Agriculture

In the first half of the 19th century, agriculture defined the U. S. way of life economically and socially. It was the primary means of sustaining the ECONOMY, through the production of raw products such as cotton, which between 1815 and 1845 generated between one-third and more than one-half of the value of all U. S. exports. On the more than 2 million farms that existed by 1860, most farmers were able to juggle a mix of commercial and subsistence farming and to see profit. What accounted for these advancements in agriculture during the antebellum years? In large part, it depended on geographic expansion and technological innovation. Both changed the face of U. S. agriculture before the Civil War. And both contributed to the striking dichotomy of American agricultural systems throughout the antebellum period, namely the proliferation of small-scale farmers in the North and large-scale plantations in the South.

Throughout the 19th century, various regions developed crops that reflected their particular geographic riches. Tobacco was grown across Virginia and the entire Upper South. Rice was harvested along the tidal rivers of Georgia and South Carolina. Hemp was produced in Kentucky, sugar in Louisiana. Across the South and West, cotton was grown. In the North, Ohio was known for pork, Ohio and Illinois for cattle. New York and Ohio were centers for cheese.

Also during this period, migration patterns, which moved largely westward, reflected the search for new fertile land. The rapid settlement of rich agricultural lands west of the Appalachians led to the founding of several states during the antebellum period: Indiana (admitted to the Union in 1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama (1819), Michigan (1837), Texas (annexed in 1845), and Iowa (1846). Curiously, this trend coincided with the westward drift of the wheat belt. A significant northern staple, wheat was experiencing difficult times in New York, Pennsylvania, and New England owing to weather and parasite-related factors, but it rapidly adapted to the prairies with considerable success. By the Civil War era Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota were the chief wheat-producing states.

The first major changes in farming came about through new technologies. As the 19th century began, a farmer’s main agricultural tools were the axe and plow. Led by the cotton gin in 1793, a number of labor-saving devices were invented, reducing the hours of labor involved in nearly all aspects of farming. Among the labor-saving items that came into common use during the first half of the 19th century were the thresher, reaper, iron and steel plows, grain drills, corn and cotton planters, seed drills, and iron harrows and cultivators. Distinguishing many of these implements was the fact that they were designed to employ animal rather than human power, which reduced the farmer’s workload.

The trend toward animal power boosted the ease and efficiency of nascent farming technology and increased demand for high-quality draft animals like the Clydesdale. It is estimated that by the turn of the century, no less than 25 million horses labored in agricultural capacities, a period that also witnessed the percentage of Americans engaged in farming decline to less than 38 percent.

For settlers and farmers, clearing land was a central task, and most northern and southern farmers in the early 19th century did so with a Carey plow. Using its wooden moldboard and wrought-iron share, farmers plowed up to one acre per day. For much of the antebellum period, prairie farmers employed the breaking plow or prairie breaker, which could crack fibrous soil. A major drawback was that it required multiple oxen and men. Much more efficient were steel plows, which were devised by various inventors beginning in the 1830s and refined by blacksmith John Deere. As refining processes reduced the price of steel during the 1840s and 1850s, the steel moldboard plow, known as the “singing plow,” became popular on the prairie. Demand for the device proved nearly insatiable, and by 1858 the John Deere Company was manufacturing an average of 13,000 steel plows per year. By 1835, iron and steel plows also entered common use in the North; but in parts of the South, a one-horse wood-and-wrought-iron shovel plow was used. The cast-iron Eagle plow, with a long, curved moldboard, was popular in the North and South.

Other mechanical advances included the hand corn planter and the horse-drawn corn planter, which was developed in the 1850s. These planters greatly increased the amount of seed a farmer could plant with a hoe. Developed in the 1820s, the horse-hoe used horse-drawn power to cultivate crops more efficiently. For harvesting crops, farmers finally found a labor-saving alternative to the scythe when the horse-drawn reaper was developed. Created in 1831 and patented in 1834 by Cyrus Hall Mccormick, it cut down 10-12 acres of wheat per day. By 1860, the reaper was used in 70 percent of U. S. farms. By 1857 rising wheat prices allowed farmers greater purchasing power to buy expensive McCormick reapers, and the factory was hard-pressed to maintain a yearly output of 1,000 machines. Thirty years later sales continued to rise in the vast wheatgrowing regions to 250,000 units every year. Shortly before the end of the antebellum period, in 1854, an automatic raking mechanism was developed to gather cut grain for harvest. It later gained common use.

The thresher, which separated the grain from the stalks, was developed in the 1820s. It was refined in 1837 with a device that separated the chaff from the straw. By the 1850s they were in common use. The grain combine, which joins the reaper, thresher, and winnower, was developed in 1835, but its weight and multiple-horse requirement made it unappealing to small to medium-sized farmers. This implement was refined later in the century. Other advances of the period include the steam planter and steam-powered cotton gin.

