The Conquest of the Old Southwest

by Archibald Henderson

Chapter 11. The Regulators

It is not a persons labour, nor yet his effects that will do, but if he has but one horse to plow with, one bed to lie on, or one cow to give a little milk for his children, they must all go to raise money which is not to be had. And lastly if his personal estate (sold at one tenth of its value) will not do, then his lands (which perhaps has cost him many years of toil and labour) must go the same way to satisfy, these cursed hungry caterpillars, that are eating and will eat out the bowels of our Commonwealth, if they be not pulled down from their nests in a very short time.--George Sims: A Serious Address to the Inhabitants of Granville County, containing an Account of our deplorable Situation we suffer .... and some necessary Hints with Respect to a Reformation. June 6, 1765.

It is highly probable that even at the time of his earlier explorations in behalf of Richard Henderson and Company, Daniel Boone anticipated speedy removal to the West. Indeed, in the very year of his first tour in their interest, Daniel and his wife Rebeckah sold all their property in North Carolina, consisting of their home and six hundred and forty acres of land, and after several removals established themselves upon the upper Yadkin. This removal and the later western explorations just outlined were due not merely to the spirit of adventure and discovery. Three other causes also were at work. In the first place there was the scarcity of game. For fifteen years the shipments of deerskins from Bethabara to Charleston steadily increased; and the number of skins bought by Gammern, the Moravian storekeeper, ran so high that in spite of the large purchases made at the store by the hunters he would sometimes run entirely out of money. Tireless in the chase, the far roaming Boone was among "the hunters, who brought in their skins from as far away as the Indian lands"; and the beautiful upland pastures and mountain forests, still teeming with deer and bear, doubtless lured him to the upper Yadkin, where for a time in the immediate neighborhood of his home abundance of game fell before his unerring rifle. Certainly the deer and other game, which were being killed in enormous numbers to satisfy the insatiable demand of the traders at Salisbury, the Forks, and Bethabara, became scarcer and scarcer; and the wild game that was left gradually fled to the westward. Terrible indeed was the havoc wrought among the elk; and it was reported that the last elk was killed in western North Carolina as early as 1781.

Another grave evil of the time with which Boone had to cope in the back country of North Carolina was the growth of undisguised outlawry, similar to that found on the western plains of a later era. This ruthless brigand age arose as the result of the unsettled state of the country and the exposed condition of the settlements due to the Indian alarms. When rude borderers, demoralized by the enforced idleness attendant upon fort life during the dark days of Indian invasion, sallied forth upon forays against the Indians, they found much valuable property--horses, cattle, and stock--left by their owners when hurriedly fleeing to the protection of the frontier stockades. The temptations thus afforded were too great to resist; and the wilder spirits of the backwoods, with hazy notions of private rights, seized the property which they found, slaughtered the cattle, sold the horses, and appropriated to their own use the temporarily abandoned household goods and plantation tools. The stealing of horses, which were needed for the cultivation of the soil and useful for quickly carrying unknown thieves beyond the reach of the owner and the law, became a common practice; and was carried on by bands of outlaws living remote from one another and acting in collusive concert.

Toward the end of July, 1755, when the Indian outrages upon the New River settlements in Virginia had frightened away all the families at the Town Fork in the Yadkin country, William Owen, a man of Welsh stock, who had settled in the spring of 1752 in the upper Yadkin near the Mulberry Fields, was suspected of having robbed the storekeeper on the Meho. Not long afterward a band of outlaws who plundered the exposed cabins in their owners' absence, erected a rude fort in the mountain region in the rear of the Yadkin settlements, where they stored their ill-gotten plunder and made themselves secure from attack. Other members of the band dwelt in the settlements, where they concealed their robber friends by day and aided them by night in their nefarious projects of theft and rapine.

The entire community was finally aroused by the bold depredations of the outlaws; and the most worthy settlers of the Yadkin country organized under the name of Regulators to break up the outlaw band. When it was discovered that Owen, who was well known at Bethabara, had allied himself with the highwaymen, one of the justices summoned one hundred men; and seventy, who answered the call, set forth on December 26, 1755, to seek out the outlaws and to destroy their fortress. Emboldened by their success, the latter upon one occasion had carried off a young girl of the settlements. Daniel Boone placed himself at the head of one of the parties, which included the young girl's father, to go to her rescue; and they fortunately succeeded in effecting the release of the frightened maiden. One of the robbers was apprehended and brought to Salisbury, where he was thrown into prison for his crimes. Meanwhile a large amount of plunder had been discovered at the house of one Cornelius Howard; and the evidences of his guilt so multiplied against him that he finally confessed his connection with the outlaw band and agreed to point out their fort in the mountains.

