all the circumstances of the case, they would have acted like Thomas Person, of Granville. and favored the distressed, even though they might have felt under obligations to maintain the peace of the province, and due subordination to the laws.  Herman Husbands, the head of the Regulators, has been denounced by a late writer, as a “turbulent and seditious character.”  If such he was, then John Ashe and Hugh Waddell, for opposing the stamp law, were equally turbulent and seditious.  Time, that unerring test of principles and truth, has proved that the spirit of liberty which animated the Regulators, was the true spirit which subsequently led to our freedom from foreign oppression.

On the 24th of May, Tryon, after committing acts of revenge, cruelty and barbarity succeeding the Alamance battle, returned to his palace at Newbern, and on the 30th took shipping for New York, over which State he had been appointed Governor.  Josiah Martin was appointed by the crown, Tryon’s successor as Governor of North Carolina.  He met the Legislature, for the first time, in the town of Newbern, in November, 1771.  Had he lived in less troublesome times, his administration might have been peaceful and prosperous.  Governor Martin had the misfortune to differ very soon with the lower House of the Assembly; and during the whole of his administration, these difficulties continued and grew in magnitude, helping, at last, to accelerate the downfall of the royal government.  In this Assembly we find the names of a host of distinguished patriots, as John Ashe, Cornelius Harnett, “the Samuel Adams of North Carolina,” Samuel Johnson, Willie Jones, Joseph Hews, Abner Nash, John Harvey, Thomas Person, Griffith Rutherford, Abraham Alexander, Thomas Polk, and many others, showing that, at that early date, the Whig party had the complete control of the popular House of the Assembly, in accordance with the recommendation of Governor Martin, the veil of oblivion was drawn over the past unhappy troubles, and all the animosities and distinctions which they created.  The year 1772 passed by without a meeting of the Assembly; and the only political event of any great importance, which occurred in the Province, was the election of members to the popular House.  Such was the triumph of the Whig party, that in many of the counties there was no opposition to the election of the old leaders, nor could the Governor be said to have a party sufficiently powerful to effect an election before the people, or the passage of a bill before the Assembly.  The Assembly, however, in consequence of two dissolutions by the Governor, did not convene in Newbern until the 25th of January, 1773, and the popular House illustrated its political character by the election of John Harvey to the office of Speaker.  To this new Assembly many of the leading members of the House in 1771, were returned.  Thomas Polk and Abraham Alexander were not members; the former having been employed in the service of the Governor, as surveyor, in running the dividing line between North and South Carolina, and the latter not having solicited the suffrages of the people.  The county of Mecklenburg was, in the Assembly, represented by Martin Pheifer and John Davidson.