F 
 
 257 
 
 NOVEMBER, 1903 
 
 No. I 
 
 THE 
 
 North Carolina Booklet 
 
 GREAT EVENTS IN 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA HISTORY 
 
 WAS ALAMANCE THE FIRST 
 BATTLE OF THE REVOLUTION? 
 
 BY 
 
 Mrs. L. a. McCORKLE. 
 
 PRICE, 10 CENTS 
 
4^ '''^ 
 
 mj 3^00 s 
 
 Book__^A3__ 
 
VOL. Ill NOVEMBER., 1903. No. ? 
 
 THE 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET 
 
 'CAROLINA! CAROLINA! HEAVEN'S BLESSINGS ATTEND HER! 
 WHILE WE LIVE WE WILL CHERISH, PROTECT AND DEFEND HER.' 
 
 RALEIGH 
 
 E. M. UzzELL & Co., Printers and Binders 
 
 1903 
 
p.. 
 
 
 OFFICERS OF THE NORTH CAROLINA SOCIETY DAUGHTERS 
 OF THE REVOLUTION, 1903: 
 
 REGENT : 
 
 MRS. THOMAS K. BRUNER. 
 
 VICE-REGENT: 
 
 MRS. WALTER CLARK. 
 
 HONORARY REGENTS: 
 
 MRS. SPIER WHITAKER, 
 
 (Nee Fanny DeBerniere Hooper), 
 
 MRS. D. H. HILL, Sr. 
 
 SECRETARY : 
 
 MRS. E. E. MOFFITT. 
 
 TREASURER I 
 
 MRS. FRANK SHERWOOD. 
 
 REGISTRAR : 
 
 MRS. ED. CHAMBERS SMITH. 
 
 Founder of the North Carolina Society and Regent 1896-1902; 
 MRS. SPIER WHITAKER. 
 
 Regent 1902: 
 MRS. D. H. HILL, Sr. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The object of the North CAROLiisrA Booklet is to erect 
 a suitable memorial to the patriotic women who composed 
 the ^'Edenton Tea Party." 
 
 These stout-hearted women are every way worthy of admi- 
 ration. On October 25, 1774, seven months before the defi- 
 ant farmers of Mecklenburg had been aroused to the point of 
 signing their Declaration of Independence, nearly twenty 
 months before the declaration made by the gentlemen com- 
 posing the Vestry of St. Paul's Church, Edenton, nearly 
 two years before Jefferson penned the immortal National 
 Declaration, these daring women solemnly subscribed to a 
 document affirming that they would use no article taxed by 
 England. Their example fostered in the whole State a deter- 
 mination to die, or to be free. 
 
 In beginning this new series, the Daughters of the Revo- 
 lution desire to express their most cordial thanks to the for- 
 mer competent and untiringly faithful Editors, and to ask 
 for the new management the hearty support of all who are 
 interested in the brave deeds, high thought, and lofty lives 
 of the North Carolina of the olden days. 
 
 Mrs. D. H. Hill. 
 
ALAMANCE. 
 
 i??i 
 
 The following poem by Seymour Whiting should be memo- 
 rized by every child in ITorth Carolina. When this poem was 
 written no monument had been placed on the old battle- 
 ground. The monument which now marks the spot was 
 erected in 1880. 
 
 No stately column marks the hallowed place 
 
 Where silent sleeps, iinurned, their sacred dust — 
 
 The first free martyrs of a glorious race, 
 
 Their fame a people's wealth, a nation's trust. 
 
 Above their rest the golden harvest waves, 
 The glorious stars stand sentinel on high, 
 
 Wliile in sad requiem near their turfless graves 
 The winding river murmurs moaning by. 
 
 But holier watchers here their vigils keep 
 
 Than storied urn or monumental stone; 
 For Law and Justice guard their dreamless sleep, 
 
 And Plenty smiles above their bloody home. 
 
 Immortal youth shall crown their deathless fame, 
 And as their country's glories still advance. 
 
 Shall brighter glow, o'er all the earth thy name, 
 Our first-fought field of freedom — Alamance! 
 
MONUMENT ON ALAMANCE BATTLE-GROUND. 
 
WAS ALAMANCE THE FIRST BATTLE OF THE 
 REVOLUTION? 
 
 BY LUTIE ANDREWS MCCORKLE, 
 Author of " Old-time Stories of the Old North State." 
 
 "Constructive historical work deserves and gets more credit 
 than does destructive work. To overthrow the idols of our 
 forefathers is considered akin to sacrilege; but the time is 
 come when we are compelled to bow our heads and acknowl- 
 edge that some of our forefathers were as great rascals as 
 some of us.'' 
 
