In an age of publicly sanctioned sadism against blacks, he defied convention and extended new protections and privileges to his slaves. In an era of empty Anglican piety, Carter experienced a feverish religious visionthat impelled him to help build a church where blacks and whites were equals. But incrementally, almost unconsciously, Carter grew to feel that what he possessed was not truly his. How did Carter succeed in the very action that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson claimed they fervently desired but were powerless to effect? And why has his name all but vanished from the annals of American history? In this haunting, brilliantly original work, Andrew Levy traces the confluence of circumstance, conviction, war, and passion that led to Carter’s extraordinary act.Īt the dawn of the Revolutionary War, Carter was one of the wealthiest men in America, the owner of tens of thousands of acres of land, factories, ironworks–and hundreds of slaves. In a document he called his Deed of Gift, Carter declared his intent to set free nearly five hundred slaves in the largest single act of liberation in the history of American slavery before the Emancipation Proclamation. But on September 5, 1791, Carter severed his ties with this glamorous elite at the stroke of a pen.

He was neighbor and kin to the Washingtons and Lees and a friend and peer to Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. Robert Carter III, the grandson of Tidewater legend Robert “King” Carter, was born into the highest circles of Virginia’s Colonial aristocracy.

Courage by Robert Carter