Book Reviews
Farming Dissenters: The Regulator Mollement in Piedmont North Carolina. By Carole Watterson
Troxler. (Raleigh: Office of Archives and History, N.C. Department of Cultural Resources,
2011. Foreword, introduction, illustrations, appendixes, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pp. xiii,
221. $24.79, paper [includes tax and shipping]. Order from the Historical Publications Section
at http://nc-historical-publications.stores.yahoo.net/. )
Carole Troxler, professor emérita of history at Elon University and recognized
authority on the Piedmont region of North Carolina and the Loyalists of the American
Revolution, has undertaken a treatment of the most historiographically exciting and
controversial topic in North Carolina's past. In Farming Dissenters, she investigates the
Regulation or Regulator Movement, a widespread protest movement among backcountry or Piedmont farmers that began with the Sandy Creek Association in Orange
County in 1766, broadened with the appearance of Regulator organizations in 1768,
and culminated in the Battle of Alamance in May 1771, in which Gov. William Tryon
with loyal militia defeated the Regulators. Although the movement was broken, its
egalitarian, anti-authoritarian impulse continued to infuse backcountry life, American
Revolutionary ideology, and western settlements beyond North Carolina to which
former Regulators migrated.
Troxler presents an extraordinarily detailed account of the progression of the
Regulation, as well as its historical antecedents, from the formation of the Sandy Creek
Association, "a touchstone for understanding the substance and dynamics of the
Regulation" (p. 29), to the Battle of Alamance in what is the best account available of
the bloodiest confrontation among white English colonials in the eighteenth century.
Subsequently, she considers Tryon's brutal retaliation against backcountry farmers in
the aftermath of the battle, later attempts of easterners to attract former Regulators to the
American Revolutionary cause—likely unsuccessfiil—and, in conclusion, the tribulations of erstwhile Regulators as they adapted to changes engendered by the Revolution.
Although Troxler does not grapple with the extensive historiography of the Regulation in the narrative, instead addressing the subject briefly in an appendix, she seems to
reject the view that the Regulators were proto-revolutionaries. Rather, they assumed
the guise of Whiggish protesters who fought onerous taxes, corrupt public officials, and
an unresponsive, oligarchic government. At the same time, following recent historians,
the author emphasizes the prominent role that hackcountry religion played in shaping
Regulator attitudes toward society and government. However, unlike her predecessors,
Troxler particularly locates the origins of Regulator ecclesiastical and political attitudes
in the English and Scottish dissenting tradition of the seventeenth century and the
constitutional crisis evoked by the Glorious Revolution and its aftermath.
In addition to tracing the spiritual and intellectual origins of the Regulation to
seventeenth-century England and Scotland, the volume abounds with evocative
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BOOK REVIEWS
observations. Troxler defends the integrity of the legal profession in colonial North
Carolina, though not the practices of individual lawyers; explains the importance of the
term "association"; believes that westerners opposed slavery on economic, not moral
grounds; and finds that Regulators, like nominal leader Herman Husband, were landspeculating, market-oriented agrarians whose capitalist proclivities were circumscribed
by an evangelical Christian ethic that emphasized virtue and moral reform. Moreover,
the author carefully analyzes the Rachel Wright controversy within the Quaker
community that paved the way for the rise to prominence of Husband, who used the
"existing issues to seize the moral high ground, to attract yeomen of substance and
conviction to act with him, and to raise his own profile" (p. 58).
With numerous lengthy quotations and many fine illustrations, this nuanced account
of the Regulation gives the reader a feel for the era that imparts sympathy for the plight
of the backcountry farmers. Of course, in a volume of such intricate detail, a few minor
discrepancies not unexpectedly intrude: fees were not set by the Privy Council (p. 5),
the term "proclamation money" did not derive from a "proclamation" by the legislature
(p. 20), and the Samuel Johnston in question was not an Onslow County planter but an
Edenton lawyer (p. 92). Cavils aside. Farming Dissenters constitutes a thoroughly
researched volume whose subject should attract all scholars interested in the early
history of North Carolina.
Alan D. Watson
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Captured at Kings Mountain.- The Journal of Uzal Johnson, a Loyalist Surgeon. Edited by Wade S.
Kolblll and Robert M. Weir. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011. Preface,
introduction, editorial tnethod, illustrations, maps, the journal, notes to the journal, bibliography, index. Pp. lix, 182. $39.95.)
The Battle of Kings Mountain in October 1780 is probably one of the best documented battles of the American Revolution, thanks to the tireless efforts of nineteenthcentury historian, archivist, and antiquarian Lyman C. Draper. His book King's
Mountain and Its Heroes (1881) remains an indispensable source because of such
firsthand narratives as Anthony Allaire's "Memorandum of Occurrences during the
Campaign of 1780."
Now Wade S. Kolb III, an attorney and clerk of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Eleventh Circuit, and Robert M. Weir, a distinguished historian of the American
Revolution at the University of South Carolina, have edited and published the journal
of Uzal Johnson. Kolb is a former student of Weir's. When they were preparing to
publish Johnson's 121-page manuscript from the Elias Boudinot Papers at Princeton
University, the editors discovered verbatim portions of Allaire's account in Johnson's
journal. Allaire and Johnson were close friends who traveled together during the
campaign through the Georgia and Carolinas backcountry beginning in March 1780.
The editors conclude, however, that while both journals are likely authentic, the
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