NCHAYWOO-L Archives

From: "Brenda Messer" <>
Subject: [NCHaywood] The First Battle For American Freedom - Alamance
Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 07:05:56 -0400

The is for all of you who have ancestors who were involved in the Battle of Alamance. A cousin, Henry Earl Messer provided me with the copy of a magazine article from The Saturday Evening Post, by Roger Butterfield, dated May 19, 1951. All of the research materials were provided to Mr. Butterfield by Henry's father, William Carl Messer. I hope that you will enjoy reading this as much as I have and will treasure it as I do.

Regards

Brenda Messer

The following account of the above information is an excerpt from "The Saturday Evening Post", May 19, 1951, Vo. 223, No. 47, pages 37, 127, 129, 131132, 134 136



THE FIRST AMERICAN BATTLE FOR FREEDOM



by Roger Butterfield





On a June morning in the year 1771 a young man named James Pugh stood waiting to be hanged on the outskirts of Hillsborough, North Carolina. His crime was that he, in company with several thousand other farmers and frontiersmen, had taken up arms against King George III and the lawful authorities of the colony he lived in. His case was aggravated, for he was an excellent shot, and had personally brought down fifteen or sixteen of the king's soldiers before he ran out of ammunition and was captured at the disastrous Battle of the Alamance. There is no evidence that James Pugh was frightened, remorseful or even subdued in the face of death. On the contrary, as he stood bareheaded on an upturned barrel, he uttered a defiant speech which was long remembered in the North Carolina back country. One sentence, which has since been engraved in bronze, was a prophecy that more than came true. "Our blood," he said, speaking for himself and the five other Alamance prisoners co!
ndemned to die with him, "will be as good seed in good ground, that will soon produce one hundredfold."



The first armed engagement of the American Revolution, according to most histories, occurred at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, in April 1775. But nearly four years earlier, on the sixteenth of May 1771, James Pugh and his fellow North Carolinians fought a pitched battle with the king's troops on the banks of the Little Alamance River, near the present city of Burlington. They were defeated and dispersed, and perhaps for that reason they have been largely forgotten. Yet they deserve to be remembered, for they were the first to fight and die for the principles which produced our War of Independence. The echoes of the guns along the Alamance were heard all the way from turbulent Boston to the mountains of Tennessee; they were the prelude, if not the actual beginning, of the American struggle for liberty.



Historians of the early revolutionary movement have usually centered their attention on such hotbeds of colonial discontent as Boston, Philadelphia and New York. But there was plenty going on in other parts of the country. In North Carolina there was open resistance to royal authority from the time of the Stamp Tax Act in 1765. The first shipment of official stamped paper was brought to North Carolina in a twenty gun warship, the Diligence, in November of that year. As the proud representative of British sea power dropped anchor at Brunswick, on the Cape Fear River, it was greeted by two regiments of local militia, drawn up along the river bank with rifles, muskets and small artillery.



The militia commanders sent word on board that if any boats should try to land with stamps they would be fired on, and the orders would be to shoot to kill. After some further parley, the Diligence, with all its twenty guns, sailed back down the river, and no stamps were landed. North Carolinians point out, with some justice, that this was a braver and more forthright act than the dumping of tea by disguised Bostonians from unarmed merchant vessels some eight years later.



That night the Sons of Liberty staged a triumphant parade through the North Carolina capitol at Wilmington, with one of the Diligence's jolly boats, mounted on the cart wheels, as a special trophy. No doubt this celebration took much the same form as one they had held a week earlier, when they forcibly persuaded the provincial stamp officer, William Houston, Esq., to resign his post. On that occasion, according to the somewhat horrified editor of the North Carolina Gazette, a bonfire was kindled in one of the public squares, "and no Person appeared in the Streets without having LIBERTY, in large Capital letters in his ?int? .... They had a large Table near the Bonfire, well furnish'd with several

sorts of Liquors, where they drank in great Form, all the favorite American Toasts, giving three Cheers at the Conclusion of each. The whole, "added the editor, who apparently realized that the Sons of Liberty would undoubtedly read his paper, " was conducted with great Decorum, and not the least Insult offered to any person.."



All of this was highly annoying to Sir William (Billy) Tryon, a tough and arrogant British Army officer who had just been appointed governor of his majesty's loyal province of North Carolina. Unfortunately for him, the leading merchants and "best people" were heart and soul behind the antistamp agitation, and there was not much Tryon could do about it. He did try to stop all commercial ships from entering North Carolina ports, but the militia assembled again, formed a hollow square around the port and customs officers, and easily persuaded them to ignore Tryon's orders. The frustrated Tryon next turned to some heavyhanded cajolery he announced that he himself would play host at a barbeque for the militia companies, with a whole roast ox and several barrels of imported English beer on the menu. The guests arrived, but before the party could get under way someone gave a signal and Tryon's ox was dumped steaming into the river,

while the beer barrels were broken open with musket butts and their expensive contents allowed to run away in the sand.



