USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1584 1783, Volume I > Part 37
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Following hard upon the "Snow Campaign" and the de- struction of Norfolk, came the defeat of the Highlanders at Moore's Creek Bridge, February 27, 1776. The victory of Moore's Creek Bridge was an event of much greater signifi- cance than is generally accorded it in the histories of the Revolution, and Frothingham is guilty of no exaggeration when he calls it "the Lexington and Concord" of the South. So far from being an isolated event, it was part of an exten- sive campaign planned by the king and ministry for the sub- jugation of all the southern colonies which but for the victory, at Moore's Creek Bridge would probably have succeeded.
Governor Martin in his cabin on the Cruizer had never once relaxed his efforts to restore the king's authority in North Carolina. Some Loyalists, who in spite of the vigi- lance of the committees found means of communicating with him, assured him that the people were tired of the rule of "the little tyrannies" called committees which they had set up and were eager for him "to relieve them from the self- made yoke which they now found intolerable." Encouraged by such reports, Martin submitted to the ministry a well- conceived plan for the reduction not of North Carolina only, but also of Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia. According to this plan, he was to raise 10,000 Tories, Regulators and Highlanders in the interior of North Carolina; Lord Corn- wallis was to sail from Cork, Ireland, with seven regiments of British regulars escorted by a fleet of seventy-two sail under command of Sir Peter Parker, and Sir Henry Clinton
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was to sail from Boston with 2,000 regulars and take com- mand of the combined forces, which were to effect a junction at Wilmington about the middle of February. On January 3, 1776, Martin received dispatches from Lord Dartmouth in- forming him that his plan had been heartily approved; that Clinton and Cornwallis had received their orders accordingly, and that he might proceed with his part of the program. Accordingly he promptly issued commissions to Donald Mac- Donald, a veteran of Culloden whom Clinton had sent from Boston to take command of the North Carolina Highlanders; to Allan MacDonald, husband of the Scottish heroine, Flora MacDonald, and to twenty-four others in Cumberland, Anson, Chatham, Guilford, Orange, Mecklenburg, Rowan, Surry and Bute counties, empowering them to raise and organize troops and ordering them to press down on Brunswick by February 15th. A few days later he received word that the Loyalists were in high spirits, were fast collecting, and were well equipped with wagons and horses. They planned to leave 1,000 men at Cross Creek and with the remainder to march at once upon Wilmington; the governor might feel assured that they would place that rebellious town in his possession by February 25th at the latest. On February 18th, 1,600 Highland- ers, led by Donald MacDonald, encouraged by the presence and the stirring words of Flora MacDonald herself, with bag- pipes playing and the royal standard flying in their midst, marched gaily out of Cross Creek and took the Brunswick road for Wilmington. Upon receiving information of this movement, Governor Martin with the men-of-war which were stationed at the mouth of the Cape Fear moved up the river and dropped anchor opposite Wilmington to be ready to sup- port his friends.
In the meantime the Whig leaders had not been inactive. Colonel James Moore of the First Regiment of Continentals had been closely watching the movements of the Highlanders and was fully informed of their plans. On February 15th he took a position on the southern bank of Rockfish Creek, where lie was soon joined by enough minute-men under James Kenan, Alexander Lillington and John Ashe to raise his little army to 1,100 men. Colonel Alexander Martin was approach- ing with a small force from Guilford County; Colonel James Thackston with another small force was hastening from the southwest, and Colonel Richard Caswell was on the march with 800 militia from the New Bern District. Moore was in Vol. 1-25
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supreme command and directed the movements of all these detachments.
