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 7
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We must make these men subject to the laws, or they will enslave the whole community. General and private musters are also an unnecessary burden, especially in our large counties, the outsides of which have to ride from thirty to fifty miles; and the outsides of a county con- tain more than the heart. Going to one of these mus-
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ters generally costs a whole week's labor .- And on the whole, costs the counties at least a Thousand pounds each. A general muster is one week's loss in a year, which is one-fiftieth part of the year .- Four private musters one week more, which is one twenty-fifth part. -Working on the roads and attending courts, will soon reduce it to one-twelfth part of our time .- And of what service is all this cost attending the militia law? It serves to bring custom to a few Ordinary Keepers, and for a day of gaiety and feasting to a few individuals, who have been vain enough sometimes to publish such a day's diversion in distant Gazettes.
With what indignation must a poor ass read such a paragraph of such vain boasting of such a crowd of poor asses, faint with hunger, cold and thirst, laying out two or three nights by a fire in the wood, to perform this journey ; destitute even of a great-coat or blanket ; and of no use under the sun but to make a show of grandeur to a few who, perhaps, are the most unworthy in the county.
This excess has not been practiced perhaps in many counties ;- But it is not amiss to check it, lest it should grow, and you be tied neck and heels for the latest af- front, and made to ride the wooden mare .- It is enough to make a free man's flesh creep to read this law ;- which might be more tolerable, were the people allowed to choose their own officers .- It would be needless to mention every circumstance of oppression in this which is yet but the civil burden.
I shall now proceed to the 3d head, to consider of a method to remove these burdens.
When the time of an election comes on, and those men of the world, who rule by wealth, and whose busi- ness it is to corrupt their fellow-subjects, and cheat
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them by flattery and corruption; out of their liberty, come to ask your votes,-do you despise their offers, and say to them: Your money perish with you.
Can it be supposed that such men will take care of your interests who begin with debauching your morals, and ruining your souls by drunkenness ?- Will that man have the least regard for your civil interest and property who first attempts to ruin your virtue ?- What opinion must they have of such people, who, for a few days riot and gluttony will sell their liberties, but that they are asses, that want to be watered?
While men are thus slaves to their lusts, they will never be free. Men that do so easily sell their souls will not value their country .- Where there is no virtue, there can be no liberty ;- it is all licentiousness. What Issa- chars are such People who give their votes for a man who neither fears God nor loves mankind! who, by the very method he pursues to. obtain his election, has it in their view to make you pay for it in the round.
Secondly, Forever despise that man who has betrayed the liberty of his constituents; this will lay a restraint upon the venal disposition of such as incline to sell their country for preferment. It would be a check to hinder them from going into the schemes of a Governor .- Never send those who depend on favor for a living, or on the perplexity of the laws, nor any who have ever discovered a want of good principles.
North Carolinians, if you remain under these bur- dens, it must be your own fault ;- you will stand re- corded for asses to all generations if you do not assert your privileges before it is too late to recover them.
It is not disloyalty, nor injurious, to give Instruc- tions to the candidates you choose, and take their sol- emn promise and obligation, that they will follow those instructions. This is far more noble than rioting a few days in drunkenness. Assemblymen are your servants,
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and it is but reasonable they be made accountable to you for their conduct.
Mark any clerk, lawyer or Scotch merchant, or any set of men, who are connected with certain companies, callings and combinations, whose interests jar with the interest of the public good .- And when they come to solicit you with invitations to entertainments, &c., shun 1 them as you would the pestilence.
Send a man who is the choice of the country, and not one who sets up himself, and is the choice of a party ; whose interest clashes with the good of the pub- lic. Send a Christian, or a man whom you think in your consciences is a real honest, good man ;- for this is the Christian, let his belief, as to creeds and opinions be what it will.
Beware of being corrupted by flattery, for such men study the art of managing those springs of action within us, and will easily make us slaves by our own consent .- There is more passions than one that these men work upon; there is drunkenness, love of honour, flattery of great men, love of interest, preferment, or some worldly advantage .- They, by taking hold of these springs within us, insensibly lead us into bondage.