 This remarkable paragraph introduces an article entitled 
 "Regulators in a IsTew Light/' which appeared in the Char- 
 lotte Observer of January 25, 1903. While few of us, I trust, 
 are willing to admit the "soft impeachment" of being rascals 
 ourselves, fewer still, doubtless, are willing to accord this dis- 
 tinction to their forefathers, and say in earnest what Burns 
 said in jest: 
 
 "My ancient but ignoble blood 
 Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood." 
 
 "The average history of Revolutionary events," our enlight- 
 ened critic goes on to say, "gives but one side of the question, 
 and even that side is whitewashed." After such a bold 
 announcement, we arei not surprised by the recklessness with 
 
6 
 
 which the writer proceeds, in his ^'destructive work/' That he 
 succeeds in showing the Regulators in a ''new light" is nn- 
 questionahle ; but that it is a true light will at least admit of 
 some degree of doubt. 
 
 Such sweeping assertions as these arraign a, formidable 
 array of writers of eminent talent as men incompetent, by rea- 
 son of carelessness and partiality, to perform the tasks which 
 they undertook. Bancroft, Lossing, Hawks, Wheeler, Swain 
 and Graham were not only men of recognized ability, but 
 were untiring, pain stalling, conscientious seekers after truth. 
 With one accord they believed and stoutly maintained that 
 "the first blood shed in battle with the troops of the English 
 government in support of the principles of the American Revo- 
 lution was the blood of N^orth Carolinians, and the first battle- 
 field was the soil of that State" at Alamance. They had pur- 
 sued their investigations unde^r a profound sense of their duty 
 to pireserve the history of their country for the instruction of 
 future generations, and they gave the results of their inquiries 
 to the public as truth, to be cherished with honest pride by 
 every patriotic American. Now it is charged that theirs was 
 "constructive work" — the construction of an idol to be wor- 
 shiped by a credulous people, and that it now becomes the 
 bounden duty of the destructive critics of this generation to 
 demolish this idol in the interest of historic certainty. 
 
 The causes of the Regulation movement, culminating in the 
 battle of Alamance, it is alleged, were "igTLorance and ven- 
 geance on one side and vanity and error on the other." The 
 "flagrant and unjustifiable wrongs" under which the people 
 
groaned are tlius laughed to scorn, and tlie patriots of 1771 
 are represented as the dupes of a cowardly demagogue who 
 was using his influence to avenge personal grievances. 
 
 Possibly no two facts in American history have been more 
 doubted and discussed, and in consequence more indisputably 
 proven, than that the battle of Alamance was the first battle, 
 and the Mecklenburg Declaration the first declaration of 
 independence in the revolt of the colonies against the Crown 
 of England. The latter was the natural sequence of the for- 
 mer. And yet, just as during the Wars of the Roses, there 
 were patriotic Englishmen who sided with the house of York, 
 and others with the house of Lancaster; as during the Pro- 
 tectorate there were patriots both among the Roundheads and 
 among the Cavaliers ; as during the Revolution some good men 
 sided with England against their own countrymen, believing 
 Toryism to be a religious virtue; as during the war between 
 the States there were conscientious Unionists who fought in 
 the Federal army against their own neighbors and kindred; 
 so for the last' century there have been among us two parties^ — 
 the one believing, the other refusing to believe, in the patriot- 
 ism of the heroes of Alamance and in the authenticity of the 
 Mecklenburg Declaration. 
 
 By far the ablest and best equipped advocate of the '^de^ 
 structive theory" in the former instance is Mr. Francis I^ash 
 of Hillsboro, ]^. C. In a most interesting and admirably 
 written paper on ''Hillsboro: Colonial and Revolutionary," 
 he essays to prove that the organization knoAvn as the Regu- 
 lators was ''an ignorant, headstrong populace," "all criminals 
 
8 
 
 in a common riot/' moved by '^imaginary grievances/' and 
 led by ^'an unscrupulous fomentor of strife/' who has since 
 been elevated as a '^sentimental hero." He would have us 
 believe that tbe battle so long regarded by our people with 
 patriotic pride as the ''first fought field of freedom" was "lit- 
 tle more than a neighborhood riot/' and denounces the asser- 
 tion that '^the same spirit inspired the Eegulators that in- 
 spired the Sons of Liberty or the Lexington Minute Men" as 
 "sentimental slush." The battle of Alamance he would have 
 us believe was but "the after-clap of a disgraceful riot." Him- 
 self the descendant, if I mistake not, of a gentleman who was 
 a victim of one of the few outrages charged against any of 
 the Eegulators, their self -assumed title a stench in the nostrils 
 of his family for more than a century, Mr. J^ash shows some- 
 what of the unreasoning spirit of hereditary prejudice, and 
 writes with a zeal worthy of a better cause. I am persuaded 
 that he is not just in his denunciation of the Regulators, 
 albeit they may have been unduly prejudiced against that 
 Francis E'ash whose honored name he bears and whose patri- 
 otic blood flows in his veins. 
 
