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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Letter from Griffith Rutherford to Richard Caswell
Rutherford, Griffith, ca. 1721 - 1805
July 17, 1779
Volume 14, Pages 161-162

GEN. GRIFFITH RUTHERFORD TO GOV. CASWELL.
[From Executive Letter Book.]

July 17th, 1779.

May it please your Excellency:

I rec'd your orders of the seventh Inst., and am extremely sorry to acquaint you that it is almost an impossibility for the men to march agreeable to your directions, as there is such a scarcity of every kind of grain in this part of the State. I am applied to by several people in this District, and people of the first rank, to pray your Excellency and the Honorable Council,

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to postpone the execution of your orders for some future day. There are already 700 men, and more Virginia Troops, gone to South Carolina, and the remaining part of 2,000 is now actually on their march to the succour of South Carolina.

I am afraid, may it please your Excellency, that it will be impossible to purchase provisions for those Troops, as the Country has been very ill paid for the former, and without an immediate supply of money there is nothing to be expected. I therefore humbly request that your Excellency would be pleased to give a warrant in favor of Captain Joseph Dickson for the sum of Twenty thousand Pounds. If the warrant is not to be immediately complied with, pray direct answer to Mr. Greenhill, Treasurer of Halifax district, as I expect the money will not be inconvenient to his neighborhood. Your Excellency may be pleased to send the money by the bearer, Hugh Park, junior.

I am also to inform your Excellency that I have this week rec'd three Expresses, one that the Tories are embodied on New River; the other two I rec'd from Fort Rutledge, in South Carolina, that Cameron, the Tyrant Superintendent in Indian Affairs, is building a Fort in the middle grounds between the Cherokees & the Creeks, and has sent a runner to the middle settlements demanding them to join; if not, that they will come and destroy them. The authenticity of the account is proved by the oaths of several persons, particularly by the oath of Mr. Spears, (who is superintendent of the middle settlements,) and Mr. Spears wrote to me that this was the only time to bring them to a sense of their duty, and that he would cheerfully join any party for the purpose of subdueing the Indians or their white allies. I must take the liberty to lay the whole to your discerning sense, and hope to be esteemed, among many others,

Your Excellency's mo. ob. humbl. & ob. Serv't,
GRIFFITH RUTHERFORD.