Thomas Jefferson

 

On an ideological level, the founders believed America should be an agrarian republic of virtuous citizens who were connected to the country because they worked the soil.

Jefferson’s view of our country’s future was not that of a conglomeration of large urban areas as manufacturing centers. He wanted to secure an agrarian democracy, with land for everyone, a somewhat utopian view. Small farmers, owning enough land to guarantee economic self-sufficiency and personal independence. Thomas Jefferson’s vision of his country was that of a vast republic populated by yeomen farmers. Jefferson believed vast lands were necessary for his agrarian republic.

Now as you can see in my thesis, I will explain how he kept this vision focused all his life. Keeping this in mind Jefferson decision to buy the Louisiana landmass was totally consistent with his vision, and the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 nearly doubled the size of the United States.  The future of nationality safeguarding his country from foreign control and borders secured, and full access of Mississippi river channel fulfilling of our proper destiny in the new world and in the larger sphere of universal history,.

In his own eyes, Thomas Jefferson considered himself first and always a man of the land. He felt that "those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God...." What made Jefferson unique in his time was his understanding of the interrelationship between humanity and the environment and how they shaped each other. This wisdom and his subsequent practices, such as crop rotation, use of fertilizer, and contour plowing, characterize him and Washington as one of America's early agronomists. Thomas Jefferson was an inventor.

He invented the iron and mold board plow that dug deeper than 3 inches.

This plow helped farmers reduce erosion as they farmed on the Virginia hillside.

Jefferson and Washington was one of the first Americans to propound crop rotation as a way of renewing the soil. He devised an extensive seven-year plan for his land, as follows:

1. Wheat, followed the same year by turnips, to be fed to the sheep.
2. Corn and potatoes mixed, and in autumn the vetch to be used as fodder in the spring if wanted, or to be turned in as a dressing.
3. Peas or potatoes, or both according to the quality of the fields.
4. Rye and clover sown on it in the spring. Wheat may substituted here for rye.
5. Clover.
6. Clover, and in autumn turn it in and sow the vetch.
7. Turn in the vetch in the spring, then sow buckwheat and turn that in, having hurled off the poorest spots for cow penning, (so these spots could be improved by the manure).

He used this rotation system with legumes and grasses in an attempt to bind the soil against washing out, to improve his hard-used land, and to arrive at the best fit between the environment and plant. The necessity for land to sustain, Jefferson probably sketched this crop rotation plan sometime during his post-presidential years at Monticello. Good crops were incredibly important to the economy and to America's self-sufficiency Jefferson was one of the first Americans to realize that the bounty of this continent was finite. If the nation and its citizens were to continue to enjoy the fruits of the New World, then its resources must be handled with proper stewardship.

In Jefferson's era comparatively few farmers were concerned with returning any vital elements back to the earth by methods such as animal manuring, crop rotation, and fertilizers. In fact, the Virginia Piedmont of his time was already played out by adverse agricultural practices. In the short span of years that the area was opened for European use, tobacco had become the chief crop; this, combined with corn, the staple food crop, had taken a heavy toll on the productive land. Erosion and soil exhaustion followed the pioneers as sloping land was cleared of natural vegetation and continuously planted with the same crops.

Under this defective sequence of tobacco and corn, planted in rows that usually ran up and downhill, much of the virgin topsoil had been lost by Jefferson's time. The culture was tobacco and Indian corn as long as they would bring enough to pay the labor.

Jefferson was concerned not only with current return from the land but also with the effects of land abuse on posterity. Unlike his contemporaries, he knew that the productive land of the United States was not infinite. When he purchased the Louisiana Territory, Federalists opposed this, questioning why they should buy more "for land of which we already have too much.. Jefferson famous quote independent farmers should be the foot soldiers of the nation. Thomas Jefferson survives. He gave us our ideals, and it is in the nature of an ideal that it can never be perfectly realized, but must be constantly sought and approximated. And no life is perfect, seamless. The contradictions and pitfalls of Jefferson's life also define America.

SOURCE : •Betts, Edwin M., ed. Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book: With Commentary and Relevant Extracts from Other Writings. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953. Rep. 1976, 1987,)