Daniel Boone and George Boone joined the party of seventy men, sent out by the colonial authorities under the guidance of Howard, to attack the stronghold of the bandits. Boone afterward related that the robbers' fort was situated in the most fitly chosen place for such a purpose that he could imagine--beneath an overhanging cliff of rock, with a large natural chimney, and a considerable area in front well stockaded. The frontiersmen surrounded the fort, captured five women and eleven children, and then burned the fort to the ground. Owen and his wife, Cumberland, and several others were ultimately made prisoners; but Harman and the remainder of the band escaped by flight. Owen and his fellow captives were then borne to Salisbury, incarcerated in the prison there, and finally (May, 1756) condemned to the gallows. Owen sent word to the Moravians, petitioning them to adopt his two boys and to apprentice one to a tailor, the other to a carpenter. But so infuriated was Owen's wife by Howard's treachery that she branded him as a second Judas; and this at once fixed upon him the sobriquet "Judas" Howard-a sobriquet he did not live long to bear, for about a year later he was ambushed and shot from his horse at the crossing of a stream. He thus paid the penalty of his betrayal of the outlaw band. For a number of years, the Regulators continued to wage war against the remaining outlaws, who from time to time committed murders as well as thefts. As late as January, 1768, the Regulators caught a horse thief in the Hollows of Surry County and brought him to Bethabara, whence Richter and Spach took him to the jail at Salisbury. After this year, the outlaws were heard of no more; and peace reigned in the settlements.

Colonel Edmund Fanning--of whom more anon--declared that the Regulation began in Anson County which bordered upon South Carolina. Certain it is that the upper country of that province was kept in an uproar by civil disturbances during this early period. Owing to the absence of courts in this section, so remote from Charleston, the inhabitants found it necessary, for the protection of property and the punishment of outlaws, to form an association called, like the North Carolina society, the Regulation. Against this association the horse thieves and other criminals made common cause, and received tacit support from certain more reputable persons who condemned "the irregularity of the Regulators." The Regulation which had been thus organized in upper South Carolina as early as 1764 led to tumultuous risings of the settlers; and finally in the effort to suppress these disorders, the governor, Lord Charles Montagu, appointed one Scovil, an utterly unworthy representative, to carry out his commands. After various disorders, which became ever more unendurable to the law-abiding, matters came to a crisis (1769) as the result of the high-handed proceedings of Scovil, who promiscuously seized and flung into prison all the Regulators he could lay hands on. In the month of March the back country rose in revolt against Scovil and a strong body of the settlers was on the point of attacking the force under his command when an eleventh-hour letter arrived from Montagu, dismissing Scovil from office. Thus was happily averted, by the narrowest of margins, a threatened precursor of the fight at Alamance in 1771 (see Chapter XII). As the result of the petition of the Calhouns and others, courts were established in 1760, though not opened until four years later. Many horse thieves were apprehended, tried, and punished. Justice once more held full sway.

Another important cause for Boone's removal from the neighborhood of Salisbury into the mountain fastnesses was the oppressive administration of the law by corrupt sheriffs, clerks, and tax-gatherers, and the dissatisfaction of the frontier squatters with the owners of the soil. At the close of the year 1764 reports reached the town of Wilmington, after the adjournment of the assembly in November, of serious disturbances in Orange County, due, it was alleged, to the exorbitant exactions of the clerks, registers, and some of the attorneys. As a result of this disturbing news, Governor Dobbs issued a proclamation forbidding any officer to take illegal fees. Troubles had been brewing in the adjacent county of Granville ever since the outbreak of the citizens against Francis Corbin, Lord Granville's agent (January 24, 1759), and the issuance of the petition of Reuben Searcy and others (March 23d) protesting against the alleged excessive fees taken and injustices practised by Robert (Robin) Jones, the famous lawyer. These disturbances were cumulative in their effect; and the people at last (1765 ) found in George Sims, of Granville, a fit spokesman of their cause and a doughty champion of popular rights. In his "Serious Address to the Inhabitants of Granville County, containing an Account of our deplorable Situation we suffer . . . and some necessary Hints with Respect to a Reformation," recently brought to light, he presents a crushing indictment of the clerk of the county court, Samuel Benton, the grandfather of Thomas Hart Benton. After describing in detail the system of semi-peonage created by the merciless exactions of lawyers and petty court officials, and the insatiable greed of "these cursed hungry caterpillars," Sims with rude eloquence calls upon the people to pull them down from their nests for the salvation of the Commonwealth.

