* These were Guilford, Chatham, Wake, and Surrey.
** Tryon, who feared and hated Husband, procured the preferment of several charges against him, and he was finally arrested, by order of the council, and imprisoned for several days. The charges, on investigation, were not sustained, and he was released.
***Colonel Joseph Leech commanded the infantry, Captain Moore the artillery, and Captain Neale a company of rangers.
* On his way to the Eno, he was joined by a detachment from Hanover, under Colonel John Ashe: another from Carteret, under Colonel Craig; another from Johnston, under Colonel William Thompson; another from Beaufort, under Colonel Needham Bryan: another from Wake, under Colonel Johnson Hinton; and at his camp on the Eno, he was joined by Fanning, with a corps of clerks, constables, sheriffs, and other materials of a similar kind. The signatures here given, of two of Tryon s officers on this occasion, I copied from original committee reports to the Colonial Legislature, now in possession of the Reverend Dr. Hawks. Some of these officers were afterward active patriots. Several other signatures of North Carolina men given in this work, I copied from the same documents.
Dispersion of Waddel's Troops.—Tyron's March toward the Allamance.—Dr. Caldwell's Mediation.—Battle.
General Waddel crossed the Yadkin on the morning of the tenth of May,1771 intending to join Governor Tryon. He had advanced but a short distance, when he received a message from a body of Regulators, warning him to halt or retreat. Finding that many of his men were averse to fighting, and that others were favorable to the Regulators, and were thinning his ranks by desertions, he retreated across the Yadkin, hotly pursued by the insurgents. They surrounded Waddel's small army, and took several of them prisoners, after a slight skirmish. The general and a few followers escaped to Salisbury.
Tryon, informed of the disaster of Waddel, broke up his camp on the Eno, crossed the Haw just below the Falls,May 13 and pressed forward toward the Allamance, where he understood the Regulators were collecting in force on the Salisbury Road. He encamped very near the scene of Colonel Pyles's defeat in 1781, within six miles of the insurgents, just at sunset, and during the night sent out some scouts to reconnoiter. * On the fifteenth he received a message from the Regulators, proposing terms of accommodation, and demanding an answer within four hours. ** He promised a response by noon the next day.