6

Cincinnatus and the World of Improvement

In April 1784, less than four months following Washington’s resignation from command of the Continental Army and his return to Mount Vernon, the French Minister to the United States, the Chevalier de La Luzerne, visited Washington at his estate and noted that the general “dresses in a gray coat like a Virginia farmer, and nothing about him recalls the recollections of the important part he played” in the Revolutionary War. Over the next five years and again following Washington’s retirement from the presidency in 1797, hundreds of other visitors, friends as well as strangers, came to pay their respects to the hero of the Revolution. Like La Luzerne, many of those seeking the general would find the farmer, greeting them in “bespattered boots,” eager to display his experimental crops, his gristmill, or his design for a drill plow made by the enslaved carpenters. Those who were willing accompanied Washington on his daily visit to his plantations, riding the half-day circuit. When Benjamin Henry Latrobe visited Mount Vernon in 1796, Washington held the British-born architect in conversation for hours, well into the dark of a summer evening, discussing the condition of crops in Virginia, the relative merits of various English plows, and problems of soil exhaustion related to corn crops. A visitor from Poland noted that Washington “answered with kindness all questions I put to him on the Revolution,” but “his favorite subject is agriculture.” Another noted of Washington that “his greatest pride now is to be thought the first farmer of America.”¹

Washington had quickly become “quite a Cincinnatus,” as many visitors remarked in the 1780s. Cincinnatus was known to the eighteenth-century Anglo-American world through the writings of Livy, Cicero, and Cato, who held up the image of “Cincinnatus at the Plow” as a model of republican virtue. The representation of Washington as Cincinnatus became for the new republic a symbol of disinterested leadership and the refusal of arbitrary power, and Washington’s life as a farmer made the symbolism all the more compelling. Dedication to agricultural improvement blended with military valor and public service to define the civic virtues of Washington.²

On his return to Mount Vernon, Washington fostered the image of his rural life detached from political contest and military conflict. To his close friend, the Marquis de Chastellux, Washington, with reference to a favorite phrase from Joseph Addison’s Cato, announced that, “free from the bustle of a camp & the intrigues of a Court, I shall view the busy world, ‘in the calm lights of mild philosophy.’ ” Washington described himself to Chastellux and his other French comrades, Lafayette and Rochambeau, as “a private Citizen on the banks of the Potomack,” free from the burdens of public service. That rural life, however, attracted widespread public interest in the agricultural pursuits of the new Cincinnatus. Washington the farmer was celebrated in his own country and in much of Europe, and his figurative return to the plow became a metaphor for the dreams of a new order among nations. At his estate, Washington displayed his experiments and improvements before visitors, known and unknown, in a demonstration of a public example and his personal virtue. His deepening personal connections with European and American advocates of agricultural improvement and scientific investigation shaped Washington’s perspective on how the United States might engage the world and how he might participate in an enlightened community that sought to establish a new foundation for peace.³

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The widely shared enthusiasm for Washington’s agricultural pursuits became evident when he set out on his first significant improvement project following his return to Mount Vernon. Washington decided to become a breeder of mules, both for his own use as draft animals and to encourage their use by other farmers. He knew of the animals’ reputed superiority to horses in their strength and longevity and for the economy with which they could be fed, but mules were infrequently bred in most parts of the United States and were often too small for effective draft work. Mules are the offspring of a male donkey or jackass and a mare, and are unable to reproduce themselves, so any breeding program depended on a reliable stock of jackasses. Washington recalled his wartime conversations with the Spanish agent to the United States, Juan de Miralles, who spoke of the virtues of mules bred from Spanish jackasses. Miralles had promised to procure one of those prized jackasses, normally prohibited from export from Spain, but he died while visiting Washington at the Morristown encampment in 1780. In July 1784, Washington asked the Alexandria merchant Robert Townsend Hooe, whose partner, Richard Harrison, was resident in Cadiz, if the trading firm might be able to procure a Spanish jackass for him. “An ordinary Jack I do not desire,” and Washington was sufficiently knowledgeable about the animals to request one “at least fifteen hands high; well formed; in his prime; & one whose abilities for getting Colts can be ensured.”⁴

