Herman Husband (1724-1795) was born in Maryland but moved to Sandy Creek, North Carolina, in 1762. Four years later he was an organizer of a local Association formed to support local farmers over wealth land-owners. He was jailed until an angry mob of supporters released him. In 1768 when the Regulators formed, Husband became a leading spokesman and pamphleteer. The Royal Governor denounced him and arrested him. The next year, Husband was elected to the North Carolina legislature from which he was expelled, charged and jailed, but released and in 1770 and published a book about the Regulators. The following year, when the movement was defeated in the Battle of Alamance, Husband moved back to Maryland, and from there to Pennsylvania, where he continued to publish pamphlets about the issues of the common people and lived under an assumed name until after the American Revolution. In the 1790s he he participated in the Whiskey Rebellion for which he was tried and sentenced to death, but, again, he was released by the actions of his supporters. I admit he lived on the periphery of Southern Appalachia, but what a cool guy! “The world has waited long enough for a scholarly biography of Herman Husband, and Stewart fills the void wonderfully with this insightful and clearly written narrative. With his new archival discoveries, he is able to depict Husband as considerably more complex than the heroic figure of legend.” -- Woody Holton. “Redemption from Tyranny will fill an enormous lacuna in the literature on eighteenth-century American politics and revolution. Herman Husband was a key actor from the rising of the North Carolina Regulators to the opening of the Revolution, and then the Whiskey Rebellion: Stewart has put this story together, explaining Husband and his world in clear, easy prose.” --John L. Brooke. The author, Bruce E. Stewart, teaches history at Appalachian State University and is the author of Blood in the Hills: A History of Violence in Appalachia.
Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 2020. 248 pages with Index, Bibliography, Notes and Illustrations. Hardback in dust jacket.