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Washingtonian Agrarianism: AntebellumReformers and the Agrarian Image ofGeorge WashingtonAlexandra Kindell aa Department of Social Sciences, Purdue University North Central,Westville, IN, USA

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Washingtonian Agrarianism: Antebellum Reformers and the

Agrarian Image of George Washington

Alexandra Kindell*

Department of Social Sciences, Purdue University North Central, Westville, IN, USA

Nineteenth-century agricultural reformers held up George Washington as a modelfarmer in order to secure national legislation to aid the farm sector. Washingtonrepresented the ideals that they hoped to imbue in the farmers who were tosupposedly benefit from this legislation such as the organic laws that created theUnited States Department of Agriculture and land-grant colleges. This essayexamines the characteristics of Washington as well as the backgrounds of thoseusing his image to find that the movement for the farm legislation of 1862 was farfrom a grassroots, populist movement because of the elitist origins of thereformers.

Keywords: George Washington; agrarianism; farming; reform; United StatesDepartment of Agriculture

As scholars and educators, we are accustomed to using Thomas Jefferson and

Alexander Hamilton as icons to represent dichotomous views about the ideals

emerging from the Revolutionary experience. The Federalists, most notably

Hamilton, represented wealthier interests and hoped to tie their own purse strings

to the success of the new government. On the other side, Jefferson and other anti-

Federalists worried about state tyranny replacing the tyranny of King George III.

Starting in the 1790s, George Washington appeared as a shadowy figure in the debate

between Jefferson and Hamilton. He allowed Hamilton officially to report on and

pursue his Federalist plan. Yet Washington did not always agree with the forceful

Hamilton, mostly choosing to take a back seat to Hamilton even when in

disagreement with his policies.1 George Washington’s quiescence and Jefferson’s

eloquence about creating an agrarian republic brought Jefferson to the forefront in

his own era as well as ours. He penned the perfect paean to the farmer when he said,

‘‘Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen

people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit of substantial and genuine

virtue.’’2

Professors have inserted Jefferson’s dandy phrase into thousands of lectures

to bored students across the world, yet in the antebellum era, agricultural

reformers lobbying for the creation of the United States Department of Agriculture

(USDA) and land-grant universities invoked the image of Washington, not Jefferson.

*Email: akindell@pnc.edu

American Nineteenth Century History2012, 1�24, iFirst article

ISSN 1466-4658 print/ISSN 1743-7903 online

# 2012 Taylor & Francis

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These reformers included a body of politically, economically, and culturally active

men � farm press editors, agricultural society leaders, local and state politicians, and

even prominent businessmen with interests in science or pastoral pursuits � who can

be considered broadly as agricultural reformers for their interests in improving

agriculture with or without the aid of government bodies. Yet in their arguments for

establishing these institutions, agriculturalists often referenced the fall of Rome and

the emergence of Cincinnatus as the ideal citizen-soldier. In doing so, they compared

the nation’s first president to Cincinnatus and extolled Washington’s commitment to

scientific agriculture. The more scientifically minded reformers lobbying for the

landmark legislation of 1862 feared that the farmer had become a backward-thinking,

ignorant drudge. Consequently, they hoped to educate the average farmer to

eliminate poor agricultural practices and elevate his status by associating him with

symbols of republicanism and American patriotism. While this rhetoric imbued the

farmer with romantic visions of Jeffersonian agrarianism, the reformers had concrete

goals of elevating the farmer to the status of an entrepreneur who might advance

the economic interests of the nation. Their socioeconomic positions and their

attitudes about the failures of working farmers set them apart from the people whom

they professed to help, but they nonetheless continued to push for improvement.

The rhetoric of agricultural reform in the mid-nineteenth century reflected this

complicated interplay of class-based concerns and political philosophy because the

leadership of these groups was made up of capitalists, some of whom might have

qualified as ‘‘farmers.’’ In theory, agricultural societies attracted working farmers

wanting to share information about the newest techniques and equipment to help

their businesses, but in many cases local elites, boosters, politicians, and successful

farmers dominated these groups. These men had the education and socioeconomic

motives for promoting reform of their localities’ farms. Men such as Charles B.

Calvert (founder of Maryland Agricultural College), John A. Lowell (a ‘‘Boston

Associate’’), Benjamin Perley Poore (nationally known editor and author), Simon

Cameron (Pennsylvania senator and secretary of war), Marshall P. Wilder (merchant

and supporter of the Massachusetts Agricultural College and Massachusetts Institute

of Technology), and Brutus J. Clay (Kentucky congressman) presided on state boards

of agriculture, acted as officers of agricultural societies, and helped to establish

agricultural schools, all of which worked toward instilling scientific farming in the

minds of working farmers.3 These men eventually joined others in the United States

Agricultural Society (USAS). Historian Carrier Lyman cited this group as the most

influential body promoting the establishment of a federally supported Department of

Agriculture, which seems plausible considering these were the men writing the

legislation and for voting for it.4 While ‘‘dirt farmers’’ attempted to feed their families

by tearing up frontier lands, the elite were pushing their agenda for a more modern

agricultural sector through agricultural societies and Congress.

Undoubtedly some men involved with agricultural societies were successful

farmers, but much of the leadership of these groups straddled the economies of both

city and countryside as well as introducing a different class perspective into the

meetings. Marshall P. Wilder, for example, tended thousands of fruit trees but also

worked as a cotton and wool broker in Boston. Echoing a Dartmouth professor’s

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view of history and agriculture, Wilder told one audience at a meeting of the New

Hampshire Agricultural Society, ‘‘[Agriculture] is industry’s eldest child, the primary

element of social organization, and the foundation of property, order and civil

institutions.’’ In the same set of transactions, the secretary recorded that ‘‘New

Hampshire was, and would be to all time, emphatically an agricultural State.’’5

Interestingly enough, these musings about farming’s importance coincided with the

period when the leaders of Massachusetts and New Hampshire were aiding the

manipulation of the state’s river system for the benefit of mills, commercial

navigation, and power companies, to the detriment of farmers. Urban men, such

as Marshall P. Wilder, John A. Lowell, and George W. Nesmith, despite participation

in rural pursuits, knew full well the changes taking place in society because they were

directly responsible for many of them.

As the era of Hamilton and Jefferson passed on, Americans of the early national

and antebellum periods were left with a rural but industrializing nation that needed

farmers who could work within capitalism successfully. John A. Lowell, like Wilder,

found himself involved in both the agricultural and industrial sectors of the emerging

economic system because they remained intertwined before the Civil War. Lowell had

emerged as one of the ‘‘Boston Associates,’’ a group of New England merchants

orchestrating the transformation of the physical and economic landscapes to build

the Waltham and Lowell mills, jump-starting America’s Industrial Revolution with

fabric manufactures. These ‘‘associates’’ were tied together not only economically in

the new market relationships of finance but also through traditional bonds of social

networks. These men used money and political power to redirect human and natural

resources to establish water-powered factories in the midst of rural places. Lowell and

other Boston Associates participated in a number of groups related to the natural and

earth sciences, including horticulture. The Massachusetts Horticultural Society began

in 1829, allowing men such as Wilder and Lowell to pursue their intellectual pursuits

in a leisurely forum. Out of 77 men identified as Boston Associates in the early

nineteenth century, 37 held memberships in the Massachusetts Horticultural Society

prior to the Civil War while others dabbled in groups such as the Boston Society of

Natural History. They did this while also forming 31 textile concerns that controlled

one-fifth of the cotton spindles in the nation and much of the region’s watercourses.

As historian Theodore Steinberg found, ‘‘The behavior and attitudes of the Boston

Associates reflect a commitment to controlling nature in the interests of industry, to

managing water with an eye toward its productive value.’’6 While each region’s stories

vary slightly, all-in-all the elite of the nation pull the strings of finance and politics to

usher in an era of market-oriented pursuits that extended into the realm of both

industrial and agricultural production.

