North Carolina
While the inland section of the colony had once been predominately composed of planters with an agriculture based economy, merchants and lawyers from the coastal area began to move west, upsetting the current social and political structure. At the same time, the local agricultural community was suffering from a deep economic depression, due to severe droughts throughout the past decade. The loss of crops caused farmers to lose not only their direct food source, but primary means of income, which led many to rely on the goods being brought in by newly arrived merchants.
Since income was cut off, the local planters often fell into debt, which could not be paid off immediately. In turn the merchants would rely on lawyers and the court to settle the debate. Debts were not uncommon at the time, but from 1755 to 1765 the number of cases brought to the docket increased 15 fold, from 7 annually to 111 in Orange County alone.
Court cases could often lead to planters losing their homes and property, who naturally grew to resent the presence of the new merchants and the lawyers. The shift in population and politics eventually led to an imbalance within the colony's courthouses, where the newly arrived and well educated lawyers used their superior knowledge of the law to their unjust advantage.
A small clique of wealthy officials formed, and became an exclusive inner circle in charge of the legal affairs of the area. The group was seen as a 'courthouse ring', or a small bunch of officials who obtained most of the political power for themselves.
By 1764, thousands of people from North Carolina, mainly from Orange, Anson, and Granville counties in the western region, were extremely dissatisfied with the wealthy North Carolina officials, whom they considered cruel, arbitrary, tyrannical and corrupt. Taxes were collected by local sheriffs supported by the courts; the sheriffs and courts had sole control over their local regions.
North Carolina was a hotbed of rebellion against royal authority from the beginning of tensions with England. North Carolina was the site of the "War of the Regulation," a conflict that lasted from 1760 to 1771. This "war" was an effort of poor western farmers to remove corrupt officials in the more prosperous east who were oppressing them with high taxes. The movement was finally defeated at the Battle of Alamance in 1771.
Many of the officers were deemed to be very greedy and often would band together with other local officials for their own personal gain. The entire system depended on the integrity of local officials, many of whom engaged in extortion; taxes collected often enriched the tax collectors directly. At times, sheriffs would intentionally remove records of their tax collection in order to further tax citizens. The system was endorsed by the colonial governor, who feared losing the support of the various county officials. The effort to eliminate this system of government became known as the Regulator uprising, War of the Regulation, or the Regulator War.
The most heavily affected areas were said to be that of Rowan, Anson, Orange, Granville, and Cumberland counties. It was a struggle between mostly lower class citizens, who made up the majority of the population of North Carolina, and the wealthy ruling class, who comprised about 5% of the population, yet maintained almost total control of the government.
The primary aim of the Regulators was to form an honest government and reduce taxation. The wealthy businessmen/politicians that ruled North Carolina at this point, saw this as a grave threat to their power. Ultimately they brought in militia to curb their anti-government sentiments and crush any efforts to start a rebellion. It is estimated that out of the 8,000 people living in Orange County at the time, some six or seven thousand of them were in support of the Regulators.
Although the "War of the Regulators" is considered by some to be one of the first acts of the American Revolutionary War, it was waged against corrupt local officials and not against the king or crown.
Edmund Fanning graduated from Yale in 1757 and studied law in New York, before moving by 1761 to North Carolina, where his brother Dr. William Fanning was the first rector of St. George's Parish in Northampton County. He served as the register of deeds, 1763-1768, and was also a judge of superior court and a militia colonel.
Governor William Tryon assumed the position following the death of Governor Dobbs. Tryon had an extremely lavish home built in 1770 in New Bern (now known as Tryon Palace), which became one of the main points of resentment for the Regulators, who were already paying substantial taxes. William (The Regulator) Butler was quoted as saying "We are determined not to pay the Tax for the next three years, for the Edifice or Governor's House, nor will we pay for it."
The Regulator Movement.
