A courtroom packed with clubs

The story, from several sources

This account blends Rothbard’s chapter with the other sources listed below and has not yet been separated into Rothbard’s own account and the fuller story. Read Rothbard’s chapter 51 for his account.

By 1770 North Carolina’s Regulators had tried everything legal. They had petitioned, sued, refused taxes and voted, and the courthouse ring around Edmund Fanning of Orange County, who held a string of posts and lived on fees, had beaten each attempt. On Monday, September 24, James Hunter and other Orange Regulators came to Hillsboro with a petition against the sheriffs, officers and juries. A crowd of 150 followed them into the courtroom. Judge Richard Henderson wrote afterward that court opened after eleven and the house filled “as close as one man could stand by another,” some with clubs, others with whips and switches. By Rothbard’s account the crowd then threatened Henderson, beat the lawyer John Williams, and whipped Fanning. A Virginia Gazette correspondent said Fanning was dragged down the courthouse steps. His new house, built on fees, was burned, and Henderson’s in Granville County followed weeks later. Rothbard’s point is that the Regulators had finally copied the Stamp Act rebels, who had shut down the machinery of a corrupt government by force of numbers. The next May the governor’s militia broke them at Alamance.