Agricultural reformers often found the productivity of farmers lacking and

embarked on a movement to bring about a more scientific and educated form of

agriculture. In the process of doing so, they invoked the image of Washington in an

effort to provide a model for the typical farmer of the antebellum period. In 1848,

one Virginia agricultural editor said:

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It is as a soldier, and as a statesman that we are most familiar with him. Why should notalso the agriculturists place great dependence in him? Washington was one of the first, ifnot the first farmer of his day.7

This editor, like other agricultural boosters, extolled Washington’s agrarian virtues,

described his operations, and simply presented the first president as a person to

emulate. These boosters joined together to reform nineteenth-century agriculture

by publishing information on the best farming practices. In order to keep their

audience’s attention, they mixed praise and chastisement because they had

considerable fears about the economic changes taking place in the nation. Since

most of these men were educated and knowledgeable of the import of commercial

expansion, they became anxious about the quality of the nation’s farmers and how

they plied their trade.

For antebellum Americans, using Washington as an icon made more sense. In the

midst of economic transition that the nation faced, the battles between Jefferson and

Hamilton had not been forgotten, and these two men represented a bifurcation of

interests that had been blurred in the years of early industrialization. Jefferson’s verbal

volleys against Hamilton set him apart from Hamilton, which made him a poor icon

for these nineteenth-century men in terms of imagery. Moreover, Jefferson’s failure as

a businessman disqualified him for their purposes. In the process, these reformers

crafted a new agrarian champion in the figure of George Washington. Their portrayal

of George Washington and use of his image reveals important insights into reformers’

ideas about the changing nation. They advertised a republican ideal with a faith in

agriculture that could save the nation from ‘‘ruin.’’ Yet these events might just expose

their belief that nature had to be managed to promote economic growth in all sectors.

It was these fears and hopes that made Washington a better icon than Jefferson,

despite the sage of Monticello’s poetic praise for the tillers of the soil. Complicated

motives were simplified by focusing on a straightforward icon of national glory.

The reformers preached a scenario of doom based on historical models, especially

that of Rome. They interpreted Rome’s fall as a result of commercial growth at the

expense of agricultural stability. Authors concerned about the decline of agriculture

in America presented two theories of history that explained how this had occurred in

Rome. First, these gentlemen argued that civilizations evolved in distinct stages based

on modes of subsistence: hunting begets pasturage, which begets agriculture and

finally commerce. Primitive people first hunted for their food until they began to

settle in communities, sparking the rise of civilization. As shepherds, they gained

greater control over their food sources and relied further on a sedentary lifestyle,

soon becoming farmers. A nineteenth-century Dartmouth professor described

this transformation for his audience, ‘‘Agriculture was the first step in primitive

civilization . . . . Until the hunter ceases from the chase and assumes a fixed

habitation and derives his chief sustenance from the soil, he is nothing but a

wandering savage.’’ Commerce as the final, and least desirable, stage of civilization

appeared only when agriculture waned.8

In a second theory, reformers compared Rome’s development to the stages of

human growth. In this ‘‘cyclical theory,’’ a civilization is at first innocent in its youth,

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but unfortunately, ensuing maturity precedes decline and death. Again Rome was an

enticing metaphor. The title of an article comparing Rome and America indicates the

author’s anxiety: ‘‘The Neglect of Agriculture, the Forerunner of Decay.’’ Agricultur-

ists learned from history that great civilizations prospered and died, and they feared

the same for their new country.9 America would face the same fate as Rome, the

epitome of a great civilization to these reformers, if the nation chose commerce over

agriculture:

the decline and ruin of all those States of antiquity, which have chased each other downthe declivity of time, like shadows down the mountain’s side, were graduated as upon adial plate, by the decay and ruin of agriculture and the useful arts.10

The progression of civilization in this manner gave agriculturists insight into the

possible future of the United States and indicated the country would have to remain

agricultural in character or ultimately face moral, political, and social decay.11 These

ideas seeped into discussions of agriculture formally and informally, but most

importantly, their purveyors used them to bring drama to the picture of agriculture

prior to the Civil War.

Americans had reason to have anxieties about economic growth in the antebellum

period. Farmers and others had moved westward during the 1840s and 1850s to the

point that it seemed it was the nation’s destiny to fill the continent with American

settlers. The Mexican-American War brought in more than a million square miles

and ended questions over the sovereignty of Texas and California. The Oregon Treaty

of 1846 settled the boundary disputes over the Oregon Country, and by 1850

America’s borders included 31 states and four territories. American commitment to

Manifest Destiny led to growth and tension. Distance created anxieties as folks moved

west and seemed to lose touch with the more settled, and thus ‘‘civilized,’’ East of

their kin. Rural communities were often decimated by the loss of residents who had

provided social and economic support.12 New communities sprouted on the frontier

without the connections to the institutions � church, government, schools � that

demonstrated the habits of industry and piety associated with established settlements.

As a result, historians have been able to identify numerous reactions to this epic

period of migration. Disconnection from institutions seemed to go hand and hand

with migration, and Americans feared the consequences of such distance. Churches

sent out circuit preachers to frontier areas in the early nineteenth century to convert

and inspire families to recommit to church and Christianity. The Mormon emphasis

on family and community in the later part of the century was similar to the

emergence of revivals. As historian Susan Session Rugh argues, these institutions

fortified members of the Church of Latter-day Saints against the transitory nature of

nineteenth-century life.13 Migration built and unnerved the nation at the same time,

and the progressive farmers who represented the most successful in the new and old

communities wanted the same the things for their localities, stability and economic

viability in the midst of change.

On the national and state political stages, the effect of migration brought the two

major parties into a contest that could almost be called ‘‘brinkmanship.’’ As the nation

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grew and incorporated new territories, tension waxed and waned with the help of

various compromises, but by the 1840s and 1850s, compromises were not enough to

hold the nation together. Sectional tensions, the issue of slavery, and the idea of

states’ rights all kindled and rekindled dissention and threatened the dissolution of

the Union. Even prior to the signing of the Constitution, the disparities between the

states forced the founders to compromise just to establish the flawed Articles of

Confederation. By the mid-nineteenth century, Whigs and Democrats argued over

the most salubrious forms of growth, often echoing the bifurcated economic ideas of

Hamilton and Jefferson. Should the nation grow up, as the Whigs argued, via

manufacturing? Or should the nation expand its territory making more room for

farmers and laborers, as the Democrats urged? These partisan fights almost destroyed

the nation as land came into the public domain, expanding territory for both free and

slave labor while eastern interests continued to invest heavily in the North. In essence,

Hamilton and Jefferson were still fighting over what the United States would look

like, and the North and South were not willing to accept a draw.

Crossing regional lines, reformers expected farmers to adopt the most progressive

and scientific methods of the day, including new implements, plant species, and types

of fertilizer. They complained that farmers used old methods of farming, which made

them appear backward, superstitious, and unproductive, qualities these reformers

found unacceptable. Progressive farmers touted the ordinary farmer as the backbone

of the American citizenry and the basis on which to create a financially strong nation.

In order to convince farmers to adopt new, scientific methods, they published success

stories of progressive farmers, often members of agricultural societies who already

had embraced the new ways. In that vein, they promoted the well-known figure of

George Washington. Since the death of the first president, writers and painters had

carefully imbued his memory with qualities of patriotism, sacrifice, and citizenship

for Americans to mimic, allowing agricultural reformers to invoke his image readily.

These were images that could be easily recalled in the American mind, so that the

promoters of agricultural science could instruct farmers how to position themselves

better in the emergent national economy.

Agricultural writers of the antebellum era complained that American farmers

were neither living up to Washington’s image nor were they actually as industrious or

virtuous as the enthusiasts romanticized. They wanted to reform agriculture and,

more importantly, farmers themselves, but they needed their own icon of agrarianism

that could depict the desired qualities as well as the concrete ideals of progressive

farming. The editor who called Washington the ‘‘first farmer of his day’’ announced

the publication of Washington’s agricultural writings because the first president

served as a ‘‘prime example’’ of a good farmer. Consequently, Washington

exemplified the good republican citizen and became the image that antebellum

agriculturists employed in their efforts to promote agricultural progress.

