Founding Gardeners

by Andrea Wulf

  Never exhibiting the reserved control that Jefferson or Washington had achieved, he refused to suffer in silence—“I sighed, sobbed, & groaned, and sometimes screeched and screamed, And I must confess to my shame and sorrow, that I sometimes swore.” His temperament might have been volatile, but it was not malicious, and when writing to Abigail, his vanity, emotions, fears and excitement would flow from the pages, deliberating, retracting, accusing and sometimes simply showing off. Adams knew only two ways of releasing tension—conversing with Abigail and working in his garden, where he took his shovel or pruning knife and disappeared for hours. He needed the physical work, the dirt between his fingers or the strong handle of a scythe in his hands. “My Time,” he said when feeling paralyzed by politics, “might have been improved to some Purpose, in mowing Grass, raking Hay, or hoeing Corn, weeding Carrotts, picking or shelling Peas.” Working the soil, Abigail told their son, “keeps his Spirits in action, and gives him Health.” Without the digging and scything at home, Abigail believed, he “could not endure” life in Philadelphia. And Adams had never worked with so much vigor in his garden and on his farm as in the summer 1796 as he debated—by way of digging and planting—what the future might hold for him.

  At the same time, some 500 miles away in Montpelier, Madison was slowly recovering from losing the battle over the Jay Treaty. Madison might have looked “pale, withered, haggard,” as Adams commented when he left Philadelphia, but once again his delicate constitution belied the steely determination that drove him. He wasn’t going to give up, and so while Adams contemplated the presidency, Madison was planning the Republican counterattack. As he rode across the plantation every day, he was not only investigating the fields and talking to the overseers but also trying to work out how he could convince a reluctant Jefferson to exchange his beloved farming pursuits at Monticello for a life in the President’s House. It wouldn’t be an easy task, because Jefferson once again protested that he no longer had any interest in politics—“the little spice of ambition, which I had in my younger days,” he asserted, “has long since evaporated.” The best strategy, Madison decided, was not to see Jefferson at all during the summer (despite Montpelier only being a short day’s ride from Monticello). “I have not seen Jefferson,” he wrote to James Monroe, in code so that no Federalist could discover their plans if the letters were intercepted, “and have thought it best to present him no opportunity of protesting to his friend[s] against being embarked in the contest.”

  While Jefferson pretended not to be involved, Washington planned his retirement, dreaming of sowing, growing and sitting under his vine and fig tree. There were no provisions made in the Constitution for a limited number of terms, and he knew that most Americans assumed that he would serve for life, but he had other plans. Throughout his presidency Washington had been aware that he was walking on “untrodden ground,” and fully realized that as the first in his office, whatever he did would establish a precedent. So when he decided to retire in order to return to farming and gardening, Washington knew that he would leave an enduring stamp on American politics. For the irony is that what we interpret as a necessary check on, and curtailment of, executive power—the two-term presidency that would become a cornerstone of America’s democracy4—had its seed in the president’s refusal to brook any further delay in his return to his fields and flowerbeds.

  Washington left Philadelphia for Mount Vernon at the end of June for his last summer as president. He arrived to see a garden that had been prepared by his estate manager for a string of prestigious and important visitors expected over the coming weeks. A month earlier Washington had instructed that everything should be in “prime order”—the necessaries spotless, the lawn rolled, the paths raked and a new front gate built. “I shall expect an abundance of every thing in the Gardens,” Washington ordered, for the house will be “crowded with company … as the ministers of France, Great Britain, and Portugal, in succession, intend to be here—besides other strangers.”

  The garden that he had planted more than a decade earlier had matured into colorful shrubberies and shady walks filled with American native species. Along the serpentine walk in front of the house, rosebays paraded their origamied white blossoms, taking over from the pink-tinged blooms of mountain laurel. Walking along the neatly raked paths Washington would have been able to smell the sweet fragrance of the last spidery flowers of Carolina allspice. Southern catalpa was at its best, almost concealing its large leaves with its abundant floral white dress, and the tulip poplars had just shed the last of their yellow-orange petals, as had the black locusts. The huge white cups of Magnolia grandiflora were still clinging to the branches next to the shiny leaves. “A thousand other bushes,” one visitor said, “all covered with flowers of different colors, all planted in a manner to produce the most beautiful hues.”

  Since planting the garden in early 1785, Washington had also created six large oval beds on the bowling green in front of the house with the trees and shrubs that he had admired in Bartram’s Garden during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Since then, William Bartram had sent more than one hundred varieties—conifers, deciduous trees and many shrubs including the lavish southern species that Washington had seen flowering at Bartram’s such as Franklinia alatamaha, silky camellia and the Carolina silverbell. Once again Washington had followed Philip Miller’s instructions in the Gardeners Dictionary by creating “rising clumps”—the ovals were thickly planted with dwarf varieties at the edge climbing to a stately white pine at the center.5 Crimson cardinals and Baltimore orioles with their beautifully contrasted orange and black plumage were flying in and out of the trees, adding dancing spots of bright color and delighting with their songs. The gardens looked glorious.

