Episode 14: The Corruption

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jim Ambuske (00:01):
This episode of Worlds Turned Upside Down is
made possible with support froma 2024 grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
Judge Richard Henderson wasuneasy as he opened the Superior

(00:22):
Court in Hillsboro, NorthCarolina. It was 11 o'clock in
the morning on Monday, September24, 1770. Earlier that day, a
great number of people callingthemselves regulators, had
filled Hillsboro, shouting,hallooing and making a
considerable tumblt in thestreets. Now, as Henderson

(00:48):
looked out from his bench andahead to the day's docket, he
could see regulators packing hiscourtroom, like many of the
people in the courtroom thatday, Henderson wasn't a native
North Carolinian. He had beenborn in Hanover County, Virginia
in the mid 1730s as a child,Henderson and his family

(01:10):
migrated south to the northCarolina Piedmont, joining other
British Americans from themiddle colonies of Maryland,
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and NewJersey, who traveled down the
Great Wagon Road in search ofnew lands, new opportunities,
and for some God's grace, thepromise of good government and
an independent living togetherwith Scots, Scots-Irish, and

(01:34):
German speakers from abroad, thelargely white colonists who
settled in the Carolinabackcountry in the mid 18th
century, farmed and speculatedin land once owned by powerful
indigenous nations. War,disease, proclamations, and
treaties have reduced nativenumbers in the region, but not
evidence of their presence.Henderson had lived a very

(01:57):
different life from the peoplepresent in his courtroom on that
September morning, the peoplewho now gave him such pause as a
young man, he had served hisfather as deputy county sheriff,
read law with his mother'scousin and then married his
legal mentor's step daughter,Henderson, had made a fortune as
a lawyer representing wealthyclients, Often land speculators

(02:20):
in debt suits against settlerswho could scarcely afford to pay
their bills. His wealth andsocial status elevated his
standing in the eyes of thecolony's elite. In 1768 Governor
William Tryon appointedHenderson as an associate judge
on the colony's Superior Courtfor the regulators who stared

(02:41):
back at him on that Mondaymorning in 1770. Elite learned
men like Henderson were aninsidious threat to their
liberty and independence formore than a decade backcountry
settlers, many of them farmers,many of them evangelical
Protestants who had experienceda great awakening in the depths

(03:02):
of their very souls. Hadcomplained about corrupt
officials, unfair land sales, anunresponsive assembly,
inexplicable laws and unjusttaxes that enriched the few at
the expense of the many. Theyhad no love for the Stamp Act,
nor the Townsend Duties, ofParliament's attempt to bind the

(03:24):
colonies closer to the mothercountry in ways that most
British Americans had oncethought unimaginable, and yet,
for many backcountry settlers,the more pressing concern wasn't
the men who ruled them fromLondon. But the provincial
elites who governed them athome, to the governor and to the

(03:45):
assembly. The king's loyalsubjects had petitioned for the
redress of their grievances, butthose prayers had gone
unanswered. By the late 1760stheir patience had worn thin,
and time was running out. If thegovernment would not reform
itself, then, with God's help,some North Carolinians would

(04:09):
regulate it. As Judge Hendersoncontemplated the scene unfolding
before him, the courtroom

Judge Henderson (04:16):
“[filled] as close as one Man could stand by
another, some with Clubs, otherswith Whips and Switches, few or
none without some Weapon!”

A farmer named Jeremiah Fields approached the
bench and informed Hendersonthat he had something to say
before the court began the day'swork. Regulators like Fields
believed that Henderson andother judges were deliberately
ignoring lawsuits they had filedagainst their alleged
oppressors, using the rule oflaw to protect the wealthy, as
Henderson later wrote toGovernor Tryon, Fields

“proceeded to let Me know that He spoke for
the whole Body of the peoplecalled Regulators, That they
understood I would not try theirCauses, and that their
Determination was to have themtryed, for they had come down to
see Justice done, and JusticeThey would have.”

Fields counseled the judge that if he tried their
cases, it might prevent muchmischief. And for the next 30
minutes, Henderson did his best

“to soften and turn away the Fury of this mad
People in the best Manner in mypower as much as could well
[...] pacifie their Rage and atthe same Time preserve the
little remaining Dignity of theCourt.”

Sudden calls rose up from among the regulators to
let the court go about itsbusiness. Many who had packed
the courtroom went back outside,giving Henderson reason to think
that all would be well, but

“The little Hopes of Peace derived from this
Piece of Behaviour were veryTransient.”

As deputy attorney general John Williams made his
way into the courtroom, theRegulators grabbed him. Williams
was both Henderson's legalpartner and his father in law,
and months earlier, he hadsigned an order authorizing the
arrest of two Regulators. Theregulators battered and beat
Williams with sticks and clubsbefore he managed to flee,

(06:10):
taking refuge in a nearby store,rushing back inside the
courthouse, they found anotherlawyer, Edmund Fanning a member
of the Provincial Assembly, anda man known for extorting
Piedmont settlers hiding behindthe bench, they dragged Fanning
outside, beating and spitting onhim as they went when Fanning

(06:31):
escaped to hide with Williams inthe store, the regulators turned
their attention to other localofficials who received a similar
dose of the farmer's fury backinside the courtroom, a
regulator named James Hunterinformed a cowering Henderson
that he would not be harmed ifhe agreed to hold court. The

(06:52):
judge had little choice but tocomply. That night, after
Henderson held hearings underthe Regulators' watchful eye,
they made sure he got homesafely, but not before
extracting a promise that hewould reopen the court the next
morning, fanning they allowedsafe passage as well. But as

(07:13):
dawn broke on Tuesday, September25 the Regulators awoke to find
that Henderson had fled withoutthe judge, the court could not
reopen and justice could not bedone. Turning their anger on
Fanning, they ran him out oftown and in a scene as familiar
in Boston or New York City as itwas in the North Carolina back

(07:35):
country, the regulators brokeinto Fanning's home, ransacked
his possessions and dismantledit. They left Hillsboro the next
day, breaking windows and localshops as they went. Weeks later,
they reduced judge Henderson'shome to ashes, if the regulators

(07:56):
wanted the provincialgovernment's attention to
finally make it see theinjustices suffered by the
king's subjects. The Governorand the assembly were certainly
listening, but not in the waythe regulators wanted for
Governor Tryon and theprovincial elite. The attack on
the courthouse was a herald ofthings to come, but not of a

(08:19):
reformation, of a revolution.
I'm Jim Ambuske, and this isWorlds Turned Upside Down, a
podcast about the history of theAmerican Revolution. Episode 14:

(08:40):
The Corruption. In August 1766,five months after Parliament
repealed the hated Stamp Act,farmers gathered near Sandy
Creek in Orange County, NorthCarolina, to demand answers from
their local officials, inspiredby the resistance movements in
Boston, New York, andCharleston, the assembled

(09:02):
farmers charged the provincialelite with subverting their
rights in abusing their power ina published advertisement, they
proclaimed,

Farmers (09:12):
“While the sons of Liberty withstood the Lords in
Parliament in behalf of trueLiberty let not Officers under
them carry on unjust Oppressionin our own Province..there is
many Evils of that naturecomplained of in this County of
Orange in private amongst theInhabitants therefore let us
remove them (or if there is nocause) let us remove the
Jealousies out of our minds.”

Sandy Creek associates as the mostly Quaker
farmers came to be known, calledon elite officials like Edmund
fanning to appear before them tohear their grievances over land,
taxes and representation. Such ameeting, they wrote, would
examine

Farmers (09:51):
“whether the free men of this Country labor under any
abuses of power or not”

And it would "certainly cause the wicked men
in power to tremble."

Marjoleine Kars (10:03):
When the Sandy Creek starts in 1766, they have
seen the Sons of Liberty protestthe Stamp Act. The Sons of
Liberty draw on a radicalpolitical tradition that argues
that a government is based onthe consent of the people, and
that people turn over some oftheir liberties and some of

(10:23):
their powers to a government inexchange for that government
acting in the public good andacting to protect them, and that
when a government violates thatcontract, people not only have a
right but even a duty toprotest. My name is Marjoleine
Kars. I am a professor emeritusat the University of Maryland

(10:46):
Baltimore County, and I am now asenior scholar in the history
department at MIT. These farmersbegin to see themselves as akin
to the Sons of Liberty, who arealso arguing that Parliament is
corrupt and that the governmentdoesn't have their best interest
at heart. The Sandy Creekfarmers are inspired by that.

