USA > North Carolina > Alamance County > Some neglected history of North Carolina, being an account of the revolution of the regulators and of the battle of Alamance, the first battle of the American Revolution > Part 15
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To have submitted to the peremptory, insult- ing demands of Tryon's proclamation just
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before the battle would have been to exhibit the cringing spirit of slaves, so, with the courage of true martyrs and heroes, they stood their ground when Tryon precipitately began the battle. "Thus," as says Caruthers, "was shown the first expression of the principle and spirit which covered the men of 1776 with immortal glory."
CHAPTER VI
Tryon Receives Commission as Governor of the Prov- ince of New York; During Trial of Prisoners He Leaves Hillsborough; Goes in Camp at Stony Creek ; Next Morning His Farewell to His Officers and Army; Returns to His Palace at Newberne and Em- barks for New York; Josiah Martin, the New Gov- ernor; Blood Shed at Alamance Battle-ground; the Graves of Patriots; the "Flower of Freedom" Which Sprang Therefrom; Monument of the Regulators that Fell at Alamance; the Monument Association ; Rev. Daniel Albright Long; Distinguished Guests in Attendance; the First Liberty Bell in America; the First Battle of the American Revolution; the First Declaration of Independence at Charlotte; the Meck- lenburg Declaration, May 20, 1775.
It is said that while the trial of the prisoners was in progress that Tryon received his com- mission as Governor of the Province of New York. As soon as the bloody tragedy was over, the army left Hillsborough on the follow- ing day, June 20, 1771, and encamped at Stony Creek, and next morning the Governor took leave of his officers and the army and returned to his costly palace at Newberne, only to bid it
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a long farewell, and make room for Josiah Martin, who knew better how to appreciate the colonists and their complaints. The troops, after Tryon's departure, were conducted by slow marches to Col. Needham Bryan's, in Johnson County, near where the present town of Smithfield now stands, where the different detachments separated. and returned each one by the nearest route to their respective counties. It will be remembered that the inhabitants of Duplin County refused to accompany Tryon's army in their march against the Regulators, and Colonel Ashe was directed to stop there and get them to take the oath of allegiance. But they were as obstinate about taking the oath of allegiance as they were about marching against the Regulators, and after waiting two or three days in vain. Colonel Ashe left them to enjoy their independence and returned home. Thus ended an expedition which was little more than a crusade against justice, freedom, and human- ity, in which Governor Tryon effected nothing for the permanent tranquillity and peace of the country, but saddled the Province with a war debt of about sixty thousand pounds sterling- three hundred thousand dollars. And while he subjected himself to the keenest shafts of ridi- cule, he gathered no laurels but such as were stained with the blood of his much-wronged and
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greatly-injured subjects, or blighted by the tears of the widow and orphan.
The Battle of Alamance was the incipiency of that "Whig" and "Tory" venom, which the "Revolution of the Regulators" aroused, that spread like wild-fire amongst the colonists of the thirteen provinces; which took years of bloody warfare and cost the country thousands of lives to smoulder it away. And yet this was a great object-lesson to the Americans. They saw the necessity for, and realized the need of, military discipline and equipment-a good les- son for a new nation, that of the United States of America. From the Hillsborough execu- tion, which was the closing scene of a tyrannical Governor's campaign against His Majesty's op- pressed subjects, was learned a lesson. The Regulators saw and realized what might have been accomplished by union, organization, and proper discipline. Notwithstanding the artil- lery, Tryon with the same troops could not have defeated the Regulators the second time on the same ground. The Americans had learned a valuable lesson in warfare and would have put Tryon's troops to flight.
