Redemption from Tyranny: Herman Husband’s American Revolution by Bruce E. Stewart

Abstract

Reviewed by: Redemption from Tyranny: Herman Husband’s American Revolution by Bruce E. Stewart Chris Pearl (bio) Keywords American Revolution, Great Awakening, Evangelicalism, Herman Husband Redemption from Tyranny: Herman Husband’s American Revolution. By Bruce E. Stewart. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020. Pp. 227. Cloth, $29.95.) Bruce E. Stewart’s biography of Herman Husband, Redemption from Tyranny, seamlessly charts Husband’s life from his early years as the rol-licking son of a well-off Maryland planter to a homespun-wearing evangelical radical championing “economic populism” during the Whiskey Rebellion. Since Husband’s life intersected with so many key moments in eighteenth-century America—the Great Awakening, North Carolina regulation, American Revolution, and Whiskey Rebellion—Stewart is able to successfully explore the “varied reasons behind the rise of radicalism and its impact on society during the long American Revolution”(5). The first two chapters describe Husband’s radicalization and increasing political activism. In these chapters, Stewart demonstrates how the Great Awakening’s equalizing message of spiritual independence gave new purpose to Husband’s life, provided a lens for him to view the world, and pushed him to question the inequality of organized religion, which unsurprisingly got him into trouble throughout his life. Even his Quaker meeting found Husband’s brand of spiritual equality a bit too much. Nevertheless, it was this experience that eventually intertwined with radical Whig protests against the Stamp Act to make him, Stewart argues, a “budding political activist” at odds with elites who monopolized positions of power and influence to the detriment of common farmers. [End Page 668] Moving to North Carolina’s frontier in 1755, Husband quickly became an important leader of backcountry resistance during the regulator movement because of his opposition to wealth inequality, resulting in his flight to Pennsylvania after the regulators’ defeat by government forces at the Battle of Alamance. These two chapters set the stage for the last three that explore how Husband became an avid revolutionary. That process began during the regulator movement, but came into full bloom in Pennsylvania, where, Stewart argues, Husband encountered another elite class of land speculators who controlled all the networks of interest, power, and patronage in the Quaker colony. Although Husband also speculated in land, amassing quite the fortune, which sits awkwardly in this book, Husband ultimately concluded that the colonial system was too corrupt to meet the needs of non-elite white farmers, and therefore he embraced American independence. It was during the American Revolution that Husband fully fused his evangelical worldview with politics. Embracing civil millenarianism, he saw in the revolution the possibility to create an equal society for white men with a perfected government, a divinely inspired “New Jerusalem” that would initiate the second coming of Jesus Christ. Among the many strengths of this book is Stewart’s ability to make Husband’s plans for this “New Jerusalem” accessible and understandable. Anyone who has read Husband’s sermons or tried to decipher his political cartography depicting a large hand or Jesus mapped onto North America understands that this is no easy task. In the end, Husband’s vision of a “new government of liberty” never came to be (143). As with the colonial period, Stewart describes a dark future in the revolution where even Husband’s narrow vision of equality for white men had little purchase. The American Revolution may have started with immense possibilities, Stewart argues, but those were easily engulfed by the power of self-interested capitalists like Robert Morris or Alexander Hamilton, setting the stage for Husband’s last effort to achieve his revolutionary dreams, the Whiskey Rebellion. Nevertheless, that movement was just as unsuccessful as the North Carolina regulation, but this time resulted in Husband’s death after seven grueling months in prison. Although Husband was consistently thwarted in his efforts, whether as a state legislator, traveling evangelist, or a populist leader of regulators, Stewart constantly points out Husband’s optimism; Husband never really [End Page 669] gave up hope in the possibilities of the American Revolution. Even in the face of George Washington’s Watermelon Army, he preached a message that embraced the democratic possibilities of the American Revolution. Given the insurmountable odds Stewart...