 Mr. ISTash has undertaken to overthrow the position on this 
 question of many men whose testimony is incontrovertible, 
 and seeks to break the force of documentary evidence that is 
 overwhelming in its mass and conclusiveness. Whatever may 
 be said of Hawks, Wheeler, Swain and Graham on the score 
 of hereditary bias and local prejudice as being natives of North 
 Carolina,, the same weakness cannot be charged to Bancroft, 
 Caruthers, Lossing and Foote, all of whom are a unit in their 
 
conclusions in the premises. These men were natives of oither 
 States, and, with tlie exception of Bancroft, they all visited 
 the scenes they described and gathered the facts, not only from 
 documentary evidence that had been handed down from colo- 
 nial times, but in great part from, men who witnessed or par- 
 ticipated in the battle and in the events preceding. Thus, it 
 is seen they had at their command not only the records to 
 which Mr. l^ash appeals so confidently, but the testimony of 
 men who were able to communicate the facts at first hand. 
 'Not a few of these, it may be added, were Presbiyterians, to 
 whose testimony, as it will be shown presently, Mr. I^ash is 
 himself disposed to defer on all occasions. 
 
 The statements of Bancroft, in his ^'History of the United 
 States,'' edition of 1854, are for the most part quotations from 
 the letters of Governors T'ryon and Martin to Lord Hills- 
 borough, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and from cotem- 
 porary publications in Philadelphia, New York and Boston. 
 This great historian tells us that he had a very full collection 
 of papers bearing on the Regulators, and he declares that ''the 
 blood of rebels against oppression was first shed on the 
 branches of the Oape Fear river." Nor is the opinion of 
 Dr. Caruthers to be despised. He lived for forty years in the 
 section which had been the storm center of the Regulation 
 movement, being the immediate successor of Dr. David Cald- 
 well as pastor of tlie historic churches of Alamance and Buf- 
 falo. He gathered many of his facts from ''old men of great 
 respectability, who were then living and remembered the for- 
 mer times." When he used verbal testimony he "took pains 
 
10 
 
 to get an account of the same thing from different persons or 
 froin the same person at different times, for the purpose of 
 comparing them together and ascertaining the truth." And 
 he tells us that '^the Eegulation is now regarded by our 
 greatest men as the very germ of the Revolution in this 
 State/' Dr. Hawks tells us he lived "where the spot on which 
 the Regulators were hanged met his eye every day/' and 
 declares that '^God made the flower of freedom, grow out of the 
 turf that covered these men's graves." He also had a personal 
 acquaintance with cotemporaries of those who laid down their 
 lives at Alamance. 
 
 The Regulators were, in Mr. E'ash's opinion, "an ignorant, 
 headstrong, lawless populace," as they were regarded by 
 Edmimd Fanning and his associates. In this view, however, 
 he is not sustained by the testimony of men of eminent charac- 
 ter who were associated with soma of the Regulators. Dr. 
 Oaruthers tells us "there were many men in most of the iipper 
 counties engaged in that affair who were then, as their de- 
 scendants are now, among the most sensible, upright and 
 respectable people in the country. Most of them had enjoyed 
 the advajitages of a Christian training, and at that time had 
 the ministrations of able and devoted men. The parishioners 
 of such men as McAden, Caldwell, Balch, Craighead and 
 others were probably something more than semi-barbarians 
 and were not likely to be an unprincipled and lawless rabble, 
 but many from these congregations were not only united with 
 the mass of the Regulators in their addresses and petitions 
 and all their legal methods of obtaining a redress for their 
 
11 
 
 grievances, but were actually engaged in the battle." He says 
 further: "Those [of the Eegulators] who lived in the region 
 in which I have been acquainted seem to have been regarded 
 as honorable in all the relations of life, and were much 
 esteemed as men and citizens." 
 
 Dr. F'oote, like Dr. C'aruthers, spent years in the section 
 involved in this disturbance, and enjoyed a personal acquaint- 
 ance with the immediate descendants of the Eegulators. "The 
 descendants of these j)eople/' he writes, "who were at the time 
 treated as rebels and stigmatized in government papers as 
 ignorant and headstrong and unprincipled, hold the first rank 
 in their country for probity and intelligence, have held the 
 first ofiices in their own and in the two younger and neighbor- 
 ing States, and have not been debarred the highest offices in 
 the Union." 
 
