54 



®l)c .farmer's JHontJjJs bteito^ 



and decide among themselves whether it would 

 be best to have some of each of these sons on 

 every farm ; or, in order more effectually to pre- 

 vent mixture, to have one sort only on a farm. 

 In the latter case, the cutting of that which ri- 

 pens first, and so on, most be accomplished by 

 the force of all the farms instead of each doing 

 bis own work. If the seed on one farm was to 

 be sown on another, especially if seed which 

 grew on a light soil was to be sown on a stift 

 one, and that which grew on a stiff one sown on 

 a light ground, advantages would unquestionably 

 result from it. 



J lth. The potatoes at the mansion house must 

 be worked by the ploughs from Union farm, and, 

 when this is required, it would be best, 1 con- 

 ceive, to accomplish the work in a day. 



13th. It is expected that the fences will be 

 made secure, and no damage permitted within 

 them by creatures of any kind, or belonging to 

 anybody — mine any more than others. 



13th." The greatest attention is to be paid to 

 stocks of all kinds on the farms; and the most 

 that can be made on the manure and litter. 

 They are to be counted regularly, that no false 

 reports may be made ; and missing ones, if any, 

 hunted for until found, or the manner of their 

 going can be accounted for satisfactorily. 



14th. A weekly report, as usual, is to be hand- 

 ed to Mr. Lewis. In this report, that 1 may know 

 better how the work goes on, mention when you 

 begin to plough, hoe, or otherwise work in the 

 field, and when that field is finished. The in- 

 crease, decrease, and change to be noted as here- 

 tofore — and let me ask : 



loth. Why are the corn harrows thrown aside, or 

 so little used, that 1 rarely of late see or hear of their 

 being at work. I have been run to very considerable 

 expense in providing these and other implements for 

 my farms ; and, to my great mortification and inju- 

 ry, find, generally speaking, tluit wherever they were 

 last used they remain, if not stolen, till required 

 again; by which means they, as well as the 

 carts, receive so much injury from the wet wea- 

 ther and the heat of the sun as to be unfit for 

 use ; to repair or supply the place of which with 

 new ones my carpenters (who ought to be other- 

 wise employed) are continually occupied in these 

 jobs. Harrows, after the ground is well broken, 

 would certainly weed and keep the corn clean 

 with more ease than the ploughs. I hope, there- 

 fore, they will be used. And it is my express 

 orders that the greatest care he taken of the tools 

 of every kind, carls, and plantation implements, 

 in future ; for I can no longer submit to the losses 

 I am continually sustaining by neglect. 



16th. There is nothing I more ardently desire, 

 nor indeed is there any more essential to my 

 permanent interest than the raising of live fences 

 on proper ditches or banks ; yet nothing has ever 

 been, in a general way, more shamefully neglect- 

 ed or mismanaged; for, instead of preparing the 

 ground for the reception of the seed, and weed- 

 ing and keeping the plants clean after they come 

 up, the seeds are hardly scratched into the 

 ground, and are suffered to be smothered by 

 the weeds and grass if they do come up; by 

 which means the expense 1 have been at in pur- 

 chasing and sending the seeds, (generally from 

 Philadelphia,) together with the labor, such as it 

 is, that has been incurred, is not only lost, but 

 (and which is of more importance to me) season 

 after season passes away, and 1 am as far from 

 the accomplishment of my object as ever. I men- 

 tion the matter thus fully to show how anxious 1 

 atu that all the seeds which have been sown or 

 planted on the banks of the ditches should be 

 properly attended to, and the deficient spots 

 made good, if you have or can obtain the means 

 for doing it. 



17lh. There is one thing that 1 must caution 

 you against, (without knowing whether there be 

 cause to charge you with it or not,) and that is, 

 not to retain any of my 7iegroes who are able and fit 

 to work in the crop in or about your own house for- 

 your own purposes. This 1 do not allow any 

 overseer to do. A small hoy or girl lor the pur- 

 pose of fetching wood or water, tending a child, 

 or some such thing, I do not object to ; but so 

 soon as they are able to work out I expect to 

 reap the benefit of their labor myself 



18ih. Though last mentioned it is not of the 

 least importance, because the peace and good 

 government of the negroes depend upon it, and 



not less so my interest and your own reputation. 

 I do, therefore, in explicit terms, enjoin it upon 

 you to remain constantly at home, (unless called 

 off by unavoidable business, or lo attend Divine 

 worship,) and to be constantly with your people 

 when there. There is no other sure way of getting 

 ivork ivell done bu negroes ; for, when an overseer's 

 back is turned, 'the 'most of them will slight their 

 work or be idle altogether, in which case correction 

 cannot retrieve either, but often produces evils 

 which are worse than the disease. Nor is there 

 any other mode than this to prevent thieving and 

 other disorders, the consequence of opportunities. 

 You will recollect that your time is paid for by 

 me, and if I am deprived of it, it is worse than 

 the robbing of my purse, because it is a breach 

 of trust, which any honest man ought lo hold 

 most sacred. You have found me, and you will 

 continue to find me, faithful to my part of the 

 agreement which was made with you, whilst 

 you are attentive to your part; but it is to be re- 

 membered that a breach on one side releases the 

 obligation on the other. //', therefore, it shall be 

 proved to me that you are absenting yourself from 

 the farm or the people ivithout just cause, 1 shall 

 hold myself no more bound to pay the wages than 

 you do to attend strictly to the charge which is en- 

 trusted to you by one who has every disposition lo 

 be your friend and servant, 



GEO. WASHINGTON. 



