VIRGINIA AGRICULTURE IN WASHINGTON'S DAY
The Virginia of George Washington's youth and early manhood was an
imperial domain reaching from Atlantic tidewater through a thousand
leagues of forests, prairies and mountains "west and northwest" to the
South Sea. Only a narrow fringe along the eastern coast was settled by
white men; the remainder was a terra incognita into which Knights of the
Golden Horseshoe and Indian traders had penetrated a short distance,
bringing back stories of endless stretches of wolf-haunted woodland, of
shaggy-fronted wild oxen, of saline swamps in which reposed the whitened
bones of prehistoric monsters, of fierce savage tribes whose boast was
of the number of scalps that swung in the smoke of their wigwams. Even
as late as 1750 the fertile Shenandoah Valley beyond the Blue Ridge
formed the extreme frontier, while in general the "fall line," where the
drop from the foothills to the coastal plain stops navigation, marked
the limit of settlement.
At the time that Washington began to farm in earnest eastern Virginia
had, however, been settled for one hundred fifty-two years. Yet the
population was almost wholly rural. Williamsburg, the capital, was
hardly more than a country village, and Norfolk, the metropolis,
probably did not contain more than five thousand inhabitants. The
population generally was so scattered that, as has been remarked, a man
could not see his neighbor without a telescope or be heard by him
without firing a gun.
A large part of the settled land was divided up into great estates,
though there were many small farms. Some of these estates had been
acquired for little or nothing by Cavalier favorites of the colonial
governors. A few were perfectly enormous in size, and this was
particularly the rule on the "Northern Neck," the region in which Mount
Vernon was situated. The holding of Lord Thomas Fairfax, the early
friend and patron of Washington, embraced more than a score of modern
counties and contained upward of five million acres. The grant had been
made by Fairfax's grandfather, Lord Culpeper, the coproprietor and
Governor of Virginia.
The Virginia plantation of 1760 was much more sufficient unto itself
than was the same plantation of the next century when methods of
communication had improved, articles from the outside world were easier
to obtain, and invention was beginning to become "the mother of
necessity." Many of the large plantations, in fact, bore no small
resemblance to medieval manors. There was the planter himself residing
with his family in the mansion, which corresponded to the manor house,
and lording it over a crowd of white and black dependents, corresponding
to serfs. The servants, both white and black, dwelt somewhat apart in
the quarters, rude log huts for the most part, but probably as
comfortable as those of the Saxon churls of the time of the
Plantagenets. The planter's ownership over the persons of his dependents
was, however, much more absolute than was that of the Norman lord, for
on the manors the serfs could not be sold off the land, a restriction
that did not apply in Virginia either to black slaves or indentured
servants. On the manor, furthermore, the serf had his own bits of
ground, for which he paid rent in kind, money or service, and the
holdings passed from father to son; on the plantation the slave worked
under an overseer on his master's crops only and had nothing that he
could call his own--not even his wife or children. In the matter of the
organization of industries there was a closer resemblance. The planter
generally raised the staple articles of food for his family and slaves,
as did the lord, and a large proportion of the other articles used or
consumed were manufactured on the place. A son of George Mason,
Washington's close friend and neighbor, has left us the following
description of industry at Gunston Hall:
"My father had among his slaves carpenters, coopers, sawyers,
blacksmiths, tanners, curriers, shoemakers, spinners, weavers, and
knitters, and even a distiller. His woods furnished timber and plank for
the carpenters and coopers, and charcoal for the blacksmith; his cattle
killed for his own consumption and for sale, supplied skins for the
tanners, curriers, and shoemakers; and his sheep gave wool and his
fields produced cotton and flax for the weavers and spinners, and his
own orchards fruit for the distillers. His carpenters and sawyers built
and kept in repair all the dwelling-houses, barns, stables, ploughs,
harrows, gates, etc., on the plantations, and the outhouses of the
house. His coopers made the hogsheads the tobacco was prized in, and
the tight casks to hold the cider and other liquors. The tanners and
curriers, with the proper vats, etc., tanned and dressed the skins as
well for upper as for lower leather to the full amount of the
consumption of the estate, and the shoemakers made them into shoes for
the negroes. A professed shoemaker was hired for three or four months in
the year to come and make up the shoes for the white part of the family.