The request set in motion a sequence of communications involving the highest diplomatic circles in Europe and raised expectations of promoting further ties between the new nation and an important ally from the Revolutionary War. Harrison contacted the United States chargé d’affaires in Madrid, William Carmichael, who in turn spoke to the Conde de Floridablanca, the chief minister to the king, about Washington’s request. Floridablanca reported that not only would King Charles III permit the export of the jackass for Washington, the monarch also ordered that two of the best specimens in Spain would be sent “as a proof of his esteem for so distinguished a character.” Jefferson, after reports from Carmichael, wrote Washington from Paris about his satisfaction at the testament of the king’s favor and his excitement about the public benefits of the breeding project. He had tried to procure one of the jackasses himself, but now hoped instead to acquire two female asses—jennies—from Spain, so that “we may be enabled to propagate and preserve the breed.”⁵

When Washington received an early report from Harrison about the extravagant price of a Spanish jackass, he countermanded his order, and then gave similar instructions to Lafayette, to whom he had sent a separate inquiry about procuring breeding asses. His initial disappointment with the cost made him all the more grateful for the generosity of the king, and he asked Floridablanca “to assure his Majesty of my unbounded gratitude for so condescending a mark of his royal notice & favor.” To Lafayette he wrote, “I have long endeavoured to procure one of a good size & breed, but had little expectation of receiving two as a royal gift,” and “Royal Gift” was the name he bestowed on the lone Spanish jack that survived the sea journey. Washington received another unexpected gift of a Maltese jack and two jennies procured by Lafayette, who also sent Chinese pheasants and partridges from the French king’s aviary. A Baltimore newspaper account of the costly gifts and the handsomely paid French attendant who delivered the animals greatly agitated Washington, who feared that the report would be reprinted in French and British newspapers and be interpreted as a willingness on his part to accept inappropriate gifts. Washington ultimately accepted the animals, but only after making several attempts to reimburse Lafayette.⁶

In October 1785, a Boston newspaper printed the report of a man at Cape Ann, Massachusetts, who witnessed the arrival of “the largest Jack-Ass I ever saw, of a peculiar species,” sent as “a present to His Excellency General Washington, with a farrier to attend him.” The following day, Thomas Cushing, lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, sent Washington the same news and promised to care for the animal until Washington could arrange for transport. Washington dispatched his overseer John Fairfax to Boston with instructions that anticipated every possible obstacle to safe delivery. “You know too well the high value I set upon these Jacks, to neglect them on the road in any instance whatsoever.” He wanted Fairfax to meet with an interpreter before leaving Boston to learn from the Spanish attendant what to feed the jack, what hours to travel, what blankets would be needed at night. Before Fairfax left Boston, Cushing received word that the second jackass from the king had died at sea, a casualty of a great storm.⁷

Newspapers along the route reported the progress of Royal Gift and his attendants as they traveled from Boston to Mount Vernon. The fall 1785 edition of the popular Weatherwise’s Town and Country Almanack featured an illustration of “General Washington’s Jack Ass.” Even before the arrival of Royal Gift in Virginia, Washington received requests to share the benefits of what were expected to be two jacks. Tench Tilghman wrote on behalf of several people on the Eastern Shore of Maryland who hoped Washington might share one of the jackasses to promote the breeding of mules in that region, where plowing was widely adopted and planters needed less expensive draft animals. As soon as Fairfax returned to Mount Vernon with Royal Gift and his Spanish attendant in early December, Washington invited a ship captain from Alexandria to interpret the conversation with the Spaniard. In February, the enslaved carpenters began to fashion the posts and rails for the yard behind the new greenhouse where Royal Gift would stand next to Washington’s prize Arabian stallion, Magnolio, and John Fairfax advertised the stud services of the Spanish jack, “the first of the kind that ever was in North-America.” The advertisement assured readers that “the usefulness of mules, bred from a Jack of his size, either for the road or team, are well known to those who are acquainted with this mongrel race.”⁸

Fig 6.1   “General Washington’s Jack Ass” in Weatherwise’s Town and Country Almanack, for the year of our Lord, 1786 (Boston, 1785). Washington received a jackass from Spain’s King Charles III and in 1786 began to breed the mules that would eventually outnumber other draft animals on his farms. The arrival of “Royal Gift” attracted the attention of newspapers and planters eager to bring their mares for breeding with the prized Spanish jackass, normally prohibited from export. Courtesy of Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.

