The First Emancipator: The Forgotten Story Of Robert Carter, The Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves

The First Emancipator: The Forgotten Story Of Robert Carter, The Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves

Robert Carter was born February 9, 1728, son of Robert Carter and Priscilla Churchill Carter. Both of his grandfathers, the land baron Robert “King” Carter and William Churchhill served on the governor’s Council.

In 1737, he entered the grammar school of the College of William and Mary. Little else is known about his youth until February 1749, when he received his patrimony and sailed to London’s Inner Temple to study law. He returned to Virginia in June 1751 without being admitted to the bar. Several of his contemporaries commented on his lack of learning and social grace.

Emancipation of 500 slaves

Although Carter inherited and owned hundreds of slaves, his growing opposition to the institution echoed the antislavery sentiments of many Baptists in the 1780s. On August 1, 1791 he executed a deed of emancipation for more than 500 of his enslaved African Americans. It was probably the largest emancipation by an individual person in the United States before 1860. Because of Virginia’s restrictive laws, the emancipation was gradual, and the young slaves received their freedom when they reached adulthood. Carter spent his remaining years working out the details and schedule, an effort that occupied his agents and executors well into the nineteenth century.

Establishment at Nomony Hall

Carter moved into Nomony Hall – also spelled “Nomini” or “Nominy” – the Westmoreland County mansion he inherited from his father. He learned the business of tobacco planting and exported as many as 100 hogsheads of the leaf to England each year. On April 2, 1754, Carter married Frances Tasker, daughter of Benjamin Tasker, longtime president of the Council of Maryland. Of their 13 daughters and four sons, eight daughters and all four sons reached adulthood.

Andrew Levy talked about his book The First Emancipator: The Forgotten Story of Robert Carter, the Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves, published by Random House. In 1791, Virginian Robert Carter III submitted a deed of gift to the Northumberland District Courthouse that freed his slaves from his plantation. He endured hardships and persecution as a result of his stance against slavery. In the book, Mr. Levy explains the religious and political ideals that prompted the emancipation and explains why he feels historians have forgotten Robert Carter. After his presentation he answered questions from members of the audience. The event was at Williamsburg Booksellers in the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center.

Watch Author Andrew Levy discuss his book "The First Emancipator" on C-Span here.

Enslavement After Emancipation

On the local level, most southern towns and municipalities passed strict vagrancy laws to control the influx of black migrants and homeless people who poured into these urban communities in the years after the Civil War. In Mississippi, for example, whites passed the notorious "Pig Law" of 1876, designed to control vagrant blacks at loose in the community. This law made stealing a pig an act of grand larceny subject to punishment of up to five years in prison. Within two years, the number of convicts in the state penitentiary increased from under three hundred people to over one thousand.

It was this law in Mississippi that turned the convict lease system into a profitable business, whereby convicts were leased to contractors who sub-leased them to planters, railroads, levee contractors, and timber jobbers.

Almost all of the convicts in this situation were blacks, including women, and the conditions in the camps were horrible in the extreme. It was not uncommon to have a death rate of blacks in the camps at between 8 to 18 percent. In a rare piece of journalism, the Jackson Weekly Clarion, printed in 1887 the inspection report of the state prison in Mississippi:

"We found [in the hospital section] twenty-six inmates, all of whom have been lately brought there off the farms and railroads, many of them with consumption and other incurable diseases, and all bearing on their persons marks of the most inhuman and brutal treatment. Most of them have their backs cut in great wales, scars and blisters, some with the skin pealing off in pieces as the result of severe beatings.

Their feet and hands in some instances show signs of frostbite, and all of them with the stamp of manhood almost blotted out of their faces.... They are lying there dying, some of them on bare boards, so poor and emaciated that their bones almost come through their skin, many complaining for the want of food.... We actually saw live vermin crawling over their faces, and the little bedding and clothing they have is in tatters and stiff with filth.

As a fair sample of this system, on January 6, 1887, 204 convicts were leased to McDonald up to June 6, 1887, and during this six months 20 died, and 19 were discharged and escaped and 23 were returned to the walls disabled and sick, many of whom have since died."