(11:08):
They're like, Oh, if our leaderson the coast can stand up for
government, then we should too.Of course, these leaders don't
see it that way. They thinkthere's a huge difference
between elite men opposingBritain and ordinary farmers
opposing local elites.

Edmund Fanning refused to meet with the Sandy
Creek associates in 1766 nor didhe or any other official bother
to appear when theirconstituents asked for another
meeting a year later, by 1767 itseemed that peaceful, organized
resistance to governmentcorruption in North Carolina had
come to an end. But in 1768farmers in the North Carolina,

(11:53):
Piedmont from Orange, Rowan,Anson, Mecklenburg, and other
counties, Quakers as well asBaptists, Presbyterians as well
as Protestant evangelicalsawakened under a new movement
with a new name regulators. Sowhy did a large protest movement

(12:13):
erupt in the North Carolina,back country in the years after
the Seven Years' War? How didradical religion inspire
settlers to combat corruptionwherever they found it, and why
did the regulators rebellioncome to a swift and bloody end?
To begin answering thesequestions, we'll head first down
the Great Wagon Road to theNorth Carolina Piedmont to

(12:36):
reconstruct the world theregulators hope to build. We'll
then travel deep into theregulators hearts to explore the
inner light that fired theirdivine sparks before setting out
on a long march with provincialforces to confront the
regulators near Alamance Creekto witness the beginning and the
end of a revolution over acentury before the regulator

(13:03):
uprising, the North CarolinaPiedmont was part of a much
grander Imperial vision in 1663,King Charles the second granted
a charter to eight men for theprovince of Carolina. These
lords, proprietors, as they wereknown, had remained loyal to the
king's family during the EnglishCivil Wars of the 1640s a

(13:25):
revolution that led to theexecution of the king's father,
Charles I and the transformationof England into a republic. When
the Commonwealth collapsed andParliament restored the monarchy
in 1660 the return of the kingheralded great rewards to those
who had bent the knee. Carolinabecame the property of the eight
lords in England. The Lordsproprietors envisioned a colony

(13:50):
where the few ruled the manyunder a Constitution drafted in
part by the philosopher JohnLocke. They imagined a Carolina
controlled by men with vasthereditary estates worked by
tenants and enslaved people toencourage settlement. The
fundamental constitutions ofCarolina called for religious
toleration for heathens, Jews,and other dissenters, but not

(14:13):
Catholics. Attracting settlersto Carolina proved difficult.
Southern Carolina quickly becamemore prosperous than the north,
while the colony as a whole grewunruly. In 1712 the proprietors
divided the colony into two,hoping separate Carolinas would
make them more governable. Butby the end of the decade, most

(14:35):
of them concluded that thecolonies were no longer worth
the investment. They sold SouthCarolina to the crown in 1719
transforming it into a RoyalColony. 10 years later, seven of
the eight proprietors sold theirshares in North Carolina to
George II, only Lord Granvilleretained his share, leaving him

(14:56):
in control of the northern halfof North Carolina in. Unlike
Virginia and South Carolina,North Carolina had no deep
harbors and comparatively fewerconnections to the Atlantic
trade, but North Carolina didhave plenty of available land.
By the 1760s disease, war, andtreaties had diminished the

(15:17):
presence and power of nativepeoples like the Cherokee and
the Catawba in the Piedmont andthroughout the back country of
both Carolinas and for BritishAmericans struggling to find
land elsewhere, the NorthCarolina Piedmont was a
tremendous opportunity.Marjoleine Kars explains

White settlers had come into the Piedmont
beginning really in the 1740sand 1750s the great majority of
them came from the middlecolonies, down the Great Wagon
Road from Pennsylvania intowestern North Carolina. Some
came from Europe directly, butthe great majority came from the
middle colonies

Cynthia Kierner (15:54):
Western North Carolina, or the area called the
back country, was the fastestgrowing part of the fastest
growing colony in British NorthAmerica. Cynthia Kierner,
Professor of History at GeorgeMason University. It was
populated mostly by whitefarmers who had traveled
southward from places likePennsylvania and Maryland and

(16:15):
Virginia to settle in theCarolina back country, where the
land was cheaper

and they were partly pushed out of the middle
colonies because land priceswere really rising there. And so
people hoped to come to NorthCarolina to find cheap land in
good sized lots. And they cameto North Carolina looking for
family competency, as theycalled it, which meant that you
had enough land to remainindependent and to be able to

(16:40):
settle your sons nearby when itcame time for them to be
independent.

We're talking about a white population that
has tremendous religious andethnic diversity. There's
German, there's Scotch-Irish,there's English, there's a lot
of people from different placesmixing there, and a lot of
religious diversity to go withthose different ethnic groups as
well. There were some wealthypeople in the area, and
therefore also some enslavedpeople owned by the wealthy

(17:08):
people, but not very many. Therewere relatively few towns, and
the towns that were there werequite small. So the population
was overwhelmingly white. It wasoverwhelmingly rural. People did
kind of like mixed agriculture.They grew grain, mostly wheat.
They kept livestock. It wasn'tan easy life.

Jane and William Spurgin were among the many
British Americans who traveledsouth in search of family
competency. By the late 1760sthey were among the more than
42,000 white settlers in thePiedmont.

Both Jane and William were born in Maryland in
the 1730s they got married inthe 1750s they settled in the
North Carolina back country,specifically Rowan County, or
the eastern part of RowanCounty, an area called Abbott's
Creek by around 1757. Like a lotof other people who migrated

(18:02):
into that area, they came withsiblings, they came with their
parents, and they came withother members of extended
family. And people tended tomigrate in groups, and I think
that that really helped in termsof setting up new farm skids,
and they kind of workedcommunally, at least initially.

The Spurgins settled in Rowan County in the
late 1750s using money from landWilliam had sold along the
Potomac to help pay for theirCarolina property.

By the time of the Imperial crisis, like the
Stamp Act, the spurgeons wereprosperous. They owned about six
or 700 acres of land, and theymay have owned one enslaved man
as well. But most impressive ofall was the fact that in 1764
just one year after the end ofthe Seven Years' War and one

(18:48):
year before the Stamp Actcrisis, William gets himself
appointed as a justice of thepeace in Rowan County, which is
a really big deal that makeshim, in effect, a member of the
county's ruling elite.

Despite William's appointment, most of his Jane's
and their children's time wasspent running the farm.

Jane would have surely enjoyed the prosperity
and the elevated status thatcame as a result of her and her
husband's success, but she wouldhave been a hard working
farmer's wife, not least becauseshe had borne five children by
1754, and less you sigh andthink that's a lot. In fact, she
and William ended up having atotal of 13 children altogether,

William managed the farm, cleared fields and tended
to the wheat and other crops. Hepossibly built a grist mill and
gave orders to an enslaved manthe Sprugins may have owned

Even before he became a justice, he probably
would have gone to town for thecourt sessions, which were
quarterly, or in other words,four times a year, because
that's what men did. It was away that you kept up on the
news. It was a way that you sortof made connections and contacts

While very few of Jane's own words survive, we can
reconstruct our daily life usingother evidence from the 18th
century.

There's a very popular housewifery book from
the period that I'm sure Janeand her neighbors did not own,
but it has this cool littlepassage in there where it
basically says that women orhousewives, were responsible for
the physical well being of theirfamilies, which I think is a
really kind of concrete way tosort of think about it. So what

(20:28):
does that mean? Well, it meansproducing and preserving food.
Women were typically in chargeof poultry. They were in charge
of dairying, orchards, vegetablegardens, and so like not only
producing this stuff, butpreserving it. It also meant
clothing your family making andmaintaining things like clothing
and bed linens, probably themost sort of demanding task in

(20:51):
terms of clothing a family waslaundry. Both William and Jane
were literate, and since therewere no schools in the area, it
would have been Jane who taughther children to read and write
and to do the sorts of kind ofsimple arithmetic that would be
useful to them in their futurelives. So it was a busy life.

Many of the British Americans who resettled in the
North Carolina back countrybrought with them more than just
a desire for new lands, theycarried a new light within them
as well. Here's Marjoleine Kars

The settlement of the Piedmont happens at the
same time that this bigreligious movement that
historians call the GreatAwakening happened, which
started in New England in the1730s and 1740s and then moved
south.