Despite the drama over states’ rights versus federal power in the territories, elite

leaders from the northern and southern states pushed for government aid to

agriculture because they had been steeped in the lessons of republicanism. According

to the rhetoric used in speeches and writings, farmers represented all that was good

about America and everything that was wrong with Europe, which seemed

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overpopulated by a poor, shiftless class of rootless laborers. American farmers

made up a yeomanry who would, if need be, protect the new country, land, and

government, because they had a stake in the soil � unlike the landless poor of Europe.

In this vision, the farmer supported the government, yet remained independent of it.

He did not depend on anyone but himself and on beneficent nature, and this

independence, as well as geographical distance, made him uniquely remote from the

vices of the city. Naturally, the republican farmer committed himself to supporting

‘‘free institutions’’ and preserving the Union because he was the ‘‘most benevolent

and patriotic’’ citizen. A foreign enemy who reached America would face ‘‘the

spectacle of a majority of the whole people rising to defend their own soil*to push

back the invader from their own farms.’’ Jefferson’s vision of a republican citizenry

lived on in the hearts and minds of nineteenth-century Americans as the Union

seemed to come into peril.14

Jefferson praised farmers, but to many nineteenth-century agriculturalists, the

tillers of the soil had failed to become good farmers and had thus failed to become

good republicans. Marshall P. Wilder and men like him romanticized the farmer’s

relationship to land, ignoring his more strained evolving relationship with local,

national, and international markets. Focusing on the quality of the republic’s

population, they viewed farmers as not living up to their expectations for the

yeomanry. In an era of great mobility, farmers took up lands in new areas and often

improved them only enough to survive or simply abandoned new farms for the next

frontier. They seemed to be only scratching at the surface instead of utilizing all of the

most recent techniques of what was considered good cultivation. As historian Steven

Stoll demonstrates, mobile farmers and elites of the Revolutionary era and early

national period started the precedent for both ‘‘scratching the soil’’ and complaining

about the men who destroyed fertility in the search of short-term profits. At first

Englishmen remarked on this, comparing their old-world techniques to the new-

world system of agriculture. England had a paucity of land with an abundance of

labor. The colonies, and later the American states, had the converse problem, which

was the cause of much waste. Farming on fertile land seemed to be the most

profitable use of farmers’ precious strength. In his published observations, English-

man William Strickland denigrated the lower classes of American farmers who sucked

the nutrients out of the soil by planting tobacco and corn incessantly. But after the

Revolution, the new American elite had little to gain by engaging in overtly class-

based conversations about agricultural education. Stoll makes an apt point about

the past that seems to continue to ring true in modern America: ‘‘Waste was

democratic.’’15 Americans had few rules about how to use land but also many

expectations regarding access to land and their perceived political equality in the

democratic republic.

This theme relating good farming to patriotism also found its origins in the years

following the Revolution. Playing to the same ideals that convinced ‘‘patriots’’ to fight

against the mother country, the same folks concerned with the destruction of land

and the perpetuation of the Union pulled these themes together in print to encourage

agricultural improvement. Thus as the grandchildren of the Revolutionary generation

witnessed the same problems with agriculture, they also watched as the Union faced

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dissolution. The stakes for agricultural improvement seemed just as high for the

earlier generations who wanted to put the nation on a strong footing economically

and politically. The nineteenth-century reformers held up George Washington as the

example of the ideal republican citizen � farmer and protector of the country. They

implicitly and explicitly promulgated an old idea that farming in general, but

especially good farming, was patriotic. In an article titled ‘‘False Estimation of

Agriculture,’’ the author complained that agricultural labor had been degraded as one

of mere physical labor requiring no intellect, but science now made it possible for

him to cultivate his mind as well as his land. To remedy the poor opinions held about

agriculture, he offered, ‘‘the Farmer of Mount Vernon was the Father of his Country,’’

and he chose to retire to farming after holding ‘‘one of the highest stations ever

conferred on man’’ thereby denoting the inherent dignity of agriculture as a

profession. By the mid-nineteenth century, Washington’s death removed him from

the discussion personally yet made it possible for him to become the center of the

same conversation at least 50 years later.16

In the antebellum period, George Washington had become as much a myth as he

had a man, and his retirement from politics and retreat to the farm fueled a useful

metaphor for reformers. Indeed, Washington’s retirement, as mentioned by the farm

press editor above, took on a life of its own in literature and art and is connected to

American republicanism. In 1800 Washington’s biographer and early mythologizer,

Mason Locke Weems, compared the deceased president to Cincinnatus in the book

Life of Washington. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, a fifth century Roman, supposedly

left his farm by the Tiber River to save Rome, and once he fulfilled his duty, he

retired readily back to the plow instead of remaining in power, as a dictator. By 1786

Jean-Antoine Houdon had already made this comparison in his sculpture of

Washington. The statue, now situated in Richmond, Virginia, portrays Washington

dressed as a citizen with one hand holding a cane and the other resting on what looks

like a pedestal. The item steadying his arm is actually a revived symbol of the Roman

republic, the fasces, a bundle of sticks surrounding an axe. Historian Garry Wills

explains that this symbol appeared in early America because the ‘‘binding of the

disciplinary rods indicated the restraint of power used when citizens agree to obey

laws of their own making.’’ On the fasces, Washington placed his sword for future

defense of the country, if needed. Additionally, the artist portrayed Washington’s new

role as a citizen tied to the land with the sculpted plow positioned behind him.

Houdon included all the elements of the Cincinnatus story, but he was not the only

one to portray Washington in this way.17

Current authors do not agree as to why the use of this metaphor developed, yet

American fears about their nation as legatee to the negative qualities of Rome gives

new insight into the imagery that emerged. William M.S. Rasmussen and Robert S.

Tilton postulate that the formation of the Society of the Cincinnati in 1783 inspired

Houdon, yet this does not take into account that the citizenry did not appreciate

Washington’s membership in a hereditary (read ‘‘aristocratic’’) organization, despite

the fact that he had no intention of joining anything but a charitable fraternal group

of former Revolutionary soldiers.18 Wills argues that a previous analogy of Moses was

faulty because Moses never made it to the Promised Land, and Americans wanted a

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more secular image.19 These numerous references to Rome and Romans appealed to

classically educated farm reformers. Nonetheless, Washington emerged as an

American Cincinnatus, an image appropriated by the agricultural press at least by

the 1830s if not earlier. At times the link was implicit; in one paragraph a farm editor

honored Cincinnatus for his return to the plow and in the next discussed George

Washington in parallel terms.20 Other writers explicitly connected the two historical

figures. For example, at a meeting of the Barbour County (Alabama) Agricultural

Society in 1844, John L. Hunter reminded his listeners how Washington was a

scientific farmer and ‘‘like Cincinnatus, always regretted to leave it for public

employments, although always obedient to the call of his country, and ever ready to

sacrifice his private and domestic happiness to the good of his country.’’ The lesson is

clear. If Washington liked being a good farmer, the average citizen could aspire to the

same for the benefit of the nascent democratic nation. The last line of Hunter’s

speech proclaims that Americans should show reverence to Washington ‘‘by

endeavoring to imitate his example as a farmer and patriot.’’21

One final example demonstrates the importance of the Cincinnatus metaphor for

the farm press. The editor of a new agricultural paper chose for his new publication

the name Cincinnatus. He told in full detail the story of how Cincinnatus saved Rome

and returned to his farm. He concluded his long article by arguing that another

commonwealth, existing two thousand years after the paper’s namesake, was in peril.