 Mr. JSTash himself admits that the four men whose names 
 we have of the six who paid the penalty of their patriotism 
 on the gallows at Hillsboro did not answer the description 
 "lawless and ignorant." James Pugh made a manly defense 
 of his course in the speech he delivered on the gallows, re- 
 buking Tiyon for dereliction in duty, and "advised him to 
 put away his corrupt clerks and tax-gatherers and be a friend 
 of the people." Benjamin Merrill "was an honest, upright 
 man." Of R,obert Matear "little is known" ; but against the 
 statement of Caruthers that "he with Thompson had never 
 taken any part in any riot and was a Regulator only in sym- 
 pathy," Mr. ISTash thinks the fact conclusive that "he was con- 
 victed at Hillsboro and executed, though six other convicts 
 
12 
 
 were respited and afterwards pardoned.'' Surely Matear must 
 ]ia,ve been ^'ignorant and lawless/' since his ciharacter and 
 record were not such as to comniend him to the mercy of that 
 humane Governor who refused to listen to the Regulators and 
 shot down Robert Thompson, an unarmed man, with his own 
 hand ! Messer's integrity may be judged from the fact that 
 he was permitted to leave the State in search of Hermon 
 Husband, having promised to return and suffer himself to 
 be executed if he could not bring Husband back. He failed 
 in his effort and retiu'ned in due time to die for his offense. 
 Many others who were numbered with the Regulators, such 
 as Thomas Person, Cblonel Bryan and Captain Raleigh 
 Sutherland, were men of ^^unimpeacliable character." If 
 Mr. Nash is correct in saying that at that time ''the most 
 moral communities in the whole section were those over which 
 a few Presbyterian ministers held sway and exerted an influ- 
 ence for good," then the weight of evidence seems to be 
 against his position, for we are told that ''a large proportion 
 of the men in Dr. Caldwell's congregation were Regulators." 
 True, Dr. Caldwell's letter to Try on, in which he declares 
 that the people of his congregation are not in sympathy with 
 the Regulators, is often quoted ; but those who make use of 
 this letter for the purpose of discrediting the Regulation 
 movement invariably fail to state that it was written in 1766, 
 five years before the battle of Alamance, and at a time when 
 Dr. Caldwell himself was a comparative stranger in tliat 
 section, having settled there only the previous year. In the 
 five succeeding years he and his flock had ample occasion 
 
13 
 
 and opportunity to ohange tlieir minds, and it is certain they 
 did. Besides, ^'the people of Orange and equally of Rowan 
 and Mecklenburg were unanimous in tlieir resolutions to 
 claim relief from the Governor." So we find "the most 
 moral communities in that section" engaged in the contest; 
 for the congregations of McAden, Caldwell, Balch and C'raig- 
 head, w^ho, to use Mr. N^ ash's phrase, ''held sw^ay and exerted 
 an influence for good," extended over this section. Dr. 
 Hawks tells us that ''w^hen the final struggle came every one 
 of these spiritual guides, to a man, was on the side of an 
 oppressed people." Even Hermon Husband, who figures in 
 the pungent periods of our destructive critics as ''a selfish 
 stirrer-up of turmoil, a fomentor of strife," seems to have 
 been regarded as a man of some character by those who knew 
 him. Clerk Fanning and the Hillsboro lawyers excepted. 
 Says C'aruthers : ''I have conversed wdth a number who knew 
 him personally and intimately in their youth, as they were 
 neighbors, some of whom are yet living, and they all speak 
 of him as a man of strict integrity and as a firm and sincere 
 advocate of w^hat he considered the rights of mankind. When 
 people find they have been deceived by a man who has 
 courted their favor merely for some selfish end, they usually 
 turn against him, but this was not the case with the people 
 he represented." Dr. Caldwell thought, as Caruthers was 
 assured by the family of that distinguished patriot and divine, 
 "that Husband was a little headstrong and impetuous, but 
 he believed him to be honest in his intentions." It is known 
 that Husband was a personal friend and relative of Benja- 
 
14 
 
 min Franklin, from whom at various times lie received mes- 
 sages and pamphlets. Although Husband, bred a Quaker 
 and deprecating all bloodshed as contrary to the law of Christ, 
 fled at the first gun at Alamance, it appears by no means 
 unreasonable that from Franklin he may have derived many 
 of his opinions, aud that, though desiring a peaceful solution 
 of every difficu.lty, he may have been actuated by motives as 
 pure as were the motives of those who afterwards laid down, 
 their lives for the cause of liberty. Very certain it is that 
 the agitation begim by the Regulators had made good head- 
 way in Grauville and Halifax, as well as in Orange and the 
 more western counties, some time before Husband took a 
 hand in it. Think what we may of his conduct at Alamance 
 and afterwards, we are, in strict justice, compelled to accord 
 him the verdict of contemporary public opinion. And while 
 we would make no ''sentimental hero" of him, w^e have no 
 right to attribute to him selfish and vengeful motives. 
 