The first efforts of Royal Gift disappointed and perplexed Washington, who for many years had closely managed the breeding of horses and his beloved fox hounds. The failure of the “very bony and stout made” jackass to perform at stud elicited some of Washington’s rare and generally awkward attempts at humor. When he invited his nephew Bushrod to bring mares for breeding, he warned that Royal Gift was “too full of royalty, to have any thing to do with a plebean race.” When William Fitzhugh sent several mares to be bred, Washington assured him “when my Jack is in the humour they shall derive all the benefits of his labours—for labour it appears to be,” adding “I am not without hope, that when he becomes a little better acquainted with republican enjoyments, he will amend his manners, and fall into a better & more expeditious mode of doing business.” Washington strangely imputed to the Spanish king Royal Gift’s disappointing performance. The jack seemed to follow “what one may suppose to be the example of his late royal Master, who cannot, tho’ past his grand climacterick, perform seldomer, or with more Majestic solemnity, than he does.” The arrival of the first jenny solved the problem with the reluctant Royal Gift and eased Washington’s frustration. When he returned a mare to Fitzhugh, Washington explained “A female ass which I have obtained lately, has excited desires in the Jack, to which he seemed almost a stranger; making use of her as an excitement, I have been able to get several mares served.” By the end of the following season, Washington was able to assure a Maryland planter, “Royal Gift never fails.”9

With the arrival of the Maltese jack and the two jennies sent by Lafayette, Washington had the stock to begin his breeding project in earnest. To ensure that the benefits of the Spanish jack would not end with its own breeding life, Washington ordered another jenny from Surinam through the assistance of Alexandria merchants, who shipped as payment twenty-five barrels of superfine flour from Washington’s gristmill. In his November 1785 census of livestock on his estate, Washington designated thirty-three mares he would breed with Royal Gift after his safe arrival. In 1788, he resolved that he would use his mares only to breed mules, and to that end he agreed to exchange the celebrated Magnolio with Henry Lee in return for land in Kentucky. Washington greatly expanded his stock of mares for the sole purpose of breeding mules. In the summer of 1789, he contacted merchants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania to procure at least twenty mares, and as many as twice that number if suitable ones could be found. Even with a greatly expanded stock of mares, the breeding of mules was a slow and often disappointing process, with many lost foals and the death of mules. In 1790, George Augustine Washington apologized for “the ill success which has attended the propigation of Mules,” and in 1793 Washington complained, “I make a miserable hand of breeding Mules.” Despite the setbacks, by the end of Washington’s life each of the farms at Mount Vernon had more mules than any other draft animals. Washington also received revenue from the steady business of planters from throughout the Chesapeake who paid pasturage and stud fees to breed their mares and jennies with the several jacks at Mount Vernon in the 1790s.¹⁰

When he first inquired about the possibility of importing a Spanish jackass, Washington had explained to Hooe that breeding mules would provide a private convenience for himself and “a public benefit to this part of the country.” In his correspondence with Lafayette, Washington was more explicit about the anticipated benefit of bringing a breeding jackass to his estate and to a region where planters relied so heavily on enslaved labor: “The Mules which proceed from the mixture of these Animals with the horse, are so much more valuable under the care which is usually bestowed on draught cattle by our Negroes, that I am daily more anxious to obtain the means for propagating them.” The breeding of mules was one of the few major improvement projects of Washington’s that had no parallel in Great Britain, and like other departures from British husbandry, it was rooted in Washington’s perception of the special challenges of managing enslaved labor. He also wanted to provide other farmers a more economic draft animal. Washington explained to Arthur Young that through his breeding program, “I hope to secure a race of extraordinary goodness, which will stock the Country. Their longevity & cheap keeping will be circumstances much in their favor.” Young wished him luck but had serious doubts based on failed experiments in Ireland, and he held fast to his opinion that oxen made the best animals for farm labor.¹¹

Mules would offer Washington more than their hard work; they would be a proud display of his commitment to innovation. He told Young that “in a few years, I intend to drive no other in my carriage.” The jacks and their progeny also provided a new way to collaborate with other important advocates of agricultural improvement throughout the United States. Several planters from Maryland, where livestock improvement was more advanced than in Virginia, brought their jennies and mares to breed with Royal Gift. From New York, John Jay reported that a plan by a group of farmers to establish a society for the breeding of horses and mules had been discouraged by the scarcity of suitable jackasses. He speculated that Royal Gift might be the foundation of “as good a Race of those animals as any in the world.” In response, Washington invited Jay to send a jenny to Mount Vernon for breeding with any of the jacks without the usual charge. When Washington made his southern tour as president in 1791, the planters in Charleston and the surrounding area were so excited about the prospect of breeding mules that they convinced Washington to send Royal Gift to stand at stud for a season in South Carolina. Jeremiah Wadsworth, a leader in breeding improved livestock, sent an offer from the partners in a Connecticut firm who were eager to purchase one of the jackasses bred from Royal Gift.¹²

