Audiobook13 hours
Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery
Written by Bruce A. Ragsdale
Narrated by Mike Chamberlain
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
()
About this audiobook
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.
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.
Related to Washington at the Plow
Related audiobooks
American Republics: A Continental History of the United States 1783-1850 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mary Ball Washington: The Untold Story of George Washington's Mother Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5John Jay: Founding Father Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Slavery, American Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIndependence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Washington's Circle: The Creation of the President Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Founding Fortunes: How the Wealthy Paid for and Profited from America's Revolution Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Adams: An American Dynasty Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnion 1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Feeding Washington's Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Separate: The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
United States History For You
Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Land of Delusion: Out on the edge with the crackpots and conspiracy-mongers remaking our shared reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Charlie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letter from Birmingham Jail Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dragonfire: Four Days That (Almost) Changed America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Untold History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): An American History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5John Adams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here—and Out There Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lafayette in the Somewhat United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Washington at the Plow
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
0 ratings0 reviews