Washington at the Plow, Bruce A. Ragsdale
Washington at the Plow, Bruce A. Ragsdale
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Washington at the Plow
The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery

Author: Bruce A. Ragsdale

Narrator: Mike Chamberlain

Unabridged: 12 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/12/2021


Synopsis

George Washington spent more of his working life farming than he did at war or in political office. For over forty years, he devoted himself to the improvement of agriculture.

Washington at the Plow depicts the "first farmer of America" as a leading practitioner of the New Husbandry, a transatlantic movement that spearheaded advancements in crop rotation. A tireless experimentalist, Washington pulled up his tobacco and switched to wheat production, leading the way for the rest of the country. He filled his library with the latest agricultural treatises and pioneered land-management techniques that he hoped would guide small farmers, strengthen agrarian society, and ensure the prosperity of the nation.

He saw enslaved field workers and artisans as means of agricultural development and tried repeatedly to adapt slave labor to new kinds of farming. But Washington eventually found that forced labor could not achieve the productivity he desired. His inability to reconcile ideals of scientific farming and rural order with race-based slavery led him to reconsider the traditional foundations of the Virginia plantation. As Bruce Ragsdale shows, it was the inefficacy of chattel slavery, as much as moral revulsion at the practice, that informed Washington's famous decision to free his slaves after his death.

About Bruce A. Ragsdale

Bruce A. Ragsdale served for twenty years as director of the Federal Judicial History Office at the Federal Judicial Center. The author of A Planters' Republic: The Search for Economic Independence in Revolutionary Virginia, he has been a fellow at the Washington Library at Mount Vernon and the International Center for Jefferson Studies.


Reviews

Goodreads review by William

The First Farmer questions Slavery. This is an extremely well-written, well-documented book about George Washington, the slave-holding farmer. It is also the best by far of the very few non-children’s books about Washington as a farmer. As reference, there was one book in 1915 (republished in 2012)......more

Goodreads review by Nancy

I had to read this for a workshop I'm attending next week. I don't really read history, and if you ever want a deep dive into colonial agriculture, this is your book. Well written. Don't read while reclining.......more

Goodreads review by Grant

If I hear the word “husbandry” one more time, I think I’ll chuck this book in the trash! Solid historical book, and I learned a lot about Washington as a farmer. It was just incredibly bland.......more

Goodreads review by Andrew

Ragsdale has written an engaging study of the farmer Washington. His legacy is a mixed one that combines a thirst for knowledge of English farming techniques and a heavy reliance of enslaved people in order to accomplish his master plans. Looking at Washington's correspondence and ledger books gives......more