USA > North Carolina > Rowan County > A history of Rowan County, North Carolina > Part 10
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MEMBERS OF THE PROVINCIAL CONGRESS
most conservative, and constitutional sticklers for prec- edent, moved too slowly for the ardent patriotism of the young lawyer, it is impossible at this late date to determine. But this much appears to be true-that somewhere about August, 1774, John Dunn, B. B. Boote, Wallace Lindsay, and one other man, signed a paper containing a general declaration of fidelity, al- legiance, obedience, and submission to the British Acts of Parliament. This paper seems to have been a kind of private protest against rebellion, kept by Mr. Boote for future emergencies. The parties signing it do not appear to have taken any public steps against the movement then in progress, but as crown officers con- tented themselves with the quiet discharge of duty. The paper, however, or a copy of it, got out among the people, and aroused suspicion. At the instance of Colonel Kennon, Dunn and Boote were hurried off in the night to Charlotte, thence to Camden, and ulti- mately to Charleston. The conduct of Colonel Kennon was deemed arbitrary and malicious by some of the citizens of Salisbury, and Dr. Anthony Newman, and others, men of unimpeachable patriotism, presented a petition to the Committee embodying the idea that the affair was arbitrary and malicious. Be that as it may, Dunn and Boote never got a hearing, though they prayed to be heard, and were kept in confinement for many weary months in Charleston.
Just at this point it becomes necessary to correct an error which Colonel Wheeler published, and which has been repeated by other writers since. It is that John Dunn and B. B. Boote never returned to North Caro-
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lina, but after the war was over settled in Florida. This leaves these two gentlemen in the attitude of per- manent disaffection to the cause of American liberty ; but there is abundance of proof in the records of Rowan Court to prove that both returned and con- ducted themselves as good and patriotic citizens, at an early period of the War of Independence. In March, 1777, B. B. Boote bought a tract of land in Salisbury, and proved a deed in open Court. On the eighth day of August, 1777, Mr. Boote took the oath of expurga- tion for disaffected or suspected persons.
On the same day, August 8, 1777, John Dunn, Esq., took the required oath of an attorney in the State of North Carolina, and shortly after this date he became State's Attorney for Rowan County. Certainly at this period there remained not the least lingering doubt of his sympathy with the cause of American freedom. Still further, on the eighth of August, 1781, five months after the battle of Guilford Courthouse, John Dunn and Matthew Troy, Esqs., were appointed Commissioners by the County Court, Adlai Osborne being chairman, to repair the courthouse in Salisbury. From this it would appear that all suspicion or un- friendliness, if any ever existed, had vanished from the mind of the high-toned Osborne. Mr. Dunn died in Salisbury in the early part of 1783. Letters of administration on the estate of John Dunn were granted to Francis Dunn and Spruce Macay on the twenty-fifth of March, 1783. The traditions of his family relate that he was taken sick while pleading a case in the old courthouse, where the Public Square in
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Salisbury is, and that he was carried down to a hotel belonging to William Temple Coles, where Kluttz's drug store now stands. After lingering awhile he passed away. His body was interred on his own lands near Dunn's Mountain. No man knows where his grave is, but the mountain he owned, with its granite cliffs, standing in full view of the Public Square of Salisbury, is his monument. There it stands, a soli- tary sentinel, overlooking not only the broad lands he once owned and his unknown grave, but the very spot where for a quarter - century he won laurels as the leading lawyer of Salisbury bar.
The events at the opening of the war are to be ac- counted for, first on the principle that old men, es- pecially lawyers, are slow and cautious in exchanging their allegiance. None know so well as they what are the results that follow in the wake of revolution. They are in the habit of looking at results and conse- quences. A second cause is found in the character- istic violence and intolerance of such times of excite- ment and struggle. Reports fly rapidly and gain ready credence. That Committee of Safety actually resolved that good old Maxwell Chambers, their Treasurer, be publicly advertised as an enemy to the common cause of liberty, for raising the price of his goods above that of the year past. Futhermore Dunn and Boote were men of great influence, and the easiest way to dispose of them was to send them away without a hearing. No doubt, if granted a hearing, they would have cleared themselves of all acts or purposes of hostility to American liberty. But this the Committee did not
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know. Colonel Kennon, being the leader in this affair, seems to have removed from Salisbury to Georgia, at or about the time that Dunn and Boote returned. So far as known to the writer he lived an honored and useful life in the State of his adoption. One of his descendants was in Salisbury a few years ago, but he knew little of his ancestor.
