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noon the next day. In the evening, Captain Ashe and Captain John Walker,
who were out reconnoitering, were caught by the Regulators, tied to trees,
severely whipped, and taken prisoner. The next day, on 16 May 1771, Governor
Tryon sent his reply to the Regulators, demanding unconditional submission.
Both parties advanced to within about three hundred yards of each other.
Robert Thompson, who had with some others come into the camp to negotiate
with the governor, was detained as a prisoner. As he attempted to leave camp
without liberty the governor seized a gun and shot him dead with his own
hand. Tryon perceived his folly in a moment, and sent out a flag of truce.
The Regulators had seen Thompson fall, and, deeply exasperated, they paid no
respect due to a flag, and immediately fired upon it. The governor gave the
order to fire. The militia hesitated, and the Regulators dared them to fire.
Maddened with rage, the governor rose in his stirrups and shouted “Fire!
Fire on them, or on me!” The cannon were discharged, and his men commenced
firing. The Regulators fought from behind trees till their scanty supply of
ammunition was exhausted, or they were in danger of being surrounded. James
Pugh, a young gunsmith from Hillsborough, and three others, shielded by a
ledge of rocks on the edge of a ravine, did great execution with rifles.
Pugh fired while the others loaded, and he killed fifteen men. Delaying his
escape too long, he was taken prisoner, still shooting when surrounded.
All told, nine of the Regulators, and twenty-seven of the militia, were left
dead on the field. A great number were wounded on both sides in this, the
first battle of our war for independence.
The Regulators had no commanding officer, nor even an acknowledged leader,
for as soon as it was evident that blood would be shed, Harmon Husbands, the
soul of the agitation, declared that his peace principles as a Quaker would
not allow him to fight, and he rode off, and was not seen again in North
Carolina until the close of the Revolution. Husbands fled to Pennsylvania,
settled near Pittsburgh, and became a member of the Pennsylvania legislature.
In 1794 he was involved in the “Whiskey Rebellion.” He was arrested, taken a
prisoner to Philadelphia, and pardoned. He met his wife on his return home,
and died at an inn before he reached his own neighborhood.
The admitted excesses of the Regulators afford no excuse for the cruelty of
Governor Tryon after the battle on the Alamance. After issuing on 17 May
1771 a proclamation of pardon to all who should lay down their arms and take
the oath of allegiance, except a few whom he named, he made a circuitous
route through Stokes, Rockingham, and Guilford counties, and back to
Hillsborough, exhibiting his prisoners in chains in the villages through
which he passed, and at Hillsborough he offered a large reward for the bodies
of Husbands and other Regulators, “dead or alive.” On his march he held
courts-martial for trying civil cases, burned houses, and destroyed the crops
of inoffensive people. At Hillsborough he held a court-martial for the trial
of his prisoners. Twelve were condemned to death; six were reprieved, and
six were hanged: James Pugh, Robert Matear, Benjamin Merrill, Captain
Messer, and two others whose names are now unknown. Governor Tryon returned
to his palace at Newbern, where he remained but a short time before the
British made him provincial governor of New York in hopes of putting down
a similar rebellion by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/foote/foote.html
http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wcarr1/Lossing1/Chap46.html
See also http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/mckstmerreg.htm
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