Like Washington and Jefferson, he championed liberty. Unlike the founders, he freed his slaves

EvilEyeFleegle

Dogpatch USA
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Nov 2, 2017
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So...Jefferson and Washington talked the talk-this man walked the walk:


It was 230 years ago Sunday that Robert Carter III, the patriarch of one of the wealthiest families in Virginia, quietly walked into a Northumberland County courthouse and delivered an airtight legal document announcing his intention to free, or manumit, more than 500 slaves.
He titled it the "deed of gift." It was, by far, experts say, the largest liberation of Black people before President Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Emancipation Act and Emancipation Proclamation more than seven decades later.
On September 5, 1791, when Carter delivered his deed, slavery was an institution, a key engine of the new country's economy. But many slaveholders -- including founding fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who knew Carter -- had begun to voice doubts.
That was the extent of their umbrage.
Chattel slavery was wrong, the men said, but they supposedly worried it was not practical to abolish the institution without societal and economic consequences.
"As it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other," Jefferson wrote a fellow politician almost 30 years after Carter's deed of gift.
Yet Carter had provided them a blueprint, not only for freeing their slaves but for ensuring the freedmen could sustain themselves, even prosper and integrate into society. Washington freed his slaves after death. Jefferson freed only 10 people of the hundreds he enslaved.
So, how has this great manumission remained largely unknown outside of a handful of history buffs and the growing body of descendants? There are theories.
Levy, whose books include a biography of Carter, "The First Emancipator," has another suspicion: America doesn't care -- because it's inconvenient.
"It blows an enormous hole in this legacy we're trying to balance for these founders," he said.
As Levy sees it, American history feebly attempts to level the founding fathers' fondness for freedom with their ownership of humans by uncritically parroting their assertions that there was no pragmatic way to emancipate hundreds of thousands of slaves. Slavery was a necessary evil, to hear the founders tell it.
"If Carter is the anti-Jefferson," Levy wrote in his book, "the man who did not lack the will to free his own slaves but who did lack the vision and clarity to make his love of freedom eloquent, then the Deed of Gift is the anti-Declaration of Independence, a document that makes liberty look dull but which is so absent of loopholes and contradictions that no result but liberty could prevail."
 
Not sure what this is in reference towards, but if it is in reference to the Robert E. Lee statue removal then I say this - If we are going to run around erasing history, and the victories we all have seen throughout history, then just as there is this thought that history should be erased, then I'd say that all of history should be erased. That's right, because the thinking is otherwise that if the nation's history remains intact, then people from future generations might adopt it for their nefarious purposes, and then use it against another for whom they might not like. Well slavery is also a part of history that is very much being used by various generation's that use it against another for whom they do not like. I say anything that pertains to slavery, and the civil war (although we've had victory after victory since those periods), should be totally erased or eradicated from the history books.

That's right if one side is to be erased, then the other side should be erased also.

No more Hollywood and Washington D.C. use of it's politics, film's and book's to gen up the past, and to place American against American with that past no matter what it is. No more of this one sided bullcrap to be left intact, all the while the other side is eradicated for one side in hopes to use the remaining history as a weapon against the other. No more statue's of anyone that would raise awareness to what their history or purpose was and/or their victories were without the other sides to reference just as well.

We as a people have proven that we can handle both sides of history, and that we can work to utilize the good from history in order to constantly make this nation a great nation for all.

Erasing history is the most ignorant thing this nation has ever engaged in, and especially in trying to erase only one side of it while leaving the other to be used as a weapon. How damned stupid are we becoming in this nation ??
 
I don’t see this OP as being about statues to Confederate leaders being removed. That is a different question which is being discussed elsewhere. Robert Carter III lived well before the Civil War began. Indeed, the “Peculiar Institution” in his time had not yet become the deep rooted and nation-devouring source of that “irrepressible conflict.”

The discussion of changes in names of military bases, of the long history of the struggles to remove Confederate flags that once flew over courthouses, schools and state buildings all across the South — that is a different question which we have all addressed before.

Here the OP discusses a man, mostly forgotten by history and ignored by his own “illustrious” contemporaries, who perhaps ought to put up on a pedestal.
 
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I don’t see this OP as being about statues to Confederate leaders being removed. That is a different question which is being discussed elsewhere. Robert Carter III lived well before the Civil War began. Indeed, the “Peculiar Institution” in his time had not yet become the deep rooted and nation-devouring source of that “irrepressible conflict.”