The years preceding the American Revolution many people in North Carolina experienced strong feelings of discontent with the way in which the provincial government's officials were conducting the affairs of the colony. The Regulator Movement in mid-eighteenth-century North Carolina was a rebellion initiated by residents of the colony's inland region, or backcountry, who believed that royal government officials were charging them excessive fees, falsifying records, and engaging in other mistreatments. The movement's name refers to the desire of these citizens to regulate their own affairsTheir quarrel was not with the form of government or the body of laws, but with the abuses and malpractices of those empowered to administer that government and those laws.
In 1764, several thousand people from North Carolina, mainly from Orange, Anson, and Granville counties in the western region, were extremely dissatisfied with North Carolina officials whom they considered cruel, arbitrary, tyrannical and corrupt.
"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.
While the inland section of the colony had once been predominately composed of planters with an agriculture based economy, merchants and lawyers from the coastal area began to move west, upsetting the current social and political structure. At the same time, the local agricultural community was suffering from a deep economic depression, due to severe droughts throughout the past decade.
The loss of crops caused farmers to lose not only their direct food source, but primary means of income, which led many to rely on the goods being brought in by newly arrived merchants.
Since income was cut off, the local planters often fell into debt, which could not be paid off immediately. In turn the merchants would rely on lawyers and the court to settle the debate. Debts were not uncommon at the time, but from 1755 to 1765 the number of cases brought to the docket increased 15 fold, from 7 annually to 111 in Orange County alone. Grievances included excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, and illegal fees.
The sheriffs and courts had sole control over their local regions. Many of the officers would band together with other local officials for their own personal gain. The entire system—which depended on the integrity of local officials, many of whom engaged in extortion; taxes collected often enriched the tax collectors directly. At times, sheriffs would intentionally remove records of their tax collection in order to further tax citizens. The system was endorsed by the colonial governor, who feared losing the support of the various county officials.
Some settlers like the Ellis’ and Davidsons simply moved their families further southwest out of Orange County, into the frontier where no county courts, unfair taxes and fees from the newly implemented Stamp Act existed, and self appointed bands of men styling themselves as Regulators provided law enforcement.
Those residing in the western part of the province, were isolated and out of sympathy with the easterners; it was from these frontier counties that the War of Regulation originated and grew.
The citizens of Anson, Orange, and Granville counties were the first to make themselves heard. In 1764, this band of citizens, referred to by the eastern planter society as “the mob," created a number of local disturbances until Governor Arthur Dobbs passed a proclamation forbidding the collection of illegal fees, the practice that the people complained of the most. Their protests were calmed only temporarily. However, the effects 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.
A small clique of wealthy officials formed, and became an exclusive inner circle in charge of the legal affairs of the area. The group was seen as a 'courthouse ring', or a small bunch of officials who obtained most of the political power for themselves. At times, sheriffs would intentionally remove records of their tax collection in order to further tax citizens. The system was endorsed by the colonial governor, who feared losing the support of the various county officials.
The effort to eliminate this system of government became known as the Regulator uprising, War of the Regulation, or the Regulator War. The most heavily affected areas were said to be that of Rowan, Anson, Orange, Granville, and Cumberland counties. A group of men, apparently enthusiastic over the success of the Sons of Liberty in resisting the Stamp Act, called citizens together to determine whether they were being treated justly or not.
Minor oppositions continued to occur until the spring of 1768 when the sheriff of Orange County announced he would be collecting taxes at certain areas of the colony only, and if colonists did not pay at these particular locations a charge would be incurred. This occured at about the same time Tryon gave word about the construction of Tryon Palace. This was very inconvenient for the settlers for two reasons. The widely scattered population made it difficult to arrive at these tax stations. Lack of money was also a concern. Opposition to these moves influenced people to join the Regulator association.
The Regulators declared their purpose in a proclamation soon after claiming they would: "assemble ourselves for conference for regulating public grievances and abuses of power, in the following particulars...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 show our dislike and bear open testimony against it.
