Government Agents Attempt to Seize Western Ranches — in 1771
There are many events in the history of the formation of this Republic that go unnoticed, unremembered, and unheralded. Today is a chance to remedy that and remember the Regulators.
As if cut from today's headlines, patriot farmers and small ranchers in North and South Carolina led a rebellion against armed government officials trying to exercise control over western lands. History has dubbed the uprising the War of the Regulation, the final battle of which happened on May 16 in 1771.
The West in this case, of course, was not Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, but the rural counties of the Carolina backcountry.
Historian James Whittenburg described the events as “the last and greatest of the social upheavals” that led to the War for Independence....
