James Whittenburg’s essay, “Planters, Merchants, and Lawyers: Social Change and the Origins of the North Carolina Regulation,” opens with a brief overview of the Regulator movement. The author then examines how other historians have interpreted this event (pages 216-219). Whittenburg explains the interpretations and types of evidence used by historians ranging from William Bassett’s 1894 report through M. L. M. Kay’s 1976 reassessment of the Regulator movement. This review of scholarly interpretations is termed historiography, that is, it is the study of how historians think about history. It also provides the context for Whittenburg’s own analysis which then follows as the bulk of his article.
Two more recent interpretations of North Carolina’s Regulator movement are found in the excerpts from Wayne Lee’s 2001 book, Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture of Violence in Riot and War (MPEAR 102-115) and the introduction and first chapter of Marjolene Kars, Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina.
For this paper you are to examine how historians Whittenburg, Lee, and Kars interpreted North Carolina’s Regulator Movement. You are encouraged to model your paper on historiographic section of Whittenburg’s essay (pages 216-219). Questions/topics you should consider include the following:
Types of evidence examined by each author.
Context of each author’s interpretation. In other words, what broader social and economic movements do the authors refer to in explaining the Regulators?
How does each author define the Regulator movement?
What are the key similarities and differences in each author’s views of the Regulator movement?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of each interpretation?
How might each of these interpretations influence our understanding of the Revolutionary era overall?
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