The movement toward agricultural mechanization also involved the building of factories for food production. Beginning in the 1820s meatpacking facilities handled pork and cattle at Cincinnati, Chicago, and other sites. By the 1850s factories in the North and West produced cheese in standardized form. This form of industrialization rid homes of the chore of producing cheese for commercial use while also providing farmers a ready outlet for excess dairy products.

In the South the lifetime labor of slaves was central to the region’s agricultural expansion and success. Here, the essential technology most closely identified with the region was Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, which first appeared in 1794 and helped indelibly cement the South to the cotton culture. Deceptively simple in appearance, it consisted of a rotary cylinder attached to a fixed comb for removing the seed from raw cotton. Yet when hand cranked, it efficiently rendered slavery profitable and—in effect— crowned “King Cotton.” Cotton exports became the major American cash crop by 1860, accounting for nearly 60 percent of all total exports by value. Output that year also crested at 4.5 million bales, which also constituted three-fourths of the world’s total cotton production. None of this could have been possible without the coerced labor provided by Aerican Americans. Male slaves, controlled by the white overseer and African-American driver, were expected to pick about 200 pounds of cotton per day, plow fields, and plant, among other tasks. Female slaves picked about 150 pounds of cotton per day and wove linen and wool, in addition to other domestic jobs. The increased production of bonded workers encouraged plantation farming and especially enriched owners. Given the South’s large population of 11 million people and the region’s dependence on a single, slave-driven crop, there was also a large market for corn and beef from northern states.

In all regions, farm women planted and harvested crops in addition to supervising the household, cooking, and caring for the gardens and household livestock. Women of slave-owning families also supervised slaves’ domestic activities. As one farm woman wrote, it was “boiling and baking, turning the spinning wheel and rocking the cradle.” They also engaged in a variety of home manufactures for trade. In the North, dairy products were popular home manufactures, and until factory-made clothing became available, women spun flax and wool as well as made linen cloth for trade. The rise of manufactured goods increased the ability of a woman to leave the farm but decreased her ability to contribute directly through farm manufactures to the family economy.

In general, life for the farm family was one of work, isolation, and limited social contact. The church provided social connections, with its rhythms of baptisms, marriages, and funerals. Similarly, communal labor-related activities such as barn-raisings and threshings contributed to the frontier society. To fuel increasing demand and in response to the changing soil, farmers developed new varieties of crops and refined animal breeds for specific agricultural uses. In Virginia during the 1850s, farmers created a new variety of tobacco called bright yellow, which, when specially cured, was used to wrap chewing tobacco. In the North, farmers bred and fed their cattle to produce dairy products with revenue-producing higher butterfat content. Western farmers also pioneered the importation of cattle such as the Shorthorn variety to improve livestock quality. Dairy farmers imported the Jersey cow in 1817, the Guernsey in 1830. Farmers also adjusted their crops to fill specialized markets. For example, when western farmers cornered their market by delivering low-cost grain, corn, and livestock, eastern farmers responded by adapting their crops and focusing on perishables such as dairy products and produce for ongoing delivery to cities.

Driven by increased demand for and production of foodstuffs, antebellum inventors developed various improvements to transport crops. Refined in 1807 by Robert Fulton, the steamboat, which could navigate a river or ocean, came into use from the 1810s to transport foodstuffs from west to east and along coastlines. By 1850, just under 750 steamboats were transporting raw materials and food along the Delaware, Hudson, and Mississippi Rivers, and along the coastlines. To link various strategic bodies of water, more than l,000 miles of canals were dug following the success of the Erie Canal. Built between 1817 and 1825, the Erie Canal connected the agriculture-rich Ohio Valley at Lake Erie to the Hudson River and the commercial hub of New York City. By 1835 the price for shipping goods along the canal dramatically declined from a high of $22 per ton to only $4, which facilitated the shipment of market crops to New York by small farmers. That metropolis soon emerged as the nation’s largest market for agricultural goods. Once the new railroad technology linked New York City to other burgeoning urban centers along the eastern seaboard, this network ensured a steady market for small-scale northern farmers engaged in traditional farming and production of high-value commodities such as milk, butter, cheese, and fruits.

Finally, while steam-powered water and wheel-based land transportation dominated much of early 19th-century transport, railroads come into use for agricultural transport by the 1840s and within decades became the dominant form of transportation for humans and foodstuffs alike. Some 30,000 miles of track were in use by 1860.

Financed in part through state and federal funds, transportation routes also increased and became more efficient during this period. The barriers to transatlantic trade during the War of 1812 gave rise to trade along the Atlantic coast, with important northern ports in Boston and New York and southern ports in Mobile and New Orleans. Inland transport of foodstuffs, particularly from the western states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, was improved by the National Road, which linked the Ohio Valley and the mid-Atlantic states, and the many side roads constructed during the period. In addition to streamlining food transport, these improvements spurred productivity and shifted areas of agricultural specialization. For example, the West became a major supplier of food and grain to the Northeast once farmers in the Ohio Valley region could ship wheat and corn along the Erie Canal and Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

Conservation practices among most U. S. farmers of the age centered on labor conservation through the widespread use of implements such as the cotton gin (1793). Time conservation was also practiced through transportation advances such as the steamboat. But as of the mid-19th century, there was relatively little soil conservation. Given the amount of fertile land in the United States and the crudeness of fertilizers, farmers who had exhausted their land migrated to new soil. This practice was evident in the migration south and west to plant cotton once the soil in the Upper South had been exhausted in the early 1800s. One observer of the time said of the South, “The new country seemed to be a reservoir. . . and every road leading to it a vagrant stream of enterprise and adventure.”

