By ARTHUR HOLT
lives without the pseudo-loyal sanc¬
tion which the rebel government gave
the Patriots later.
As Walter Whitaker points out in
A Barren
ty ever since, full of precipitous men
and events.
A visitor to the windswept field to¬
day can conjecture where James Pugh
and his companions lay waiting for the
militia.
Pugh and the other hundreds had
not come in companies or squads with
equipment and baggage. The word
had spread through the country and
they struggled in small bands from
the farms dotting the rolling Piedmont.
Some had no more than clubs and
staves, and the best-armed had a hunt¬
Battlefield
In a county so energetic as Al¬
amance. neglect of the old battlefield
is singular.
You go out N.C. 62. and just below
the mill village of Alamance there is
a flat, open field, growing in broom
sedge, rimmed by second-growth tim¬
ber.
On the highway is one of the metal
historical markers, and in the middle
of the field is a modest monument.
That's all.
On May 16. 1771, on this spot some
2,000 Regulators, many of them un¬
armed. and with little or no leader¬
ship. fought it out with 1.200 militia
under Royal Governor Tryon, and
were quickly defeated. Six of the pris¬
oners were hanged. Many others fled
the country”, and still others took the
oath to support the royal government.
The rebellion, which had been brew¬
ing for years, was effectively put down.
Tryon returned to New Bern, and it
was another five years before there
was further violent resistance to the
British.
The Regulators, inspired by a
Quaker firebrand named Herman Hus¬
band, were victims of a corrupt and
heedless bureaucracy, and their chief
complaint seems to have been based
on the collection of excessive and il¬
legal taxes and fees imposed by royal
courts and officials.
Throughout the province, other
North Carolinians resisted these im¬
positions. sometimes with violence, but
it was in the mid-Piedmont, occupied
mostly by settlers of moderate means,
that the Regulator movement assumed
the most serious proportions.
In Orange (which included Al¬
amance) the Regulators were partic¬
ularly obdurant. They mobbed and
whipped officials, invaded the courts,
refused to pay fees and taxes, and fi¬
nally gathered the formidable force to
oppose the governor himself.
Under Tryon, of course, were other
North Carolinians. Many of Trvon’s
militiamen later were to be Revolu¬
tionary heroes, and were to fight
against the tyranny which they now
defended. And many of the Regulators,
who took the oath of allegiance after
the battle, became fanatic Tories in
the war that was to come.
Nevertheless, here was a bold and an
audacious revolt of some plain Ameri¬
can people against oppression: all the
more audacious and heroic because it
was so poorly led. These pioneers were
committing treason and they knew it;
and knew that they were risking their
his history, the Revolutionists were in¬
spired and led by the ablest and
strongest men of the colony. But these
desperate, brave and confused men
were on their own. Says Whitaker:
“James Pugh had never heard of the
Continential Congress nor of Thomas
Jefferson nor the Declaration of Inde¬
pendence. He had never heard of the
rights of all men to life and liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. He had
never heard of the United States. No
— James Pugh who had left his farm
and his family to join the Regulators
on the bank of the Alamance Creek
had never heard of these things — and
he never would."
It was a sanguine, impulsive begin¬
ning for Alamance's history, and it
has been a full-bodied, sanguine coun¬
ing gun and a handful of powder and
shot.
Many of them were poor immi¬
grants. Bareheaded, with moccasins,
and rough clothes, made of homespun
and crudely sewn by their wives, so
that they hung awkwardly from their
frames. The men were in sharp con¬
trast to the milita, many of whom were
gentlemen from the cultivated and
civilized cast.
The undeveloped and unadorned
battlefield looks quite unprofessional,
as historic spots go. It is rough, unre¬
fined; naked and bucolic. Just the sort
of place a band of rural neighbors
might collect to defend themselves
against some menace.
Maybe they should leave Alamance
battlefield just as it is.
+0-
Regulators, naked of arms and leadership
and sanction, fought alone on this remote
broom sedge field, far ahead of the rest of
the colonists.
’O
13
THE STATE. May 16. 19S3