The discussion of changes in names of military bases, of the long history of the struggles to remove Confederate flags that once flew over courthouses, schools and state buildings all across the South — that is a different question which we have all addressed before.

Here the OP discusses a man, mostly forgotten by history and ignored by his own “illustrious” contemporaries, who perhaps ought to put up on a pedestal.
Hmmm I think the op is alluding to current events, and the on going question's that are surrounding America erasing it's history (what it keeps, and what it deletes). I say erase it all, because leaving one side of it intact is unfair, where as it can be weaponized by activist who will use it for ill gotten gain like we are seeing and experiencing big time in this nation to date.
 
Not sure what this is in reference towards, but if it is in reference to the Robert E. Lee statue removal then I say this - If we are going to run around erasing history, and the victories we all have seen throughout history, then just as there is this thought that history should be erased, then I'd say that all of history should be erased. That's right, because the thinking is otherwise that if the nation's history remains intact, then people from future generations might adopt it for their nefarious purposes, and then use it against another for whom they might not like. Well slavery is also a part of history that is very much being used by various generation's that use it against another for whom they do not like. I say anything that pertains to slavery, and the civil war (although we've had victory after victory since those periods), should be totally erased or eradicated from the history books.

That's right if one side is to be erased, then the other side should be erased also.

No more Hollywood and Washington D.C. use of it's politics, film's and book's to gen up the past, and to place American against American with that past no matter what it is. No more of this one sided bullcrap to be left intact, all the while the other side is eradicated for one side in hopes to use the remaining history as a weapon against the other. No more statue's of anyone that would raise awareness to what their history or purpose was and/or their victories were without the other sides to reference just as well.

We as a people have proven that we can handle both sides of history, and that we can work to utilize the good from history in order to constantly make this nation a great nation for all.

Erasing history is the most ignorant thing this nation has ever engaged in, and especially in trying to erase only one side of it while leaving the other to be used as a weapon. How damned stupid are we becoming in this nation ??
Huh? Not sure just how this references my OP at all? Not trying to 'erase' anything..just the opposite..trying to bring a little-known historical act into greater prominence.
 
So...Jefferson and Washington talked the talk-this man walked the walk:


It was 230 years ago Sunday that Robert Carter III, the patriarch of one of the wealthiest families in Virginia, quietly walked into a Northumberland County courthouse and delivered an airtight legal document announcing his intention to free, or manumit, more than 500 slaves.
He titled it the "deed of gift." It was, by far, experts say, the largest liberation of Black people before President Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Emancipation Act and Emancipation Proclamation more than seven decades later.
On September 5, 1791, when Carter delivered his deed, slavery was an institution, a key engine of the new country's economy. But many slaveholders -- including founding fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who knew Carter -- had begun to voice doubts.
That was the extent of their umbrage.
Chattel slavery was wrong, the men said, but they supposedly worried it was not practical to abolish the institution without societal and economic consequences.
"As it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other," Jefferson wrote a fellow politician almost 30 years after Carter's deed of gift.
Yet Carter had provided them a blueprint, not only for freeing their slaves but for ensuring the freedmen could sustain themselves, even prosper and integrate into society. Washington freed his slaves after death. Jefferson freed only 10 people of the hundreds he enslaved.
So, how has this great manumission remained largely unknown outside of a handful of history buffs and the growing body of descendants? There are theories.
Levy, whose books include a biography of Carter, "The First Emancipator," has another suspicion: America doesn't care -- because it's inconvenient.
"It blows an enormous hole in this legacy we're trying to balance for these founders," he said.
As Levy sees it, American history feebly attempts to level the founding fathers' fondness for freedom with their ownership of humans by uncritically parroting their assertions that there was no pragmatic way to emancipate hundreds of thousands of slaves. Slavery was a necessary evil, to hear the founders tell it.
"If Carter is the anti-Jefferson," Levy wrote in his book, "the man who did not lack the will to free his own slaves but who did lack the vision and clarity to make his love of freedom eloquent, then the Deed of Gift is the anti-Declaration of Independence, a document that makes liberty look dull but which is so absent of loopholes and contradictions that no result but liberty could prevail."
Try again:

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, owned more than 600 African-Americans during some periods of his adult life. Jefferson freed two of his slaves while he lived; seven others were freed after his death. Jefferson consistently spoke out against the international slave trade and outlawed it while he was President. He privately advocated gradual emancipation and colonization of slaves already in the United States, rather than immediate manumission.

