SYMHC Classics: Regulator War

Summary

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Stuff You Missed in History Class — "The Regulator War"

Podcast: Stuff You Missed in History Class
Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Fry
Episode Date: May 16, 2026 (originally aired January 28, 2019)
Topic: A deep dive into the Regulator War (Regulator Movement) in colonial North Carolina

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the Regulator War, also called the Regulator Movement or the War of the Regulation, a pre-Revolutionary conflict in colonial North Carolina. Motivated in part by current interest from shows like Outlander (which references the Regulators), the hosts discuss the historical causes, events, and aftermath of the movement, focusing on issues of regional inequality, government corruption, and the persistent struggle for fair representation and taxation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Historical Context

• Geography of North Carolina: The state was divided into three main regions—mountains, Piedmont, and coastal plain—with significant cultural and economic divides between them.
  • “North Carolina is divided into three geographical regions. From west to east. They are the mountains, the Piedmont, and the coastal plain.” (Tracy, 05:09)
• The Piedmont's poorer settlers, mostly non-English immigrant groups, clashed with the wealthier, coastal elite.

2. Population Growth & Representation Issues

• Massive population increase in the Piedmont in the 1700s, primarily from Scots-Irish and German settlers traveling down the Great Wagon Road.
  • "North Carolina's population more than doubled between 1730 and 1750, and then nearly tripled in the 20 years after that." (Tracy, 09:33)
• The backcountry settlers were under-represented in the colonial assembly, as district boundaries hadn’t been updated to reflect population shifts.

3. Political Corruption & Economic Grievances

• Dominance of Coastal Elites: Political offices were held by a small group—often coastal or their allies—forming "courthouse rings."
  • “A lot of these appointees were wealthy and powerful people from the coast or friends of theirs... it seemed like all the political power had increasingly moved toward these wealthy outsiders.” (Tracy, 10:29, 11:20)
• Court & Legal System Abuse: Officials padded their fees, delayed processes, and sheriffs often embezzled or unjustly seized property.
  • “The widespread perception was that everyone, from lawyers to clerks was making things take longer and running up fees just to line their own pockets.” (Holly, 11:47)
  • Governor Tryon himself estimated “sheriffs had embezzled half of the money that they had been charged with collecting." (Tracy, 13:55)

4. Governor Tryon & Extravagance

• Tryon was seen as favoring the coast, building an extravagant "Tryon Palace" in New Bern using money originally meant for public schools and replenished through new taxes.
  • “A lot of people in the Piedmont thought this was extravagant... the money to do it was taken from a fund that had been established for public school schools.” (Tracy, 18:56)
  • "That £5,000 was just the beginning, though. Another £10,000 was earmarked for the project two years later." (Holly, 19:22)

5. Rise of the Regulators

• The movement began with peaceful petitions and meetings (notably the Quaker-led Sandy Creek Association) seeking "regulation" of government abuses.
  • “In August of 1766. A group of Quakers met in Orange county to talk about all their various grievances... they planned to go through the more typical non violent means of trying to get things changed.” (Tracy, 22:15)
• Early formal statements were firm; the first letter (24:34) refused further tax payments until resolved and asserted the settlers' right to inquiry:
  • “Think not to frighten us with rebellion in this case... it is our intent to have a full settlement of yawn in every particular point that is matter of doubt with us, so fail not to send an answer by the bearer.” (Regulator letter, 24:34)

6. Escalation & Conflict

• Despite later, more conciliatory statements, conflict escalated: seizures of property by officials, failed meetings, and eventually violence and disruption of courts.
  • Key events:
    • April 1768 Incident: Attempt to reclaim seized property leads to near-violence (31:37)
    • Arrest of Herman Husband & William Butler: Inflamed tensions when Fanning arrested the two leading Regulators. (32:16)
    • Court Riot, Hillsborough (Sept. 1770): Regulators stormed and took over the court, whipped officials, forced Fanning out, and tried cases themselves.
      • "They took over the courtroom and disrupted the court proceedings... whipped a lawyer and the assistant district attorney... whipped edmund fanning." (Tracy, 38:00; Holly, 38:25)
    • Bassett quote: “Whatever we may think of the justness of the cause of the regulators, we must readily agree that their conduct on this occasion was illegal.” (Tracy, 38:55)

7. Government Response & Legislative Action

• The Johnston Riot Act (Jan 1771) made rioting a felony punishable by death and allowed the governor to raise a militia—at the same time as several reforms were passed to address grievances.
  • “An act for Preventing tumultuous and riotous assemblies... made rioting a felony, punishable by death, and it authorized the governor to raise a militia to deal with it.” (Holly, 39:36)
  • “All of these reforms related to the things that the regulators had been advocating for so long. But rather than waiting to see whether they resolved the situation, Governor Tryon...raised a militia.” (Tracy, 40:02)

8. Battle of Alamance (May 16, 1771)

• The movement ended in violence at the Battle of Alamance. Governor Tryon's militia (about 1,000 men) outnumbered, but better trained than the Regulators (about 2,000), fired before the surrender deadline.
  • "On May 16, the regulators were told to disarm themselves near Alamance creek, But before the deadline... the governor's militia opened fire." (Tracy, 41:28)
  • Nine killed on each side; many more wounded among the Regulators.
  • The aftermath included summary executions, mass forced oaths of allegiance, imprisonment, and the dispersal of the movement.

