3. When they hauled wheat to Cross Creek, now Fayetteville, it realized but little more than enough to pay for the salt needed in the family. Sugar and coffee were luxuries in which they rarely indulged. It can thus be seen how cruel would have been even an honest collection of what the laws demanded of these recent settlers as taxes. When these sums were enormously increased by dishonest sheriffs the farmers were in despair, for it was beyond their power to pay. 4. The farmers knew they were being cheated, and resolved to put an end to such practices. Colonel Edmund Fanning, of Hillsboro, in Orange county, was growing rich as Register of Deeds, and was the ringleader in this oppression of the people. 5. In this same county lived Herman Husbands, who was a Quaker preacher, and, though of limited education, was a man of considerable natural abilities. He prevailed on his neighbors at Sandy Creek to form an association for mutual protection against the wrongs of the public officers. His organization was known as the "Regulators," and they were to help each other in the lawsuits and indictments growing out of a refusal to pay unlawful demands. 6. This was wise and proper, as these men were not rebellious, but only desired relief from oppression, but Husbands should have joined the league he was thus creating, and thereby shared the liabilities of the members. This he would not do, but preached and harangued until the people were in a fever of excitement. 1768. 7. The first trouble grew out of a seizure of a horse from one of two men sent to Hillsboro on a mission to the sheriff. The Regulators retook the horse by force, and fired into the roof of Colonel Fanning's house. That night Husbands was arrested and carried to Hillsboro, and gave bail for his appearance at the next Superior Court. He had hardly left Hillsboro before seven hundred men came to his rescue; they went away with promises made by Isaac Edwards, who was Tryon's Secretary, that the Governor would redress their wrongs. 8. Governor Tryon went to Hillsboro in a few weeks, but condemned only the people who had asked his aid, and, after going further west, came back to the Superior Court with an army of eleven hundred men, which he had raised in Mecklenburg and Rowan counties. Husbands was acquitted on trial, but three other Regulators were heavily fined and imprisoned. Colonel Fanning was convicted in five cases of extortion in office, and the judges, to their shame, imposed a fine of only one penny in each case.