Alan Taylor > Quotes

“The greatest liberator was Robert Carter of Nomini Hall in the Northern Neck. An eccentric great planter, he experimented in radical religion, joining a Baptist church that included twenty-nine of his own slaves. Carter’s spiritual quest led him to recognize slavery as a sin. In 1791 he began to liberate his 509 slaves, freeing about 25 a year until completing the process in 1812. His dismayed children saw much of their inheritance dissolve into freedom, and his neighbors denounced the freedmen for setting bad examples that ruined their slaves, who thereafter resented and resisted their bondage. An angry neighbor rebuked Carter, “It appears to me (witnessing the consequences) that a man has almost as good a right to set fire to his own building though his neighbor’s is to be destroyed by it, as to free his slaves.”
― Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832

“Fleeing first, in November 1813, Presley represented the greatest blow, for a body servant was a master’s favorite and confidante: no one knew Jones better than Presley did. Presley, however, preferred to serve a Royal Navy captain. In 1815 a visitor to HMS Havannah recognized Presley, whom he praised as “uncommonly likely & trained as a House Servant.” The visitor noted that Presley had renamed himself “Washington,” evidently after the great revolutionary leader who had won liberty and independence for the Americans.3 As a black Washington, Presley returned to free his friends and family left behind. In October 1814, Presley guided a British raiding party to Kinsale, liberating the rest of the slaves and casting Jones out. Presley’s return represents a common pattern in the slave escapes during the war. Runaways tended to bolt in two stages: in the first, a pioneer runaway made initial contact with the British, and then in the second stage, he returned home to liberate kin and friends.”
― Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832

“Writing to his son in 1799, John Adams blamed America’s political turmoil on “a systematical dissolution of the true Family Authority. There can never be any regular Government of a Nation without a marked Subordination of Mothers and Children to the Father.” Tellingly, Adams suddenly remembered his forceful wife and urged his son to keep his patriarchal sentiments “a Secret,” for their revelation would “infallibly raise a Rebellion against me.”67 Rather”
― Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804

“In 1786, Jefferson pitched a secular and public system of education for Virginia. He reasoned that “the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more that the thousandth part of what will be paid to [the] kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
― Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804

“On the one hand, Puritans hinted that God would reward the diligent and godly with prosperity. On the other hand, they cautioned that wealth must not be an end unto itself lest carnal temptations overwhelm the ultimate purpose of human life: preparation for salvation in the next world.”
― Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America

“Anglicans and Quakers dreaded falling under the sway of their more numerous Congregationalist and Presbyterian rivals, who were early and staunch Patriots.”
― Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804

“Jefferson warned Washington “that the ultimate object of all this is to prepare the way for a change, from the present republican form of government, to that of a monarchy, of which the English constitution is to be the model.”
― Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804