This new nation needed its own Cincinnatus. Washington fulfilled this role, and both

of these historical figures demonstrated that the ‘‘TILLERS OF THE SOIL’’ were of the

‘‘soundest wisdom, the purest patriotism, the most stainless honor.’’ The author

explained, in part, why the Cincinnatus theme was consistently useful for agricultural

authors and orators; if Rome instructed the nation’s leaders to support agriculture,

Cincinnatus exemplified the type of leaders and citizens America needed. There

would not always be a George Washington, but a nation of farmers could hold up the

same ideals in his place. In promoting Washington as a modern Cincinnatus, writers

urged farmers to take their places as the defenders of the nation’s economic and social

viability while trying to obscure the class differences between the reformers and the

body of soil-raping farmers whom they wanted to educate.22

The Cincinnatus metaphor provided writers with a literary device for their

articles on agricultural reform, yet a simpler, obvious reason for using George

Washington’s image in this way must also be acknowledged. Before the Civil War, the

new American leadership held up Washington as a model for rural citizens of

questionable literacy. On a tour of the United States in 1811, a Russian diplomat

noticed the ubiquity of the first president’s likeness. Printmaking was in its infancy in

the early nineteenth century, but the growing number of graphic artists collectively

met the unceasing demand for portraits of Washington. Image-makers fashioned

each event in Washington’s life into highly glorified moments, enhancing his

reputation beyond reality. He became a universal, instead of a sectional, symbol,

representing the entire country. Early school primers and almanacs adorned with

crude cuts of Washington gave many their first impression of him. By the time the

first president’s image began appearing on almanacs, they had become an accessible,

available literary form with a readership derived from all classes.23 Everyone knew of

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George Washington. The same could not be said for regional politicians such as

Kentucky’s Brutus Junius Clay or Massachusetts’s Marshall P. Wilder, both model

farmers, who might have remained obscure outside of their states. By the 1860s,

printmakers even placed Washington’s image next to that of Abraham Lincoln. In a

time when pictures were rare, correlating the two was not a careless afterthought.

Washington’s image had developed meaning to the public, significance these artists

hoped to invoke during a time of sectional strife; the supporters of the Republican

Party wanted to associate Lincoln with the virtues, real or imagined, of George

Washington, especially his image as leader of the nation as a whole.24 Thus

Washington had become the embodiment, as much as one man could be, of the

United States.

For these reasons, Washington replaced Thomas Jefferson as an agrarian

figurehead in the mid-nineteenth century. In addition to everything else, Washington

had become a national and apolitical symbol of the history and values of the country.

In Wendy Wick’s study on the evolution of Washington as an American icon, she

points out that even during his second administration, which was wracked by

partisan politics, artists had already begun recreating his image, in essence redefining

the United States’ creation myth.25 By the antebellum period, the mythical

Washington, a founding father unconcerned with politics or parties, had become

well ingrained in people’s minds, an image that agricultural reformers found

attractive in contrast to the Democratic party’s use of Jefferson’s memory, which

excluded the third president as a unifying image. Agricultural writers and orators

constantly complained that agriculture suffered because of politicians and partisan

politics. Politicians only offered their ‘‘bombastic praises,’’ and it was time for ‘‘less

partizanism, and more farmingism.’’ As the critics argued, legislation for agriculture

was thwarted due to different views of constitutionality and sectional revenge or

because government favored industry, commerce, and the military over the

‘‘commanding interest’’ in the forms of, for instance, tariffs and military training.26

The movement for agricultural reform needed unity not division, which was hard to

find prior to the Civil War. Because of the work of Washington’s original

mythologizers, reformers were able to easily adopt his image for their purposes.

While George Washington was corresponding with experts and raising appropriate

crops, Jefferson neglected the business aspects of his operations to entertain visitors,

often going into debt. Jefferson wrote many articulate pieces about American

government, and other topics, and Washington wrote about farming and farmers for

the benefit of a successful republican nation. As the iconic republican, Washington

was a farmer and soldier, while Jefferson could not legitimately claim status as either.

With the benefit of hindsight, historians know the result of antebellum divisions,

but at the time, agricultural reformers could not foresee the consequences of the

sectional conflict. Yet they were keenly aware of how the fight hindered agricultural

reform, and they generally framed their conversations carefully. Reformers made

attempts to put progress in farming above politics, as in the case of the USAS.

Sectional politics were at the forefront in the 1850s due to the entrance of new states

into the Union after the Mexican-American War. Despite that, agricultural leaders

from across the nation met as the USAS from 1852 to 1860. Southerners, northerners,

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westerners, Democrats, Whigs, Republicans, Free Soilers, slaveholders, and

anti-slavery men sat side by side in the Smithsonian to discuss agriculture, farmers,

and the reform of both.27 Many of the officers came back several years in a row,

indicating that nothing offended them enough during meetings to cause protest or

complaint. And as we know, many politicians were not above storming out of

meetings or even resorting to violence, as was the case with Preston Brooks and

Charles Sumner in 1856.

With the knowledge of the break that occurred because of sectional issues, it is

easy to forget that there were those who wanted to see the experiment in democracy

continue and the Union endure. As late as 1860, northerners worried about disunion

formed the Constitutional Union party with a simple plank of ‘‘pledging ‘to recognize

no political principal other than the Constitution . . . the Union . . . and the

Enforcement of Laws.’’’ These disaffected Whigs then offered John Bell, a wealthy

slave owner, and Edward Everett, a Yankee, for the presidential and vice presidential

ticket.28 There were politicians who came before them who put the continuation of

the Union above party politics, as futile as the effort might have been. Agricultural

reformers promoted George Washington and also urged agricultural prosperity for

the goal of fostering national growth. The Marshall Wilders and John Lowells of the

movement for agricultural change stood squarely between Thomas Jefferson and

Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton’s policies to encourage a centralized government and

self-sustaining American economy remained in place despite Jefferson’s ‘‘Revolution

of 1800.’’ It seemed only appropriate that the man who stood between these two

men and their ideas during the early years of nationhood became the icon for later

men who wanted capitalism and agriculture to coalesce into a new vision, the

entrepreneurially wise and nationally focused farmer.

Within the context of the heated discussions in Congress over the extension of

slavery, northern editors continued their nonpartisan and nonregional program by

visiting farms of slaveholders who practiced scientific agriculture. Many slaveholders,

of course, used the land as well as their human chattel to maximize profits. Yet there

were some outspoken advocates for the type of farming that many northerners

promoted in their papers. For example, Lewis F. Allen of New York owned a

1000-acre farm, participated in agricultural societies, and made regular contributions

to journals such as the Genesee Farmer. In pursuit of a story in 1856, he visited Brutus

J. Clay to promote the benefits of ‘‘high farming’’ (scientific agriculture) as practiced

by the owner. Allen conveniently made no mention of the significant number of

slaves Clay used to cultivate his 1207-acre plantation in Kentucky.29 Northerners,

westerners, and southerners joined the USAS to promote good farming, ignoring the

regional divisions that dominated the politics of the time. The USAS president,

Marshall Wilder, reminded his fellows that agriculture should be ‘‘advanced by pure-

minded, honorable men, patriots, philanthropists, and christians [sic], who, free from

party prejudice, from sectional jealousy and all selfish motives, shall seek in this, as

in other worthy objects, the highest welfare of their species.’’30 Needless to say, this is

an exceptional statement considering the regional and political dynamics of the

situation in the 1850s, but not so extraordinary when examining the reformers’

efforts through the lens of republicanism. These businessmen and politicians, who

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appreciated the virtues and economic value of agriculture, wanted a sustained Union

with its varied economic sectors.

Agricultural science and investigation benefited the nation, reformers believed,

and agriculture’s purportedly desperate condition required regional leaders to work

together. Even minor quarrels seemed to be a needless distraction. After several farm

press editors exchanged nasty words, Pennsylvania editor J.L. Darlington reminded

everyone that discussions of agricultural problems needed to remain as ‘‘impersonal

as Geometry.’’ Personal vendettas retarded progress, so he recommended that it was

‘‘time for a truce, Gentlemen, bury the hatchet, drop into line, contend together for

the common cause.’’31 Because George Washington had come to represent a national

image irrespective of agriculture, the use of his name in one region would not offend

agriculturists or farmers in another. Washington represented, if not supported, the

common cause of agricultural reform and national aggrandizement.