When any man, who has much of this world, so that his interest weighs down a great number of his poor neighbors, and employs that interest contrary to the principles of virtue and honesty, any person of the least discernment may see he is a.curse to the nation.
When men's votes are solicited, or overawed by some superiors, the election is not free .- Men in power and of large fortunes threaten us out of our liberty, by the weight of their interests.
North Carolinians, Are you sensible what you are doing, when, for some small favor, or sordid gratifica- tions, you sell your votes to such as want to enslave
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your country ?- You are publishing to all the world that you are asses .- You are despised already by the sister colonies .- You are hunting your trade ; for men of public generous spirits, who have fortunes to promote trade, are discouraged from coming among you.
You are also encouraging your own assemblymen to enslave you; for when they, who are elected, see that those who had a right to elect them had no cencern for their true interest, but that they were elected by chance, or power of their own, or some great man's interest, such men will be the more ready to vote in the assem- bly with as much indifference about the interest of their constituents as they had in voting them in.
You may always suspect every one who overawes or wants to corrupt you; the same person will load you with burdens. You may easily find out who was tools to the governor, and who concurred in past assemblies to lay burdens on us, the edifice, paying the troops, the associates' salaries, &c. Send not one of them ever any more; let them stand as beacons; set a mark on them, that ages to come may hold their memories in abhor- rence.
May not Carolina cry and utter her voice, and say, That she will have her public accounts settled; that she will have her lawyers and officers subject to the laws .- That she will pay no taxes but what are agreea- ble to law .- That she will pay no officer nor lawyer any more fees than the law allows .- That she will hold con- ferences to consult her representatives, and give them instructions; and make it a condition of their election, that they assert their privileges in the assembly, and cry aloud for appeal of all oppressive laws.
Finally, My brethren, whenever it is in your power. take care to have the house of assembly filled with
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good honest and faithful men; and encourage and in- struct them on all occasions: And be sure to let your elections be no expense to them.
Balaam, I confess, loved the wages of unrighteousness too much. His conduct with the Almighty seems to have been similar to some men who have too strong a desire after drink, or to gratify some other lustful passion, who will plead with conscience, and contrive a hundred ways to gain its consent .- I have heard a drunken man say he had made excuses in himself to go out with his gun, and kept working all day in his mind, till he had got the tippling house between him and home, when he has instantly got in a great hurry to get home by the dram-shop, and arguing, that now he really needed one dram ;- has got so blinded by this time as, like Balaam, no more to see the angel that stood in his way.
We generally get in a hurry of business before we can lose sight or get shut of our guide .- Lo, Balaam gets in great haste, was up early, and saddled his ass.
And no doubt but his heart was full of the hopes of the rewards full of great expectations, and perhaps was telling over in his mind what large sums of money he should bring home and how he should be honored by the princes of Moab; and meditating, may be, what a pious work he would put the money to .- The Lord had given him leave to go, but no doubt he ought to have kept cool and resigned, and not have got in such a hurry, and filled his mind with such proclamations, that he could not see his guide that was to direct his steps .- Well, he is so blind, however, that conscience was in- visible to him-when on a sudden, the ass started aside, and crushed his foot against the wall.
When the Lord opened the mouth of the ass to speak in human style, one would have thought it would have frightened any man almost out of his senses .- But
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Balaam was not easily frightened, but he was for cane- ing and killing her.
So when any poor ass now-a-days opens her mouth in human style or by way of teaching and reproving the rulers, they use him as Balaam did his ass, cane him with discipline, and threaten him with excommunication as the Pharisees did the man who was born blind.
And Balaam's ass spoke much like the complaints of an enslaved people .- Am not I thine ass?
