Small Craft Warnings is a two-act play by Tennessee Williams, written in late 1971 and early 1972. Williams expanded his two-scene play Confessional (1970), which had been published in his 1970 compilation Dragon Country, into this full-length play that centers on a motley group of people gathered in a seedy coastal bar in  Southern California.

Overview
The characters include lusty, needy beautician Leona Dawson, an embittered middle-aged woman who repeatedly plays Jascha Heifetz's recording of Tchaikovsky's Serenade Melancholique on the jukebox; her ne'er-do-well live-in lover Bill McCorkle; Doc, an alcoholic who lost his license to practice medicine but still does; Violet, who risks becoming the target of Leona's wrath when she flirts with Bill; Steve, the middle-aged short order cook who is resigned to his fate slinging hash in a waterfront dive; Monk, the congenial bartender; and two gay men – Quentin, a washed-up screenwriter, and Bobby, a young man bicycling from Iowa to Mexico that Quentin picked up on the road.

An article about a 2015 regional production noted that Williams wrote: " 'It is the responsibility of the writer to put his experience as a being into work that refines it and elevates it' to make an audience feel the truth of that work." That article analyzes the play, stating that "there is no single dramatic arc... Interspersed throughout are "confessional" moments, monologues of observation and revelation from the individual characters."

The play is a "kaleidoscopic ... of monologues... as the action... becomes frozen and muted."

Productions
The play premiered on April 2, 1972, at the Off-Broadway Truck and Warehouse Theatre and later moved to the New Theatre on the upper East Side. Richard Altman directed a cast that included Helena Carroll as Leona and William Hickey as Steve. During the course of the run, Irish actor Patrick Bedford assumed the role of Quentin, James Seymour appeared as Bobby, and Tennessee Williams himself took over the role of Doc. Candy Darling, a trans woman from the Warhol stable of "superstars," played the role of Violet, a bewitching, trampy girl whom most of the male characters desire.

The play was produced in the West End at the Comedy Theatre in 1973, with Elaine Stritch, Peter Jones, George Pravda, Edward Judd, Frances de la Tour, James Berwick, Tony Beckley, Eric Deacon, and J M Bay.

The play was produced Off-Broadway at the Tribeca Playhouse in June to July 19, 1999, directed by Jeff Cohen.

The play was presented Off-Broadway in 2001 by the Jean Cocteau Repertory, directed by Scott Shattuck.

The Off-Broadway Studio Theatre produced the play in February 2011, directed by Austin Pendleton, who also played Quentin.

Critical reception
In his review in The New York Times, Clive Barnes wrote: "This is almost a dramatic essay rather than a play, a temperature reading of a time and a place . . . This is perhaps best regarded as a play in waiting, a pleasurable and rewarding exercise of style . . . This is not a major Tennessee Williams play, but it will certainly do until the next one comes along, and I suspect it may survive better than some of the much touted products of his salad years."

The CurtainUp reviewer of an Off-Broadway 2011 production wrote: "Even in a better production, the episodes and characters of this play often come across as either too calculated or overly sentimental. Indeed the characters seem to be mere tokens of those found in the playwright's earlier (and better) dramas."

References

External links

1972 plays
Plays by Tennessee Williams
Plays set in California
New Directions Publishing books

Small Craft Warnings


Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States about racial discrimination and United States constitutional criminal procedure. Strauder was the first instance where the Supreme Court reversed a state court decision denying a defendant's motion to remove his criminal trial to federal court pursuant to Section 3 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Its holding, along with those of its companion cases of Virginia v. Rives (1880) and Ex parte Virginia (1880) established the proposition that it is a denial to criminal defendants of the equal protection of the law for a state to exclude persons from service on a grand or petit jury on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. These holdings do not guarantee criminal defendants that the grand or petit juries involved in their case will be composed either in full or in part of members of a non-white defendant's race (as was sought in the Rives case), but held instead that equal protection demands only that potential jurors could not be excluded from jury service on account of their race. Additionally, the Supreme Court did not exercise its power of judicial review to strike down West Virginia's juror qualifications statute as unconstitutional, as Strauder and his attorneys did not seek such a remedy. Instead, Strauder desired his case be removed to federal court, where he expected he could receive a venire that included freedmen.

