Regulator Movement

Questionable taxation and lack of law enforcement were the triggers for several uprisings in North and South Carolina from 1765 to 1771, known as the Regulator Movement. While the movement in South Carolina succeeded, the movement in North Carolina saw the defeat of the colonists in the Battle of Alamance. Both groups sought to effect change in the government, but not to overthrow it.

Background

The Regulator Movement, also known as the War for Regulation, was a reform movement during the pre-Revolutionary War period. In the early 1760s, colonists in North Carolina and South Carolina began moving to the western parts of the colonies in search of new opportunities. At that time, the areas were mostly home to farmers, and as merchants and lawyers moved west, the farmers saw a disruption in the economic, political, and social systems of the Carolinas. The area was also experiencing an influx of immigrants from Scotland and Ireland. Conflict soon developed between the colonists and the British officials overseeing the colonial governments, whom many colonists thought were corrupt.

By the mid-1760s these tensions would erupt in two separate Regulator Movements—one in North Carolina and one in South Carolina. In the North, the farmers protested unfair taxes and the methods of collecting the taxes by the British officials. In the South, those in the Regulator Movement were against the lack of law and order in the western backcountry.

Overview

The strife in North Carolina began after years of drought that put the western part of the colony into a severe economic depression. Farmers not only lost their livelihoods from growing crops but also lost their own food sources. The farmers suffered hardship as they had to buy their supplies and food from the merchants from the east. When the farmers could not pay, they were taken to court. The courts often took over the farmers’ homes and land to settle the debts. In 1765, King George III appointed William Tryon, a British Army general, as governor, increasing the tensions. Tryon’s officials worked to assess taxes from the farmers. On June 6, 1765, the patriot Sons of Liberty’s North Carolina chapter was protesting the British Stamp Act. George Sims, a Nutbush township planter, delivered the Nutbush Address, which spurred others to join him in protesting British officials and their actions. Within the speech, Sims called out Samuel Benton, the Clerk of the Court. This angered Benton so much that he sued Sims for libel. Regardless, Sims’ speech ignited the Regulator Movement.

The Regulators attempted to reform their local government through legal and extralegal methods. One of the Regulators’ initial moves was to petition the provincial legislature to recall British-appointed court and government officials and replace them with colonial residents. They attempted to set up meetings with local officials, which were turned down. They petitioned the governor and assembly hoping to spark interest in their cause. They also brought lawsuits against officials, but were unsuccessful. All these rejections resulted in the Regulators turning to illegal actions, such as refusing to pay taxes, repossessing property seized for public sale to satisfy debts and taxes, disrupting court proceedings, and trying officials at people’s courts.

At this time, the Regulators were thriving and won control of the provincial legislature in 1769. They were stymied by Tryon, however, and became frustrated at the political level, so they sought to gain the support of the people through demonstrations. While their protests were peaceful in the beginning, they started to become more violent. In April 1768, a group of Regulators targeted Tryon’s personal lawyer, Edmund Fanning, and fired shots into his Hillsborough township home. Fanning, who was convicted of extorting money from residents but was never punished, was unharmed. Things were a bit different in September 1770 when some Regulators entered Hillsborough and ended up at Fanning’s estate, where they burned down his house and badly beat him.

Tryon decided to retaliate and, with the blessing of the colonial Assembly, he led his militia from the provincial capital of New Bern to the backcountry. His plan was simple—to crush the Regulator Movement. On May 16, 1771, the Regulators attempted to negotiate with Tyron, who only agreed to meet if they dispersed and handed over their weapons. The Regulators refused and Tryon ordered them to disperse immediately, or they would be fired upon. To this, Regulator leader James Hunter said, “Fire and be damned!”

The subsequent government attack would be later known as the Battle of Alamance. It took only two hours for Tryon’s army of two thousand to defeat the Regulators. Seven Regulators were executed, and six others were pardoned by King George III. In exchange for full pardons, almost all the former Regulators vowed allegiance to the Crown. The exact number of Regulator casualties is unknown since members would immediately move a killed or injured insurrectionist from the battlefield. Estimates suggest that twenty may have been killed and one hundred injured that day.