(3) We will attend all of our meetings as often as we conveniently can...
(4) We will contribute to collections for defraying the necessary expenses attending the work, according to our abilities.
(5) In case of differences in judgement, we will submit to the judgment of the majority of our body.
(6) The Regulators also did not allow drinking of alcohol at their meetings because they knew that different opinions could result in an internal clash.
These meetings often took place at the local church building. Churches that were led by men like Joseph and William Murphy
1764 Riots and disturbances were breaking out at court houses in nearly every major county, the upland farmers were finally considering in organizing and amassing a concerted response to the government, all of which was being cultivated and taking root in local non-Anglican rural churches.
1768, An association of "Regulators" was formed, allied in opposition to what they considered unjust and tyrannical practices of government officials. The wealthier ruling class considered these Regulators to be "a mob."
Discouraged over the failures to secure justice through peaceful negotiations, and considering the government indifference to their distress with deliberate slowness of legal remedies to take effect, the Regulators took a more radical stand. When punitive measures were taken against them, the Regulators defiantly refused to pay fees, and terrorized those who administered the law, and successfully disrupted court proceedings. It fell to the Royal Governor William Tryon to bring this backcountry revolt to a speedy conclusion. In March, 1771, the governor's council, determined to squelch the angry rebel farmers, advised Governor Tryon to call out the militia and to march against the Regulators and their “spiritual” ringleaders.
War of the Regulation
Although the "War of the Regulators" is considered by some to be one of the first acts of the American Revolutionary War, in fact it was against the corrupt local officials, and not against the king or crown.
Governor William Tryon assumed the title and role as the Royal Governor of North Carolina following the death of Governor Dobbs in 1765. In 1770, Tryon had built an extremely lavish home built in New Bern (now known as Tryon's Palace), which became one of the main points of resentment for the Regulators, who were already paying substantial taxes.
Edmund Fanning, a young and ambitious local prosecutor for the crown, crony and henchman of Governor Lord Tyron. He was also the local public registrar for the county and given a commission in the county’s militia, both prime jobs for an up and coming good ol’ boy. Eventually he became the Superior Court justice for the Salisbury district and elevated to the rank of Colonel in the Orange County militia.
With strong-arm assistance of the local sheriff in property confiscation and collusion with other governmental offices, he became the major landowner in the town of Hillsboro, which his friends commonly called Fanningsburg. With his acquisition of power, arrogance towards the locals and apparent streak of cruelty everyone had to pay dearly to do business with Fanning’s office. It was not uncommon for the local Sheriff to embezzle nearly 50% of the local taxes collected. Edmund Fanning and his connections to Governor Tyron came to epitomize everything that was wrong with local government to the great majority of Orange county residents.
Edmund Fanning viewed the backwoods Baptist churches as a hotbed of sedition to the Crown and he made it his single ambition to round them up and tried for sedition, punishable by death. Fanning’s brother was an Anglican clergyman in Tidewater, Virginia who believed the Quakers and Baptists were aimed at undermining the Church of England, Needless–to-say, Edmund Fanning was one of the Regulators principal targets having confiscating unfortunate Regulators’ property for delinquent taxes at every turn. Col. Edmund Fanning had been found guilty of embezzling money, but was only fined a minuscule amount, which only proved the government’s corruption to the Regulators.
At an unfortunate moment with feeling between the two opposing sides come to a peak, when officials in Hillsborough seized a Regulator's horse, saddle, and bridle and sold them for taxes. Outraged, a band of Regulators rode into Hillsborough, rescued the horse, and before leaving town, fired several shots into Edmund Fanning's house. Fanning, who was in court in Halifax, immediately ordered the arrest of three Regulators who played a big role in the Hillsborough horse incident, William Butler, Peter Craven, and Ninian Beall Hamilton. The majority citizens of Orange County were sympathetic with the Regulators, but Fanning gathered a handful of armed men and assisted the sheriff in arresting the guilty Regulators, the men were charged with inciting the people to rebellion and were confined in the Hillsborough jail.
