THREE EMINENT FARMERS . 47 



in their furrows, to aid the farmer of Mount Vernon,&quot; in unyok 

 ing their land from tyranny. Three illustrious farmers, George 

 Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, did not obey 

 the injunction to &quot;let politics alone,&quot; and are therefore less 

 known than they deserve to be as Patrons of Husbandry. 

 They were not only practical but scientific cultivators. Jefferson 

 devoted much time to improvements in plows, and Washington 

 kept himself fully informed by maps and weekly reports of the 

 exact condition of his crops, when absent on his campaigns. 

 But the rank and file do not seem to have profited by these 

 illustrious examples. We have at least a hint of the reason in 

 a letter from Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, in 

 1641, to the home government. &quot;But I thank God,&quot; he says, 

 &quot;there are no free schools or printing, for learning has brought 

 disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing 

 has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God 

 keep us from both.&quot; 



At first, the virgin soil amply repaid the labors of the hus 

 bandman. The lighter and poorer lands first brought under 

 tillage were soonest exhausted of their fertility; there was little 

 attempt at systematic rotation in the Northern, and still less in 

 the Southern States, where cotton and tobacco formed the sur 

 plus crops, and found the readiest market abroad. These 

 staples were cultivated without manure, and the result proved 

 how fatal to the prosperity of a country the exclusive produc 

 tion and monopoly of any great staple may become, even where 

 there is a regular, extensive and profitable demand for it. 



Notwithstanding the encouragement given to silk and other 

 cultures, by the British government, cotton and tobacco re 

 ceived more and more attention; as, the land gave out, popula 

 tion pushed backward, the cost of transportation to the sea 

 board in a country whose resources are undeveloped, being 

 usually considered less than the cost of reclaiming lower and 

 richer lands. 



Thus emigration peopled Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Gulf 

 States, where the exceeding fertility of the river bottoms offers 

 some exceptional features to the inevitable results of exclusive 

 cropping. The bottoms of the Mississippi, Yazoo, Ked, Ar 

 kansas, and Big Black Kivers, are unrivalled for the production 

 of cotton and sugar-cane, but the carefully kept statistics of the 

 years of French domination, now in possession of that 



