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.

-----Original Message-----
>From: [log in to unmask]
>Sent: Oct 27, 2006 10:46 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Andrew Levy's FIRST EMANCIPATOR
>
>I found the historiographical part of Levy's work the least
>convincing.  I don't think that Carter's act is significant
>because it happened to be the biggest emancipation in
>Virginia.  Carter, like several other Virginians, but in the
>end all too few, emancipated a large number of slaves.  The
>story is worth telling.  I am not sure its any *more* worthy
>of telling than, say, Robert Pleasant's emancipation, or
>Richard Randolph's, or George Washington's.  They are all good
>stories, worthy of our analysis and memory, and they all have
>something useful to tell us about ante-bellum Virginia.
>
>The fact that Carter just happened to free the most slaves,
>out of that small cadre of large planter Virginians who
>emancipated their slaves, is an historical accident.  Suppose
>that he had freed, say, one slave less than the next biggest
>guy?  Would that have made his act any less, or more for that
>matter, significant?  He freed a large number of people, and
>he did so for the same sorts of reasons as did some Baptists,
>Methodists, and Quakers, who emancipated fewer slaves but
>nonetheless acted on their convictions.  When we elevate
>Carter's act simply because he happened to emancipate more, it
>seems to me that we cheapen the acts of those lesser
>emancipators.  I doubt that is what Levy intended, but it does
>some to me to be one consequence of his rhetoric.  I find that
>unfortunate, as to my read it mars what is otherwise a good book.
>
>The Carter emancipation, like the Randolph emancipation, has
>been relatively neglected in the literature until recently.
>There have been, I think, several articles on the Pleasants
>emancipation.  There were others as well, that I studied in
>graduate school some years ago, but the details of which I'd
>have to look up.  I learned about them under the mentorship of
>Ira Berlin, but I would imagine that any student in similar
>seminars lead by Peter Wood, or Winthrop Jordan, or David
>Brion Davis, or Eugene Genovese, or any other leading scholar
>of slavery would have learned about them too.    While the
>particular emancipation by Carter was, I think, neglected, the
>larger phenomenon (that some planters emancipated their slaves
>for religious or ideological reasons) is well known.  More
>study of that phenomenon is a good thing.  But let's not over
>do the claims that the phenomenon itself is unstudied.
>
>All best,
>Kevin
>Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
>Department of History
>James Madison University
>
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Lillian Jane Steele

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