The North Carolina Regulation was a social movement in the Piedmont region of the colony aimed at combating corruption among local officials, creating a more equitable economic system in the backcountry, and increasing the participation of farmers in the political system. Settlers had first moved to the North Carolina Piedmont, or back-country as it was then known, beginning in the 1740s. Most came from the colonies to the north, with others coming directly from Europe or from eastern North Carolina. The majority of immigrants were dissenters from the established Anglican Church. They were eager to follow their own religious principles and to obtain sufficient land to ensure family independence. Their hope for autonomy in economic and religious matters was threatened by backcountry elites who used their control of the legal system, the land market, and credit, to fleece the population. Farmers were particularly outraged by three key issues: the high costs associated with using the courts, which served as the only local government institution in the southern colonies; the sheriffs’ embezzlement of people’s hard-earned tax monies; and laws that favored creditors over debtors.
The movement began in 1766 when farmers in Orange County organized the Sandy Creek Association. The core of the organization consisted of a group of Quakers led by Herman Husband, a deeply religious and prosperous farmer from Maryland who had first come to the Piedmont in the mid-1750s. Husband quickly became the main spokesman for the farmers’ movement and its chief ideologue. His ideas about social justice and the duty of Christians to help bring it about were tremendously influential among Piedmont farmers. Within two years of its organization, the Sandy Creek Association ceased to exist, but the seeds for more widespread resistance had been sown; early in 1768, many of the members of the Sandy Creek Association joined with other reform-minded farmers under the name of “Regulators,” a term used in England for people appointed to reform government abuse.
Regulators organized throughout all Piedmont counties. They pursued legal and extralegal means to put a stop to the extortionate practices of local officials. They repeatedly petitioned the governor and the colonial assembly for relief, tried to set up meetings with local officials to talk things over, and brought suits against officials. When such legal measures had little effect, they resorted to extralegal action: They refused to pay taxes, repossessed property seized for public sale to satisfy debts and taxes, and disrupted court proceedings. In September 1768, Governor William Tryon and his militia confronted a large number of Regulators outside of Hillsborough but violence was avoided. Two years later, Regulators disrupted the superior court in Hillsborough, roughed up a number of lawyers, merchants, and officials, and destroyed the house of Edmund Fanning, the most hated official in the area. The authorities retaliated forcefully.
Almost as soon as the colonial assembly opened later that fall, Herman Husband, who had been elected a legislator for Orange County in 1769, was accused of libel, expelled from the assembly, and jailed. Next, the assemblymen passed a sweeping riot act that, among other things, gave Governor Tryon the authority and funds he needed to raise the militia and march against the Regulators. On May 16, 1771, about 1,100 militiamen, confronted upwards of 2,000 farmers in the Battle of Alamance about 20 miles west of Hillsborough. Two hours after the first shot was fired, 17 to 20 farmers lay dead, along with nine militiamen; more than 150 men on both sides were wounded. One Regulator was hanged on the spot without benefit of trial; six others were hanged in Hillsborough on June 19 after a hasty trial. At least 6,000 Regulators and sympathizers took the oath of allegiance as the victorious troops marched through backcountry settlements, burning farms and requisitioning foodstuffs. Some of the best-known Regulators, including Herman Husband, fled the province. By summer, the Regulation had been suppressed. Just five years later, the same men who had opposed the Regulators in the assembly and on the battlefield, led North Carolina into the Revolutionary War (1775-83). Perhaps not surprisingly, many former Regulators were either little interested in the imperial struggle or became Loyalists.
See also land riots; riots; South Carolina Regulation.
Further reading: Marjoleine Kars, Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); William S. Powell, James K. Huhta, and Thomas J. Farnham, eds., The Regulators in North Carolina: A Documentary History, 1759-1776 (Raleigh, N. C.: State Dept. of Archives and History, 1971).
—Marjoleine Kars
World History
