n concerning the American
Cause, if any of the brethren see cause to join it they have the
liberty to do it without being called to an account by the
church. But whether they join or do not join they should be used
with brotherly love.

The fundamental reasons underlying the approaching westward
hegira are found in the remarkable petition of the Regulators of
An son County (October 9, 1769), who request that "Benjamin
Franklin or some other known PATRIOT" be appointed agent of the
province in London to seek redress at the source. They exposed
the basic evil in the situation by pointing out that, in
violation of the law restricting the amount of land that might be
granted to each person to six hundred and forty acres, much of
the most fertile territory in the province had been distributed
in large tracts to wealthy landlords. In consequence "great
numbers of poor people are necessitated to toil in the
cultivation of the bad Lands whereon they hardly can subsist." It
was these poor people, "thereby deprived of His Majesties
liberality and Bounty," who soon turned their gaze to the
westward and crossed the mountains in search of the rich, free
lands of the trans-Alleghany region.

This feverish popular longing for freedom, stimulated by the
economic pressure of thousands of pioneers who were annually
entering North Carolina, set in motion a wave of migration across
the mountains in 1769. Long before Alamance, many of the true
Americans, distraught by apparently irremediable injustices,
plunged fearlessly into the wilderness, seeking beyond the
mountains a new birth of liberty, lands of their own selection
free of cost or quit-rents, and a government of their own
choosing and control."' The glad news of the rich valleys beyond
the mountains early lured such adventurous pioneers as Andrew
Greer and Julius Caesar Dugger to the Watauga country. The
glowing stories, told by Boone, and disseminated in the back
country by Henderson, Williams, and the Harts, seemed to give
promise to men of this stamp that the West afforded relief from
oppressions suffered in North Carolina. During the winter of
1768-9 there was also a great rush of settlers from Virginia into
the valley of the Holston. A party from Augusta County, led by
men who had been delighted with the country viewed seven years
before when they were serving under Colonel William Byrd against
the Cherokees, found that this region, a wilderness on their
outward passage i