Читать книгу Green Spring Farm, Fairfax County, Virginia - Ross De Witt Netherton - Страница 10

The lands which were assembled by John Moss to comprise his farm were quite different from the virgin forest land that was being opened up for cultivation in the western part of Fairfax and in Loudoun County at about the same time. Like most of the open land below the fall line, the tract which Moss assembled had first played a part in the tobacco civilization that had dominated the life of Northern Virginia from 1650 to 1750.[22] During the eighteenth century, tobacco 8 planters of the Virginia Tidewater had turned inland, clearing the forested area of the Piedmont to bring virgin land into production of their crop. Their actions were the result of many contributing causes—the tendency of tobacco to wear out the soil, the need for timberland to supply the rising demand for barrels and hogsheads, the introduction of new implements of husbandry, the plentiful supply of enslaved or indentured labor, and, of course, the presence of cheap land in the western part of the county.[23]

Expansion required capital, however, and many of the Tidewater tobacco planters whose holdings had been created through proprietary grants obtained the necessary funds by selling off portions of their Tidewater holdings. By the middle of the eighteenth century, few of the large land grants remained intact and what remained to the original owners was interspersed with smaller farms and old fields gradually being taken over by scrub pine.[24] At the same time, the increase of warehouses and riverside facilities, the growth of roads overland between the principal river landings and the gaps in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and a steadily rising number of tradesmen and artisans setting out for themselves upon completion of their indenture periods all combined to offer a prospect of success, if not affluence, to one who was willing to work the land diligently and prudently.

Many of the small farmers of the Tidewater remained as committed to tobacco as the great planters had been. Others turned to diversification of crops. Corn (maize) was grown in conjunction with tobacco from the beginning of settlement in Northern Virginia and diversification simply called for increasing its role. In the eighteenth century, wheat was introduced as a substitute for tobacco to restore the land and gradually became adopted in place of tobacco as a farm staple. As commercial relations with England became more difficult after 1750, and were completely disrupted during the War for Independence, tobacco planters in great numbers shifted to production of foodstuffs to meet domestic demands. The description of Washington’s experience at Mount Vernon, only a few miles distant from Green Spring Farm, may be taken as typical of that of his neighbors:

On the thin topsoil that overlay the clay slopes at Mount Vernon, George Washington grew wheat that sold in Alexandria, made ship’s biscuit that was famous the world over—and rye that supplied his less celebrated distillery. The increasing number of cattle accounted for the introduction of mangel-wurzels, turnips, and other root crops in the rotation. The soil-building virtues of peas were discovered. Beef cattle grew in increasing numbers, and began to appear prominently in inventories and wills. Orchards and vineyards were planted more widely. With these developments, simultaneously with the decline of the tobacco trade, a lively business sprang up in shipping corn, wheat, and livestock to the West Indies. … [25]

In his efforts to develop methods of husbandry which would restore the fertility of the land, Washington reflected a concern which was widespread among Virginians of his time 9 and the first half of the nineteenth century. Organized efforts to promote better husbandry through exchange of practical experience and dissemination of the results of experimentation and invention began in the 1770’s.[26] Between 1790 and 1830, hundreds of publications on agriculture were produced[27] and more than 100 inventions of agricultural devices were patented to Virginians, among them Cyrus McCormick’s reaper, the most influential mechanical factor in the development of American agriculture in the nineteenth century.[28] National leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Marshall actively worked in societies which encouraged experimentation and study for improvement of agriculture through what was called “scientific farming.”

With the effort to establish scientific farming came experiments in crop rotation, with use of clovers and grasses interspersed between other crops, increased use of manure and artificial fertilizers, better plows and methods of soil preparation, and more attention to control of erosion. Interest in improving farm animals during this period led to introduction of merino sheep and new breeds of mules.

Despite this active element in Virginia’s agricultural system, and notwithstanding the substantial amount of intelligent and successful experimentation and publicity of results which this element inspired, many farmers in Virginia persisted in traditional ways. “Book farming,” as the new methods were called, was decried in favor of the familiar ways of cultivating which were passed from father to son. This skepticism was strengthened, also, when experiments failed—as they did in many cases—and when Virginia agriculture suffered from economic depression along with the rest of the nation—as it did in the years following the War of 1812.[29]

While Virginia agriculture had an equivocal or only moderately successful record of growth from 1750 to 1830, the proponents of scientific farming could and did argue that its value was measured in political as well as economic terms. Men like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Taylor, James Garnett, and others sincerely believed that the survival of their way of life and that which they sought for Virginia depended on restoring the farmer to preeminence. One historian has described their philosophy thus:

The sincerity of their belief in the corruption of urban and the virtue of rural living is unquestionable. They practiced as they preached. And as they looked about them, at the long line of Virginia leaders of the early republic and at their own modest pleasant way of life, which some of them believed extended all the way down to their slaves, they felt they had incontestable evidence of the rightness of their convictions. As their soil became depleted, the hold of their state on preeminence in everything was weakening. Restore the soil and Virginia would be restored to her rightful preeminence. Simple, primitive, noble, limited yet grand, thus went the conception.[30]