 Mr. Nash does not discuss the ''causes leading up to the 
 War of the Regulation, except as they affect the history of 
 colonial Hillsboro." Having thus left out of view a large 
 part of the facts bearing on our question, he persuades him- 
 self, and would persuade others, that the whole movement was 
 oontemptible in its origin and spirit, and that Alamance was 
 only the "after-clap" of what all must admit was a "disgrace- 
 ful riot." Conceding all the facts alleged as to the riot at 
 Hillsboro, we are by no means compelled to regard Alamance 
 as the "after-clap" of that unfortunate affair, and much less 
 are we required to admit that the men of Alamance were men 
 
15 
 
 of another spirit tlian that which animated the Sons of Lib- 
 erty and the Minute Men of Lexington. The truth is, the 
 disturbances around Hillsboro were but the temporary out- 
 ilashings of a spirit of deep resentment against corrupt offi- 
 cials which pervaded the whole piedmont section of the 
 colony, and was felt even on the distant sea-board. Before the 
 Stamp Act bred defiance in the east, the people of the middle 
 counties had long been groaning imder the exactions of the 
 officers of the law, and simultaneously, though without con- 
 cert of action, '^pleading in the anguish of their souls" for 
 deliverance from the extortions and abuses of power under 
 which they suffered. It would hardly be possible for dis- 
 content so widespread not to evoke some lawlessness. When 
 men bred to count themselves freemen ha,ve seen law dis- 
 regarded and justice trampled under foot, what wonder if 
 they fail to respect the law and its officers ? When wise heads 
 ar^ convinced that foul wrong is being done without rebuke, 
 hot heads will sometimes plot hasty vengeance. 
 
 And what more natural than that the E,egulators should 
 have cherished an '^especial antipathy toward Hillsboro'' ? 
 It was a ver)^ small village, chiefly known to them as the 
 home of Edmund Fanning, whose abuses of the law had made 
 him odious to the people; as the home of the lawyers who 
 justified and defended him, making his cause their own, and 
 as the seat of a court in which a judge had flaunted his con- 
 tempt for a long-suffering people in their faces by fining the 
 chief culprit a penny and costs when convicted of extortion 
 on six counts. Goaded by a sense of outrage, some of these 
 
16 
 
 meiij in an outburst of indignation, undertook to "administer 
 wild justice'' after their own fashion. But it is a well known 
 fact that these outrages, instead of being excused as the 
 "overflow of exuberant patriotism/' as Mr. I^ash would have 
 us believe, were deplored and "condemned by the great body 
 of Eesrulators." Because a small number of rnde "fellows 
 of the baser sort" were g^iilty of lawless conduct, in one neigh- 
 borhood, it is neither in accord with "historic truth" nor with 
 historic justice to hold the entire body responsible for such 
 conduct, and much less is it right on that account to impugn 
 the motives of all those men of piedmont I^orth Carolina who 
 for ten long years waged a fight for their liberties. This was 
 precisely the uncharity of Governor Tryon, according to the 
 testimony of his successor. 
 
 Bnt in referring to the "so-called extortions practiced upon 
 the people," Mr. ISTash concedes that "the charges of public 
 officers were m some instances oppressive" ; and yet, in his 
 evident anxiety to establish confidence in T'ryon's view of the 
 "discreet and steady behavior of Colonel Fanning," and to 
 relieve his character from unjust aspersion, he tells us that 
 on certain papers Fanning "was entitled to a charge of eight 
 shillings, whereas he made a rule, out of abundance of cau- 
 tion, to charge only six shillings." It is matter of well 
 attested fact, also that, "out of abundance of caution," to 
 re-imburse himself for occasional generosity and keep his 
 famous wine cellar well filled. Colonel Fanning was wont to 
 charge $15 for a marriage license, for which the law allowed 
 him but one dollar. 
 
17 
 
 Governor Josiali Martin, who sncoeeded Tryon very soon 
 after tlie battle of Alamance, was undoubtedly in a position 
 to know wliereof be spoke. After spending some montbs in 
 and around Hillsboro, be wrote to tbe Earl of Hillsborougb, 
 Secretary of State for tbe Colonies, as follows: 
 
 "North Carolina, Hillsborough, 
 
 "August 30, 1772. 
 
