The Regulators of North Carolina: Outraged Opressors
Uploaded by Admin on Jan 22, 1999
The history of colonial North Carolina is bombarded with frequent strife and turmoil. The people of North Carolina, because of a lack in supervision from the British monarchy, learned to possess an independent spirit. The colony remained isolated from the rest of the country because of several geographical conditions such as poor harbors, the abscence of navigable rivers, numerous swamps, and bad road conditions. Due to these conditions, communities throughout North Carolina became widely seperated. The colony was initially set up by the Lords Proprietors, an English founding company that helped finance early American exploration. When North Carolina was freed from British proprietorship, the Granville family, descendants from the original Lords Proprietors, con-tinued to hold their land rights. This area, which became known as the "Granville District," was the scene of many disputes over land grants, taxes, British support, and a great deal of lesser issues.
Settlers in the back country (Piedmont) felt particularly oppressed by the laws drawn up by an assembly largely composed of eastern landowners. "Local" officials in many counties, particularly in the western segment of the back country were not local men at all, but friends of the royal governor, William Tryon. These so-called "friends" often collected higher fees than authorized by the law while obtaining tax money or divided a single service into many services and charged fees for each. Lawyers who followed the judges around the colony also fell into the same habit.
The citizens of Anson, Orange, and Granville counties were the first to make themselves heard. In 1764, this band of citizens, referred to as the "mob," created a number of local disturbances until Governor Arthur Dobbs passed a proclomation forbidding the collection of illegal fees, the practice that the people complained of the most. Their protests were calmed only temporarily. However, the efects of the new law wore off soon enough and sheriffs and other county officers returned to their old dishonest practices. Citizens complained largely in part because money was so scarce; local trading was almost limited to barter. Often, property was seized and resold, and citizens felt that their property was being sold to a friend of an official for much less than its true value (1).
People among the Granville District were anxious to revolt and needed only a leader to provide the spark that led to the fire of the War of Regulation. A man named Hermon Husband...