In Strauder and the companion cases, the Supreme Court also issued a narrow interpretation of the removal provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. For a case to be removed to federal court, the denial of rights must occur in the constitution or laws of the state, or in other pre-trial actions of state officials, that state courts are without power to remedy—that is, it held that the Civil Rights Act required removal be based on objectively discernible facts about the denial of rights (such as the exclusion of freedmen from the jury pool by Judge Coles in Ex parte Virginia, despite Virginia law allowing freedmen to serve as jurors, an act in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1875), and not the defendant's subjective beliefs about potential outcomes of a state-administered trial. The Supreme Court provided that the remedy for denials of equal protection occurring during trial can be found in the appeals process; only those cases where equal rights cannot be enforced before state judicial bodies are appropriate to be removed to federal court.

Background
On the morning of April 18, 1872 in Wheeling, West Virginia, Taylor Strauder, a former slave, allegedly murdered his wife Anna by bludgeoning her to death with two strikes from a hatchet handle to the left side of her head after having argued with her through the night about an allegation of her marital infidelity. Strauder's step-daughter, Fannie Green, supposedly witnessed the murder, and alleged that Strauder threatened Green to remain quiet, lest she too be killed. Strauder allegedly fled and was arrested in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on April 25, 1872.

Procedural history
Following the passage and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Under section 3 of the act, Congress provided to defendants in state trials the right to remove to federal court "all causes, civil or criminal," arising under state or municipal laws wherein "any of the rights secured to [the defendant] by the first section of this act" were denied or could not be enforced. Later fearing that the Thirteenth Amendment might not provide a sufficient legal basis for the Civil Rights Act, Congress passed and the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress then passed the act of May 31, 1870, of which section 18 reenacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Moreover, section 16 of the 1870 act also provided that "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory in the United States... to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens[.]"

First trial
Upon his return to Wheeling, Strauder appeared before the circuit court for Ohio County, West Virginia and received a preliminary examination before Judge Thayer Melvin. The court assigned George O. Davenport and Blackburn B. Dovener as Strauder's counsel, and set his arraignment for the May 1872 term of the circuit court. On May 20, 1872 the grand jury returned an indictment for murder in the first degree. Strauder demurred the indictment as defective, arguing the facts alleged did not rise to murder in the first degree, and that the panel from which the grand jury was selected excluded non-whites; the court overruled the arguments. Counsel for Strauder then attempted to remove the case to the U.S. district court for West Virginia, but this too was overruled. Strauder then pleaded not guilty by reason of temporary insanity and asked the court for a continuance to the October term, which was granted. At the next term, Strauder received a second continuance to the May 1873 term.

During the first continuance, the State of West Virginia adopted a new state constitution in August 1872. The state legislature reconstructed the state courts and passed a criminal procedure bill on April 3, 1873 providing criminal defendants with preliminary examinations to occur at the county court (as distinguished from the circuit court for the county). At the May 1873 term of the circuit court, Strauder made a motion requesting this examination before the county court. The circuit court denied the motion, citing the preliminary examination the circuit court had already given. The case then proceeded to trial over May 6–8, 1873; the jury returned a verdict of guilty after approximately 90 minutes of deliberations. The court sentenced Strauder to death by hanging on July 8, 1873.

First appeal
On appeal, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia held on July 20, 1874 that, since Strauder's case had not yet commenced trial at the time of the passage of the April 3, 1873 statute providing for a preliminary examination before trial, Strauder's case was within the scope of the statute. Since Strauder had timely made the request for the examination, the ruling of the circuit court denying the examination by the county court on grounds that the statute wasn't applicable to the case was reversed. "The error of the circuit court in refusing the accused an examination before the county court of the county of Ohio upon said charge of murder, is fatal to all the other proceedings in the cause by which the accused was tried, convicted and sentenced to be hung..." Consequently, the supreme court reversed the circuit court's denial of the request for the preliminary examination, overruled and nulled all rulings made in the case after that point, set aside the verdict, and remanded the case with instructions that the preliminary examination take place in the county court in accordance with the law.

