ammunition intended for the guard was stolen from the courthouse in Lumberton. White citizens were infuriated by the decline in law and order, and the Home Guard suspected that the Lowry family was largely responsible. On March 3, a detachment of the Home Guard under Captain Hugh McGreggor arrested Allen and Mary Lowry, three of their sons—William, Calvin, and Sinclair—some female relatives, and their Lumbee neighbor, George Dial. They also seized some of Allen's belongings. They brought them to the property of Robert McKenzie. The women were locked in the smokehouse while the men were interrogated outside facing accusations of "highway robbery", aiding Confederate deserters and Union escapees, stockpiling weapons, and having dodged labor conscription. The men denied the accusations and Williams was wounded after trying to escape. The guardsmen then moved them into the smokehouse and held a kangaroo court to determine their culpability in the alleged crimes, selecting a jury from among their own ranks. The tribunal found Allen and William guilty of possessing stolen goods on their farm (Lumbee oral tradition holds that these goods were planted to frame them) and ruled that William had been positively identified during a robbery. They were taken back to their farm and executed by firing squad. According to one account, Henry Berry hid in the woods nearby and witnessed this execution. The next day the guardsmen forced Calvin Lowry and Dial to show them where Union soldiers were hiding. Dial led them to a small cave, but, to the guardsmen's frustration, the two men largely did not know where to find escapees. Dial and the Lowry family members were released the following day under the threat that they would be punished for any "mischief" that occurred in the area. On March 9 Union troops entered Robeson County and looted, but quickly moved on. The Home Guard was briefly disrupted by this incursion, but thereafter resumed investigating the Lowry family. In April a Home Guard detachment searched Sinclair's farm for an alleged stockpile of weapons and interrogated Mary Lowry, but found nothing. The situation in Robeson County calmed with the Union victory at the end of the Civil War, as locals focused on rebuilding their livelihoods. Local government in Robeson mostly continued as it had during the war, with rich white men of prominence dominating public offices, especially the justices of the peace who constituted the county court. The Home Guard