A brief examination of Washington’s farming illustrates both his success as an

eighteenth-century agriculturist and why nineteenth-century writers adopted him as

a model for their time. As a market-oriented farmer, Washington corresponded with

the English and Scottish agriculturists Arthur Young and Sir John Sinclair to gain

insight into agricultural techniques and organization being used in their areas as a

part of the ‘‘new husbandry.’’ He had taken possession of 2300 acres in 1754 and

planned to create a tobacco plantation, as did many of his Virginia neighbors. He

quickly learned, however, that Mount Vernon’s clay soil produced inferior quality

tobacco, and profitable production required extensive labor and caused substantial

soil erosion. He thus sought information from those considered the experts of the

time.32

In addition to facing problems with Mount Vernon’s soil, he confronted

economic losses due to British taxes and duties after the French and Indian War,

which soon caused political discontent among the wealthier farmer and merchant

class. Apparently, economic and political indignation, combined with agricultural

realities, forced Washington to consider crop diversification. Emotions relating to

England’s treatment of the colonies are not easily quantified, but tobacco and wheat

prices are. The price of tobacco fell between 1770 and 1785 from 25 to 13 shillings per

hundred weight. Conversely, at the same time flour prices were rising from about

10 shillings per barrel in 1770 to 31 shillings in 1784 and to a high of 84 shillings in

1796.33 Clearly, the prices of these commodities were sufficient impetus for smart

planters to switch to grains. As early as 1756 Washington began ordering agricultural

books from England, and by 1760 he was implementing new techniques and

conducting experiments.34 When the American Revolution took him away from his

plantation, he was forced to rely on the mail to relay his instructions to his farm

manager.

After being away from Mount Vernon for nine years, Washington returned to

continue his agricultural investigations and thoughtful management in person. He

read Arthur Young’s Annals of Agriculture carefully because he believed it could be

‘‘a practical guide’’ in replacing the unproductive and soil-ruinous system he saw

practiced in his region. His interest in improvement was not solely for his own

economic benefit. In a letter to Young, he complained that American farmers

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‘‘pertinaciously’’ adhered to bad farming practices and remained ‘‘averse to novelty

in matters of this sort.’’ He expressed urgency for change among farmers,

exhortations similar to the editors printing his words 50 to 60 years after him. Just

as the nineteenth-century reformers disapproved of working farmers’ techniques,

Washington and his like-minded colleagues criticized the soil depleting practices of

locals.35 Washington not only realized the importance of experimentation and careful

record keeping but also of sharing information. He agreed with later writers who

believed that innovation in business had to be protected by patents and secrecy, but

in agriculture a ‘‘man can make no improvements in husbandry, without at once

extending the knowledge and advantage of them to others. The enlargements of the

capacities of the soil . . . confer an immediate benefit upon the whole community.’’36

Elite farmers had the means to practice more extensive techniques to achieve these

‘‘benefits’’ and expected farmers of other classes to emulate them. Recognizing his

efforts, the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture made him an honorary

member, and to show his support he donated six copies of Young’s Annals to the

group’s library. For the men of these times and their intellectual grandchildren,

Young, as Steven Stoll identifies in Larding the Lean Earth, ‘‘showed them a grassy,

burgeoning, and patrician rural life.’’ The landed class in both periods saw the

urgency of their cause, and without an inkling of the irony to come, the elite of two

generations later re-invoked George Washington’s image.37

In Washington, antebellum agriculturists found a kindred spirit. He cultivated a

diversity of crops, using the newest, most efficient equipment found in the United

States or Europe; he used fertilizer in order to optimize his soil; and he built

appropriate structures to house equipment, protect animals, and store manure saved

on the farm. Additionally, he promoted improvement by experimenting, kept records

of his observations, and shared his findings when possible. These were all measures

advocated in the farm press and in speeches in the following century, and for this

reason and others, Washington made a good ‘‘farmer’’ to emulate, unlike Jefferson

who had continually mismanaged his affairs.

Jefferson’s career as a farmer is a bit misleading as he was most successful as a

factory foreman. He owned almost 11,000 acres, but had only kept about 1000 acres

in cultivation. His slaves successfully raised many subsistence crops, but his soil could

not support farming on a large scale. While he seemed to make a wise decision

switching from tobacco to wheat just as Washington had, his soil was clay based and

more suited to brick making than wheat culture. Moreover, Jefferson was not unlike

other farmers in many ways. Bad weather, bad luck, and fateful decisions led to

failure for Jefferson as they had for many other men relying on capricious Mother

Nature. To add to his problems, he inherited debt from his father-in-law and

neglected his plantation business during his almost two decades of public service

prior to his first retirement in the 1790s. Thus, to meet his financial obligations and

make his plantation a play place for his children and grandchildren, Jefferson

operated a nailery on his plantation. He personally oversaw the slaves making nails

and ran a successful operation, making almost $1000 in a good year. Yet no matter

what good decisions he made they were countered with numerous poor decisions

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that led to more debts.38 For much of American history, creation of debt translated

into conceived failure. Jefferson’s debts were well known and thus his failure was, too.

In this retirement, he had hoped to embody the characteristics of the images of

Cincinnatus or Roman orator and politician Cicero, known to the elite of his time.

Thomas Jefferson believed he was retiring from the political arena for which he felt

ill-suited to become a farmer. Historian Joseph J. Ellis commented on Jefferson’s

vision of retirement by saying, ‘‘Jefferson’s agrarian ideal was utterly sincere, an

honest expression of how he wished to see himself but set so far from the messy and

mundane realities of plantation life.’’ So in comparison to George Washington,

Jefferson did not make the best icon of agrarianism. His farming ventures were

mostly failures, he ran two factories on his plantation, and a good number of his

slaves were most likely related to him in one way or another. His lifestyle that

included extensive modifications to his home, Monticello, and lavish entertaining put

him into unnecessary debt. The ideal republican citizen had to be independent

enough to stand up against tyranny, yet Jefferson required lotteries to save him from

his personal debt. Examining these facts makes it clear why nineteenth-century

reformers were reluctant to hold Jefferson up as a farmer to emulate. He may have

only become a modern-day agrarian model because of his ability to pen words that

embodied an ideal to which he aspired while the mores about debt have changed.39

Curiously, though, the real George Washington had one major flaw for

agricultural reformers who sought to emulate this nonsectional icon: he was a slave

owner. As a part of creating collective memory, the Washington stories are simplified

in order to facilitate a narrative which provides understanding, continuity, and

coherence. Therefore, in remembering Washington as a figure for the present, there

had to be an aspect of forgetting inconvenient parts of the past, in this case, slavery.

Slavery caused serious contention in the antebellum period, to put it mildly. Just

prior to his death, Washington owned 316 slaves. However, mythologizers and

reformers alike either ignored this fact completely or made his slave ownership more

palatable in early accounts of the first president. In articles comparing Washington to

Cincinnatus, both returned to the plow after completing their civic duties. Such

stories created an image of Washington as a farmer like any other, one who got out in

the field, rolled up his sleeves, and worked as God and the nation-state had

supposedly intended for mankind. When Washington’s slaveholding was acknowl-

edged, authors portrayed him as a benevolent master. Washington’s slaves seemed to

be free from the common evils of slavery � doing back-breaking work, being beaten,

or being fed minimal diets. For example, the famous 1851 painting by Junius Brutus

Stearns depicts a kindly Washington standing in his field with his farm manager.

Well-dressed slaves prepare wheat for market in the background, and in the

foreground smiling slaves drink water without fear of either white man chastising

them to go back to work. Nelly and George W.P. Custis, the grandchildren of

Washington’s second wife, sit in the field playing near the slaves. All of Washington’s

‘‘children,’’ black and white, were safe and content, with all of their needs met. This is

not the image northerners in 1851 had of slavery, but memories can be manipulated

to create narrative coherence. Cultural memory is made, in part, to establish identity.