Soon after this, Parliament repealed the stamp tax, and tension relaxed along the seacoast. But in the teeming back country, which was rapidly filling up with hardy Scotch-Irish, German and Quaker farmers, Tryon's troubles were just beginning. In the summer of 1765 and for several years thereafter, numerous petitions or "advertizements" were circulated in the western counties, especially around Hillsborough, the largest town on what was then the frontier. These handwritten publications expressed warm approval of what had been done to resist the stamp tax, but pointed out that many North Carolinians were suffering worse oppressions nearer home. These were blamed mostly on the corrupt and greedy county officials who had come from England and elsewhere to take charge of the local courthouses. As soon as a new county was organized, it was

said, sheriffs, registers, clerks and lawyers descended on the people like wolves and devoured their substance in illegal and extortionate fees. The members of these courthouse rings were not elected locally; they were appointed directly by Governor Tryon, and some of them paid very large sums for their appointments. Then they would turn around and get their money back in any way they could.



Scores of cases were cited in which poorly educated farmers were charged from twice to ten times the legal fee for registering the deeds to their properties, and then, when they could not pay at once, were charged again for signing a confession of their debt. There was no paper money in North Carolina at the time another serious grievance and corn and furs, by necessity, were the currency of the frontier. This furnished further opportunity for sharp practices and browbeating by fee collectors and merchants. A man could be arrested and forced to work a whole month for a creditor to pay off a debt as low as twelve dollars. For slightly larger amounts the sheriff would seize his furniture, livestock or even his house and land, which were sold at auction for a fraction of their value. The buyer, very often, was the same official who had pushed him into debt in the first place, and many such adventurers became rich in a few months or years.



"These cursed hungry caterpillars," exclaimed one angry pamphlet writer "are eating and will eat out the bowels of our Commonwealth, if they be not pulled down from their nests in a very short time!"



Most of the complaining farmers, however, were anxious to avoid violence. Their purpose, as announced in one of their petitions, was to "regulate" the fees and costs of government to a reasonable and legal level. From this they became known as "the Regulators." Their early methods were strictly democratic and in the best American tradition. They wrote and signed petitions, which they sent to the local judges and then to the governor and Provincial Assembly. They announced a public meeting near Hillsborough in October, 1766, to which they invited the county officers for a full discussion of their grievances. The answer they got was an insult and a threat. No official attended the meeting, but Col. Edmund Fanning, register of Orange County, and commander of the county militia, sent word through an underling that he considered it an insurrection, and would act accordingly.



The Regulators were somewhat awed by this but they sat down and wrote another petition they were great petition writers. Since the county they lived in .... Orange was so very large, they said, only a few of the inhabitants could possibly know or hear what their so-called representatives in the Assembly were doing in the course of a year. For this reason they deemed it right to hold an annual meeting of the citizens at some central place, at which their representatives could appear and give an account of themselves.



This perfectly reasonable suggestion has long since become a commonplace of American politics, but in 1766 it was novel and dangerous. Colonel Fanning, who happened to be one of the Orange County representatives himself as a rule the courthouse rings controlled the County elections regarded it as rank treason. As soon as the new petition arrived, he dashed off an indignant reply to the effect that neither he nor any other official would ever agree to such a thing. Then he mustered the militia under full arms to hear him denounce the nefarious proposal. In the end he all but ran his sword through it.



This Colonel Fanning, who quickly attained prominence as the Regulators' worst enemy, was the arch type of all the "cursed hungry caterpillars" who had flocked to North Carolina. He was a protege and favorite of Governor Tryon, and faithfully copied his master's haughty military manner, as well as his gaudy uniforms. Also like the governor, he planned to get rich as soon as possible, and then move on to some more fashionable part of the world. The law allowed him, as register, to charge a fee of two shillings eight pence for certifying a legal document. But Fanning counted each page as a separate document and charged a separate fee for every page. He and the other county registers also raised the price of marriage licenses to such high and illegal level that many young couples were forced to start housekeeping without taking out a license.



Fanning had genuine ability and courage, but he also regarded the majority of hisconstituents as ignorant peasants who were born to be pushed around and exploited by quick-witted men like himself. In this he did not differ much from other crown servants of the period. He was born on Long Island, educated at Yale, and at one time was said to hold more college degrees that any other man in North America. After the Regulators drove him out of Hillsborough, he went to New York, fought on the British side in the Revolution, and died in London in 1818 as a retired general in the regular British Army.