The Great Awakening swept through British America in
the mid 18th century, led by menlike Anglican preacher George
Whitefield and Congregationalminister Jonathan Edwards, in
their view, all people weresinners in the hands of an angry
God, a God who alone wassovereign over salvation, but
also a merciful being to thosewilling to open their hearts to

(22:05):
the light in emotive andemotional styles of preaching,
Protestant divines likeWhitfield sometimes preached
outdoors in fields and parks tothousands of people at a time,
instantly awakening them toGod's grace.

These folks who come down the Great Wagon Road
bring many of these ideas withthem, and these are ideas that
are based on a long radicalProtestant tradition that says
that after a deep conviction ofone's sins, people can be

(22:41):
reborn, and once they arereborn, they carry within them a
God, like Spark, an inner light,as they often call it. That
means that they communicate withGod directly.

Herman Husband was one of the many British
Americans who felt a stirring intheir souls.

Herman Husband is born to middling, relatively
well to do farming parents inMaryland. He grows up in the
Anglican Church. At some pointhe experiences one of these
conversion experiences inresponse to Whitefield, who
comes from England and makes abig tour through the colonies,

(23:24):
calling upon people toexperience a rebirth. Herman
Husband is one of those peoplewho falls under his bell and
experiences a rebirth, andeventually he finds a home among
the Quakers.

In a 1761 pamphlet published in Philadelphia,
Husband described the moment ofhis awakening,

Herman Husband (23:44):
“I began to feel the Wrath of God to kindle in my
Bosom, and I cried ‘O LordJesus! Convince me of a Truth
that it is thee, and I will goat thy Command!’ and I can in
Truth declare it, in a Moment’stime he appeared like a Blaze of
Light, enlightening the wholeRoom and said, ‘It is, I, be not

(24:07):
afraid.’ I had shut my Eyes fromseeing the Glory of that
Light…and being told to be notafraid, I opened my Eyes and had
to behold, that Light was whollywithin my Soul.”

People who separate themselves from the
Congregational Church in NewEngland or the Anglican Church
in the south, and they eitherjoin more democratic
congregations, such as theBaptists or Mennonites or
Dunkers or Quakers, othersbecome separates, and they
remain independent, and theyjust attend services wherever

(24:46):
they can, or they begin theirown meetings where people who
are inspired by God as they seeit, will lead prayers and give
sermons. These people oftenbegin to feel. Feel that they
don't need a learned minister totell them what to believe, that
they can read the Bible forthemselves, that this god like

(25:07):
spark will help them interpretit, and that in fact, learned
ministers who are not themselvesreborn, who have not experienced
this deep conversion are, infact, people who are not to be
trusted and not to be followed

This evangelical emphasis on personal salvation
and rebirth challenged the powerand authority of the learned men
who led traditional churches inNorth Carolina as in other
colonies, the Anglican Churchwas The official established
Church, though it was not asinfluential in the colony as
some wanted. For CharlesWoodmason, an English born

(25:48):
Anglican minister who settled inSouth Carolina in the mid 18th
century, the maddening number ofProtestant sects in the two
Carolinas was both a threat tothe social order and the
people's spiritual well being.In January 1767, Woodmason was
on a missionary tour of theCarolina backcountry when he
preached at a settlement nearLynch's Creek, not far from the

(26:11):
border between the two colonies,and what he found there troubled
him.

Charles Woodmason (26:17):
“I returned and preached the 27th in my Way
back at Lynch’s Creek to a greatMultitude of People assembled
together, being the 1stEpiscopal Minister they had seen
since their being in theprovince–They complain’d of
being eaten up by ItinerantTeachers, Preachers, and
Imposters from New England andPensylvania—Baptists, New

(26:39):
Lights, Presbyterians,Independents, and an hundred
other Sects–So that one day Youmight hear this System of
Doctrine–the next dayanother–next day another,
retrograde to both–Thus by theVariety of Taylors who would
pretend to know the best fashionin which Christs Coat is to be
worn, none will put it on–Andamong the Various Plans of

(27:03):
Religion, they are at Loss whichto adapt, and consequently are
without any Religion at all.”

Charles Woodmason is absolutely appalled
by these congregations, in partbecause the congregations are
rather egalitarian, and theAnglican Church is rather
hierarchical, partly becausewomen can breastfeed their
babies in the middle of ameeting, people come and go as
necessary, people disciplinetheir children. Children are

(27:32):
talking. It's just chaotic anddisrespectful and not at all
like what a service ought tolook like.

Even worse, in the eyes of the cantankerous cleric:

He also feels that it's preposterous that
these uneducated, formerlyuneducated people, who are self
taught, many of them know theBible by heart, but who have not
been to seminary or touniversity, would have the
wherewithal to give a sermon,and they speak really from the
heart, and the point of theirspeaking is to elicit an

(28:06):
emotional response in theirlisteners, and that to Woodmason
is, of course, also abhorrent.Church is supposed to be a place
where people sit and in silencelisten to a learned sermon by
their ministers, and they don'tinterrupt and they don't shout,
and they don't ride on thefloor, and they don't move. He's
altogether disgusted by them,and at the same time, he's very

(28:28):
worried, because he realizesthat these folks are making
enormous inroads. The AnglicanChurch is not well established
in the Piedmont in NorthCarolina, but it really impedes
efforts to establish it morefirmly, because people don't
want to go to those churches.They want to go to their own
meetings.

But perhaps most concerning of all for a minister
like Woodmason, the sheep in thebackcountry seem to have no real
need for a shepherd like him,nor did they readily defer to
their social betters, the elitemen who ruled the counties and
governed the colony and withgrowing unrest in the Piedmont
over allegations of corruptionlevied by back country settlers

(29:11):
against their provincialgovernment. Woodmason feared
that they were meddling withpowers they could not possibly
comprehend.

These folks believe very deeply that this
spark within them, it's sort oflike your conscience, it becomes
your moral compass, and itallows ordinary people to
separate good from bad, evilfrom godliness. And eventually
it extends to people beginningto think that even though

(29:39):
prevailing elite notions saythat ordinary people are not
smart enough, educated, enoughwith it, enough to dabble in
politics. These people begin tobelieve that God, like spark
within them allows them not onlyto ferret out sin in each other.

(30:00):
But ferret out sin in the largerpolitical sphere, and therefore
these people are inspired, inpart, in their activities as
regulators by a religiousclimate that empowers ordinary
people to trust their ownconscience and their own moral
compass.

The quest for good land and a divine moral compass
guided farmers who settled inthe North Carolina, Piedmont in
search of independence, of whatHerman Husband called "a new
government of liberty."

Independence looked like, first of all,
having enough land so as not tohave to be a tenant farmer. And
it meant having enough land soyour sons didn't have to be
tenant farmers. You could leavethem all, you know, a 200 acre
or whatever farm. It meantgrowing enough produce on your
farm and being able to sell itso that you could pay your taxes

(30:58):
and you could pay your debts,and you were beholden to nobody.
So independence meant economicindependence, literally, but it
also meant for many of them,independence from a state
church, the ability to livetheir religious lives as they
wanted to.

But as they began to build this new government of
liberty, they began to believethat the old one was plagued by
corruption and rot. The power ofland speculators, the lack of
hard money and the self interestof local officials helps to
explain why. When colonists likeHerman Husband or Jane and
William Spurgin headed for theNorth Carolina backcountry, they

(31:39):
did so with the intention ofowning their own land.

People come to the Piedmont expecting that they
can get deeds to land. And thatprocess turns out to be much
more complicated than many ofthem had thought. In part that
is because half of NorthCarolina is owned by Lord
Granville, a descendant of oneof the former proprietors who
had been given big pieces ofland in North Carolina in the

(32:05):
17th century. All the otherproprietors have sold out to the
king. Granville refuses. Theother half of the colony is all
in the hands of the king. Andboth Granville and the king
employ land agents to sell landto people. The way it's supposed
to happen is people settle downon a piece of land, they begin

(32:27):
to improve it, and then whenthey have a little bit of money,
they make the long trek to NewBern to go to the land offices
and have their land surveyed andregister it, and they will get a
deed.

Many prospective Piedmont settlers, however,
encountered a vastly differentreality.

A lot of these land agents, who are not well
regulated or closely overseen,use this process to enrich
themselves. So they do that byselling the same piece of land
to three different people, bycharging much bigger fees than
they should for registering adeed, for saying to somebody,
oh, that's a really nice pieceof land you found there.

