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 brigandage 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. [105] 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. [106] 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. [107]
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. [108]
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. [109]
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.