 . . . "My progress through this country, my Lord, hath opened my 
 eyes exceedingly with respect to the commotions and discontents that 
 have lately prevailed in it. I now see most clearly that they have been 
 provoked by insolence, and cruel advantage taken of the people's igno- 
 rance by mercenary, tricking attorneys, clerks and other little officers, 
 who have practised upon them every sort of rapine and extortion, by 
 which, having brought upon themselves their just resentment," etc. 
 
 E-eferring to tbis letter of Governor Martin, and also to 
 tbe petition of tbe people of Orange to Gbief Justice Howard 
 and bis associates, Bancroft says: ^Tbe people bad no re^ 
 spite from tbe insolence of mercenary attorneys and offioers, 
 and were subjected to every sort of rapine and extortion. Tbe 
 courts of law offered no redress. At tbe inferior courts tbe 
 justices, wbo tbemselves were implicated in tbe pilfering of 
 public money, named tbe juries. Tbe sberiff and receivers of 
 taxes were in arrears for near seventy tbousand pounds wbicb 
 tbey bad extorted from tbe people and of wbicb more tban 
 two-tbirds bad been irretrievably embezzled." In 1769 Gov- 
 ernor Tryon bimself wrote to tbe Assembly : 
 
 ^Tbe fact is too well known to admit of a denial, tbat in a 
 long course of years past great sums of tbe public money bave 
 
18 
 
 been lost by tlie negligence or insolvency of sberiffs and other 
 collectors with their sureties. And it is presimied that in the 
 same course of time considerable sums have simk after they 
 were lodged in the public treasury, whereof no account has 
 hitherto been made." 
 
 Were it needful to add anything to these statements, we 
 could rely upon the facts mentioned by Bancroft, that the 
 petition of the Regulators was signed by about five hundred 
 men and was fortified 'Vith a precise specification of acts of 
 extortion, confirmed in each instance by oath.'' He had in 
 hig possession a copy of tliat petition, with its signatures. 
 
 Against all this mass of evidence, conclusive to any un- 
 prejudiced mind, Mr. E^ash brings up the address presented 
 to Governor Tryon in the Assembly of 1770 by Robert Howe, 
 Samuel Johnston, Maurice Moore, Cornelius Harnett, Abner 
 E'ash, Joseph Hewes and Edmund Fanning, in which they 
 '^condemn without stint both the motives and the acts of the 
 Regulators." As these men, with the exception of Fanning, 
 were afterwards ^^distinguished patriots," Mr. ^N'ash would 
 have us consider their opinion conclusive as to the status of 
 the Regulators. But he fails to tell us that these men, except 
 Joseph Hewes, were all lawyers, and. Fanning only excepted, 
 all from the eastern part of the province. The fight of the 
 Regulators had all along been largely against the lawyers. 
 They had plainly stated in one of their protests: 'Tt is not 
 our form or mode of government, nor yet our laws, that we 
 are quarreling with, but with the malpractice of the officers 
 of our County Ct)urt, and the abuse we suffer from those who 
 
19 
 
 are empower ed to manage our public affairs." C'an we won- 
 der if the acts of mercenary individuals had brought odium 
 upon the whole profession? ]^or can we forget that the 
 people of the sea-board had not felt the heavy hand of extor- 
 tion as the poor farmers of the interior had felt it. The 
 Governor residing in the east, the officers of the law would 
 be held in check there and would hardly dare to practice the 
 oppressions that were common in more remote regions. Be- 
 sides, the east had been longer settled and was more pros- 
 perous through its flourishing commerce with the outside 
 world, while in the interior there was little either of coin or 
 currency, the people subsisting solely upon their small crops, 
 and their trade being diiefly barter. Hence, men from the 
 east were hardly prepared to appreciate the motives (even 
 though they may at a later period have followed the good 
 example) of the Regulators in fighting ^'for the liberties they 
 had inherited." 
 
 The Regulators, says Mr. IsTash, ^'demanded that dishonest 
 public officials should be removed and punished ; and Gov- 
 ernor T'ryon not complying with their demand so summarily 
 as they desired, they, inspired by hatred and revenge, pro- 
 ceeded to administer this punishment themselves. So they 
 were an organized but irresponsible and uncontrollable 
 mob^ — not a great people in the throes of a struggle for inde- 
 pendence." 
 
 Were the Regulators a mob? Let them answer for them- 
 selves. "We tell you, in the anguish of our souls," they said 
 to Governor Try on, "we cannot go to law with our powerful 
 
20 
 
 antagonists ; that step, whenever taken, will terminate in the 
 ruin of ourselves and families." They had had experience 
 with lawyers and had grown wiser because of that sad expe- 
 rience. ''That is all we want/' they said to the Governor's 
 secretary — ''liberty to make our grievances known/' so con- 
 fident were they of the righteousness of their cause. This, 
 surely, is not the unreasoning spirit of a mob. Their deter- 
 mination, as set fortli in resolutions adopted at one of their 
 earlier meetings, was: 
 
 "1st. That we will pay no more taxes until we are satisfied 
 that they are agreeable to law and applied to purposes therein 
 mentioned, unless we cannot help it or are forced to it. 
 
