On the 3d of April, 1765, William Tryon qualified as Commander in-chief, and Captain-General of the Province of North Carolina.  The administration of Governor Tryon embraces an important period in the history of the State.  He was a soldier by profession, and being trained to arms, looked upon the sword as the true scepter of government.  “He knew when to flatter, and when to threaten.  He knew when ‘discretion was the better part of valor,’ and when to use such force and cruelty as achieved for him from the Cherokee Indians, the bloody title of the ‘Great Wolf of North Carolina.’  He could use courtesy towards the Assembly when he desired large appropriations for his magnificent palace; and knew how to bring to bear the blandishments of the female society of his family, and all the appliances of generous hospitality."[D] Governor Tryon first met the Assembly in the town of Wilmington on the 3d of May 1765.  “In his address, he opposed all religious intolerance, and, although he recommended provision for the clergy out of the public treasury, yet he advised the members of the Church of England of the folly of attempting to establish it by legal enactment.  Under such recommendations, a law was passed legalizing the marriages (which before were denounced as illegal) performed by Presbyterian ministers, and authorizing them and other dissenting clergymen to perform that rite."[E]

On the 22nd of March, 1765, the Stamp Act was passed.  This act produced great excitement throughout the whole country, and no where was it more violently denounced than in North Carolina.  The Legislature was then in session, and so intense and wide-spread was the opposition to this odious measure, that Governor Tryon, apprehending the passage of denunciatory resolutions, prorogued that body after a session of fifteen days.  The speaker of the House, John Ashe, informed Governor Tryon that this law “would be resisted to blood and death.”

Early in the year 1766, the sloop-of-war, Diligence, arrived in the Cape Fear River, having on board stamp paper for the use of the province.  The first appearance and approach of the vessel had been closely watched, and when it anchored before the town of Brunswick, on the Cape Fear, Col.  John Ashe, of the county of New Hanover, and Col.  Hugh Waddell, of the county of Brunswick, marched at the head of the brave sons of these counties to Brunswick, and notified the captain of their determination to resist the landing of the stamps.  They seized one of the boats of the sloop, hoisted it on a cart, fixed a mast in her, mounted a flag, and marched in triumph to Wilmington.  The inhabitants all joined in the procession, and at night the town was illuminated.  On the next day, Col.  Ashe, at the head of a great concourse of people, proceeded to the Governor’s house and demanded of him to desist from all attempts to execute the Stamp Act, and to produce to them James Houston, a member of the Council, who had been appointed