  While at Mount Vernon, Washington received a letter from Alexander Hamilton that contained a draft for the president’s final words to the American people. Six months previously, he had asked Hamilton to write his Farewell Address, sending him the draft that the diligent Madison had prepared for the possible retirement at the end of the first term as well as a few paragraphs that addressed the “considerable changes” that had occurred in his second term. He left it to Hamilton to either revise or prepare an entirely new one—his only stipulation was that it be “honest; unaffected; simple garb.”

  In tandem with this Farewell Address, Washington also arranged the agricultural aspect of his retirement, having decided to radically change the management of his plantation. If successful, it would make his fields more productive and provide a stable income, but the main incentive was to reduce slave labor on his land. Instead of one plantation run by one master and worked by his slaves, Washington proposed that most of his arable land be divided into smaller lots to be leased to tenants who were encouraged to refrain from using slave labor. Washington planned to keep only the farm operation associated with the mansion, and that only “for amusement.” The idea was “to separate the Negroes from the Land.” What he should do with the surplus slaves remained a problem, so he asked his estate manager, William Pearce, to compile lists of all his slaves with information on how they were related to each other and “the Neighbouring Negros,” as he wanted to avoid splitting up families. At the same time he planned to sell his vast tracts of land in the Ohio territory. The money from the sales, he explained, would allow him “to liberate a certain species of property which I possess, very repugnantly to my own feelings.” Advertisements of the terms and conditions for the leases were dispatched across America from Ohio and Kentucky to Hartford and Alexandria.6

  Washington was in search of a particular breed of tenant. He had no intention of leasing his land to “the slovenly farmers of this country” who ruined the soil by cultivating their land with the same methods and tools that had been used since the Middle Ages. For centuries, farmers had yoked their oxen and horses to wooden ploughs to turn the soil into the familiar ridges and furrows. Most still cast their seeds by hand instead of with new seed drills—animal-drawn machines that dropped se
eds in regular rows7—an invention that had been “violently opposed.” Virginia farmers (if they didn’t grow tobacco) planted their fields on a three-year cycle, starting with Indian corn, then wheat and then a year fallow—after which it started again. With no understanding of nutrients or fertilizers, farmers slowly destroyed the soil. In a country where land was plentiful and labor dear, farmers just cleared a new plot of land to start all over again.

  Adams had called the Massachusetts farmers “a lazy, ignorant sett” and Washington was equally frustrated about the “abuse” of the land. In England, however, where land was scarce, scientifically inclined agriculturists had begun to restore the soil’s fertility in the early eighteenth century by introducing crop rotation. Farmers across England worked on a four-field cycle that introduced fodder crops such as turnips. Since then the idea had developed into five-, six-, seven- and eight-year methods based on the same principle. Leguminous plants like clover, buckwheat and winter vetch acted as “green manure,” which, when ploughed under, added organic matter and released nitrogen into the soil, while grazing crops brought cattle and much-needed manure to the fields.

  For the past decade Washington had kept abreast of the latest innovations by corresponding with England’s leading agriculturalist, Arthur Young, who sent him publications, new seeds, ploughs and plans for farm buildings. Washington had tested these new farming methods and wanted tenants who would follow his visionary six-year crop rotation and also give their word that not an inch of his land would be used to cultivate tobacco. To find tenants who were acquainted with the most up-to-date practice, Washington wrote to his agricultural correspondents abroad for men “particularly from Great Britain.”8

  Washington had studied the latest agricultural books and discussed his experiments with friends and correspondents. “His favourite subject is agriculture,” visitors at Mount Vernon remarked again and again, surprised to be lectured at great length by the president of the United States about crops, ploughs, “a very minute account of the Hessian fly” and other pressing farming issues. Even when he led 13,000 troops to crush the so-called Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, which saw several thousand grain farmers protesting against the tax on whiskey, Washington examined the fields en route and relayed his observations back to his estate manager. “Our welfare and prosperity depend upon the cultivation of our lands,” he wrote, reiterating that the “common farmer will not depart from the old road ’till the new one is made so plain and easy that he is sure it cannot be mistaken.”

  Despite his more modest means, Adams shared this zeal for innovative agriculture. He had previously published an essay that stressed the importance of “making Experiments, upon Soils and Manures, Grains and Grasses, Trees and Bushes.” He had introduced clover and grasses to his meadows and had grown hemp in his garden to test it as a possible crop. Jefferson was also busy learning the new methods—“the few who can afford it,” he wrote to Madison, “should incur the risk & expense of all new improvements.”