Second trial
The clerk of the circuit court certified the case to the county court, which completed its preliminary examination on September 9, 1874 and remanded Strauder to the circuit court for trial. A grand jury convened and on October 20, 1874 returned an indictment similar to that of May 20, 1872. Strauder's arraignment on the new indictment took place on November 2, 1874.

At the arraignment, Strauder and his counsel moved to quash the new indictment and to remove the case to federal court on grounds that West Virginia law precluded non-white citizens from grand and petit jury service. During the course of the first trial, an act regarding trial procedure had passed as part of the 1873 reconstruction of the West Virginia courts in consequence of the new state constitution; the act of March 12, 1873 provided "[a]ll white male persons, who are twenty-one years of age and not over sixty, and who are citizens of this State, shall be liable to serve as jurors, except as herein provided." The only exception provided regarded service as a state official. The judge denied both motions. Strauder then demurred each count contained in the indictment and was again overruled. At that point, Strauder pleaded not guilty to the indictment, and the trial proceeded to jury selection, which resulted in an all-white jury. Strauder's counsel raised an objection to the composition of this jury was entered, but the court overruled the objection. The trial continued through November 4 when the case went to the jury for deliberations. On November 5, the jury returned a verdict of guilty and a sentence of death. Strauder and his counsel moved for a new trial on grounds of an impartial juror and that the jury contained no jurors of Strauder's race, for which arguments were heard January 5, 1875. The court denied the motion, and proceeded to sentence Strauder to death by hanging on January 9, 1875.

Second appeal
Arguments before the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia took place June 27, 1876. Strauder's counsel raised 11 points of exception. The supreme court handed down its ruling on November 17, 1877, relying on the opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States in The Slaughter-House Cases and Bradwell v. Illinois to find the Fourteenth Amendment had not been "intended to protect the citizens of any State against unjust legislation by their own State."  The Supreme Court consequently affirmed the trial court's denial of the motion to remove of the case to federal court as correct. Strauder's case was then sent back to the Circuit Court of Ohio County for resentencing, but held over until the April 1878 term.

While awaiting resentencing, Strauder and his counsel appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. On April 15, 1878, Chief Justice Morrison Waite granted a writ of error. The case was set for argument in the October 1879 term, and oral arguments were heard over October 20–21, 1879 along with the companion cases of Virginia v. Rives and Ex parte Virginia. Assisting Strauder's counsel in the arguments before the Supreme Court were U.S. Attorney General Charles Devens and former justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia Westel Willoughby. Arguing for the State of West Virginia were West Virginia Attorney General Robert White and special counsel James W. Green, a Virginia lawyer.

Decision
The majority opinion, written by Justice William Strong, focused on two legal questions:
 Does the Constitution of the United States afford citizens of the United States a right to trial by a jury selected and empaneled without discrimination against prospective jurors on account of a juror's race or color?
 If such a right exists and is denied by the state, may the case be removed to federal court pursuant to Congress's power of enforcement under the Fourteenth Amendment?

The majority held that categorical exclusion of blacks from juries for no other reason than their race violated the Equal Protection Clause since the very purpose of the Clause was "to assure to the colored race the enjoyment of all the civil rights that under the law are enjoyed by white persons, and to give to that race the protection of the general government, in that enjoyment, whenever it should be denied by the States." The Court did not say that a law barring blacks from juries violated the rights of potential jury members, but that such an exclusion violated the rights of black criminal defendants since juries would be "drawn from a panel from which the State has expressly excluded every man of [a defendant's] race."

However, the Court did not strike down West Virginia's law respecting juror qualifications as unconstitutional, as Strauder had not challenged the law on that ground. Instead, it proceeded with an analysis of whether the denial of equal protection of the law confronting Strauder was of a nature sufficient to motivate an exercise of Congressional authority under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to enact federal legislation allowing for the removal of cases such as Strauder's to the local federal district court, presumably where the trial process, under the supervision of a federal judge, would enforce the defendant's rights against the state.

Dissent
The two dissenting justices, Field and Clifford, explained their position in the case of Ex Parte Virginia, decided the same day.  In the latter case, Field wrote, with Clifford joining, "The equality of the protection secured extends only to civil rights, as distinguished from those which are political or arise from the form of the government and its mode of administration."

