilkes on the eastern side ; and while terms of 
 court were to be held at Morganton, two sessions a year 
 were directed to be held west of the mountains. 
 
 Because of the impoverished condition of the people in 
 the Wilmington district, who had suffered so much from the 
 depredations of the Loyalists, those inhabitants of that sec- 
 tion who should be excused by the county commissioners 
 were exempt from the payment of taxes ; and the residents of 
 Bladen were required under penalty of fine to carry with 
 them their arms and six rounds of ammunition whenever 
 they attended courts or elections or any public meeting, for 
 the Tories were not yet entirely subdued in that region. 
 
 The Moravians had been fearful that their lands would be 
 regarded as subject to the confiscation acts. In 1778 they 
 applied for some alteration in the form of the oath of 
 
READJUSTMENT 
 
 715 
 
 allegiance, and that they might on the payment of the regu- 
 lar tax be exempt from military service. At first their re- 
 quest was not favorably considered, and without some relief, 
 under the orders of the court of Surry County, they would 
 have been compelled to abandon their homes in sixty days 
 should they further delay taking the prescribed oath. 
 Mr. Hooper befriended them when all seemed dark in the 
 Assembly, and satisfactory legislation was obtained. Still 
 doubts were entertained lest their lands were subject to the 
 confiscation act, and at this session all uncertainties were 
 finally removed. 
 
 1782 
 
 April, 1782 
 
 The depreciation of the currency 
 
 The public accounts being in great confusion, the office of 
 Comptroller of Accounts was created, and Richard Caswell 
 undertook its duties. The depreciation of currency was such 
 that while in December, 1778, the decline in value was only / 
 
 5 per cent., a year later it was 30 per cent. During the fol- 
 lowing year it went by leaps and bounds, until in December, 
 
 1780, it fell 200 per cent., and the next December its value 
 had declined 725 per cent. No greater depreciation than 
 800 per cent, was, however, recognized by the Assembly. 
 
 The value of a Spanish milled dollar was fixed at 8 shillings, 
 making a shilling in North Carolina 12^4 cts. A tax was s.^m 
 laid by the Assembly of one penny on the pound of value 43 8, 485 
 of all property embracing land and negroes ; but two-thirds 
 of this tax could be paid in commodities. Quakers and other 
 non-combatants were, however, subjected, as they had been 
 during the war, to a threefold taxation. Inasmuch as there 
 were many worthy citizens of the State still confined on 
 prison ships and suffering the most cruel hardships, the 
 legislature directed the governor to send Samuel Bryan and 
 others under sentence of death to be exchanged for militia exchanged 
 officers of similar rank, and that he should cause a sufficient 
 number of Tories to be sent on to General Greene’s camp 
 to be exchanged for the citizens held by the British, send- 
 ing also the wives and families of the Tories; and the gov- 
 ernor was directed to continue to do this from time to time. 
 
 And if General Leslie would not carry out in good faith 
 
 May, 1782 
 
 Tories 
 
7*6 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-83 
 
 1782 
 
 XXIV, 424 
 
 1782 
 
 S. R.. 
 
 XXIV, 
 
 419-422 
 
 The Indians 
 
 renew 
 
 hostilities 
 
 this proposition, the treason laws of the State were to be 
 rigidly enforced. 
 
 The Assembly addressed itself to giving effect to its con- 
 fiscation acts, and appointed commissioners to sell the prop- 
 erty of those who had adhered to the enemies of the State. 
 Provision, however, was made for unfortunate families, and 
 where a wife or widow or children of a Tory remained in 
 the State, the county courts were directed to set aside so 
 much property, both real and personal, as would provide 
 them adequate support. 
 
 The Continental Line 
 
 On March 30th a board of officers of the North Carolina 
 line had held a meeting to arrange the continental officers of 
 the State to command the four continental battalions which 
 had been provided for. Thomas Clark was assigned to com- 
 mand the First Battalion ; Colonel John Patten the Second ; 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Selby Harney the Third, and Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Archibald Lytle the Fourth. There were ninety- 
 six officers embraced in this arrangement. Some, Colonel 
 James Armstrong, Colonel James Thackston, and Captain 
 Francis Childs, were allowed to retire on half pay. The 
 Assembly approved of this arrangement, and the officers 
 took the commands assigned them. 
 
 While under the exchange many officers as well as men 
 were returned to duty, yet as late as November Colonel 
 Clark, Major Nelson, six captains and eight lieutenants of 
 the North Carolina line were still unexchanged, although 
 paroled. 
 