Authorities : Mrs. H. M. I., in Southern Home; Hunter's Western North Carolina; Wheeler, Records of Rowan Court; Miss C. B.
CHAPTER XIV
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ROWAN COUNTY COMMITTEE OF SAFETY
Who sounded the first note of liberty in North Carolina? There are claimants for this honor, but their claims are not fully established. In the unsettled state of affairs immediately preceding the Revolution of 1776, public opinion was drifting insensibly for a number of years in the direction of a higher form of civil liberty.
Besides this, many have confounded liberty with independence. The design to preserve their liberties was universal before the thought of independence gained any hold upon the public mind. Colonel Moore, in his History of North Carolina, affirms that as late as the meeting of the Continental Congress, in Septem- ber, 1774, there were but three men in America who contemplated actual independence of the crown of England. These were Patrick Henry of Virginia, Wil- liam Hooper of North Carolina, and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts. These three had given utterance to sentiments of independence, but the Congress avowed its loyalty to the King, and protested its devotion to the British constitution. The Congress of North Car- olina, in August, 1774, protested the same loyalty ; but at the same time there were opinions on the sub- ject of human rights, and plans and purposes on the
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HISTORY OF ROWAN COUNTY
subject of trade and taxation, and resolves on the mat- ter of a union of the colonies, whose inevitable con- sequence was the ultimate independence of the colon- ies, unless the British Parliament should recede from the position they had deliberately chosen. It matters little who first called for independence, provided we know who first avowed the principles that inevitably led to that result.
Without claiming that these principles were first conceived in Rowan County, or even that they were first avowed here, from the documentary evidence before the public for thirty years it may be affirmed that the first recorded adoption of these principles oc- curred in Salisbury. Nearly a year before the patri- otic citizens of Mecklenburg adopted their famous "Resolves" of the thirty-first of May, which so ir- ritated Governor Martin, and provoked his angry let- ter from the lower Cape Fear; and nearly two years before the National Declaration of Independence, the citizens of Rowan adopted a paper that contains the germs of independence. This was on the eighth of August, 1774. The evidence of this is found in the Journal of the Committee of Safety of Rowan County, found recorded on pp. 360-62 of Colonel Wheeler's Sketches of North Carolina, Vol. II. This document was discovered in Iredell County, among the papers of the Sharpe family, by the Rev. E. F. Rockwell, and published by Colonel Wheeler in 1851. William Sharpe was the last secretary of the Committee, and preserved the Minutes that were found in the hands
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of his descendants. Colonel Wheeler vouches for the genuineness of the document.
This Committee of Safety began its sessions, ac- cording to these Minutes, on the eighth of August, 1774, seventeen days before the assembling of the first North Carolina Provincial Congress. This com- mittee was probably chosen at the time appointed for electing members to the General Assembly of the Province, or it may have come into existence before that time in obedience to the wishes of the people. The members of the committee were chosen from all parts of this grand old county, and numbered twenty- five. The following is a list of their names: James McCay, Andrew Neal, George Cathey, Alexander Dobbins, Francis McCorkle, Matthew Locke, Maxwell Chambers, Henry Harmon, Abraham Denton, William Davidson, Samuel Young, John Brevard, William Kennon, George Henry Barringer, Robert Bell, John Bickerstaff, John Cowden, John Lewis Beard, John Nesbit, Charles McDowell, Robert Blackburn, Christo- pher Beekman, William Sharpe, John Johnson, and Morgan Bryan.
At their first recorded meeting, August 8, 1774, this committee adopted seventeen resolutions upon public affairs, showing that they were in the very forefront of liberal and patriotic opinions.
As this paper is not generally known, we give it entire.
"At a meeting of the committee, August 8, 1774, the following resolves were unanimously agreed to:
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Resolved, That we will at all times, whenever we are called upon for that purpose, maintain and defend, at the expense of our lives and fortunes, His Majesty's right and title to the crown of Great Britain and his dominions in America, to whose royal person and gov- ernment we profess all due obedience and fidelity.
