Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)
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resentment placed them in an awkward position when the Revolutionary
War began.
Recent scholarship by A. Roger Ekirch and Marjoleine Kars, a mong others,
emphasizes that many North Carolina Regulators supported neither the British
nor the patriot cause with any enthusiasm during the Revolutionary War. The for-
mer Regulators’ decision to sit out the war was fueled not only by disaffection with
both s ets of political leaders, but also by evangelical preaching that advocated
neutr ality and pacifism. In 1775, the Continental Congress, anxious to overcome
Piedmont farmers’ disaffection with the patriot cause, hired two Presbyterian min-
isters to tour the North Carolina bac kcountry for four mon ths and persuade the
region’s residents that opposition to British rule was morally justifiable. Some for-
mer Regulators, notably Herman Husband, did espouse the patriot cause. But most
seem to have recognized that neither major party to the Revolutionary War was
likely to bring about the changes the Regulators had sought. Although the
Revolutionary War brought prolonged and violent conflict to the North Carolina
backcountry, it did n ot address the backcountry settlers’ fundamental grievances
about the government’s responsiveness to their needs.
In the wake of the Revolution, former Regulators sympathized with other back-
country “regulations” such as Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts and the Whiskey
Rebellion in Pennsylvania. Lingering backcountry distrust of central government
made North Carolina one of the last states to ratify the U.S. Constitution, which
heightened the powers of a distant federal government. Nevertheless, state leaders
in both North and South Carolina slowly came to terms with the need to secure the
loyalty of backcountry residents and improve their access to state institutions.
Between 1786 and 1801, the North and South Carolina legislatures sited their
new state capitals in Ral eigh and Columbia, respectively, and their new state
universities in Chapel Hill and Columbia—locations in the very h eart of the
backcountry.
—Darcy R. Fryer
See also all entries under Shays’ Rebellion (1787); Whiskey Rebellion (1794).
Further Reading
Adams, George R. “The Carolina Regulators: A Note on Changing Int erpretations.” North
Carolina Historical Review 49 (1972): 345–352.
Brown, Richard Maxwell. The South Carolina Regulators. Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press, 1963.
Denson, Andrew C. “Diversity, Religion, and the North Carolina Regulators.” North
Carolina Historical Review 72 (1995): 30–53.
174 Regulator Movement (1771)
Ekirch,A.Roger.“Poor Carolina”: Politics and Society in C olonial Nort h Carolina,
1729–1776. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.
Kars, Marjoleine. Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-
Revolutionary North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Ca rolina Press, 2002.
Klein, Rachel. Unification of a Slave State: The Rise of the Planter Class in the South
Carolina Backcountry, 1760–1808. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1990.
Lee, Wayne E. Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture o f
Violence in Riot and War. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001.
Nelson, Pau l David. William Tryon and the Course of Empire: A Life in British Imperial
Service. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
Regulator Movement (1771) 175
Battle of Alamance (1771)
The Batt le of Alamance, which occur red on May 16, 1771, at Grea t Alamance
Creek near Hillsborough, was a clash between North Carolina Regulators and
the North Carolina militia, led by Governor William Tryon. The Regulators’
defeat in this conflict effectively ended the Regulator Movement.
On January 15, 1771, in an atmosphere of mounting tension, the North Carolina
Assembly passed the Johnsto n Riot Act, which authorized Tryon to suppress the
Regulator Movement by milita ry force. In the spring, Tryo n duly summoned the
North Carolina militia to the colonial capital, New Bern. He failed to raise as many
troops as he hoped, but he nevertheless marched to Hillsborough, the seat of
Orange County and a site of past Regulator violence, with an estimated
1,100 men. On May 9, approximately 2,000 Regulators surrounded General Hugh
Waddell’s encampment of 250 militiamen in Rowan County. Tryon rushed to join
Waddell, and for several days, the two armies eyed each other warily. Many
militiamen were reluctant to engage the Regulators, and a few went over to the
Regulator side.
On May 13, Tryon marched his troops further westward to Great Alamance
Creek. There, on the e vening of May 15, the Regulators petitioned Tryon for an audi-
ence. Tryon refused their request and, on the morning of May 16, positioned his
troops to do battle with approximately 2,000 to 3,000 as sembled Regulators.
A group of Regulators led by Presbyterian minister David Caldwell attempted to
negotiate with Tryon to avert an armed confrontation; Tryon responded by issuing
an ultimatum that the Regulators lay down their arms within an hour. He also
ordered the execution of Regulator Robert Thompson, a member of Caldwell’s party.
