by Andrea Wulf
The well-tended fields of small farms became a symbol for America’s future as an agrarian republic. John Adams had been the first to provide a legal base for the elevation of agriculture when he chiseled the promotion of useful arts (of which agriculture was regarded the most important) into the constitution of Massachusetts in 1779. He had included a section stating that the government should encourage societies and awards that promoted agriculture and other useful arts. Eight years later the framers wrote into the Constitution that the federal government had the duty “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”
It was easy for Adams and Franklin to proselytize based on the idea of the independent yeoman farmer, but it was more problematic for the slave-owning Washington, Jefferson and Madison. On a political and economic level they might have been fighting for their dream of a nation of free farmers, but back at Mount Vernon, Monticello and Montpelier, hundreds of slaves were harvesting wheat and corn, working from dawn to dusk six days a week.11 Despite this contradiction, Washington, Jefferson and Madison still firmly believed that widespread small-scale farming in principle fostered an independent people.
With the elevation of the small farmer as the guardian of liberty, seemingly mundane tasks such as collecting manure, planting seeds and devising crop rotations became elemental parts of nation-building, and the founding fathers’ political rhetoric became ever more infused with agricultural imagery. Jefferson for example said the accounts of the United States “may be, made, as simple as those of a common farmer.” After a summer of happy farming, Adams told Jefferson that the “Earth is grateful … I wish We could both say the Same of its Inhabitants.” Even Washington’s political motto of “slow and sure,” Jefferson wrote, “is not less a good one in agriculture than in politics.”
If agricultural improvements had become political acts, then experimental farmers, Madison argued, were “patriotic individuals.” Every advance the founding fathers made would make America stronger and more independent. They were, as Madison quipped, “worshippers of Ceres,” the Roman goddess of agriculture. Their agricultural correspondence zigzagged the country and crossed the ocean. They exchanged the latest books, shared valuable seeds of new crops, reported about the yields of their harvests and compared their experiments. Madison tried out a new species of wheat from Italy that Washington passed on to him, as well as some new varieties of beans from Mount Vernon’s garden. Adams heard about a new sort of wheat and forwarded a paper describing it to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he was president. He and Washington also encouraged a farmer to pursue the cultivation of a vineyard and Jefferson was so “delighted” by a new Indian corn that he packed it in his luggage on his way home to present to his friends, including Madison. On his journey into his retirement, Jefferson had acted as Washington’s courier, dropping off some pecan nuts at the post office in Alexandria on his way from Philadelphia to Monticello. Madison dispatched a new crop from Jamaica (“where it forms a great proportion of the food of the Slaves”) to Jefferson, and when Washington received chicory seeds from an agricultural writer in Britain, he shared them with Jefferson, who declared “it as one of the greatest acquisitions a farmer can have.”
They kept up-to-date with innovative methods by reading gardening and agricultural books, mostly from Britain. In the summer of 1796, Jefferson, for example, consulted Miller’s Gardeners Dictionary in order to find new species of winter vetch for his crop rotation. Washington kept a whole collection of gardening and farming books open on the table in his study, including old favorites such as the Gardeners Dictionary and the latest publications from agricultural writer Arthur Young. Whenever an American agricultural book or pamphlet was published (which was still rare), they enthusiastically bought those too. In the previous summer, for example, they had all eagerly read John Bordley’s Sketches on Rotations of Crops, the first American treatise on the subject.
They were also fascinated by new agricultural technology. Threshing machines in particular excited them because for millennia farmers had separated the grains from the chaff by hand or by letting their horses trample over the wheat (neither efficient nor very hygienic, as the grain mixed with dirt and excrement). Washington had constructed an innovative sixteen-sided barn at Mount Vernon, in which horses ran in circles “treading” on the upper floor, the clean grain falling through narrow gaps onto the floor below. Washington and Jefferson had together inspected a threshing machine on a farm just outside Philadelphia, and Jefferson had become so interested that he had ordered a model from Britain through the American minister in London. Like an excited child, he had constantly updated Madison about his progress—“I expect every day to receive it,” “I have not yet received my threshing machine,” it had at last “arrived at New York.” When he finally constructed and tried it in August 1796, it was a “great success.”
