It is here deemed unnecessary to enter into a
detail of the circumstances leading to this unfortunate conflict.
Suffice it to say the Regulators, as they were called, suffered
greatly by heavy exactions, by way of taxes, from the Governor to the
lowest subordinate officer. They rose to arms--were beaten, but theirs
was the _first blood shed_ for freedom in the American colonies. Many
true patriots, who did not comprehend the magnitude of their
grievances, fought against them. But the principles of right and
justice for which they contended could never die. In less than four
years, all the Colonies were found battling for the same principles,
and borne along in the rushing tide of revolution! The men on the
seaboard of Carolina, with Cols. Ashe and Waddell at their head, had
nobly opposed the Stamp Act in 1765, and prevented its execution; and
in their patriotic movements the people of Orange sustained them, and
called them the "Sons of Liberty." Col. Ashe, in 1766, had led the
excited populace in Wilmington, against the wishes and even the
hospitality of the governor. The assembled patriots had thrown the
Governor's roasted ox, provided for a barbecue feast, untasted, into
the river. Now, these patriotic leaders are found marching with this
very Governor to subdue the _disciples of liberty_ in the west. The
eastern men looked for evils from across the waters, and were prepared
to resist oppression on their shores before it should reach the soil
of their State. The western men were seeking redress for grievances
that oppressed them at home, under the misrule of the officers of the
province, evils scarcely known in the eastern counties, and
misunderstood when reported there. Had Ashe, and Waddell, and Caswell
understood all the circumstances of the case, they would have acted
like Thomas Person, of Granville. and favored the distressed, even
though they might have felt under obligations to maintain the peace of
the province, and due subordination to the laws. Herman Husbands, the
head of the Regulators, has been denounced by a late writer, as a
"turbulent and seditious character." If such he was, then John Ashe
and Hugh Waddell, for opposing the stamp law, were equally turbulent
and seditious. Time, that unerring test of principles and truth, has
proved that the spirit of liberty which animated the Regulators, was
the true spirit which subsequently led to our freedom from foreign
oppression.

On the 24th of May, Tryon, a