The Colonial and Revolutionary history of Cabarrus is closely connected with that of Mecklenburg county.  No portion of the State was more fixed and forward in the cause of liberty than this immediate section.  In the Convention at Charlotte, on the 20th of May, 1775, this part of Mecklenburg was strongly represented, and her delegates joined heartily in pledging “their lives, their fortunes and most sacred honor” to maintain and defend their liberty and independence.

The proceedings of that celebrated Convention, its principal actors, and attendant circumstances, will be found properly noticed under the head of Mecklenburg County.  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.

THE “BLACK BOYS” OP CABARRUS.

Previous to the battle of Alamance, on the 16th of May, 1771, the first blood shed in the American Revolution, there were many discreet persons, the advocates of law and order, throughout the province, who sympathized with the justness of the principles which actuated the “Regulators,” and their stern opposition to official corruption and extortion, but did not approve of their hasty conduct and occasional violent proceedings.  Accordingly, a short time preceding that unfortunate conflict, which only smothered for a time the embers of freedom, difficulties arose between Governor Tryon and the Regulators, when that royal official, in order to coerce them into his measures of submission, procured from Charleston, S.C., three wagon loads of the munitions of war, consisting of powder, flints, blankets, &c.  These articles were brought to Charlotte, but from some suspicions arising in the minds of the Whigs as to their true destination and use, wagons could not be hired in the neighborhood for their transportation.  At length, Colonel Moses Alexander, a magistrate under the Colonial Government, succeeded in getting wagons by impressment, to convey the munitions to Hillsboro, to obey the behests of a tyrannical governor.  The vigilance of the jealous Whigs was ever on the lookout for the suppression of all such infringements upon the growing spirit of freedom, then quietly but surely planting itself in the hearts of the people.

The following individuals, viz.:  James, William and John White, brothers, and William White, a cousin, all born and raised on Rocky River, and one mile from Rocky River Church, Robert Caruthers, Robert Davis, Benjamin Cockrane, James and Joshua Hadley, bound themselves by a most solemn oath not to divulge the secret object of their contemplated mission, and, in order more effectually to prevent detection, blackened their faces preparatory to their intended work of destruction.

They were joined and led in this and other expeditions by William Alexander, of Sugar Creek congregation, a brave soldier, and afterward known and distinguished from others bearing the same name as “Captain Black Bill Alexander,” and whose sword now hangs in the Library Hall of Davidson College, presented in behalf of his descendants by the late worthy, intelligent and Christian citizen, W. Shakespeare Harris, Esq.