That summer Jefferson was also ploughing his fields with his newly invented “mould-board of least resistance.” He had a knack for mechanics and could spend years brooding over a single invention. Ever since he had seen the badly designed ploughs in the Netherlands and France, he had thought about making a more efficient moldboard (the wooden part of a plough that lifts and turns the sod). The plough, Jefferson believed, was the most important agricultural tool, “to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer.”12 With his inveterate fondness for science, Jefferson had created a mathematically perfect moldboard. When it was finished, his slaves yoked the oxen to the plough and watched their master draw it through the red soil with ease.
While Jefferson only dirtied his hands for a scientific experiment like this, Adams stood in a pile of compost that was rising in his yard—seemingly one of his most favorite spots, because no other subject was mentioned so frequently in his diary that summer. In fact, the only correspondence that Adams thought worth noting at all was a letter about a “report on manures” from Britain, which Jefferson, Madison and Washington also had received. Mundane as it seems, manure was of the greatest concern to all four of them, for one of the reasons why yields in the United States of America were declining so drastically was the lack of manuring. Since the first settlers had arrived in the early seventeenth century, American farmers had let their livestock roam freely in the forests, where they scattered their manure miles away from the fields.
Over the years Adams had experimented extensively with dung, mixing it with mud, lime and seaweed, which was easily available from the nearby shore. One of the most charming images from Adams’s life—and proof of how different he was from the powdered and bejeweled diplomats in Europe—was his close investigation of a manure heap just outside London. Teasing apart the straw and dung, the American Minister to the court at St. James’s Palace “carefully examined” the stinking pile and clearly didn’t mind the muck on his hands. He noted the exact contents and ingredients, before announcing with glee that it was “not equal to mine.”
While Adams had his arms up to the elbow in the dung, the studious Madison used pen, paper and numbers to tackle the problem. In spring 1796, in the midst of the Jay Treaty controversy, he had managed to find time to calculate precisely how many wagonloads of manure were needed to produce a healthy harvest of potatoes and dispatched instructions to Montpelier to cover the fields with dung. Unsurprisingly, Madison approached agriculture with the same attention to detail as he approached legal and political issues.
Somewhat ironically, these steaming piles of dung became icons of the founding fathers’ agricultural vision. While other farmers let their cattle and hogs drop the nutritious dung far away from the plantations, Washington was the first American to build a stercorary—a covered dung depository where manure could be stored, aged and mixed. “Nothing, is more wanting in this Country,” Washington wrote to Jefferson, asking him to share all knowledge on manures with his friends. Jefferson thought a British pamphlet on the subject so delectable that he declared it a “charming treatise.” In the summer of 1796 they all received a pamphlet on manur
e from John Sinclair, the president of the British Board of Agriculture, who knew that they were not only the most powerful political figures in the United States of America but also the most innovative farmers.13 All agreed with Washington that “the profit of every Farm is greater, or less in proportion to the quantity of manure which is made thereon.”
The downside of being so groundbreaking, however, was that many American farmers found their ideas controversial. Manuring was labor-intensive because the dung had to be collected, stored, mixed and then carted to and spread across the fields. Their fellow farmers needed to be convinced that it was worth all the effort. One of the problems, the revolutionaries felt, was that there was no American equivalent to bodies such as the newly established British Board of Agriculture, which encouraged (through medals and awards) and disseminated (through publications) innovative methods and their advantages.