On February 19th MacDonald approached to within four miles of Moore's encampment on Rockfish Creek. Now began a series of movements in which Moore out-generaled Mac- Donald, displayed military capacity of a high order and clearly won the honors of the campaign. Some years later a dispute arose among the friends of Alexander Lillington and Richard Caswell as to which of the two was due the credit of the victory over the Highlanders. It has since taken its place along with Alamance and Mecklenburg among the historic controversies in our annals. The truth is that the real hero of Moore's Creek Bridge was neither Lillington nor Caswell, but Moore. This is said without any purpose to detract from the just fame of either of those eminent patriots. Their work was plain and could be seen of all men; Moore's part in the campaign, owing to his absence from the scene of the actual fighting, was not so evident and can not be understood without a careful study of the events of the week preceding the battle. It was he who directed the movements which on the morning of February 27th brought Caswell, Lillington and Ashe with 1,100 minute-men face to face with MacDonald's 1,600 High- landers at Moore's Creek Bridge, eighteen miles above Wil- mington.
On the afternoon of February 26th, in obedience to Moore's directions, Caswell took up a position at the west end of Moore's Creek Bridge, toward which MacDonald was ap- proaching, while Ashe and Lillington held the east end. About daybreak the following morning MacDonald reached within striking distance of Caswell's camp, expecting to find him with the creek in his rear between his forces and those of Lillington and Ashe. But in the night Caswell, leaving his campfires burning, as Washington afterwards did at Trenton, (a fact which Caswell's friends commented on at the time), crossed the bridge and joined Lillington and Ashe. He then had the planks of the bridge removed, leaving only the sills in place. The Highlanders having formed for the attack on the west bank of the stream were greatly surprised when they marched into a deserted camp and immediately concluded that the enemy had fled. Leading his troops, Donald McLeod, who commanded, MacDonald being too ill to take the field, reached the bridge while it was still dark. "Who goes there?" chal- lenged Caswell's sentinel. "A friend," replied McLeod. "A friend to whom?" answered the voice in the darkness. "To
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the king," replied the Highlander. Receiving no further reply and thinking the challenge might have come from one of his friends, McLeod called out in Gaelic. Still no answer. Raising his gun, he fired toward the spot whence the voice came and made a dash across the bridge. The Whigs fired and McLeod fell. Those who attempted to follow him were cut down and fell into the creek below. More than thirty of the bravest were shot down. The others losing heart, shame- fully abandoned their sick general and fled. The victory could not have been more complete. Of the Whigs only one man was killed and one wounded. The total loss of the High- landers in killed and wounded was estimated at fifty. Their army was completely scattered. Moore arriving on the field shortly after the battle pressed the pursuit so vigorously that 350 guns, 150 swords and dirks, 1,500 excellent rifles, a box containing £15,000 sterling, 13 wagons, 850 soldiers and many officers, including their commanding general, fell into his hands. Two days after the victory Caswell reported it to President Harnett of the Provincial Council and on March 2d Colonel Moore sent to him a more detailed account of the cam- paign. Both these reports were widely published throughout the colonies and everywhere encouraged the advocates of inde- pendence.
Martin's plan for the subjugation of the province was excellent, but it failed because the Loyalists were too eager and the regulars were not eager enough. During the month of February, while the ill-fated Highlanders were marching to their doom at Moore's Creek Bridge, Sir Henry Clinton, with the two thousand regulars he was to bring from Boston, was leisurely coasting southward, now calling at New York for a talk with former Governor Tryon, now peeping in at Chesapeake Bay to pass the time of day with Governor Dun- more; while Sir Peter Parker, whose fleet was to bear Lord Cornwallis' seven, regiments to the Cape Fear, was still lingering at Cork. Consequently when Clinton finally arrived at Cape Fear in April and Cornwallis in May, they found that they were too late. The Highlanders rising prematurely had been crushed, and the Americans forewarned were under arms in large numbers. Clinton therefore dared not attempt a landing, and after wasting more than a month plundering the plantations of prominent Whig leaders along the Cape Fear, weighed anchor and set sail for Charleston. With him sailed Josiah Martin, the last royal governor of North Caro- lina.