I have pondered on the sad fate of the pa- triots who shed their blood on the Alamance battle-ground. "Theirs was indeed a sad fate; but God in His wisdom, overruling all men's
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wickedness, even to His own high purposes, has brought good out of this great wrong. It is said that in the olden days, from every hillock surrounding this historic spot, consecrated by the blood of martyrs, there came a voice to their countrymen, which for years afterwards they remembered, "Ye see here the tender mercies of an oppressive Government to your country- men"; and the people answered, "It were better for men to die like patriot soldiers, trying to overthrow such a government, than to be hanged like dogs for complaining of it." And they swore, God being their helper, they would be free, and they are free! "From the blood shed on the Battle-field of Alamance, from the very grass which covers the graves of the he- roic dead, sprung the glorious flower of free- dom which now blossoms in all its fragrant splendor throughout this great Republic"-the United States of America : the grandest, great- est, and most glorious republic on earth today.
I once lived and practiced my profession in the county of Alamance, in the neighborhood where these patriots lived. suffered, and died ; I have made many a pilgrimage to the historic spot; I have talked with the descendants of those who were in this battle, and of the oppres- sion they endured, and of the incidents before and after the battle. The spot is now marked
The First Liberty Bell
Facing page 2no.
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by a monument reared by the citizens of Ala- mance County in memory of the brave heroes who fell fighting for American freedom and in- dependence.
Rev. Daniel Albright Long, D. D., a citizen of Alamance County, on July 4, 1879, in a speech at the Regulator Battle-ground, which is about six and a half miles southwest of the present town of Graham, the county seat of Alamance County, called upon the citizens of the county to organize a "Monument Associa- tion" for the purpose of erecting a monument to the patriots of May 16, 1771. The organi- zation was perfected, and in the course of time the monument was erected, and it was unveiled on May 29, 1880, in the presence of several thousand patriotic citizens, the Governor of the State and military staff being present.
The music for this patriotic occasion was fur- nished by the Durham Military Band from Durham, North Carolina, through the gener- osity of Gen. Julian S. Carr, who fought under Lee during the late unpleasantness between the North and the South, and one of North Caro- lina's most princely and patriotic philan- thropists.
Col. Thomas M. Holt and Judge Daniel G. Fowle, both of whom were afterwards Gov- ernor of the State, made appropriate speeches.
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Many interesting relics were exhibited, among others a very large hand-bell, said to have been used by the Regulators to call their forces to- gether, as well as to warn them of the approach of the British. This first Liberty Bell in Amer- ica was presented to Dr. Long for his interest in the movement, and final erection, of the monument.
Governor Tryon with his own hands fired the first shot at the Battle of Alamance, which killed Robert Thompson, the first man killed at Alamance, Thursday, May 16, 1771. It was here that the first blood was shed for American freedom and independence ; it was here that the British first met the Americans-Regulators- on the battle-field ; here was the spot where the first armed resistance to British authority was enacted. The Battle of Alamance, and not the Battle of Lexington, as is usually taught, was the first battle of the American Revolution.
The burning desire for freedom and inde- pendence, held in check by an oppressive gov- ernment, at last-volcano-like .- burst through the powers of suppression ; and its eruption, like wild contagion, spread with the rapidity of a wild prairie fire, consuming the mind and intel- lect of all with whom it came in contact with a desire for and a determination to be free and independent, until Massachusetts and the other
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ALAMAINE
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Monument to the Battle of Alamance.
Facing page 202.
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eleven colonies joined the Regulators of the Province of North Carolina for the coming stu- pendous struggle for independence.
The Revolution of the Regulators at the Bat- tle of Alamance sharpened the sensibilities and instilled into the intellect of the Mecklenburgers the determination to be free and independent, which led to the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, the first Declaration of Ameri- can Liberty and Independence. With the facts before us it is an indisputable historic fact that the Province of North Carolina was the first of the thirteen colonies to openly resist and later cast off the British yoke, and relying on the truth and justice of her cause and with the help of the God of David, she threw the gauntlet- Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence-of defiance in the teeth of the Goliath power of England .*
Possibly no two facts in American history have been more doubted and discussed, and as a consequence more clearly and indisputably pro-
*Mrs. L. A. McCorkle, writing in the North Carolina Booklet, "Was Alamance the First Battle of the Ameri- can Revolution," defends the cause of the Regulators in a masterly style. Her conclusions evince a research sur- passing that of any recent writer, and so just to the cause of the Regulators and the principles for which they fought and died that I hope to be pardoned for drawing largely upon it, realizing that she has exhausted the sources of information, and that nothing can be added to nor taken from it without marring the truth.
