Robert Carter III (February 28, 1728 – March 10, 1804) was an American planter and politician from the Northern Neck of Virginia. During the colonial period, he sat on the Virginia Governor's Council for roughly two decades. After the American Revolutionary War saw the Thirteen Colonies gain independence from the British Empire as the United States, Carter, influenced by his Baptist beliefs, began the largest manumission in the history of the United States prior to the American Civil War.
Despite strong opposition from family members and neighbors, Carter began emancipating the hundreds of slaves he owned via a deed of gift filed with the Northumberland County, Virginia authorities on September 5, 1791, seventy years before the Civil War. Over the following years, Carter gradually emancipated over 500 of his slaves by filing documents with the Northumberland County, Virginia authorities, and settled many freedmen on land he gave them. Carter died in Baltimore, Maryland in 1804.Levy, 2005
Early life and education Carter was born into one of the First Families of Virginia, as a grandson of Virginia land baron Robert "King" Carter of Corotoman. In 1732, both his father and grandfather died within four months of each other, leaving the young boy in the care of his uncles Charles and Landon Carter, as well as his mother. In 1735, she remarried to John Lewis of Warner Hall in Gloucester County.warnerhall.comLevy, 2005, pp. 13-14
Although his uncles had been sent to England for their education, young Robert was sent to the College of William and Mary, beginning with preparatory classes since he was only nine years old. In 1749 he reached legal age and received his inheritance.Sara Bearss (ed.) Dictionary of Virginia Biography (Richmond, 2006), vol 3, p. 87 After crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Liverpool with Lawrence Washington, Carter traveled to London, where he and Philip Ludwell Lee started legal studies at the Inner Temple.
Family life
In 1754, Carter married Frances Ann Tasker, daughter of former Maryland governor Benjamin Tasker. They ultimately had seventeen children, of whom eight daughters and four sons reached adulthood."Genealogy", Ben Lomond Manor House, accessed 30 Jan 2007"Robert 'King' Carter of Corotoman (1663–1732)" , Historic Christ Church, accessed 30 Jan 2007 The successful marriage seemed to settle Carter, who began to pay attention to his vast landholdings, as well as politics.
Early career
Carter returned to Virginia in 1751 where he was admitted to the bar. He took up residence at Nomony Hall. This was his preferred spelling for his inherited plantation on the Northern Neck. Nominy or Nomini are more commonly used today, as in the highway marker noting the plantation site.http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=22384, http://www.hmdb.org/Marker.asp?Marker=22361 He also became a local justice of the peace for Westmoreland County in 1752; the county justices of that era also jointly administering the county. However, Carter was unsuccessful in at least two campaigns to become one of the county's two (part-time) representatives in the House of Burgesses.Levy, 2005, pp. 16-20
In 1758, using his in-laws' connections with the Board of Trade, Carter secured an appointment from George II to the Virginia Governor's Council.Levy, 2005, p. 22 When George III succeeded to the throne in 1760, Carter was reappointed to the post, which served as the colony's appellate court as well as advised on executive matters. Carter purchased a house in Williamsburg from his cousin Robert Carter Nicholas Sr. and moved his growing family there in 1761. Carter also began reading voraciously, as well as socializing with the city's top intellectuals, including Governor Fauquier, George Wythe, William Small, John Blair and young Thomas Jefferson a classmate of Carter's.Levy, pp. 15, 23
Patriotism
At first loyal to his King, Carter expressed support for the Crown during the period of popular rejoicing that accompanied news of George III's repeal of the Stamp Act, but Parliament passed additional laws obnoxious to colonial interests, and by 1772 the new Governor Dunmore exacerbated tensions. That year, Carter moved his ailing family (having lost three young daughters to unknown illnesses within 11 months)Levy, 2005, p. 37 back to Nomony Hall on the Northern Neck, announcing his retirement from public life. Carter never appeared in the Governor's Council minutes (other than as present) after it voted to allow slaveholders or local authorities to punish slaves without due process.Levy, 2005, pp. 40-41 Moreover, rather than educate his sons at the College of William and Mary, Carter hired Philip Fithian as tutor.
