Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation [Hardcover]

Rhys Isaac (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0195159268 | ISBN-13: 978-0195159264 | Edition: annotated edition

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Isaac (The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790) offers an eloquent and unique look at the beginnings and consequences of the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of early America's finest diarist, Landon Carter. Carter, who owned the magnificent Sabine Hall plantation in Virginia, recorded his daily life from 1752 until just before his death in 1778. Originally used to record "plantation procedures," as Isaac points out, the diary soon grew from a collection of proverbs about when to plant to a journal of Carter's attempt to understand the meaning of the coming revolution for himself and his family. A supporter of the British, Carter nonetheless sided with the growing American quest for liberty. He thought of himself much like a king whose authority extended over the realm of his plantation. As the larger revolution approaches, Carter experiences smaller revolutions and rebellions on his own plantation: his son defies him by marrying against Carter's wishes, and eight of his slaves rise up in an armed rebellion. Angry that his authority is being challenged on all sides, Carter also exhibits perplexity at the changing world around him. Isaac weaves entries from Carter's diary with a splendid biographical narrative to provide a profound and intimate glimpse into one portion of early America.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"A detailed, persuasive picture of a world so different from our own as to be almost unimaginable."--Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

"A poignant tale of crumbling patriarchy in a world of revolutions.... Unlike most historians, who try to maintain the appearance of objectivity, Isaac, like many anthropologists, feels that his personal perspective and subjective reactions should be made explicit.... The result is a very personal and intimate portrait of a Virginia patriarch."--Gordon S. Wood, The New York Review of Books

"A captivating view of a leading planter's personal life and political transformation during the Revolutionary era. Isaac deftly blends pungent extracts from Carter's diary with illuminating biographical details and historical commentary.... A splendid addition to our understanding of the Virginia gentry--and of ourselves."--David Shi, Christian Science Monitor

"Full of rich cultural and psychological insights. Isaac sympathetically reveals Carter as a tragic figure, almost as cruel to himself as he was to others. Driven by a perverse but pervasive sense of duty, he alienated almost everyone in his angry wake."--Alan Taylor, New Republic

"Offers fresh insights into the character of the plantocracy and its evolution. There is no doubt about the importance of Landon Carter's diary as a window on the planter class and Carter himself. It reveals a man who saw himself as a link in the long chain of patriarchy, whose history stretched back to time immemorial."--Ira Berlin, The Nation

"In Isaac's hands the story of the Revolution in a small corner of Virginia breaks into multiple competing narratives that reveal the rich interplay between the local and the Atlantic, between the personal and the political, and, above all, between lost stories told by subalterns and the recorded stories of a patriarch-master."--James Sidbury, The Journal of Southern History

"A major contribution to the study of the American Revolution.... Readers will be fascinated by Carter's impassioned narratives, masterfully placed in their time by Isaac's brilliant analysis. This admirable study joins Claire Tomalin's Samuel Pepys as an example of the finest scholarly analysis of personal diaries."--Library Journal (starred review)

"An outstanding work of history.... An extraordinary, fascinating set of firsthand accounts from the revolutionary era."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"If for nothing else, we should read Landon Carter because he was an honest man, and Rhys Isaac's Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom because it is a skilled and honest depiction of the man, his place, and his age."--Christianity Today

"An eloquent and unique look at the beginnings and consequences of the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of early America's finest diarist, Landon Carter.... Isaac weaves entries from Carter's diary with a splendid biographical narrative to provide a profound and intimate glimpse into one portion of early America."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"As an expert and incredibly knowledgeable editor, Rhys Isaac guides us through the diaries of the great and deeply human Virginia patriarch, Landon Carter, ultimately the owner of over 700 black slaves, as he responds with both joy and furious anger to the coming of the American Revolution and to the seismic shocks it brought to Virginia's old regime and to his own authoritarian family."--David Brion Davis

"Isaac convincingly portrays Carter, one of Virginia's twelve richest men, as a figure ensnared by contradictions: In his energetic defense of American liberty, Carter appreciated that he was helping to destroy a hierarchical world to which he was intensely attached....Isaac is a sensitive guide to Carter's world, and reading his systematic exploration is the only way for the layman to comprehend the diaries properly."--Ben Schwarz, Atlantic Monthly