The Regulators r efused to capitulate, although some who were religious paci-
fists left before Tryon’s one-hour ultimatum expired. Just before noon, Tryon order
the militia to open fire. The battle was brief; within two hours, Tryon’s troops had
routed their unpr epared opponents. Many of the Regu lators, not expec ting that
their confrontation with Tryon would erupt into an open battle, had arrived at
Great Alamance Creek unarmed or without adequate ammunition. Nor did the
Regulators have a single commanding officer; Jame s Hunter, the obvious choice,
declined to assume the command on the grounds that each individual should com-
mand himself. The militia suffered 9 dead and 61 wounded. The Regulator losses,
never precisely determined, included 10 to 20 dead and approximately 100
wounded.
After the battle, the royal government of North Carolina executed seven Regu-
lators. One, James Few, was executed without trial; the others were accorded brief
and i nade quat e trials u nder the ter ms of the Johnston Rio t Act. Tryon pardoned
177
most of the Regulators on the condition that they lay down their arms and sw ear
allegiance to the royal government of North Carolina. More than 6,400 did so.
The Regulator Movement collapsed in the a ftermath of t he Battle of Alamance,
although backcountry settlers’ disaffection with the North Carol ina government
remained. Many former Regulators moved west, settling in Tennessee; others
sought solace in pacifism and radical Protestantism.
—Darcy R. Fryer
Further Reading
Kars, Marjoleine. Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-
Revolutionary North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Lefler, Hugh T., and William S. Powell. Colonial North Carolina: A History. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973.
Dobbs, Arthur (1689–1765)
Arthur Dobbs, a Scots-Irish landowner and politician, served as royal governor of
North Carolina from 1753 until his death in 1765. He aimed to unite North Caro-
lina settlers agains t external threa ts and bring North Carolina within the British
cultural mainstream. In practice, his policies antagonized backcountry settlers
and failed to resolve North Carolina’s internal conflicts.
A scion of Northern Ireland’s affluent Protestant Ascendancy, Dobbs began his
career as a British army officer in Scotland. He subsequently returned to Ireland to
manage the family estate near Carrickfergus. He was elected to the Irish
Parliament in 1727 and was appointed engineer an d surveyor gen eral of Ireland
in 1733. Dobbs’s involvement in Irish politics led him to reflect deeply on the state
of the British Empire. He advocated administrative reform and vigorous policies
to promote economic development throughout the empire, particularly in North
America. Dobbs believed that these policies would assist Britain in its geopolitical
struggle with France. Dobbs invested heavily in private ventures to promote North
American development. In the mid-1740s, he purchased 200,000 acres of frontier
land in North Carolina and sponsored the immigration of 500 Irish Protestants to
settle it. In 1749, he was a founding member of the Ohio Company. He also helped
fund two unsuccessful expeditions to find the Northwest Passage.
Dobbs’s idea listic interest in imperial reform, combined with his financial
investments in North Carolina, inspired to him to seek the colonial governorship
through his connections at cou rt. Arriving in North Carolina in October 1753,
Dobbs initially sought to root out corruption and resolve regional disputes within
178 Regulator Movement (1771)
the colony. He encouraged North Carolinians to present a united front in the face
of the French and Native American threat posed by the Seven Years’ War. He also
sought to strengthen the Anglican Church within the colony. Wealthy, well-
established coastal residents recognize d the potential benefits of the stabilization
Dobbs p romoted, but Dobbs’s polici es antagonized some frontier settlers. His
opposition to the printing of paper money caused considerable hardship on North
Carolina’s cash-poor frontier. On his vast land claims in Anson County (later
Mecklenburg County), D obbs skirmished with settlers who exploited a North
Carolina–South Carolina border dispute to avoid paying for their plots and intimi-
dated court officials who attempted to serve them papers.
Ultimately, Dobbs’s authority floundered among both frontiersmen and
North Carolina’s nasc ent gentry. As early as 1760, Dobbs complained that North
Carolina assemblymen equated themselves with members of the British
House of Commons and evinced a similar reluctance to submit to the authority
of the Crown. The colony’s leadership had grown more united under Dobbs’s
tenure, but in opposition to him rather than in cooperation with him. Meanwhile,
frontier settlers exploited social disorder and weak government for their own ends,
anticipating the Regulator Movement. In 1764, Dobbs re queste d permission to
return home for health reasons. He ceded authority to the newly appointed lieuten-
ant governor, William Tryon, and died while packing for the trip home.
—Darcy R. Fryer
Further Reading
Clarke, Desmond. Arthur Dobbs, Esquire, 1689–1765: Surveyor-General of Ireland,
Prospector and Governor of North America. London: Bodley Head, 1958.