Royal Gift traveled by land to South Carolina, where he attracted the interest of the most prominent political and agricultural leaders. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Ralph Izard, Jacob Read, and Thomas Bee were among those who brought their mares and jennies to breed with the famous Spanish jackass. Unfortunately, the journey had taken a serious toll on Royal Gift’s health, and few of the mares or jennies foaled. Royal Gift never recovered enough to stand at stud or to return to Virginia, and he died in South Carolina in 1796. Washington was most regretful that the relocation of Royal Gift from Virginia to South Carolina had yielded “so little public or private advantage.” Despite the sad end of the Spanish jackass, Washington’s success with the jackasses bred from Royal Gift at Mount Vernon and his support for breeding programs throughout the United States furthered public acclaim for his agricultural innovations.¹³

The leaders of the several agricultural societies established in the 1780s venerated Washington as the great patron of improvement in the United States and recognized the significance of his transition from revolutionary military leader to experimental farmer. The Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, organized in March 1785, elected Washington as a corresponding member, with the expectation that following the military service that contributed so much to the independence of the country, Washington would “chearfully, become a Member of a Society whose Views are solely directed to the Increase of it’s Advantages, by cultivating one of the most usefull Arts of Peace.” The South Carolina agricultural society, established later that year, elected Washington one of its first honorary members, a recognition “due to the man, who by his gallantry & Conduct, as a Soldier, contributed so eminently to stamp a Value on the Labours of every American Farmer; and who by his Skill and Industry in the Cultivation of his own Fields, has likewise distinguish’d himself as a Farmer.” Washington readily accepted both honors, and he offered his encouragement to other improvement societies that elected him as a corresponding member and sent their published transactions.¹⁴

Washington attributed to the many local societies for the encouragement of agriculture “the perfection to which husbandry is now arrived in England.” He believed the English example, like that previously developed by Scottish agriculturalists, demonstrated the likeliest path to improvement in the United States. The British societies facilitated the exchange of learning and experience among improving landowners, and Washington expected comparable groups in the United States would apply the principles of improved husbandry to their local conditions. “To a liberal communication of experiments must this Country be indebted for those profitable courses of crops which are best adapted to our climate—our soil—and our circumstances.” In the 1780s, private societies in the United States and Canada reestablished networks for the exchange of scientific and agricultural experiments with Great Britain. Washington was interested in those societies that focused on large-scale commercial farming and the introduction of British husbandry in the United States, and he expected wealthy landowners to provide the leadership for agricultural change. Societies like that in Philadelphia were organized by urban residents who owned country estates, and among the founding members of the Philadelphia society were wealthy leaders of the patriot cause, most of whom had personal connections with Great Britain or France. Washington remained convinced that it would be through the investments and innovations of wealthy and knowledgeable landowners “that the Community may derive advantages from the experiments and discoveries of the more intelligent.”¹⁵

After the founding of the Philadelphia society, Washington hoped every state in the union would establish similar organizations, and he was frustrated by his fellow Virginians’ failure to establish one. He tried to persuade Alexander Spotswood to organize an agricultural society in the area around Fredericksburg, which Washington believed to have both land suitable for experiment and the greatest concentration of innovative farmers in the state. He knew that, like Spotswood, several of his associates in the area, including Charles Carter and William Fitzhugh, could afford to conduct the kind of experiments that would benefit the public. Washington, however, never offered to participate in the organization of an agricultural society, and no such group formed as a result of his suggestions. Despite his repeated calls for the collective promotion of improvement, Washington refrained from playing any public role in fostering those efforts, preferring to rely on personal influence and trusting in the strength of his example.¹⁶

The Philadelphia society became the most important of the institutional connections in the United States for Washington’s farming pursuits, but his participation in the society was largely through private correspondence and friendship with its influential members, including the founding president, Samuel Powel, and Richard Peters. Washington received from the society a publication on crop rotations, samples of wheat from the Cape Colony in southern Africa, and a copy of the essay on farmyards that was awarded one of the society’s premiums. While serving as a delegate to the Federal Convention, Washington in July 1787 attended a meeting of the Philadelphia society in Carpenter’s Hall, and he visited the farms of some of its leading members. Sometime in the mid-1790s, the society fell into what its members later recalled as “a long sleep,” likely contributing to Washington’s growing disenchantment with the various agricultural societies in the United States and his disappointment that more had not been established. While the example of local agriculture societies in Great Britain and Ireland went unheeded, those nations moved forward with the organization of national societies that Washington anticipated would be among the most beneficial institutions in either country.¹⁷

