Born in Maryland in 1724, Herman Husband, the son of a prominent planter-merchant, was an influential leader in the wave of agrarian protest movements that occurred before and after the Revolutionary War. Bruce Stewart’s highly readable, scholarly biography explores the world of this deeply spiritual farmer and political activist, tying together the various social, religious, and economic influences on both Husband and the broader anti-establishment movements of the eighteenth century.Husband’s anti-establishment character was established when, as a teenager, he rejected his father’s secular Anglican culture and embraced the revivalism preached by George Whitfield, whose sermon convinced the fifteen-year-old to become a fervent proponent of New Side evangelicalism. Husband eagerly adopted the revivalist principles of frugality, self-control, and spiritual equality. New Side evangelicalism’s critique of the hierarchical society influenced Husband’s political views for the rest of his life. He joined a New Side Presbyterian congregation, soon became dissatisfied with their lack of evangelical zeal, and became a member of the Society of Friends in 1743. He later found himself at odds with the local Quaker establishment in North Carolina and left organized religion altogether, rejecting church authority and embracing the idea that individuals could determine their own religious principles. Husband, like many other evangelical Protestants influenced by radical Whig ideology, transformed his anti-establishment religious egalitarianism into anti-gentry political egalitarianism. Common farmers, he and they believed, had a civic and religious duty to fight all forms of tyranny.Seeking land, Husband moved to western North Carolina in 1755, eventually acquiring over 10,000 acres, where he played an active role in fomenting the North Carolina Regulation by forming the Sandy Creek Association in 1766. This was with the aim of gaining control of the county government from the lawyers and merchants as small landholders believed they were being cheated by court officials, sheriffs, lawyers, and land speculators. The Association was a failure, but Husband’s advocacy of a just and moral government soon reemerged in the Regulator movement for which he served as a spokesperson and chief political thinker. Professor Stewart’s discussion of the motivations and aims of the Regulation makes extensive references to Husband’s own writings (he was an active pamphleteer, penning numerous tracts over his lifetime) as well as the North Carolina colonial records and the correspondence of Governor Tyron. Husband was expelled from the state legislature and jailed. He fled the state with a price on his head after the Battle of Alamance crushed the Regulation, eventually settling in Bedford County, Pennsylvania.Husband was an ardent proponent of the patriot cause during the Revolutionary War. Since his days in North Carolina he had consistently advocated for the formation of a government that would protect the economic and political interests of the common white man, and, viewing the Revolution as divinely inspired, believed that American independence would usher in the millennium by encouraging other nations to also rebel against corrupt despotism. Professor Stewart’s lively and engaging prose again uses Husband’s own writings to explore the religious and economic bases of his political thought and vision for the New Jerusalem he expected the American Revolution to bring about. Alarmed by the proposed federal Constitution, Husband published a series of pamphlets condemning the Constitution and outlining his plan for an ideal government. Taking God’s mandate to Ezekiel in the Old Testament to build the temple of New Jerusalem with a large base that tapered as it grew higher as inspiration, Husband argued this natural law of design should serve as the blueprint for a representative government.A top-heavy government like that proposed in the Constitution would allow the wealthy to consolidate political power and reduce the mass of white men to tyranny. Husband proposed, instead, a multilayered government that began with small townships governed by a popularly elected council. The election districts would be small enough that all the voters knew the candidates and could select the most honest among them to manage township affairs. Councilmen who had proved to be real servants of the people would be appointed to upper bodies of local government: district and county assemblies, and the state legislature. Such a system, Husband believed, would result in corrupt or incompetent officials quickly being voted out of office before they could use the government to exploit their constituents, corrupt local officials being a chief grievance in both the Regulator Rebellion in pre-Revolutionary North Carolina and the Whiskey Rebellion in southwestern Pennsylvania during the early 1790s.During the summer of 1794, Husband was again drawn into the conflict between westerners and the eastern establishment, this time over resistance to the whiskey tax. He was one of the leaders of the moderate faction of the so-called Committee of Sixty, which served as a steering committee for the rebellion. Husband urged the resistors to comply with the demands of the federal government, while also working through the system to repeal the tax and other laws they opposed, and was against the use of violence. Nonetheless, he was one of those the Washington administration singled out for arrest. Brought to Philadelphia on a charge of sedition for participating as a delegate to the Parkinson’s Ferry meeting of the resistors, he was acquitted after witnesses testified that although he had spoken against the Washington administration, he had preached against violence during and after the meeting. He died just outside of Philadelphia on his way back home on June 18, 1795.A previous biography of Herman Husband bordered on the hagiographic.1 Professor Stewart presents a far more complex Husband, both influenced by and influencing the times in which he lived. The final chapter of the book, “Making Sense of Husband’s World,” links everything together and interprets the new religious, economic, political, and intellectual forces that contributed to the transformation of American society before and after the American Revolution and how those forces shaped the thinking of Herman Husband and other ordinary, anti-establishment revolutionaries. Highly recommended for understanding the motivations and goals of populist movements in eighteenth-century America.