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Herman Husband's Republican Vision

Roger A. Ekirch

• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

“‘A New Government of Liberty’: Herman Husband's Vision of Backcountry North Carolina, 1755.” William and Mary Quarterly 34 (October 1977): 632–645.

Herman Husband, a westerner whose causes included the Regulator movement and the Whiskey Rebellion, shows his feelings for what the backcountry of North Carolina should be like in this 1755 series of epistles. Husband opposed the establishment of the Anglican Church, slavery's growth, and speculation (although he himself had engaged in speculation). His opposition to the church was because “such a maintainance of the clergy by law opens a door to for wiked designing men” [sic]. His opposition to slavery seems to be rooted in a racial desire to keep Africans out. Nonetheless, his writings and life seem to evince a better picture of what western Americans thought during the days just before the Revolution.

One of the 1755 documents expresses Husband's republican conviction that western North Carolina would become a “new government of liberty” when settled by industrious farmers. This republican vision was an idealization shared by other backcountrymen who cherished freedom of religion and economic liberty which allowed each man to prosper.