The blacksmiths did all the iron work required by the establishment, as
making and repairing ploughs, harrows, teeth, chains, bolts, etc. The
spinners, weavers, and knitters made all the coarse cloths and stockings
used by the negroes, and some of fine texture worn by the white family,
nearly all worn by the children of it. The distiller made every fall a
good deal of apple, peach, and persimmon brandy. The art of distilling
from grain was not then among us, and but few public distilleries. All
these operations were carried on at the home house, and their results
distributed as occasion required to the different plantations. Moreover,
all the beeves and hogs for consumption or sale were driven up and
slaughtered there at the proper seasons, and whatever was to be
preserved was salted and packed away for distribution."
Nevertheless the plantation drew upon the outside world for many
articles, especially luxuries, and the owner had to find the wherewithal
to make payment. The almost universal answer to this problem
was--tobacco. It was not an ideal answer, and historians have scolded
the departed planters vigorously for doing the sum in that way, yet the
planters were victims of circumstances. They had no gold or silver mines
from which to draw bullion that could be coined into cash; the fur trade
was of little importance compared with that farther north; the Europe of
that day raised sufficient meat and grain for its own use, and besides
these articles were bulky and costly to transport. But Europe did have a
strong craving for the weed and, almost of necessity, Virginians set
themselves to satisfying it. They could hardly be expected to do
otherwise when a pound of tobacco would often bring in England more than
a bushel of wheat, while it cost only a sixtieth part as much to send it
thither. It is estimated that prior to the Revolution Virginia often
sent out annually as much as ninety-six thousand hogsheads of tobacco.
Tobacco took the place of money, and debts, taxes and even ministers'
salaries were paid in it.
The disadvantages of tobacco culture are well known. Of all crops it is
perhaps the most exhausting to the soil, nor was a large part of
Virginia particularly fertile to begin with. Much land was speedily
ruined, but nothing was so cheap and plentiful in that day as land, so
the planter light-heartedly cleared more and let the old revert to the
wilderness. Any one who travels through the long settled parts of
Virginia to-day will see many such old fields upon which large forest
trees are now growing and can find there, if he will search closely
enough, signs of the old tobacco ridges. Only heroic measures and the
expenditure of large sums for fertilizer could make such worn-out land
again productive. Washington himself described the character of the
agriculture in words that can not be improved upon:
"A piece of land is cut down, and left under constant cultivation, first
in tobacco, and then in Indian corn (two very exhausting plants), until
it will yield scarcely anything; a second piece is cleared, and treated
in the same manner; then a third and so on, until probably there is but
little more to clear. When this happens, the owner finds himself reduced
to the choice of one of three things--either to recover the land which
he has ruined, to accomplish which, he has perhaps neither the skill,
the industry, nor the means; or to retire beyond the mountains; or to
substitute quantity for quality in order to raise something. The latter
has been generally adopted, and, with the assistance of horses, he
scratches over much ground, and seeds it, to very little purpose."
The tobacco industry was not only ruinous to the soil, but it was badly
organized from a financial standpoint. Three courses were open to the
planter who had tobacco. He might sell it to some local mercantile
house, but these were not numerous nor as a rule conveniently situated
to the general run of planters. He might deposit it in a tobacco
warehouse, receiving in return a receipt, which he could sell if he saw
fit and could find a purchaser. Or he could send his tobacco direct to
an English agent to be sold.
If a great planter and particularly if situated upon navigable water,
this last was the course he was apt to follow. He would have his own
wharf to which once or twice a year a ship would come bringing the
supplies he had ordered months before and taking away the great staple.
If brought from a distance, the tobacco was rarely hauled to the wharf
in wagons--the roads were too wretched for that--instead it was packed
in a great cylindrical hogshead through which an iron or wooden axle was
put. Horses or oxen were then hitched to the axle and the hogshead was
rolled to its destination.
By the ship that took away his tobacco the planter sent to the English
factor a list of the goods he would require for the next year. It was an
unsatisfactory way of doing business, for time and distance conspired to
put the planter at the factor's mercy. The planter was not only unlikely
to obtain a fair price for his product, but he had to pay excessive
prices for poor goods and besides could never be certain that his order
would be properly filled.
Washington's experiences with his English agents were probably fairly
typical. Near the close of 1759 he complained that Thomas Knox of
Bristol had failed to send him various things ordered, such as half a
dozen scythes and stones, curry combs and brushes, weeding and grubbing
hoes, and axes, and that now he must buy them in America at exorbitant
prices. Not long afterward he wrote again: "I have received my goods
from the Recovery, and cant help again complaining of the little care
taken in the purchase: Besides leaving out half and the most material
half too! of the Articles I sent for, I find the Sein is without Leads,
corks and Ropes which renders it useless--the crate of stone ware don't
contain a third of the Pieces I am charged with, and only two things
broken, and everything very high Charged."