The Regulators, who used both songs and humor in their propaganda, wrote a little ditty about Fanning which took his measure effectively. It went like this



When Fanning first to Orange came,

He looked both pale and wan,

An old patched coat upon his back,

An old mare he rode on.



Both man and mare wan't worth five

pounds

As I've been often told,

But by his civil robberies

He's laced his coat with gold.



The principal leader and spokesman for the Regulators was Hermon Husbands, a Quaker farmer who was the exact opposite of Fanning in manner, speech and dress. The Regulators themselves, in another one of their songs, described Husbands as "that humdrum old fox, who looks so bemeaning in his towsled locks." Apparently Husbands was an artful backwoods politician and debater, but he had the Quaker aversion to fighting, and he took no part in the Battle of Alamance.



Rebuffed by the gold-laced Fanning, and given a royal runaround in their efforts to petition the governor and Assembly, Husbands and his Regulators subsided temporarily. But in 1767 an event occurred which brought them out stronger than ever, and soon led to the first violence. Governor Tryon had married a rich London heiress and was anxious to install her in the finest palace in the British colonies something much more elaborate and costly, for instance, than the wellknown Governor's Palace at Williamsburg, Virginia. He imported architects and builders, and bullied a reluctant Assembly into appropriating £5000 (pounds) toward the work. Everybody knew that this wasn't enough, but Tryon figured that once the building was started, the Assembly would keep on paying for it. He was right; when the next session rolled around the first appropriation had been used up for the foundations, and the unhappy Assembly had to vote £11,500 more rather than waste what they had alre!
ady spent. Altogether, Tryon added £80,000 to the colony's debt during his six years as governor a staggering sum for taxpayers who did not even have a currency with which to meet their assessments. To the Regulator's, most of whom lived in log cabins with packed earth floors, the extra tax for Tryon's palace was the final straw. They simply refused to pay it or any other taxes until their complaints were listened to. They justified themselves by the fact that the Assembly which had voted the taxes was elected on a rotten borough basis, with only sixteen members representing the western half of the population, while the merchants and large land owners of the coastal had fifty members.



If all of this seems petty and local, the principles on which it was based were not. "We conceive," said one of the Regulator petitions at this time, "that no people have a right to be taxed, but by the consent of themselves or their delegates." And in another publication they put it more bluntly "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 satisfaction, and as the nature of an officer is a servant to the publick, we are determined to have the officers of this country under a better and honester regulation than 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 disbursement of our funds as those of our mother country, we think it is by arbitrary proceedings that we are debarred of this right."



Out of sentiments like these, springing up locally in many places besides North Carolina, grew the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.



In April, 1768, the high sheriff of Orange County, seized a horse from a Regulator who had refused to pay taxes, and brought it into Hillsborough to be sold. A party of sixty or seventy Regulators rode after him, took back the horse, paid cash to satisfy the sheriff's claim, and fired a couple of shots through Edward Fanning's windows. Fanning was in New Bern at the time, but when he received work of this "outrage" he was far from speechless.



"Such an instance of a traitorous and rebellious conduct and behavior such a lawless opposition to Government such an open defiance of Law and contempt of authority I would never believe or suspect the Inhabitants of my Darling my favorite Country guilty of," he wrote, without pausing to put in commas or periods. He hurried back to Hillsborough, called out the militia again, arrested Husbands, William Butler and other Regulators on a charge of "inciting the populace to rebellion," and let it be known he would hang them if they were convicted in court.



By this time the Regulators themselves were pretty well organized; like the minutemen of a few years later they swarmed out of their farms and wood lots and marched on Hillsborough some 1500 strong. At their head rode an old Scotch farmer named Ninian HAMILTON. Fanning's militia were hopelessly outnumbered, so the doughty colonel had to swallow his pride and let his prisoners go free on bail. According to the Regulator's account, Fanning even waded across the Eno River, just outside Hillsborough, with a bottle of rum in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other as a peace offering



With hat in hand, at our command

To salute us every one, Sir;

And after that, kept off his hat,

To salute old Hamilton, Sir!