For years they had tried in vain to get agriculture onto the political agenda. Adams had suggested as far back as 1771 that a society to encourage agriculture in Massachusetts be established, and five years later had convinced Congress to adopt a resolution to establish “in each and every Colony” a society for the improvement of agriculture and other useful arts. But nothing had happened on a national level. Washington and Jefferson were honorary members of the agricultural societies in Philadelphia and South Carolina, and Adams was a member of the recently founded Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture14—but none of these had national outreach.
Washington now began to make this goal a political priority. With his retirement only months away, he felt a greater urgency to leave a legacy in the shape of such a national board. At the opening of the congressional session at the end of the year—“the last I shall ever address”—Washington wanted to recommend “an Agricultural establishment” that would serve the national interest. In December he told Congress that it “will not be doubted, that with reference either to individual, or National Welfare, Agriculture is of primary importance.” It was to no avail—Washington would never see the establishment of a National Board of Agriculture. “I am sorry to add,” he told John Sinclair two days after he had left office, “that nothing final, in Congress, has been decided respecting the institution of a National board of Agriculture, recommended by me, at the opening of the Session.”15
“OF ALL THE SUMMERS in my life, this has been the freest from Care, Anxiety and Vexation to me,” Adams wrote in August, not knowing that all this was about to change. On 19 September 1796, Washington left Philadelphia for Mount Vernon, and as he boarded his coach, the nation opened their newspapers to find his Farewell Address printed across one and a half pages. Washington declared his intention not to stand for another term—once again, just as he had done after the War of Independence, he turned away from power. He urged his compatriots to rein in the “spirit of Party” and unite in a federal government, the great strength of the United States, “a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence.” Yet his Farewell Address was, as one contemporary described it, “a signal, like dropping a hat, for the party racers to start.” The summer of 1796 was over.
The two front-runners were Adams and Jefferson, but both remained on their farms—seemingly untouched by the electioneering—with Jefferson pretending for weeks not to be aware that he was a candidate and even Adams keeping unusually quiet. It was the first American election that was fought between two parties that, as one commentator observed, “mutually accuse each other of perfidy and treason.” The Federalists denounced the Republicans as being puppets of the French and the Republicans attacked the Federalists for their alleged obsession with monarchy. The Republican press portrayed Adams as an “advocate for hereditary Governments,” and even the Federalists turned against him, attacking him for his “enemity … to Banks and funding systems.”
Like Adams and Jefferson, Madison had also remained on his estate and only returned to Philadelphia in late November for the beginning of the congressional session in December. Once there he began to update Jefferson with predictions for the outcome of the election. It was possible, Madison wrote to his friend in Monticello on 5 December, that Adams might not win because Hamilton was working against his own candidate, favoring the second Federalist nominee, Thomas Pinckney. Then, five days later, with the results still unclear, he prepared Jefferson for the possibility of the vice presidency. But Jefferson remained reluctant, replying that he wished Madison himself had been put on the ballot, finishing the letter with a discussion of agricultural matters instead of politics. Meanwhile, Adams prepared himself for defeat, “then for Frugality and Independence. Poverty and Patriotism. Love and a Carrot bed.” Finally, when the electoral votes were counted, Adams had won by just three—he had received 71, Jefferson 68, South Carolina’s Thomas Pinckney 59 and New York’s Republican candidate Aaron Burr 30 votes.
As the vice president (and therefore the president of the Senate), Adams found himself in the peculiar situation of being the one who officially announced the result in February 1797. He would be the second president of the United States and his vice president would be Jefferson, for he had the second-most votes.16 Not only did Adams face the unenviable and profoundly daunting task of following Washington, the hero of the American Revolution, he would also have to govern with a vice president who was not from his own party. Jefferson continued to insist that he had “no ambition to govern men” and quoted Virgil: “flumina amo, sylvasque inglorius”—“[though] inglorius, I love rivers and woods.” He seemed much more delighted about another election altogether. As Adams was announced president-elect of the United States, Jefferson was voted president of the American Philosophical Society, “the most flattering incident of my life,” he wrote.