In the years after 1785, Washington developed closer and more formative ties with British agriculturalists who demonstrated the innovation and initiative he found lacking among their counterparts in the United States. He relied on his British correspondents for practical advice, and he increasingly engaged them on matters related to agricultural policy and the political economy of their respective nations. During his presidency and the difficult negotiations to protect the new nation against the competing forces of Great Britain and France, these correspondences served to remind him of the potential for common enterprises among nations and of the larger significance of the agricultural changes Washington sought to perfect at his own estate. Washington more readily confided in British rather than American agricultural leaders about his deepening disappointment with the practice of farming in the United States.

The dialogue with British agriculturalists began with Arthur Young, who presented himself as a “brother farmer,” and whose influence went far beyond the practical assistance he provided Washington in the selection of crops and advice on cultivation. The first volume of the Annals of Agriculture, from which Washington copied extensive notes on practical experiments, also introduced him to Young’s anti-mercantilism and his sharp critique of what Young considered Britain’s wasteful spending on warfare and empire. Young’s opening essay, with its summation of the dilemma facing the British nation—“America is Lost! Must we fall beneath the blow? Or have we resources that may repair the mischiefs of the late unfortunate contest?”—had attracted the close attention of George III, who noted its warnings about the inevitable costs of defending distant imperial holdings and of sacrificing the potential benefits of trade with an independent United States. Young argued that the money spent, first to defend and then to defeat the American colonies, would have been more productively invested in the reclamation and cultivation of wastelands in Great Britain, land that still awaited enclosure and improvement by the methods Young so tirelessly promoted.

Fig 6.2   “The Plan of a Farm Yard - Venerate the Plow,” Columbian Magazine, 1787. Washington received the farmyard plan and an accompanying essay, which were awarded a “Venerate the Plough” medal from the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. He drew on the plan in the design of his own farmyard adjacent to the great barn at Union Farm. Washington was in frequent correspondence with the society, of which he was an honorary member. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ds-04633.

Young’s essay and much of the content of the Annals affirmed Washington’s belief that agricultural improvement and the exchange of knowledge might lay the foundation for new and amicable relations between Great Britain and the United States. When Young wrote of the new United States, “I am clear that we shall reap more advantages from their trade as friends than ever we could derive from them as colonies,” he implicitly rejected the calls for neo-mercantilist restrictions on the trade of the United States. Washington considered British commercial discrimination and restrictions on the trading privileges of the former colonies as grave threats to the survival of the union of states. Young’s essay made clear that some influential Britons opposed commercial confrontation with the United States and saw in a particular program of agricultural improvement the potential for shared prosperity. With his stated goal of publishing an agricultural journal dedicated to repairing “the waste of war,” Young presented the prospect of the two nations working together toward mutually beneficial goals of agricultural productivity and the exchange of respective advantages in trade. In Washington, he found his most avid American reader.18

Washington’s reading of the Annals and his correspondence with Young taught him more about the promoters of agricultural improvement in Great Britain. He read about Thomas William Coke, the great Whig champion of the American patriots during the Revolutionary War, who introduced new husbandry at his massive Norfolk estate, motivated, according to Young, by “the most liberal and public-spirited nature.” In 1786 Young published in the Annals two letters, signed “Ralph Robinson” but written and submitted by George III, who described his conversations with a celebrated small farmer who lived near the royal residence in Richmond. Washington probably never learned about the king’s authorship, but Young in his correspondence introduced Washington to the agricultural innovations of George III. Young sent Washington a sample of wheat with the explanation that Empress Catherine of Russia had offered it to George III, who in turn shared it with the nearby farmer he wrote about in the Annals. In his efforts to enlist Washington into the transnational efforts to improve the breeding of sheep, Young described the collaboration of the king and Sir Joseph Banks, the renowned naturalist, in an effort to develop superior stock from Spanish Merino sheep.¹⁹