But Fanning was only stalling for time; he quickly wrote to Governor Tryon that he needed more troops to put down them "dogs" and "traitors" by whom he seemed to be surrounded. The governor, who was always a soldier at heart, was eager to oblige. In September he turned up at Hillsborough with an army of 1150 volunteers and loyal militia units from the seaboard counties. An extraordinary feature of this force was the number of high officers it contained. In addition to Tryon, the supreme commander, there were six lieutenant generals, two major generals, three adjutant generals, seven colonels, five lieutenant colonels, two brigade majors, four ordinary majors and thirtyone captains. The Regulators had no idea of fighting such an array of brass and cocked hats as that. They assembled near the town, with their wives and families, to the number of 3700, and humbly sent word to inquire what the governor wanted them to do. He replied that he would pardon their past misdeed!
s if they would give up their arms, pay their taxes, stop using the name of Regulators, and surrender nine of their principal men as hostages. As a slight concession, he offered to send some of their grafting County, officers to trial. There was no formal acceptance of these terms. The Regulators simply melted away to their homes without surrendering anything. Tryon, after marching his men around the pleasant autumnal countryside for weeks, returned to his palace at the new capital of New Bern. His expedition had cost the taxpayers of the colony another 20,000 pounds.



If Tryon thought that his grand military promenade had crushed the Regulator's spirit, he was mistaken. But is did tend to drive them underground. The more unruly members set up kangaroo courts and ruled remote parts of several counties in vigilante fashion. High sheriffs and their deputies no longer dared to appear in such places. The more moderate Regulators continued to write petitions and seek justice by lawful ways, but they were treated with scorn and contempt. Even the local courts now seemed determined to teach the Regulators a lesson. When one of their members was convicted of riot in a famous horsestealing episode he was fined 50 pounds. But when Edmund Fanning was finally brought to book and convicted on five counts of extorting illegal fees, he was fined one penny on each count, for about ten cents in all.



In September, 1770, the superior court convened in Hillsborough; with a number of cases both for and against the Regulators on its docket. Judge Richard Henderson had just taken his place on the bench when the room was suddenly filled with 150 hardfaced men who took every available seat. One of them informed the judge that they were there to see justice done for once. The demanded that the jury already selected be changed to include some Regulators, and that all cases be tried promptly, without the usual delays and postponements. The judge, who rightly felt that he was in personal danger, agreed to go along. But as soon as he could, he escaped through the back door and fled to his home in another County.



Meanwhile the rougher elements among the Regulators had got completely out of hand. They grabbed John Williams, a prominent lawyer, and beat him within an inch of his life on the courthouse steps. Edmund Fanning tried to escape by hiding under the judge's bench, but the Regulators dragged him out and pounded him with clubs and whips. They then let him run away to the nearby woods. When the Regulators found that Judge Henderson had escaped them, they set up a mock court of their own and scribbled insulting entries across the official docket such as "Damn'd Rogues" and "File it and be darned." According to one scurrilous newspaper account, they propped the corpse of a dead Negro on the judge's seat. but this seems to have been a fabrication.



They did break into Fanning's house, drank his liquor, smashed a big bronze bell he had just purchased for the local church, and finally burned his house to the ground. That night in the local taverns a horrified informer swore that he heard some Regulators drinking "Damnation to King George!" But this serious charge was never proved.



There is no doubt that the Hillsborough riot was a grave infraction of law and order, and a black mark against the Regulators. But it was also humanly understandable. For years the local farmers and their spokesmen had ben using every legal and dignified means to secure honest treatment from their officials and fair representation in their Assembly. But they had found the whole machinery of the British colonial system of government dead set against them. There seemed to be nothing left but violence.



"Oppression will make a wise man mad, and if you tread on a worm it will turn and fight," warned one of their petitions of this period.



Events now moved swiftly toward the tragic climax. At New Bern, Governor Tryon and Edmund Fanning pushed through the Assembly a law which permitted any Regulator to be denounced as an outlaw, subject to the death penalty. Over the winter the governor reorganized his army of two years ago and sent to New York for artillery. In April, 1771, he was once more at Hillsborough, and this time he meant business; there were fewer lieutenant generals among his troops and more fighting privates, about 1400 in all. Another loyal force of 300 men was assembled at Salisbury by the militia Gen. Hugh Waddell, who was supposed to join Tryon at Hillsborough. But when Waddell's soldiers crossed the Yadkin River they were confronted by a much large force of Regulators, and

Waddell turned back without fighting.



Meanwhile nine young Regulators with blackened faces the socalled "Black Boys of Cabarrus" - captured a wagon train of powder being brought to Tryon from South Carolina, and destroyed it. So the first small victories went to the Regulators.



