Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of the US, served from 1801-1809. He was a Democratic Republican, and his election of 1800 was considered “The Revolution of 1800” because it was the first time that the presidency went from federalist to Democratic Republican. Jefferson had various ambitions for his term and numerous goals he wished to accomplish, and ultimately, Jefferson and the Jeffersonians were fairly successful in achieving their goals. One goal Jefferson had strived for was the “Agrarian empire”, or the expansion of agriculture. He believed that farmers and cultivators were the most important people in a society since they provided the nourishment of life, and thus he wished for this occupation to be taken up at large.
How did Jefferson’s idea of an agrarian republic
Thomas Jefferson was a strong believer of the yeoman farmers and believed their independent farms to be of republican values that he believed in. The yeoman farmers began
Jefferson knew that Virginia had great lands to grow cotton and that this will help them grow economically. Jefferson states, “But we have an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman. Is it best then that all our citizens should be employed in its improvement”. Letting us understand how important the land is for them. It can provide them with great opportunities if all people in America work the land together.
The farmer's husband's futile search for work in ten counties underscored the widespread economic difficulties that plagued farming communities across the country. This firsthand account of deprivation and despair exposes the harsh realities faced by farmers during this era of change, as they grapple with crop failures, economic hardships, and the stark realities of poverty and hunger. The farmer's poignant lament serves as a poignant reminder of the immense challenges and uncertainties that farmers navigate as they struggle to adapt to the new realities of American agriculture. (Document I) Amidst significant transformation in American agriculture, as technological advancements, government policies, and shifts in economic conditions reshaped the landscape of the farming industry, the excerpt from the document sheds light on the debates surrounding land use during the late 19th century.
From the beginning of the book, Ball has been advocating for the treatment of all aspects of farming, on large scale agriculture plantations, to improve. Ball is specifically observant of the soil, crop, and cattle quality, when illustrating plantations he visited or passes by on his journeys. He writes about the greed of southern plantation owners, and their unremitting crops of tobacco, drying out their plantations, writing, “It had originally been highly fertile and productive, and had it been properly treated, would doubtlessly have continues to yield abundant and prolific crops… but regardless of their true interest, they valued their lands less than their slaves,…”(Ball, p. 32). This quote is important because compares the white landowners view of the land to Ball’s, while the landowners focus on the money the land has to offer and are overrun with greed. Ball highlights the care and value of the land, making the distinction that if not properly treated it will be useless, and “exhausted”.
The American historian Nell Painter made several comments regarding the importance of land for the freed slaves. For example: “So they (sharecroppers) saw their own land as a means of having a stake in society” (Painter para. 4). Some more proof of this is the fact that it’s also stated that due to most southerners being rural, owning land was crucial to their way of life (para. 4). The evidence shows that white farmers who formerly owned slaves felt that by allowing the slaves to own land made them independent took away a resource the farmers heavily relied upon: slave labor.
Thomas Jefferson, a former president’s, statement in Query XIX about his admiration of the Yeoman farmer was hypocritical. Jefferson declared that “venality suffocates the germ of virtue” (QUERY XIX). Work motivated by trade and profit is not a righteous practice. Although he claimed to value a life of self-sufficiency, Jefferson owned substantial amounts of slaves in his lifetime. In this case, contradicts the claim that one should provide for themselves.
The southern cotton kingdom was equal to the nations railroads, banks and factories in economic profit (313). This created a southern “slaveocracy” which allowed the rich southern planters to dominate the common class (317). The economy of the south depended on slavery since the cotton industry hindered industrial development and technological growth (315). It was true that slaves had better diets and lower mortality rates in American slavery compared to other countries with slavery, but the practice was dwindling worldwide, therefore there were only a few small countries to compare America to (322). Some smaller scale slave owners worked the fields alongside slaves and some had house slaves, but the majority worked in the Deep South on cotton plantations where they knew a slave drivers punishment better than their master’s companionship
The early 1620’s called upon desperate measures for the Virginians, surges of hunger so violent that it caused some to go mad and eat anything- the corpses of loved ones took a large popularity on the menu- they became despondent to grow food and stay alive, human nature beginning to take over. The Virginians had finally developed a “better” system that differed from their starvation of the time. Having had just recently committed the first few acts of slavery, Jamestown kicked off a big bang for the journey of slavery for the average dark, non-leisure men of the world. Aside from the Indians, all people in the newly discovered United States were unaware of how to grow food and prosper greatly in the new world. The fact that the Indians knew how to succeed in the new land angered all the white men, soon most of the Indian population had been killed off, and the white men were still struggling, just no longer in comparison to the Indians.
Post argues that “For the proponents of the ‘planter-capitalism’ model, the master-classes of the Americas responded to this ‘market-coercion’ in the same ways other capitalists responded through - productive specialization and technical innovation. According to Lewis Gray, ‘the plantation was a capitalistic type of agricultural organization in which a considerable number of unfreelabourers were employed under unified direction and control in the production of a staple crop’. The planters, ‘hard, calculating businessmen’ committed to individual effort, upward social mobility, and the accumulation of wealth, successfully utilized command of slave-labor in the pursuit of profits on the world-market.” (Post, Charles. The American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class-Structure, Economic Development and Political Conflict, 1620–1877.
I agree with all that you have stated above. I also found that republican agrarianism was Jefferson 's view of a nation of small family farms grouped into rural communities. Jefferson believed that a nation full of farmers, each only dependent on themselves for livelihood, would show the concern for the community good that was essential in a republic. This is exactly how it gave America uniqueness and a new destiny. I also read from the text that expansionism had a few downfalls to it.
Jefferson’s main ideas of agrarianism had a huge influence upon American society. Jefferson believed “agrarianism promoted individualism and self-interest”. Agrarians looked at America as a garden of God and the farmers were chosen by God. In Jefferson’s “Query XIX: Manufactures” from Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson specifically states, “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people.” Agrarianism gave economic independence and freedom to farmer and industrialism and urbanization would take that away.
For example, small farmers depended on the local plantation aristocracy for access to cotton gins, markets for their modest crops and their livestock, and credit or other financial assistance in time of need. The great cotton economy allowed many small farmers to improve their economic fortunes. Some bought more land, some became slave owners, and some moved into the fringes of plantation society. A typical white southerner was a yeoman farmer, who was also known as “plain folk.” These farmers owned a few slaves, with whom they worked and lived more closely than the larger planters.
Slaves were considered chattel property which meant they were only viewed as property. However, there were no rights for slaves as they endlessly worked in fields. The plantation is a fancy name for a farm that grows one crop. Slaves lived on such plantations as they picked crops such as cotton, rice, sugar cane, or tobacco. Slaves that picked crops worked from the sun up to sun down as the average was from fourteen to sixteen hours a day.