Ekirch,A.Roger.“Poor Carolina”: Politics and Society in C olonial Nort h Carolina,
1729–1776. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.
Kars, Marjoleine. Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-
Revolutionary North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Ca rolina Press, 2002.
Husband, Herman (1724–1795)
Herman Husband, an ex-Quaker millennialist and North Carolina planter, was one
of the intellectual and political leaders of the Regulator Movement. An eccentric
visionary, Husband exemplified the crucial rol e that radical Pro testantism played
in the Regulators’ critique of North Carolina politics.
Born into an Anglican planter family in Maryland, Husband experienced a
religious conversion after hearing George Whitefi eld preach in 1739. He le ft the
Regulator Movement (1771) 179
Anglican Church to join the Presbyterians, then the New Side (evangelical) Pres-
byterians, and finally, in about 1743, the Quakers. As a young man, Husband man-
aged his family ’s proper ties in Maryland, operated a pig ironworks, and held
leadership roles in the local Quaker meeting. He married three times and fathered
eight children. Husband first visited North Carolina in 1751, and from the mid-
1750s on he purchased 10,000 acres of land in Orange and Rowan Counties, where
he installed a grist mill and ironworks. In 1762, he settled in Sandy Creek, North
Carolina. Soon afterwards, Husband left the Quakers as a result of a dispute about
individuals’ freedom to buck the rulings of higher meetings.
Husband aimed to redeem society by means of religiously inspired political
activism. In 1766, Husband and his neighbors formed the Sandy Creek Associa-
tion to promote public officials’ accountability to voters. It quickly collapsed.
When the Regulator Movement emerged a few years later, Husband assumed the
role of intellectual advisor and scribe, drafting resolutions and petitions and
incorporating ideas fro m his extensive readi ng. In 1770, he wrote two poli tical
pamphlets, An Impartial Relation of the First Rise and Cause of the Recent Differ-
ences in Publick Affairs and A Continuation of the Impartial Relation. These pam-
phlets fused radica l Protestant theology with Whig country thought to argue that
Christians were obliged to defend their civil rights and ensure that the government
under which they lived was virtuous and just. Meanwhile, Regulators and other
backcountry voters elected Husband to the North Carolina Assembly in 1769.
The North Carolina government, c onvinced that Husband was the ringleader of
the rebellion, jailed him on libel charges in December 1770; he was released in
February. Husband was p resent at the confrontation that preceded the Battle of
Alamance but, as a pacifist, slipped away before the shooting started. Soon
180 Regulator Movement (1771)
Receipt given to Thomas Sitgreaves for assisting in Herman Husbands' 1771 incarceration.
(Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina)
afterwards, Husband fled the province with a price on his head. His property was
confiscated by the government.
Husband settled in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, where he became a
large landowner, assemblyman (1777–1778), and supporter of American indepen-
dence. In 1779, Husband experienced a vision of a New Jerusalem rising west of
the Allegheny Mountains; he also experienced a revelation that constitutional
reform was necessary to pave the way for the millennium. In his later years,
Husband wrote extensively on millenarianism. He criticized the U.S. Constitution
as too moderate and welcomed the more radical French Revolution. When western
Pennsylvania farmers p rotested the federal excise tax on whiskey in 1794,
Husband once again assumed the role of spokesman and scribe for the protesters.
He was charged with treason and spent the winter of 1794–1795 in jail, but a grand
jury failed to indict him. Husband die d s oon after his release from prison, a
dissident and freethinker to the end.
—Darcy R. Fryer
Further Reading
Jones, Mark H. “Herman Husband: Millennarian, Carolina Regulator, a nd Whiskey
Rebel.” PhD diss., Northern Illinois University, 1983.
Kars, Marjoleine. Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-
Revolutionary North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Ca rolina Press, 2002.
Tryon, William (1729–1788)
William Tryon, who served as royal governor of North Carolina from 1765 to
1771, was the Regulators’ principal adversary. His decision to build a sumptuous
governor’s palace in New Bern became a popular symbol of oppressive and expen-
sive government. Altho ugh Tryon sympa thized with the Regulators’ complaints
about fiscal corruption in North Carolina, he quashed their resistance harshly at
the Battle of Alamance.