Other abuses were also recorded. So exorbitant was the charge for a marriage-license, for instance, that an early chronicler records "The consequence was that some of the inhabitants on the head-waters of the Yadkin took a short cut. They took each other for better or for worse; and considered themselves as married without further ceremony." The extraordinary scarcity of currency throughout the colony, especially in the back country, was another great hardship and a perpetual source of vexation. All these conditions gradually became intolerable to the uncultured but free spirited men of the back country. Events were slowly converging toward a crisis in government and society. Independent in spirit, turbulent in action, the backwoodsmen revolted not only against excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, and extortionate fees, but also against the rapacious practices of the agents of Lord Granville. These agents industriously picked flaws in the titles to the lands in Granville's proprietary upon which the poorer settlers were seated; and compelled them to pay for the land if they had not already done so, or else to pay the fees twice over and take out a new patent as the only remedy of the alleged defect in their titles. In Mecklenburg County the spirit of backwoods revolt flamed out in protest against the proprietary agents. Acting under instructions to survey and close bargains for the lands or else to eject those who held them, Henry Eustace McCulloh, in February, 1765, went into the county to call a reckoning. The settlers, many of whom had located without deeds, indignantly retorted by offering to buy only at their own prices, and forbade the surveyors to lay out the holdings when this smaller price was declined. They not only terrorized into acquiescence those among them who were willing to pay the amount charged for the lands, but also openly declared that they would resist by force any sheriff in ejectment proceedings. On May 7th an outbreak occurred; and a mob, led by Thomas Polk, set upon John Frohock, Abraham Alexander, and others, as they were about to survey a parcel of land, and gave them a severe thrashing, even threatening the young McCulloh with death.

The choleric backwoodsmen, instinctively in agreement with Francis Bacon, considered revenge as a sort of wild justice. Especial objects of their animosity were the brothers Frohock, John and Thomas, the latter clerk of the court at Salisbury, and Edmund Fanning, a cultured gentleman-adventurer, associate justice of the superior court. So rapacious and extortionate were these vultures of the courts who preyed upon the vitals of the common people, that they were savagely lampooned by Rednap Howell, the backwoods poet-laureate of the Regulation. The temper of the back country is well caught in Howell's lines anent this early American "grafter", the favorite of the royal governor:

When Fanning first to Orange came,
He looked both pale and wan;
An old patched coat was on his back,
An old mare he rode on.

Both man and mare wan't worth five pounds,
As I've been often told;
But by his civil robberies,
He's laced his coat with gold.

The germs of the great westward migration in the coming decade were thus working among the people of the back country. If the tense nervous energy of the American people is the transmitted characteristic of the border settlers, who often slept with loaded rifle in hand in grim expectation of being awakened by the hideous yells, the deadly tomahawk, and the lurid firebrand of the savage, the very buoyancy of the national character is in equal measure "traceable to the free democracy founded on a freehold inheritance of land." The desire for free land was the fundamental factor in the development of the American democracy. No colony exhibited this tendency more signally than did North Carolina in the turbulent days of the Regulation. The North Carolina frontiersmen resented the obligation to pay quit-rents and firmly believed that the first occupant of the soil had an indefeasible right to the land which he had won with his rifle and rendered productive by the implements of toil. Preferring the dangers of the free wilderness to the paying of tribute to absentee landlords and officials of an intolerant colonial government, the frontiersman found title in his trusty rifle rather than in a piece of parchment, and was prone to pay his obligations to the owner of the soil in lead rather than in gold.

