Volume 3, Chapter 51, The North Carolina Regulation.
Inspired by the success of the South Carolina regulators, a group of citizens of St. George's
Parish in backcountry Georgia formed an association movement in the late spring of 1768. The aim of
the association was armed action against Indians in the locality, fearful of a full-scale Indian war
Governor Wright promptly told the local militia captains to order the association to disperse
on paying of prosecution. The associators apparently obeyed the order as nothing more was heard of
them. The term regulator, however, found its most important place in history in a movement that had
only that name in common with the South Carolina organization. This movement, the regulators of
The roots of the North Carolina back country also adopted the name in April 1768, but its nature and purposes differed radically from those of its southern neighbor.
One of the early roots of the North Carolina regulation lay in land monopoly. Large tracts of land had been arbitrarily granted to one George Selwyn.
In Mecklenburg County in western North Carolina, numerous settlers and squatters refused to
acknowledge Selwyn's claim or to pay him for the land. When in May 1765, Selwyn sent
his agent, Henry McCullough, and a group of surveyors to Mecklenburg to enforce payment
or eject the settlers, the latter rose up in defense of their land. A mob of settlers,
by Thomas Polk set upon and severely whipped the surveyors and threatened McCullough with death.
The North Carolina Council refused to the request of the governor to intervene against the settlers.
Another route of the regulation emerged also in the spring of 1765. In Orange County and in
Granville County near the Virginia border, disturbances arose from the exactions of excessive
and even illegal fees by county officials.
The Nutbush paper issued by George Sims, schoolmaster of Nutbush, Granville County, in June, denounced
extortionate court fees imposed upon the public.
The author pointed out that to pay a debt judgment of five pounds, a man had also to
to pay more than 41 shillings, or over 40% of the amount to the county clerk, and thus
was forced to contribute his labor to the clerk for 21 days.
In addition, the debtor was enslaved for 19 days to pay legal fees, and a further 19 days
to pay the sheriff for prosecuting him.
The climax arrived when the author peacefully drew up a petition protesting these outrages.
Not only was the petition ignored, but the said government officials sued the petitioners
for libel and imprisoned the author.
These incidents were illustrative of the intense resentments and grievances of the back country
against the government of North Carolina.
And the major grievances were specifically against government, against excessive taxes
and Quit rents against extortionate fees and against dishonest and extortionate sheriffs
and other appointed government officials.
Nearly all government officials in North Carolina were paid in fees, and the fees were of course
exacted from the hapless inhabitants of whatever locality the officials ruled.
Indeed, as the historian John S. Bassett wrote, as soon as frontier counties were organized,
sheriffs, clerks, registers and lawyers swooped down upon the defenseless inhabitants like
wolves.
The various ranks of fee-charging officials conspired together.
For example, lawyers and officials of county and superior courts collaborated to delay
pay cases and thus collect increased fees.
Another major grievance of the people of the North Carolina backcountry stemmed from poll
taxes, which constituted virtually the only tax and the bulk of the revenues in the province.
The poll tax bore most heavily upon the poor.
The settlers were plagued with quit rents and high fees and taxes.
To compound the evils, the people were plagued by dishonest and oppressive sheriffs. A common
practice of the sheriff was to call upon a farmer without advance warning and demand
that he pay his poll tax immediately. Refusing to give the farmer a chance to borrow in order
to pay the tax, the sheriff would promptly seize the property and then quickly sell it
But cheaply to a friend of his before the farmer could come up with the money.
To add grave insult to grievous injury, the sheriff charged the farmer an extra fee for
the trouble of calling at the latter's house.
As icing on the cake of the sheriff's calling, the lawmen generally embezzled the revenues
that they thus collected.
Conditions, in short, were becoming ripe for rebellion in the North Carolina backcountry
by the mid-1760s.
The conflict reached the stage of definite organization in the Sandy Creek movement of
the late summer of 1766.
In late August, the leaders of the Libertarian Reform Movement in Orange County concentrated
in the County seat, called a county-wide meeting of the delegates from each neighborhood to
meet at Maddox Mills at Sandy Creek on October 10. No county officials sanctioned the unauthorized
meeting, which nevertheless went ahead and hailed the recent victory of the Sons of Liberty
against the Stamp Act and called for extension of this concept of liberty closer to home.