9. Aftermath & Legacy

• Key figures:

  • Governor Tryon: Left to become Governor of New York, Loyalist in Revolution, died in London.
  • Edmund Fanning: Accompanied Tryon, also Loyalist, died 1818.
  • Herman Husband: Fled to Pennsylvania, later involved in the Whiskey Rebellion.
  • James Few: Executed at Alamance "to set an example."
    • "One regulator named James Few was executed on the spot. At the battle of alamance. To set an example..." (Tracy, 41:59)
  • Benjamin Merrill: Sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered. (Tracy reads the grisly sentence, 41:59)

• Many former Regulators later relocated (notably to what would become Tennessee).

• Tryon's Palace was destroyed and eventually reconstructed in the 1950s.

• Historians debate its significance as a precursor to the American Revolution; many Regulator concerns overlapped with later Patriot grievances about taxation, representation, and government arrogance.

  • “Some historians argue that the Regulator movement was a precursor to the Revolutionary War, especially given how much of the dispute was between ordinary farmers and the royal governor and how many of the same or similar grievances were shared...” (Holly, 44:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Geography & Social Divide

• “The show kind of makes it look like these places are all next door to each other. They are not.” — Tracy, 07:05
• “It is made of rocks.” — Tracy, 07:05

Government Abuse

• "The widespread perception was that everyone, from lawyers to clerks was making things take longer and running up fees just to line their own pockets." — Holly, 11:47
• "In 1767, North Carolina Governor William Tryon said that he thought the sheriffs had embezzled half of the money that they had been charged with collecting." — Tracy, 13:55

Satirical Verse about Fanning

• "When Fanning first to orange came, he looked both pale and wan. An old patched coat upon his back. An old mare he rode on. Both man and mare want worth £5, as I've been often told, but by his civil robberies he's laced his coat with gold." — Tracy, 20:58

Regulator’s Demand Letter

• “Think not to frighten us with rebellion in this case. For if the inhabitants of this province have not as good a right to inquire into the nature of our constitution and disbursement of our funds as those of our mother country, we think it is by arbitrary proceedings that we are debarred of that right.” — Regulator Letter, 24:34

On the (In)Effectiveness of Reforms

• "Convicted, but not really punished in a very meaningful way." — Tracy (ref: Fanning's one penny fine), 35:07
• "For punishment, he can join the Columbia records club. That one penny thing is..." — Holly, 35:22

On Legal Self-Help

• “They broke into the courtroom and started trying cases on the docket themselves.” — Holly, 38:25
• “Whatever we may think of the justness of the cause of the regulators, we must readily agree that their conduct on this occasion was illegal.” — John Spencer Bassett (quoted by Tracy), 38:55

On Power and Rebellion

• "The existence of the Johnston riot act had inflamed tensions even further, and the idea that the governor was actually raising a militia to come after them raised numerous questions about civil liberties..." — Holly, 40:33

On Revolutionary Connections

• “Some historians argue that the Regulator movement was a precursor to the Revolutionary War... but it does not appear that most of the Regulators became involved in the Revolution themselves.” — Holly, 44:30

Outlander & Historical Accuracy

• “None of this is anything that I would have gleaned from watching Outlander because as we all know, Outlander is not really a source of of historical accuracy.” — Tracy, 45:14
• “That is not its mission.” — Holly, 45:27

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Important Timestamps

• 02:14–05:09 — Introduction to the Regulator War, context from Outlander, and North Carolina’s geography
• 09:00–12:26 — Social/economic divisions, population growth, court & sheriff corruption
• 18:29–21:20 — Tryon's Palace, tax increases, and rise of Edmund Fanning
• 22:15–24:34 — Initial Regulator organization and letters/petition
• 31:37–34:11 — First violent confrontations, failed meetings, escalation
• 35:07–36:35 — Frustration with lack of reform and minimal penalties for officials
• 38:00–38:55 — Court riot at Hillsborough and illegal self-justice
• 39:36–41:28 — Johnston Riot Act, raising of militia, and path to battle
• 41:28–42:50 — Battle of Alamance: outcome, executions, and suppression of the movement
• 43:32–44:30 — Fate of key figures and debate on Regulator War’s connection to the Revolution

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Episode Tone & Style

Friendly, witty, with frequent asides and clarifications for listeners, including pop culture references (notably Outlander), and occasional dry humor amid the historical narrative ("It is made of rocks," "For punishment, join the Columbia records club"). Tracy and Holly strive for clear explanation and nuance regarding the complexities of the era.