Many leaders of the Regulator Movement went into hiding, while some returned to their normal lives. Some moved away and formed a settlement on the Mississippi River near Memphis, but they ended up moving farther away when some of Tryon’s former militiamen found their location. When the American Revolution began in 1775, the differences between the two groups of North Carolinians seemed less important than the urgent question of independence from the British.

Historians are divided on whether the Regulator Movement and the War of Regulation helped spark the American Revolution. Some say that the Regulator Movement foreshadowed the independence movement’s resistance against British authority and unfair taxation during the Revolution. Some former Regulators fought in the Revolutionary War, while Fanning supported the British. Tryon also served as a British general during the Revolution and during the War of Regulation. Meanwhile, other historians believe that not all the Regulators were against Britain but were loyal subjects who were opposed to the corruption and excessive taxation they witnessed. Some historians even claim that the Battle of Alamance was the first battle of the American Revolution, but the two wars were fought for two completely different reasons. The Regulator War was waged against corrupt government officials and the goal was to regulate the government. Few if any Regulators seriously thought about overthrowing the government, as took place years later in the American Revolution.

While the term “Regulator” is best-known when associated with the North Carolina farmers’ movement, it was also used in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. The goal of the South Carolina Regulator Movement of 1767 was to restore law and order and to bring the government under the colonists’ control instead of British control. The Regulators Association began when a group of planters and farmers began to act as the arm of the law in the backcountry. The association members were angered over what they saw as the British authorities’ failure to protect them. The Regulators made arrests and set up local courts and penal systems. Because there was no cost to them and the problems were being resolved, the British did not stop this branch of the movement, but in fact moved to help address the underlying concern. In 1769, the South Carolina colonial legislature passed the Circuit Court Act, which set up six district courts to provide law and order in the backcountry. After the Act was approved by British Parliament, the South Carolina Regulators disbanded.

The Pennsylvania Regulation is more commonly known as the Whiskey Rebellion (1794) and the Massachusetts Regulation is better known as Shays’ Rebellion (1786–1787). In the Whiskey Rebellion, US federal forces moved into western Pennsylvania to avert an uprising of people opposing the liquor tax. At that time, many farmers distilled whiskey and used it as a currency, as it was easier to move and sell whiskey than the grain that it came from. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton proposed a national tax on liquor to pay for the national debt and to demonstrate the authority of the federal government. Some refused to pay the tax and would tar and feather revenue officers who attempted to collect. After years of contentious meetings with tax collectors, five hundred armed men attacked and burned the home of a regional tax inspector, causing President George Washington to call in federal troops. Some had feared it could become a full-scale revolution, but it subsided.

In Shays’ Rebellion, protestors attacked courthouses and other government properties in western Massachusetts, beginning in 1786. Rebels were opposed to high taxes and prevailing economic conditions. Daniel Shays led several hundred men in forcing the Supreme Court in Springfield to close down. The rebellion ended in a military confrontation in 1787 when about 1,200 men led by Shays attacked the federal arsenal at Springfield. Shays was defeated at Petersham and fled to Vermont. The result of the rebellion was the enactment of laws easing the economic condition of debtors. It also became an argument for a stronger and more conservative national government.

Bibliography

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Kiker, Jessie D. Violence in the Backcountry: The South Carolina Regulator Movement and the Atlantic World. University of North Carolina, 2014.

Longley, Robert. “What Was the Regulator Movement? History and Significance.” ThoughtCo., 20 Sept. 2020, www.thoughtco.com/regulator-movement-history-and-significance-5076538. Accessed 27 Apr. 2023.

Makos, Isaac. “The Regulator War.” American Battlefield Trust, www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/regulator-war. Accessed 27 Apr. 2023.

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