 
Hmmm I think the op is alluding to current events, and the on going question's that are surrounding America erasing it's history (what it keeps, and what it deletes). I say erase it all, because leaving one side of it intact is unfair, where as it can be weaponized by activist who will use it for ill gotten gain like we are seeing and experiencing big time in this nation to date.
Nope..not at all what I'm saying..or my intent.
I was struck by the juxtaposition of the words and inactions of our founding Fathers..while this man..equally prominent in their time...quietly, and with little fanfare, did the right thing.
 
Try again:

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, owned more than 600 African-Americans during some periods of his adult life. Jefferson freed two of his slaves while he lived; seven others were freed after his death. Jefferson consistently spoke out against the international slave trade and outlawed it while he was President. He privately advocated gradual emancipation and colonization of slaves already in the United States, rather than immediate manumission.

You, try again...LOL! Thomas J. is referenced in the article as is Washington. He talked anti-slavery..yet only freed 10 slaves out of his 600+.
Washington waited until his death to free his slaves. Neither did squat to help their ex-slaves transition into freedom. You did read the article, right?

What Carter did was singular..no-one did the same--on the same scale-- AFAIK. He freed 500+ slaves..at what would have been seen as a huge financial loss

With no hoopla...no 'agenda' he freed all his slaves..in a manner that could not be challenged legally, and trained and educated his ex-slaves--their descendants, as you know from reading the article--have been very successful, in large part due the start Carter gave them.
 
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You, try again...LOL! Thomas J. is referenced in the article as is Washington. He talked anti-slavery..yet only freed 10 slaves out of his 600+.
Washington waited until his death to free his slaves. Neither did squat to help their ex-slaves transition into freedom. You did read the article, right?

What Carter did was singular..no-one did the same--on the same scale-- AFAIK. He freed 500+ slaves..at what would have been seen as a hug financial loss

With no hoopla...no 'agenda' he freed all his slaves..in a manner that could not be challenged legally, and trained and educated his ex-slaves--their descendants, as you know from reading the article--have been very successful, in large part due the start Carter gave them.
He had 600 slaves over his entire life and he lived into his 80s. He never had 600 slaves at the same time.

Try harder.
 
:lol:
As to the rest, good story! Thanks for posting.
Not sure as to why you find the quoted funny. Is a simple fact, AFAIK..do you know differently? I suppose one could quibble with 'black people' liberated vs blacks slaves freed---but i don't get the same amusement you do, I guess?
 
He had 600 slaves over his entire life and he lived into his 80s. He never had 600 slaves at the same time.

Try harder.
Good grief..so the fuck what? How does this quibble change anything about the OP? Your nic fits.
Perhaps you're trying too hard?


Thomas Jefferson enslaved over 600 human beings throughout the course of his life. 400 people were enslaved at Monticello; the other 200 people were held in bondage on Jefferson’s other properties. At any given time, around 130 people were enslaved at Monticello.
 
Good grief..so the fuck what? How does this quibble change anything about the OP? Your nic fits.
Perhaps you're trying too hard?


Thomas Jefferson enslaved over 600 human beings throughout the course of his life. 400 people were enslaved at Monticello; the other 200 people were held in bondage on Jefferson’s other properties. At any given time, around 130 people were enslaved at Monticello.
Just stop being such a sleazebag. Jefferson never enslaved anyone.

 
Just stop being such a sleazebag. Jefferson never enslaved anyone.

Oh..wait..I get it now..you're a moron.
OK my bad..I thought posting something of historical note..in the History forum--might make me immune from your ilk blaring your ignorance about.
Carry on, troll boy~
 
No Republican ever owned a slave. You could look it up.
How does that relate to the OP? FYI...the Republican party was formed largely on an anti-slavery platform--it was the Left/Liberal party of its time. The Democrats were the Conservative party and they owned all the slaves.
Of course, that is no longer true--but you know that---you just gotta troll....to fill that empty hole in your head.
 
Not sure as to why you find the quoted funny. Is a simple fact, AFAIK..do you know differently? I suppose one could quibble with 'black people' liberated vs blacks slaves freed---but i don't get the same amusement you do, I guess?
Because the EP didnt free any slaves. It only applied to the South which had seceded. He knew that, it was just political theater for England.
 

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