In September of the same year he ordered, among other things, busts of
Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charles XII of Sweden, Frederick the
Great, Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough; also of two wild
beasts. The order was "filled" by sending him a group showing Aeneas
bearing his father from Troy, two groups with two statues of Bacchus and
Flora, two ornamental vases and two "Lyons."
"It is needless for me to particularise the sorts, quality, or taste I
woud choose to have them in unless it is observd," he wrote a year later
to Robert Gary & Company of London apropos of some articles with which
he was dissatisfied, "and you may believe me when I tell you that
instead of getting things good and fashionable in their several kind,
we often have articles sent us that coud only have been used by our
Forefathers in the days of yore--'Tis a custom, I have some reason to
believe, with many Shop keepers, and Tradesmen in London when they know
Goods are bespoke for Transportation to palm sometimes old, and
sometimes very slight and indifferent goods upon us taking care at the
same time to advance 10, 15, or perhaps 20 pr. Ct. upon them."
To his London shoemaker he wrote, November 30, 1759, that the last two
pairs of dog leather pumps scarce lasted twice as many days. To his
tailor he complained on another occasion of exorbitant prices. "I shall
only refer you generally to the Bills you have sent me, particularly for
a Pompadour Suit forwarded last July amounting to £16.3.6 without
embroidery, Lace or Binding--not a close fine cloth neither--and only a
gold Button that woud not stand the least Wear."
Another time he mentions that his clothes fit poorly, which is not
strange considering that measurements had to be sent three thousand
miles and there, was no opportunity to try the garments on with a view
to alterations. We may safely conclude, therefore, that however elegant
Virginia society of that day may have been in other respects, it was
not distinguished for well fitting clothes!
Most Virginia planters got in debt to their agents, and Washington was
no exception to the rule. When his agents, Robert Gary & Company, called
his attention to the fact, he wrote them, that they seemed in a bit of a
hurry considering the extent of past dealings with each other.
"Mischance rather than Misconduct hath been the cause of it," he
asserted, explaining that he had made large purchases of land, that
crops had been poor for three seasons and prices bad. He preferred to
let the debt stand, but if the agents insisted upon payment now he would
find means to discharge the obligation.
Not all planters could speak so confidently of their ability to find
means to discharge a debt, for the truth is that the profits of tobacco
culture were by no means so large as has often been supposed. A recent
writer speaks of huge incomes of twenty thousand to eighty thousand
pounds a year and asserts that "the ordinary planter could count on an
income of from £3,000 to £6,000." The first figures are altogether
fabulous, "paper profits" of the same sort that can be obtained by
calculating profits upon the geometrical increase of geese as
illustrated in a well known story. Even the last mentioned sums were
realized only under the most favorable conditions and by a few planters.
Much of the time the price of the staple was low and the costs of
transportation and insurance, especially in time of war, were
considerable. Washington himself had a consignment of tobacco captured
by the French.
The planters were by no means so prosperous as is often supposed and
neither was their life so splendid as has often been pictured. Writers
seem to have entered into a sort of conspiracy to mislead us concerning
it. The tendency is one to which Southern writers are particularly prone
in all that concerns their section. If they speak of a lawyer, he is
always a profound student of the law; of a soldier, he is the bravest
tenderest knight that ever trod shoe leather; of a lady, she is the most
beautiful that ever graced a drawing-room.
The old Virginia life had its color and charm, though its color and
charm lay in large part in things concerning which the writers have
little or nothing to say. It is true that a few planters had their
gorgeous coaches, yet Martha Washington remembered when there was only
one coach in the whole of Virginia, and throughout her life the roads
were so wretched that those who traveled over them in vehicles ran in
imminent danger of being overturned, with possible dislocation of limbs
and disjointing of necks. Virginians had their liveried servants,
mahogany furniture, silver plate, silks and satins; an examination of
the old account books proves that they often had these and many other
expensive things, along with their Madeira and port wine. But the same
books show that the planter was chronically in debt and that bankruptcy
was common, while accounts left by travelers reveal the fact that many
of the mansion houses were shabby and run down, with rotting roofs,
ramshackle doors, broken windows into which old hats or other garments
had been thrust to keep the wind away. In a word, a traveler could find
to-day more elegance in a back county of Arkansas than then existed in
tidewater Virginia.
