Washington at the Plow by Bruce A. Ragsdale

Author:Bruce A. Ragsdale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

Fig 6.3   James Anderson, by Samuel Freeman, 1809. Anderson of Edinburgh published The Bee, which sought to bring knowledge of improvement to broad audiences. Washington promoted the journal in the United States and recommended Anderson for membership in the American Philosophical Society. Anderson sent Washington his publications on agriculture and plant specimens from around the world, and he hired a gardener to work at Mount Vernon. Photograph © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Sir John Sinclair, the chairman of the British Wool Society and a tenacious proponent of agricultural improvement in his native Scotland, introduced himself to Washington in 1792 by sending several published papers along with some queries about sheep husbandry in the United States. Washington apologized that his country could offer no valuable information regarding sheep, although he reported on his own efforts to improve the stock on his farms. Washington was intrigued by Sinclair’s proposal for a statistical study of Scotland, calling for a systematic collection of information about land, population, and agriculture in each county. Such a close examination must, Washington predicted, “result in greatly ameliorating the condition of the people—promoting the interests of civil society—and the happiness of Mankind at large.” When Sinclair in 1793 won support from Prime Minister William Pitt for the establishment of the Board of Agriculture, he led that body as its founding president in commissioning agricultural surveys for every county in Great Britain. Sinclair was confident that the work of the Board of Agriculture would benefit the United States as much as Great Britain, an opinion with which Washington fully concurred.27

By the time he initiated his correspondence with Washington, Sinclair had concluded that agricultural improvement in any nation depended on more than the experiments and investments of enlightened landowners; it required the encouragement of government. Since the 1770s, more and more British proponents of improvement had called for governmental support of research in agriculture and science. Lord Kames in The Gentleman Farmer proposed “A Board for Improving Agriculture,” in part to compensate for the anticipated loss of the American colonies, and Young’s inaugural volume of the Annals called for governmental support of research in the natural sciences. Sinclair encouraged Washington to seek congressional approval for a board of agriculture in the United States, and sent him the outline and instructions for the county surveys initiated by the British board. The more Sinclair learned about agriculture in the United States, the more convinced he was “that the Farmers of America want some Spur to acquire agricultural information, as well as a Spirit to communicate to others, what they have already acquired: In short, that they should read, speak, and write more, upon that Subject.” If Congress did not establish a board of agriculture, Sinclair suggested that a comparable private institution be established in Philadelphia to correspond with agricultural societies in each state. Washington thought that the creation of smaller societies, organized by the states, would build support for a national board, but the proposals for a Pennsylvania society, which he sent Sinclair, failed to

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