The meeting delivered a trenchant attack upon the corruption of power. Take this as a maxim,
that while men are men, though you should see all those sons of liberty, who has, just
now redeemed us from tyranny, set in offices and vested with power, they would soon corrupt
again and oppress if they were not called upon to give an account of their stewardship.
The Sandy Creek meeting called for annual meetings of such delegates in a continuing
voluntary association of the people to keep check on the activities of their representatives
and appointed rulers.
Chief Officer of the county and chief enemy of the Sandy Creek Association was the roundly
hated Edmund Fanning.
Fanning, a native New Yorker and a graduate of Yale, was a prototype of the provincial
bureaucrat and the leader of the courthouse ring in his county. A favorite of Governor
William Tryon, young Fanning had managed to acquire a justice ship of the peace and numerous
important county offices, Judge of the Superior Court, Register of Deeds, Militia Colonel
and Member of the Assembly. Colonel Fanning denounced the Sandy Creek meeting as insurrectionary
and threatened its leaders with punishment. Yet the leaders of the North Carolina protest
movement were at this early stage far from revolutionary. The main leader of the Sandy
Creek organization was Herman Husband, an intelligent and learned Quaker from Orange
The position to North Carolina government grew. Brunswick, Cumberland and other counties refused to pay their taxes, and petitions similar to Sandy Creek's were submitted and similarly ignored in Anson, Granville and Halifax counties, and in the Piedmont of North Carolina.
But Orange County remained the focus of conflict. In 1767, a justice of the county court found a
very scarce copy of the laws of North Carolina and discovered that the extortionate court fees
of the province were illegal. Rather than mend its illegal ways, the tight-knit bureaucratic oligarchy
of Orange County threatened the judge with arrest for contempt of court. The judge quickly fell
at Sandy Creek and had suggested reforms. Their protests had been brusquely ignored.
It was now evident that stronger and more radical measures of protest were required. Leadership
of the liberal protest movement of backcountry North Carolina now passed into more vigorous
and determined hands, those of James Hunter, the general of the movement, of William Butler,
The next phase of the protest movement was touched off in early 1768 when Sheriff Tyree
Harris of Orange County posted the taxes for the coming year. Poll taxes had to be
paid at a few centralized locations. Any tax paid at a different location would be automatically
This penalty tax was soon raised even higher by Colonel Fanning.
Public opinion was further inflamed by an assembly appropriation of the large sum of
five thousand pounds to build a palace for Governor Tryon, a boondoggle of which one
of the chief sponsors was Edmund Fanning.
In ensuing years, 10,000 pounds more was appropriated for home for the governor.
The higher taxes and the generous perquisites granted to the governor initiated the development
of a new association in Orange County, first known informally as The Mob, and then borrowing
the name of regulators from the successful South Carolina movement.
The first thing that the mob did in Orange and other counties was to announce its refusal
to pay taxes until its grievances were redressed and government fees and taxes lowered. Similar
meetings were held in the spring of 1768 in counties west of the Hall River, and the various
regulator associations took oaths to pay no taxes or illegal fees until redress was achieved.
South and West of Orange County, sympathy for the movement was expressed in Anson and
Rowan Counties. The Sandy Creek Organization, incidentally, far from leading the new regulator
movement, lagged behind this new radicalization and refused to join the tax strike as too
hot and rash and, in some respects, not legal. Orange County, however, remained the heart
and Center of the Growing Regulator Movement. Once again, as has happened so often in history,
actual armed hostilities were opened by the men in power, by the panicky forces of counter-revolution.
On April 4, a meeting of Orange regulators asked the sheriff and vestrymen of the county
to meet with the regulator committee to give a full account of their use of public monies.
The reply of Sheriff Harris was typically swift and brutal. The horse and saddle of a regulator
were seized and sold for non-payment of some governmental levy. Here was the spark of armed
rebellion in North Carolina. A crowd of nearly 100 armed regulators rode to the county seat
of Hillsboro, seized the sheriff, rescued the horse and saddle, and returned them to
to their owner. After an official threatened to fire at the crowd, they shot up the roof
of Colonel Fanning's house.