 The Assembly was not indifferent to the hardships endured 
 by the soldiers, and took measures for their relief ; while in 
 order to manifest its appreciation of their patriotic service, 
 it granted to every soldier who should continue in the ranks 
 until the end of the war 640 acres of land, and to every 
 officer a larger quantity according to his rank, a colonel re- 
 ceiving 7200 acres; a brigadier, 12,000 acres, while to Gen- 
 eral Greene was given 25,000 acres. This land was set aside 
 for the soldiers in the wilds beyond the mountains, now in 
 the State of Tennessee. 
 
 The Indians had long been quiet, and General Greene 
 
CHEROICEES AND TORIES 
 
 717 
 
 on taking command of the Southern army had made a par- 
 ticular treaty with them to preserve their neutrality, but now, 
 although the British cause no longer wore a hopeful out- 
 look, they were suddenly inflamed to renew hostilities. They 
 were active in Georgia and in South Carolina, and against 
 the inhabitants of Washington County, where, under the di- 
 rection of the legislature, lands intended for the soldiers were 
 to be located, in July Martin Armstrong wrote: “The In- 
 dians are very troublesome in this side of our new county.” 
 Colonel Crawford with four hundred and eighty men was 
 totally defeated by them, aided by the British Tories. 
 
 A year later, in August, 1783, Governor Martin, under- 
 standing that there were still some Cherokee prisoners held 
 in Rutherford and Lincoln counties, directed General Mc- 
 Dowell to have them given up to Colonel Joseph Martin, in 
 command across the mountains, that he might send them to 
 the Indian nation in exchange for the white prisoners the 
 Indians held. 
 
 Nor were the Tories pacified: even in October they made 
 a demonstration in Bladen. When the judges issued war- 
 rants against some rioters in that county they threatened to 
 disturb the court, and Governor Martin felt that the menace 
 was so great as to require General Lillington to protect the 
 court with his militia. 
 
 After the battle of Eutaw, on September 8th, the British 
 commander, Colonel Stuart, took post at Monk’s Corner, and 
 Greene on the high hills of the Santee. Lord Rawdon, having 
 previously sailed for Europe, General Leslie, then serving in 
 Virginia, was appointed by Cornwallis to command in the 
 Carolinas, and he soon made his headquarters at Charleston. 
 Although there were some slight conflicts, a period of inac- 
 tivity set in between the contending armies. Greene took 
 post at Camp Round O, on the Edisto, about forty miles 
 from Charleston, hemming the British in to the coast. In the 
 spring of 1782 General Leslie proposed a cessation of hos- 
 tilities, which, however, was not agreed to. Not supplied 
 with provisions from abroad, Leslie was forced, in order to 
 relieve the distress of his troops, to forage on the country as 
 far as he could make incursions, but his field of operations 
 was so restricted that only an insufficient supply could be ob- 
 
 1782 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 
 627 
 
 General 
 Leslie 
 remains at 
 Charleston 
 1782 
 
7x8 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-83 
 
 1782 
 
 The 
 
 deplorable 
 condition of 
 the army 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 518, 634, 645, 
 687 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 7°3 
 
 tained. His troops suffered severely, and so did those in 
 the Whig camp. 
 
 Indeed, the condition of the army in South Carolina was 
 deplorable. No clothing or provisions could be obtained 
 from Virginia or Maryland, while South Carolina was ut- 
 terly unable to supply their necessities. North Carolina was 
 their only resource. Colonel Dixon reported to General 
 Sumner in February that "some of our officers are so bare 
 of clothes that they cannot mount guard or keep company 
 with decency.” On May 15th Colonel Murfree wrote that 
 the men were almost naked, and a great many were returned 
 not fit for duty for want of clothes. Officers felt compelled 
 to resign because they could get no pay and could not live. 
 The legislature having taken steps to keep the ranks of 
 the battalions filled, all during the year drafts were being 
 collected and sent forward. General Greene had urgently 
 requested that at least three thousand head of cattle should 
 be sent to camp, together with some rum and salt, for the 
 army was in great distress for the want of these neces- 
 saries. And in August Governor Martin wrote to General 
 Bryan, the superintendent-commissary for the New Bern 
 district, that General Greene is still in great distress for beef. 
 “Must General Greene,” said he, “retreat before a conquered 
 and despairing enemy, abandon all his conquest, give up 
 South Carolina for the want of food, and return to this 
 State ? . . . Rather than he should be compelled to this alter- 
 native, which would disgrace the State to eternity, I would 
 through all opposition drive to him everything in the shape 
 of a cow ot steer” to be found in North Carolina. Truly, 
 the situation of the army at that period was most distressing ; 
 not merely were the troops ragged and without decent cloth- 
 ing, but subsistence was scarce, and their deprivations exces- 
 sive and heartrending. 
 
