The Regulators is told through the eyes of Warren Hascott, who returns to America after the Revolutionary War, having spent years as a slave to the Moors. He finds the Boston he had known in his youth completely changed. The country is undergoing a depression. City merchants are engaged in an economic war with the countryside. Torn between the love of two women--Judith Burdock of Tory background, and Beulah Crane, who uses her strong will and beauty to defend the rights of the farmers--Warren finds himself gradually caught in the web of Shays' Rebellion, which seeks to create a new kind of social order based on class equality. But it is Salderman, the Boston merchant, whose cold, ruthless business tactics finally launch Warren on his career as a rebel--a career which climaxes by the famous march on the United States arsenal at Worcester.