Carter concentrated his efforts on trade, including ironworks, a textile factory, and a flour mill, in addition to draining swamps around Nomony and diversifying crops at all his plantations.Levy, 2005, pp. 46-47, 51-53 Although publicly neutral, Carter honored the continental boycott declared in 1774, and in 1775 joined Richard Corbin in expressing the council's concern about rumors of British marines being stationed at Williamsburg. Carter declined to give the loyalty assurances Dunmore required, and the governor dissolved the council in 1776. The following summer, he gave an oath of loyalty to the new Commonwealth of Virginia. Although Carter declined to hold political offices suggested by Patriot friends, he began supplying provisions and bayonets to Patriot forces during the American Revolutionary War, which resulted in his plantations near the Potomac River being raided by British ships.Levy, 2005, p. 72-77http://ing d/npsvip.net/history/BenLomond/history/carterchinnhistory.html
Slaveholding and spiritual seeking
Although his great-grandfather John Carter had freed slaves in his will (as well as provided homesteads and livestock for them),Levy, 2005, p. 27 the colony of Virginia made individual manumission illegal in the year Carter's father and grandfather died. It was not authorized again until 1783. King Carter had greatly expanded the institution of slavery in Virginia, by purchasing many from ships to work on his plantations. He owned more than a thousand slaves upon his death. King Carter gave his grandson Robert III his first slave (a girl) when the infant was three months old.Levy, 2005, p. 10 By the time he came of legal age in 1749, Robert Carter III owned of land and 100 slaves.Levy, 2005, p. 15
Although Carter sold land and some slaves to pay his debts in 1758,Levy, 2005, p. 23 he did not purchase more slaves (unlike George Washington and other neighbors). He became known among his neighbors for his humane treatment of the enslaved workers in this region.Fithian p. 38. available at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40044 Carter rarely whipped slaves, or allowed them to be whipped, let alone scarred them, although he whipped his own children, particularly his eldest son Robert Bladen.Levy, 2005, pp. 53, 61 Carter's plantations had roughly double the rate of slave population increase as others in the state.Levy, 2005, p. 62 Carter was particularly moved by the example of Governor Fauquier, who in his will allowed his slaves to choose their masters.Levy, 2005, pp. 29-32
When Carter became a co-administrator of his father-in-law's estate, he (with the support of Daniel Dulany) delayed scheduling a sale of the slaves of Bel-Air plantation, since that would break up families. But his delays led to more than 18 years of litigation with his Tasker in-laws.Levy, 2005, pp. 29-31
Conversion
Carter became known for his religious freethinking and support of Dissenters even before the Revolution. He resigned from the Cople Parish Church vestry in 1776.Levy, 2005, p. 70. During the following year he had a mystical experience while feverish from a smallpox inoculation.Levy, 2005, p. 80. This prompted further spiritual seeking, from composing his own prayer for God to "have pity upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels & Hereticks", to making trips to attend services and hear from Quaker, Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist preachers (all classified as dissenters), and investigating Arminianism and perhaps Catholicism (although these pursuits were illegal in Virginia at the time, where the Anglican Church was the state established church).Levy, 2005, pp. 81-89. On September 6, 1778, the Rev. Lewis Lunsford baptised Carter by immersion in Totuskey Creek. Carter scandalized neighbors further by joining Morattico Baptist Church, which had a mixed congregation of white and black, free and slave. In this period, most elite planters still belonged to the Anglican Church. Carter knew he risked persecution, for Eleazar Clay, another wealthy man, had his life threatened after such conversion. During the three weeks preceding his own baptism, Carter attended two different services that were attacked by armed mobs that included Revolutionary War veterans.Levy, 2005, pp.91-93. His wife Frances Ann Tasker Carter, who was declared an invalid in October 1779 after the birth of their 16th child,Levy, 2005, p. 92. moved to Bladensburg, Maryland, for health reasons.Levy, 2005, p. 106. She converted to the Baptist faith there a year before her death in 1787.Levy, 2005, pp. 127-128.
Meanwhile, Carter became a prominent Baptist, serving on its General Association, financing the foundation of several churches in the Northern Neck, and corresponding with eminent ministers.Levy, 2005, p. 114. The noted Methodist missionary and anti-slavery activist Francis Asbury also lodged at Nomony Hall at least twice after Carter's Baptist conversion.Levy, 2005, p. 115.Shomer S. Zwelling, Robert Carter's Journey, From Colonial Patriarch to New Nation Mystic," American Quarterly 38(1986), pp. 613-636
Carter believed human slavery immoral, and tried to pass his beliefs to his children. However, his eldest son, Robert Bladen (although an admirer of the poet Phyllis Wheatley), at least twice sold young female slaves against his father's wishes. He also gambled and incurred such large debts that when Robert Bladen fled to England in 1783, his father was compelled to liquidate not only lands, but also slaves and thus break up families, in order to pay off his son's debts.Levy, 2005, pp. 113-114. In 1785 his son-in-law John Peck sold slaves whom Carter had given to his daughter Anne Tasker Carter as a dowry before the couple married and moved northward.Levy, 2005, p. 125. Carter gave his remaining daughters dowries that did not include human property.
In February 1786, Carter decided to send his youngest sons George and John Tasker Carter to the new Baptist university in Rhode Island (what is now Brown University). He wrote to its minister president James Manning: I beg leave to appoint you their Foster Father intimating that my desire is that both my Said Sons shd. be active Characters in Life ... The prevailing Notion now is to Continue the most abject State of Slavery in this [Virginia] Common-Wealth – On this Consideration only, I do not intend that these my two Sons shall return to this State till each of them arrive to the Age of 21 years.
In November 1788, Carter sent three daughters to live with Baptist friends in Baltimore, instructing their hosts "Girls are not to act by a Maid, but by themselves." But he also sent a slave as barter for their room and board.Levy, 2005, p. 126.