 All during the summer the opposing forces in South 
 Carolina watched each other, waiting for some development. 
 At length, in August, General Leslie announced in general 
 orders his intention of evacuating Charleston. To stop the 
 further effusion of blood, he addressed General Greene, ask- 
 ing permission to purchase from the country such supplies as 
 might be furnished him until he should be ready to sail. As 
 
NORTH CAROLINA’S QUOTA 
 
 719 
 
 desirable as this practical suspension of hostilities was for 
 the advantage of the naked and destitute American soldiers, 
 General Greene felt constrained to refuse the accommodation. 
 How deplorable was the situation of the army was portrayed 
 by General Greene in a report: “For upward of two months 
 more than one-third of our army was naked, with nothing 
 but a breech-cloth about them, and never came out of their 
 tents. . . . Our condition was little better in the articles of 
 provision.” In September the preparations for evacuation 
 were apparent ; but autumn passed without action, and it was 
 not until December 14th that the British, having embarked, 
 took their departure. General Greene with his continentals 
 at once occupied the city, which the next day was restored 
 to the civil authorities. 
 
 The number of troops furnished by North Carolina 
 
 It is impossible to ascertain with entire accuracy the num- 
 ber of North Carolinians who were in the field during the 
 war for independence. There w T ere originally six battalions 
 of continentals of 500 men each, and later the battalions of 
 Colonel Hogun, of Williams, and Sheppard marched to the 
 north,, so that 4500 continentals might be computed for 
 these. There was Vance’s artillery company and Dickinson 
 and Ashe’s cavalry, and Phifer’s cavalry, numbering about 
 400. In the spring of 1779 there was a battalion of conti- 
 nentals with Lincoln and in the fall General Sumner had a 
 brigade of new continentals in South Carolina, altogether 
 1500. All these disappeared on the surrender of Lincoln. 
 Major Eaton’s battalion in the early summer of 1781 num- 
 bered about 400 ; Sumner’s brigade at Eutaw Springs, 1000. 
 The returns of this brigade in April, 1782, showed 1000 on 
 the roll. The Assembly of April, 1782, directed that every 
 thirtieth man in the State should be drafted for eighteen 
 months to fill up this brigade, and these drafts were being 
 sent forward in May and later. They were calculated to 
 raise 2000 men, and even in September selections from the 
 militia were being made to complete these drafts, so that 
 probably 1000 new men became continentals after the 
 summer of 1782. These figures aggregate 8800 continen- 
 tals. On the reorganization, in 1781, the new battalions 
 
 1782 
 
 Lee’s 
 
 Memoirs, 
 
 572 
 
 Charleston 
 
 evacuated 
 
 Dec. 14, 
 1782 
 
720 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-83 
 
 were numbered the First, Second, Third, and Fourth, the 
 former ones having been obliterated. 
 
 There were originally 3000 six-months’ minute men ; 500 
 militia marched in the “Snow campaign”; 1500 with Ruther- 
 ford against the Cherokees. Colonel Williams had 300 with 
 the Virginia troops at the same time. There were probably 
 3000 militia besides minute men and continentals on the 
 Cape Fear in the Moore’s Creek campaign, and in May, 
 when the British fleet was in the harbor ; for it is stated 
 that the number of troops in arms at that time was 9400. 
 In the fall of 1776 General Allen Jones’s brigade was in 
 South Carolina, numbering, say, 600. General Rutherford 
 carried 700 and Ashe 2000 to the aid of General Lincoln ; 
 to take their place, Butler carried 700 to Lincoln in June. 
 Early in 1780 Lillington carried, say, 800 to Charleston, 
 where Colonel Lytle already had a detachment of two regi- 
 ments, numbering perhaps 400. A thousand North Carolina 
 militia were surrendered by Lincoln. General William Cas- 
 well marched to the relief of Charleston with 800. At Cam- 
 den, under Richard Caswell, there were 1600. In June General 
 Rutherford had his brigade of, say, 800 and Davie, say, 200. 
 The First Brigade commanded by Sumner, three regiments, 
 800; Butler’s brigade, assigned to Sumner, 800; Harrington, 
 450 ; the North Carolina detachments at King’s Mountain, 
 1000; General Gregory, in defence of the Albemarle section, 
 600 ; with Morgan at Cowpens, 300 ; Davidson’s brigade, 
 after his death commanded by Pickens, 700; Lillington, 
 near Wilmington, 600 ; Eaton’s brigade and Butler’s, at Guil- 
 ford Court House, 1600; Colonel Kenan, 400; General Cas- 
 well, 150; General Lillington, in August, 600; Colonel Haw- 
 kins’s cavalry, 150; Wade, Brown, Robeson, 800; Malmedy, 
 at Eutaw Springs, 600 ; Rutherford, Butler, Smith, and 
 Graham, in October, 1200; Colonel Isaacs, 300; State troops, 
 500 ; sailors and companies stationed at the forts on the 
 coast, 600. These aggregate 27,800. Certainly there were 
 many duplications; how many is a mere matter of conjec- 
 ture. It is to be remembered that the inhabitants of the 
 State were divided into militia companies, and these com- 
 panies into five classes, and when a draft of militia was made 
 for three months, the regular term, one of these classes only 
 