Colonel Fanning was not the sort of Tory oligarch to take such an incident lying down. First,
he had to gain the wholehearted support of Governor Tryon. Hysterically, Fanning falsely
claimed to Tryon that the regulators were insurrectionaries who had sworn to pay no
no more taxes, to kill all tax collectors, to burn Hillsboro, and to become sovereign
arbiters of right and wrong.
Tryon and the Council then agreed to authorize Fanning to call out the militia to suppress
the rebellion.
Striking back with all the might of government, Fanning ordered the arrest of the three leaders
Regulators of the Regulator Rescue Party, William Butler, Peter Craven and Norman Bell
Hamilton. Seven companies of militia were now called up to suppress the regulation. Only
120 people appeared, and very few of these could be relied upon to fight the people of
the county. About one-half of the people of Orange County were ardent regulators, and
The regulators called a confederation of inhabitants throughout the county to maintain enforcement
of their tax strike and to prepare for a march in force on Hillsboro.
But the regulator resolved to press its advantage was tragically weakened by the advice of such
The peace meeting was scheduled for May 11, but no officials deigned to appear, and while the bemused regulators peacefully elected delegates and waited for the peace meeting, Colonel Fanning seized the opportunity to swoop into the meeting room.
Hoppe, down upon them, denouncing the regulators as traitorous dogs, Fanning seized the startled
regulator leaders on May 2, arresting Butler and Husband. The two were given a quick kangaroo
trial and promptly imprisoned at Hillsborough. The seizure of Husband and Butler was enough
to rouse the ire of all the populace, regulator and non-regulator alike. Seven hundred men
and March to Hillsboro and forced Fanning to release the prisoners. Seeing the might
of the regulator uprising, Governor Tryon used his wiles to lure the regulators again
into passivity. He promised the regulators that if they behaved properly and returned
to their homes to confine themselves to drawing up a petition, he would seek redress of their
The Regulators naively agreed, forgetting the great principle of the English rebels
of old, that grievances must be redressed before the keen edge of protest is allowed
to soften. Once again the bemused regulators allowed their movement to retreat to the naive
petitioning of Sandy Creek days.
At the end of May, the Orange regulators drew up a petition signed by Hunter, Howell and
450 others, and Hunter and Howell were selected to present it to the Governor and Council.
Meanwhile, Fanning had tried hard to split the regulators and to induce them to sign
a humble and contrite petition confessing their sins and errors and throwing themselves
upon the mercy of the Governor.
Otherwise, he threatened the protesters. He would urge Tryon to regard them as traitors.
Fanning's efforts were partly successful in weakening the timber of the regulator petition.
But Governor Tryon and the council, sending weakness in the popular opposition and largely forgetting the governor's promises,
replied on June 25 by hinting at treason and demanding total submission and contrition
by the regulators. All future meetings of regulators were banned, and they were ordered
to pay their taxes. At the same time, local governmental fees were raised still higher.
Although the regulators had been lured again into dispersing their armed force, they did
Hold a Trump Card Continued Refusal to Pay Taxes
Though nonviolent, this step was far from passive. In fact, such refusal struck aggressively
at the root of the oligarchic power structure of North Carolina.
The regulators continued to meet and continued to refuse taxes. At a regulator meeting on
On August 1, Tryon sent a sheriff to demand submission and the payment of taxes, but the
people continued adamant. Four hundred men quickly met and unanimously resolved to refuse
tax payment and to kill any man who seized property for taxes due. Five hundred regulators
gathered a week later at Peds, threatening to burn the county seat at Hillsboro, and
and began to march on the town.
Rapidly the confrontation escalated.
Tryon called out the militia, and an armed populace gathered in a meeting of 1,000 regulators.
Cowed once again by force majeure, Tryon, on August 11, again turned wheedling and conciliating,
and promised that the sheriffs would now satisfy the people and give them an accounting at
and a general meeting on August 17, provided that the armed regulators would again disperse.
