Our first-fought field for freedom - ALAMANCE

In doing some genealogical work, I have come across fifth great-grandfather Benjamin Dumas (1728-1796). He served as a private in the North Carolina Continental Regiments.

However, before the Revolution, he was one of the North Carolina Regulators during the 1760s. I had kind of forgotten about those forerunners of the Revolution. There were different Regulators in different states with different agendas, but by and large they were frontier settlers objecting to the graft and corruption of the colonial administrative state. Taxes would be paid, the clerks would claim the records did not reflect the payment and would demand a second payment. In a geographical region where there was virtually no hard currency, possessions would be seized and auctioned in order to satisfy tax demands. Bribes had to be paid to register land and land transfers.

Basically, citizens were tired of the Mandarin Class squeezing them for the pleasure of the Mandarins. They did not object to government. They objected to bad government. They objected to government that preyed upon them.

As has been said, "History never repeats itself but it rhymes."

It is hard not to see echoes of the Regulators in the revulsion of citizens for their establishment parties all across the OECD.

Some background is available through the Wikipedia entry for War of the Regulation, including the Battle of Alamance.

Another site with some more local documentation is here. It includes this poetic tribute to the Regulators.

Alamance
by Seymour W. Whiting

No stately column marks the hallowed place
Where in silence sleeps their sacred dust,
The first free martyrs of a glorious race-
Their fame a people's wealth, a nation's trust.

The rustic ploughman at the early morn
The yielding furrow turns with heedless tread,
Or tends with frugal care the springing corn,
Where tyrants conquered and where heroes bled.

Above their tomb the golden harvest waves,
The glorious stars stand sentinel on high,
While in sad requiem near their turfless graves
The great Alamance slowly moaning murmurs by.


No stern ambition waved them to the deed:
In Freedom's cause they nobly dared to die.
The first to conquer, or the first to bleed,
"God and their country's right," their battle cry.

But holier watchers here their vigil keep
Than storied urn or monumental stone;
For love and justice guard their dreamless sleep
And plenty smiles above their bloody home.

Immortal youth shall crown their deathless fame,
And as their country's glories still advance,
Shall brighter glow, o'er all the earth thy name,
Our first-fought field for freedom - ALAMANCE.