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Of Tryon's men nine were killed and sixty-one wounded. Thus ended the affray known as the battle of the Alamance, in which were fired the first shots for freedom from tyranny by the people of the American colonies. The victorious governor hastened to make revengeful use of his triumph. He began the next day by hanging James Few, one of the prisoners, as an outlaw, and confiscating his estate.
"Worthy New England people, I understand," said my Aunt with her nod of indulgent stateliness, referring to the Bon Homme Richard species, "but of entirely bourgeois extraction Paul Jones himself, you know, was a mere gardener's son while the Alamance Fanning was one of those infamous regulators who opposed Governor Tryon. Not through any such cattle could you be one of us," said my Aunt.
The old Regulators had not all left her soil, and we seem to hear in these resolutions an echo of the guns which were fired on the Alamance in the first stroke of the colonists of America for freedom from tyranny.
Never had the colonies been so spoiled on such slight pretence. Thus marching onward like a conquering general of the Middle Ages, leaving havoc and ruin in his rear, on the evening of May 14, 1771, Tryon reached the great Alamance River, at the head of a force of a little over one thousand men.
The description of his looks is taken from the statements of his descendants, and of the grandchildren of his contemporaries. The importance of maize to the western settler is shown by the fact that in our tongue it has now monopolized the title of corn. Putnam, p. 24, says it was after the battle of the Great Alamance, which took place May 16, 1771. An untrustworthy tradition says March.
It gradually appeared that a grandmother of my mother's grandfather had been a Fanning, and there were sundry kinds of Fannings, right ones and wrong ones; the point for me was, what kind had mine been? No family record showed this. If it was Fanning of the Bon Homme Richard variety, or Fanning of the Alamance, then I was no king's descendant.
Now I had known this handsome youngster when he was but a little lad; had taught him how to bend the Indian bow and loose the reed-shaft arrow in those happier days before the tyrant Governor Tryon turned hangman, and the battle of the Great Alamance had left me fatherless.
But there is one bold transaction connected with the early history of Cabarrus, showing that the germs of liberty, at and before the battle of Alamance, in 1771, were ready to burst forth, at any moment, under the warmth of patriotic excitement, is here deemed worthy of conspicuous record.
It has been said about the Regulators that they were not cast down by their defeat at Alamance but "like the mammoth, they shook the bolt from their brow and crossed the mountains," but such flowery phrases do not seem to have been inspired by facts. Nor do the records show that "fifteen hundred Regulators" arrived at Watauga in 1771, as has also been stated.
These Tories supposed the Whigs to be a company of British troops sent for their protection, and commenced crying, "God save the King." Tarleton was about a mile from this place, and retreated to Hillsboro. Shortly afterward General Graham was in an engagement under Colonel Lee, at Clapp's Mill, on the Alamance, and had two of his company killed, three wounded and two made prisoners.
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