The War of the Regulation Part Two- The plight of Western North Carolina by Jim Curran

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The War of the Regulation Part Two- The plight of Western North Carolina

Persecution took many forms in the colonies. In New England church doors were padlocked, and preachers beaten and jailed by the state Congregational “church.” In Virginia and North Carolina the state church was the Anglican “church” and it persecuted the Baptists in different ways. In Virginia the Separate Baptists were harassed, beaten, and thrown in jail. This alone was ineffective in silencing them for they preached through the jail bars. To silence them their hands were slashed, their faces were pressed against the bars, sulfur was burnt, they were spit upon and suffered many other indignities- yet none of that deterred them or their listeners.In North Carolina the situation was a little different as the Western land where much of the Baptist growth had been was more sparsely populated and far from the more centralized government in the eastern part of the colony. Hillsborough was the chief center of government for the eastern part of the state. Here the Eastern Anglican aristocracy was a world away from the western farmer. The same could be said for the Anglican “church.” The governor William Tryon had made it a point to establish the Anglican “church” and had even been granted full authority by the Bishop of London over the clergy. Most of the Anglican parishes had seen nary a minister for many years yet the people Anglican or not were forced to pay vestry taxes to support a minister and church most had never seen and as the Baptists increased absolutely disagreed with. Yet if you failed to pay that tax and many others that largely supported a corrupt rich aristocracy your lands and goods were impounded and sold for pennies on the dollar. There was also massive corruption found among the government officials in Western North Carolina and much of this centered upon Edmund Fanning. One could also argue that the government in the east was also corrupt as Tryon was also building a palace from other taxes laid upon poor farmers and the people of the colony. The taxes and fees were imposed in ways that the farmer could not pay and when they did not their goods and lands were confiscated and sold for pennies of their value. Herman Husband notes that the officials and lawyers were also a Masonic club which Fanning boasted had extended so far that it would be vain for the planters or common people to oppose it. (It is of note that the site where Edmund Fanning’s house was located is now the Masonic temple in Hillsborough. I have been unable to determine if Tryon was one as well) Another chief concern were other laws that were in favor of the establishment and onerous to the Baptists Chief among them was the marriage act. “By the Act of 1741 the right to officiate at marriages was confined to ministers of the Church of England and in those parishes where no minister was settled to justices of the peace. Each of the couple desiring to marry was required to give a bond with the Clerk of the Court in the sum of fifty pounds that there was no legal obstruction to the marriage; then they might be married either by securing a license or on the publication of banns in accord with the rubric of the Book of Common Prayer.” (Paschal History of NC Baptists) To understand what this meant those wanting to get married would either have their names read for a period of three weeks in the ANGLICAN CHURCH ONLY or be forced to get a license which was quite profitable to the Anglican church and the government. The marriage license fee was 1 pound (about $250 US) which half went to the Governor and a quarter to the Anglican minister (about $62.50 today) This law was the subject of a petition from the inhabitants of Tryon County in 1769, one of the complaints in a petition from Orange and Rowan County as well as noted in others. Even though some pretenses were made to the Presbyterians to allow their marriages the Baptists were given no such privilege and their marriages were outlawed. The Baptists stood against this and continued their practices of marrying (One Anglican Mr Drage of Salisbury complained of the “Anabaptists” marrying and bidding him defiance and not paying him his marriage fees) This law was not repealed until the revolution in 1778. Into this stepped a new group called “The Regulators.” They wanted to regulate the power of the government in the western part of the colony and they rightly saw many of the actions of the government as unjust. We will examine their makeup in the next two installments but they were united in seeking freedom and reform of government. They in most ways had little way to address their grievances for the very ones that any grievance was to be addressed to were the very ones causing them! They sent petitions to the governor and the legislature which fell on deaf ears and even silent ears when the governor dissolved the legislature. The redresses boiled over into mob action in 1770 when the court at Hillsborough was attacked. Even the courts that were supposed to give them justice made it impossible to secure any redress. There was a large protest in 1768 there. Fanning was convicted of extortion in 1768 yet when the wronged people sought redress they found the grand juries stacked against them. Anyone daring to seek redress was also called into court under a malicious prosecution. A letter was even sent to the court signed by 174 men in favor of their redresses but fell on deaf ears. All the frustration boiled over in 1770 in Hillborough. They had protested peacefully on the 22-25 but then tensions boiled over. On March 25 the Regulators packed the courthouse with clubs and whips and demanded to be made jury members. They debated for 30 minutes and were disregarded. They would beat a lawyer named Williams outside and renter the courthouse and beat Fanning. Under duress they made agreement with the Regulators. Judge Henderson would promise to hold court but would flee overnight. The next day they ran Fanning out of town and plundered his home and marched an effigy of him through the town and broke a few merchants windows. We certainly could not agree with all what was done but it seems as though some of the reports were sensational and not true (one mentions a long dead body placed in the courthouse- but that is disputed.) Fanning had never paid for the crimes that he had been found guilty of- never paid restitution and was still doing them. These were the actions of frustrated men. As a whole this does not represent all of the Regulators and quite a few argued against it.