While small acts of violence had been taking place for some time, mainly out of resentment, the first organized conflict was in Mecklenburg County in 1765.
The Regulators pursued their purpose with tremendous force. They broke into courts of justice, drove judges from the bench and set up mock trials. They dragged unoffending attorneys through the streets almost until death and publicly assaulted peaceful citizens who refused to express public sympathy for the Regulation.
In September, 1770, Judge Richard Henderson was presiding over the superior court in Hillsborough when a mob of one hundred fifty Regulators, armed with sticks and switches, broke into the courthouse, attempted to strike the judge, and forced him to leave the bench.
Edmund Fanning was pulled out from the courthouse by his heels and dragged from the courthouse before being brutally whipped. The mob then broke into Fanning's house, burned his papers, destroyed his furniture, and demolished and burned the building. Many others were whipped as the Regulators rioted through the streets of Hillsborough. Windows of private homes were broken and the inhabitants of the town were terrorized. Court was adjourned when Judge Henderson was unable to keep order.
On March 19, 1771 Tyron called for volunteers for the militia, he offered a payment of forty shillings. The offer helped tremendously, and on April 23 the troops got under way. Guns, ammunition, and other equipment for these troops had been sent at Tryon's request from Fort Johnston on the Cape Fear River.
General Hugh Waddell was ordered to march to Salisbury to halt the advances of the Rowan County Regulators, to retrieve the western militia, and then march to Hillsborough from the west. There were 1,068 men; 151 were officers.
General Waddell, Tryon left Hillsborough on May 11, leading the militia through the heart of "Regulator country." On the fourteenth day they reached the banks of Alamance Creek where they rested for a day. On May 16, 1771, Tryon ordered his army into battle formation. With these troops Tryon was set to destroy a large body of Regulators reported assembled five miles ahead. The Regulators, estimated at about 2,000, were waiting for Tryon's confrontation.
While the inland section of the colony had once been predominately composed of planters with an agriculture based economy, merchants and lawyers from the coastal area began to move west, upsetting the current social and political structure. At the same time, the local agricultural community was suffering from a deep economic depression, due to severe droughts throughout the past decade. The loss of crops caused farmers to lose not only their direct food source, but primary means of income, which led many to rely on the goods being brought in by newly arrived merchants.
Since income was cut off, the local planters often fell into debt, which could not be paid off immediately. In turn the merchants would rely on lawyers and the court to settle the debate. Debts were not uncommon at the time, but from 1755 to 1765 the number of cases brought to the docket increased 15 fold, from 7 annually to 111 in Orange County alone.
Court cases could often lead to planters losing their homes and property, who naturally grew to resent the presence of the new merchants and the lawyers. The shift in population and politics eventually led to an imbalance within the colony's courthouses, where the newly arrived and well educated lawyers used their superior knowledge of the law to their unjust advantage.
A small clique of wealthy officials formed, and became an exclusive inner circle in charge of the legal affairs of the area. The group was seen as a 'courthouse ring', or a small bunch of officials who obtained most of the political power for themselves.
By 1764, thousands of people from North Carolina, mainly from Orange, Anson, and Granville counties in the western region, were extremely dissatisfied with the wealthy North Carolina officials, whom they considered cruel, arbitrary, tyrannical and corrupt. Taxes were collected by local sheriffs supported by the courts; the sheriffs and courts had sole control over their local regions.
North Carolina was a hotbed of rebellion against royal authority from the beginning of tensions with England. North Carolina was the site of the "War of the Regulation," a conflict that lasted from 1760 to 1771. This "war" was an effort of poor western farmers to remove corrupt officials in the more prosperous east who were oppressing them with high taxes. The movement was finally defeated at the Battle of Alamance in 1771.