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The victory at Moore's Creek Bridge was the crowning achievement of the Provincial Council. But for the sleepless vigilance and resourceful energy of President Harnett and his colleagues in organizing, arming and equipping the troops, MacDonald's march down the Cape Fear would have been but a holiday excursion. As it was, the royal governor had again measured strength with the people and again was beaten. High ran the enthusiasm of the Whigs, and high their confidence. Ten thousand men sprang to arms and hur- ried to Wilmington. "Since I was born," wrote an eye wit- ness, "I never heard of so universal an ardor for fighting and so perfect a union among all degrees of men." Clinton and Cornwallis came with their powerful armaments, but find- ing no Loyalist force to welcome them at Cape Fear, they sailed away to beat in vain at the doors of Charleston. The victory at Moore's Creek Bridge saved North Carolina from conquest, and in all probability postponed the conquest of Georgia and South Carolina for three more years. Of this victory Bancroft wrote: "In less than a fortnight, more than nine thousand four hundred men of North Carolina rose against the enemy; and the coming of Clinton inspired no ter- ror. *
* * Almost every man was ready to turn out at an hour's warning.
* * Virginia offered assistance, and South Carolina would gladly have contributed relief; but North Carolina had men enough of her own to crush insur- rection and guard against invasion; and as they marched in triumph through their piney forests, they were persuaded that in their own woods they could win an easy victory over Brit- ish regulars. The terrors of a fate like that of Norfolk could not dismay the patriots of Wilmington; the people spoke more and more of independence; and the Provincial Con- gress, at its impending session, was expected to give an authoritative form to the prevailing desire." 3
3 History of the United States, ed. 1860, Vol. VIII, p. 289.
CHAPTER XXII
INDEPENDENCE
"Moore's Creek was the Rubicon over which North Caro- lina passed to independence and constitutional self-govern- ment." Before that event the Whig leaders had rather dreaded than sought independence. They met with indignant denial the assertions of their enemies that they had aimed at it from the beginning of their dispute with the mother country. Perhaps they did not foresee as clearly as the Tories did the logical result of their contentions. At any rate, they approached independence slowly, through a long process of development, and finally adopted it, as emancipation was afterwards adopted, as a war measure. Officially North Caro- lina led the way with the first resolution adopted by any of the colonies authorizing their delegates in the Continental Congress to vote for independence. It seems proper, there- fore, to trace briefly the rise and development of the senti- ment for independence in North Carolina, and to point out what influence the action of the North Carolina Congress had in other colonies.
It cannot be said that the sentiment for independence "originated" in any particular place. It was a growth and was present, perhaps unconsciously, in the minds of political thinkers and leaders long before England's policy crystal- lized it into conscious thought. Academic discussions of the possibility of an independent American nation were not un- common, either in Europe or America, for many years before the Revolution; but it is safe to say that the idea took no defi- nite shape even in the minds of the most advanced thinkers until after the struggle over the Stamp Act. The principles upon which the Americans opposed the Stamp Act had been regarded in the colonies as so firmly fixed, both by the British Constitution and by the colonial charters, that they were as- tonished to find them seriously questioned. Adherence to their charters and resistance to their perversion were car- dinal principles with North Carolinians throughout their
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colonial history, and their records for a hundred years before the passage of the Stamp Act are full of the assertions of the principles upon which the American Revolution was fought.
The ministry, therefore, no sooner asserted the constitu- tional authority of Parliament to levy internal taxes in the colonies than the people of North Carolina denied it. Their contest, however, before the outbreak of hostilities was for constitutional government within the British Empire, though a few far-sighted leaders soon began to think of independence as possibly the ultimate solution of their political troubles with the mother country. Among the leaders of North Caro- lina who foresaw it, first place must be assigned to William Hooper. On April 26, 1774, in a letter to James Iredell, Hooper made this remarkable forecast of the political tenden- cies of the time :
"With you I anticipate the important share which the Colonies must soon have in regulating the political balance. They are striding fast to independence, and ere long will build an empire upon the ruins of Great Britain, will adopt its constitution purged of its impurities, and from an experi- ence of its defects will guard against those evils which have wasted its vigor and brought it to an untimely end."