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Conclusion

The Regulator War, though often overshadowed by later events of the American Revolution, demonstrates the deep roots of colonial frustration regarding inequity, representation, and government abuse. The hosts effectively connect this local movement to the broader revolutionary spirit of the age, while also debunking dramatized portrayals found in pop culture.

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Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Happy Saturday. Today's Saturday Classic is on the Regulator War. Also called the Regulator Movement. It was inspired by the TV show Outlander, although I did not choose it as today's Saturday classic to align with last night's Outlander series finale. It is because Today is the 255th anniversary of the Battle of Alamance, which took place on May 16, 1771, and was the Regulator War's final and by some descriptions, only battle. Because some people want to draw a distinction between battles and skirmishes.

[Holly Fry]

This originally came out on January 28, 2019. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio foreign.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

If you have been watching the fourth season of the TV show Outlander, one of the things that keeps coming up is that there are some rebellious people in colonial North Carolina who are called the Regulators and that they're mad about something about unfair taxes and corruption. The show doesn't really make it all that clear. This season of Outlander was roughly based on the novel Drums of Autumn, which, to be clear, I haven't read. I also haven't read the next novel after that one, which is called the Fiery Cross. And this episode is being recorded before the last episode of this season of the TV show, but it's going to come out after. So I don't have any idea what's happening in the season finale. But it seemed like with all of this it would be a good time to do an episode on the Regulator War, also known as the War of the Regulation, also known as the Regulator Movement, which is something that people started asking us to do all the way back during the last time we did an Outlander themed episode, and that was in 2016 with our installment on the Jacobite rising of 1745.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, I'll confess that part of me wanted this to be some very weird steampunky because it does. Your name sounds so good.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It does. And one of the things that currently is a bit of a challenge, this will all be sorted out by the time this episode comes out is finding the artwork to go with it on our website. Because I keep getting these strange. I mean, they're beautiful some of them, but they're definitely steampunk inspired watches and

[Holly Fry]

not and not anything to do with the actual historical event.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

No. And I also do, I do wanna say right up here at the top that there is really a lot to unpack with this of Outlander in terms of its representation of a number of peoples. And that is not what today's episode is about at all. But there's a lot there. So I just wanted to acknowledge that it exists.

[Holly Fry]

I have not Been watching, so I have no idea. But to make sense of this whole series of events we're talking about, we first need to get into some North Carolina geography. North Carolina is divided into three geographical regions. From west to east. They are the mountains, the Piedmont, and the coastal plain. Sometimes the coastal plain is even further divided into the intercoastal plain and the tidewater.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Naturally, when Europeans started colonizing this part of North America, they started out along the coastal plain. And it's not just because that's where they landed. Aside from the swampy bits, the coastal plain soil is really soft and flat and rich. It's not particularly rocky. This part of the continent has navigable rivers that are really good for carrying things back and forth to the ocean. And overall, this was a lot of what would become North Carolina's best farmland. And it was a place where wealthy planters started establishing big plantations with enslaved workforces.

[Holly Fry]

The coastal plain is separated from the adjacent piedmont by a geological boundary known as the fall line. This is basically a dividing line between the harder, rockier, more clay like Piedmont and the softer, sandier coastal plain. In addition to the differences in the soil and farming conditions on either side of the line, rivers crossing the line descend through waterfalls and rapids, making them impractical to, impossible to use to transport people and goods. There are, of course, fall lines all over the world. And in terms of the Atlantic seaboard fall line, it runs from New York to Georgia.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, you could still certainly grow things in the Piedmont, but it was harder, and then it was harder to get them anywhere. It's a little bit of a disadvantage.

[Holly Fry]

It makes me think of the various stories we've done on things like, I think Brook Farm had this problem, the Brook Farm community, where they were like, we're gonna go a thing where no one else is doing stuff. We're going to farm here. And it's like no one else is farming here for a reason.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It is made of rocks. Also, just to clear up a little geographical confusion for Outlander viewers who might be trying to imagine where all of this is happening in relation to the TV show, the fictional Fraser's Ridge is in the Blue Ridge Mountains in northwest North Carolina, somewhere near the real places of Boone and Blowing Rock. And that is on the opposite end of the state from Wilmington, which is out on the southeastern coast, roughly 300 miles, or 480 kilometers away. Fraser's Ridge also would not be very close to Cross Creek or the Cape Fear river, which is home to the show's fictional plantation of Riverrun. That is roughly 200 miles, or 320 kilometers today. You would measure it from roughly Boone to Fayetteville, which is what Cross Creek is known as today. The show kind of makes it look like these places are all next door to each other. They are not.