In this case, agriculturists enhanced and glorified Washington’s agricultural identity

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to fit their needs. Scholar Marita Sturken found that looking at a nation’s memory

‘‘is crucial to the understanding of a culture precisely because it indicates collective

desires, needs, and self-definitions.’’ Slavery got in the way of antebellum farm

reformers’ efforts to create a common cause, so Washington’s position as a slave

owner was sanitized or ignored. Nineteenth-century reformers did not need lessons

in creating collective memory as they were ignoring the problem of slavery in the

USAS and in farm press articles as long as the plantation owners practiced scientific

agriculture.40

Agricultural societies and papers proliferated throughout the mid-1800s, and

reform-oriented men recommended many of the activities pursued by George

Washington. During this period, however, the leaders of the movement for

agricultural progress expressed concern for the lack of improvement that had been

so far achieved by these voluntary efforts. Editors begged farmers to write their

experiences down, even promising to fix their grammar if working farmers would just

submit data on what crops, soil treatments, and techniques worked in their locales.

This effort was especially important because it brought in territories with different

climates. Society officers became frustrated because of the lack of attendance at

meetings by local farmers. The self-appointed agricultural leaders felt they were the

holders of agrarian intellect, which did not go to anyone if no one listened. In

frustration, reformers began to look beyond private organizations for farm reform. At

one New Hampshire meeting, a participant noted, ‘‘If mere voluntary association

cannot achieve so noble results, let us invoke the aid of government.’’41 And local

leaders did just that, which we can see in the nationally based membership of the

USAS. As they looked for governmental support for agriculture, through a department

of agriculture and agricultural education and extension, Washington, the first

president-farmer, remained an icon to use to promote their program of reform.

Reformers frustrated by the lack of progress began to demand legislation to aid

their efforts because ‘‘the grand impediment to Agricultural improvement is every

where the same; namely, popular ignorance and popular prejudice.’’ Daniel Lee, editor

of the Southern Cultivator and Patent Office agricultural clerk, asked, ‘‘Suppose an

improving system of tillage and husbandry had been universally adopted at the time it

was so earnestly recommended by the illustrious Farmer of Mount Vernon?’’42 He

answered. The ‘‘land-killing system’’ would not have prevailed. One year after the

Compromise of 1850, we again see the confluence of time and region. Southern

planters appear to have been the first to use the term ‘‘land-killing system.’’43 But we

also see the nationalization of reform at the time when threats to the Union continued

the efforts of so many. Daniel Lee and men like him, North and South, worried about

farmers who used up the soil and moved onto the next frontier rather than

replenishing the land they used up. This was one of many concerns they had. They

warned farmers to take the former president’s advice before the damage could not be

undone. If farmers were unwilling to heed the reformers or Washington, a national

agricultural college might just be needed to overcome the ‘‘popular ignorance’’ among

the average farmer.44 When the rhetoric of republicanism failed, it was time to bring in

the central government to bring about improvement to all the states.

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The purportedly unrepentant farmer failed to listen to the preachers of

improvement and elected rather to buy new land when he exhausted the soil, or at

least that is what reformers claimed, but they hoped the farmer would listen to

Washington if not to them. Believing that farmers dogmatically resisted change, they

advocated education for farmers’ sons. In promoting agriculture in common schools

during the nineteenth century, agricultural reformer J.M. Merrick complained that

farmers ‘‘have not the mental discipline and culture that disposes and enables them to

enter heartily into this study’’ of agricultural science because ‘‘their intellectual

standard is not sufficiently high.’’45 Therefore, reformers pursued educating young

people, often referred to as farmers’ sons, to be progressive farmers. Agricultural

leaders worked toward establishing agricultural education on local, state, and

national levels. In 1853, Frederick Watts, future commissioner of the Department

of Agriculture, wrote to the Farm Journal explaining why he and his colleagues were

opening the Farmers’ High School. Agriculture progressed slowly because farmers

clung to the ‘‘old way.’’ He wanted farmers’ sons to learn the art and the science of

farming. Watts stated his point clearly: ‘‘if agricultural education be left to the

farmers alone, it will, I fear, be retarded, if at all promoted.’’46 Almost every state had

a similar movement for agricultural education. In New York, the American Institute

petitioned the state legislature to support its efforts. Its members justified their

request for state funds by quoting a ‘‘practical’’ farmer’s opinion: ‘‘Agriculture is of

primary importance,’’ said Washington in his 1796 speech to Congress, and ‘‘renders

the cultivation of the soil more and more an object of public patronage.’’47

The American Institute hoped to use Washington’s words to endorse its bid for

state agricultural education. But a point of clarification should be made about how

writers used Washington’s words because they often quoted him out of context. They

anachronistically applied his statements for their present purposes. Nineteenth-

century agriculturists lobbying for federal and state aid to education and departments

of agriculture selectively quoted Washington to suit their purposes. Improvement

advocates recycled certain phrases over and over and became a shorthand understood

by them as a means to express Washington’s imagined support for their work. After

President Buchanan vetoed a homestead bill, one secretary recorded that Washing-

ton’s words were a ‘‘testimony in favor of aid to agriculture,’’ misrepresenting what he

actually said.48 Washington only advocated the support of a national board of

agriculture that would bring together various state societies, not liberal land laws or a

special-interest federal government policy or agency, i.e., homesteads and the USDA.

In the eighteenth century, state and local societies were just beginning to be formed

and would soon, hopefully, effect progress in agriculture. But Washington also knew

that change would come slowly. He wrote to English agricultural leader Sir John

Sinclair, who had discussed English societies with him, ‘‘It will be sometime, I fear

before an Agricultural Society with Congressional aid will be established in the

Country; we must walk as other countries have done before we can run.’’49 Even

though Washington enjoyed agriculture and advocated a national board, he never

envisioned the type of governmental support for education and governmental

departments that nineteenth-century agriculturists advocated in his name.

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Reformers hoped that state and federal governments would support agricultural

education. In their attempts to invoke Washington’s support and bring a certain

amount of legitimacy to so-called book farming, supporters of education recom-

mended buying Mount Vernon to create an agricultural college or model farm. Even

though Washington had become such an important American icon in the 1840s and

1850s, monuments to him were few. Citizens solicited funds from private donors and

Congress to build the Washington Monument, completed finally in 1888. The fate of

Mount Vernon seemed less optimistic. During Washington’s retirement at Mount

Vernon, he was besieged by visitors, all of whom expected to be accommodated as

guests. This did not end after his death.50

By the time Washington died in 1799, his estate had grown to 8000 acres and was

far too large for any of his heirs to manage. In the 1840s, it was described in the press

and by visitors as ‘‘dilapidated,’’ showing ‘‘evidences of desolation,’’ and as being in a

state of ‘‘desolation and ruin.’’ As historian Michael Kammen points out, America

had no ruins as Europe did, and the new nation did not necessarily want any. The

vision of America was one of a new place, breaking from the past of decadent and

decayed civilizations, such as Europe or Rome. In the first report of the Department

of Agriculture, the commissioner alluded to this when he said:

May we hope and devoutly pray that, taking warning from history and the sign of thetimes, our republic may so learn lessons of wisdom, that, eradicating all destructivetendencies, she will fortify herself against decay, and become, what Rome was not�eternal?51

Kammen also notes that the government did not feel it was the conservator of the

nation’s collective memory in terms of monuments to individuals.52 If people wanted

to memorialize someone such as George Washington through a monument or Mount

Vernon, it would have to be done privately.