In the same prophetic vein, Samuel Johnston, writing Sep- tember 23, 1774, with reference particularly to the Declara- tory Act and the Boston Port Bill, said: "It is useless, in disputes between different Countries, to talk about the right which one has to give Laws to the other, as that generally attends the power, tho' where that power is wantonly or cruelly exercised, there are Instances where the weaker state has resisted with Success; for when once the Sword is drawn all nice distinctions fall to the Ground; the difference between internal and external taxation will be little attended to, and it will hereafter be considered of no consequence whether the Act be to regulate Trade or raise a fund to sup- port a majority in the House of Commons. By this desperate push the Ministry will either confirm their power of making Laws to bind the Colonies in all cases whatsoever, or give up the right of making Laws to bind them in any Case."
These utterances, however, expressed political judgment rather than sentiment, for neither Hooper nor Johnston at that time desired independence. Nor did their judgment ex- press the general sentiment of the colony. This sentiment found more accurate expression in the proceedings of the local meetings which were held in the various counties during
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the summer of 1774 to elect delegates to the Provincial Con- gress, and to adopt instructions to them. They invariably required the delegates to take a firm stand for the constitu- tional rights of the colonists, but at the same time professed the utmost loyalty to the king; while in August the Provincial Congress spoke for the province as a whole when it resolved to "maintain and defend the succession of the House of Han- over as by law established," and avowed "inviolable and un- shaken Fidelity" to George III. But while these expressions undoubtedly represent the general sentiment of the colony at that time, they are less significant than other utterances which point to the change unconsciously working in the minds of men. Significant were the instructions of Pitt County, whose delegates were directed to make "a declaration of American rights," and, while acknowledging "due subjection to the Crown of England," to make it equally clear that in submit- ting to the authority of the king, the Americans did so "by their own voluntary act," and were entitled to enjoy "all their free chartered rights and libertys as British free sub- jects." But surpassing all other resolutions in the clearness and accuracy with which they stated the American idea, and reaching the most advanced ground attained in North Caro- lina during the year 1774, were the instructions of Granville County, adopted August 15th. They declared "that those ab- solute rights we are entitled to as men, by the immutable Laws of Nature, are antecedent to all social and relative duties what- soever; that by the civil compact subsisting between our King and His People, Allegiance is right of the first Magistrate, and protection the right of the People; that a violation of this Compact would rescind the civil Institution binding both King and People together."
Political sentiment in North Carolina, therefore, during the year 1774 reached this point: The people owe and ac- knowledge allegiance to the king, but in return for this al- legiance the king owes protection to the people; if either violates the "civil compact" subsisting between them, the other is released from all obligations to maintain it; however, the acts of which the people now complain are not the acts of the king, but of a corrupt Parliament and a venal and tyrannical ministry; the people are convinced that the king, if only they could reach his royal ears with their grievances, would throw the mantle of his protection around them; and therefore they determined, in the words of the Granville reso- lutions : "Although we are oppressed, we will still adhere
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to the civil Obligation exacting our allegiance to the best of Kings, as we entertain a most cordial affection to His Maj- esty's Person."
A severe blow was dealt this position with the opening of the year 1775. In February the two houses of Parliament presented an address to the king declaring the colonies in rebellion, and assuring his majesty of their determination to support him in his efforts to suppress it; and the king returning his thanks for their loyal address, called for an in- crease of both the land and naval forces to be used in America. A few months later those who held that the king was not responsible for the acts of Parliament were still further shaken in their position by the announcement that he was hiring Hessians for service against the Americans; and in October they were driven completely from their ground by his proclamation declaring the colonists out of his protection.