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ven, than that the Battle of Alamance was the first battle, and here the first blood was shed; and that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Inde- pendence was the forerunner of the American Revolution. The blood shed at Alamance made possible the Declaration of the Mecklen- burgers. However, just as there were during the war of the roses patriotic Englishmen who sided with the House of York, while others were allied with the House of Lancaster; as during the Protectorate there were patriots among the Roundheads as well as among the Cavaliers ; as during the Revolution there were some good men who believed in Toryism and sided with England, while other good men, be- lievers in Whig principles, opposed England ; as during the war between the States there were conscientious believers on the Union side who fought against their neighbors and kindred in the Federal army-so for more than a hundred years there have been among us those believing in, and those refusing to believe in, the patriot- ism of the heroes of the Battle of Alamance and in the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declara- tion of Independence.
"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 Tryon and Martin to Lord Hillsbor-
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ough, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and from contemporary publications in Philadel- phia, New York, and Boston. This great his- torian tells us that he had a very full collection of papers bearing on the Regulators, and he de- clares that 'the blood of rebels against oppres- sion was first shed on the branches of the Cape Fear River.' Nor is the opinion of Dr. Ca- ruthers to be despised. He lived for forty years in the section which had been the storm-center of the Regulation movement, being the imme- diate successor of Dr. David Caldwell as pastor of the historic churches of Alamance and Buf- falo. He gathered many of his facts from 'old men of great respectability, who were then liv- ing and remembered the former times.' When he used verbal testimony he 'took pains to get an account of the same thing from different persons or from the same person at different times, for the purpose of comparing them to- gether and ascertaining the truth.' And he tells us that 'the Regulation is now regarded by our greatest men as the very germ of the Rev- olution in this State.' Dr. Hawks tells us he lived 'where the spot on which the Regulators were hanged met his eye every day,' and de- clares that 'God made the flower of freedom grow out of the turf that covered these men's graves.' He also had a personal acquaintance
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with contemporaries of those who laid down their lives at Alamance.
"It is urged that the Regulators were not fighting British troops and that they were not fighting for independence. As to the first quib- ble, it is sufficient to state that they were fight- ing the same sort of a force that suffered defeat at the hands of Shelby and Cleveland at King's Mountain-colonial militia, flying the British flag, and led by officers who represented the British Crown. As to the second, the same ar- gument would prove that Lexington was not a battle of the Revolution at all, and that in fact the Revolution did not commence until July, 1776. The truth is, none of the colonists at first desired independence. The common de- mand of all was redress of grievances. Only thirty-seven days before the Battle of Lexing- ton, 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 Regulators did not come thither expecting to fight. Neither did the men of Lexington. We are told that ‘the night preceding the outrage 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 stig- matized as rebels, and suffered the spoiling of
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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 Alamance with those of the men of Lex- ington. They at Lexington instruct their rep- resentatives to demand 'radical and lasting re- dress of their grievances.' On the village green of Lexington free-born Americans swore 'to combat manfully for their birthright inherit- ance of liberty.' On the green sward of Ala- mance the Regulators. counting themselves free-born, gave full proof of their resolve 'to know and enjoy the liberty which they had in- herited.'
"Word chimes with word. Deed harmon- izes with deed. The same spirit of freedom, 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 freedom that afterwards flashed in the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, and later flamed at King's Mountains, at Cowpens, and at Guilford Court House."