Mrs. Bushrod Washington, the owner of Mount Vernon in 1846, was more than

happy to oblige citizens who wanted to memorialize Washington on his own estate �at $100,000 for 150 acres. The editor of the Prairie Farmer, concerned for the fate of

Mount Vernon and American agriculture, recommended that Washington’s home

‘‘should properly belong to the nation, and might with great propriety become, under

its auspices, a model farm to illustrate the progress of that pursuit to which he was so

much devoted.’’53 In 1854 after making a recommendation to contribute a stone to

the Washington monument, the USAS endorsed the petition of the Maryland

Agricultural Society for funds to buy Mount Vernon in order to establish a model

farm. One editor, commenting on the petition vituperatively, denounced the

$100,000 price being asked for the estate. Congressman Francis P. Blair, however,

acknowledged the same fact but added in an address to the Agricultural Association

of Montgomery County, Maryland, that the Patent Office spent about $100,000, and

that money could support an agricultural college at Mount Vernon rather than the

congressional printer: ‘‘This would make an institution certainly as creditable to the

country, and infinitely more useful, than the military academy at West Point.’’54

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As Blair noted, the army, the navy, commerce, and manufacturing all seemed to

get governmental aid, but politicians only supported agriculture with paeans and a

‘‘well-hole at the bottom of a Patent Office.’’55 Reformers’ concerns for America’s

political stability could be seen in their depiction of Rome and their understanding of

history, but leaders were also concerned for the economy, and that translated into a

desire for government support. Economic theories of the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries molded opinions about agriculture and land, especially in America where

these were the greatest national resources. While most of Europe still needed to shake

off the last vestiges of mercantilism, the United States remade itself in the image of

the Physiocrats. These men, such as Adam Smith and John Locke, provided

alternative philosophies to mercantilism and argued that nations could reconsider

the nature of wealth. The Physiocrats, led by Francois Quesnay, disagreed and placed

agriculture above all other pursuits as the only one that produced real wealth,

increasing productivity of output. David Taggart, speaking in front of the North-

umberland County Exhibition, agreed. As he noted: ‘‘Agriculture is profitable, for it is

the true source of wealth, not only to individuals, but to nations.’’ Gold and silver

were scarce and useless in and of themselves, but a bag of corn or wheat was ‘‘worth

more than mountains of glittering gold.’’56 Adam Smith also argued that wealth could

be created, yet he avoided the extremes of the Physiocrats. Productive labor could be

found in agriculture and manufacturing, although capital and mechanization had to

be utilized to increase goods, services, and wages, thereby increasing the wealth of the

nation. Agriculture ranked above other economic activities because it fueled

commerce and manufacturing. Finally, Smith argued that wealth and economic

growth were encouraged ‘‘by removing regulations that favored one group over

another.’’57 Agricultural boosters did not give credit to Smith or Quesnay when they

reiterated similar ideas, but they used these ideas nonetheless. Commissioner of the

Patent Office D.P. Holloway said in support of a department of agriculture,

‘‘Agriculture is the basis of our national prosperity. It is the substratum of all our

interests,’’ and he added it also provides materials for manufacturing and

commerce.58 In this same vein, agricultural writers continually referred to farming

as ‘‘the commanding interest,’’ ‘‘of primary importance,’’ the ‘‘nursing mother,’’ and

as ‘‘the bone and sinew’’ of the country.59

The idea that regulations favoring one sector could hinder potential growth

nationally was not lost on agricultural writers in the antebellum period. They

complained that commerce, manufacturing, and the military received direct or

indirect aid when agriculture did not. The farmer, far removed from the city and

government, could not press his interests as could manufacturers and merchants who

resided in the nation’s cities. Agricultural editor James Jay Mapes, and an ardent

supporter of a federal department of agriculture, claimed that the farmers’ ‘‘very

pursuits prevent them from being public men, and therefore they pay the larger share

of the public taxes without receiving any of the public benefits’’ when other industries

did.60 Protective tariffs and the Patent Office also seemed to represent government’s

excessive interest in nonagricultural pursuits. This explains, in part, why agriculturists

favored the analogy of the United States to Rome. If urban pursuits were favored over

agriculture, the United States was destined to face the same fate as the formerly great

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empire. However, government aid to agriculture would offset this assistance to

commerce, manufacturing, and the military, allowing farmers and farming to

prosper.

Not only did industry and commerce receive direct aid from the government but

so did the military. Congress approved funds for schools for the army and navy, and

military engineers, all at the cost of farmers who supposedly paid ‘‘four fifths of the

expense,’’ since they still constituted a majority of the population. Agriculture

sustained life, they said, but government spent millions ‘‘to teach our youth the art of

war and improve the science of human butchery.’’61 Often, the accusations of

government interference on behalf of industry were vague and at times bordered on

the irrational. For instance, one editor complained about politicians’ incessant praise

of agriculture while ignoring the needs of farmers by refusing to establish a

department of agriculture. ‘‘We are told,’’ he wrote, ‘‘‘that man owes his advancement

from the savage state, principally to agriculture,’ and yet Congress has done more for

the Indians than for farmers.’’62 Thus, agriculture deserved a department equal to the

other governmental departments, just as Washington had supposedly recom-

mended.63 Therefore, a department of agriculture and a national agricultural college

were vehicles to end the backwardness of farmers, protect the economic foundation

of the nation, and give farming the respect it deserved. It was, as they interpreted

Washington’s statements, a part of his original plan for the government, and

agriculturists could not understand why it was so difficult to gain representation and

aid. USAS members summarily dismissed constitutional objections. Maryland’s

Charles B. Calvert reminded his USAS fellows that the constitution did not provide

the power to purchase Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Mexico, and Cuba (as some hoped at

the time). The constitution was ‘‘written on vellum, but since that it would seem to

have been transferred to India-rubber, so as to be stretched to suit the purposes of

individual politicians.’’64 Interestingly enough, Calvert sat on the House Committee

of Agriculture that finally created the Department of Agriculture.

When all was said and done, the supporters of land-grant colleges, homestead

laws, and the creation of a federally supported department of agriculture got their

way during the Civil War. It was not the divisions of North and South that stood in

the way of the laws of 1862 but the differences in political ideology. Republicans

emphasized a particular kind of growth that included government subsidy to internal

improvements, while the Democrats expected territorial growth to be enough for the

inchoate nation. With the defection of most southern Democrats, the Republicans

passed four pieces of legislation that had been previously blocked by Democrats. The

legislation of 1862 created the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the land-grant college

system, a new land policy giving land to homesteaders, and a transcontinental

railroad on a northern route. Despite historiography regarding the so-called

grassroots efforts to lobby the government for the USDA, it is clear with further

investigation that the movement for the department and related reforms came from

an elite movement, not a populist one. These elites had fought across regional and

political lines as members of the USAS before they could have ever known that it

would take a break in the nation’s solidarity to get this legislation passed. The

reformers had a vision for the nation that included encouraging progress through

American Nineteenth Century History 19

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societies and newspapers or forcing progress from above, if necessary, through

government support for agricultural colleges and a national department of

agriculture. These elite reformers imagined the positive virtues of Washington while

they disdained the reality of current farming through the windows of their book-

lined offices well above the soil they claimed as their own.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Drs. Christopher Curtis (Claflin University), Elizabeth

Sherburn-Demers (Potomac Books), and Edward D. Melillo (Amherst College) for their

assistance in preparing this article.

