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Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Thompson, Peter E. |
| Copyright Year | 2005 |
| Abstract | and academic in style, yet the end results are more than justified for anyone with an interest in knowing more about our "peculiar institution" and the origins of American society and culture. The focus of the book is the conflicting world views of the patriarch, Landon Carter (whose plantation is in the Williamsburg area), his slaves, and his son. The book illuminates the cognitive disconnects and churning dissatisfactions that plagued Carter, his heirs, and their plantation slaves because of rigid social separation, institutionalized deceit, and the dissolution of personal and power relationships at the coming of the American Revolution. I generally dislike social histories -however necessary they may be -if only because they seem always to be selective, poorly documented, and subject to easy contradiction. This one -perhaps because it is so concentrated on the microcosm of one Virginia family -manages to come across as solid, scholarly, believable, and a pretty good story to boot. African American already April April 26 British burgess called Captain Carter Burwell chapter Colonel colonial Colonial Williamsburg Foundation conflict continued court daughter death declared deﬕance diarist English enslaved father ﬕeld ﬕerce ﬕgure ﬕnd ﬕne ﬕrst French Gentleman George George Grenville Giberne governor Hill House of Burgesses influence johnny king kingâ€TMs knew Landon Carter Landon wrote Landonâ€TMs diary later liberty lived Lord Manuel March master Moses narrative Nassaw never night noted old Landon overseer Parliament patriarchal patriots perhaps persons plantation planter plants political quarter Rappahannock River rebellion record reflection Reuben Beale Revolution Richard Henry Lee Richmond County Robert Carter Robert Wormeley Carter runaways Sabine Hall scientiﬕc seems Sept slaves sonâ€TMs Stamp Act story tell tion tobacco told turned UNCP Univ Virginia whipped wife Williamsburg Winifred Yesterday young Rhys Isaac and David Waldstreicher reconstruct the stories of two men who experienced the American Revolution toward the end of long lives. One—Benjamin Franklin—signed the U.S. Constitution to cap an illustrious career as scientist and diplomat. The other—Landon Carter—was a wealthy slaveowner in Virginia and might like Franklin have become a so-called Founding Father had he not died in 1778. Of the same generation, although from starkly different social origins, Carter and Franklin shared a similar set of hesitations when confronted by the turbulence of the American Revolution. As historians, Isaac and Waldstreicher do not share the same generation, and their interpretations of the American Revolution are dramatically divergent. Yet their microhistories are fruitful to juxtapose because they are so similar in subject and method, and because together they beg major questions about the meaning of the American Revolution. Isaac sees the American Revolution as "the first comprehensive promise to mankind of freedom and equality in this world." "It accomplished the symbolic pulling down of patriarchal monarchy as the keystone of the cosmic arch of public and private authority" (p. xi). Isaac depicts this transformation through the eyes of a Virginia planter who would remain invested in patriarchy even as he grudgingly turned his back on monarchy. Landon Carter would see his whole world turn upside down, when he wanted only half of it to do so. Imagining himself to be a firm moderate in public and private life, Carter came to embrace political revolution in Virginia even as household rebellions by his children and his slaves brought him copious headache and heartache. Isaac is at the height of his powers in conjuring the poignancy of Carter's situation as it was swept up into escalating political tensions and household strains in the 1760s and 1770s. His great fortune is that Carter left behind a diary marvelous in quantity and quality; it is both extensive and expressive, and it is the vivid centerpiece of Isaac's microhistory. Among Early Americanists Laurel Thatcher Ulrich launched the trend of microhistory in 1990, in her case in the classic social history mode of reconstructing subaltern experience. There is nothing remotely subaltern about Landon Carter, owner of thousands of acres and hundreds of slaves, and Isaac is more interested in reconstructing outlook than experience. To capture that outlook, however, Isaac also reconstructs Carter's social environment, especially the lives of his adult children and his slaves, with a richness and deftness quite worthy the attention of social historians. In the 1760s and 1770s Landon Carter struggled with children who moved away and children who stayed home, and with slaves who ran away and slaves who stayed on the plantation. Isaac painstakingly draws out the vicissitudes of all these struggles over the years of the diary, and yet he reconstructs considerably more than that: a typical year in the working life of a plantation, the contents of Carter's vast library, the practice of plantation medicine, the administration of colonial