Balaam had his ass saddled and prepared for mount- ing before he got on to ride ;- so likewise it requires some pains and furniture to prepare a people to bear the yoke of slavery .- In .civil administration, their general cry is to maintain courts of justice .- In matters of re- ligious concern, it is necessary to have the people well persuaded of the rights and importance of the clergy, and the divinity of creeds and canons of churches, be- fore they will submit to be mounted or ridden like asses. * *
Harmon Husband was by birth a Pennsyl- vanian, or of Pennsylvania parents, who had removed to North Carolina. He was a Quaker preacher and held large estates on the banks of the great Alamance, and between the Alamance and "Buffalo Ford" on Deep River. Husband was a member of the lower House of the Gen- eral Assembly and a prominent man in his com- munity. Hewas one of those independent Quak- ers (educated at the honest school of William Penn) who refused to pull off his hat and bow before the minions of despotism, in consequence of which he shared the contempt of the Gov- ernor. But the frowns of power could never
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drive him from the faithful performance of what he considered his duty to his constituents. He was a man of grave deportment, superior mind and great influence, undoubted courage ; charged with the highest element of bravery, . having imbibed from Benjamin Franklin ideas of freedom and independence, he applied the spark which ignited the fuse that flamed into wild conflagration which eventually destroyed the system of English domination in the New World. On the 6th of June, 1765, he delivered an address at Nut Bush, in Granville County, on the deplorable situation of outrageous extor- tion with which the people were oppressed. From his book on the Regulation, we reproduce this address herewith.
(FROM HUSBAND'S BOOK ABOUT THE REGU- LATION.)
A serious address to the inhabitants of Granville County. containing a brief narrative of our deplorable situa- tion by the wrongs we suffer. And some necessary hints with respects to reformation.
Well, gentlemen, it is not our form or mode of govern- ment, nor yet the body of our laws, that we are quarrel- ing with, but with the malpractice of the officers of the county courts, and the abuses we suffer by those that are empowered to manage our public affairs; this is the
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grievance, gentlemen, that demands our serious atten- tion. And I shall show you that most notorious and intolerable abuses have crept into the practice of the law in this county, and I doubt not into other counties also, though that does not concern us.
In the first place, there is a law which provides that every lawyer shall take no more than fifteen shillings for his fee in the county court. Well, gentlemen, which of you has had his business for fifteen shillings? they exact thirty for every cause; and three, four, and five Pounds Sterling for every cause attended to with the least difficulty ; and in the Superior Court they exact as fees almost as many hundreds, and laugh at us for our stupidity and tame submission to these demands, &c.
Again, a poor man gives his judgment bond for Five Pounds, which bond is by the creditor thrown into court. The Clerk of the Court has to enter it on the docket, and issue execution, the work of one long minute, for which the poor man has to pay forty-one shillings and five pence. The clerk, in consideration of his being a poor man, takes it out in work, at eighteen pence per day. The poor man works some more than twenty-seven days to pay for this one minute's writing.
Well, the poor man reflects thus: When will I get to labor for my family, at this rate? I have a wife and a parcel of small children suffering at home, and here I have lost a whole month. I don't know for what, for my merchant or creditor is as far from being paid as ever. However, I will now go home and try to do whatever I can. Stay, neighbor, you have not half done yet, for there's a damn'd lawyer to stop yet, for you empowered him to confess that you owed this Five Pounds, and you have thirty shillings to pay for that, or go and work nineteen days more; and then you must go and work as long for the sheriff for his trouble, and then you may
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go home and see your horses and cows sold, and all your personal estate, for one-tenth of its value, to pay off your merchant; and lastly, if your debt is so great that all your personal estate will not be sufficient to raise the money, then your lands the same way, to satisfy these accursed caterpillars, that will eat out the very boweis of our commonwealth if they are not pulled down from their nests in a short time. And what need I say to urge reformation? If these things were absolutely ac -. cording to law, they are enough to make us throw off all submission to such tyrannical laws, for were such things tolerated, it would rob us of the means of living ; and it were better to die in defense of our privileges than to perish for the want of the means of subsistence: But as these practices are contrary to law, it is our duty to put a stop to them before they quite ruin our country, and before we become slaves to these lawless wretches, and hug our chains of bondage, and remain contented under these accumulated calamities.
I believe there are a few of you who have not felt the weight of these iron fists. And I hope there are none of you but will lend a hand towards bringing about this necessary work (viz., a reformation). And in order to bring it about effectually we must proceed with circum- spection, not fearful, but careful.
