For history buffs. Betty Pace <snip> From: "Linda Brunner" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2002 07:40:30 -0500 Subject: [NCGuilford] New Regulator Book There is a newly published book on Regulators that I just finished and recommend to anyone interested in Regulator history: "Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina," by Marjoleine Kars, University of North Carolina Press, 2002. It's a trade paperback for $20. An historical rather than a genealogical book, it covers a lot of territory other than just the petitions, riots and battle at Alamance, including the economic and social life of the Piedmont farmers, class issues, religious thought, legal problems, the political climate of the Stamp Act, and the tensions between the Eastern and Piedmont areas of North Carolina. It is heavily referenced and has a killer bibliography for those like me who are always looking for new books. It's a really good book if you like history. The author's conclusions were interesting to me too, given that I have read in several places that the area between the Haw and Deep Rivers was a hotbed of Tory sympathies because of the Regulation and the subsequent oaths of allegiance. Here are some quotes to show what I mean: P. 204. After Tryon devastated the back country following the rout at Alamance, "Soaked and disheartened, thousands of Piedmont farmers waded across swollen streams to deliver up their arms and to take the hated oath. While Tryon's army was camped at Husband's plantation on Sandy Creek, 1,300 alone came to take the oath. Eventually, more than 6,400 men , or about three-quarters of the free male population of the Piedmont took the oath...." P. 208. "Once news of the Battle of Alamance spread, sympathy for the Regulation grew outside of North Carolina.... Sons of Liberty stressed the parallels between themselves and the Regulators.... North Carolina Sons of Liberty labored hard to undercut this initial impression beyond the colony...." [This is the tension between the ruling elite in eastern NC and the backcountry farmers.] P. 212-3. "In the years before the War of Independence, it was increasing clear to North Carolina elites that many Piedmont inhabitants had little sympathy for the Whig cause.... Piedmont inhabitants, like most colonists, took their stand on the revolutionary cause based on religious and political principles as well as a broad understanding of political realities, resentment of those, both Tories and Whigs, who had so recently defeated them, and a desire not to get burned again. ...the Moravians remarked in their diary that '...the last Regulator Rebellion, which cost many lives and brought many into poverty and need [because of Tryon's indiscriminate burning of crops and farms], has made people afraid of hurting themselves again...'" P. 213. "Many radical preachers advocated pacifism or outright opposition to the anti-imperial cause.... Others advocated, and enforced, neutrality....[Minister James] Miles claimed to have effected a union of ten churches in the Piedmont which agreed to remain neutral...." P. 214. "Whether North Carolina farmers decided to throw in their lot with the Tories or the Whigs, or tried to remain aloof from the conflict, none of them saw the fundamental changes they had fought for in the Regulation become reality. The war for American Independence brought vicious and costly civil conflict to the Piedmont, but when it was over, much the same men and the same social system remained in place." . ______________________________