Robert "Councillor" Carter III (February 1727/28 – March 10, 1804) was an American plantation owner, founding father and onetime British government official. After the death of his wife, Frances Ann Tasker Carter, in 1787, Carter embraced the Swedenborgian faith and freed almost 500 slaves from his Nomini Hall plantation and large home in Westmoreland County, Virginia. By a "Deed of Gift" filed with the county in 1791, he began the process of manumitting slaves in his lifetime. His manumission is the largest known release of slaves in North American history prior to the American Civil War and the largest number ever manumitted by an individual in the US.[1]
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Robert Carter III was the grandson of Virginia land baron Robert "King" Carter of Corotoman.
Robert Carter III married Frances Ann Tasker, and they had seventeen children.[2][3]
King George II appointed Carter to the Virginia Council. He continued to serve by a reappointment by King George III. Later, despite expressing support of the crown after George III's repeal of the Stamp Act 1765, Carter resigned as Councillor and eventually supported the American cause in the Revolution.
In the two decades after the Revolutionary War, numerous slaveholders in the Chesapeake Bay area freed their slaves. They were inspired by Quaker, Methodist and Baptist preachers, as well as the principles of the Revolution. Often they made provision for freeing slaves in their wills or deeds, in which they noted the principles of equality as reason for their decisions. The percentage of free blacks increased in the Upper South from less than one percent before the Revolution, to 10 percent by 1810. In Delaware, three-quarters of all blacks were free by 1810.[4]
From Baptist and Swedenborgian influences, Carter concluded that human slavery was immoral. He instituted a program of gradual manumission of all slaves attached to his estate. It started in his lifetime in 1791 and continued after his death. He designed the program to be gradual to reduce the resistance of white neighbors. Frequently, Carter rented land to recently freed slaves, sometimes evicting previous white tenants in the process. His release of slaves, numbering 452, is the largest known manumission in the United States.[1]
He also took pains to pass his beliefs to his children. He wrote to James Manning (first President of what is now Brown University ) in February 1786 of his sons, George and John Tasker Carter: “they [are] to be Sent from Boston immediately upon their Arrival there to your College in Providence. 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 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.” [5]
Toward the end of his life, Carter moved from Virginia to Baltimore, Maryland. In part he wanted some distance from family and neighbors who looked askance at his Swedenborgian faith and program of manumission. In 1803 the year before his death, Carter wrote his daughter Harriot L. Maund, "My plans and advice have never been pleasing to the world."[1]