There is no reliable evidence as to how many Regulators came together for the final showdown at the Alamance; there were at least 2000 and perhaps as many as 3000. But fewer that 1500 of these were equipped to do any fighting, and they had only the muskets and rifles which they used for hunting, with no more than a day's supply of ammunition. Tryon, on the other hand, had three brass cannon and wagon loads of powder and shot. His troops were smartly drilled and uniformed; at their head rode the resplendent governor himself, in doeskin breeches and white silk stockings, a purple velvet coat, ruffled white shirt with lace at the wrists, and a cocked hat with a white plume. Colonel Fanning, even with his goldlaced coat, was cast in the shade by his glittering commander.



The Regulators had pitched their camp beside the Little Alamance River, a branch of the larger Alamance, about twenty miles southwest of Hillsborough. Some local clergymen and other would be peacemakers were riding back and forth daily between the two armies, trying to arrange a truce. But Tryon was now convinced that nothing but a blood bath would settle the Regulators, and he intended to have it.



Moving in his leisurely fashion and keeping his supply lines well guarded, he came up to the Regulator's outposts on the morning of May sixteenth. The Regulators, it seems, were still not persuaded that a battle was about to take place; many of them had laid down their weapons and were wrestling, jumping and frisking about while the enemy was within gunshot. They had a number of captains, but no overall commander. Just a few minutes before the actual fighting, some of them asked one of their captains to take charge, but he replied, "We are all free men, and every man must command himself." Obviously this did not work very well during the battle.



Meanwhile Tryon had sent a uniformed orderly into the Regulator lines to announce that he had nothing further to offer them but a chance to surrender unconditionally. The Regulators sent back an unarmed farmer named Robert Thompson to say that they would stand by their well known principles. As Thompson turned to go back to his comrades, the governor, in a real or feigned fit of rage, snatched a gun from the nearest soldier and shot him dead on the spot. Then, immediately realizing that this was bad tactics, he hurried forward another side with white flag to ask for further parley.



But the Regulators had seen their man killed in cold blood, and they opened fire all along the line. Tryon's men were so startled by his wild actions that at first they failed to reply; the governor, raining himself in his stirrups, rode out in front of them and shouted, "Fire! Fire on them or on me!"



"Fire and be dammed!" yelled the Regulators, and the battle was
on.



It was quite a fight, by the standards of the times, with as many men engaged as in some of the more important revolutionary battles. At first the Regulators had the better of it; hiding behind rocks and trees, they picked off Tryon's scarlet clad soldiers with ease. A bullet knocked off the governor's cocked hat, and one of his principal officers lost his pants as he ran from the line of scrimmage. The governor's cannon were effective, but a small detachment of Regulators charged and captured one of them. None of the Regulators had more bullets than they would usually carry for a day of squirrel shooting, and after the first hour their fire began to slacken. One small pocket of resistance centered around the crack marksman, James Pugh; several men were kept busy loading and handing him rifles in a nest of rocks behind a splitrail fence. But by mid-afternoon the main body of Regulators was in full retreat toward the mountain, leaving 120 dead and wounded, and about fif!
teen captives in Tryon's not too tender hands. The royal losses were about half as large.



The governor lived up to his reputation for brutality by ordering the battlefield set on fire so that some of the wounded Regulators were roasted to death where they lay. Then he set up a drumhead courtmartial which condemned a halfcrazed prisoner, James Few, to be hanged on the spot. Few, according to some letters he had written, had seen visions which commanded him to end tyranny and oppression, and he fought with a kind of wild frenzy. After the Battle of the Alamance, his family fled to Georgia, where his brothers Benjamin and William became prominent revolutionary officers.



Leaving Few's body dangling from a tree, Tryon's victorious army made a triumphanal tour through the Regulator country, taking care to visit the plantations of their known leaders and to burn their houses, barns and fields of standing grain.



Hermon Husbands, who had fled just before the battle began, got across the border into Virginia and eventually settled in Western Pennsylvania, where he was elected to the Legislature and was active in the Whisky Rebellion of 1794. Other prominent Regulators escaped to Maryland, New Jersey and the mountains of what later became Tennessee. Tryon issued a proclamation inviting every person to shoot them on sight, and offered a reward of 100 pounds or 100 acres for each act.



The rank-and-file Regulators were ordered to come into Tryon's camp and take an oath of loyalty to the King, in return for which they were pardoned. More than 6400 individuals did this, which gives some indication of how widespread the movement had become. But many Regulators never did take the oath.



Meanwhile the bedraggled prisoners of Alamance, tied with ropes, were taken from town to town on foot or by wagon. Weeks after the battle, Tryon returned to Hillsborough and ordered them placed on trial for treason. Six were convicted and sentenced to hang. The sentence was carried out on a grassy knoll which is now marked with a cracked iron plaque bearing the following words



On This Spot Were Hanged

By Order of a Tory Court

June 19, 1771

Merrill, Messer, Matear, Pugh

And Two Other Regulators.