The effect of these measures on the development of senti- ment for independence is marked, first in the opinion of indi- vidual leaders, afterwards in the utterances of public assem- blies. On April 7th, just after the adjournment of the second Provincial Congress and the dissolution of the last Assembly held under royal authority, Governor Martin, in a letter to Lord Dartmouth declared that the royal government in North Carolina was absolutely prostrate and impotent; that "noth- ing but the shadow of it is left," and that unless strong meas- ures were taken at once "there will not long remain a trace of Britain's dominion over these colonies." Three months later Joseph Hewes urged Samuel Johnston to use his in- fluence and example to "drive every principle of Toryism" out of every part of the province ; he considered himself "over head and ears in what the ministry call Rebellion," but felt "no compunction" for the part he had taken, or for the num- ber of "our enemies lately slain in the battle at Bunkers Hill." Another North Carolina Whig, writing July 31st to a busi- ness house in Edinburgh, declared that "every American, to a man, is determined to die or be free," and closed his letter with the warning: "This Country, without some step is taken, and that soon, will be inevitably lost to the Mother Country." Thomas McKnight, a Tory, believed there had been "from the beginning of the dispute, a fixed design in some peoples breasts to throw off every connection with Great] B[ritain] and to act for the future as totally inde- pendent." After the king's proclamation in October, Hewes at Philadelphia entertained "but little expectation of a recon-
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ciliation" and saw "scarcely a dawn of hope that it will take place"; and thought that independence would come soon "if the British ministry pursue their present diabolical scheme." The year 1775 closed in North Carolina with the publication of a remarkable open letter to "The Inhabitants of the United Colonies" by one who called himself "A British American." He declared that the salvation of the colonies lay in "declaring an immediate independency," in "holding forth, to all the Powers of Europe, a general neutrality," and in "immedi- ately opening all our ports, and declaring them free to every European Power, except Great Britain." "We must separ- ate," he concluded, "or become the laboring slaves of Britain, which we disdain to be."
Men of course are more radical in expressing their opinions in private than in public assemblies and official docu- ments. It will be found, therefore, that during the year 1775 the sentiment of public assemblies, though much in advance of the sentiment of 1774, was more conservatively expressed than the private opinions of the leaders might lead us to ex- pect. On April 6, 1775, the Assembly of the province, in reply to a message from the governor reminding them of their duty to the king, declared that "the Assembly of North Carolina have the highest sense of the allegiance due to the King; the Oath so repeatedly taken by them to that purpose made it unnecessary for them to be reminded of it"; at the same time, however, they called the governor's attention to the fact that the king "was by the same Constitution which established that allegiance and enjoined that oath, happily for his Subjects, solemnly bound to protect them in all their just rights and privileges by which a reciprocal duty became in- cumbent upon both."
This declaration was made before the people had heard of the address of Parliament in February and the king's reply declaring them in rebellion. How quickly they as- sumed that the withdrawal of protection by the sovereign re- leased the subject from the obligations of allegiance is made manifest by the Mecklenburg Resolutions of May 31. "Where- as," so runs this striking document, "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 and Parliament are annulled and vacated and the former civil constitution of these colonies for the present wholly sus-
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pended;" therefore, it was resolved that "the Provincial Congress of each Province under the direction 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." Under these circum- stances it was thought necessary to inaugurate a new county government, to organize the militia, and to elect officials "who shall hold and exercise their several powers by virtue of this choice and independent of the Crown of Great Britain and former constitution of this Province." These resolves and this organization were declared to be "in full force and virtue until instructions from the Provincial Congress regulating the jurisprudence of the Province shall provide otherwise or the legislative body of Great Britain resign its unjust and arbitrary pretensions with respect to America." 1
The day after the meeting at Charlotte, the Rowan com- mittee, which had declared a year before that they were ready to die in defense of the king's title to his American dominions, resolved "that by the Constitution of our Government we are a free People"; that the constitution "limits both Sov- ereignty and Allegiance," and "that it is our Duty to Sur- render our lives, before our Constitutional privileges to any set of Men upon earth;" and referred any who might be of
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