Resolved, That the right to impose taxes or duties, to be paid by the inhabitants within this Province, for any purpose whatsoever, is peculiar and essential to the General Assembly, in whom the legislative authority of the colony is vested.
Resolved, That every attempt to impose such taxes or duties by any other authority is an arbitrary exer- tion of power, and an infringement of the constitu- tional rights and liberties of the colony.
Resolved, That to impose a tax or duty on tea by the British Parliament, in which the North American Colonies can have no representation, to be paid upon importation by the inhabitants of the said colonies, is an act of power without right. It is subversive to the liberties of the said colonies, deprives them of their property without their own consent, and thereby reduces them to a state of slavery.
Resolved, That the late cruel and sanguinary acts of Parliament, to be executed by military force and ships of war upon our sister colony of Massachusetts Bay and town of Boston, is a strong evidence of the corrupt influence obtained by the British Ministry in Parliament, and a convincing proof of their fixed in- tention to deprive the colonies of their constitutional rights and liberties.
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Resolved, That the cause of the town of Boston is the common cause of the American Colonies.
Resolved, That it is the duty and interest of all the American Colonies firmly to unite in an indissoluble union and association, to oppose by every just and proper means the infringement of their common rights and privileges.
Resolved, That a general association between all the American Colonies not to import from Great Britain any commodity whatsoever (except such things as shall be hereafter excepted by the General Congress of this Province), ought to be entered into, and not dissolved till the just rights of the colonies are re- stored to them, and the cruel acts of the British Par- liament against the Massachusetts Bay and town of Boston are repealed.
Resolved, That no friend to the rights and liberties of America ought to purchase any commodity what- soever, except such as shall be excepted, which shall be imported from Great Britain after the General As- sociation shall be agreed upon.
Resolved, That every kind of luxury, dissipation, and extravagance ought to be banished from among us.
Resolved, That manufacturers ought to be en- couraged by opening subscriptions for that purpose, or by any other proper means.
Resolved, That the African slave trade is injurious to this colony, obstructs the population of it by free men, prevents manufacturers and other useful immi- grants from Europe from settling among us, and oc-
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casions an annual increase of the balance of trade against the colonies.
Resolved, That the raising of sheep, hemp, and flax ought to be encouraged.
Resolved, That to be clothed in manufactures fabricated in the colonies ought to be considered as a badge of distinction, of respect, and true patriotism.
Resolved, That Messrs. Samuel Young and Moses Winslow, for the County of Rowan, and for the town of Salisbury, William Kennon, Esq., be, and they are hereby, nominated and appointed Deputies upon the part of the inhabitants and freeholders of this county, and town of Salisbury, to meet such Deputies as shall be appointed by the other counties and corporations within this colony, at Johnston Courthouse, the twen- tieth of this instant.
Resolved, That, at this important and alarming crisis, it be earnestly recommended to the said Depu- ties at their General Convention, that they nominate and appoint one proper person out of each district of this Province, to meet such Deputies in a General Congress, as shall be appointed upon the part of the other Continental Colonies in America, to consult and agree upon a firm and indissoluble union and associa- tion, for preserving, by the best and most proper means, their common rights and liberties.
Resolved, That this colony ought not to trade with any colony which shall refuse to join in any union and association that shall be agreed upon by the greater part of the other colonies on this continent, for preserving their common rights and liberties."
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An analysis of these resolves shows that these early patriots comprehended all the great doctrines of civil liberty. They began with the profession of loy- alty to their king. An examination of a large number of similar papers adopted about the same time, in Virginia and in the more northern colonies, reveals the same acknowledgment of loyalty to the House of Hanover. To have omitted it would have been evi- dence of treasonable designs. Men educated under monarchical rule sometimes affirm their loyalty in amusing ways. The Parliament of England, in the days of Charles I., levied war against the king in the name of the king himself, for his own good. In the case of the Revolutionary patriots, there is little reason to doubt the genuineness of their professions in the early days of the struggle. They entertained hopes of securing their liberties by the repeal of the odious laws, as they had done in the matter of the stamp duties several years before.