Many of the officers were deemed to be very greedy and often would band together with other local officials for their own personal gain. The entire system depended on the integrity of local officials, many of whom engaged in extortion; taxes collected often enriched the tax collectors directly. At times, sheriffs would intentionally remove records of their tax collection in order to further tax citizens. The system was endorsed by the colonial governor, who feared losing the support of the various county officials. The effort to eliminate this system of government became known as the Regulator uprising, War of the Regulation, or the Regulator War.
The most heavily affected areas were said to be that of Rowan, Anson, Orange, Granville, and Cumberland counties. It was a struggle between mostly lower class citizens, who made up the majority of the population of North Carolina, and the wealthy ruling class, who comprised about 5% of the population, yet maintained almost total control of the government.
The primary aim of the Regulators was to form an honest government and reduce taxation. The wealthy businessmen/politicians that ruled North Carolina at this point, saw this as a grave threat to their power. Ultimately they brought in militia to curb their anti-government sentiments and crush any efforts to start a rebellion. It is estimated that out of the 8,000 people living in Orange County at the time, some six or seven thousand of them were in support of the Regulators.
Although the "War of the Regulators" is considered by some to be one of the first acts of the American Revolutionary War, it was waged against corrupt local officials and not against the king or crown.
Edmund Fanning graduated from Yale in 1757 and studied law in New York, before moving by 1761 to North Carolina, where his brother Dr. William Fanning was the first rector of St. George's Parish in Northampton County. He served as the register of deeds, 1763-1768, and was also a judge of superior court and a militia colonel.
Governor William Tryon assumed the position following the death of Governor Dobbs. Tryon had an extremely lavish home built in 1770 in New Bern (now known as Tryon Palace), which became one of the main points of resentment for the Regulators, who were already paying substantial taxes. William (The Regulator) Butler was quoted as saying "We are determined not to pay the Tax for the next three years, for the Edifice or Governor's House, nor will we pay for it."
The Regulator Movement.
The years preceding the American Revolution many people in North Carolina experienced strong feelings of discontent with the way in which the provincial government's officials were conducting the affairs of the colony. The Regulator Movement in mid-eighteenth-century North Carolina was a rebellion initiated by residents of the colony's inland region, or backcountry, who believed that royal government officials were charging them excessive fees, falsifying records, and engaging in other mistreatments. The movement's name refers to the desire of these citizens to regulate their own affairsTheir quarrel was not with the form of government or the body of laws, but with the abuses and malpractices of those empowered to administer that government and those laws.
In 1764, several thousand people from North Carolina, mainly from Orange, Anson, and Granville counties in the western region, were extremely dissatisfied with North Carolina officials whom they considered cruel, arbitrary, tyrannical and corrupt.
"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.
While the inland section of the colony had once been predominately composed of planters with an agriculture based economy, merchants and lawyers from the coastal area began to move west, upsetting the current social and political structure. At the same time, the local agricultural community was suffering from a deep economic depression, due to severe droughts throughout the past decade.
The loss of crops caused farmers to lose not only their direct food source, but primary means of income, which led many to rely on the goods being brought in by newly arrived merchants.
Since income was cut off, the local planters often fell into debt, which could not be paid off immediately. In turn the merchants would rely on lawyers and the court to settle the debate. Debts were not uncommon at the time, but from 1755 to 1765 the number of cases brought to the docket increased 15 fold, from 7 annually to 111 in Orange County alone. Grievances included excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, and illegal fees.
The sheriffs and courts had sole control over their local regions. Many of the officers would band together with other local officials for their own personal gain. The entire system—which depended on the integrity of local officials, many of whom engaged in extortion; taxes collected often enriched the tax collectors directly. At times, sheriffs would intentionally remove records of their tax collection in order to further tax citizens. The system was endorsed by the colonial governor, who feared losing the support of the various county officials.
Some settlers like the Ellis’ and Davidsons simply moved their families further southwest out of Orange County, into the frontier where no county courts, unfair taxes and fees from the newly implemented Stamp Act existed, and self appointed bands of men styling themselves as Regulators provided law enforcement.