(33:06):
Unfortunately, that land hasalready been promised to
somebody else, usually one oftheir own friends.

Even when settlers believed they had clear titles
to land, the records in thecolonial capital of New Bern
sometimes told a differentstory.

Herman Husband, who at some point after he has
moved to the Piedmont in theearly 1750s goes to New Bern,
look at the records there, isappalled that all these people
from whom he had gotten noticesthat their deeds should be
there. Their deeds are notthere. The land office is
chaotic. People feel exploited.A lot of people can't get clear

(33:46):
title nearly as easily, and thetrek to the coast is really far,
so people cannot do thisrepeatedly.

Unscrupulous land agents weren't the only
obstacles to the settlerspursuit of good ground.

Big parts of the Piedmont are in the hands of
speculators, big timespeculators, some of whom own as
much as 2000 square miles. Andthese men are supposed to make
their money by bringing settlersinto the Piedmont in order to
augment a population that willpay quick rents to the king. But

(34:23):
instead of spending their ownmoney to bring people from
Europe, they just sit back andwait till these folks come from
the middle colonies, settle downon the land, spend a couple of
years of hard work, sweat andtears, to turn those pieces of
land into nice farms. And thenthey go up to them, and they
say, nice farm you have herethat's worth a lot of money.

(34:47):
Unfortunately, you are sittingon my land, so I'll sell you
your own farm if you want me to.And then, in other words, they
retail land to farmers who havealready improved it. And thereby
made it valuable. So thesesettlers are basically turning
what is a paper fortune into anactual fortune. For these

(35:08):
speculators and people resentthis greatly. They feel that
frontier land should beavailable to the people who do
the work of turning wildernessand Indian land into European
farms. These speculators feelvery differently. They feel that
they obtained these large piecesof land, usually through

(35:29):
connections, very cheaply, andthey spent their money by
selling that land as farms tothe very people who created it.

That left settlers with few good options.

These farmers are willing to pay fees for the
land and modest sums of money,but are not willing to pay these
speculators what the farm isworth, given that their labor
created that worth in the firstplace, but given that money is
scarce in the Piedmont andpeople have trouble coming up
with money to pay thesespeculators. They're often put

(36:04):
in very awkward positionsbecause the speculators say, if
you can't pay, or you don't wantto pay, just move. That means
leaving three, four, five yearsof work behind. People are often
in a real fix.

The lack of circulating hard money in North
Carolina only compounded thesettlers' problems, giving land
speculators the advantage. In1764 Parliament passed the
Currency Act forbidding thecolonies from issuing paper
money as legal tender andoutlawing its use for satisfying
public or private debts. The Actwas designed to prevent

(36:38):
colonists from paying Britishmerchants with depreciated paper
currency, but it also drainedthe colonies of hard money,
making it difficult for settlersin North Carolina to buy land
pay Imperial stamp duties andeven local taxes.

They're worried about these taxes, which they
have trouble paying and whichare highly regressive, because
people pay taxes, not accordingto how much land they own, but
they pay what is called a headtax, meaning that everybody pays
the tax regardless of how muchyou own or don't own. So a
speculator with 100,000 acrespays the same as a man with 200

(37:17):
acres or a man with no acres,

As one farmer in Mecklenburg County lamented:

Farmer (37:23):
“A man that is worth £10,000 pays no more than a poor
back settler that has nothingbut the labour of his hands to
depend upon for his dailysupport.”

Religious taxes added to the Piedmont settlers.
Growing list of complaints,North Carolina tolerated other
Protestant sects and religiousfaiths. But like other colonies,
it did not grant religiousfreedom. Quakers, Baptists,
Moravians, and independents wererequired to pay a vestry tax to
support the Anglican Church intheir respective counties, and

(37:53):
while the vestry tax funded thesalaries of local Anglican
ministers, supporting thesalaries of local sheriffs,
justices of the peace and othercourt officials, was an entirely
different matter.

Abby Chandler (38:05):
North Carolina cannot afford to pay salaries
for many of its positions of thecolonial government: the royal
governor gets a salary, theChief Justice gets a salary, the
Governor's Council gets asalary, but the positions at the
county level, county clerks,county sheriffs, essential for

(38:27):
making a county work, do not getpaid salaries. I am Abby
Chandler. I am AssociateProfessor of early American
history at the University ofMassachusetts in Lowell. The
system that the North Carolinalegislature comes up with is the
county sheriff is responsiblefor collecting taxes, both

(38:49):
colonial and imperial taxes, andhe can then collect a percentage
on top of that. There are norules that say how large that
percentage is. The sheriff couldcome out to your farm and say,
I'm here to collect the colonialtaxes, and that'll be 8% on top
of that, and you'll pay him thetaxes, plus the 8%. He goes off.

(39:14):
There's also no system fordocumenting the collection. He
can come back two weeks laterand say, hi, I'm here for the
taxes. And you can say, but Ipaid them. And you can say, no,
you didn't. This is a problemthat everybody in North Carolina
is aware of. In the 1750sGovernor Dobbs mentions this is

(39:35):
a problem. We need to fix this,but the colonial legislature has
no interest in fixing theproblem, because the men who are
in the colonial legislature arefrom those powerful eastern
North Carolina families, and thecounty clerks and sheriffs are
their brothers and their sonsand their nephews, and this

(39:57):
system is financially benefitingtheir families. So why fix it?

By 1766 Piedmont farmers began to believe that it
was up to them to fix what theysaw as a corrupt system and
defend their rights andliberties as the king's
subjects, Quakers as well asProtestants, men as well as
women, guided by an inner light,met at Sandy Creek in Orange
County that August to discusstheir plight. Marjoleine Kars

(40:26):
explains why

The Sandy Creek Association is started in 1766
by a number of farmers who aredeeply disappointed by what they
found in the Piedmont, the waysin which it did not turn out to
be a new government of liberty,and who decide that together,
they are going to agitate forgreater fairness, for farmers to

(40:48):
root out government fraud,government officials on the
local courts, who charge peoplemore fees than they should this
land situation, but also thefact that people have to use the
courts for pretty mucheverything that happens to a
farmer when they interact withgovernment.

From the farmer's point of view, local courts and
court officials were at theheart of an unfair, unjust and
immoral world that sacrificedvirtue, godliness and the
community's well being in favorof self interest, greed and
naked ambition.

If you want to register a deed or you want to
register a contract, or you wantto sue for a debt or you want to
contest the debt, you goinitially to your local court,
and those local courts chargefees, and those fees add up very
fast, and what court officialsare doing is charge fees that
are way higher than what'sallowed, and they frequently

(41:45):
postpone cases. You pay feesevery time your case comes up
again. Fees go up because courtcases are postponed, and also
people have to travel 1015,2030, miles to come to court. So
postponements are expensive in anumber of different ways.

And then there were lawyers like Edmund Fanning, a
native of Long Island New York,and a favorite of Governor
Tryon, who made a very goodliving in Orange County
representing land speculatorsand wealthy clients in local
courts around 1765, onedisgruntled back country settler
entertained wedding guests witha song about a poor man who had

(42:27):
become very rich.

Regulator Song (42:30):
When Fanning first to Orange came; He looked
both pale and wan; An oldpatched coat upon his back; An
old mare he rode on. Both manand mare wa'n't worth five
pounds; As I've been often told;But by his civil robberies; He's

(42:52):
laced his coat with gold.

So the Sandy Creek Association starts
initially as a way to figureout, how can they make
government more responsive andmore fair and less corrupt?

The farmers called on Edmund Fanning their
representative in the ProvincialAssembly, as well as other
officials, to appear before themat Sandy Creek in a manifesto
written by Herman Husband, thefarmers demanded that these
officials give an account oftheir stewardship, fanning
declined, nor did petitions tothe governor and the Provincial

(43:27):
Assembly have much effect.

They have very limited success. And in 1768
they reorganized, and theyrenamed themselves "The
Regulators."

When dawn broke in 1768, settlers in the North
Carolina Piedmont ushered in thenew year with a renewed sense of
purpose and determination thatjustice would be done. Farmers
in orange, Anson, Mecklenburg,and Rowan counties resurrected
the spirit of the Sandy CreekAssociation, this time calling

(44:04):
themselves regulators. Thechoice of that name was no
accident. It revealed thefarmers familiarity with English
history and a common moral senseinformed by their evangelical
beliefs.