In the next place they firmly declared that no per- son had a right to levy taxes upon them except their own representatives in Assembly. This was the pivot on which the whole matter turned. And to prevent the arbitrary imposition of taxes, they proposed an in- dissoluble union and association of all the American Colonies, and do all in their power towards securing this union, by appointing Deputies to a Provincial Congress and recommending those Deputies to secure the appointment of representatives to a Continental Congress. The other resolutions concerning luxury,
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home manufacture, the slave trade, and sympathy with Boston, are subordinate to the others.
Having affirmed their political creed, the Committee adjourned until the twenty-second of September, 1774. At the next meeting, William Kennon appears as chair- man and Adlai Osborne as clerk. Their first business was to read and approve the resolves of the Provincial Congress that had met in the interval, and take steps towards carrying them out. Maxwell Chambers was appointed treasurer of the committee, and an order issued that each militia company in the county pay twenty pounds (£20), proclamation money, into his hands. As there were nine companies of militia in the county, this would aggregate the sum of one hundred and eighty pounds (£180), or between four and five hundred dollars. This money was to be used by the committee at discretion, for the purchase of powder, flints, and other military munitions. This conduct, as early as September, 1774, showed that the idea of re- sistance was growing up rapidly in the minds of the patriots of Rowan. This committee fixed the price of powder, and examined carefully into the political senti- ments of the people. If they were not satisfied with a man's conduct, they did not hesitate to declare him an enemy to liberty, and to put him under suitable re- straints. They also, in after days, took control of Court matters, allowing some to enter suits against others, and forbidding some. No doubt many of their acts were arbitrary in a high degree, and sometimes an infringe- ment of the liberty they proposed to protect. But when the storm of war was about to break upon the country,
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the committee acted vigorously, awaking zeal, sup- pressing disaffection, embodying militia companies, providing ammunition, and doing all they could to sup- port the cause of freedom. Nor did they confine them- selves to deliberation, but they took the field. General Rutherford, Colonel Locke, Gen. William Davidson, and others, won for themselves honorable names in many a march and skirmish, and many a hard-fought battle.
CHAPTER XV
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MILITARY AFFAIRS
The Provincial Congress of North Carolina held its fourth meeting at Halifax, beginning on the fourth of April, 1776. Rowan was represented by Griffith Rutherford and Matthew Locke. This Congress was fully aware that the General Congress at Philadelphia was continuously moving towards a general declara- tion of independence, and was in full sympathy with it. The North Carolina statesmen were well aware that independence could not be achieved except by a fear- ful struggle against the military power of Britain. In order to be ready for this emergency, the judicial dis- tricts were made into military districts, and a Briga- dier-General appointed for each. Griffith Rutherford was appointed General for the Salisbury district. In Rowan County there were two regiments and two sets of field officers. Of the first regiment, Francis Locke was Colonel; Alexander Dobbins, Lieutenant- Colonel; and James Brandon and James Smith, Ma- jors. Of the second regiment (up the Catawba River), Christopher Beekman was Colonel; Charles McDowell, Lieutenant-Colonel; and Hugh Brevard and George Wilfong, Majors. Among the Company officers, we notice Captains Robert Smith, William Temple Coles, Thomas Haines, and Jesse Saunders,,
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with Lieutenants William Brownfield, James Carr, William Caldwell, David Craige, Thomas Pickett, Wil- liam Clover, John Madaris, and Pleasant Henderson. Among the officers of Light Horse Companies, we notice Martin Phifer, Captain; James Sumner, Lieutentant; and Valentine Beard, Cornet. These were all, or nearly all, from Rowan County. This military organization was intended for active service, whenever emergencies should arise. And the emer- gency for calling out the soldiers of the Salisbury dis- trict soon arose. Early in July of the same year, General Rutherford led nineteen hundred men across the mountains to scourge and hold in check the Chero- kees. This was more of an excursion than a war, for there was no open enemy to face, nothing but hills and mountains and rivers to be overcome, and a secret enemy waylaying their march and firing upon them from the wilderness, or from inaccessible crags along their way. But the object was accomplished, and the. Cherokees were compelled to sue for peace.