The names of the last two are no longer known. Of the six, James Pugh undoubtedly made the best farewell speech, from which we have already quoted. He was said to have been an ingenious gunsmith and made his living that way. Before the battle he mended many of the Regulator's guns, and he used his own so well that one of Tryon's cannon was assigned especially to fire on him. At the gallows he still showed plenty of fight. He continued to denounce the governor and Colonel Fanning --- both of whom were standing nearby -- until a soldier walked over and kicked the barrel out from under his feet.



Benjamin Merrill, who ranked as a captain among the Regulators, sang a psalm before he was turned off, and died "like a Christian soldier." Perhaps the saddest case, and the one that was talked about the longest by the Regulators themselves, was that of Captain Robert MESSER. He had bee scheduled to die on the battleground along with the unfortunate James Few. At that time his ten-year-old son ran up and begged Governor Tryon to let him die in his father's place.



"Who told you to say that?" Demanded the suspicious governor.



"Nobody," Said the boy.



"Well, why do you say it?" Asked Tryon.



"Because if you hang my father, my mother will die and all the rest of us will starve anyway," was the reply.



Tryon relented to the extent of offering MESSER a pardon if he would ride up into Virginia and bring back Hermon Husbands for trial and almost certain death. Meanwhile his wife and son were held as hostages. MESSER made the attempt, but returned empty handed and was hanged with the rest.



Fortunately, the story does not end on such a grim note, Governor Tryon could hang a few martyrs, but he could not kill the passionate desire for freedom and decent self-government which the Regulators had stirred up all along the frontier. Newspapers were scarce in those days, but the word that men had fought and died at the Alamance for their basic rights as citizens spread like an electric shock throughout the thirteen colonies. In the Virginia Gazette, of Williamsburg, a writer denounced Governor Tryon as a cold-blooded murderer for his shooting of Thompson, and accused him of deliberately forcing the battle. And in far off Massachusetts the Worcester Spy pointedly demanded "What shall we in future think of the term Loyalist, should it continue to be applied to extortioners, traitors, robbers and murderers?" In the western part of North Carolina, the Regulators and their sympathizers proceeded to carry out one of the largest migrations in colonial history. They cr!
ossed the mountains in groups and whole congregations to take part in the founding of the independent government of Watagua, at the headwaters of the Holston and Watagua Rivers. Before they went they met in their churches, as they were accustomed, to hear the exhortations of James Robertson, John Sevier and other great colonizers of the Old Southwest. When the American Revolution broke out in full force, they played a large part in winning the Battle of King's Mountain. Some of them were with George Rogers Clark in his famous expedition against the British and their Western Indian allies. Others joined their old North Carolina neighbor, Daniel Boone, in exploring the dark and bloody ground of Kentucky.



Later they helped establish the State of Franklin, which still later formed the nucleus of Tennessee. A grandson of Robert Thompson, the man Tryon shot at Alamance, became governor of Tennessee, and one of James Pugh's brothers was an early Tennessee sheriff. In a sense theirs were the first truly American states --- they boasted that neither Watagua nor Franklin had ever seen a British flag or felt the tread of a British soldier.



Not all surviving Regulators, of course, went west. Many of them remained in North Carolina, and a few who stayed home were Tories or Tory sympathizers during the Revolution. There was a bitter political reason for this some of the loudest and most active rebels against King George in 1776 were the same eastern county politicians who had fallen in behind Governor Tryon to bring down and hang the Regulators in 1771. But despite these resentments, recent statistical research has shown that the great majority of ex-Regulators were in the American side in the years of the Revolution.



It could hardly have been otherwise, for in five short years the ideas they had e



Events now moved swiftly toward the tragic climax. At New Bern, Governor Tryon and Edmund Fanning pushed through the Assembly a law which permitted any Regulator to be denounced as an outlaw, subject to the death penalty. Over the winter the governor reorganized his army of two years ago and sent to New York for artillery. In April, 1771, he was once more at Hillsborough, and this time he meant business; there were fewer lieutenant generals among his troops and more fighting privates, about 1400 in all. Another loyal force of 300 men was assembled at Salisbury by the militia Gen. Hugh Waddell, who was supposed to join Tryon at Hillsborough. But when Waddell's soldiers crossed the Yadkin River they were confronted by a much large force of Regulators, and Waddell turned back without fighting.



Meanwhile nine young Regulators with blackened faces the socalled "Black Boys of Cabarrus" - captured a wagon train of powder being brought to Tryon from South Carolina, and destroyed it. So the first small victories went to the Regulators.



