War of The Regulation - Regulation in South Carolina

Regulation in South Carolina

At the same time as the regulation in North Carolina, the South Carolina colony had a similar group of men calling themselves regulators, albeit with very different goals. The regulators of the south were also farming class, landowning men who were upset with injustices of the officials. However their main problems stemmed not from corruption, but a lack of representation and of government-provided services such as courts and churches. These regulators also found an enemy in local groups of hunters (who were seen as undesirables due to their profession) and bandits. It can be argued that the South Carolina regulation is also a partial cause for the revolutionary war, as the reason it was taking so long for their demands to be met was the struggle with England.

The Regulators of South Carolina were formed during the mid 1760s, and active mainly between 1767 and 1769. Over the past few decades the population of the frontier had boomed, thanks to the planning of governor Robert Johnson. His enthusiasm for sending yeoman out to the frontier in mass was in fact to provide a buffer for the coastal cites from Cherokee attacks. The slave population alone grew 19% (however the entire slave population of the frontier only accounted for 8% of total of the colony).

During this time violent crimes and organized bandit raids threatened the welfare of the settlers inland of the colony. The fallout of the Cherokee war of 1760-1761 left many settlers without homes, and children were abandoned during native raids. These people would fall back on the only trade they could use to sustain themselves and their families, which was hunting for their food. In the colonial period on the western frontier this was not seen as an honorable profession, and hunters were labeled as vagrants and universally hated by the planters. The planters had numerous reasons not to like hunters, as many of them were also bandits that would steal livestock. The method of fire hunting, which was a practice of hunting at night, and using fire to blind deer. However this endangered the livestock of farmers, as hunting in the dark often led to cattle being mistaken for deer. Many unused animal corpses were also left as a result, which drew wolves and scavengers closer to populated areas. Along with this, hunting also pushed well into the boundary of the local natives, the Creek Indians, hurting the already tense relationship with colonists. The bandit problem had become so bad that it was found they had an organized network even larger than the regulators, numbering at roughly 200 strong. Eventually the thieves were bold enough to attack members of the magistrate, and one regulator James Mayson was dragged from his home in the night. The bandits, while originally being composed of the hunting groups, were not an exclusive group. Into their fold they accepted Mulattos (free blacks) and runaway slaves, and any outlaw available. Some members of the bandit network were well established farmers as well.

The South Carolina regulators were a much smaller organization than their North Carolina counterpart. There were 100 known regulators, and of these 32 of them went on to become justices of the peace, and 21 were militia leaders. Of the regulation members, 31 of them owned slaves, and 14 in fact owned 10 or more. These men banded together initially to form a vigilante law force to protect themselves and their assets from bandits. Unlike their neighbors to the north, this was not a rebellion, and in fact South Carolina regulators were in cooperation with their colonial government for their entire active time. The secondary cause of this group was to get courts, churches and schools established in their quickly growing communities. Unfortunately the only court in the colony was in Charleston, through which all legal documentation had to go. In fact, the inland settlers had the sympathy of the coastal elite, but the circuit court act, which would establish the jails, courts, sheriffs and 14 judicial districts, was held up due to a dispute with Parliament concerning the tenure of judges.

In stark contrast to the outcome of Herman Husband's Sandy Creek association and regulators, the South Carolina regulation movement was a great success. Their manifesto, written by Anglican missionary Rev. Charles Woodmason forcefully argued their case. Eventually a series of acts were passed that met the needs of the yeoman frontiersman. These included vagrancy acts, which outlawed many staples of hunter lifestyle, such as their trespassing on native lands. This, coupled with the 1769 ordinance for the preservation of wolves, which prevented the act of fire hunting, led to many hunters being whipped and banished from the area. In 1768 the Charleston grand jury began urging the creations of new schools in the back country, as per regulator request. And finally in 1769 the circuit court act was passed, making way for the new courthouses and jails, as well as setting up four new judicial districts. The cooperation between frontier and coastal colonists was so effective, that by 1771 Governor Montague of South Carolina had issued a full pardon for any actions taken by the regulators in his state.