[Holly Fry]

This geography might seem like a weird thing to be spending all this much time on, but in colonial North Carolina, the division between the Piedmont and the coastal plain contributed to huge divisions among the colonists and between the colonists and the government.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

At first, the vast majority of colonial activity was happening out on the coastal plain with mostly English colonists, and they were arriving by boat either from Europe or from other colonies. But in the 1700s, that really started to change. The western part of the colony experienced a huge population boom. Newcomers were arriving in the mountains and the Piedmont along the Great Wagon Road, also known as the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road. This had started out as a trading route that was being used by eastern North America's native peoples, and it ran from Philadelphia down to Georgia. By the 18th century, it had been widened to accommodate wagons. In some places, it had been shifted to cross rivers and to get around obstacles more easily.

[Holly Fry]

Many of these new arrivals were Scots, Irish, or German. And while most of the English colonists out on the coast were Anglican, the Scots, Irish, and German people arriving in North Carolina included a lot more Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Moravians. So from settlement to settlement, or even within settlements, people often didn't speak the same language or follow the same religious practices and observances. And as a general trend, the Piedmont was much poorer than the coast, with most people scratching out a living as subsistence farmers rather than running large plantations.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This influx of Europeans to the Piedmont was huge. North Carolina's population more than doubled between 1730 and 1750, and then nearly tripled in the 20 years after that. Most of these new arrivals were settling in what was known then as the back counties. That was the Piedmont, which is at the time considered the North Carolina frontier.

[Holly Fry]

This combination of geography and demographics led to many problems. People in the Piedmont and the mountains. But our focus for this is really the Piedmont in this episode, thought that they were being unfairly taxed because various taxes were levied at the same rate there as they were out on the coast, where people had more money. Settlers in the Piedmont were also represented in the assembly, but those assembly seats had not been reapportioned in light of the population boom. So the Piedmont settlers also felt that they weren't really being fairly represented in the assembly either.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

A lot of local political and court offices were being filled by appointment either by the monarch or by the governor or by the assembly. A lot of these appointees Were wealthy and powerful people from the coast or friends of theirs. So together with the tax issues, this really led to a perception that the piedmont did not matter to the assembly or to the governor, except when it came to being taxed.

[Holly Fry]

And even when there was some local control over who was in charge, the government and courts were very cliquish. Technically, most officials were appointed by the governor, but in many cases, the governor made these appointments Based on the recommendations of the court itself. So those officers would recommend themselves and their friends, Ultimately creating a courthouse ring where the same powerful people were always in control of local politics and the legal system.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The existence of these courthouse rings Wasn't necessarily the biggest problem in people's minds. A bigger issue in the piedmont was that those legal and political positions went from being held by farmers and planters to being held by lawyers and merchants. So it seemed like all the political power had increasingly moved toward these wealthy outsiders, A lot of them either from the coast or connected to people from the coast, and all of them in cahoots to stay in power.

[Holly Fry]

And it also seemed like they were in cahoots to take advantage of people. There were laws meant to keep officials from abusing their positions, but they were not consistently enforced. And people had to handle a lot of matters through the court, Everything from filing deeds to trying to collect debts. The widespread perception was that everyone, from lawyers to clerks was making things take longer and running up fees just to line their own pockets. For example, if you were trying to file something with the register of deeds, he might tax you three times, Once for each of the forms necessary to finish the transaction, rather than just once for the whole transaction you were trying to do.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

As another example of all this, people did not trust the sheriff's at all. One of the sheriff's duties was to collect the taxes. And here's how people thought this process generally went down. It's clear that sometimes the process did go down this way. Not clear whether it happened every time, but this was how when somebody said, the sheriff's coming to collect the tax, People just sort of thought, okay, this is how this is going to happen. The sheriff would show up and demand the tax, but the taxpayer would not have the cash on hand to actually pay it, because people didn't have a lot of need to carry cash. And there was also a serious shortage of actual physical currency to pay things with. But most communities did have somebody who would keep cash and basically acted like a banker. So the taxpayer would ask to go see that person to get some money and the sheriff would refuse and seize some of their property instead.

[Holly Fry]

I love that people just presume this is how the process works. Like there's a horrible flowchart that ends with property seized. People, though, did not want to pay their taxes in property arbitrarily seized by the sheriff. If it had to be paid, they wanted to pay it with something of known value, like money. So then taxpayers would try to negotiate, asking if they could get their property back if they went and got some money and then caught up to the sheriff down the road. And the sheriff might even agree to this, but then disappear. Later on, the taxpayer might hear that his property had been sold off for much less than it was worth, so he would still owe money.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But it was not just the taxpayers who thought that they were being ripped off by crooked sheriffs and all this in 1767, North Carolina Governor William Tryon said that he thought the sheriffs had embezzled half of the money that they had been charged with collecting.

