Washington was our first president and a farmer
As a youngster, classmates learned about President Abraham Lincoln on Feb. 12 and President George Washington on Feb. 22.
In 1971, Congress set Presidents Day as the third Monday in February as a federal holiday that became a three-day weekend for federal services and the U.S. Postal Service. Hopefully, it is a chance to learn more about all our presidents.
President George Washington was the general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, when a group of 13 North American colonies banded together to fight Great Britain, ultimately win and change world history. Washington became our nation’s first president, serving two terms from 1789 to 1797.
His roots were in agriculture.
He oversaw 50,000 acres. During that era, a farm that size required slave labor. At the time of his death in December 1799, the Mount Vernon estate’s enslaved population consisted of 317 people, according to MountVernon.org.
Washington accepted slavery as a young man, but after the Revolutionary War, he began to question it. He avoided the issue publicly, as did many of our Founding Fathers, and he struggled with it morally and feared that bitter debates about slavery would tear apart the nation, the website stated.
MountVernon.org notes that Washington made his most public antislavery statement after his death. “In his will, Washington ordered that his enslaved workers be freed at his wife’s death. Unfortunately, this applied to fewer than half of the people in bondage at Mount Vernon.”
Nonetheless, Washington’s agricultural roots are something we should celebrate.
MountVernon.org notes on agriculture
Washington’s precise record-keeping was one of the first steps on the path to agricultural improvement and innovation. Over time, Washington’s agricultural record grew increasingly detailed and inquisitive, steadily progressing from a basic record of planting and agricultural products to a quasi-scientific journal of experimentation and economic viability.
Washington’s post-Revolutionary War rehabilitation of Mount Vernon progressed from repairing the physical improvements of his plantation to a reconsideration of his entire mode of farming. The end of the Revolutionary War triggered an interest amongst educated and wealthy American planters and gentleman farmers in agricultural reform. On March 1, 1785, 23 prominent planters founded the first organization devoted to agricultural pursuits—the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Agriculture.
By June 1785, Washington signaled he wanted to adopt a new, rigorous approach to farming. With the help of Arthur Young, a major figure in the British agricultural reform movement, and others, Washington began to reconfigure fields from a three-field arrangement to a seven-field system. This enabled him to adapt to a seven-year crop rotation focused on wheat as the principal cash crop, corn for domestic food needs and legumes to rejuvenate the soil. He began his plan on Jan. 1, 1787.
Washington, as a steward, believed that it was the responsibility of wealthy farmers to undertake experimentation as failures, that losses were inevitable and that those producers could absorb the losses.
Although Washington was our first president, it remains an exclusive club, as our country has had fewer than 50 commanders-in-chief. It is noble that he was an agriculturalist at heart. His stories of trial and error, success and failure gave our first president an understanding of the troubles farmers and ranchers faced then when they did not have any safety net or conservation programs available. Agriculture continues to be at the heart of our economy. Washington lived that life, and we are glad he did.
Dave Bergmeier can be reached at 620-227-1822 or dbergmeier@hpj.com.