And once again the regulators, at the brink of victory, gullibly gave credence to Tryon's
promises. Once again they weakened their pressure to shift suddenly to peaceful and passive
of Tactics. Once again, when the naively confident regulators assembled on the 17th, they were
stunned to find a severe condemnation by Tryon, denouncing them as criminal and illegal insurrectionaries
and demanding a bond to ensure that no attempt would be made to rescue the imprisoned butler
and husband. Tryon then proceeded to raise a mighty force of militia from all over the
in North Carolina Backcountry.
But while Trion was raising his counter-revolutionary forces
far and wide, people from other counties
were increasingly joining Orange in the regulator protest.
For instance, people from Anson County
in southwest North Carolina.
Anson County was tightly governed
by a ruling clique of three men,
Samuel Spencer, county clerk, assemblyman,
and Colonel of the Militia, and two embezzling ex-sheriffs who had moved up to become county
judges.
A Citizens Association was formed in early 1768 to oppose this oligarchy.
The Anson Association of Regulators, headed by Charles Robinson, pledged to refuse payment
of Taxes, to rescue any imprisoned members and to retake any property seized for non-payment
of taxes. In April, 100 Anson regulators gathered at the county court, drove the tyrannical
judges off the bench and made ready to run Robinson for assembly. Governor Tryon was
also moved to promise Anson County regulators redress of grievances if they would disperse.
Turning to the Orange Regulation for advice, the regulators received counsel that sowed
dangerous illusions, disarmed the movement, and crippled its momentum. They were advised
to abandon violence for a peaceful and friendly petition of grievances. One hundred and twenty
people of Anson signed this petition during August, but Tryon's only acknowledgement
was to hail Anson County's submission. When Anson County found the governor calling out
the militia in force, five hundred men of the county resolved unarmed self-defense against
the government forces. Moreover, in Johnston County, close to the
Low Country, a mob of eighty regulators threatened to oust their judges. But here the judges
The Mises were able to mobilize governmental forces to defeat the rebels. Another regulator
failure occurred in near Lowland, Edgecombe County, where 30 men tried unsuccessfully
to release an insurgent leader from jail. Throughout the latter part of August and September
of 1768, both sides gathered their forces in the rapidly polarizing conflict. Rowan
in Mecklenburg Counties in the southwestern backcountry sent particularly ardent pro-government
militia, which were all assembled at Hillsboro in the heart of the regulator rebellion. The
counter-revolutionary militia were bolstered and egged on by four leading Presbyterian
ministers of the backcountry, who called for steadfast support of government on principle,
And in this call they were backed up by Baptist and German ministers. All in all, Trion was
able to gather by the beginning of September nearly 1,500 militia. The main clue to their
recruitment was the enormous proportion of top-ranking officers, largely politicians
and bureaucrats. Fully one-quarter of the assembled militia were officers, and thirty-four
The 34 leaders of the North Carolina oligarchy who headed the assembly at Hillsboro to defend
One of their vested privileges against the regulators included John Rutherford, President of the Council, five other counselors, Edmund Fanning, Samuel Spencer, and a Superior Court Justice, Maurice Moore.
ranged against the militia was a massive force of some 3,700 regulators, but the regulators,
timorous and lacking determined and efficient revolutionary leadership, pleaded for negotiation.
The only terms that Governor Tryon would consider were that the regulators disarmed themselves,
The regulators did not agree to pay all taxes, swear oaths of loyalty and allegiance to their rulers, and surrender nine of their leaders for trial, in addition to the still incarcerated husband and butler.
The regulators did not agree to these arrogant and insulting terms, but neither were they brave enough to use their overwhelming force.
The regulators disbursed, with 30 of them accepting the terms of submission.
Pressing his advantage, Tryon quickly sent troops to round up and arrest the regulator leaders.
They met with no resistance from the demoralized regulators, and 13 leaders were placed on trial.
The regulators, moreover, resumed payment of their taxes.
The second phase of the regulator protest movement had ended in total and abject failure.
Governor Tryon's shrewd and cunning strategy had been met by bumbling confusion and ineptitude on the part of the popular opposition.