[Holly Fry]

Another thing the Piedmont settlers were unhappy with Governor Tryon and we're gonna get to that after we first pause for a little sponsor break.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

So before the break, we talked about a lot of stresses happening in North Carolina. We did not even get into the tensions between the colonists and the native people already living there or the tensions with the enslaved people that were also in North Carolina. Like there was really a lot going on. One of the biggest things though in the minds of the regulators was the governor, William Tryon. He had been appointed Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina in 1764 under Governor Arthur Dobbs. But Dobbs retired really soon after that and then died in 1765. When Tryon became governor, he represented the royal prerogative in the colony of North Carolina. And soon he established North Carolina's first permanent capital in New Bern, which is near the coast and connected to the Atlantic by the Neuse River.

[Holly Fry]

Tryon planned to build an extravagant seat of the government and governor's residence in New Bern. To that end, even before leaving England to become lieutenant governor, he had convinced architect John Hawks to join him. Tryon made his first request for funding for this project, nicknamed Tryon's palace, on November 8, 1766. Not long after, the assembly allotted £5,000 to both buy the land and get started on the building.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

A lot of people in the Piedmont thought this was extravagant. And then to make things worse than just the fact that it was £5,000 to build something that was nicknamed a palace, the money to do it was taken from a fund that had been established for public school schools. And then to restore the money back to that fund, the assembly imposed a poll tax, and more importantly, in the minds of some people, a levy on alcoholic beverages.

[Holly Fry]

That £5,000 was just the beginning, though. Another £10,000 was earmarked for the project two years later. And then when it was finally time to open the palace in 1770, Governor Tryon planned a huge gala to celebrate.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Tryon's palace wasn't the governor's only extravagance. In 1767, he mounted an expensive expedition that he personally went on to survey and negotiate a new border between North Carolina and the Cherokee Nation. And as had happened with Tryon's palace, taxes were used to pay for this. Settlers who were on the wrong side of the line were required to move the following January. And the general perception among the people of the Piedmont was that Tryon had made this a whole lavish production just to draw attention to himself. It was described as, quote, making a splendid exhibition of himself to the Indians.

[Holly Fry]

The regulators also had a particular problem with one of the governor's friends, Edmund Fanning. Fanning was a great example of the way a small group of people were holding a huge amount of power, which we touched on before we had our commercial break. And born in New York, he was a lawyer, an assemblyman, the Register of Deeds of Orange county, and a colonel in the militia. He was not at all the only person who had multiple titles like this. That crossover among the assembly and the courts and the militia was huge and was contributing to the perception that the Piedmont was Being controlled by a few wealthy people, Fanning was just the one who raised the most ire.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

There was even a song about him. More than one. This is the one we're going to read. When Fanning first to orange came, he looked both pale and wan. An old patched coat upon his back. An old mare he wrote on. Both man and mare want worth £5, as I've been often told, but by his civil robberies he's laced his coat with gold.

[Holly Fry]

On top of all of this, the geography and the taxes and the representation and the governor and the governor's friend, the colonists and settlers of North Carolina were just fractious. The colony went through numerous uprisings and rebellions in the decades leading up to this. In 1677, Culpepper's Rebellion was an armed uprising largely in response to the Navigation Acts that restricted colonial trade. In 1689, colonists arrested corrupt governor Sess Sothell, who was then put on trial and banished by the Assembly. The next year, John Gibbs, who replaced Governor Sothol, led an armed uprising against his successor and vowed to fight him to the death. Then there was Carey's Rebellion in 1711, which is a lot harder to sum

[Tracy V. Wilson]

up in one sentence.

[Holly Fry]

It is named for former Governor Thomas Carey, who led an armed rebellion against his successor that was rooted in both religion and politics.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The first seeds of the Regulator movement had started back before Governor Tryon asked for that £5,000 for his palace. It was August 1766. A group of Quakers met in Orange county to talk about all their various grievances, all those issues that were connected to taxation and corruption. One of them was a man named Herman Husband, who's often described as one of the leaders of the Regulator movement, but it's a little more complicated than that. As a Quaker, he could not get behind some of the more violent acts that they took. And he really distanced himself from the movement as it became more violent. The people that met in August of 1766 called themselves the Sandy Creek association and they planned to go through the more typical non violent means of trying to get things changed. They were going to file petitions, they were going to try to get representation in the assembly, things like that.

