Perhaps, as we continue the saga of Cabarrus County's Black Boys, there is a third option for why they blew up King George's ammunition train in 1771, other than hatred of the king or sympathy for the rebelling Regulators in the Hillsborough/Greensboro area.
It seems likely to me that the Black Boys' gunpowder plot -- treasonous, in King George's eyes -- was a bit of both: Hatred of the king, as well as sympathy for the Regulators, who had long been cheated in many ways by various county officials -- Americans all, sad to say -- in their various legal transactions.
We'll never know for sure. Historians have disagreed on this question over the centuries.
At any rate, in March 1925, F.M. Williams, the "scholarly lawyer" from Newton whose letter in The Charlotte Observer attacked our Black Boys, tried to claim that both the Regulators and the Black Boys, when the Revolution began, were not fighting for America.
In a tactful but vigorous rebuttal to Williams' letter, Morrison Caldwell, Concord lawyer and historian, again took exception. He wrote:
"Mr. Williams casts a slur upon the patriotism of the Regulators, because many of them took no active part in the war, and some actually fought for the King.
"It is well to be fair," Caldwell wrote. "If Mr. Williams will examine these Colonial Records he will discover that (royal) Governor (William) Tryon, after the defeat of the Regulators, had compelled them all to take oath ever after to support the King.
"They were liberty-loving, but God-fearing men, who regarded the sanctity of an oath.
"Fortunately for the future of this Commonwealth, Rev. David Caldwell and other ministers advised that when the sovereign ceases to protect and begins to oppress, the oaths of the subject to submit ceases."
And history tells us that the king and royal Gov. Tryon did oppress.
Caldwell continued that Williams also was "concerned to know what the `Black Boys' did during the Revolution."
Referring to the two traitors -- who were Black Boys themselves, and who betrayed the other seven to their English pursuers -- Caldwell wrote that those two were the only ones who took that oath to serve the king.
One of them did fight for America. The other committed suicide. Our 1770s people here never really forgave the surviving traitor. He is buried in an unmarked grave.
Most of the other seven Black Boys served America well during its fight for independence, Caldwell wrote.
He concluded his rebuttal of Williams' accusations: "They were soldiers, all of them, and right nobly did they finish the work they began in May 1771."
Now, a few paragraphs explaining more about the Regulators:
Caldwell wrote that Col. William L. Saunders, who edited a history of these events, made a "magnificent and unanswerable argument against the unjust and unwarranted aspersions upon the patriotism of the Regulators."
Their petitions presented to the judges and Governor Tryon by the Regulators "contain the complaints of the Regulators couched in their own language.
"They give no indication of a want of education, patriotism or regard for law.
"Verily, the Regulators (who had been accused of being ignorant troublemakers) might be content to rest their case upon these petitions....
"Of the 47 Sections of the State Constitution adopted in l776, 13, more than one-fourth, are the embodiment of reforms sought by the Regulators, and yet, though many men have maligned the unhappy Regulators, no man has dared reflect upon the `patriots of '76' who thus brought to such a glorious end the struggle the Regulators began, and in which they fought, bled and died.
"The War of Regulation ended not with the Battle of Alamance, but with the adoption of the State Constitution in 1776."
So it would seem that those much-maligned pioneers, in the end, could feel a deep sense of satisfaction for their efforts -- though they paid for it dearly, sometimes tragically.
All this, of course, seems reflected on our Cabarrus Black Boys. So we can honor them as we wish.
A Look Back Helen
Arthur-
Cornett