First, let us be careful to keep sober-do nothing rashly-act with deliberation.
Secondly, let us do nothing against the known estab- lished laws of our land, that we appear not as a faction endeavoring to subvert the laws, and overturn the sys- tem of our government. But let us take care to appear what we really are, free subjects by birth, endeavoring to
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recover our lost native rights, and to bring them down to the standard of law.
6th June, A. D. 1765.
Nutbush, Granville County, North Carolina.
(Colonial Records of the State of North Carolina, Vol. VII, pp. 89, 90.)
In October, 1766, he drew up a written com- plaint entitled, "An Impartial Relation of the Rise and Cause of Recent Difficulties in Public Affairs." The signers agreed to form an asso- ciation to regulate public affairs in Orange County.
In 1768-69 and 1770, Regulation meetings became frequent, notwithstanding the Gov- ernor's legislation to stop such meetings ( Col. Rec. of N. C., Vol. 8, p. 481). This aggra- vated his Royal Highness, Governor Tryon, whom the Cherokee Indians had given the appropriate cognomen the "Great Wolf of North Carolina." Petition after petition was framed and addressed to the Governor and General Assembly. Below we give a tran- script of their conferences for March 22d, 1768, April 4th, April 25th and April 30th, 1768, in order that the reader may fully understand the situation.
At the last meeting held on April 30th, 1768, Harmon Husband was selected as one of the settlers to meet the county officers and vestry- men of Orange and adjoining counties.
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(REGULATOR ADVERTISEMENT NO. 5.)
The request of the Inhabitants on the West side of Haw River to the Assemblymen and Vestrymen of Orange County :
The 22nd March, 1768.
Whereas, the Taxes in the County are larger accord- ing to the number of Taxables than adjacent Counties, and continues so year after year. and as the jealousy still prevails amongst us that we are wronged, & having the more reason to think so, we have been at the trouble of choosing men, and sending them after the civilist manner, that we could know what we paid our Levy for, but could receive no satisfaction for. James Watson was sent to the Maddock's Mills, and said that Edmund Fanning looked upon it that the country called him by authority, or like as if they had a right to call them to accompt. Not allowing the country the right, as they have been accustomed to as English subjects, for the King requires no money from His subjects but what they are made sensible what use it's for, we are obliged to seek redress by refusing to pay any more until we have a full settlement for what we have paid in the past, and have a true regulation with our Officers, as our griev- ances are too many to notify in one piece of writing. We desire that you, our Assemblymen and Vestrymen, may appoint a time before our next Court at the Court House, and let us know by the Bearer, and we will choose men to act for us, and settle our grievances until such time as you will settle with us. We desire that the Sheriffs will not come this way to collect the Levy, for we will pay none before there is a settlement to our satis- faction ; and as the nature of an Officer is a servant of the publick, we are determined to have the Officers of this country under a better and honester regulation than
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they have been for some time past. Think not to frighten us with rebellion in this case, for if the Inhabitants of this Province have not as good a right to enquire into the nature of our constitution and Disbursements of our funds as those of the Mother Country, we think it is by arbitrary proceedings that we are debarred of that right; therefore, to be plain with you, it is our intent to have a full settlement of you in every particular point that is a matter of doubt with us, so fail not to Answer by the Bearer ; if no answer, we shall take it for Granted that we are disregarded in this request again for the Publick.
(Col. Rec. of N. C., Vol. VII, pp. 699, 700.)
(REGULATOR ADVERTISEMENT NO. 6.)
At a general meeting of the REGULATORS, held April 4th, 1768, it was agreed to send Peter Craven and John Howe to request the late Sheriff and one Vestry- man to meet 12 men that we shall choose, on Tuesday after the Court, to produce to them a copy of a list of the Taxables for each year, and a list of the number and the names of the insolvents returned each year, with an ac- count how the money was applied, to whom paid, and to what uses both Vestrymens and Sheriffs, and to request our representatives to confer with them in our behalf, and to show us law for the customary fees that has been taken from Deeds, Indentures and Administrations, &c. If the time appointed don't suit them, let them appoint them another more suitable; 2nd, that we hold a general meet- ing the first Monday in July, October, and January and April of each year following, until the business be com- pleted to satisfaction, at the Meeting House near Moses Teague's, to which each Chief is to send one or more representatives from a private meeting of his own com- pany to attend to confer on further business, according to our Association Paper already agreed on the day, and
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sooner, or at any other time when an emergency requires by public notice.
