"That Colonel Johnson's conduct in raising fortifications round his house, keeping a number of Indians and armed men constantly about him, and stopping and searching travellers upon the King's highway, and stopping our communication with Albany, is very alarming to this County, and is highly arbitrary, illegal, oppressive, and unwarrantable; and confirms us in our fears, that his design is to keep us in awe, and oblige us to submit to a state of Slavery."[106] On the 23rd the Albany Committee warned Guy Johnson that his interference with the rights of travellers would no longer be tolerated.[107] So flagrant had been the conduct of the Johnsons that a sub-committee of the city and county of Albany addressed a communication on the subject to the Provincial Congress of New York.[108] On June 2nd the Tryon County Committee addressed Guy Johnson, in which they affirm "it is no more our duty than inclination to protect you in the discharge of your province," but will not "pass over in silence the interruption which the people of the Mohawk District met in their meeting," "and the inhuman treatment of a man whose only crime was being faithful to his employers."[109] The tension became still more strained between the Johnsons and patriots during the summer. The Dutch and German population was chiefly in sympathy with the cause of America, as were the people generally, in that region, who did not come under the direct influence of the Johnsons. The inhabitants deposed Alexander White, the Sheriff of Tryon county, who had, from the first, made himself obnoxious. The first shot, in the war west of the Hudson, was fired by Alexander White. On some trifling pretext he arrested a patriot by the name of John Fonda, and committed him to prison. His friends, to the number of fifty, went to the jail and released him; and from the prison they proceeded to the sheriff's lodgings and demanded his surrender. He discharged a pistol at the leader, but without effect. Immediately some forty muskets were discharged at the sheriff, with the effect only to cause a slight wound in the breast. The doors of the house were broken open, and just then Sir John Johnson fired a gun at the hall, which was the signal for his retainers and Highland partisans to rally in arms. As they could muster a force of five hundred men in a short time, the party deemed it prudent to disperse.[110] The royalists became more open and bolder in their course, throwing every impediment in the way of the Safety Committee of Tryon county, and causing embarrassments in every way their ingenuity could devise. They called public meetings themselves, as well as to interfere with those of their neighbors; all of which caused mutual exasperation, and the engendering of hostile feelings between friends, who now ranged themselves with the opposing parties.