In view of all the facts, attested by contem- porary witnesses and admitted by royal Gov- ernors, we feel constrained to believe that what
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Bancroft says of the men of Lexington should be, in all its particulars, held applicable to the heroes of Alamance, 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 to furnish the victims. If any fact in the history of the United States is well at- tested, it is that the fire which flashed forth at Alamance was not quenched in the ashes of de- feat. It left embers burning from which, as the years went by, there was kindled through- out Surry, Anson, Rowan, and Mecklenburg, and across the Alleghanies in the independent 'State of Franklin,' founded by refugees from the country of the Regulators, a flame of pa- triotic fever which, uniting at last with the fires of Lexington and Bunker Hill, swept away the entire remnant of British power in the colonies. In the State of Franklin, the immediate off- spring of the Regulation movement, independ- ence was a fact before it was dreamed of else- where. 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 oppression, 'set to the people of America
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the dangerous example of erecting themselves into a State separate and distinct from and in- dependent of the authority' of the English Crown."
If this resistance of the Regulators to Try- on's tyranny is not entitled to be designated a "Revolution" because the original purpose of the Regulators was not to "change their form of government," neither was the continuous and falsely so-called "Revolutionary War" en- titled to be termed a revolution for the same reason; for to a certainty the Revolutionary patriots had no idea of changing their form of government till 1776-five years after the war had begun. We have proven that the War of the Regulators was a revolution and the begin- ning of, and the Revolutionary War the ending of, one and the same war against oppression by the British Government; and that for the es- tablishment of our free and glorious Republic Washington and his coadjutors must share the honor with the Regulators. We feel in duty bound, as a true North Carolinian, to do the Regulators and their cause justice, and the Col- ony of Massachusetts, with the glories of her Lexington, must yield precedence to the Old North State and her "Alamance," where the first patriots defied an army flying the British flag, and gave up their life-blood for American liberty and independence.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX "A"
GOVERNOR WILLIAM TRYON'S CHARACTER AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.
Governor Tryon was an Englishman by birth and a soldier by profession. He received a commission as Lieutenant and Captain of the First Regiment of Foot Guards, 12th October, 1751; in 1757 he married Miss Wake, of Hanover St., London, with whom he received a large fortune of £20,000 pounds sterling, and on 30th September, 1758, became Captain and Lieutenant-Colonel in the Guards. Through some Court influence, probably as Miss Tryon, his sister, was maid of honor to the QUEEN, and as he claimed relationship with the Raw- don or Moira family. he was appointed Lieutenant-Gov- ernor of North Carolina, where he arrived 27th of Octo- ber. 1764, and was Gasetted Governor. of the Province 20th July. 1765. He administered the Government of North Carolina until July, 1771, when he was advanced to that of New York. He was promoted to a Colonelcy in the Army 25th May, 1772; became third Major of the Guards, 8th June, 1775; Major-General, 29th August, 1777, and Colonel of the 70th regiment, 14th May, 1778. In 1779 his name was inserted in the New York Act of Confiscation. On 21st March, 1780, he resigned the Gov- ernorship of New York, which for many years had been only nominal, and returned to England, where he was appointed Lieutenant-General, 20th November, 1782, and Colonel of the 29th Foot. 16th August, 1783. Governor Tryon died at his home, upper Grosvenor Street, Lon-
OR
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don, 27th January, 1788, and his remains were deposited in the family vault at Twickenham. A highly eulogistic obituary notice of him, doubtless from the pen of Ed- mund Fanning, who accompanied him from North Caro- lina in July, 1771, appeared shortly after in the Gentle- man's Gasette, LVIII., 179. "The name of Tryon," it asserts, "will be revered across the Atlantic while virtue and sensibility remain." The State of New York mani- fested its "reverence" soon after by erasing the name Tryon from the only county that bore it in the State. North Carolina also obliterated the name Tryon, which stigmatized one of her counties, by dividing the territory in 1779 into two new counties-Lincoln and Rutherford.