Subsequent case history
The Supreme Court of the United States on July 9, 1880 remanded the case to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, and ordered that the court reverse the decision of the circuit court and remand the case for further proceedings. By August 17, 1880, the Supreme Court of Appeals had done as ordered, setting aside the verdict and sentence of the second trial, and reversing the ruling of the circuit court that had denied to Strauder the removal of the case to federal court. The orders of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Appeals were entered into the circuit court record on Saturday, August 21, 1880 and the case was ordered to be removed to the U.S. district court.

Federal court
On Monday, September 6, 1880, the sheriff of Ohio County was served with a writ of habeas corpus to produce Strauder before the U.S. district court the next day and to show cause why he was being held. Over the next two days, before Judge John Jay Jackson Jr., arguments were heard over why the writ should be quashed, the state seeking to maintain its custody of Strauder. Arguments were also heard whether Strauder should be released pending the next hearings, or bail set. On Thursday, September 9, the court denied the state's motion to quash the writ, ordered custody of Strauder be transferred to the U.S. Marshal, and that a bail hearing for Strauder be scheduled. By October 9, Judge Jackson denied both discharge and bail.

The case was next heard on Thursday, January 13, 1881, whereupon Strauder entered a plea of abatement to defeat the 1874 indictment on the grounds that it too suffered from the constitutional deficiency passed upon by the Supreme Court—that is, the venire from which the grand jury had been drawn in May 1874, subject to the same 1873 jury law, excluded non-whites as jurors. On Saturday, April 30, 1881, Judge Jackson ruled in favor of Strauder, quashing the 1874 indictment and discharging Strauder from federal custody.

Rearrest
Anticipating that the federal court would discharge Strauder, the Wheeling Chief of Police Henry Conant swore out in secret a new warrant for Strauder's arrest before Aquilla B. Caldwell of the First Judicial Circuit on April 7, 1881. When the federal court then in fact discharged Strauder, Conant immediately moved to rearrest Strauder in the courtroom; Judge Jackson objected, causing Conant to withdraw. Conant instead rearrested Strauder upon his leaving the federal courthouse, and both returned to Wheeling on May 2. The next day, arguments were heard before Judge Caldwell regarding the circuit court's jurisdiction. Strauder and his counsel argued that even though the U.S. district court had discharged Strauder, it had only done so on the 1874 indictment, and since the state's prosecutor had never made a declaration of nolle prosequi or otherwise dismissed the 1872 indictment, and since the entire case had been certified to the federal district court, both the 1872 and 1874 indictments were under the federal court's jurisdiction when the April 7 warrant had issued. Further, since the 1872 indictment was still pending before the federal court, it still had jurisdiction over the case. As such, argued Strauder, the state circuit court had no jurisdiction, rendering its warrant invalid. Judge Caldwell ultimately agreed that the 1872 indictment was still alive and before the federal court, and ordered Strauder discharged from state custody, finally freeing Strauder from his nine-years confinement.

Impact
While a victory for the rights of black defendants and an important early civil rights case, dicta from Strauder v. West Virginia implies the right of states to bar women or other classes from juries by holding, in the words of Justice Strong, that a state "may confine the selection to males, to freeholders, to citizens, to persons within certain ages, or to persons having educational qualifications. We do not believe the Fourteenth Amendment was ever intended to prohibit this.... Its aim was against discrimination because of race or color." The precedent set by Strauder has continued to influence rulings in cases as late as 1961 in Hoyt v. Florida.

Because it was not raised in the context of Strauder, the Court also did not consider in its analysis whether state actions that have a disparate impact upon African-Americans would violate the Equal Protection Clause; that question was not considered until almost a century later in Washington v. Davis, which reaffirmed that Strauder "established that the exclusion of [African-Americans] from grand and petit juries in criminal proceedings violated the Equal Protection Clause, but the fact that a particular jury or a series of juries does not statistically reflect the racial composition of the community does not, in itself, make out an invidious discrimination forbidden by the Clause." .