The tobacco industry was a culture that required much labor. In the
spring a pile of brush was burned and on the spot thus fertilized and
made friable the seed were sowed. In due course the ground was prepared
and the young plants were transplanted into rows. Later they must be
repeatedly plowed, hoed and otherwise cultivated and looked after and
finally the leaves must be cut or gathered and carried to the dry
house to be dried. One man could care for only two or three acres, hence
large scale cultivation required many hands--result, the importation of
vast numbers of indentured servants and black slaves, with the blighting
effects always consequent upon the presence of a servile class in a
community.
[Illustration: _By permission of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association_
The Mount Vernon Kitchen (restored)]
Although tobacco was the great staple, some of the Virginia planters had
begun before the Revolution to raise considerable crops of wheat, and
most of them from the beginning cultivated Indian corn. From the wheat
they made flour and bread for themselves, and with the corn they fed
their hogs and horses and from it also made meal for the use of their
slaves. In the culture of neither crop were they much advanced beyond
the Egyptians of the times of the Pyramids. The wheat was reaped with
sickles or cradles and either flailed out or else trampled out by cattle
and horses, usually on a dirt floor in the open air. Washington
estimated in 1791 that the average crop of wheat amounted to only eight
or ten bushels per acre, and the yield of corn was also poor.
So much emphasis was laid upon tobacco that many planters failed to
produce food enough. Some raised none at all, with the result that
often both men and animals were poorly fed, and at best the cost of food
and forage exhausted most of the profits. A somewhat similar condition
exists in the South to-day with regard to cotton.
Almost no attention was paid to conserving the soil by rotation of
crops, and even those few planters who attempted anything of the sort
followed the old plan of allowing fields to lie in a naked fallow and to
grow up in noxious weeds instead of raising a cover crop such as clover.
Washington wrote in 1782: "My countrymen are too much used to corn
blades and corn shucks; and have too little knowledge of the profit of
grass land." And again in 1787:
"The general custom has been, first to raise a crop of Indian corn
(maize) which, according to the mode of cultivation, is a good
preparation for wheat; then a crop of wheat; after which the ground is
respited (except for weeds, and every trash that can contribute to its
foulness) for about eighteen months; and so on, alternately, without any
dressing, till the land is exhausted; when it is turned out, without
being sown with grass-seeds, or reeds, or any method taken to restore
it; and another piece is ruined in the same manner. No more cattle is
raised than can be supported by lowland meadows, swamps &c. and the
tops and blades of Indian corn; as very few persons have attended to
growing grasses, and connecting cattle with their crops. The Indian corn
is the chief support of the labourers and their horses."
As for the use of fertilizer, very little was attempted, for, as
Jefferson explained, "we can buy an acre of new land cheaper than we can
manure an old one." It was this cheapness of land that made it almost
impossible for the Virginians to break away from their ruinous
system--ruinous, not necessarily to themselves, but to future
generations. Conservation was then a doctrine that was little preached.
Posterity could take care of itself. Only a few persons like Washington
realized their duty to the future.
In the matter of stock as well as in pure agriculture the Virginians
were backward. They showed to best advantage in the matter of horses.
Virginia gentlemen were fond of horses, and some owned fine animals and
cared for them carefully. A Randolph of Tuckahoe is said to have had a
favorite dapple-gray named "Shakespeare" for whom he built a special
stable with a sort of recess next the stall in which the groom slept.
Generally speaking, however, even among the aristocracy the horses were
not so good nor so well cared for as in the next century.
Among the small farmers and poorer people the horses were apt to be
scrubs, often mere bags of bones. A scientific English agriculturist
named Parkinson, who came over in 1798, tells us that the American
horses generally "leap well; they are accustomed to leap from the time
of foaling; as it is not at all uncommon, if the mare foal in the night,
for some part of the family to ride the mare, with the foal following
her, from eighteen to twenty miles next day, it not being customary to
walk much. I think that is the cause of the American horse having a sort
of amble: the foal from its weak state, goes pacing after the dam, and
retains that motion all its life. The same is the case with respect to
leaping: there being in many places no gates, the snake or worm-fence
(which is one rail laid on the end of another) is taken down to let the
mare pass through, and the foal follow: but, as it is usual to leave two
or three rails untaken down, which the mare leaps over, the foal,
unwilling to be left behind, follows her; so that, by the time it is one
week old, it has learned to leap three feet high; and progressively, as
it grows older, it leaps higher, till at a year old, it will leap its
own height."
