3. Meanwhile, Congress had refused to confer upon the President the power to declare martial law, and the August elections kept drawing near. A new Attorney-General and a new Legislature and new Congressmen were to be elected. The Governor and his party were therefore compelled to rely on the Shoffner bill alone. 4. State troops, as they were called, were now recruited, and, on the 21st of June, George W. Kirke, a brutal ruffian of infamous character, and known to be such, who had commanded a regiment of Federal troops during the war, was brought from his home in Tennessee and commissioned Colonel. This man Kirke, in his public posters calling for recruits, the original of which was found in Governor Holden's own hand-writing, appealed to his old comrades to join him, saying that "the blood of their murdered countrymen, inhumanly butchered for opinion's sake, cried to them from the ground for ensconce." 5. On the 8th of July, the county of Caswell was declared to be in a state of insurrection. Meanwhile, however, a company of Federal troops had been stationed at Yanceyville, and had found use for neither ball nor bayonet, and in both Alamance and Caswell the courts were open and not the slightest obstruction to any process of the law. 6. On the 13th of July, Kirke having organized his regiment, was ordered to take command of the counties of Alamace and Caswell. In a few days more than a hundred citizens of Alamance and Caswell were arrested and imprisoned by Kirke and his subordinates. In some instances persons thus seized were hung up by the neck, or otherwise treated with great brutality. Among there prisoners were many men who had been for years of the first respectability as citizens, and were known and honored in every portion of the State. 7. Application was speedily made to Chief-Justice Pearson for a writ of habeas corpus, that Adolphus G. Moore, and others thus imprisoned, might know the cause of their detention and receive the protection of the laws. Judge Pearson granted the writ, but when it was served on Kirke, he directed the messenger to inform the Chief-Justice that such things "had played out," that he was acting in accordance with Governor Holden's orders, and he refused to obey the command of his Honor. The lawyers of the imprisoned men then asked for further process of the Judge to punish Kirke for his disregard of his orders; but Judge Pearson passed over his contemptuous message as the "flippant speech of a rude soldier," and held that his powers were exhausted, as the Governor had ordered Kirke to seize the men, and the judiciary could not contend with the Executive, and in this he was sustained by the other members of the court.