government—indeed, every dimension of Carter's world. Isaac does this in masterly fashion over the course of the book, alternately thickening the context around Carter and narrating the passage of time as the tensions and strains built up and then exploded with the outbreak of the American Revolution. This yields a page-turning account, replete with father-son disputes, master-slave conflicts, imperial war, and colonial resistance. Isaac accomplishes one main agenda, to lend contingency to the American Revolution—to render it a history of uncertainty and anxiety. In politics, Landon Carter tried to find a middle path between obsequious loyalism and radical resistance. At home, he pursued the same instinct, softening his patriarchal authority with dollops of sensibility. Ultimately, however, Isaac must recount the story of an elderly patriarch whom the world was passing by, alienated from his headstrong children, irritated by his defiant... JSTOR uses cookies to maintain information that will enable access to the archive and improve the response time and performance of the system. Any personal information, other than what is voluntarily submitted, is not extracted in this process, and we do not use cookies to identify what other websites or pages you have visited. The aging patriarch, though a fierce supporter of American liberty, was deeply troubled by the rebellion a...more Landon Carter, a Virginia planter, left behind one of the most revealing of all American diaries. In this astonishingly rich biography, Isaac mines this remarkable document--and many other sources--to reconstruct Carter's interior world as it plunged into revolution. This work focuses on Landon Carter (1710-1778). The author is interested in showing us how this man thought. Because he was one of the wealthiest men in Virginia, how he thought is very important. Having considered himself a patriotic citizen of the British empire for 50 years, having studied in London, having lived the privileged life available only to men who could surround themselves with hundreds of slaves, how did he justify in his own mind the rebellion against the King? And how did he de...more This work focuses on Landon Carter (1710-1778). The author is interested in showing us how this man thought. Because he was one of the wealthiest men in Virginia, how he thought is very important. Having considered himself a patriotic citizen of the British empire for 50 years, having studied in London, having lived the privileged life available only to men who could surround themselves with hundreds of slaves, how did he justify in his own mind the rebellion against the King? And how did he deal with the daily rebellions by his slaves on his many estates and by family members in his own home? Based on diary notations, this work focuses on the mental struggle of Landon Carter to understand the changes he is living through. As a Burgess, he was one of the first Virginians to remonstrate with Parliament over the unconstitutional imposition of the Stamp Act. He sided with the patriots between 1773 and 1776, though he did not agree with Thomas Payne or Patrick Henry. Instead, he hoped Virginia's constitutional rights would be restored. When Lord Dunmore announced the emancipation of slaves and eight of his Africans joined the British, Landon Carter accepted the American independence movement. This work covers other aspects of Carter's mind, too. He considered himself trained in medicine and dispensed medical advice and recommended treatments continually. There is a fascinating chapter that explains Carter's understanding of how the human body works, using constructs devised by Hypocrates and Galen and only slightly amended by Harvey's discovery of the circulatory system. While his political views evolved somewhat, his medical understanding advanced but little. The diaries primarily show us the Landon Carter who struggled to manage every aspect of his tobacco and corn-based estate economy. He also attempted to control all of his slaves and each of his dependents. In this arena, Landon plays the role of George III. His children and grandchildren disobey, disrespect and disregard him. His relations with his eldest son and daughter-in-law, who live with him in Sabine Hall in expectation of his demise, are especially difficult. His political world and the domestic world seem to be falling apart simultaneously. What did he think about these changes? The Father/King figure was an important construct that †̃explainedâ€TM and justified the way things worked in the political realm (the King), in religion (God), in the family (the father), and on the manor (the all-knowing patriarch). During Landonâ€TMs lifetime, many came to question this simplistic arrangement. Americans rebelled against the King and his ministers; the Enlightenment undermined traditional religious teaching, and Landon†|
| Starting Page | 295 |
| Ending Page | 298 |
| Page Count | 4 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.5860/choice.42-6694 |
| Volume Number | 62 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://archbd.net/fj4.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.42-6694 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
