JACKSON, CHARLES W. (?-1841). Charles W. Jackson, organizer of the Regulators, a native of Kentucky, was a steamboat captain on the Mississippi and Red rivers and owner of a store at Shreveport, Louisiana, before he became a fugitive from justice and established residence in Shelby County, Texas. When he was defeated as a candidate for the Texas Congress, he blamed persons whom he accused of counterfeiting headright certificates to engage in land fraud; he also stated an intention to expose corruption in the General Land Office.^qv When Jackson was brought to trial late in 1840 for the murder of Joseph G. Goodbread, the courtroom was so filled with armed spectators that Judge John M. Hansford^qv refused to sit. After he was acquitted, Jackson organized his followers into the Regulators, and the resulting feud with their opposition on the land-title question was known as the Regulator-Moderator War.^qv In 1841 Jackson himself was waylaid and killed, an act that increased the hostilities and sustained the war.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: John Warren Love, The Regulator-Moderator Movement in Shelby County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1936). John W. Middleton, History of the Regulators and the Moderators (Fort Worth: Loving, 1883). Oran M. Roberts, "The Shelby War, or the Regulators and the Moderators," Texas Magazine, August 1897.