What was Tryon's real character it is difficult to say even at this day. That he was a soldier, diplomat and statesman is beyond dispute. That he possessed per- sonal courage is doubtless true ; that he was well versed in the learning of his profession and possessed of a prac- tical knowledge of its details, no one can deny who has studied his record. Undoubtedly, he was fond of the pomp and vanities of life generally ; but, possibly, he was never quite so happy as when riding at the head of a col- umn of gallant men, and doubtless the feather in his hat was just.a trifle, at least, more showy than the plumes worn by men of equal rank, though, perhaps, not of equal military ability. But Tryon, when in North Carolina, at least, is considered to have been something more than a mere soldier seeking a bubl le. reputation at the can- non's mouth : but, for all that, he was always a soldier. and, while an adept in the arts of diplomacy whenever it pleased him to employ them, he always had in view the use of armed troops as a last resort. Diplomacy, too. perhaps, he kept for the legislature and force for the people. After the matter of the Stamp Act, he used all the force at his command, the armed vessels in the river. and proceeded to advise the home government as to the best time to send troops to the Province. In the matter
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of the Cherokee Boundary Line, of which there was no necessity, with an army consisting of one hundred men and servants, marching in all the vanity and pomp of a general going to war, he marched for the westward on May 20th, 1767, and returned again on June 13th of the same year, being out seventeen days, for which the tax- ables of the Province were assessed more than two pence per head, aggregating the sum of £15,000 sterling. In the matter of the Regulators, which, though perhaps the most important event of his administration, the advan- tages likely to accrue to himself personally from a suc- cessful armed conflict with so-called rebels, seemed to have possessed him at an early date, and to have blinded him entirely as to his duties to the people over whom he ruled. His desire to live in luxury and be surrounded by the pomp and vanity of royalty, had its culmination in his influencing the Assembly to build a palace which cost the Province Twenty Thousand Pounds. The truth seems to be that he could have settled the Regulation troubles without force had he desired to do so. This he did not desire to do, but, on the contrary, desired the Regulators should proceed to violence, which would give him a pretext to bring an army into the fields. His first army for this purpose was officered in September, 1768, when he undertook the Hillsborough Expedition against the Regulators; but his promises to their requests for an amicable adjustment of their grievances satisfied them, and they left him "to fight the air ;" he was disappointed of the desired conflict. The cost of this Hillsborough ex- pedition was something more than £20,000 sterling. His next army was not put in the field until April, 1771, but he began preparing for it more than twelve months be- fore by having the Johnson Act passed, which was only to be in force for one year, and no longer, during which time he realized that the Regulators would take up arms against the Government, knowing that they would no longer submit to the extortion and oppression practiced
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by all the officers of the Government, from himself down. After having the necessary laws passed for this cam- paign and the troops drilled and in readiness, he by no means proposed "to fight the air" (again) this time, so he held his troops back until it was certain there would be substantial men in his front, and not merely "the air." The expense of this expedition cost the taxpayers of the Province more than £40,000 sterling. From the tenor of his correspondence generally, it would seem he was steadily looking forward to his marching against the Regulators, and, from his correspondence just before the Legislature met in 1770, it would seem he was eagerly on the hunt for matter with which to aggravate that body into passing a Johnson Act of some sort. Certainly, too, when in March, 1771, he ordered the judges to attend the approaching term of Hillsborough court, it would seem he desired to make sure of further violence. and to use the words of one of the judges, "was not unwilling to sacrifice his judges to increase the guilt of his ene- mies." Either that, or he utterly discredited the reputed violence of the Regulators.
He was a fine writer, too. and a fearless one, and wrote with much force and elegance, indulging at times in smoothly polislied impertinence. very thinly veiled, in his correspondence with the home Government. But, to do Tryon full justice, we must bear in mind that modern ideas of the just relations between the People and their Governors today are very different from the ideas of one hundred and fifty years ago. Fanning, too, at an early day seems to have gotten an influence over him; so baneful, indeed, was it, that from the day it was acquired it was full of evil, and evil only, to the Province.
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