Sheep raising was not attempted to any great extent, partly because of
the ravages of wolves and dogs and partly because the sheep is a
perverse animal that often seems to prefer dying to keeping alive and
requires skilled care to be made profitable. The breeds were various and
often were degenerated. Travelers saw Holland or rat-tailed sheep, West
Indian sheep with scant wool and much resembling goats, also a few
Spanish sheep, but none would have won encomiums from a scientific
English breeder. The merino had not yet been introduced. Good breeds of
sheep were difficult to obtain, for both the English and Spanish
governments forbade the exportation of such animals and they could be
obtained only by smuggling them out.
In 1792 Arthur Young expressed astonishment when told that wolves and
dogs were a serious impediment to sheep raising in America, yet this was
undoubtedly the case. The rich had their foxhounds, while every poor
white and many negroes had from one to half a dozen curs--all of which
canines were likely to enjoy the sport of sheep killing. Mr. Richard
Peters, a well informed farmer of Pennsylvania, said that wherever the
country was much broken wolves were to be found and bred prodigiously.
"I lay not long ago at the foot of South Mountain, in York county, in
this State, in a country very thickly settled, at the house of a Justice
of the Peace. Through the night I was kept awake by what I conceived to
be a jubilee of dogs, assembled to bay the moon. But I was told in the
morning, that what disturbed me, was _only_ the common howling of
wolves, which nobody there regarded. When I entered the _Hall of
Justice_, I found the 'Squire giving judgment for the reward on two wolf
whelps a countryman had taken from the bitch. The _judgment-seat_ was
shaken with the intelligence, that the wolf was coming--_not to give
bail_--but to devote herself or rescue her offspring. The animal was
punished for this _daring contempt_, committed in the face of the court,
and was shot within a hundred yards of the tribunal."
Virginians had not yet learned the merits of grass and pasture, and
their cattle, being compelled to browse on twigs and weeds, were often
thin and poor. Many ranged through the woods and it was so difficult to
get them up that sometimes they would not be milked for two or three
days. Often they gave no more than a quart of milk a day and were
probably no better in appearance than the historian Lecky tells us were
the wretched beasts then to be found in the Scottish Highlands.
Hogs received even less care than cattle and ran half wild in the woods
like their successors, the famous Southern razor-backs of to-day, being
fed only a short period before they were to be transformed into pork.
Says Parkinson:
"The real American hog is what is termed the wood-hog: they are long in
the leg, narrow on the back, short in the body, flat on the sides, with
a long snout, very rough in their hair, in make more like a fish called
a perch than anything I can describe. You may as well think of stopping
a crow as those hogs. They will go a distance from a fence, take a run,
and leap through the rails, three or four feet from the ground, turning
themselves sidewise. These hogs suffer such hardships as no other animal
could endure. It is customary to keep them in the woods all winter, as
there is no thrashing or fold-yards; and they must live on the roots of
trees, or something of that sort, but they are poor beyond any creature
that I ever saw. That is probably the cause why American pork is so
fine. They are something like forest-sheep. I am not certain, with
American keeping and treatment, if they be not the best: for I never saw
an animal live without food, except this; and I am pretty sure they
nearly do that. When they are fed, the flesh may well be sweet: it is
all young, though the pig be ten years old."
"The aim of the farmers in this country (if they can be called
farmers)," wrote Washington to Arthur Young in 1791, "is, not to make
the most they can from the land, which is or has been cheap, but the
most of the labour, which is dear; the consequence of which has been,
much ground has been _scratched_ over and none cultivated or improved as
it ought to have been: whereas a farmer in England, where land is dear,
and labour cheap, finds it his interest to improve and cultivate highly,
that he may reap large crops from a small quantity of ground."
No clearer statement of the differences between American and European
agriculture has ever been formulated. Down to our own day the object of
the American farmer has continued to be the same--to secure the largest
return from the expenditure of a given amount of labor. But we are on
the threshold of a revolution, the outcome of which means intensive
cultivation and the realization of the largest possible return from a
given amount of land.
That Washington saw the distinction so clearly is of itself sufficient
proof that he pondered long and deeply upon agricultural problems.