arge
of your province," but will not "pass over in silence the interruption
which the people of the Mohawk District met in their meeting," "and the
inhuman treatment of a man whose only crime was being faithful to his
employers."[109] The tension became still more strained between the
Johnsons and patriots during the summer.

The Dutch and German population was chiefly in sympathy with the cause
of America, as were the people generally, in that region, who did not
come under the direct influence of the Johnsons. The inhabitants deposed
Alexander White, the Sheriff of Tryon county, who had, from the first,
made himself obnoxious. The first shot, in the war west of the Hudson,
was fired by Alexander White. On some trifling pretext he arrested a
patriot by the name of John Fonda, and committed him to prison. His
friends, to the number of fifty, went to the jail and released him; and
from the prison they proceeded to the sheriff's lodgings and demanded
his surrender. He discharged a pistol at the leader, but without effect.
Immediately some forty muskets were discharged at the sheriff, with the
effect only to cause a slight wound in the breast. The doors of the
house were broken open, and just then Sir John Johnson fired a gun at
the hall, which was the signal for his retainers and Highland partisans
to rally in arms. As they could muster a force of five hundred men in a
short time, the party deemed it prudent to disperse.[110]

The royalists became more open and bolder in their course, throwing
every impediment in the way of the Safety Committee of Tryon county, and
causing embarrassments in every way their ingenuity could devise. They
called public meetings themselves, as well as to interfere with those of
their neighbors; all of which caused mutual exasperation, and the
engendering of hostile feelings between friends, who now ranged
themselves with the opposing parties.

On October 26th the Tryon County Committee submitted a series of
questions for Sir John Johnson to answer.[111] These questions, with Sir
John's answers, were embodied by the Committee in a letter to the
Provincial Congress of New York, under date of October 28th, as follows:

"As we found our duty and particular reasons to inquire or rather
desire Sir John Johnson's absolute opinion and intention of the three
following articles, viz:

1. Whether he would allow that his tenants may form themselves into
Companies, according to the regu