It's a term that originates in Britain in
about the mid of the 17thcentury, where regulators were
actually government officialswho were appointed to travel
around and ferret out governmentcorruption in towns and cities
by adopting that name, farmersare trying to give themselves a

(44:41):
certain amount of legitimacy andsay, we too are going to ferret
out government corruption inorder that government work
better

The regulators agreed among themselves not to
pay taxes nor pay courtofficials any fees greater than
those allowed by law, unlesstheir. Advances were redressed
or they were compelled by force,we

Farmers (45:04):
“We will stand true and faithful to this cause until We
bring them to a trueregulation.”

But who were the leaders of this cause? Unlike
settlers formal petitions to thegovernor or the assembly, the
regulators often didn't signtheir public communications, and
that was intentional.

They are a very egalitarian group of people, a
movement that loosely hangstogether by people who share
grievances, who share similarideas about how it ought to be
relieved or how things ought tobe made better, and who come and
go as the situation requires it,they repeatedly refuse to have

(45:45):
leaders. Or when people areappointed and asked to take
leadership roles, those men say,No, we're all doing this
together. We shouldn't haveleaders.

Nevertheless, some settlers exerted a greater
influence than others over themovement, men like Jeremiah
Fields, James Hunter, and mostespecially Herman Husband.

Nathan Schultz (46:06):
I would describe Herman Husband as a radical,
theocratic Democrat. He believesin radical politics. He cares
about the common people. Hereally hates these courthouse
rings. He literally calls himthe beast, in a very clear
biblical reference. I'm NathanSchultz, the site manager at
Alamance Battleground StateHistoric Site as part of the

(46:26):
North Carolina State HistoricSite system. He had religious
visions about his place in theworld and how the world should
be, and he cared deeply aboutthe regular people.

Husband is a complicated, confounding figure,
a man who, in this moment and inthe decades to come, seemed to
relish rebellion and revolutionwherever he found it. When he
migrated to the North CarolinaPiedmont in the 1750s he joined
the Quaker community at CaneCreek in Orange County. But in
1764 the community expelled himfollowing a years long dispute

(47:03):
over the membership of a womannamed Rachel Wright who had very
publicly supported her youngdaughter after her alleged rape
by Jehu Stuart. Husband didn'tabandon his Quaker beliefs after
his expulsion, but he struggledto reconcile Quaker pacifism in
moderation with evangelicalferocity and his own sense of

(47:23):
his English rights andliberties, he was willing to
lift the terrible, swift swordof God's righteous justice, but
leave it to others to swing it.

Men like Herman Husband take that idea of a
compact that people have a dutyto protect. And he melds that
with this radical Protestantidea about people having a God
like spark within them thattells them what's right and
wrong. And so Herman Husbandbegins to argue that not only do

(47:56):
people have a right and a dutyto protect government, but that
the God, like spark within them,makes that duty a sacred duty,
so that radical religion notonly makes it okay for ordinary
people to engage in politics,but it makes it imperative that
men do so. And in fact, God ison their side.

In Husband's view, the regulators had a singular
objective.

Herman Husband (48:23):
“All we want is to be Governed by Law, and not
by the Will of officers, whichto us is perfectly despotick and
arbitrary.”

But from the perspective of Governor, Tryon,
the Provincial Assembly andlocal officials like Edmund
fanning the regulators and theback country were on the edge of
lawlessness. Tryon was a soldierof empire and a man of Imperial
ambition, appointed governor bythe king in 1764 Trion had his

(49:00):
eyes set on an even greaterprize, the governorship of New
York, but first he had to provehimself in North Carolina.
Here's Nathan Schultz.

He's really this typical British imperial
official. He had familyconnections, both through his
own family and his wife'sfamily, who were considerably
wealthy and influential. He'salso a career military officer.
He started in the first FootGuards, the most prestigious
unit in the British Army, and heeventually rises all the way to
Lieutenant Colonel at thatregiment, and fights with them

(49:33):
during raids to France duringthe Seven Years War, and gains
this royal appointment to becomegovernor of North Carolina.

In North Carolina, the governor hoped to improve
the colony's image.

He tries, from his perspective, he tries to
raise the prestige of NorthCarolina. He improved the postal
system. He views that to have arespectful colony, you need to
have a place, a center, a focalpoint. Point of government
power, and that's where heconstructs what becomes Tryon's
Palace

In the spring of 1768, word of a new round of
taxes reached farmers in OrangeCounty. The new levies would pay
for the construction of anostentatious building in the
capital of New Bern three yearsearlier, the Stamp Act crisis
had soured relations betweenGovernor Tryon, who had a duty
to enforce parliaments to testat law, and the Provincial

(50:26):
Assembly, who resisted it withthe crisis abated, and in an
effort to restore harmony withthe governor, the assembly
appropriated a total of 15,000pounds to fund the construction
of a new official residence forthe colony's governors that some
would soon call "Tryon Palace."For Tryon, the erection of the
fine red brick, Georgian stylebuilding was in keeping with his

(50:49):
efforts to elevate NorthCarolina from a colonial
backwater into a proper Imperialprovince.

He comes with an architect to build this. The
Assembly originally authorizedonly 5,000 pounds to construct.
It eventually cost 15,000pounds, and so the difference
has to be made up from thepopulation

To Piedmont farmers Tryon Palace was a monument to
malfeasance, an edifice thatsymbolized the wealth in which
they did not share. They learnedof the palace's greater costs
shortly after the Sheriff ofOrange County announced he would
no longer travel from farm tofarm to collect all due taxes.

(51:27):
Instead, colonists would berequired to pay them at one of
five different collectionpoints, putting the
responsibility and any expensesthat came with it on them as the
farmers began working theirfields that spring, the back
country reached a breaking pointin March, 1768, regulators in

(51:49):
Orange County protested the newappropriations for Tryon Palace,
declaring that they would notpay any tax until Edmund
Fanning, their representative,could justify it to them. In
April, an armed regulator mobconfronted the county sheriff
near Hillsboro after he hadseized the horse of a Regulator
accused of not paying his taxes,Fanning informed try on that he

(52:13):
could not rely on the countymilitia to help restore order.
Most militia men weresympathetic to the Regulator's
cause, if not Regulatorsthemselves. Two weeks later,
some 40 armed Regulators innearby Anson county barged into
the local court in Salisbury anddisrupted its proceedings. They
came back days later and ingreater numbers, expelling the

(52:36):
judges, holding their own courtand debating whether to burn the
building, they warned thesheriff he would do well to make
no attempt to collect taxes. Inthe wake of these events, Tryon
believed it had become necessaryto reassert the provincial
government's authority in thePiedmont. On April 27, the

(52:57):
governor issued a proclamationordering the regulators to
disperse, submit to law or faceforce, he deputized Edmund
Fanning and a company of men toarrest the chief agitators,
leading to the arrest of HermannHusband and William Butler on
May 1. Men, women, and childrengathered by the hundreds on the
streets of Hillsboro to protestthe arrests, raising fears of a

(53:20):
violent confrontation orsomething far worse, as one
regulator wrote, If governmentofficials could arrest husband
and Butler, then none were nowsafe, whether active, passive or
neutral. Fortunately, Tryons'private secretary managed to
calm the mob, he pledged that ifthe crowd dispersed, the

(53:44):
governor would receive theirpetitions for the regulators.
This was a victory, a chance toopen the governor eyes to their
plight and the corruption thatthreatened the liberties of all
the king's subjects. Thatassurance was, for the moment,
good enough. The crowd went homewhen the regulators sent their

(54:06):
petition to try on in late May1768, they apologized for the
recent upheavals, but assuredthe governor they were
necessary.

Regulators (54:16):
“Those Disturbances had their source in the corrupt
and arbitrary Practices ofnefarious & designing men who
being put into Posts of Profitand Credit among us, and not
being satisfied with the legalbenefits which arose from the
execution of their Offices havebeen using every artiface,

(54:36):
practicing every Fraud…tosqueeze and extort from the
wretched Poor.”

But Tryon was not as receptive as the regulators
had hoped. Their complaints hereplied, did not justify their
actions, nor did they have anyright to call themselves
Regulators.

