01/20/2026
Regulators and Moderators
Someone recently asked me Ann Marie, who were the regulators of South Carolina?
I’m just kidding nobody asked me that… I was butting in on someone else’s post. They’ve written a story about the regulators and it sounded so romantic. It detailed how the Woodward men defended the South Carolina backcountry against the lawlessness of the era as well as the tories. The story ended with the senior Woodward’s death.
Y’all remember Joanne Woodward? She married Paul Newman. She was from Spartanburg County. I don’t know if there is a relation, but I imagine there is. Woodward is one of those names that’s been in South Carolina since Anglo names showed up here.
Mr. Thomas Woodward is buried in Fairfield county near Winnsboro, South Carolina. He was the focus of the story and I agree, at first glance, he sounds pretty bad ass. I feel like my family specifically probably owes him a debt of gratitude for their safety and security at the time. Thank you, sir.
My intention in writing this is not to discredit Mr. Thomas Woodward, his ideals, his legacy or the Forgotten South, who chose to write about him.
My intent is to promote accurate history. Please indulge me.
The time period between roughly 1765-1771 birthed the concept of our regulators. It is very easy to see how they were conceptualized. This territory that would become South Carolina was completely lawless. There was no established British entity here. It was the concepts of a plan at best, scribble on some parchment paper.
We came with the only the clothes on our back, the knowledge and skill in our bodies, the will to carve out a new existence, a land grant from King George, an ox cart and maybe some liquor.
We found the area of land that we thought correlated with the grant based on hand drawn maps, and we directed our oxen down dirt trails to get there. When we arrived, we took out our ax and we cut down some tree trees and we built some tiny little roughly hewn cabins. We forged a community with our neighbors in order to survive. Some of us made alliances with indigenous people that already lived here.
My ancestors specifically were the Crankfields, Hogans and Wilsons. The neighboring farms gave homes to the Laughons, the Perrys, the Hogans, the Halls, the Dukes, the Kellys, the Raines to name just a few. It became community of farmsteads. They banded together to look out for one another for safety and they shared their resources in trade.
There was no official town or incorporated area. My people ran a drover station that serviced the drovers who were running livestock between Kentucky and Ohio and the ports in Charleston. Those folks had to have a place to rest  and feed their livestock. The Crankfield farm, where I am from, produced crops just to survive, well before cotton was king.
You raised your own meat and your own vegetables and you wove your own cloth. You brewed your own liquor. The deer, cows or pigs that you killed to eat, you kept the hide and used it for leather just like the Indians did.
In addition to the drover station, a tanner, a mill, perhaps a brothel existed. There were a couple of churches by the late 1700s Bear Creek Baptist and Zion United Methodist emerged . It was minimalistic living, but all your basic needs were covered.
At this time, there were no train tracks. There was no Post Office. There was no town of Blythewood. The Doko name hadn’t even been adopted yet. This was backwoods, bare bones, sink or swim, carve your existence or die trying living.
I have read accounts from historians or other observers of the day who made notes about the inhabitants in this time period of South Carolina history. They were described as somewhat feral with a large affinity to drunkenness and lawlessness.  We have not changed much. Think of fraternity parties you may have attended.
So all this lawlessness without structure and people just kinda doing whatever the heck they felt like doing facilitated an environment that bands of marauders and thieves would r**e, steal, pillage and generally traumatize the good people of the area.
Additionally the Cherokee Wars from roughly 1760 to 1761 consisted of raids against settlers moving into their hunting territories.
At the time, some white folks were still looking to England to perhaps help us out and there was, in effect, no help to speak of. There was however, some taxation without representation going on, but that’s another story that culminates in Boston, Massachusetts.
So for a while the citizens of the backwoods suffered with extra insult to injury. People like the Woodwards said “you know what? We need to protect ourselves because nobody’s gonna do it for us. Come on you guys ride with us. Let’s goooooooooooooooo!”
They recognized a distinct need. They organized themselves into a vigilante militia type force, and they rode out and they found the people that were robbing and pillaging, they killed them or ran them out. They did serve a positive purpose to preserve the livelihood of the people that had come to this territory to create their new lives with the opportunity King George had given them.
The citizens and regulators responded with violent efforts that destroyed Cherokee towns and forced land cessions. This as well as epidemic among indigenous people that killed many or rendered them unable to fight, essentially ending the Indian wars.
But problems lay in the fact that we were citizens both united and divided at the same time. Generally, we had all come here for the same reason that I just described. Generally, we were all subject to the same taxation without representation and lawless backcountry environment.
As our nation started to think about complete independence, we had some neighbors that were comfortable staying in an alliance with Britain for safety or power or whatever reasons they had. Other neighbors wanted to sever that tie sharply.
Not everybody had the same religious convictions. Not everybody had the same morals and ethics.
It was a confusing time. You couldn’t tell who was who. Some of the Wilsons had their livestock butchered by the British even though they were supposedly sympathizers. We pondered why that happened. And it is my opinion it is because nobody could tell who was for who. It was a confusing, chaotic and dark time.
So What to do when you’ve defeated most of the people creating danger and you’ve eliminated the Indians threat?What to do? What to do?
Can you guess where this is going?

What if you take your power and turn it on your political enemies? What if you try to make people be moral with a threat of or actual violence? 
What if you decide that you’re going to be the judge jury and executioner because you can? Because there’s no one stopping you? Because you eliminated all of the things that would prevent you from doing so….. or at least that’s what you thought.
Praise Jesus, in 1769 some smart guys with foresight and insight had a vision that we needed to do better got together and established essentially the first circuit court of South Carolina. They had a specific intent of reigning in the increased violence and lawlessness that the regulators were creating. These were primarily prosperous businessmen that knew how things worked and had the capacity to think about complex issues and solve them. They offered up the voice of reason.  They called themselves “the Moderators.”
They said “look y’all we cannot have this. We know we have legal frameworks available. We were using them in England and we’re gonna use them here and we’re not going to live this way. This is insanity. You cannot force morality on people with threats of violence. You just can’t. Stop it. You are too much, too big for your britches, too unregulated yourselves…. Check it before you wreck it, boys.”
And thank God they checked them. Because they were, in fact, wrecking it.
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And that’s why it’s so important to tell the whole story of how the regulators of South Carolina served a purpose for a brief period of time in a very particular set of circumstances, but they lacked the morals and ethics that they needed to be successful for all of our people. 
That, in my humble opinion, is what’s required for effective leadership. Otherwise you become an example of what not to do in a blip of our history….something we had to overcome….. something we look back in gratitude and thanks that we did in fact overcome it.