There is no reliable evidence as to how many Regulators came together for the final showdown at the Alamance; there were at least 2000 and perhaps as many as 3000. But fewer that 1500 of these were equipped to do any fighting, and they had only the muskets and rifles which they used for hunting, with no more than a day's supply of ammunition. Tryon, on the other hand, had three brass cannon and wagon loads of powder and shot. His troops were smartly drilled and uniformed; at their head rode the resplendent governor himself, in doeskin breeches and white silk stockings, a purple velvet coat, ruffled white shirt with lace at the wrists, and a cocked hat with a white plume. Colonel Fanning, even with his goldlaced coat, was cast in the shade by his glittering commander.



The Regulators had pitched their camp beside the Little Alamance River, a branch of the larger Alamance, about twenty miles southwest of Hillsborough. Some local clergymen and other would be peacemakers were riding back and forth daily between the two armies, trying to arrange a truce. But Tryon was now convinced that nothing but a blood bath would settle the Regulators, and he intended to have it.



Moving in his leisurely fashion and keeping his supply lines well guarded, he came up to the Regulator's outposts on the morning of May sixteenth. The Regulators, it seems, were still not persuaded that a battle was about to take place; many of them had laid down their weapons and were wrestling, jumping and frisking about while the enemy was within gunshot. They had a number of captains, but no overall commander. Just a few minutes before the actual fighting, some of them asked one of their captains to take charge, but he replied, "We are all free men, and every man must command himself." Obviously this did not work very well during the battle.



Meanwhile Tryon had sent a uniformed orderly into the Regulator lines to announce that he had nothing further to offer them but a chance to surrender unconditionally. The Regulators sent back an unarmed farmer named Robert Thompson to say that they would stand by their wellknown principles. As Thompson turned to go back to his comrades, the governor, in a real or feigned fit of rage, snatched a gun from the nearest soldier and shot him dead on the spot. Then, immediately realizing that this was bad tactics, he hurried forward another side with white flag to ask for further parley.



But the Regulators had seen their man killed in cold blood, and they opened fire all along the line. Tryon's men were so startled by his wild actions that at first they failed to reply; the governor, raining himself in his stirrups, rode out in front of them and shouted, "Fire! Fire on them or on me!"



"Fire and be dammed!" yelled the Regulators, and the battle was

on.



It was quite a fight, by the standards of the times, with as many men engaged as in some of the more important revolutionary battles. At first the Regulators had the better of it; hiding behind rocks and trees, they picked off Tryon's scarletclad soldiers with ease. A bullet knocked off the governor's cocked hat, and one of his principal officers lost his pants as he ran from the line of scrimmage. The governor's cannon were effective, but a small detachment of Regulators charged and captured one of them. None of the Regulators had more bullets than they would usually carry for a day of squirrel shooting, and after the first hour their fire began to slacken. One small pocket of resistance centered around the crack marksman, James Pugh; several men were kept busy loading and handing him rifles in a nest of rocks behind a splitrail fence. But by mid-afternoon the main body of Regulators was in full retreat toward the mountain, leaving 120 dead and wounded, and about fift!
een captives in Tryon's not too tender hands. The royal losses were about half as large.



The governor lived up to his reputation for brutality by ordering the battlefield set on fire so that some of the wounded Regulators were roasted to death where they lay. Then he set up a drumhead court martial which condemned a half crazed prisoner, James Few, to be hanged on the spot. Few, according to some letters he had written, had seen visions which commanded him to end tyranny and oppression, and he fought with a kind of wild frenzy. After the Battle of the Alamance, his family fled to Georgia, where his brothers Benjamin and William became prominent revolutionary officers.



Leaving Few's body dangling from a tree, Tryon's victorious army made a triumphanal tour through the Regulator country, taking care to visit the plantations of their known leaders and to burn their houses, barns and fields of standing grain.



Hermon Husbands, who had fled just before the battle began, got across the border into Virginia and eventually settled in Western Pennsylvania, where he was elected to the Legislature and was active in the Whisky Rebellion of 1794. Other prominent Regulators escaped to Maryland, New Jersey and the mountains of what later became Tennessee. Tryon issued a proclamation inviting every person to shoot them on sight, and offered a reward of 100 pounds or 100 acres for each act.



The rank-and-file Regulators were ordered to come into Tryon's camp and take an oath of loyalty to the King, in return for which they were pardoned. More than 6400 individuals did this, which gives some indication of how widespread the movement had become. But many Regulators never did take the oath.