(Creating Jim Crow: In-Depth Essay, by Ronald L. F. Davis, Ph. D.)

Abraham Lincoln and the Freed Slaves

Original Thomas Nast Drawing of Freed Slaves Greeting Abraham Lincoln in Richmond, Virginia

On April 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln entered the city of Richmond Virginia, the capitol of the Confederate States of America. This was one day after the fall of Richmond to the Union army. This, one of the most historic events of Lincoln's presidency, was captured by renowned artist Thomas Nast in this now famous sketch. This messianic scene showing Lincoln being praised and almost worshipped by freed slaves and liberated Southerners. The famous Nast sketch was published in Harper's Weekly shortly thereafter and this is an original Harper's Weekly leaf of the Nast sketch. This leaf is 137 years old.

In presenting this illustration, Harper's Weekly correctly predicted the enduring legacy of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. Harper's succinctly stated that "Posterity will see in him a greater man than his contemporaries can acknowledge" and "Among all the incidents of Lincoln's life, none will be more fondly prized and remembered than that which Thomas Nast Captured in this Illustration."

The Assassination of President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on the Night of April 14, 1865.

A short ten days after this historic event, President Lincoln lay dying, a victim of the assassin John Wilkes Booth.

April 4, 1865 started early for Mr. Lincoln. He began the day with quiet resolve to personally walk the streets of the fallen rebel capitol. He left Washington on the Ship the "River Queen", and stayed with the ship as far as Varina. He disembarked the River Queen, and was taken by Army Ambulance to the outskirts of Richmond Virginia, where he met Union Admiral Porter. At about 11:00, Mr. Lincoln entered the city of Richmond on foot, accompanied by Admiral Porter, Captain Bell, and a protective force of about a half dozen marines. Crowds thronged the streets, and chief and eager among them were the emancipated, wishing to pay homage, and give thanks to their Great Emancipator.

The small white boy clutching the President's hand . . . that is Tad Lincoln, the President's son, whom the President had taken with him to the fallen Rebel capital. This day, April 4, 1865 was Tad Lincoln's 12th Birthday. As Mr. Lincoln and his son walked the streets of Richmond, one group of Newly freed slaves cried "Glory, Hallelujah!" and fell to their knees before Mr. Lincoln. The President motioned for them to rise. "Don't kneel to me." he told them. "You must kneel to God only and thank Him for your freedom." "Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as he gave it to others, and it is a sin that you have been deprived of it for so many years."

We often think of the last years of Lincoln's life as filled with the heartache and pain of his heroic efforts to preserve the union and free the slaves. This illustration is an encouraging reminder that Lincoln did, in fact, have a brief glimpse before his death of his enduring legacy, a United Nation, with Freedom and Justice for all.

(source: Son of the South)

Emancipation and the Struggle Over Equality in Washington, D.C.

An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle Over Equality in Washington, D.C.

In "An Example for All the Land," Kate Masur offers the first major study of Washington during Reconstruction in over fifty years. Masur's panoramic account considers grassroots struggles, city politics, Congress, and the presidency, revealing the District of Columbia as a unique battleground in the American struggle over equality.

After slavery's demise, the question of racial equality produced a multifaceted debate about who should have which rights and privileges, and in which places. Masur shows that black Washingtonians demanded public respect for their organizations and equal access to streetcars, public schools, the vote, and municipal employment. Congressional Republicans, in turn, passed local legislation that made the capital the nation's vanguard of racial equality, drawing the attention of woman suffragists hoping for similar experiments in women's rights. But a conservative coalition soon mobilized and, in the name of reform and modernization, sought to undermine African Americans' newfound influence in local affairs. In a stunning reversal, Congress then abolished local self-government, making the capital an exemplar of disfranchisement amid a national debate about the dangers of democracy.

Combining political, social, and legal history, Masur reveals Washington as a laboratory for social policy at a pivotal moment in American history and brings the question of equality to the forefront of Reconstruction scholarship.

An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C.