 "2d. That we will pay no officer any more fees than the 
 law allows," etc. 
 
 Again, let Governor Martin, who seems honestly desirous 
 to deal fairly by them, answer in their behalf. The "tricking 
 attorneys, clerks and other little officers," he v/rites to the 
 Eiarl of Hillsborough, in the letter already mentioned, had 
 "engaged government in their defense by artful misrepre- 
 sentations, that the vengeance the wretched people in folly 
 and madness aimed at their heads was directed against the 
 Constitution; and by this stratagem they threw an odium 
 upon the injured people that by degrees begot a prejudice 
 which precluded a full discovery of their grievances. Thus, 
 my Lord, as far as I have been able to discover, the resentment 
 of government was craftily worked up against the oppressed, 
 and the protection which the oppressors treacherously ac- 
 quired, v/here the injured and ignorant people expected to 
 
21 
 
 find it, drove (some of them) to acts of desperation and con- 
 federated them in violence, which, as your Lordship knows, 
 induced bloodshed; and, I verily believe, necessarily." In 
 the adroit special pleading of Mr. Nash, the craft and strata- 
 gem of Fanning is being repeated in this year of grace 1903. 
 
 The Regulators, says Bancroft, ''asked no more than that 
 extortioners be brought to fair trials and the collectors of 
 public money called to proper settlement of their accounts." 
 Tryon made promises, only to break them, until they found 
 to their sorrow that "his Excellency was determined not to 
 lend a kind ear to the just complaints of the people." And 
 such was the craft and cunning of Fanning and the la,wyers 
 who aided and abetted his rascalities that the Regulators were 
 doomed to disappointment in their sanguine ''hope that naked 
 truth and native igTiorance would poise the superexcellent 
 flourishes and consummate declamation of their powerful 
 adversary." Certain it is, however, that something more 
 than the "superexcellent flourishes" of Mr. leash's specious 
 argument will be needed to "poise" the right of the men of 
 Alamance to be regarded as patriots contending for their 
 liberties. History has given its verdict, and that verdict is 
 not likely to be changed by the arguments of those whose 
 methods and animus compel them to become the apologists of 
 Fanning and of Tryon. 
 
 Mocked in the courts, stigmatized as "outlaws and rebels," 
 again and again deceived by the royal Governor, tliese men 
 whom Mr. I^ash denounces as a "lawless and irresponsible 
 mob" twice retired quietly to their homes on receiving a mere 
 
22 
 
 promise of redress — once wtien they had gathered seven hun- 
 dred strong at Hillsboro, and again when ^ve hundred of 
 them, had assembled at Salisbury. Here again we do not find 
 any spirit of irresponsibility and lawlessness. 
 
 'Not were they men of lawless and cowardly spirit who, 
 without a leader and in large part unarmed, stood before 
 Tryon at Alamance, desiring naught but permission to pre- 
 sent to him a respectful petition laying before him in ample 
 detail all their grievances, ^'in full hope and confidence of 
 being redressed by him." To have submitted to his peremp- 
 tory and insulting demands would have been to exhibit the 
 cringing spirit of slaves. So, with the courage of martyrs, 
 those of them who were armed stood their ground when Tryon 
 precipitately began the battle. Thus was given, as Caruthers 
 says, ^Hhe first expression of the principles and spirit which 
 covered the men of '76 with immortal honor.'' 
 
 When Captain Raleigh Sutherland, coming with a force 
 from Surry to help the Regulators, wept on hearing from, a 
 distance the guns of Alamance, because he was not there with 
 his countrymen 'Svho were shedding their blood in defense 
 of their rights," he was animated by the same spirit which led 
 General Francis ^N^ash to say, with his -dying breath, on the 
 field of Gennantown, ^'Froni the first dawn of Revolution 
 I have been on the side of liberty and my country." The 
 difference was, that Sutherland was first to recognize that 
 dawm of Liberty's day. 
 
 But it is urged that the men of Alamance were not fighting 
 British troops, and that they were not fighting for inde- 
 
23 
 
 pendence. As to the first quibble, it is sufficient to state tbat 
 tbey were fighting the same sort of a force that suffered de- 
 feat at the hands of Shelby and Cleveland at King's Moun- 
 tain — colonial militia, flying the British flag and led by 
 officers who represented the British crown. As to the second, 
 the same argument would prove that Lexington was not a 
 battle of the Revolution at all, and that in fact the Revolu- 
 tion did not commence until July, 1776. The truth is, none 
 of the colonists at first desired independence. The common 
 demand of all was redress of grievances. Only thirty-seven 
 days before the battle of Lexington, John Adams declared 
 ''that there are any who pant after independence is the 
 greatest slander on the province." 
 