Despite these anticonservation tendencies, some farmers and agricultural reformers formulated soil and other conservation practices. The U. S. government helped the cause, to an extent. Beginning in 1839, the U. S. Patent Office offered reports on farming advances and technology, including a lengthy annual report distributed to farmers free of charge. The work of the Patent Office, along with the advocacy of the U. S. Agricultural Society, laid the groundwork for the development of the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

Of all farmers, northeasterners were generally the most well-versed in the common preservation practices of crop rotation and letting land lie fallow. These practices were not applicable for farmers of a single crop in great demand, such as cotton. However, one group of farmers along the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina did practice a form of crop rotation, turning to rice after the soil had been depleted by cotton or when rice might yield a higher return than cotton, as it did in the 1830s. Still, given generally declining prices for rice over the antebellum years, only large-volume, slave-labor plantations could still make money from the crop. In any event, cotton eclipsed rice, moving rice cultivation westward after the Civil War.

As the antebellum years came to a close in 1860, agricultural products remained central to the U. S. economy, accounting for 82 percent of U. S. exports. Producing 838 million bushels of corn, 172 million bushels of wheat, and over 2 billion pounds of cotton, the United States was its own primary supplier to domestic food processors and manufacturers. These products from across the nation’s 2 million farms included food-related crops such as corn, wheat, other grains, fruits, and vegetables as well as livestock; and raw materials such as cotton and tobacco. Together, they revealed the wealth of the U. S. agricultural landscape and the efficiency of new cultivation methods and technological refinements. By the last quarter of the 19th century, these advances, coupled with the large number of working U. S. farmers, would provide the means by which the United States (along with the rest of North America and Australia) would overtake Europe as the world’s leading producer of food.

Apart from the measurable advantages of improving farming practices and increasing productivity, the country’s success with commercial agriculture brought lasting changes to the ways U. S. citizens lived. Farmers who once produced all the items they needed for daily life now purchased manufactured goods. This practice pointed to another overall shift, toward regional interdependence. As one region like the Ohio Valley specialized in grain, it depended on another specialized region, such as the Northeast, for textiles. Although for the most part the South produced its own foodstuffs, it depended on the North for many manufactured goods, for storing some of its cotton before export, and for providing credit to establish planting sites. In all, these practices promoted a national sense of self-sufficiency.

As the century moved on, agriculture continued to dominate the economy, but challenges to its position were in process. Increasingly, people were moving to urban areas and engaging in nonagricultural vocations. In 1860 more than 75 percent of southerners made their living through agriculture, but this percentage would erode greatly during the next several decades.

Still, whether small-time farmer or plantation owner, farmers of the 19th century believed in the importance of owning land. To this end, the U. S. government offered several bills which, to varying extents, served settlers’ needs. After the PANIC OF 1819, many farmers were unable to pay for the lands they had purchased from the government on credit. In response, the government ended its credit practices and opened land at $1.25 per acre, to be paid by farmers in full. Still unable to pay for the land, the squatters who had settled their land were granted another chance through the Preemption Act of 1830. This law allowed them to buy surveyed land from the federal government and granted a year to pay costs. Given that this provision was used in large part by speculators, the law was superseded by the Preemption Act of 1841, which required claimants on surveyed land to live on and settle the public-owned land. Unclaimed or western lands came to be subject to the Graduation Act of 1854, which reduced the price of land not sold over the course of 10-30 years.

Politically, this developed into a battle between established southern landowners who wished to retain power, the westerners who wished to settle large quantities of land, and a government undecided on whether selling land or providing it for quick settlement would best serve the economy. These questions would be debated on a national level for years to come.

The issue of free public land was not resolved until after the South had seceded and Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1862, which allowed heads of households to claim 160 acres of frontier land at no cost in exchange for five years of residency and cultivation. Such legislation underscored the government’s commitment to the preservation of small family farms as the bulwark of the national economy.

Further reading: Claudia L. Bushman, ed., In Old Virginia: Slavery, Farming, and Society in the Journal of John Walker (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Paul Wallace Gates, The Farmer's Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1952); R. Douglas Hurt, American Agriculture: A Brief History (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994); John Mayfield, The New Nation 1800-1845, rev. ed. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1982); Peter D. McClelland, Sowing Modernity: America's First Agricultural Revolution (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997); James D. Miller, South by Southwest: Planter Emigration and Identity in the Slave South (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002); Steven Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002); Thomas Summerhill, Harvest of Dissent: Agrarianism in Nineteenth-Century New York (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005).

—Melinda Corey