Governor Tryon is very upset about them using
that term, and he's constantly.He's saying, quit using that
term regulators. He says itmeans that you are assuming a
constitutional authority thatyou do not have.

Still Tryon could not ignore the merits of some of
the regulators grievances. InJuly, he issued a proclamation
commanding court officials tocease charging excessive fees,
yet he could not turn a blindeye from the perceived weakness
of the government in the backcountry. He paid a visit to
Hillsboro that summer to make apoint.

He really relishes taking the fields. He,
from the very beginning, refusesto take farmers grievances
seriously. I argue that he doesmuch to inflame the situation.
Several times, coming toHillsboro, ostensibly to meet
with people, but then, in fact,bringing soldiers with him,

(55:52):
arguing that these farmers aredisrespectful, that their
grievances are made up, thatthey are violating the
Constitution, he ratchets up thesituation. He makes what could
have remained peaceful protestsinto something that becomes
increasingly contentious andtension filled, people
increasingly come to believethat he wants to militarily

(56:16):
fight against them. They nolonger believe that he is out to
help them.

Tryon returned in late September, leading a force
of over 1400 men, he marchedthem through regulator country
in a show of force, though over3000 Regulators turned out to
meet the governor and hissoldiers in Hillsboro on
September 19, they had littlewish for an armed confrontation,
nor did they show any enthusiasmfor obeying tryons order to turn

(56:45):
over nine of their men and allof their weapons. They simply
faded into the night. Tryon andthe militia remained in town as
the trials of William Butler andHerman Husband got underway in a
token measure, Edmund Fanningwas charged with extortion.
Martin Howard, the colony's newChief Justice, presided over the

(57:06):
trials, along with Judge RichardHenderson. Howard was no
stranger to provincial unrest.Three years earlier, he had fled
Rhode Island after colonistsconfronted him over his support
of the Stamp Act. His courtfound husband not guilty. It
convicted Butler of illegallyretaking the horse confiscated

(57:26):
by the Orange County Sheriff. Hewas sentenced to prison. Fanning
was found guilty of extortion,but fined only a single penny.
Anne Hooper, the wife ofprominent attorney William
Hooper, was disappointed thatTryon, who had been ill on his
march to Hillsboro, had not donemore to end the regulator

(57:46):
uprisings. As she wrote to afriend, in the wake of the
trials,

Ann Hooper (57:51):
“[A] number of men mostly from orange county who
took the title regulators havegiven great disturbance to the
County. They demanded that theRegister & Clerk of Orange
should be given to them[,]refused paying their taxes[,]
desired the assembly might beDissolved[,] [and] threatened to
pull the Province Housedown…..People imagine they have

(58:11):
been too passive with them[.] ifthe Govr had been well he would
have pursued more vigorousmeasures & have humbled them
sufficiently.”

If Governor Tryon believed that his martial tour
of the back country hadsufficiently humbled the people,
he was wrong, and though theprovincial government's flaws
were the regulator's mostimmediate concern for Tryon, the
regulators were fast becomingpart of a much larger Imperial
problem. In early 1768 just asPiedmont farmers began reforming

(58:48):
themselves into regulators, theMassachusetts House of
Representatives issued acircular letter to the
assemblies in the other coloniescalling on them to unite in a
coordinated resistance to thetownsenax In response, the Earl
of Hillsboro, the Secretary ofState for the colonies, and the
namesake of the Piedmont town,ordered governors to suspend or

(59:10):
dissolve their assemblies shouldtheir members open debate on the
Massachusetts missive for monthsfrom the fall of 1768 through
the Fall of 1770 try on, and theNorth Carolina assembly danced a
delicate minuet. Tryon neededthe assembly to appropriate
money for the militia, shouldthey be needed in the back

(59:30):
country, and the assembly wantedto avoid its suspension or
dissolution so it could considermeasures to counter Parliament's
perceived overreach. Neither thegovernor, nor most of the
representatives, however, hadmuch sympathy for the regulators
grievances. In the fall of 1768,the assembly finished its
legislative work, includingfunding the militia bill, before

(59:52):
it began a debate on theMassachusetts Circular Letter,
prompting try on to prorogue it.But by May 1769 when the
assembly began considering aboycott of British goods until
Parliament repealed the TownsendActs, Tryon dissolved it
entirely. He called for newelections, hoping that by the
time the new assembly sat inOctober, cooler heads would have

(01:00:16):
prevailed. The Regulators sawthe assembly's demise as a major
opportunity. If they wanted topurge the colony of corruption,
they would have to do it fromwithin the government itself in
Orange, Anson, Rowan, andGranville counties, Regulators
ran for the assembly, and muchto the delight of Regulators in

(01:00:37):
Orange and the dismay of Tryonand other leading men, Edmund
Fanning was defeated, and HermanHusband was elected in his
stead.

Marjoleine Kars (01:00:46):
They see him as a threat precisely because he
has so many followers, so manypeople who are willing to come
out for him. He's imprisoned in1768, and hundreds of people
come and confront a governordemanding his release. They are
afraid of him because he'sarticulate, he's tenacious, and

(01:01:07):
people are willing to put bitebehind his words.

Jim Ambuske (01:01:13):
From England, Henry McCullough, one of the largest
North Carolina land speculators,believed that the election of
Hermann Husband from Orange andRegulator Christopher Hation
from Rowan, was a sign of adangerous spirit of leveling in
the colony:

Henry McCulloh (01:01:29):
“the madness of the people must be great indeed,
to trust such wretches as HermanHusbands and Christopher Nation
as their representatives.”

What McCulloh imagined as madness and a threat
to the social order. TheRegulators and their supporters
saw as a chance, with God'shelp, to usher in a new
government of liberty. Theycalled for secret ballots and an
end to public voice voting inelections, a practice that
exposed voters to intimidationand pressure by elite
candidates. They sought theelimination of aggressive taxes

(01:02:03):
and the adoption of a moreprogressive scheme, and they
suggested that local officialsbe given salaries instead of
being paid out of fees to removethe corrupting allure the
growing conflict over theTownsend acts dashed the
regulators hopes for anymeaningful government reform.
When the new assembly met in NewBern in late October 1769, its

(01:02:26):
members began debating a nonimportation agreement, forcing
try on to perrogate once morewith the assembly no longer in
session, regulators in thePiedmont turned to the local
courts for relief. They sued menlike Edmund Fanning whom they
believed had extorted them. Butover the winter of 1769 and into

(01:02:48):
the fall of 1770 as judgesdelayed cases and ruled against
them, as court clerks pocketedfees, and as lawyers grew
wealthier at their expense, theRegulators long simmering
frustration began to boil on themorning of Monday, September 24

(01:03:10):
1770 they gathered at thecourthouse in Hillsboro, where
Judge Richard Henderson wasabout to begin the day's
proceedings. Nathan Schultzhelps us to understand what
happened next.

Nathan Schultz (01:03:24):
They engage in a very loud conversation with
Henderson to try their cases.They've been sitting on the
docket for a long time, and theyrefuse to do it. And at some
point, somebody says, Let'sretire. Let's go out of the
room. Let's figure this out.

And that's when Deputy Attorney General John
Williams walked into the room.

Now this is the guy who had been trying people
had been really ruining a lot ofthese people's lives, and they
attack him. We don't know, asalways, these things go we don't
know who threw the first punch.We know that some of them were
armed with clubs, whips and afew other things. They attack
him. And this is when a lot oforder begins to break down. They
rush into the courtroom, theygrab Edmund Fanning and a couple

(01:04:06):
other corrupt officials, andthey drag them out into the
streets and beat them a nearlyinch of their lives.

The Regulators allowed Williams and Fanning to
take refuge in a nearby store.

And they then go back into the courtroom and they
start, they're like, we're incontrol. Now to judge Henderson
to try cases. Now, Hendersonwill write in his own report
saying that he didn't, he didn'ttry any cases. He adjourned the
court. We know that's not true.Under duress. He tried cases
because the actual leisure fromthe court in Hillsborough
survives, and in the leisurewritten in a different hand, in

(01:04:42):
a different tone, are notes oncases on the docket.