Meanwhile the bedraggled prisoners of Alamance, tied with ropes, were taken from town to town on foot or by wagon. Weeks after the battle, Tryon returned to Hillsborough and ordered them placed on trial for treason. Six were convicted and sentenced to hang. The sentence was carried out on a grassy knoll which is now marked with a cracked iron plaque bearing the following words



On This Spot Were Hanged

By Order of a Tory Court

June 19, 1771

Merrill, Messer, Matear, Pugh

And Two Other Regulators.



The names of the last two are no longer known. Of the six, James Pugh undoubtedly made the best farewell speech, from which we have already quoted. He was said to have been an ingenious gunsmith and made his living that way. Before the battle he mended many of the Regulator's guns, and he used his own so well that one of Tryon's cannon was assigned especially to fire on him. At the gallows he still showed plenty of fight. He continued to denounce the governor and Colonel Fanning --- both of whom were standing nearby -- until a soldier walked over and kicked the barrel out from under his feet.



Benjamin Merrill, who ranked as a captain among the Regulators, sang a psalm before he was turned off, and died "like a Christian soldier." Perhaps the saddest case, and the one that was talked about the longest by the Regulators themselves, was that of Captain Robert MESSER. He had bee scheduled to die on the battleground along with the unfortunate James Few. At that time his ten-year-old son ran up and begged Governor Tryon to let him die in his father's place.



"Who told you to say that?" Demanded the suspicious governor.



"Nobody," Said the boy.



"Well, why do you say it?" Asked Tryon.



"Because if you hang my father, my mother will die and all the rest of us will starve anyway," was the reply.



Tryon relented to the extent of offering MESSER a pardon if he would ride up into Virginia and bring back Hermon Husbands for trial and almost certain death. Meanwhile his wife and son were held as hostages. MESSER made the attempt, but returned empty handed and was hanged with the rest.



Fortunately, the story does not end on such a grim note, Governor Tryon could hang a few martyrs, but he could not kill the passionate desire for freedom and decent self-government which the Regulators had stirred up all along the frontier. Newspapers were scarce in those days, but the word that men had fought and died at the Alamance for their basic rights as citizens spread like an electric shock throughout the thirteen colonies. In the Virginia Gazette, of Williamsburg, a writer denounced Governor Tryon as a cold-blooded murderer for his shooting of Thompson, and accused him of deliberately forcing the battle. And in far off Massachusetts the Worcester Spy pointedly demanded "What shall we in future think of the term Loyalist, should it continue to be applied to extortioners, traitors, robbers and murderers?" In the western part of North Carolina, the Regulators and their sympathizers proceeded to carry out one of the largest migrations in colonial history. They cr!
ossed the mountains in groups and whole congregations to take part in the founding of the independent government of Watagua, at the headwaters of the Holston and Watagua Rivers. Before they went they met in their churches, as they were accustomed, to hear the exhortations of James Robertson, John Sevier and other great colonizers of the Old Southwest. When the American Revolution broke out in full force, they played a large part in winning the Battle of King's Mountain. Some of them were with George Rogers Clark in his famous expedition against the British and their Western Indian allies. Others joined their old North Carolina neighbor, Daniel Boone, in exploring the dark and bloody ground of Kentucky.



Later they helped establish the State of Franklin, which still later formed the nucleus of Tennessee. A grandson of Robert Thompson, the man Tryon shot at Alamance, became governor of Tennessee, and one of James Pugh's brothers was an early Tennessee sheriff. In a sense theirs were the first truly American states --- they boasted that neither Watagua nor Franklin had ever seen a British flag or felt the tread of a British soldier.



Not all surviving Regulators, of course, went west. Many of them remained in North Carolina, and a few who stayed home were Tories or Tory sympathizers during the Revolution. There was a bitter political reason for this some of the loudest and most active rebels against King George in 1776 were the same eastern county politicians who had fallen in behind Governor Tryon to bring down and hang the Regulators in 1771. But despite these resentments, recent statistical research has shown that the great majority of ex-Regulators were in the American side in the years of the Revolution.



It could hardly have been otherwise, for in five short years the ideas they had evolved so painfully and fought for so disastrously had spread like wildfire up and down the American continent. The spirit of the Regulators, as the most balanced histories of their movement, Elmer D. JOHNSON, has written, "was the spirit of independence -- independence of all control that was arbitrary or tyrannical, whether by the king, state, county, or church. It was the spirit that brought on the Reformation, the exodus to America, the settlement of the West, the independence from England, and the healthy democracy that has sustained that independence ever since."

The End


The Messerville Gazette
http://www.geocities.com/windy4448/

Messer Family Inherited Medical Conditions
http://www.geocities.com/windy4448/knowninheritedmedicalconditionsinmesserlineage.html

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