12. Watauga--Haven of Liberty

The Regulators despaired of seeing better times and therefore quitted the Province. It is said 1,500 departed since the Battle of Alamance and to my knowledge a great many more are only waiting to dispose of their plantations in order to follow them.- -Reverend Morgan Edwards, 1772.

The five years (1766-1771) which saw the rise, development, and ultimate defeat of the popular movement known as the Regulation, constitute a period not only of extraordinary significance in North Carolina but also of fruitful consequences in the larger movements of westward expansion. With the resolute intention of having their rulers "give account of their stewardship," to employ their own words, the Sandy Creek Association of Baptists (organized in 1758), in a series of papers known as Regulators' Advertisements (1766-8) proceeded to mature, through popular gatherings, a rough form of initiative and referendum. At length, discouraged in its efforts, and particularly in the attempt to bring county officials to book for charging illegal fees, this association ceased actively to function. It was the precursor of a movement of much more drastic character and formidable proportions, chiefly directed against Colonel Edmund Fanning and his associates. This movement doubtless took its name, "the Regulation," from the bands of men already described who were organized first in North Carolina and later in South Carolina, to put down highwaymen and to correct many abuses in the back country, such as the tyrannies of Scovil and his henchmen. Failing to secure redress of their grievances through legal channels, the Regulators finally made such a powerful demonstration in support of their refusal to pay taxes that Governor William Tryon of North Carolina, in 1768, called out the provincial militia, and by marching with great show of force through the disaffected regions, succeeded temporarily in overawing the people and thus inducing them to pay their assessments.

The suits which had been brought by the Regulators against Edmund Fanning, register, and Francis Nash, clerk, of Orange County, resulted in both being "found guilty of taking too high fees." Fanning immediately resigned his commission as register; while Nash, who in conjunction with Fanning had fairly offered in 1766 to refund to any one aggrieved any fee charged by him which the Superior Court might hold excessive, gave bond for his appearance at the next court. Similar suits for extortion against the three Froliocks in Rowan County in 1769 met with failure, however; and this outcome aroused the bitter resentment of the Regulators, as recorded by Herman Husband in his "Impartial Relation." During this whole period the insurrectionary spirit of the people, who felt themselves deeply aggrieved but recognized their inability to secure redress, took the form of driving local justices from the bench and threatening court officials with violence.

At the session of the Superior Court at Hillsborough, September 22, 1770, an elaborate petition prepared by the Regulators, demanding unprejudiced juries and the public accounting for taxes by the sheriffs, was handed to the presiding justice by James Hunter, a leading Regulator. This justice was our acquaintance, Judge Richard Henderson, of Granville County, the sole high officer in the provincial government from the entire western section of the colony. In this petition occur these trenchant words: "As we are serious and in good earnest and the cause respects the whole body of the people it would be loss of time to enter into arguments on particular points for though there are a few men who have the gift and art of reasoning, yet every man has a feeling and knows when he has justice done him as well as the most learned." On the following Monday (September 24th), upon convening of court, some one hundred and fifty Regulators, led by James Hunter, Herman Husband, Rednap Howell, and others, armed with clubs, whips, and cudgels, surged into the court-room and through their spokesman, Jeremiah Fields, presented a statement of their grievances. "I found myself," says Judge Henderson, "under a necessity of attempting to soften and turn away the fury of these mad people, in the best manner in my power, and as such could well be, pacify their rage and at the same time preserve the little remaining dignity of the court."

During an interim, in which the Regulators retired for consultation, they fell without warning upon Fanning and gave him such rough treatment that he narrowly escaped with his life. The mob, now past control, horsewhipped a number of leading lawyers and citizens gathered there at court, and treated others, notably the courtly Mr. Hooper of Boston, "with every mark of contempt and insult." Judge Henderson was assured by Fields that no harm should come to him provided he would conduct the court in accordance with the behest of the Regulators: namely, that no lawyer, save the King's Attorney, should be admitted to the court, and that the Regulators' cases should be tried with new jurors chosen by the Regulators. With the entire little village terrorized by this campaign of "frightfulness," and the court wholly unprotected, Judge Henderson reluctantly acknowledged to himself that "the power of the judiciary was exhausted." Nevertheless, he says, "I made every effort in my power consistent with my office and the duty the public is entitled to claim to preserve peace and good order." Agreeing under duress to resume the session the following day, the judge ordered an adjournment. But being unwilling, on mature reflection, to permit a mockery of the court and a travesty of justice to be staged under threat and intimidation, he returned that night to his home in Granville and left the court adjourned in course. Enraged by the judge's escape, the Regulators took possession of the court room the following morning, called over the cases, and in futile protest against the conditions they were powerless to remedy, made profane entries which may still be seen on the record: "Damned rogues," "Fanning pays cost but loses nothing," "Negroes not worth a damn, Cost exceeds the whole," "Hogan pays and be damned," and, in a case of slander, "Nonsense, let them argue for Ferrell has gone hellward."