At the day's end, the Regulators allowed Henderson
to go home after he gave hisword that he would reopen the
court the next day. But

The regulators wake up. They go back to the
courthouse. They see JudgeHenderson skip town, and that's
when they decide to sackrevenge. They start rioting
through the street. They go andtarget the officials offending
them. They go to EdmundFanning's nice timber frame
house, and disassemble it. Theyrip off all the siding, stack it
up next to it. They take hisfurniture out of the house and

(01:05:16):
destroy it with axes. They grabpiles of his clothing, throw it
out into the streets. And afterthat incident, after all this
happens, they leave Hillsboroughand go from there. And that
incident, the Hillsboroughriots, September 1770 is what
escalates everything.

For Governor Tryon and for the bulk of the
assembly, the regulators, attackon the courthouse changed the
calculus of the crisis. This wasno longer a matter of keeping
the peace in the backcountry, itwas about suppressing a growing
colonial rebellion. But Tryonnor the colony had the legal
powers sufficient to quell theuprising. The colony's attorney

(01:05:56):
general advised the governorthat the regulators could be
charged only with rioting andmisdemeanors and not with
rebellion or treason. And undercurrent law, cases would be
tried in the local districtcourts, which the regulators
seemed to have under theircontrol. To counter the emerging
regulator threat try on,reconvened the assembly and

(01:06:20):
asked it to pass a new powerfulRiot Act. Samuel Johnston
introduced his eponymous bill onDecember 15.

It's based off an English law where you read
the riot act, or you read somecommand for a group to disperse
or forces legalized.

The Johnston Riot Act allows for pretty
amazingly strong punishments forthese rioters, which allows for
these people to be tried forrebellion and to be outlawed if
they don't turn themselves in.And it also authorizes the
governor to raise an armyagainst regulators to go restore
order in the Piedmont, andasserts that the public monies

(01:07:02):
will be used to pay for it.

The Johnston Riot Act passed in early January
1771. Besides the legalpenalties, the ex post facto
provision, and the money for themilitia, the act enabled the
government to create courts ofoyer and terminer, courts that
allowed judges to hear anddetermine a case without a jury
at a place of their choosing,regardless of where the alleged

(01:07:25):
crime was committed.

And it only goes through that year, and it
backdated the Hillsborough riotsto being under that law too.

By then, Herman Husband had been languishing in
a New Bern jail for weeks. TheAssembly expelled him on
December 20th, five days afterthe Johnston Riot Act was
introduced. The assembly accusedhim of being one of the
architects of the Regulatorrebellion. Chief Justice Howard
promptly issued an arrestwarrant on charges of libel and

(01:07:56):
had him confined. Husband’sarrest enflamed the backcountry.
Rumors began swirling thatthousands of Regulators were
prepared to march on New Bern torescue him, prompting Tryon to
keep the militia in the capitalin a state of readiness. When
Husband was released inmid-February, hundreds of
Regulators who had been makingtheir way to the capital in the

(01:08:18):
snow halted their march, andreturned home. But by March
1771, Tryon had learned the kinghad appointed him governor of
New York. He was due in thenorthern province by the summer.
Not wishing to leave hissuccessor a southern colony in a
rebellious state, Tryoncommitted himself to bringing

(01:08:38):
the Regulator revolution inNorth Carolina to an end. The
governor invoked the JohnstonRiot Act and began assembling a
provincial army. That task wasnot as easy as he might have
hoped.

A number of historians have sort of
explained to regulation as asectional conflict of back
country versus the coast. But Ithink that's not quite accurate,
because by 1771 when Tryon istrying to raise the militia,
regulators have already sentsort of advanced troops out

(01:09:16):
east, and they are beginning toorganize there, and Tryon, in
fact, has a really hard timeraising the militia almost
everywhere. Militia men come outand say, We don't want to fight
the regulators. We kind of agreewith them. And so he has to
resort to intimidation to getlocal militia leaders to fulfill
their quota. He offers bigbounties. And even that doesn't

(01:09:37):
do it in some counties, theyhave to institute a draft which
did not exist. And in the end,instead of the 2200 men he had
hoped to raise, he only raises1100 his army is top heavy with
officers. He has about 300officers who are quite eager to
prove their support of theGovernor at this point in

(01:09:59):
1771and I think one of thereasons is this worry that the
regulation will spread east, andthat they're all potentially
sitting on a powder keg.

General Thomas Gage, the commander in chief of
British forces in North America,was equally supportive. At
Tryon's request Gage shipped

Two six pound artillery pieces, some flags,
some drums and kettles, othersupport.

If Tryon ever asked for or if Gage ever offered a
regiment of British regulars, norecord has survived. Neither
seems likely. In the wake of theshooting on King Street in
Boston a year earlier, Gage hadlittle desire to see another
confrontation between soldiersand civilians in the colonies
become a massacre, and Tryonconsidered the matter in the

(01:10:49):
Piedmont an affair internal toNorth Carolina. Tryon and his
army began marching towardHillsborough in early May.

Tryon assembles this army, eight cannons, 1000
men. He's got cavalry from thesegentlemen volunteers. He's got
pioneers, he's got Rangers. Heequips them in a military
capacity with these leggings,echoing the French and Indian
War. He gets to Hillsborough inMay of 1771 and is trying to

(01:11:19):
decide how exactly he's gonnadisrupt this insurrection.

He gets to Hillsboro, and he hears of a
situation with a militiaregiment in Rowan County that is
being obstructed by largenumbers of regulators. And so he
decides that he should marchWest.

He receives word from Hugh Wadell, that other
group that was raised in thewestern part, that they had been
turned back at the Yadkin River,by a group of regulators who
blew up their gunpowder andtheir clothing, and Tryon is
worried that he will get stuckon the other side of a river
trying to cross it. While theregulators are there.

The provincial army headed for Alamance Creek,
twenty miles west ofHillsborough.

After a couple of days, he encamps on Alamance
Creek, and regulators begin toamass on the other bank.

And it's over 2000 people, just regular
farmers in the middle ofnowhere, just 2000 people show
up. And often criticism of theregulation is that they weren't
organized. They were veryorganized to be able to assemble
2000 people in a not denselypopulated area, all in one
place. And within that arepeople who show up armed with

(01:12:30):
guns. All these people are inthe militia, so they have
militia training, and they'rerequired to own a gun. Lot of
people don't show up with guns.Some people show up with clubs.
Some are Quakers who arepacifists.

The board was set. The pieces were moving.

May 15, 1771, into that night, into the 16th,
riders begin to ride between theRegulator camp and Tryon’s camp,
trying to negotiate, tryingtheir absolute best to solve
this peacefully. The regulatorseven assemble together write one
last petition to Tryon, sayinghow they are loyal subjects of
the king, but they do say that.His and His Majesty's subjects

(01:13:07):
are not toys to be trifled with,very clear demand, but still
trying to maintain peacefulnessagain, all they want is peaceful
reform riders back and forth,Tryon rejects and ignores every
overture. Only thing he has tosay to them is, give up your
arms, give up your leaders andsurrender.

Regulators keep trying to negotiate with the
governor. At some point, theysent a Presbyterian minister and
two of their spokesmen to him totalk with him. He refuses to
negotiate. He sends the ministerback, he keeps the two
spokesmen.

When dawn broke on the morning of May 16th, Tryon’s
patience was wearing thin, andtime was running out.

He gives his soldiers order to execute one of
these men by firing in such away that the regulators amassed
on the other side, can actuallysee this happening.

He orders the man shot in the back in front of
2,000 of his friend, neighborsand allies. And the regulars are
pretty incensed by this yellingand screaming. And at the same
time, some regulators areleaving Herman Husband, if he
was there, left at about thispoint, seeing that violence is
happening. Quakers notparticipating violence, he's
leaving.

Shortly after ordering Robert Thompson’s
execution, Tyron made one lastattempt to disperse the mob
using the powers granted to himin the Johnston Riot Act.

He sends the Sheriff of Orange County, ahead,
holding a letter. This lettereffectively says, you are
rebels. You are against HisMajesty, give up your leaders,
to prevent a great effusion ofblood. Very clear demands. This
letter read by the sheriff,constitutes the riot act. About
11 o'clock, May 16, this is readto groups of regulators. He

(01:14:59):
probably then walked over toother groups, and this mob just
assembled and read to theseother bodies of people. We know
the regulators yelled back athim. We're not happy about this
situation.

The riot act required Tryon to give notice
before taking action. In themeantime, hef began moving his
men and his artillery intoposition.