[Holly Fry]

The Sandy Creek association didn't make a lot of headway and escalated to things like refusing to pay taxes. And then a law was passed in 1768 that required sheriffs to be at specific places on specific dates to collect taxes. Rather than just showing up in the Piedmont. This made things worse instead of better. Taxpayers felt like now the burden Was on them to travel somewhere to pay taxes. And because the counties then were much larger than they are now, this could be a very time consuming and expensive inconvenience. The new law also didn't do anything to address the many other concerns with embezzlement and corruption.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, it seems like having a person take their taxes to the sheriff At a specific time and place, Rather than having the sheriff show up and demand money like it seems like that would be an improvement, Was not really read as an improvement. In the early spring of 1768, the Orange county sheriff posted a list of all the places that he would be to collect the tax, along with a fine for the people who did not make it to those places at the right time. And taxpayers were really angry about this, and they thought it might be illegal. By this point, they had also heard about that additional money that had been allotted to build tryon's palace. So a group of orange county residents got together. They drafted a letter which they sent to all of their various officials, and

[Holly Fry]

here is what it said. Whereas the taxes in the county are larger according to the number of taxables than adjacent counties, and continue so year after year. And as the jealousy still prevails among us that we are wronged, and having the more reason to think so, as we have been at the trouble of choosing men and sending them after the civilist manner that we could to know what we paid our levy for, but could receive no satisfaction, we are obliged to seek redress by denying paying any more until we have a full settlement for what is passed and have a true regulation with our officers, as our grievances are too many to notify in a small piece of writing. We desire that you, our assemblymen and vestrymen, May appoint a time before next court at the courthouse, and let us know by the bearer, and we will choose men to act for us. We desire that the sheriffs will not come this way to collect the levy, for we will pay none before there is a settlement to our satisfaction. And as the nature of an officer is a servant to the public, we are determined to have the officers of this county Under a better and honester regulation Than they have been for some time past. Think not to frighten us with rebellion in this case. For if the inhabitants of this province have not as good a right to inquire into the nature of our constitution and disbursement of our funds as those of our mother country, we think it is by arbitrary proceedings that we are debarred of that right. Therefore, to be plain with you. It is our intent to have a full settlement of yawn in every particular point that is matter of doubt with us, so fail not to send an answer by the bearer.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

They're basically refusing to pay any taxes until these things are settled. Some cooler headed people decided that the language in this initial letter was much too aggressive, so they arranged to have a second meeting and at that second meeting they adopted this set of articles that I find to just be delightfully conciliatory. Here is what it says. We the subscribers do voluntarily agree to form ourselves into an association to assemble ourselves for conference for regulating public grievances and abuses of power in the following particulars with others of a like nature that may occur. 1. We will pay no more taxes until we are satisfied that they are agreeable to law and applied to the purposes therein mentioned, unless we cannot help it or are forced. 2. We will pay no officer any more fees than the law allows unless we are obliged to do it, and then to show our dislike and bear open testimony against it.

[Holly Fry]

3.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We will attend all our meetings of conferences as often as we conveniently can, etc. 4. We will contribute to collections for defraying necessary expenses, attending the work according to our abilities. 5. In case of the difference in judgment, we will submit to the judgment of the majority of our body. So this is a lot more like we're not going to pay our taxes unless we have to, but then we will complain about it.

[Holly Fry]

Both of these documents talked about regulating, but the term regulators, as these men came to be known, was likely picked up from a similar movement in South Carolina that started the year before. Although that particular movement was more about combating lawlessness than tax reform and government corruption.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Even though the regulators had tried to walk back that first, more aggressive statement, it was really too late. That statement had already been sent to Orange County's officers, who were affronted. But soon things really started to escalate and we will get to that after another quick sponsor break. Work can be a little weird. One minute you're in a meeting that could have been an email. The next you're trying to decode corporate jargon that somehow means means nothing. And don't even get me started on the quick sync that turns into a 45 minute deep dive. I know I have had these and many more frustrations. The truth is, figuring out your career isn't always straightforward. Whether you're trying to grow, pivot or just stay relevant, it can feel like you're navigating it all on your own. That's where LinkedIn comes in. LinkedIn can help you grow your career, helping you confidently navigate your path. With insights, ideas and inspiration from your professional community. You can stay up to date with the latest trends in your field, connect with people who get it, and discover opportunities tailored to your goals, your experience and what actually matters to you. Whether you're looking for something new or just trying to grow where you are, LinkedIn gives you the tools and connections to move forward with confidence because LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Visit LinkedIn.com class to learn more.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

On April 4, 1768, the regulators called for another meeting, this time to ask the sheriff to meet with the committee to talk about their grievances. But before that meeting could actually happen, one of the regulators saddle and bridle were seized to pay off a levy. A group of regulators went to try to get them back. That led to weapons being drawn, but apparently no physical violence. Authorities tried to deploy a militia to re seize the reclaimed saddle and bridle, but not enough people reported for duty to go and do this, presumably because they were sympathetic to the regulators and didn't want to go take up arms against them.

