Existing comment:
Letter from Littleberry Apperson to Robert Carter III, May 4, 1792
In 1791, Robert Carter III -- the grandson of Robert "King" Carter -- filed a deed to emancipate his more than 500 slaves on a gradual basis. This plan angered fellow elite planters and vexed his plantation managers. In this letter, Carter's overseer reports how four of his slaves, "flushed with notions of freedom," tried to run away rather than wait for their scheduled manumission.
Carter's plan is the largest recorded emancipation by an individual slaveowner in U.S. history. |