REMARKS. 



We publish the foregoing, not so much to 

 commend Washington as a "sound practical 

 farmer," as to shew the process by which hun- 

 dreds and thousands of acres of the best soil 

 have become barren and useless under the slave 

 cultivation of the South. 



No man in the nation sixty years ago was more 

 anxious than George Washington to keep up the 

 production of the country by improving the soil. 

 The virgin lands of the Virgin State at their first 

 opening, inviting the introduction of slave labor, 

 had made the agricultural calling a most profita- 

 ble and lucrative pursuit. Laid off in large 

 plantations, the early income of their English 

 owners created for ihem the great wealth which 

 made a proud and talented race. Soon it be- 

 came disreputable for any but slaves of the col- 

 ored race to labor in the soil with their own 

 hands. The. seeds of the degeneracy were sown 

 broadcast amidst the rising germs of a present 

 prosperity. 



The tobacco crop was the first source of wealth 

 to Virginia as the tobacco crop was the first great 

 exhauster of the Virginia soil. Washington pos- 

 sessed in right of bis own inheritance, an exten- 

 sive fertile tract of land embracing the several 

 plantations named in the foregoing letter, con- 

 sisting of more than twelve thousand acres: be- 

 sides this large extent of territory -he occupied, 

 in the right of his wife who was a widow with 

 two children of whom he was the guardian, 

 other plantations lower down in Virginia. From 

 what we can learn of this excellent man and 

 patriot his income from the tobacco crop must 

 in his early life have been very considerable ; it 

 was all but sufficient to freight a ship for London 

 to which place he was wont to send out orders 

 as a return cargo for many of the comforts and 

 even elegancies of life. 



It is remarkable that the value of the tobacco 

 crop of Virginia should at the most difficult crisis 

 of the revolutionary war furnish that assurance 

 of credit which alone enabled the country to 

 make its first loan of France for the sole tem- 

 porary means at the time of sustaining Inde- 

 pendence. 



From the revolution may probably be dated 

 the decline of agricultural wealth in that glorious 

 commonwealth: Washington's estates at Mount 

 Vernon seem to have gone into decay at the 



same time. His plantations undoubtedly suffer- 

 ed dilapidation from his long absence in the rev- 

 olutionary service. What must we think of his 

 anguish of thought in relation to his own private 

 affairs when, in his long absence, he was obliged 

 to exercise his wits to " prevent theft" and "em- 

 bezzlement" from those in his employ; and 

 when even his overseers would scarcely listen to 

 any suggestion of improvement he should make 

 where he had furnished the implements at a 

 large expense? 



Our inferences from this letter of Washington, 

 despite of his watchful vigilance and thought 

 about the cultivation of his lands, can be no less 

 than that the whole would become what it has 

 become — stale, worn-out and unprofitable. The 

 Washington plantations, the twelve thousand 

 acres of land once so flourishing and profitable 

 to their proprietor — returning from Europe be- 

 fore the revolution the means of living in easy 

 affluence — do not at this lime yield more, if as 

 much as the pine barrens lying along our rivers 

 and around the lakes whose waters when at a 

 higher elevation left them at their present level. 

 At the time Washington wrote the above letter 

 the art of an improved agriculture was not well 

 understood even in Europe: if it was understood 

 at all, it was but little practised. Washington's 

 taste for agricultural improvement brought him 

 into correspondence with Sir Arthur Sinclair 

 and other farmer economists of that day ; '"it 

 his letter discovers to us that he had grasped 

 but little of that science which enabled the great 

 farmer of Hot ham, the earl of Leicester, to 

 change sterile, worn-out lands into fruitful fields 

 in after times. It reflects great credit on the 

 improving system in England, that the Earl of 

 Leicester has taken up an extensive track of 

 sterile lands and converted them into fruitful 

 fields, improving his estates at a great profit, at 

 the same time the cultivation of those lands has 

 given employment lo hundreds of peasantry who 

 are thus enabled to live in comfort from the fruits 

 of the soil. 



For almost the whole term <it' an active life 

 Washington was engaged in ihe public service 

 of the country. Seven years at the head of the 

 army of the revolution — personally the soul of 

 that revolution: in the intermediate term before 

 the adoption of the present constitution at the 

 head of affairs calling him from home — for eight 

 years our first President — the plantation business 

 in Virginia must have been good to enable him to 

 meet the expenses and support of the slave la- 

 bor necessary lo carry it forward. 



Washington was absent one season as the pre- 

 siding officer and one of the master spirits who 

 formed the constitution at Philadelphia: in that 

 absence his journal proves that lie at no lime 

 lost sight of ihe means best applicable to the 

 cultivation of the soil. In journies and excur- 

 sions out from and around Philadelphia, thru as 

 now the garden spot of America, this subject as 

 a matter of observation was always uppermost 

 in his mind: in that absence he first learned the 

 use of buck-wheat to be ploughed in for the 

 renovation of the soil. This he seems to have 

 carried into effect four years afterwards. 



It is not to bo wondered that indifferent crops 

 of hay should he procured from the lands upon 

 the Potomac. It might be discovered that the 

 fault lies more in the cultivation than in the soil. 

 As far as our observation has extended the depth 

 of ploughing in that country is even less than 

 the most shallow ploughing in New England. 

 Year after year the fields are turned up either 