[Holly Fry]

Edmund Fanning, having read only that first angrier document, wrote to the governor saying that these regulators were going to burn down the Orange county seat of Hillsborough. At first, the governor was at least somewhat conciliatory, and on April 30, the regulators selected 13 delegates to attend a meeting to discuss their grievances. But before that meeting could happen, Fanning had Herman Husband and a regulator named William Butler arrested and jailed, and this just inflamed tensions even further.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

What followed was months and a lot of confusion and miscommunication, which is not really surprising considering that now there have been two meetings that were thwarted by some other action. Local authorities were trying to prosecute the regulators, and the regulators were refusing to pay taxes and also trying to bring charges against the officials who they thought were corrupt. In July, Husband and Butler were tried and acquitted for inciting the populace to rebellion. In that same court session, Fanning was indicted for taking excessive fees. Tryon also traveled to Hillsborough himself during all this, hoping that his presence would calm things down. And one of the things he had to do was to dispel rumors that he was recruiting a Native American fighting force to go after the regulators.

[Holly Fry]

By August, a new sheriff had been appointed in Orange county, and he came bearing a letter from the governor condemning the regulators and calling their actions illegal. The next month, 3,700 regulators, all of them farmers, sent a proposal to the governor, desiring to know the terms on which their submission would be accepted. They were told that if they surrendered, nine of their leaders from three counties laid down their arms and paid all their taxes, they would be pardoned. Only about 30 people accepted this agreement, and tryon sent troops to try to track down and arrest some of the biggest ringleaders.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

After all of this, several people were put on trial for their involvement with the regulators, and those who were convicted paid fines and spent some time in prison. But later on, the governor pardoned everybody who had been found guilty. That summer, he also dissolved the assembly and called for a new election with new representatives, at which point, the several men who had sympathies to the regulators or had been really involved in the movement were elected to the assembly.

[Holly Fry]

The regulators had little success bringing corrupt officials to trial, though. Edmund Fanning and another official named Francis Nash were both charged with taking illegal fees. Nash was ultimately acquitted, while Fanning was convicted, but fined only one penny for each of the five offenses and resigned his post as register of deeds. That register of deeds example we gave earlier in the show, where he was collecting multiple fees on one transaction, Was essentially what he was convicted of doing.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Convicted, but not really punished in a very meaningful way.

[Holly Fry]

One penny.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. His. His argument was. Was misconstruction of the law, basically that he had. He had misunderstood that this was not allowed.

[Holly Fry]

And for punishment, he can join the Columbia records club. That one penny thing is.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In November of 1769, regulators from multiple counties brought petitions before the assembly in new burn. A petition from Anson county called for changes to voting rights and taxation, for paper money to be issued and loaned on land, for the ability to sue for small debts without involving a lawyer. That was important to that whole idea that the courts were running up fees. If you could just handle small debts without getting a lawyer involved, there would be less of that. Purportedly also some changes to how court officials were paid. In particular, paying them salaries rather than having them paid out of the fees. This petition also called for all of the religious denominations to have the rights to conduct legal marriages. For a long time, only Anglican clergy had been able to legally perform marriages in North Carolina, and once presbyterians were also allowed to do it, Part of their fees were still going to the Anglican church. The Anson county regulators also called for Benjamin Franklin or some other patriot to act as the colony's representative.

[Holly Fry]

In London, regulators from Orange and Rowan counties submitted a very similar petition asking for a lot of the same reforms, along with calling for the assembly's yay and nay votes to be recorded.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In response, the assembly introduced a number of bills meant to do several of these very things, Although the lower house did also pass a resolution that anyone who didn't pay taxes was an enemy of the country. But on November 6, 1769, Governor Tryon got back to the assembly after having been ill. He saw these bills that had been introduced. He dissolved the assembly again and called for another new election. Once again, though, several pro regulator people were either elected or reelected. This included herman husband and john pryor.

[Holly Fry]

But back in the piedmont, many of the regulators were incredibly frustrated by this point. They had been trying to get issues with taxation and corruption resolved for roughly four years. They had no confidence that the assembly was actually going to get new laws passed, and it felt like everything that they had tried to accomplish so far had been thwarted. So on Saturday, September 20, 1770, a group of regulators took a petition to the superior court in hillsborough. They felt that the juries were prejudiced. They wanted the corrupt officers fairly tried, and they wanted all these ongoing tax issues to be cleared up and fairly settled.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

They were told to come back on Monday, and when they did, it was with 150 regulators armed with switches and sticks. They took over the courtroom and disrupted the court proceedings. And then they surrounded the courthouse, whipping a lawyer and the assistant district attorney when they tried to enter the building. Then they whipped edmund fanning until he finally convinced them to let him go home if he promised to come back in the morning.

[Holly Fry]

He did return in the morning, and the regulators ran him out of town and then tore down his house. But the judge did not return to the courthouse, having fled in the middle of the night. So the regulators broke into the courtroom and started trying cases on the docket themselves. In the words of John Spencer bassett, who wrote a history of all of this in 1895, quote, Whatever we may think of the justness of the cause of the regulators, we must readily agree that their conduct on this occasion was illegal.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

After these incidents in hillsborough, governor tryon became understandably alarmed. He asked whether the regulator's actions constituted treason and was told that no, they did not. Even so, he started considering whether he could raise a militia to fight them. Then, on November 12, Judge Richard Henderson's barn was burned down, presumably by regulators. Governor tryon convened the assembly to determine a course of action. The assembly expelled herman husband from his seat in the assembly, and he was then put in jail. Even though he claimed he had no involvement with the regulators at this point and disavowed all their actions, Regulators in the piedmont started planning a march to new bern.

