Funny how something that happened 250 years ago can sound so similar to events of today.

North Carolina in the 1760s and 1770s was a British crown colony, and it suffered a fate common to such colonies: It suffered under a lot of bad crown officials. The people who ran the government were often on the take, and would use their powers to levy fines and fees that were not really due them -- and, when they weren't paid, would use the failure to pay as an excuse to levy more fines. It was, without doubt, an abusive system. And, since the government appointed the judges, there was little legal recourse.

Throw into this mix an extremely high-handed Royal Governor, William Tryon, and a bunch of independent mountain anarchist types who didn't want any government at all, and you had an explosive mix. The name "Regulators" arose because most of the people of western North Carolina wanted to "regulate" their own affairs. They gradually increased their degree of defiance until the courts and sheriffs could no longer function in the western counties. A more sympathetic governor might have tried to clean up the government in the west. Tryon instead called out the militia.

The big meeting of the Regulators and Tryon's forces was at the Alamance in 1771. Our information about what happened is a little limited, but it's pretty clear that the Regulators outnumbered Tryon's 1500 or so militia by at least three to two. However, Tryon had a number of advantages. First, he was able to call upon the government's artillery and supplies; the Regulators had no heavy weapons. Indeed, many of them had no weapons at all other than clubs and sticks and the like. Even more important, the Regulators were often the sort of far-right types that are familiar today; they weren't going to have no stinkin' leaders, not them. They weren't an army; they were a mob, with no organizatin larger than a company. They could not execute a plan; they could only sit there and wait for Tryon's better-organized troops to attack.

And attack he did, and although casualties were fairly light, he forced the Regulators from the field. Most of the Regulators fled, taking their injured with them. Tryon captured a few, and hung some of them, though he eventually offered a pardon of sorts for those who would take an oath of loyalty. In the short term, the War of the Regulation was over. But less than five years later, the American colonies would rise against the British for grievances that were generally less than those the Regulators had suffered.

This is a short little booklet -- 32 pages plus a map, and two of those 32 pages are the cover page, one is blank, four are the bibliography, plus there are about six pages of illustrations. Obviously there isn't much depth to it. And yet, it feels like a good general summary; there is no bogging down in details, but neither are there a lot of loose ends. Other than Tryon, the only person who gets much ink is Edmund Fanning, the worst of all the lesser officials, who became the subject of several Regulator songs condemning his rapacity. He makes a good example of just how bad the government of North Carolina was. The booklet was written three-quarters of a century ago as a sort of official product to celebrate North Carolina history. I don't know if it's still available in any form. But if you're interested in pre-Revolutionary protests against the Crown, or want to know about an interesting bit of North Carolina history, it' a good place to start. ( )

This leaflet describes the rise and fall of the Regulator movement and the battle of Alamance in North Carolina on May 16, 1771.