Of the regulator leaders, William Butler was convicted for riot and rescue of confiscated property and sentenced to six months' imprisonment.
John Philip Hartzow and Samuel Davini received three months.
Herman Husband was acquitted on the charge of riot.
James Hunter was convicted but freed at a new trial.
The three convicted leaders had their sentences suspended
and were finally pardoned at the King's instructions in September 1769.
Meanwhile, Edmund Fanning was convicted of extorting illegal fees
The Governor had promised to bring extortionate officials to trial. The trial of Fanning was, in particular, a mockery of that pledge. Other regulator charges against officials were systematically obstructed by the government. Complaining witnesses were driven away by the guards and ordered out of town and grand juries were systematically packed with government officials.
The abject crumbling of the regulator movement did nothing, of course, to allay the grievances of the backcountry.
After a lull of many months, regulator agitation welled up once more.
In the spring of 1769, Orange County Sheriff John Lee, trying to arrest Ninian Hamilton and other regulator leaders,
The legislature leaders was set upon and severely whipped by a mob led by Hamilton and Devaney.
But this was an exceptional incident. The regulators generally turned to concentrate
on political action, specifically to try to change assembly policies in the July elections.
The regulators of Orange, Anson and Rowan counties formulated their political program
in Petitions, Asking for an End to Poll Taxes, and a Shift to Property Taxes, Drastic Limitations
on Legal Fees, Payment of Taxes in Kind, Lower Quit Rents, a Cutback of Land Grants to Counselors
and Other Governmental Favorites, and a Secret Ballot for Assembly Elections. In contrast
was the petition of 1,000 Presbyterians in backcountry Mecklenburg County. The petitioners
proclaimed their loyalty to the government and requested repeal only of the Anglican establishment
in their counties. The July elections did result in a general
overturn of the North Carolina legislature. Of 77 assemblymen, 45 were new. Only a handful
All of the new representatives were regulators, but regulators did sweep the elections in
Orange, Granville, and Halifax counties in the northern back country and Anson County
in the southwest. Rowan County also returned the ardent regulator Christopher Nation. Orange
County for its part elected Herman Husband to the assembly, while Hyde-bound Mecklenburg
County remained committed to the status quo.
After the flush of enthusiasm over their political victory, the regulators found to their dismay
that their victory had won them nothing.
The assembly did nothing to redress their grievances.
Indeed, the elections of the spring of 1770 only weakened regulator strength in the assembly.
The regulators were neither the first nor the last revolutionary movement to become disillusioned
with the Fruits of Political Action and defined that voting and politics were just another
blind alley to blunt their effectiveness, deflect them from their course and weaken
their purpose. The regulators, in fact, had tried every form of legal or nonviolent protest,
petitioning, suits in court, tax strikes and political action. Each in its turn had totally
failed. The regulators were finally learning that only one course of action remained to
them, armed rebellion. Matters came to a head, inaugurating the fourth phase of the North
Carolina Regulation in late September 1770. The incident began on September 24 when James
Hunter and other orange regulators presented a petition at Hillsboro against the peculation
and systematic bias of the county sheriffs, officers and juries.
Backing up the petition was a determined crowd of 150 regulators led by Hunter, Butler and
Howell who invaded the county courtroom.
The crowd threatened Judge Richard Henderson who fled town and began to set upon its enemies.
The courthouse lawyer, John Williams, was beaten up and leading county bureaucrats were
given a severe trouncing. The crowd also proceeded to the highly satisfactory whipping of their
archenemy, Colonel Fanning. Fanning was generously permitted to flee town and his new pretentious
house reviled as being built from illegal fees was thoroughly burned to the ground.
The same treatment was meted out to Judge Henderson's house in Granville County some weeks later.
Thus, the regulators followed the model of the Stamp Act rebels.
The regulators were now feeling their oats.
Determined violent action had redressed their grievances by forcibly stopping the machinery
of government in the county.
Although the two years delay had reduced the movement from several thousand to several
hundred, the regulators, growing stronger by the day, threatened to storm the capital,
New Bern, to be joined by the regulators of Butte and Johnston Counties to prevent the
assembly from ceding Edmund Fanning from a newly created rotten borough of Hillsborough.