[Holly Fry]

Soon, johnston's riot act was introduced to the assembly, and it passed on January 15, 1771. It was an act for Preventing tumultuous and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectually punishing the rioters, and for restoring and preserving the public peace of this province. It made rioting a felony, punishable by death, and it authorized the governor to raise a militia to deal with it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

At the same time, the assembly also passed several other bills relating to things like sheriff's appointments and attorney fees and faster collections of small debts and salaries for the chief justice. They also divided several of the counties into smaller, more manageable ones. All of these reforms related to the things that the regulators had been advocating for for so long. But rather than waiting to see whether they resolved the situation, Governor Tryon took advantage of the Johnson's riot act and raised a militia.

[Holly Fry]

The regulators were outraged at this. The existence of the Johnston riot act had inflamed tensions even further, and the idea that the governor was actually raising a militia to come after them raised numerous questions about civil liberties and whether the governor was just going to resort to violence anytime someone disagreed with him.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This militia left New Bern in April of 1771 and arrived in Hillsborough on May 9 to find that it was vastly outnumbered by the regulators. The militia was also short on ammunition after a powder raid that had been undertaken by nine young men dressed as native Americans. They were later nicknamed the black boys of Cabarrus. Reinforcements arrived on May 11, which gave the militia a force of about 1,000 men. They were still outnumbered by the Regulators 2 to 1, but the militia were much better trained and also better armed.

[Holly Fry]

On May 16, the regulators were told to disarm themselves near Alamance creek, But before the deadline given to do so, the governor's militia opened fire. This came to be known as the battle of Alamance, and it lasted a couple of hours before the regulators ran out of ammunition. Nine were killed on each side, although many more regulators were wounded than militiamen. This effectively ended the regulator movement, although Tryon's militia continued moving through the piedmont, rounding people up for some time afterward.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

One regulator named James Few was executed on the spot. At the battle of alamance. To set an example, 12 more people were arrested and put on trial. The six who were convicted were executed for treason on June 19, 1771. Here is the sentencing of one of them, a man named Benjamin Merrill. Quote, I must now close by afflicting duty by pronouncing upon you the awful sentence of law, which is that you, Benjamin Merrill, be carried to the place from whence you came, that you be drawn from thence to the place of execution, where you are to be hanged by the neck, that you be cut down while yet alive, that your bowels be taken out and burnt before your face, that your head be cut off, that your body be divided into four quarters, and this to be at his Majesty's disposal. And the Lord have mercy on your soul.

[Holly Fry]

After all this. Nearly 6,500 settlers in the Piedmont were made to swear allegiance to the government. This was about 3/4 of the white men in the more remote parts of the colony. And afterward, many former Regulators left North Carolina, many of them settling near the Watauga river in what would become East Tennessee.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Tryon got back to New Bern in June of 1771, but then he left the colony not long after that to become governor of New York. Fanning went with him to be his personal secretary. Both Tryon and Fanning were on the Loyalist side in the Revolutionary War. Tryon died in London in 1788, and Fanning died in 1818.

[Holly Fry]

Herman husband fled to Pennsylvania, where he was part of the Whiskey Rebellion, for which he was convicted and condemned to death, but then later freed. He died in 1795.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

As for Tryon's palace, his successor, Josiah Martin, furnished it really extravagantly, but then he fled the capital in May of 1776 out of fear of the Revolutionary War. The state government took control of the building in 1777, although it was again abandoned as the war went on. The building was also damaged when large amounts of lead that had been used in its construction were torn out of it and made it to musket balls. The state Capitol was moved to Raleigh in 1792, at which point Tryon's palace had been damaged by vandals and squatters. It burned down on February 27, 1798. It was restored and rebuilt in the 1950s and is now just known as Tryon palace without the s. Some historians

[Holly Fry]

argue that the Regulator movement was a precursor to the Revolutionary War, especially given how much of the dispute was between ordinary farmers and the royal governor and how many of the same or similar grievances were shared between the Regulators and the Patriots. In addition to taxation and representation and other issues that we discussed, Tryon supported the British government when it came to the stamp act of 1765 and had refused to allow a delegation from North Carolina to attend the Stamp Act Congress that October. And this whole incident does seem to have inspired some of the Patriots in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, but it does not appear that most of the Regulators became involved in the Revolution themselves.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

None of this is anything that I would have gleaned from watching outlander because as we all know, Outlander is not really a source of of historical accuracy.

[Holly Fry]

That that is not its mission.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is historypodcastheartradio.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Holly Fry]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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