See also
 Batson v. Kentucky

References

Further reading

External links

United States equal protection and criminal procedure case law
United States jury case law
United States Supreme Court cases
United States Supreme Court cases of the Waite Court
1880 in United States case law
African-American history of West Virginia
Legal history of West Virginia
1880 in West Virginia
Criminal cases in the Waite Court
African-American history between emancipation and the civil rights movement
Ohio County, West Virginia
Race-related case law in the United States
United States racial discrimination case law

Strauder v. West Virginia


Robert Carter III (February 28, 1728 – March 10, 1804) was an American planter and politician from the Northern Neck of Virginia. During the colonial period, he sat on the Virginia Governor's Council for roughly two decades. After the American Revolutionary War saw the Thirteen Colonies gain independence from the British Empire as the United States, Carter, influenced by his belief in Baptism, began the largest manumission in the history of the United States prior to the American Civil War.

Despite strong opposition from family members and neighbors, Carter began emancipating the hundreds of slaves he owned via a deed of gift filed with the Northumberland County, Virginia authorities on September 5, 1791. Over the following years, Carter gradually emancipated over 500 of his slaves by filing documents with the Northumberland County, Virginia authorities, and settled many freedmen on land he gave them. Carter died in Baltimore, Maryland in 1804.

Early life and education
Carter was born into one of the First Families of Virginia, as a grandson of Virginia land baron Robert "King" Carter of Corotoman. In 1732, both his father and grandfather died within four months of each other, leaving the young boy in the care of his uncles Charles and Landon Carter, as well as his mother. In 1735, she remarried to John Lewis of Warner Hall in Gloucester County.

Although his uncles had been sent to England for their education, young Robert was sent to the College of William and Mary, beginning with preparatory classes since he was only nine years old. In 1749 he reached legal age and received his inheritance.
After crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Liverpool with Lawrence Washington, Carter traveled to London, where he and Philip Ludwell Lee started legal studies at the Inner Temple.

Family life

In 1754, Carter married Frances Ann Tasker, daughter of former Maryland governor Benjamin Tasker. They ultimately had seventeen children, of whom eight daughters and four sons reached adulthood. The successful marriage seemed to settle Carter, who began to pay attention to his vast landholdings, as well as politics.

Early career

Carter returned to Virginia in 1751 where he was admitted to the bar. He took up residence at Nomony Hall. This was his preferred spelling for his inherited plantation on the Northern Neck. Nominy or Nomini are more commonly used today, as in the highway marker noting the plantation site.  He also became a local justice of the peace for Westmoreland County in 1752; the county justices of that era also jointly administering the county. However, Carter was unsuccessful in at least two campaigns to become one of the county's two (part-time) representatives in the House of Burgesses.

In 1758, using his in-laws' connections with the Board of Trade, Carter secured an appointment from George II to the Virginia Governor's Council.  When George III succeeded to the throne in 1760, Carter was reappointed to the post, which served as the colony's appellate court as well as advised on executive matters. Carter purchased a house in Williamsburg from his cousin Robert Carter Nicholas Sr. and moved his growing family there in 1761. Carter also began reading voraciously, as well as socializing with the city's top intellectuals, including Governor Fauquier, George Wythe, William Small, John Blair and young Thomas Jefferson a classmate of Carter's.

Patriotism

At first loyal to his King, Carter expressed support for the Crown during the period of popular rejoicing that accompanied news of George III's repeal of the Stamp Act, but Parliament passed additional laws obnoxious to colonial interests, and by 1772 the new Governor Dunmore exacerbated tensions. That year, Carter moved his ailing family (having lost three young daughters to unknown illnesses within 11 months) back to Nomony Hall on the Northern Neck, announcing his retirement from public life. Carter never appeared in the Governor's Council minutes (other than as present) after it voted to allow slaveholders or local authorities to punish slaves without due process. Moreover, rather than educate his sons at the College of William and Mary, Carter hired Philip Fithian as tutor.