NORTH CAROLINA'S QUOTA 
 
 721 
 
 was embraced in the draft, until all the five drafts, being all 
 the militia, had been called out into service, so that the error 
 of duplication is largely minimized. Indeed, first and 
 last it would seem that every man, not a Tory, in the 
 State capable of bearing arms was at one time or another 
 called into active service, although for only one tour of duty. 
 
 It has been computed that there were 22,000 different names 
 on the muster rolls of the North Carolina troops. Prob- 
 ably that is a correct statement. Were there no duplica- 
 tions the number would be 36,600. 
 
 Except in the territory where the Highlanders and the Regu- 
 lators resided, and in Tryon County, there was but little dis- 
 affection. In Bladen fifteen companies of the militia out of 
 eighteen were inclined to the British ; in Cumberland and 
 Anson, at least one-half of the people were disaffected, and 
 similarly in the Deep River country. Elsewhere the propor- 
 tion was not near so great. 
 
 On January 29, 1783, Captain Eve brought the ship t he capture 
 Dawes, bound from Jamaica to New York, which was still Montane 
 held by the British, into Wilmington. Lord Charles Mon- ^ 41 R '’ XVI ’ 
 tague, lieutenant-colonel of a British regiment, Captain Mon- 
 tague, and four or five other British officers had taken pas- 
 sage for New York. When well at sea, Captain Eve in- 
 formed these officers that they must consider themselves his 
 prisoners, and he brought them into the Cape Fear and de- 
 livered them to General Lillington. It was at once reported 
 to Governor Martin that the regiment raised for Lord 
 Charles Montague was chiefly composed of captive conti- 
 nentals taken at Charleston, who were compelled to enlist 
 into the British service, under Montague’s own direction, on 
 the pain of severe penalties. For this conduct Governor 
 Martin thought that Montague should suffer some punish- 
 ment. The other officers were paroled as prisoners, but al- 
 lowed to go abroad, while his Lordship was paroled only to 
 North Carolina. There was some delay in communicating 
 these circumstances to General Greene, and before he was 
 informed of Governor Martin’s purpose to deal with his 
 Lordship differently from other prisoners, General Greene 
 paroled him with permission to go to New York. On in- 
 quiry General Greene found that Lord Charles did enlist 
 
722 
 
 MARTIN’S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-83 
 
 American soldiers into the British service, but it was said 
 that it was by the voluntary act of the prisoners themselves. 
 The punishment in contemplation by the North Carolina au- 
 thorities was thus defeated, as the parole by General Greene 
 could not be annulled. 
 
 The condition in 1783 
 
 The eight years that had elapsed since the first provincial 
 convention assembled in August, 1774, had brought 
 many changes. Harvey had died while the colonists were 
 just entering on the struggle to maintain their rights as Brit- 
 ish subjects, and year by year the leaders who had set in 
 motion the ball of revolution mourned the loss of some of 
 their number. James Moore, Francis Nash, James Hogun, 
 Harnett, Hewes, Buncombe, Davidson, John Ashe, Gideon 
 Lamb and many of their associates had perished without be- 
 holding the glorious consummation of their patriotic desires 
 and unselfish sacrifices. It is to be observed that among the 
 North Carolinians who had enrolled themselves under the 
 banner of the American cause there was not a single deser- 
 tion during the whole course of the conflict. The contest 
 had been doubtful. It brought many vicissitudes and much 
 suffering. The state as well as the continental currency had 
 ceased to have value. Many families had been utterly im- 
 poverished. Misery and desolation were diffused through 
 innumerable households. Civil war and carnage had raged 
 from Surry to Brunswick. Murder and pillage had stalked 
 through a large section of the State, and families expelled 
 from their homes had sought asylums in distant parts, and 
 were too impoverished to return. Many mothers and chil- 
 dren were bereft of their last support, their sacrifices in the 
 cause of independence being irreparable. In the desolated 
 region of the Cape Fear even the wealthiest of the patriots 
 were ruined by the ravages of the war. They had cheer- 
 fully laid their all on the altar of their country. Hard had 
 been the conflict, but in the darkest hours the brave hearts 
 of the North Carolina patriots became still more courageous, 
 and in their adversity they bore their sufferings with resolu- 
 tion and fortitude. At length the storm-clouds passed 
 away, the sky was no longer obscured, and hope gave 
 