Those residing in the western part of the province, were isolated and out of sympathy with the easterners; it was from these frontier counties that the War of Regulation originated and grew.
The citizens of Anson, Orange, and Granville counties were the first to make themselves heard. In 1764, this band of citizens, referred to by the eastern planter society as “the mob," created a number of local disturbances until Governor Arthur Dobbs passed a proclamation forbidding the collection of illegal fees, the practice that the people complained of the most. Their protests were calmed only temporarily. However, the effects 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.
A small clique of wealthy officials formed, and became an exclusive inner circle in charge of the legal affairs of the area. The group was seen as a 'courthouse ring', or a small bunch of officials who obtained most of the political power for themselves. At times, sheriffs would intentionally remove records of their tax collection in order to further tax citizens. The system was endorsed by the colonial governor, who feared losing the support of the various county officials.
The effort to eliminate this system of government became known as the Regulator uprising, War of the Regulation, or the Regulator War. The most heavily affected areas were said to be that of Rowan, Anson, Orange, Granville, and Cumberland counties. A group of men, apparently enthusiastic over the success of the Sons of Liberty in resisting the Stamp Act, called citizens together to determine whether they were being treated justly or not.
Minor oppositions continued to occur until the spring of 1768 when the sheriff of Orange County announced he would be collecting taxes at certain areas of the colony only, and if colonists did not pay at these particular locations a charge would be incurred. This occured at about the same time Tryon gave word about the construction of Tryon Palace. This was very inconvenient for the settlers for two reasons. The widely scattered population made it difficult to arrive at these tax stations. Lack of money was also a concern. Opposition to these moves influenced people to join the Regulator association.
The Regulators declared their purpose in a proclamation soon after claiming they would: "assemble ourselves for conference for regulating public grievances and abuses of power, in the following particulars...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 show our dislike and bear open testimony against it.
(3) We will attend all of our meetings as often as we conveniently can...
(4) We will contribute to collections for defraying the necessary expenses attending the work, according to our abilities.
(5) In case of differences in judgement, we will submit to the judgment of the majority of our body.
(6) The Regulators also did not allow drinking of alcohol at their meetings because they knew that different opinions could result in an internal clash.
These meetings often took place at the local church building. Churches that were led by men like Joseph and William Murphy
1764 Riots and disturbances were breaking out at court houses in nearly every major county, the upland farmers were finally considering in organizing and amassing a concerted response to the government, all of which was being cultivated and taking root in local non-Anglican rural churches.
1768, An association of "Regulators" was formed, allied in opposition to what they considered unjust and tyrannical practices of government officials. The wealthier ruling class considered these Regulators to be "a mob."
Discouraged over the failures to secure justice through peaceful negotiations, and considering the government indifference to their distress with deliberate slowness of legal remedies to take effect, the Regulators took a more radical stand. When punitive measures were taken against them, the Regulators defiantly refused to pay fees, and terrorized those who administered the law, and successfully disrupted court proceedings. It fell to the Royal Governor William Tryon to bring this backcountry revolt to a speedy conclusion. In March, 1771, the governor's council, determined to squelch the angry rebel farmers, advised Governor Tryon to call out the militia and to march against the Regulators and their “spiritual” ringleaders.
War of the Regulation
Although the "War of the Regulators" is considered by some to be one of the first acts of the American Revolutionary War, in fact it was against the corrupt local officials, and not against the king or crown.
Governor William Tryon assumed the title and role as the Royal Governor of North Carolina following the death of Governor Dobbs in 1765. In 1770, Tryon had built an extremely lavish home built in New Bern (now known as Tryon's Palace), which became one of the main points of resentment for the Regulators, who were already paying substantial taxes.