Carter concentrated his efforts on trade, including ironworks, a textile factory, and a flour mill, in addition to draining swamps around Nomony and diversifying crops at all his plantations. Although publicly neutral, Carter honored the continental boycott declared in 1774, and in 1775 joined Richard Corbin in expressing the council's concern about rumors of British marines being stationed at Williamsburg. Carter declined to give the loyalty assurances Dunmore required, and the governor dissolved the council in 1776. The following summer, he gave a oath of loyalty to the new Commonwealth of Virginia. Although Carter declined to hold political offices suggested by Patriot friends, he began supplying provisions and bayonets to Patriot forces during the American Revolutionary War, which resulted in his plantations near the Potomac River being raided by British ships.

Slaveholding and spiritual seeking

Although his great-grandfather John Carter had freed slaves in his will (as well as provided homesteads and livestock for them), the colony of Virginia made individual manumission illegal in the year Carter's father and grandfather died. It was not authorized again until 1783. King Carter had greatly expanded the institution of slavery in Virginia, by purchasing many from ships to work on his plantations. He owned more than a thousand slaves upon his death. King Carter gave his grandson Robert III his first slave (a girl) when the infant was three months old. By the time he came of legal age in 1749, Robert Carter III owned  of land and 100 slaves.

Although Carter sold land and some slaves to pay his debts in 1758, he did not purchase more slaves (unlike George Washington and other neighbors). He became known among his neighbors for his humane treatment of the enslaved workers in this region. Carter rarely whipped slaves, or allowed them to be whipped, let alone scarred them, although he whipped his own children, particularly his eldest son Robert Bladen. Carter's plantations had roughly double the rate of slave population increase as others in the state. Carter was particularly moved by the example of Governor Fauquier, who in his will allowed his slaves to choose their masters.

When Carter became a co-administrator of his father-in-law's estate, he (with the support of Daniel Dulany) delayed scheduling a sale of the slaves of Bel-Air plantation, since that would break up families. But his delays led to more than 18 years of litigation with his Tasker in-laws.

Conversion

Carter became known for his religious freethinking and support of Dissenters even before the Revolution. He resigned from the Cople Parish Church vestry in 1776. During the following year he had a mystical experience while feverish from a smallpox inoculation. This prompted further spiritual seeking, from composing his own prayer for God to "have pity upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels & Hereticks", to making trips to attend services and hear from Quaker, Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist preachers (all classified as dissenters), and investigating Arminianism and perhaps Catholicism (although these pursuits were illegal in Virginia at the time, where the Anglican Church was the state established church).  On September 6, 1778, the Rev. Lewis Lunsford baptised Carter by immersion in Totuskey Creek. Carter scandalized neighbors further by joining Morattico Baptist Church, which had a mixed congregation of white and black, free and slave. In this period, most elite planters still belonged to the Anglican Church. Carter knew he risked persecution, for Eleazar Clay, another wealthy man, had his life threatened after such conversion. During the three weeks preceding his own baptism, Carter attended two different services that were attacked by armed mobs that included Revolutionary War veterans. His wife Frances Ann Tasker Carter, who was declared an invalid in October 1779 after the birth of their 16th child, moved to Bladensburg, Maryland for health reasons. She converted to the Baptist faith there a year before her death in 1787.

Meanwhile, Carter became a prominent Baptist, serving on its General Association, financing the foundation of several churches in the Northern Neck, and corresponding with eminent ministers. The noted Methodist missionary and anti-slavery activist Francis Asbury also lodged at Nomony Hall at least twice after Carter's Baptist conversion.

Carter believed human slavery immoral, and tried to pass his beliefs to his children. However, his eldest son, Robert Bladen (although an admirer of the poet Phyllis Wheatley), at least twice sold young female slaves against his father's wishes. He also gambled and incurred such large debts that when Robert Bladen fled to England in 1783, his father was compelled to liquidate not only lands, but also slaves and thus break up families, in order to pay off his son's debts. In 1785 his son-in-law John Peck sold slaves whom Carter had given to his daughter Anne Tasker Carter as a dowry before the couple married and moved northward. Carter gave his remaining daughters dowries that did not include human property.

In February 1786, Carter decided to send his youngest sons George and John Tasker Carter to the new Baptist university in Rhode Island (what is now Brown University). He wrote to its minister president James Manning:
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 [Virginia] 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.