The assembly, now genuinely alarmed, did a little to remedy the problems of the back
country by increasing representation of the Piedmont in the assembly and limiting governmental
fees. But most of its panicky reaction centered around savage repression of the regulator
movement. Its resolve for repression was strengthened by a secret agreement with the Presbyterian
In exchange for the assembly's permission to perform the marriage ceremony, Presbyterian ministers pledged their support against the regulation.
With the back country thus split, the assembly passed a law on January 1771, sponsored by Samuel Johnston of Edenton, in the Lowcountry, for suppressing riots.
The Death Penalty was decreed for any assemblage of ten or more people that refused to disperse.
Anyone ignoring subpoenas for rioting would be declared an outlaw.
The militia was authorized to enforce these decrees.
Furthermore, any uplander could now be tried in low-country courts.
And anyone opposing the militia would be deemed guilty of treason.
Furthermore, the assembly arbitrarily expelled Hermann Husband for criticizing a reactionary
assemblyman and then had Husband summarily arrested.
The assembly finally released Husband after a couple of months when a grand jury refused
to indict him.
The release of Hermann Husband served to disperse a threatened regulator rescue march on New
New Bern, but Tryon, furious at the release, determined to pursue a massive program of
armed repression, there were several prongs to this campaign. First, Tryon called up the
provincial militia, since the local back country militia was now ineffective. Second, the governor
mobilized a private force of redressers, organized by Fanning, Thomas Hart and Alexander Martin,
who had all been beaten up at Hillsboro in an armed association against the regulators.
Particularly formidable was the aristocratic armed association of Cape Fear loyalists headed
by General Hugh Waddell.
Third, Tryon brazenly ordered the packing of all juries for Tryon regulators, with aristocratic
gentlemen of the first rank, property and property, who would take care to hear only
Pro-Official Witnesses
The regulators of 1771 were not the regulators of three years earlier. Disappointments at
suppression had radicalized them, and particularly infuriating was Tryon's raising of the massive
provincial force against them. The people were incensed. Redknapp Howell composed forty
Edmund Fanning was declared an outlaw, who could therefore be shot on sight by the regulators.
One gauge of the intensity of regulation feeling was the refusal of militiaman Jeremiah Pritchett
to obey military orders and his attempt to breed a mutiny in support of the regulation.
Pritchett was sentenced to the huge total of 150 lashes. At Pritchett's public flogging,
one of the spectators tried to get the crowd to pelt the floggers with eggs. The man was
immediately arrested, and the colonel in charge threatened to run through any other heckler
with his sword. Regulator forces sprang up in Halifax, Edgecombe, Butte, and Northampton
In Rowan County, the people refused to pay fees and threatened to kill every clerk and
lawyer in the area. The court at the Rowan County seat of Salisbury was threatened with
the same treatment as at Hillsboro. Rowan County and other regulators nevertheless proposed
to arbitrate their disputes, but Governor Tryon adopted an implacably hard-line anti-appeasement
View. No negotiations were possible with rebels, he declared, nor would there be arbitration
by any organization but the government. At this rebuff, the regulators protested that
every man would rise up and defend his just rights. Our civil liberties are certainly
more dear to us than the good opinion of a ruler. Governor Tryon tried to raise an armed
Trion's force of 2,500 men. Despite determined efforts, including a subsidy to each volunteer,
he could only raise less than 1,100 men, who were supplemented by General Waddell's irregulars
of less than 300 men. Trion's force had no fewer than 150 officers and Waddell's nearly
50. Most of Trion's men came from Orange and Dobbs counties in the back country and
Trion's and Waddell's forces were supposed to meet at Hillsborough, but Waddell's column was stopped by a large body of regulators on May 9 and forced to fall back to Salisbury. Waddell's ammunition had been destroyed by a heroic group of young rebels called the Black Boys of Cabarrus. Going to the rescue of his ally, Trion moved westward from Hillsborough to the Alamance River, reaching
The regulators, though radicalized to the point of gathering an armed force, were still gravely undermined by the lack of firm and resolute leadership. There was no overall leader. The major leaders bickered among themselves and trepidated.
