General John Ashe: From Stamp Act to Revolution
Near Wilmington, North Carolina
General John Ashe embodied the path from colonial resistance to open revolution. In the seventeen sixties he served as Speaker of the North Carolina House and became one of Wilmington's most outspoken opponents of the Stamp Act, resigning his royal militia commission in protest and helping organize the Sons of Liberty. When war came, he led five hundred men to destroy Fort Johnston in seventeen seventy-five and fought at the Patriot victory at Moore's Creek Bridge in seventeen seventy-six.
He rose to brigadier general, but in seventeen seventy-nine he suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Brier Creek in Georgia, losing most of his command. The British later captured him and imprisoned him. He contracted smallpox in captivity and died in October of seventeen eighty-one, just days after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.
His home stood two miles east of this marker.
