Populist crusade in the 1890s.
The role of the federal government in agricultural development can be found in works dealing with specific topics. The battles between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton over national policy can be found in any standard US history textbook. The subject of disposition of the public domain was at the heart of an older agricultural history, such as Roy M. Robbins (1976). The latest examination is John R. Van Atta (2014) who, by including the Native American perspective, offers a different interpretation of land law creation and execution. The particular topics of how land got distributed to individuals and land companies due to the Ordinances of 1785 and 1787 are dealt with in William D. Pattison (1957), Malcolm J. Rohrbough (1968), and Kenneth C. Martis (2001). The role of land companies is given in most state histories but for a broader view see the older work of Shaw Livermore (1939 ) and the more recent treatment in Wilma A. Dunaway (1996). European desire for western land becomes a narrative of greed in the work of Daniel M. Friedenberg (1992). For the most flagrant example of speculative frenzy and corruption, the Yazoo land scandals, consult Charles F. Hobson (2016) and the earlier monograph of Peter C. Magrath (1966).
How the land laws operated and which groups they favored has been a continuing debate among historians. The ability of planters to acquire vast tracts is revealed in Adam Rothman (2005) and Kristofer Ray (2007); James L. Huston (2015) stressed the emergence in the north of the family farm. For the assessment that the land laws favored speculators everywhere, see John Opie (1987).
The subjects of American expansion and pioneering are interesting examples of alterations in the topics that entrance historians. Earlier interpretations centered on European families moving over the mountains, clearing the land, establishing farms, and (seemingly) practicing an egalitarianism that supported political democracy (see, for example, Ray Allen Billington 1974). However, this history based on white pioneers is no longer the focus of modern studies of the westward movement, save in territorial and state histories. Instead, interest now centers on Native American displacement; in southern expansion, the effect of the cotton boom and establishment of slave systems predominates. For the white incursion into Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, narratives which extensively deal with land companies and speculators, consult the outstanding histories by Stephen Aron (1996), Craig Friend (2010), and R. Douglas Hurt (1987). Alabama and Mississippi are well covered by Rothman (2006), Daniel S. Dupre (1997), and John Reda (2016).
The best general history on the westward movement, one that is truly encyclopedic, is Malcolm J. Rohrbough (2008), but one that focuses more on the time period covered in this chapter is Reginald Horsman (1970). Geographers have written immensely informative works on expansion which simply must be consulted. For migratory patterns as well as the “imperial thrust” of American expansion, see D. W. Meinig (1993). Michael Williams (1989) is simply marvelous in his history of pioneers cutting down forests, and Carville Earle (1992) provides stimulating insights into the effects of crop selection and wage rates in early American agriculture.
The agricultural history of the Old Northwest in its pioneer stages and beyond can be found in numerous state studies, all of which now include Native American removal, the role of women, and the issue of slavery. There are many good state studies but they often only briefly mention the years 1790–1830: Robert Leslie Jones (1983), Andrew R. L. Cayton (1996), James E. Davis (1998), Richard F. Nation (2005), Paul Salstrom (2007), and Timothy Thoresen (2018).
On the migration of easterners across the Appalachian Mountains, see the extended discussion in Meinig (1993) but note also the outstanding discussion of the role of Virginians in David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly (2000). The movement of New Englanders is given in all the general histories of American expansion as well as the general surveys of the United States 1790–1830 already discussed in this Bibliographical Essay, but see also Virginia E. McCormick and Robert W. McCormick (1998) on a New England settlement in Ohio. The special role of the yeoman farmer in leading southern expansion is detailed in James D. Foust (1975).
Cotton cultivation and plantation slavery have received the bulk of scholarly interest in agricultural history during the years of the early republic. Adam Rothman (2005) gives the strongest account of the spread of plantation slavery over this period, while the global setting of textile industrialization and its reliance on cotton is the theme of Sven Beckert’s book (2015). The interesting story of southern planters’ experimentation with cotton seeds is given full account in John Hebron Moore (1988), and Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode (2008). Joyce E. Chaplin (1993) has provided an insightful narrative of planters improving rice cultivation. On the rice industry, the indispensable work is Peter A. Coclanis (1989). For sugar, see the first chapter of John C. Rodrique (2001) on the evolution of Louisiana sugar production as well as Joe Gray Taylor (1963).
The rigors of plantation slavery, whether cotton or rice, are the heart of a host of studies, the most current being Ira Berlin (1998), Philip D. Morgan (1998), Edward E. Baptist (2014), and Walter Johnson (2013). Though based on the census of 1860, the findings of Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman (1989) are still valid for earlier years. The development of the plantation abounds in older state histories of the Cotton South and in the works of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips.
Crucial topics in agricultural practices of the South are covered by a number of authors. The matter of soil fertility, the long fallow, and shifting from field to field is taken up in John Majewski and Viken Tchakerian (2007), and the gloomy assessment of soil exhaustion by cotton cultivation in Steven Stoll (2002) as well as Roger G. Kennedy (2003).
Within the Cotton South lurks the matter of the condition of nonslaveholders, the bulk of the white population. There is little work on this topic for the years 1790–1830 as the records are so incomplete. Most of the studies on nonslaveholders use the Census of 1850 or 1860, and by that time conditions had markedly worsened for nonslaveholders; see Charles C. Bolton (2005) and Samuel Hyde (2005). The world of the nonslaveholder also includes the southern region now known as Appalachia; the poverty of the area was not apparent in the years 1790 to 1830, and most studies have concentrated on the post-Civil War years; however, consult Paul Salstrom (1994) and Wilma A. Dunaway (1996) and her later volume (2008).
The Upper or Border South had a different history than the Cotton South. Plantations existed throughout the Upper South, but generally a yeoman farming culture predominated. Most work has been done on Virginia, where the old tobacco plantation dissolved and a wheat culture took its place, sometimes with disastrous results. The key historian detailing the demise of a slave society in Virginia in its transition to a society with slaves is Ira Berlin (1998). On wheat cultivation, see especially Kenneth E. Koons and Warren R. Hofstra (2000) as well as Warren R. Hofstra (2004). The older interpretation that tobacco culture produced soil exhaustion in the Tidewater and Piedmont has been replaced by incompetent wheat cultivation (Earle 1992 and Lorena S. Walsh 1993). Earle also provides an interpretation on how the characteristics of various crops (tobacco, cotton, wheat, and corn) aid or detract from the creation of cities and transportation facilities.
Much of the agricultural history of other border states resides in local state histories and, since 2000, writers have dwelled more on political than agricultural history. For Kentucky, consult Aron (1996); for Tennessee, Paul H. Bergeron, Stephen V. Ash, and Jeanette Keith (1999); for Arkansas, Charles Bolton (1993); for Maryland, Max Grivno (2011); and for Missouri, Diane Mutti Burke (2010).
New England agriculture has an abbreviated agricultural history because early industrialization has stolen the interest of researchers. Farmers deserted the region for the West, and those who remained turned to livestock and raising fodder. These developments are clearly delineated in the broad history of Henretta (1973) and Barron (1984). A good popular history of New England farming is Howard S. Russell (1976). Although largely on the eighteenth century and mixed with other pursuits, Daniel Vickers (1994) is excellent. The standard histories of Massachusetts farming are Christopher Clark (1990) and Winifred Rothenberg (1992). Alan Taylor (1990) depicts the battles between Maine proprietors and small farmers while Brian Donahue (2004) shows the change to husbandry in Connecticut.
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