Deed of Gift

Friday, July 5, 2024

Dedicated students, distinguished colleagues and dear friends,

Happy Friday!

Two and a half centuries ago, 56 brave souls risked life and liberty to ensure life and liberty. In fact, five of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were captured and tortured, nine fought in the ensuing Revolutionary War and died, and the homes of dozens of the signers were pillaged and burned. The lasting result of their selfless sacrifice? Establishment of a new nation with the enduring truth “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The vision of the enduring truth, the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, was not implemented at once for all. Although prominent founding fathers preached passionately against slavery, they owned and traded slaves, delineating and then reconciling the theory of freedom and its practice with blatant simplicity. In fact, “four score and seven years” later, it took a national civil war to force the unalienable right that “…all men are created equal.”

In 1791, decades before the Emancipation Proclamation, out of sync with his noble contemporaries, a shining star in the long stretch of antebellum America, Robert Carter III, wrote the “Deed of Gift” and filed it in the Northumberland District Court of Virginia, freeing 500 slaves.  A wealthy, highly accomplished, serenely confident lawyer, he had a library larger than those of his close friends, the mystic founding fathers of the new nation. Perhaps the richest, most literate and the most powerful Virginian, Robert Carter III curtailed his worldly desires early in life, legally freed all his slaves and left a vast canon of manuscripts and writings that are preserved in the Duke University archives.

As I write this note today, on the 248th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I am reminded of not only the brave signers of the Declaration of Independence, but also of the few men and women who subscribed not only to the letter, but also to the spirit of the “unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all. Few were like Robert Carter III, “the first emancipator,” who had the personal courage to act on his deep belief of freedom for all, at grave personal and familial cost.

Again, as I write this note on this Fourth of July, and as we honor America for all her unthinkable achievements, it is sobering to contemplate an alternative antebellum American history that would have been simply the American history without the bellum!  Without segregation, without two centuries of sharp divisions, without Jim Crow and without painful, divisive, retroactive ongoing reconciliation conversations.  Although today, without a doubt, we live in the most equitable America, it is possible to envision a much more constructive, albeit dull approach to end slavery as was envisioned and implemented by too few unsung heroes of the post-American Revolution era. But perhaps that is why the freedoms that we celebrate on each and every Independence Day must not be taken for granted as our simple acts of celebrations today were considered acts of treason 248 years ago.

On a lighter note, a fun fact for me to learn was that the audio finale of many Fourth of July fireworks often includes Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” Ironically, the overture was composed for a different struggle than the Revolutionary War, as Dr. David Samson, our assistant professor of music, explains.

Wishing all of you in the U.S. a happy and safe Fourth of July weekend filled with family, friends and, of course, fireworks!

And, perhaps, devoting a few minutes to learn about a lesser known visionary of the dawn of the American Revolution, Robert Carter III, and his Deed of Gift.

Warmly,

-Mo.

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Mohammad Dehghani, PhD
Chancellor
mo@mst.edu | 573-341-4116

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