In November 1788, Carter sent three daughters to live with Baptist friends in Baltimore, instructing their hosts "Girls are not to act by a Maid, but by themselves." But he also sent a slave as barter for their room and board.

During the 1780s, some Baptists began to segregate their meetings. After the Baptist Ketocton Association of churches passed a motion that hereditary slavery was "contrary to the word of God," and Morattico Baptist Church changed its rule to allow only free male members to vote on church issues, tumult rocked the General Committee. Carter's wife had died and the grieving widower responded to the changes by drafting a charter for Yeocomico Church that required egalitarian voting. He left Morattico for the splinter congregation, signing its charter below the signatures of several slaves. Carter unsuccessfully ran for a position in the Virginia Ratification Convention. While struggling with several bouts of illness, he was cared for by his daughter Sarah Fairfax Carter. He postponed her proposed marriage to Richard Bland Lee, perhaps because of the suitor's pro-slavery ideas.

Carter continued to host spiritual seekers, including a "Mr. Moyce," who in January 1788 introduced him to the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Scandinavian aristocrat, scientist and mystic who had developed followers in London. Carter began to request copies of his writings from business correspondents. In December 1789, Carter believed he "died", perhaps another religious experience tinged by illness. In 1790, Carter wrote in a letter to English Baptist minister John Rippon that "the toleration of slavery indicates very great depravity of mind." He also criticized ministers who offered universal redemption, but only "partial Election before Creation". In the nineteenth century, as some Virginia Baptist churches became more accommodating of slavery, it began to grow in the number of members. In 1790 it claimed 20,000 members in Virginia; a decade later, well after the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, it had become Virginia's second largest sect.

Manumission

In the years after the Revolutionary War, Virginia's legislature (having barred the slave trade in 1778) passed several laws sympathetic to freeing slaves, although it did not pass a law legalizing manumission until 1782, and throttled many petitions for wider emancipation. Numerous slaveholders in the Chesapeake Bay area freed their slaves, often in their wills (like Quaker John Pleasants) or deeds, and noted principles of equality and Revolutionary ideals as reason for their decisions. The number of free African Americans increased in the Upper South from less than one percent before the Revolution, to 10 percent by 1810. In Delaware, three-fourths of the slaves had been freed by 1810. In the decade after the act's passage, Virginians had freed 10,000 slaves, without visible social disruptions. The price of slaves reached a 20-year low as the percentage listed as "black, tithable" (i.e. slaves) fell below 40%, the lowest point in the century. However, Virginia's courts sidestepped issuing appellate decisions ratifying emancipation until 1799, and the methodology of within-life emancipation was not established.

Carter hoped Virginia's legislature would pass a gradual emancipation plan, as did New York and New Jersey. His neighbor Ferdinando Fairfax published one such plan in a Philadelphia-based journal, and Quaker Warner Mifflin presented petitions to Congress to do the same, but James Madison buried the proposals in committee.  In early 1791, Carter refused to rent a plantation to Charles Mynn Thruston, a Revolutionary veteran and Anglican minister, with whose racial views he disagreed. His Baptist friend John Leland left Virginia after a final anti-slavery sermon, which Carter copied in full into his journal.

Carter nonetheless began a personal program of gradual manumission of slaves on his many plantations. He announced his plan on August 1, 1791, and began a new legal process by recording a Deed of Gift in Northumberland County on September 5, 1791. Since the manumission law required a five shilling fee, and Carter had plantations and slaves in several Virginia counties, he corresponded with the Westmoreland County clerk (where he resided) and followed up by filing manumission papers at the Westmoreland County court sessions the following February, May, July and August. His actions were resisted by his son-in-law John Peck, and various overseers and white tenants of his estates. Carter designed the gradual program to reduce the opposition of slave-owning white neighbors, but he failed to gain their support. He refused tenants' requests to relocate slave breeding women in order to circumvent the Deed of Gift. That winter Carter was shunned, although he sought help from fellow slavery opponents, including George Mason (who declined to help and cited his own age and infirmity). By the filings of February 27, 1793, Carter was ahead of his own planned schedule. Moreover, he refused to relocate freed blacks, and began offering them wages to work for him. He also offered some grants and tenancies, sometimes dispossessing obstreperous white tenants. Carter began investigating relocating to the District of Columbia. He leased Nomony plantation and its servants to his son J.T. on April 26, 1793 (expressly conditional to the Deed of Gift).