 Once more, it is said that the men of Alamance did not 
 come thither expecting to fight. Neither did the men of 
 Lexington. We are told that ''the night preceding the out- 
 rage at Lexington there were not fifty people in the colony 
 that ever expected any blood would be shed in the contest." 
 The patriots of Alamance were stigmatized as rebels, and 
 suffered the spoiling of their plantations and the burning of 
 their homes, and some of them were executed as traitors and 
 rebels. According to the British view, the men of Lexington 
 were nothing more nor less. 
 
 Compare the utterances and the deeds of the men of Ala- 
 mance with those of the men of Lexington. They of Lexing- 
 ton instruct their representatives to demand "radical and 
 lasting redress of their grievances." The Regulators, when 
 promised a respectful hearing, are so sure of compliance with 
 
24 
 
 tlieir just demands that they cry ''Agreed ! That is all we 
 want — liberty tO' make our gTievancies known.'' On the vil- 
 lage green of Lexington free-born Americans swore ''to com- 
 bat manfully for their birthright inheritance of liberty.'' 
 On the greensward of Alamance the Kegulators, counting 
 themselves free-born, gave full proof of their resolve "to 
 know and enjoy the liberty which they had inherited." 
 
 Word chimes with word. Deed harmonizes with deed. 
 The same spirit of freemen, ready to die for liberty, breathes 
 in both. At Alamance there burst forth in a, battle for right 
 and justice the same undaunted spirit of love for freedoim 
 that afterwards flashed in the Mecklenburg Declaration of 
 Independence, and later flamed at King's Mountain, at Cow- 
 pens and at Guilford Court House. I^or does it alter this 
 fact, that some of the Eiegulators, forced by Tryon to take the 
 oath of allegiance to the British government, afterward fought 
 in the ranks of the Loyalists against their own countrymen, 
 as some of those who had oppressed them w^ere in the ranks of 
 the patriot army. This is, in truth, but another argument to 
 show that theirs was not the irresponsible temper and lawless 
 disposition of a mob. They kept their oath out of regard to 
 solemn obligations which they considered binding in the sight 
 of heaven ; and it is matter of history that they were promised 
 as loyalists all the redress for which they had fought at Ala- 
 mance, and under a Governor who had declared his convic- 
 tion of the justice of their cause. It is matter of history also 
 that the Presbyterians of Mecklenburg hesitated because of 
 their oaths, when independence was proposed, and disregarded 
 
25 
 
 those oaths only under the advice of their leaders. If any 
 fact in the history of the United States is well attested, it is 
 that the fire which flashed forth at Alamance was not 
 quenched in the ashes of defeat. It left embers burning from 
 which, as the years went by, there was kindled throughout 
 Surry, Anson, Eowan and Mecklenburg and across the Alle- 
 ghanies in the independent "State of Franklin," founded by 
 refugees from the country of the Hegulators, a flame of 
 patriotic fervor which, uniting at last with the fires of Lex- 
 ington and Bunker Hill, swept away the entire remnant of 
 British power in the colonies. In the State of Franklin, the 
 immediate offspring of the Regulation movement, independ- 
 ence was a fact before it was dreamed of elsewhere. In that 
 little Commonwealth in the mountains no British flag ever 
 waved and no officer of the British Crown ever came, and 
 there the people, outraged and outlawed by British oppres- 
 sion, "set to the people of America the dangerous example of 
 erecting themselves into a State separate and distinct from 
 and independent of the authority'' of the English Crown. 
 
 In view of all the facts, attested by cotemporary witnesses 
 and admitted by royal Governors, we feel constrained to be- 
 lieve that what Bancroft says of the men of Lexington should 
 be, in all its particulars, held applicable to the heroes of Ala- 
 mance, and to them only. 
 
 "There they now stood, with arms in their hands, silent, 
 fearless, willing to fight for their privileges, scrupulous not to 
 begin civil war, as yet unsuspicious of danger. The ground 
 on which they trod was the altar of freedom, and they were 
 
26 
 
 to furnisli the victims. They gave their lives a testimony 
 to the rights of mankind, hequeathing tO' their country an 
 assurance of success in the mighty struggle which they 
 began/^ 
 
 Let us hold their names in grateful remembrance, and let 
 the '^expanding millions of their countrymen renew and mul- 
 tiply their praise from generation tO' generation." 
 
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