"By creatively exploiting the remarkable diary of the eighteenth-century Virginia planter Landon Carter of Sabine Hall--a character out of a Fielding novel if there ever was one--Rhys Isaac has written an extremely imaginative book that brings to life the world of this well-meaning but often ludicrous slave-master in all its humanity and inhumanity. From Isaac's rendition of Carter's story-filled diary we learn, among other things, how rebellions against patriarchal authority both in Carter's own household and in the British empire were transforming American society."--Gordon S. Wood

"A lively portrait of a busy, prolific character who went from being a monarchist to a reluctant revolutionary in the course of one lively adulthood. An irascible figure among neighbors, a respected member of Virginia's pre-Revolutionary House of Burgesses, and an often-brutal, sometimes-charitable master to his slaves and children, Carter embodied the paradoxes of his age. Carter was a dutiful chronicler of this changing world. And Mr. Isaac, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for 'The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-90,' proves to be a strong advocate for Carter's voluminous musings."--New York Sun

"Masterfully, creatively, Rhys Isaac uses the words of one of America's great patricians to tell the story of the birth of the new republic and the psychological traumas that resulted. Deftly, Isaac moves between the public and the domestic, the political and the psychological in a tale as complex, nuanced and fascinating as was the figure it describes." --Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Mary Frances Berry Collegiate Professor of History and American Culture, University of Michigan

"Landon Carter's diary is an unedited literary masterpiece full of Faulknerian stories. Now it has found a worthy editor and commentator in Rhys Isaac, a great storyteller in his own right. The result is a fascinating tale of public storms and personal furies that illuminates not only the dying world of the eighteenth century slaveholder but the dawning age of democratic revolution. Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom is itself a literary and historical masterpiece." --John Gillis, Rutgers University, author of A World of Their Own Making: Myth, Legenc and the Quest for Family Values

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; annotated edition edition (July 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195159268
• ISBN-13: 978-0195159264
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,078,317 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than the title suggests, December 16, 2004

By 

Jon L. Albee "Faulkner Wannabe" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation (Hardcover)

This book isn't as popular as it should be because the title makes it seem something of a dry academic tome and, let's face it, Landon Carter doesn't have the popular name recognition of Alexander Hamilton (i.e. Chernow), George Washington (i.e. Ellis) or Benjamin Franklin (i.e. Wood).

The star of the show in this case is Carter himself rather than the author. Dr. Isaac does a wonderful job of framing and interpreting Carter's diary to make a coherent analysis of the profound social changes which occurred during the Revolutionary period. Carter was a first hand witness to the transformation of the American society from a rigid colonial society based on patronage to a participatory, republican society in which people made lives for themselves. The transformation is nothing less than a journey of existential self-discovery for Carter, which is something ANY person can appreciate. So this book is not just a biography of a member of the Virginia planter aristocracy, but a reflection of the undermining of the feudal, patriarchal social structure Americans largely rejected during the Revolution. And it illustrates that the highly dualistic interpretation of Americans of the period as either "patriot" or "loyalist" is largely a modern historical construct with little basis in truth. Marvelous work by one of the foremost historians of American colonial history.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully researched and written but poorly edited., May 24, 2005

By 

Joseph P. Nichols (Malone, New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation (Hardcover)

Mr. Isaac's book is an excellent idea and almost perfectly executed. Far from being a "psycho-babble" book, Mr. Isaac explores in a powerful fashion the life of a man in such a way that we very much get to know him. Carter is a man who we have all met, known, or even lived with at one time or another.

The only thing that I disagreed with was the ordering of the book's treatment of Landon Carter. I would have appreciated a more chronological presentation. Still, I understand why Mr. Isaac wrote it using the organization based on subject matter, but I disagree.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Intimate Glimpse of Colonial Virginia, December 30, 2004

By 

Joseph S. Lamountain (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation (Hardcover)

By editing and contextualizing the voluminous diary of Landon Carter, Rhys Isaac has made a significant contribution to the social history of early Virginia and colonial America. By placing excerpts from Carter's diary within a larger framework of colonial society, readers can gain a more thorough understanding of the changing mores of mid 17th century Virginia. Carter emerges as a flesh and blood person throughout the book, though rarely sympathetic when seen through the eyes of 21st century readers. Of particular impact were Carter's regularly inhumane interactions with slaves and increasing inability to reconcile relationships with his own children. At times the book is 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.