By the time of Adams’s inauguration in March 1797, they had all traded places, as if playing a game of musical chairs. Washington “Seemed to me to enjoy a Tryumph over me,” Adams wrote to Abigail. “Methought I heard him think Ay! I am fairly out and you fairly in! See which of Us will be happiest.” And as Jefferson rode toward Philadelphia, once again leaving behind his fields and gardens, his ploughs and threshing machine, Madison, who had refused a diplomatic post in Europe and a reelection to Congress, was looking forward to his own retirement at Montpelier. “It Seems, the Mode of becoming great is to retire,” Adams said. “Madison I Suppose after a Retirement of a few Years is to be President or V. P.… It is marvellous how political Plants grow in the shade. Continual Day light and sun shine, Show our Faults and record them.”
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1 Jefferson’s accusation was that Washington and his administration had had “their heads shorn by the harlot England.” This letter, which Jefferson had written in private to his gardening friend Philip Mazzei in April 1796, was published a few months later in newspapers in France and America. If Washington did have any doubts before, the letter proved that Jefferson had turned against him. Bemoaning that America was ruled by Federalists and their monarchical principles, Jefferson had written that “it would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council.” And though he had not named Washington, everybody knew whom he meant.
2 Both John and Abigail had seen the house before they left for Europe, but evidently their time in London and Paris had made them accustomed to more luxurious and larger dwellings. When they returned they were surprised how small the house was compared to what they remembered.
3 Unlike Jefferson, who despite his huge debts was in the process of demolishing his house in Monticello in order to build a more sophisticated one, Adams never lived above his means.
4 Only Franklin Delano Roosevelt broke this precedent, but in 1951 the two-term presidency was written into law with the Twenty-second Amendment.
5 Lawns dotted with clumps and oval flowerbeds—many planted with American species—were fashionable in England. Washington had probably also been inspired by another publication that he owned—The Seats
of the Nobility and Gentry by William Watts—which featured almost one hundred engravings, many showing landscape gardens and shrubberies.
6 Once he got a response to the advertisements, Washington hoped, “I shall be able to take more decisive measures” and plan how to reduce the number of slaves.
7 Jethro Tull had invented his seed drill in England in 1701 but many farmers had refused to use it—critics said that it required long experience to handle the implement efficiently.
8 A few years earlier, Washington had already employed an English farmer as manager, because he wanted his plantation run according to the latest agricultural methods.
9 American revolutionaries were not the only ones who injected pastoral associations into the republican endeavor. French revolutionaries had translated this vision into their new republican calendar, creating names for months that were inspired by the agricultural year rather than by Roman gods. The calendar was divided into periods such as Prairial (French, prairie or “pasture”), Messidor (Latin, messis or “harvest”) and Fructidor (Latin, fructus or “fruit”). And instead of saint days, each day was now associated with crops, vegetables, fruits, farm animals and agricultural tools.
10 This was a sentiment that Madison later applied to emigrants, insisting that farmers would be more easily integrated than merchants who “are less tied … to their new Country by the nature of their property & pursuits.” Adams equally disliked merchants because they were “living in Such Pomp and Such Expence upon Property of others, giving Charities, making feasts, Signing Subscriptions, blaring away with Furniture, Equipage &c.”
11 In the past Jefferson had even thought that small-scale farming held the possibility of ending slavery at Monticello. While still in Europe he had considered settling German farmers “intermingled” with his slaves on farms of fifty acres each. The Germans whom he had met were “absolutely incorruptible by money”—the epitome of the virtuous farmer. The slaves would remain his property but their children would be free, and by being brought up in the proximity of the German farmers, Jefferson believed, they “will be good citizens.” Jefferson never implemented this scheme (nor any other along these lines), and when he returned to his plantation, he abandoned his plans to free his slaves. During his life he freed only three slaves and a further five through his will, while Madison never freed any of his slaves. Only Washington freed the slaves who belonged to him after his death.