Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation

by Isaac, Rhys

• ISBN13: 9780195159264
• ISBN10: 0195159268
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-07-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Landon Carter, a Virginia planter patriarch, left behind one of the most revealing of all American diaries. In this astonishingly rich biography, Rhys Isaac mines this remarkable document--and many other sources--to reconstruct Carter's interior world as it plunged into revolution. The aging patriarch, though a fierce supporter of American liberty, was deeply troubled by the rebellion and its threat to established order. His diary, originally a record of plantation business, began to fill with angry stories of revolt in his own little kingdom. Carter writes at white heat, his words sputtering from his pen as he documents the terrible rupture that the Revolution meant to him. Indeed, Carter felt in his heart he was chronicling a world in decline, the passing of the order that his revered father had bequeathed to him. Not only had Landon's king betrayed his subjects, but Landon's own household betrayed him: his son showed insolent defiance, his daughter Judith eloped with a forbidden suitor, all of his slaves conspired constantly, and eight of them made an armed exodus to freedom. The seismic upheaval he helped to start had crumbled the foundations of Carter's own home. Like Laurel Ulrich in her classic A Midwife's Tale , Rhys Isaac here unfolds not just the life, but the mental world of our countrymen in a long-distant time. Moreover, in this presentation of Landon Carter's passionate narratives, the diarist becomes an arresting new character in the world's literature, a figure of Shakespearean proportions, the Lear of his own tragic kingdom. This long-awaited work will be seen both as a major contribution to Revolution history and a triumph of the art of biography.

Author Biography

Rhys Isaac is Distinguished Visiting Professor at the College of William and Mary and a Research Associate of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Table of Contents

The Argument	p. XI
First Words	p. XIII
Dramatis Personae
The Carters and the Beales	p. XXIII
Sabine Hall--1770s Staff of the Dual Household	p. XXIV
Revolution in House and Home
Morning of Revolution	p. 3
The Egypt of This Exodus	p. 17
"All for Love"	p. 37
Enlightenment Calm
Plantation Pastoral	p. 57
Landon's Library	p. 85
Plantation Medical Science	p. 105
Politics, War, and Rebellion
Landon, Legislator	p. 123
Rebellions Begin	p. 163
A Troubled Old Regime
Master and Slaves	p. 187
Duties Betrayed	p. 233
Contests at Home	p. 265
King Lear Into the Storm
Primal Rebellions	p. 287
Landon and Nassaw	p. 313
Toward Death	p. 323
Last Words	p. 333
Chronology	p. 337
Annotation	p. 339
About the Illustrations	p. 396
Acknowledgments	p. 400
Index	p. 401
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