Notes

1. See Washington’s ‘‘tirade’’ about Hamilton and his ideas about paper money. McDonald,

Alexander Hamilton, 242�3.2. Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 164�5.3. Some attained boards of agriculture for their states as did Marshall P. Wilder in

Massachusetts and others attained educational facilities such as the high school in

Pennsylvania. For more detailed analysis and a list of who the reformers were and their

specific program, see Kindell, ‘‘Preparing the Ground for Progress.’’4. Carrier, ‘‘The United States Agricultural Society,’’ 278�88.5. Transactions of the New Hampshire Agricultural Society for 1850, 1851 and 1852, 123 and

107.6. Steinberg, Nature Incorporated, 49�74. See also Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis.7. The ideas for this paper came from the research for my master’s thesis. While investigating

the life of Isaac Newton, the first head of the Department of Agriculture, I started to come

across references to George Washington and saved them for a later date. At the time, the

issue was tangential, and I did not have the background in republicanism to understand

the underlying story. Almost every farm newspaper or agricultural society that I examined

contained some reference to Washington. For the sake of space and readability, I have only

cited the sources I have referenced in the text. Kindell, ‘‘Preparing the Ground for

Progress.’’8. E.D. Sanborn, ‘‘Remarks,’’ Transactions of the New Hampshire Agricultural Society for 1850,

1851 and 1852. 40�1; Eisenger, ‘‘The Influence of Natural Rights and Physiocratic

Doctrines,’’ 17.9. Ibid.; Persons, ‘‘The Cyclical Theory of History,’’ 152; Working Farmer, October 1858, 170,

see also Working Farmer, July 1850, 135�7; Buel, An Address, 710. E.D. Sanborn, ‘‘Remarks,’’ Transactions of the New Hampshire Agricultural Society for 1850,

1851 and 1852, 40�1.11. E.D. Sanborn, ‘‘Remarks,’’ Transactions of the New Hampshire Agricultural Society for 1850,

1851 and 1852. 40�1; Southern Planter, September 1851, 364; Cultivator, December 1849,

363. Joyce E. Chaplin found the theory of four stages as an intellectual force in the Lower

South in the mid- to late-eighteenth century and attributes it to the Scottish historical

school. These ideas are reflected in the farm journals of the antebellum North as well. See

Chaplin, An Anxious Pursuit, 30�6.12. Barron, Those Who Stayed Behind.13. Rugh, Our Common Country.14. Marshall P. Wilder, ‘‘Annual Address,’’ and Charles H. Peaslee, ‘‘Remarks,’’ Transactions of

the New Hampshire Agricultural Society for 1850, 1851 and 1852. 124, 146.15. Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth, 31�5.

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16. Article from New England Farmer reprinted in Southern Cultivator, February 7, 1844, 21;Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth, 33�5, 58�72.

17. Wills, Cincinnatus, 225�8.18. Rasmussen and Tilton, George Washington, 166; Chernow, Washington, 444, 497.19. Rasmussen and Tilton, George Washington, 33�5.20. Transactions of the New Hampshire Agricultural Society for 1850, 1851 and 1852, 147�8;

Cincinnatus, January 1, 1856, 1�6, 7�13; Working Farmer, July 1854, 119; Farm Journal,January 1854, 5.

21. Hunter, ‘‘An Address,’’ 67.22. Cincinnatus, January 1, 1856, 1�6. Also see, Genesee Farmer, November 10, 1832, 356�7.23. Crothers, ‘‘Agricultural Improvement and Technological Innovation in a Slave Society.’’24. Holzer, Washington and Lincoln Portrayed, 5�9, 173�4; Wick, George Washington, 4, 53.25. Wick, George Washington, 53.26. Working Farmer, May 1849, 49�50; Farm Journal, May 1851, 44.27. See Journal of the United States Agricultural Society for lists of the officers. Each state and

territory was represented by a vice president. Some who served on the board included,George W. Nesmith; Ezekial Holmes, editor of the Maine Farmer; James D.B. DeBow;Charles B. Calvert, Maryland politician; Brutus J. Clay; and Benjamin Perley Poore, forexample. For an article on southern agricultural improvement, see Crothers, ‘‘AgriculturalImprovement and Technological Innovation in a Slave Society.’’

28. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 221.29. See Mary Clay Berry’s (family) history, Voiced from the Century Before, 140�1; Marti, To

Improve the Soil and the Mind, 50. Clay has been characterized as one of the largestslaveholders in Kentucky and politically active. There are hundreds of regional leaderssuch as Clay, Allen, and Wilder, but I have chosen only a few for this treatment to providecontinuity, not for a lack of other examples. Please see Kindell, ‘‘Preparing the Ground forProgress,’’ for information on other states and the individuals active there.

30. Transactions of the New Hampshire Agricultural Society for 1850, 1851 and 1852, 123.31. Farm Journal, October 1853, 232.32. Fusonie and Fusonie, George Washington, 6.33. Crothers, ‘‘Agricultural Improvement and Technological Innovation in a Slave Society.’’

T.H. Breen notes that the transition to wheat occurred in Virginia unevenly, but can be

seen especially in Washington’s area known as the Northern Neck. He describes NorthernNeck inhabitants’ view of tobacco as an ‘‘enslaving crop’’ that made planters economicallydependent on England, see Breen, Tobacco Culture, xiv.

34. Fusonie and Fusonie, George Washington, 6�11.35. George Washington to Arthur Young, August 6, 1786, in The Papers of George Washington,

4, 196; Fusonie and Fusonie, George Washington, 12�13.36. Southern Cultivator, January 1, 1845, 9.37. Fusonie and Fusonie, George Washington, 50�1. For more information about Arthur

Young’s influence, see Loehr, ‘‘Arthur Young and American Agriculture,’’ 43�56 and Stoll,Larding the Lean Earth, 58.

38. Ellis, American Sphinx, 118�43.39. Ibid., 119, 136.40. See Stearns painting in Rasmussen and Tilton, George Washington, 192�3; Fusonie and

Fusonie, George Washington, 6; Sturken, Tangled Memories, 2. For a review of collectivememory more generally, see the American Historical Review’s forum ‘‘Collective Memoryand Cultural History.’’

41. Transactions of the New Hampshire Agricultural Society for 1850, 1851 and 1852, 44.42. Southern Cultivator, July 1851, 97�8.43. Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth, 34.44. Southern Cultivator, July 1851, 97�8.45. Transactions of the New Hampshire Agricultural Society for 1857, 315.

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46. Farm Journal, April 1853, 27�8, May 1853, 51 and June 1851, 69. Watts’s colleagues

included Simon Cameron, politician, and Alfred L. Elwyn, local philanthropist.47. American Institute report in Working Farmer, March 1849, 23.48. Journal of the United States Agricultural Society, 1860, 53.49. Washington quoted from Fusonie and Fusonie, George Washington, 54.50. Thane, Mount Vernon is Ours, 8.51. Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 53�5; Department of Agriculture, Report of the

Commissioner, 25.52. Congressmen worked to make monuments out of landscapes, but not for individuals in

this period. See Karl Jacoby’s Crimes against Nature.53. Thane, Mount Vernon is Ours, 7�10; Prairie Farmer, January 1851, 53.54. Journal of the United States Agricultural Society, 1854, 25; Ohio Cultivator, March 15, 1854,

84; Cultivator, January 1854, 10; Southern Planter, May 1851, 136; Cultivator, March 1857,

80; Southern Cultivator, July 1851, 98.55. Journal of the United States Agricultural Society, 1854, 29.56. ‘‘Profits and Pleasures of Agriculture,’’ Farm Journal, January 1854, 5. For other examples

see, Colman, An Address Delivered, 7; Papers for 1810, 6. All italics and exclamatory

punctuation within quotes are original to the texts.57. Werhane, Adam Smith and His Legacy, 156�60; Whittaker, A History of Economic Ideas,

368�9; Johnstone, ‘‘Turnips and Romanticism,’’ 245. On Locke see, Eisenger, ‘‘The

Influence of Natural Rights and Physiocratic Doctrines.’’58. Maine Farmer, September 11, 1856, front page. Holloway was at this time on the

‘‘congressional committee of agriculture’’ and later became commissioner of patents

(1861�1865).59. Cultivator, December 1849, 362, 363, and April 1860, 110; Southern Planter, November

1848, 322.60. Cultivator, January 1852, 46, March 1852, 120, and April 1862, 108; Working Farmer,

February 1849, 8.61. Working Farmer, April 1849, 33; Cultivator, January 1854, 10; Transactions of the New

Hampshire Agricultural Society for 1850, 1851 and 1852, 47.62. Cultivator, January 1854, 10; Working Farmer, May 1849, 49.63. Cincinnatus, August 1856, 355; American Farmer reprinted in Southern Planter, June

1849, 171�2; Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania State

Agricultural Society, 4; Blight, One Hundred Years Ago, 21; Prairie Farmer, January 1851,

53 and February 1852, 90; Cultivator, December 1849, 362; Working Farmer, February

1849, 8 and April 1849, 33, 49.64. Journal of the United States Agricultural Society, 1860, 53.

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