  Since his retirement Jefferson had been studying crop rotation, and in spring 1796, as Congress had battled over the Jay Treaty, he had sent questionnaires to a number of his fellow farmers about fodder crops. For some time he had been corresponding with “the best farmers of all,” including Washington and Madison, in order to determine how best to implement crop cycles. He sent diagrams for an eight-year plan and asked for their opinions. Madison was more than happy to oblige, sending Jefferson a new pamphlet on the subject, and Washington, having experimented for years with crop rotation, was also delighted to advise Jefferson on different crops and methods.

  The condition of their respective fields when they retired was an indicator of how differently each of the founding fathers ran their farms. Jefferson’s were in the least impressive state, ravaged by overseers and suffering from a decade of neglect while he had been in office. While Jefferson blamed his long absences from home for the losses, Washington had successfully managed to run his plantation from the same distance. Every Sunday without fail during his eight years as president he wrote explicit instructions to his estate manager—the longest of all his letters during this period. Washington’s innovative farming techniques had gained him the reputation as “best Farmer in the State,” while the cerebral Jefferson was regarded as something of a failure because his agricultural knowledge was based too much on theory rather than practice. Since the beginning of his retirement, however, Jefferson had embraced farming wholeheartedly, determined to turn his depleted land into lush fields. “I am but a learner,” he wrote to a friend, “an eager one indeed but yet desperate.” He relished his new life away from politics and spent the summer of 1796 on horseback all day out in the fields, as one visitor noted in June, despite the scorching heat of the sun. The red soil of Monticello had become the main interest in his life. “I have made researches into nothing but what is connected to agriculture,” he wrote in July, for “I am entirely a farmer, soul and body.”

  Equally Madison, who until recently had mainly been occupied with politics, had begun to focus on the day-to-day operation of farming. As the eldest son he was expecting to inherit several thousand acres in Orange County in Virginia, but with his father still alive, Madison had long searched for another vocation. He acquired two farms near Montpelier and when his brother (who had managed the plantation with the father) died, in 1793, Madison took over more responsibilities. Like Adams and Washington, he had written long farming letters from Philadelphia during the Jay Treaty debates that showed him to be a similarly innovative farmer. He built his own mill, studied crop rotation and, despite his frailty, also enjoyed the physical work such as chopping wood. Jefferson was delighted that his closest friend was “now immersed in farming.” Their letters had always included weather and farm reports, and now they could compare yields, crops and tools. Jefferson arranged for a new plough from one of the members of the agricultural society in Philadelphia for Madison and quizzed him about Jethro Tull’s horse-drawn hoe. Madison in turn reported about a “patent plow” that was “worth your looking at.”

  The improvement of agricultural methods and crops was not only an immediate economic necessity. While at a more prosaic level, farming provided a basic livelihood for most Americans, for the founding fathers, free husbandmen with small self-sufficient farms would be the foot soldiers of the infant nation.

  This was not a new idea—Aristotle had claimed that for a republic “an Agrarian people is the best” and the Romans had elevated the farmer as the most virtuous kind of citizen, imbuing the hardworking peasant at his plough with patriotic pride. Virgil’s poem Georgics had been admired as a celebration of virtuous country life, while Cicero had written that “of all the occupations by which gain is secured, none is better than agriculture, none more profitable, none more delightful, none more becoming to a freeman.”9 This emphasis on farmers as the foundation of a free society had its origin in the belief that republics were the most fragile form of government. With the removal of the monarchy, the traditional control mechanisms of society—which were based on fear and force—had to be replaced by self-control, moral integrity and industry. “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” Franklin had written, “as nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” As such the strength of a republic—the people—was also its weakness. People’s selfishness, ambition, avarice and vanity in America posed such a threat that Adams worried “whether there is public Virtue enough to support a Republic.”

  To put the common good before one’s private interests, the founding fathers believed, was the foundation of a nontyrannical and nonmonarchical government (again a notion lifted from classical literature), and the only basis on which a republic could be founded. Closely linked to the concept of “public virtue” was that of “private virtue,” described as being frugal, temperate and uncorrupted—traits that the founding fathers ascribed to farmers. “Cultivators of the earth,” Jefferson wrote, “are the most vigorous, the most independent, the m
ost virtuous.” They elevated the independent yeoman to an elemental place in American life. Hardworking and independent farmers were the pillars of American society because only a virtuous and industrious people would be able to hold together the republic.

  AS LONG AS a man had a piece of land of his own that was sufficient to support his family, Franklin had said, he was independent.10 Jefferson went even further, arguing that only farmers should be elected congressmen because more than any others they were “the true representatives of the great American interest.” A man who cultivated his own soil was immune to moral corruption, Jefferson said, unlike the deplorable merchants who “have no country” and therefore no real attachment to their nation. Laborers employed in manufacturing and factories would never be bound to their country as farmers who worked the soil were. “The small landholders are the most precious part of a state,” Jefferson insisted, and had written into his draft for the Virginia Constitution that every free person was to be entitled to fifty acres of land (he had failed to get it passed). Madison agreed and published an article in the National Gazette declaring that the greater the proportion of husbandmen, “the more free, the more independent, and the more happy must be the society itself.”