An army officer and son of the English landed gentry, Tryon became a career
colonial administrator. In 1764, he secured the lieutenant governorship of North
Carolina through the patronage of Lord Hillsborough. He succeeded to the gover-
norship after Arthur Dobbs’s death in March 1765. As governor, Tryon sought to
integrate the colony mo re fully into the Britis h imperial mainstream. He secured
the full establishment of the Anglican Church in North Carolina, promoted
Anglican education and missionary activities, and established a postal service
linking North Carolina to other colonies. Tryon also persuaded the North Carolina
Regulator Movement (1771) 181
Assembly to appropriate £15,000 in provincial currency for the construction of an
elegant capitol and governor’s palace in New Bern. Tryon believed this project
would dignify the colony’s royal government and signal the maturation of the British
settlement in North Carolina. An effective though somewhat authoritarian adminis-
trator , Tryon was initially popular with the residents of North Carolina.
In the earl y years of his governors hip, Tryon was sympathetic to many of the
backcountry settlers’ grievances. He attempted to increase the supply of paper
money, ameliorate abuses in tax collection, and prevent the embezzlement of pub-
lic f unds. Tryon’s efforts met with limited success and, in some cas es, merely
fanne d public anxiety about political corruption. When the Regulator Movement
erupted in physical violence, Tryon took a harsh line. In the spring of 1768, he
called up the militia of eight backcountry counties to suppress the rebellion. Tryon
himself led the militia in clashes with Regulators at Hillsborough in Septem-
ber 1768 and at the Battle of Alamance in May 1771. Just before and after the Bat-
tle of Alamance, Tryon summarily executed two Regulators. Six others were
hanged after being convicted of treason. Tryon ultimately pardoned s ome 6,400
former Regulators who agreed to swear allegiance to North Carolina. Tryon’s
response to the Regulator Movement was authoritarian but scarcely vindictive;
his paramount goal was to uphold the authority of the royal government of North
Carolina.
Tryon transferred to the governorship of New York soon after the Battle of
Alamance. There, as in North Carolina, he vigorously promoted social stratifica-
tion and the Anglican Church, both of which he envisioned as anchors of political
stability. In the opening salvos of the American Revolution, Tryon took a moderate
stance, just as he had done in the Stamp Act Crisis in North Carolina. He favored
the repeal of parliamentary taxes on the American colonies, arguing that only mas-
sive military force could subdue the protests. Not until 1775 did Tryon reluctantly
accede to British efforts to impose parliamentary authority on the colonies. During
the Revolutionary Wa r, he organized Lo yalist troops and led s everal raids on
Connecticut towns and arsenals. He retired to England in 1780.
—Darcy R. Fryer
Further Reading
Nelson, Pau l David. William Tryon and the Course of Empire: A Life in British Imperial
Service. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
Tryon, William. The Correspondence of William Tryon and Other Selected Papers. Edited
by William S. Powell. 2 vols. Ralei gh, NC: Division of Arc hives and History, Depart-
ment of Cultural Resources, 1980–1981.
182 Regulator Movement (1771)
Pine Tree Riot (1772)
The Pine Tree Riot was one of the first acts of rebellion against the authority of
Great Britain that would lead to the American War of Independence three years
later. Essentially, it had its ori gins in the use of pine trees in North America to
make masts for ships for the (British) Royal Navy, and was an event that in some
ways resembled the Boston Tea Party, which took place 20 months later.
The War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–1748) and the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763)
had been won by the British, in large part because of their control of the seas
through a massive navy. However, the making of so many warships, as well as
merchant vessels, resulted in much demand for white pine trees, which could be
used to make masts. In the British Isles, the sheer number of ships being built
and repaired had meant that there were few large white pines left—this species
was regarded as the best for a single-stick mast. With Britain anxious to keep its
naval (and also its trading) advantage, laws had been passed in North America
whereby white pine trees were ordered to be preserved until the tree was fully
grown.
The New Hampshire General Court passed an act in 1722 making it illegal to
cut down any white pine that was more than 12 inches in diameter. Cutting down
any of them would result in a fine of £5. Any timber found in violation of this
was marked with white arrows painted on the wood, signifying that these trees
were property of the British Crown.
By this time, in the British North America, there had been growing resentment
of the British, and some people started to cut down the trees and use them for
floorboards. T his led to a fashion among anti-British ac tivists to display proudly
the width of the boards used in their property, often as much as 12 inches wide.
These laws were n ot heavily enfo rced until 1766, w hen John Wentworth was
appointed as governor of New Hampshire. Wentworth had originally been born
in New Hampshire and educated at Harvard, his uncle, Benning Wentworth, hav-
ing been his predecessor as governor (and the person who had introduced the
1722 Act). He was generally thought to be sympathetic to some of the grievances
of the colonists, but on the issue of the white pine trees, he held firm.
Finally the British decided to crack down on this use of timber, and in the winter
of 1771–1772, John Sherburn, the deputy surveyor in New Hampshire, ordered a
search of sawmills. At six sawmills in Goffstown and Weare, Sherburn’s men
183