In the organization and drill of these military com- panies strange scenes were sometimes enacted. Min- gled among the patriots there were often men dis- affected to the cause of freedom. Some of these men had been Regulators a few years before, and at the conclusion of that contest, terrible oaths had been im- posed upon them, which now entangled their con- sciences. When the Declaration of Independence had been made, and it was understood that they might soon be called to fight against the troops of England, the disaffected began to draw back, while the Whigs
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were for moving forward. In the Company from the forks of the Yadkin one of these strange scenes was once enacted. Captain Bryan of that Company was disaffected, while the lieutenant, Richmond Pearson, was a Whig. On the muster, a dispute arose upon political matters between these two officers, and the Company decided that this great national question should be decided by a fair fist-fight between the cap- tain and the lieutenant, and that the Company should go with the victor. The fight came off in due time and manner, and Lieutenant Pearson succeeded in giving Captain Bryan a sound thrashing. The Forks Com- pany after that became zealous Whigs, while the crowd from Dutchman's Creek followed Captain Bryan and became Tories. Captain Pearson with his Company took the field against Lord Cornwallis as he passed through North Carolina. They were present at Cowan's Ford on the first of February, 1781, when General Davidson fell. Captain Pearson was the grandfather of the Hon. Richmond M. Pearson, the distinguished Chief Justice of North Carolina for so many years.
Captain Bryan became a confirmed loyalist, and was the notorious Colonel Bryan, who according to Dr. Caruthers, on the spur of the moment collected eight hundred Tories in the Forks of the Yadkin, and marched them off to Anson Courthouse to the British. While Colonel Fanning headed the Loyalists in the region of Deep River and the upper Cape Fear, and Colonels McNeil, Ray, Graham, and McDougal did the same for the region of the lower Cape Fear and
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HISTORY OF ROWAN COUNTY
Pee Dee, and Col. Johnson Moore, with Major Welch, and Captains Whitson and Murray, sustained the Loyalists' cause in Lincoln, Burke, and Rutherford Counties, Colonels Bryan and Hampton, and Major Elrod were the Tory leaders of Rowan County. The chief field of their operations was the region called the Forks of the Yadkin. This was an extensive tract, lying between the main Yadkin and the South Fork, beginning at the junction of these two streams about five miles from Salisbury, called "The Point," and extending from "The Point" northward and westward for a distance of forty or fifty miles. There Colonel Bryan ranged over plains and hills, through the Brushy Mountains, to the foothills of the Blue Ridge. He was connected with Colonel Fanning's troop only in a general way, and does not seem to have been, like him, a cruel and bloodthirsty man. In 1781, Colonel Bryan headed his troop of Loyalists in the partisan warfare in South Carolina. He was under Major Carden, at the military post established by Lord Raw- don, at Hanging Rock, in South Carolina, in 1781. Major William R. Davie, of North Carolina, with his cavalry troop and some Mecklenburg militia, under Colonel Higgins, hastened to attack this post at Hang- ing Rock. As he was approaching he learned that three Companies of Bryan's Loyalists were encamped at a farmhouse, on their return from a foraging ex- pedition. He immediately went in search of them, and soon made a vigorous attack upon them in front and rear, completely routing them, and killing or wounding all of them but a few. The spoils of this
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victory were sixty horses and one hundred muskets. Major Davie, though an Englishman by birth, was a law student in Salisbury during the first years of the war. In 1779 he was elected Lieutenant in a troop of Horse raised in Mecklenburg and the Waxhaws, and was attached to Pulaski's legion. He soon rose to the rank of Major ; but being wounded in the battle of Stono, below Charleston, he returned to Salisbury and resumed his studies. In the winter of 1780 he again raised a troop of cavalry, and in the absence of any statement to the contrary we would naturally infer that his Company was raised in Rowan County, es- pecially since Lieut. George Locke, of Rowan, was in it. It was with these troops, and the Mecklenburg militia, that he cut to pieces Colonel Bryan's Com- panies at Hanging Rock. It was thus that our people were arrayed against each other in this terrible strug- gle for liberty.
Colonel Bryan was afterwards tried by the Courts of North Carolina for disloyalty to his country, but no act of inhumanity was proved against him, and no charge was made out except that of being in arms against his country.
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