And then they wait for about 45 minutes, just
standing there, fully loaded,and the regulators do exactly
what you'd expect. They startscreaming and yelling at them,
insulting them. And a little bitaway the Boston Massacre, they
say, you know, if it's battle,let it happen. Now. They start
yelling, battle, battle. And thething is, is some of these
people knew each other, this isOrange County. You got the

(01:15:45):
Orange County militia underEdmund Fanning with Tryon, and
we know there was at least onegroup. William Butler and his
brother were on opposite sides.So you have literal brothers
that could see each other,probably across the field. And
there's this kind of bizarretense thing waiting for 45
minutes.

Despite their taunts:

Most of these men did not really expect there
to be a battle. They can'treally believe the governor
would order his army to fire onhis own citizens. So they only
brought somebody says, enoughbullets as they would have
brought on a hunt.

45 minutes expires, the sheriff goes over
again, goes over to thesepeople, says, What's your
answer? And we know, from theaccounts they yelled back at
him, fire and be damned. Goesback to the safety of the lines,
Tryon probably doesn't see muchelse to do. He turns to the
commander of the artillery, guynamed Robert Howe. Gives the

(01:16:40):
order. He gives the order, andall eight of the cannons fire on
the regulators. Some accountssay from about 50 to 100 yards
away, very close with grapeshotsending small iron balls ripping
through this crowd of people.Shortly after, the militia, the
first line, 500 men, open upwith muskets on them.

And initially it looks like the regulators are
have the upper hand, because thesoldiers have trouble aiming
their cannon right. And theythey are fighting in in in
regiments, but the regulatorsare fighting what's called
Indian style. They're hidingbehind trees, sort of like
guerrilla fighters, but prettyquickly the regulators begin to
run out of ammunition.

Some archeological evidence and some
other accounts [say] that duringthat cannonade, a group of
Regulators from the far leftflank of the army try to attack
a cannon actually tried to runup on it, and are taken out
before they get close or evenreached it. But after this half
hour of bombardment, Tryonorders his the militia to
advance onto them, marchingforward and clears them out from

(01:17:44):
the woods, capturing as many asthey can, and then pursues the
remnants of the regulators thatwere left into their camp and to
loot it, by all accounts, forthe next hour and a half.

In the end, some 20 farmers are dead, nine
militia men and some 150 men onboth sides are wounded.

After Tryon cleared the field, he set out to ensure
that the Regulators never roseagain.

He begins to undertake a victorious march
through the back country that isintended to intimidate the
people. So he destroys the farmsof men who he thinks are
regulator leaders. He turns hishorses out into people's fields.
He requisitions food from localfarmers for all his troops. And
he demands that people come inand says, If you come in and you

(01:18:39):
turn in your gun and you swearallegiance to the king, which,
of course, regulators had neverthey had never undone their
allegiance to the king, then Iwill pardon you, except a number
of the leaders. Some 6,400 mencome forward, which is roughly
three quarters of all the grownmen in the Piedmont.

Leading Regulators like Herman Husband and James
Hunter vanished, escapingTryon’s grasp. Others were not
so lucky. Empowered by theJohnston Riot Act, the governor
convened a court of oyer andterminer in Hillsborough on
Saturday, June 15, 1771, in thesame courthouse the Regulators

(01:19:24):
had laid siege to the previousSeptember. Twelve men were
convicted of treason andsentenced to be executed. Tryon
commuted the sentences of six.The remaining six would serve as
a warning. Tryon:

He goes to a hill that's right next to the
town. He orders his army toclear the brush around it to
make it clearly visible. And heconstructs these gallows, and
then surrounds it with the Armyjust to make sure people could
watch it, and then,systematically execute six of
these people.

James Pugh, Herman Husband’s former brother-in-law,
climbed atop a barrel and hadthe noose placed around his
neck. With his final words, herepeated the Regulators’
grievances, prayed for an end tothe corruption of this world,
and prepared to meet God in thenext. As Pugh spoke exacted one

(01:20:22):
last measure of revenge.

The story is that Edmund Fanning had the
barrel upon which he wasstanding kicked out from under
him mid sentence.

Minutes later, Pugh was dead. Tryon departed for New
York soon thereafter. Fanningwent with him as his new private
secretary. With the Regulatorsdefeated, the provincial
assembly and the colonial eliteturned their attention back to
confronting Parliament, toquarreling with Tryon’s

(01:20:54):
successor, and to resisting thenew imperial order. And as they
did so, the Regulatorsconfronted the reality that
their reformation was a failedrevolution. That memory endured
for years, even as mattersbetween the colonies and the
Mother Country became muchworse.

When the revolution comes, many people in
the Piedmont are not willing tosupport it, in part because the
leaders of the revolution werejust five short years ago their
opponents. And partly becausethey've already been burned and
they don't want to be burnedagain. Some say, well, we took
an oath to the king now we can'tfight him, because we would be

(01:21:38):
bringing our souls in mortaldanger. But a great number of
people, I think, are just sortof disaffected and are like,
forget it. We're just not doingthis anymore. We don't care who
wins, let them battle it out.

More than three thousand miles away from the
North Carolina Piedmont, Britishmen and women began a march of
their own on London. In May1771, visitors flocked to the
Royal Academy of Arts to see thelatest work by Benjamin West, a
Pennsylvania-born BritishAmerican artist with a flair for
the historical and the dramatic.In a canvas measuring four feet

(01:22:25):
high, and seven feet wide, Westused oil paints to depict a
tragedy at a moment of triumphin the recent history of the

British Empire (01:22:33):
The Death of General James Wolfe on the
Plains of Abraham at the Battleof Quebec on September 13, 1759.
The painting’s unveiling at theRoyal Academy Exhibition nearly
twelve years after Wolfe’sdemise came at an uncertain
moment for the empire. New taxescalled into question the

(01:22:56):
colonies’ connection with theMother Country; restrictions on
westward expansion deniedsettlers access to Indigenous
lands; the destruction of thefinal liberty pole on the
commons in New York city; theshooting on King Street in
Boston; the War of theRegulation. West depicted Wolfe

(01:23:20):
like Christ descending from across made of flags bearing
British colors. Wolfe looks toheaven as he bleeds from a
pierced wound on his side. Thelight is fading from his eyes as
a messenger rushes from just offview bearing the news that
Protestant British arms have wonthe day, that Catholic France
has been defeated. As Christ wassurrounded by his disciples in

(01:23:45):
Leonardo da Vinci's The LastSupper, so Wolfe is surrounded

by the empire (01:23:49):
Scottish Highlanders, English men, Irish
soldiers, and British Americans.A tattooed Native warrior rests
in the foreground, contemplatingthe scene before him as Wolfe’s
men fear for their fallengeneral. In a moment of imperial
crisis, West’s painting remindedBritons on both sides of the

(01:24:13):
Atlantic that an empire ofliberty was not without
hardship, not without sacrifice.It is difficult to know whether
Black Britons or Black BritishAmericans – free or enslaved –
gained admittance to see West’shistory, a painting in which
they could not see themselves.But not far from where West’s

(01:24:34):
painting hung, in the monthsafter its installation, in a
courtroom in London, in a casethat connected West Africa,
Virginia, Boston, and England,enslaved Britons would argue for
their place in Britain’s Empireof liberty.

(01:25:01):
Thanks for listening to WorldsTurned Upside Down. Worlds is a
production of R2 Studios, partof the Roy Rosenzweig Center for
History and New Media at GeorgeMason University. I’m your host,
Dr. Jim Ambuske. This episode ofWorlds Turned Upside Down is
made possible with support froma 2024 grant from the National

(01:25:21):
Endowment for the Humanities.Learn how you can support the
series at r2studios.org, whereyou’ll also find a complete
transcript of today’s episodeand suggestions for further
reading. Worlds is researchedand written by me with
additional research, writing,and script editing by Jeanette
Patrick. Jeanette Patrick and Iare the Executive Producers.

(01:25:43):
Grace Mallon is our BritishCorrespondent. Our lead audio
editor for this episode isPatrick Long of Primary Source
Media. Annabelle Spencer andAmber Pelham are our graduate
assistants. Our thanks to AbbyChandler, Marjoleine Kars,
Cynthia Kierner, and NathanSchultz for sharing their
expertise with us in thisepisode. Thanks also to our

(01:26:05):
voice actors Sarah Donelson,Evan McCormick, Norman Rodger,
John Terry, and Peter Walker.Subscribe to Worlds on your
favorite podcast app. Thanks,and we’ll see you next time.

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