Hermann Husband would not fight at all. The other leaders naively counseled a token fight to induce Tryon to negotiate. They did not realize the absurdity of threatening or beginning the use of force without being prepared to use it effectively.
Moreover, it was incredibly naive of them to still believe Tryon would negotiate honestly.
James Hunter, when asked to take command of the regulators, replied in a magnificently individualistic
but militarily ineffectual vein, We are all free men, and everyone must command himself.
As a result, each company of regulators had a captain, but there was no overall commander.
Shorn of any effective leaders on or off the field, the regulator movement had therefore
no effective field command and no theoreticians to define their goals and purpose, their strategy
and tactics. In such a case only one outcome was possible. On May 16, Triance forces advanced,
demanded unconditional surrender and then, after a two-hour fight, routed the disorganized
regulators into wild disorder. Thus ended the Battle of Alamance. Nine regulators were
killed and many wounded and captured. Surprisingly, the brief regulator resistance also took a
toll of nine killed and several score injured. Tryon now had the opportunity to wreak his
One leader, young James Few, a prisoner of the battle, was executed the next day on the ground that he had been made an outlaw for ignoring a court subpoena for burning Fanning's house.
Tryon, then joined by Waddell, marched unresisted through the back country, looting and burning the houses and plantations of the regulator leaders,
In the brutal Tryon Victory March, thousands of settlers were forced to take an oath of
allegiance to him, promising to pay their taxes and obey the laws in exchange for the
governor's pardon.
Tryon's largess, however, was not at all extended to the prisoners taken in battle.
Summary, court-martials were held in mid-June, and twelve prisoners were sentenced to death
for High Treason. Six of the convicted were pardoned, but the other six were publicly
executed on the spot. One of the executed regulators was Captain Benjamin Merrill of
the Rowan County Militia, who died supposedly repenting in order to allow his family to
inherit his property. But another of the executed, James Pugh, remained steadfast to the end
and indeed was hanged in the middle of a rebuke that he was delivering to Edmund Fanning.
Assemblyman Thomas Person, who had been sympathetic to the regulators, was arrested by Tryon on
his march but was ultimately acquitted. All the major leaders of the regulation had managed
to escape capture. Redknapp Howell fled north to Maryland and eventually settled in New
New Jersey, Herman Husband fled north to western Pennsylvania, other leaders escaped to South
Carolina and thousands of regulators soon trekked westward over the mountains.
The government quickly moved toward pardon of the regulator leadership. The implacable
enemies of the regulators, Governor Tryon and Edmund Fanning, both left in the summer
The governor of 1771, trying to become governor of New York, and fanning to be his secretary.
The new governor of North Carolina accelerated the pardoning of the wanted leaders.
The latter petitioned for mercy, and when the riot act expired in 1772, they were allowed
to surrender, come into court, and be pardoned.
James Hunter returned from Maryland to general acclaim and remained free.
The returning William Butler crawled to the authorities for claiming his utmost abhorrence
of the regulation. Soon, in fact, the King had pardoned all the old leaders except Herman
Husband, who remained in Pennsylvania. The North Carolina regulators, as we have seen,
were far different from their namesakes to the South. The South Carolina group arose
In North Carolina, however, the major grievance was too much government, specifically too
much revenue extracted from the public in taxes and fees.
Hence the conflict was much more sectional than in South Carolina, where the local courthouse
oligarchies in the back countries were appointed by the royal provincial officials in Charleston.
Within the back country, the bulk of the split was waged between the people and the oligarchy
of bureaucrats. The regulator conflict cannot be properly interpreted as many historians
Presbyterians have done in religious terms. For example, as Low Country Anglican versus
Back Country Protestant. As we have seen, the Presbyterian Church was very active in
opposing the movement. Its ministers wrote a circular letter urging Presbyterians not
to join the regulators. And of course, the established Anglican Church was also opposed
to the regulators, but so too with the Baptist, who were almost all opposed. Indeed, pro-regulator
Baptists were excommunicated from the Church. The German and Quaker sects also opposed the
regulation.