Edmund Fanning, a young and ambitious local prosecutor for the crown, crony and henchman of Governor Lord Tyron. He was also the local public registrar for the county and given a commission in the county’s militia, both prime jobs for an up and coming good ol’ boy. Eventually he became the Superior Court justice for the Salisbury district and elevated to the rank of Colonel in the Orange County militia.
With strong-arm assistance of the local sheriff in property confiscation and collusion with other governmental offices, he became the major landowner in the town of Hillsboro, which his friends commonly called Fanningsburg. With his acquisition of power, arrogance towards the locals and apparent streak of cruelty everyone had to pay dearly to do business with Fanning’s office. It was not uncommon for the local Sheriff to embezzle nearly 50% of the local taxes collected. Edmund Fanning and his connections to Governor Tyron came to epitomize everything that was wrong with local government to the great majority of Orange county residents.
Edmund Fanning viewed the backwoods Baptist churches as a hotbed of sedition to the Crown and he made it his single ambition to round them up and tried for sedition, punishable by death. Fanning’s brother was an Anglican clergyman in Tidewater, Virginia who believed the Quakers and Baptists were aimed at undermining the Church of England, Needless–to-say, Edmund Fanning was one of the Regulators principal targets having confiscating unfortunate Regulators’ property for delinquent taxes at every turn. Col. Edmund Fanning had been found guilty of embezzling money, but was only fined a minuscule amount, which only proved the government’s corruption to the Regulators.
At an unfortunate moment with feeling between the two opposing sides come to a peak, when officials in Hillsborough seized a Regulator's horse, saddle, and bridle and sold them for taxes. Outraged, a band of Regulators rode into Hillsborough, rescued the horse, and before leaving town, fired several shots into Edmund Fanning's house. Fanning, who was in court in Halifax, immediately ordered the arrest of three Regulators who played a big role in the Hillsborough horse incident, William Butler, Peter Craven, and Ninian Beall Hamilton. The majority citizens of Orange County were sympathetic with the Regulators, but Fanning gathered a handful of armed men and assisted the sheriff in arresting the guilty Regulators, the men were charged with inciting the people to rebellion and were confined in the Hillsborough jail.
While small acts of violence had been taking place for some time, mainly out of resentment, the first organized conflict was in Mecklenburg County in 1765.
The Regulators pursued their purpose with tremendous force. They broke into courts of justice, drove judges from the bench and set up mock trials. They dragged unoffending attorneys through the streets almost until death and publicly assaulted peaceful citizens who refused to express public sympathy for the Regulation.
In September, 1770, Judge Richard Henderson was presiding over the superior court in Hillsborough when a mob of one hundred fifty Regulators, armed with sticks and switches, broke into the courthouse, attempted to strike the judge, and forced him to leave the bench.
Edmund Fanning was pulled out from the courthouse by his heels and dragged from the courthouse before being brutally whipped. The mob then broke into Fanning's house, burned his papers, destroyed his furniture, and demolished and burned the building. Many others were whipped as the Regulators rioted through the streets of Hillsborough. Windows of private homes were broken and the inhabitants of the town were terrorized. Court was adjourned when Judge Henderson was unable to keep order.
On March 19, 1771 Tyron called for volunteers for the militia, he offered a payment of forty shillings. The offer helped tremendously, and on April 23 the troops got under way. Guns, ammunition, and other equipment for these troops had been sent at Tryon's request from Fort Johnston on the Cape Fear River.
General Hugh Waddell was ordered to march to Salisbury to halt the advances of the Rowan County Regulators, to retrieve the western militia, and then march to Hillsborough from the west. There were 1,068 men; 151 were officers.
General Waddell, Tryon left Hillsborough on May 11, leading the militia through the heart of "Regulator country." On the fourteenth day they reached the banks of Alamance Creek where they rested for a day. On May 16, 1771, Tryon ordered his army into battle formation. With these troops Tryon was set to destroy a large body of Regulators reported assembled five miles ahead. The Regulators, estimated at about 2,000, were waiting for Tryon's confrontation.