In Baptist churches, he was placed on equal footing with social outcasts and developed an egalitarian social view. Though an aristocrat invested in the current order, he converted to the Baptist faith around the time of the Revolutionary War. These convictions were buttressed by Carter’s devoutly religious practices. He did so explicitly because he found American rhetoric about universal freedom was not supported by popular practice. Instead, Carter freed his slaves in the largest emancipation before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. However, unlike these two other leaders, Carter was not a political leader publicly using high rhetoric to espouse an egalitarian age while swallowing the uncomfortable pill of private slavery. Like many aristocrats of his time, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Carter was educated in Enlightenment principles and kept good records of his actions. His story provides us with courage to live up to our principles even when they contradict our practices. In the late eighteenth century, he freed around 500 of his own slaves, to the ire of his neighbors and without compensation, because of religious inspiration.

To these three national myths, the case of Virginian aristocrat Robert Carter stands in stark opposition. The founding fathers were deist in their religious orientation. General emancipation of slaves after the Revolution was impractical.

Northerners were against slavery while Southerners were for it. For most of us, American history consists of well-attested narratives.

Courage by Robert Carter