The First Emancipator

by Andrew Levy

Robert Carter III was born into the highest circles of Virginia's Colonial aristocracy, neighbor and kin to the Washingtons and Lees and a friend and peer to Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. But in 1791, Carter severed his ties with this elite at the stroke of a pen. Having gradually grown to feel that what he possessed was not truly his, clashing repeatedly with his neighbors, his friends, government officials, and, most poignantly, his own family, he set free nearly five hundred slaves in the largest single act of liberation in the history of American slavery before the Emancipation Proclamation. How did Carter succeed in what 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 vivid book, Andrew Levy traces the confluence of circumstance, conviction, war, and passion that led to Carter's extraordinary act.