The uprising of these bold and resolute, simple and imperfectly educated people, which had begun as a constitutional struggle to secure justice and to prevent their own exploitation by dishonest lawyers of the county courts, now gave place to open anarchy and secret incendiarism. In the dead of night, November 12th and 14th, Judge Henderson's barn, stables, and dwelling house were fired by the Regulators and went up in flames. Glowing with a sense of wrong, these misguided people, led on by fanatical agitators, thus vented their indiscriminate rage, not only upon their op pressors, but also upon men wholly innocent of injuring them--men of the stamp of William Hooper, afterward signer of the Declaration of Independence, Alexander Martin, afterward governor and United States Senator,,and Richard Henderson, popular representative of the back country and a firm champion of due process of law. It is perhaps not surprising in view of these events that Governor Tryon and the ruling class, lacking a sympathy broad enough to ensure justice to the oppressed people, seemed to be chiefly impressed with the fact that a widespread insurrection was in progress, threatening not only life and property, but also civil government itself. The governor called out the militia of the province and led an army of well nigh one thousand men and officers against the Regulators, who had assembled at Alamance to the number of two thousand. Tryon stood firm upon the demands that the people should submit to government and disperse at a designated hour. The Regulators, on their side, hoped to secure the reforms they desired by intimidating the governor with a great display of force. The battle was a tragic fiasco for the Regulators, who fought bravely, but without adequate arms or real leadership. With the conclusion of this desultory action, a fight lasting about two hours (May 16, 1771), the power of the Regulators was completely broken."

Among these insurgents there was a remarkable element, an element whose influence upon the course of American history has been but imperfectly understood which now looms into prominence as the vanguard of the army of westward expansion. There were some of the Regulators who, though law-abiding and conservative, were deeply imbued with ideas of liberty, personal independence, and the freedom of the soil. Through the influence of Benjamin Franklin, with whom one of the leaders of the group, Herman Husband, was in constant correspondence, the patriotic ideas then rapidly maturing into revolutionary sentiments furnished the inspiration to action. As early as 1766, the Sandy Creek leaders, referred to earlier in this chapter, issued a call to each neighborhood to send delegates to a gathering for the purpose of investigating the question "whether the free men of this country labor under any abuses of power or not." The close connection between the Sandy Creek men and the Sons of Liberty is amply demonstrated in this paper wherein the Sons of Liberty in connection with the "stamp law" are praised: for "redeeming us from Tyranny" and for having "withstood the lords in Parliament in behalf of true liberty." Upon the records of the Dutchman's Creek Church, of "regular" Baptists, at the Forks of the Yadkin, to which Daniel Boone's family belonged, may be found this memorable entry, recognizing the "American Cause" well-nigh a year before the declaration of independence at Philadelphia: "At the monthly meeting it was agreed upon concerning the American Cause, if any of the brethren see cause to join it they have the liberty to do it without being called to an account by the church. But whether they join or do not join they should be used with brotherly love.

The fundamental reasons underlying the approaching westward hegira are found in the remarkable petition of the Regulators of An son County (October 9, 1769), who request that "Benjamin Franklin or some other known PATRIOT" be appointed agent of the province in London to seek redress at the source. They exposed the basic evil in the situation by pointing out that, in violation of the law restricting the amount of land that might be granted to each person to six hundred and forty acres, much of the most fertile territory in the province had been distributed in large tracts to wealthy landlords. In consequence "great numbers of poor people are necessitated to toil in the cultivation of the bad Lands whereon they hardly can subsist." It was these poor people, "thereby deprived of His Majesties liberality and Bounty," who soon turned their gaze to the westward and crossed the mountains in search of the rich, free lands of the trans-Alleghany region.