conduct the court in
accordance with the behest of the Regulators: namely, that no
lawyer, save the King's Attorney, should be admitted to the
court, and that the Regulators' cases should be tried with new
jurors chosen by the Regulators. With the entire little village
terrorized by this campaign of "frightfulness," and the court
wholly unprotected, Judge Henderson reluctantly acknowledged to
himself that "the power of the judiciary was exhausted."
Nevertheless, he says, "I made every effort in my power
consistent with my office and the duty the public is entitled to
claim to preserve peace and good order." Agreeing under duress to
resume the session the following day, the judge ordered an
adjournment. But being unwilling, on mature reflection, to permit
a mockery of the court and a travesty of justice to be staged
under threat and intimidation, he returned that night to his home
in Granville and left the court adjourned in course. Enraged by
the judge's escape, the Regulators took possession of the court
room the following morning, called over the cases, and in futile
protest against the conditions they were powerless to remedy,
made profane entries which may still be seen on the record:
"Damned rogues," "Fanning pays cost but loses nothing," "Negroes
not worth a damn, Cost exceeds the whole," "Hogan pays and be
damned," and, in a case of slander, "Nonsense, let them argue for
Ferrell has gone hellward."

The uprising of these bold and resolute, simple and imperfectly
educated people, which had begun as a constitutional struggle to
secure justice and to prevent their own exploitation by dishonest
lawyers of the county courts, now gave place to open anarchy and
secret incendiarism. In the dead of night, November 12th and
14th, Judge Henderson's barn, stables, and dwelling house were
fired by the Regulators and went up in flames. Glowing with a
sense of wrong, these misguided people, led on by fanatical
agitators, thus vented their indiscriminate rage, not only upon
their op pressors, but also upon men wholly innocent of injuring
them--men of the stamp of William Hooper, afterward signer of the
Declaration of Independence, Alexander Martin, afterward governor
and United States Senator, and Richard Henderson, popular
representative of the back country and a firm champion of due
process of law. It is perhaps not surprising in view of these
events that Governor Tryon and the ruling class, lacking a
sympathy broad enough