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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