On arriving in Orange he found political and social conditions there much worse than before, many of the colonists declining to take the obligatory oath of allegiance to the British Crown after the Battle of Alamance, preferring to carve out for themselves new homes along the western waters.

Some sixteen families of this stamp, indignant at the injustices and oppressions of British rule, and stirred by Robertson's description of the richness and beauty of the western country, accompanied him to Watauga shortly after the battle.
This vanguard of the army of westward advance, independent Americans in spirit with a negligible sprinkling of Loyalists, now swept in a great tide into the northeastern section of Tennessee.

The men of Sandy Creek, actuated by independent principles but out of sympathy with the anarchic side of the Regulation, left the colony almost to a man.

"After the defeat of the Regulators," says the historian of the Sandy Creek Association, "thousands of the oppressed, seeing no hope of redress for their grievances, moved into and settled east Tennessee.

A large proportion of these were of the Baptist population.