PEACE 
 
 723 
 
 place to assurance. The ardent longing became a joyful 
 realization. 
 
 On September 21, 1782, Lord Shelburne being then at 
 the head of the administration, the King of Great Britain 
 acknowledged the independence of the American States, and 
 authorized Oswald, the British commissioner at Paris, to 
 make a treaty of peace, which, however, was not to be opera- 
 tive until agreed to by France also. On November 30, 1782, 
 preliminary articles were drawn up requiring a cessation 
 of hostilities, and on January 20th France gave her assent. 
 The war was over. Independence had been won. The long 
 and arduous struggle had closed, and everywhere, in the 
 household of every patriot, there was great rejoicing. But 
 in the bosoms of many there burned a strong resentment 
 against the detested Tories. 
 
 At the next session of the Assembly Governor Martin in 
 his opening address said : “With impatience I hasten to com- 
 municate the most important intelligence that has yet ar- 
 rived in the American Continent,” the acknowledgment by 
 Great Britain of the independence of the American States 
 and the appointment of commissioners to conclude a treaty 
 of peace, which was signed on January 20th. He continued : 
 “Nothing now remains but to enjoy the fruits of uninter- 
 rupted constitutional freedom, the more sweet and precious 
 as the tree was planted by Virtue, raised by Toil and nur- 
 tured by the Blood of Heroes. To you, gentlemen, the repre- 
 sentatives of this free, sovereign, and independent State, be- 
 longs the task, that in sheathing the sword, you soften the 
 horrors and repair those ravages which war has made, with 
 a skilful hand, and thereby heal the wounds of your bleeding 
 country.” He recommended an act of pardon and oblivion, 
 with some exceptions, and said : “Let the laws henceforth 
 be our sovereign ; when stamped with prudence and wis- 
 dom, let them be riveted and held sacred next to those of 
 Deity. . . . Happy will be the people, and happy the ad- 
 ministration when all concerned . . . contribute to this 
 great end.” 
 
 Governor Martin’s re-election was strenuously contested 
 by Governor Richard Caswell, but without avail, Martin’s 
 majority being 17. There were those who never forgave 
 
 1783 
 
 s. R., XVI, 
 752 
 
 Governor 
 Martin’s 
 address, 
 April 18, 
 
 1783 
 
 Preliminary 
 
 Treaty, 
 
 Jan. 20, 1783 
 
 S. R , XIX, 
 240 
 
724 
 
 MARTIN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1781-83 
 
 1783 
 
 April 
 
 The 
 
 sovereign 
 
 State 
 
 S. R., XVI, 
 725 
 
 Definitive 
 Treaty, 
 Sept., 1783 
 
 Caswell for withdrawing from the service of the State in 
 the dark hours after the battle of Camden, although he con- 
 tinued to wield a great influence, and later again enjoyed 
 the gratification of directing the affairs of the common- 
 wealth. 
 
 Although the last British soldier had departed from the 
 southern states, General Greene continued to hold the rem- 
 nant of his army together at Charleston. The regiments, 
 however, constantly grew smaller by the expirations of en- 
 listments. By January 5, 1783, all the North Carolina 
 battalions except one had been sent home on furlough ; 
 and finally on April 23d Greene was instructed to furlough 
 his troops, and the last of the North Carolina continentals, 
 relieved from further service, returned to their homes. 
 
 After much delay, in September, 1783, the Definitive 
 Treaty of Peace was signed. By it Great Britain formally 
 acknowledged the United States, naming North Carolina and 
 each of her sister States separately and particularly, to be 
 “free, sovereign, and independent States,” and relinquished 
 all claims to any right in them. And thus North Carolina 
 entered on her career as a separate, distinct, and sovereign 
 State. 
 

 
 
Date Due 
 
 L. B. Cat. No. I 137 
 
c 6 A824»<- cop. 5 116185 
 
 N*l'- 1 
 
 S ' ■ *