In reply to Jane Steele:

The man who manumitted a single slave out of the conviction
that slavery was immoral committed an act of moral courage.
Why is Robert Carter's act, likewise an act of moral courage,
any more noteworthy?  They are both morally exemplary actions,
that deserve our commemoration.

Levy tells the story of Carter's emancipation with verve and
passion.  The book is, on the whole, a good one, well worth
reading.  If you have not yet read it, I recommend it.

That said, his historiographic argument--the one Brent
highlighted in the original post--strikes me as the weakest
part of the book.  When Levy suggests that Carter's
emancipation matters more than does that of, say, the Quaker
farmer who manumitted "only" forty, because Carter happened to
own more slaves, I think he is implicitly cheapening the moral
act of the Quaker.

Moreover, Levy suggests that there has been something of a
conspiracy among historians not to write or talk much about
the Carter emancipation.  I think this is en erroneous claim.
 Yes, it is true that outside of a small number of scholars,
the particular emacnipation by Carter has been neglected.  But
if we abandon the claim that Carter's action is siginificant
because it freed the largest number of people, and instead
focus on the larger phenomenon of which it is part, the notion
that there has been a conspiracy or collective amnesia or
whatever to forget this event evaporates.

The larger phenomenon of which the Carter action is part was
the emancipation of slaves in Virginia out of the conviction
that slavery was immoral.  This larger phenomenon is well
known, amply documented in quite a large number of studies,
and is widely taught in graduate history seminars.  I teach it
to my undergraduates, as, I rather expect, do most of my
teaching colleagues on this list-serv.

In sum, I object to two claims which I take Levy to have
advanced.  First, I object to the claim that Carter's
emancipation warrants our attention more than does that of my
Quaker farmer (who stands in here for the historically
documented, real, lesser emancipators I am too lazy to go look
up) because Carter freed more slaves.  Anyone who freed slaves
out of the conviction that slavery was wrong, it seems to me,
performed an historically memorable action.  Carter's action
deserves no more--and no less--respect from us than that of
any other person who manumitted slaves for similar reasons.

Second, I reject the notion that the larger phenomenon--that
of people who emancipated slaves out of the conviction that
slavery was wrong--has been neglected.  There are numerous
case studies of particular emancipations on Virginia, and even
more for the South as a whole.  Carter may have been
neglected, but the class of phenomena of which his action is
part has not been similarly neglected.

Note that the combination of my two assertions--if I am
correct to make them--has the effect of weakening the
significance claims that Levy makes for his book.  Levy claims
to have uncovered this major event that historians, for
whatever nefarious reason, have chosen to forget or ignore.
Here, however, I think Levy has made a mistake in his
assessment of the significance of his own work.  As a case
study of a major act of emancipation, Levy's work stand out.

But it would have been a better book had he chosen to omit the
hyperbole.  I recommend reading it--but not for the reasons
that Levy claims make his study important.

All best,
Kevin

---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:45:10 -0500
>From: Jane Steele <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Andrew Levy's FIRST EMANCIPATOR
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>What do you mean by the act of "we cheapen the acts of
others" during this period (IE) those who were brave enough to
free their enslaved people?  Let's call all of them brave and
going out on a limb in order to allow human beings to live and
breathe in their own homes and to chart their own lives.  The
cheap part would have come in if these emancepators chose to
free the enslaved people but not to provide for their futures.
 These men had a conscience and saw that this was wrong from
the beginning.  It took some a lifetime of observance and the
horrors of war(President Washington) in order to create a
clear conscience.  Thank goodness it came to pass. Jane Steele.
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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