Battle of Alamance

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The Battle of Alamance took place on May 16, 1771 in what is now Alamance County , North Carolina, USA. It ended the so-called war of the regulators (also the revolt of the regulators ), a rebellion in colonial North Carolina against the local authorities and their tax collections . Some historians regard these events as the prelude to the American Revolutionary War , although the rebellion was against the local government and not the British Crownturned. The battle was named after the nearby Great Alamance Creek in the central Piedmont region and took place about eight miles south of what is now the city of Burlington .

In the spring of 1771, Governor William Tryon left his seat of government in New Bern to march with troops into the western counties to suppress the rebellion that had been smoldering there for years. Up until that point, the “war” consisted mostly of occasional small outbreaks of violence. The so-called regulators , about 2,000 men against the approximately 1,000-strong force of Tryon, hoped to get him to commit in view of their numerical superiority. On May 16, 1771, under the leadership of men like Hermon Husband of Maryland , the regulators refused to give orders to Tryon to withdraw peacefully. Tryon moved his troops south of their camp on Alamance Creek and forced them to form on Alamance Road. It is alleged that Tryon himself fired the first and fatal shot in that battle. The regulators lacked military leadership, organization and ammunition, and many of them, including husbands, fled the battlefield. A force of around 300 reinforcements under the command of Captain Benjamin Merrill did not reach the battlefield in time to support the rebels.

The regulators lost the battle; the rebellion was unsuccessful. The losses on Tryon's side comprised nine dead and 61 wounded, although the regulators are said to have fallen in much larger numbers, historians estimate the number of wounded at around 100, between 10 and 15 regulators were killed in the battle. Tryon took 13 prisoners, one of them, James Few was executed in the camp, six more were later executed in nearby Hillsborough . Many of the regulators withdrew to the border areas west of North Carolina, others were amnestied by the governor on the premise that they would take an oath of allegiance to the royal government.

The battlefield was in what was then Orange County ( separated into Orange and Alamance Counties in 1849 ), where a decade later, during the Revolutionary War, a number of minor attacks and skirmishes took place. This included the infamous Pyle's Hacking Match in 1781.

Battle of Alamance Memorial

Visitors to the Alamance Battlefield, now under the protection of the state as the Alamance Battleground State Historic Site , can view an 1800 granite memorial, rotating exhibits, and marked troop battle lineups. In addition to exhibitions, the visitor center also offers artifacts and presentations of the course of the battle. A restored farmhouse that was on the battlefield at the time; The Allen House is also part of the memorial.

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