(Col. Rec. of N. C., Vol. VII, pp. 702, 703.)
(REGULATOR ADVERTISEMENT NO. 7.)
At a council of REGULATORS, held the 25th April, 1768:
Be it remembered, that our Minister has paid us a visit upon more than ordinary weight and concern, and by the power of persuasions and argument hath restrained us from going to the Town of Hillsborough until the IIth day of May, unless there should be any Distress or Levys, on which day a certain Number, not exceeding twelve men, of penetrating judgment, shall be selected out of our REGULATORS and sent to the said Town of Hillsborough, then & there to propose and deliberate on such matters as shall be conducive to the preservation of our public and private Interest.
Signed and delivered in the presence of
Ninian Hamilton William Butler Isaac Jackson
Jno. Lowe
James Hunter
(REGULATOR ADVERTISEMENT NO. 8.)
At a general meeting of the REGULATORS, on April 30th, 1768, it was laid before us-an appointment of the Officers, by the means of the Rev. Mr. Micklejohn, to meet us on the 11th day of May next, to settle the several matters of difference between us, and it was agreed on that we send 12 men that we have chosen, to meet on the said IIth day of May at Thomas Lindley's, when we hope things will be set in a fair way for an amicable settle- ment, and Mr. Hamilton is appointed to contrive them a
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copy hereof and bring from under our (their) hands if they will meet with us.
John Marshall, John Pryor,
Rednap Howell,
Harmon Husband,
John Burtson,
William Maffet,
George Henry,
William Cox,
Charles Smith,
Simon Dixon,
James Hunter,
Thomas Christian,
John Butler,
Appointed Settlers.
At a convention of REGULATORS & ASSOCIATES held at George Adam Sallings (Sally's) on Rocky River, April 30th, 1768- the following articles of Settlement and Oath were agreed upon :--
Instructions to the settlers appointed by the Country. .
I. Procure for us a list of the Taxables for the years of the two late Sheriffs, with a list of the names of the insolvents returned and the delinquents.
2. Procure us a fair accompt of the money paid, and for what uses applied, with a citation of every Law for the same.
3 Procure us a copy of all the several particulars of the Tax for 1767, with a citation precisely for every Law for the same; endeavor to be satisfied in your judgment that it is agreeable to the intent and meaning of it, so as you may be able to satisfy us.
4. Procure also an account of the County and Parish Tax for the same year, endeavoring in the same manner to satisfy yourselves of its agreeableness in every particular.
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5. Examine the true Cost by Law for recording and Proving Deeds.
6. Examine the true cost by Law for Letters of Admin- istration, Letters Testamentary, Indentures, and Fees in Common Law.
The Form of the Oath or Declaration.
We do swear or declare that we will, in all the above- mentioned articles, above mentioned, for the settlement between the Officers and the country, do equal right and justice after our cunning, wit and power, according to law, as far as we know or can find out; that we will not wrong any for Fee or Gift, Reward or otherwise, but will truly act honestly as Settlers for the Country, and that we will not suffer any officer to have his Oath in any matter depending before us, but will have them set- tled according to law, producing Receipts and other suf- ficient Discharges for the Country's money, with Lists of the Insolvents for every year. (Col. Rec. of N. C., Vol. 7, pp. 731-2.)
It would be doing grave injustice, however, to the. Regulators to omit special reference to the following petition setting forth in detail the grievances under which they labored and the remedies they proposed therefor. The peo- ple of Orange and Rowan Counties in 1769 addressed the following petition :
To His Excellency, WILLIAM TRYON, Esq.,
His Majesty's Governor in Chief, In and over the Province of the Colony of North Carolina, and Presiding Officer of the General Assembly of North Carolina.
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