Then, before the next Westmoreland court session, perhaps victimized by mob action such as tar-and-feathers, Carter and his daughters fled by ship with Negro George and Negro Betty to Baltimore (on May 8, 1793). He never returned, despite numerous entreaties from family and friends. The meetinghouse used by the Yeocomico Baptist Church burned down six months after Carter left; Carter saved an unsigned complaining letter (which he believed from Thruston) that compared the Deed of Gift to fire destroying neighbors' houses.

Later life and death

Upon reaching Baltimore, Carter was told that his son Robert Bladen Carter had died in London, nine days after being assaulted by a city sheriff trying to collect gambling debts. Carter joined the congregation of James Jones Wilmer, an Episcopal priest receptive to Swedenborg's views, bought a small house on Green Street, and began attending many religious meetings. Before leaving Nomony Hall, Carter locked his books and papers in the library, and gave the only key not to his son J.T., but to a wandering Baptist preacher named Benjamin Dawson. Dawson proved a corrupt debt collector, but a diligent abolitionist, duly securing legal papers from Carter in Baltimore and filing them in Westmoreland  and other counties to free slaves. Carter made provision for his relatives, allocating them land, but not the slaves who were the subject of the Deed of Gift. On July 26, 1797, upon learning from Dawson that attorney John Wickham doubted the legal validity of the power of attorney which allowed Dawson to file further manumission papers, Carter executed an agreement selling Dawson his remaining slaves for the nominal sum of a dollar. Dawson duly filed this with the Westmoreland clerk, despite suffering a beating by Carter's son-in-law Spencer Ball.

Carter spent the last decade of his life issuing manumission papers pursuant to his recorded program, writing letters in support of freed slaves whose papers had been stolen, and contemplating religious and political issues. Carter lent money to Baltimore to build its city hall, negotiated with the Bank of the United States, and donated money to refugees from Saint Domingue, who fled the Haitian Revolution. Carter thought he had lived too long—mourning his daughter Anne's death in childbirth in 1798, and the deaths of Rev. Lunsford and his son-in-law John Maund in Caroline County, Virginia the following year. In 1803, the year before his death, Carter wrote his daughter Harriet L. Maund, "My plans and advice have never been pleasing to the world."

Citizen Robert Carter (as he preferred to be called) died in his sleep, unexpectedly, on March 10, 1804. His son and executor, George, brought the body back to Nomony and buried his father in the garden. The same day that George announced his father's death, he bought slaves for Nomony, in order to replace those his father had freed over his objection.

On April 3, 1805, Rev. Thruston, acting as judge of Frederick County, Virginia, refused to allow Dawson to record the scheduled deed for emancipation for that year, perhaps because of George Carter's objection. But on March 24, 1808, the Virginia Court of Appeals upheld Dawson's objection, declared the county court had erred, and authorized liberation of the slaves illegally held in bondage. Dawson continued to free sons and daughters born to Carter's slaves after 1791, as did Thomas Buck and John Rust after 1826.

See also

 Robert Carter I
 Carter's Grove
 Slavery in the United States
 George Wythe

References

Works cited

 Baptists in America in A General History of the Baptist Denomination in America, and Other Parts of the World.

External links
 Robert Carter III at Encyclopedia Virginia
  Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice
 Nomini Hall Slave Legacy Project:Chronicling the Descendants of the Slaves freed by Robert Carter III at Nomini Hall
 Guide to the Robert Carter letter books and day books, 1771-1804 and undated, Duke University
 McLaughlin, Eliott C., "Like Washington and Jefferson, he championed liberty. Unlike the founders, he freed his slaves", CNN.com, September 5, 2021.

1728 births
1804 deaths
American people of English descent
American planters
American Swedenborgians
Robert III
College of William & Mary alumni
Politicians from Baltimore
People from Westmoreland County, Virginia
People of Virginia in the American Revolution
Virginia Governor's Council members
Year of birth uncertain
History of slavery in Virginia
American slave owners
Tasker family

Robert Carter III