This letter may be regarded, upon the whole, as an impartial account of the Regulation movement in South Carolina.[90] It exhibits the character of those who were taking the lead in the matter, and indicates the objects which they proposed to accomplish. It also indicates that their usual procedure was to whip and banish all persons whom they considered inimical to the interests of the community. In this respect the Regulation movement in South Carolina closely resembled the Regulation movement in North Carolina. It may be said, therefore, that lynch-law was in operation at this time in the Carolinas, though not known by that name. The practice of administering corporal punishment for reformatory or corrective purposes, the practice of “regulating” public offenders and public grievances, is the essence of lynch-law procedure. As events shaped themselves for the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775, conditions became such as to encourage the frequent use of summary methods of redressing grievances in all of the colonies. The increasing dissatisfaction among the colonists with the way they were being governed by the mother country, the obnoxious Stamp Act and other measures which they thought to be unjustly imposed upon them, rendered recourse to summary procedure not only easy but popularly justifiable.[91] It was a time of excitement when neighbor looked upon neighbor with suspicion and the slightest offense was deemed worthy of severe punishment. Social conditions were unsettled; the civil authorities were fast losing the respect and support of the people in the community; threats and taunts, satire and insult, were prevalent.[92] Under such conditions it is not strange that summary procedure came to be in vogue from Maine to Georgia. Furthermore, during the entire period of the Revolutionary War not only were the usual unsettled conditions incident to a war prevailing, but, in addition, there was disaffection and disagreement among the colonists themselves. Almost every community had its Tories who frequently sought, openly or secretly, to further the Royal cause and injure the American cause. In return, the American sympathizers often adopted retaliatory measures against the Tories. In such cases it was hopeless to appeal to the civil or the judicial powers for they were badly disorganized. Not infrequently conditions were such as to preclude action under martial law, and thus the only recourse possible was the popular administration of justice in the form of summary procedure of one sort or another.