Young solicited from Washington a sample of wool from the Mount Vernon flocks, which he then delivered to “an ingenious person” to spin into seven samples of yarn, from coarse to fine. Washington’s long-time merchant in London successfully concealed the yarn to evade what Young decried as the “abominable monopolizing laws” that prohibited its shipment from Great Britain and also forbid his sending Washington one of the South Down rams he thought would suit conditions in Virginia. Young, however, had little understanding of farming in the United States, and he was confused or incredulous about much of what Washington reported in an extensive survey of agriculture in the Middle States and the Chesapeake. In frustration, Young wrote Washington, “To analyze your husbandry has the difficulty of a problem: I cannot understand it; and the more I know of it the more surprizing it appears.” Young had never purposefully gathered information about farming in North America or the Caribbean, and Washington remained his only significant correspondent in the United States.²⁰

In addition to the many articles he prepared or obtained from his Suffolk neighbors, Arthur Young filled his Annals of Agriculture with the results of farming experiments and descriptions of improvement projects undertaken throughout Great Britain and on the European continent. The periodical depended on a steady stream of submissions, and Young was relentless in pursuing contributions from prominent and innovative estate owners, most notably George III. Early in their correspondence, Young asked Washington if he might insert in the Annals some extracts from his letters, attributed by name. Washington admitted it might not be thought generous or proper that any farmer “should withhold his mite of information from the general stock,” but he feared that publication of his letters might be characterized as “a piece of ostentation.” With the abundance of caution that increased with his fame and veneration, Washington did not want to do anything that would even risk accusations of self-promotion. To explain his reticence, he offered Young a disingenuous picture of quiet retirement at Mount Vernon and his desire “to glide silently and unnoticed through the remainder of my life.” He deferred, however, to Young’s prudence to do what was best.²¹

In hopes of a more explicit grant of permission, Young sought to persuade Washington that his greatest influence would come not from his many agricultural experiments but rather from public recognition that the same man who “founded an empire on the basis of human liberty” also had such a close connection “with the plough.” Young esteemed those who served mankind through agricultural improvement as good citizens, and publication of Washington’s letters would promote the best kind of farming. Young added that he had already shared Washington’s most recent letter with several knowledgeable friends who shared his enthusiasm. When in December 1791 Washington sent Young an extensive report on farming in the United States, he emphasized, with an intended finality, that his observations on farming were written for Young’s private satisfaction. “It is not my wish that they should be promulgated as coming from me.”²²

Those who knew Washington better would probably have pressed the subject no further, but Young asked permission to publish the report. He argued that the ability to promote agricultural improvement was proportional to one’s fame, and “for a man on whom the eyes of the universe are fixed it is some thing for the good of agriculture to have it known that he regards, practices and studies it.” This appeal arrived with a new volume of the Annals in which Young, with no advance notice, published the barn design he had prepared for Mount Vernon, and noted in the accompanying text that it had been prepared at Washington’s request. Washington again declined permission to publish the report, insisting that his writings would only expose the defective practices of farmers in the United States. Even after he entrusted Young with his plan to reorganize his entire estate—a plan Washington considered so sensitive that he asked Young to burn the letter if he deemed it improper, Young again implored him to allow publication in the Annals of his survey of the nation’s agriculture.²³

In the meantime, Washington had received reports from his former secretary Tobias Lear that must have raised suspicions of Young’s opportunism. Young had sought out Lear when he arrived in London, and the two spent considerable time together. Lear heard rumors that Young’s reversal in political positions—“he is now as high a monarchist as any in Britain”—followed his appointment to a lucrative sinecure as secretary to the Board of Agriculture. Lear also relayed gossip claiming that Young had never made half the experiments he claimed in the Annals, and that his own farm was “one of the most slovenly in the part of the Country where he lives.” A few days after receiving one more entreaty from Young, Washington, in November 1794, reiterated that he had prepared the survey of agriculture to answer Young’s private inquiries about the possible emigration of his son, and “my present situation, adds greater reluctance than heretofore, to see, or to know that any hastily written and indigested letters of mine, should be handed, with my name to them, to the public.” It was the last letter exchanged between Washington and Young.²⁴

Washington was hardly the only person to mistrust Young; Jefferson later dismissed the Annals as “written merely for money,” and other contemporaries questioned the evidence for many of Young’s claims, just as historians since have challenged them. Washington’s unwillingness to publish his observations on farming, however, arose from more than the suspected self-aggrandizement of Arthur Young. In his pursuit of agricultural improvements, Washington had circumscribed himself with the same refusal of public advocacy that marked his otherwise ardent efforts to expand the powers of the federal government and to open the Potomac to navigation. His reticence predated the concern for discretion he expressed during John Jay’s negotiation of a commercial treaty, which, as Washington inferred, made Young’s last appeal particularly ill-timed. Washington believed that the influence of his public image as the disinterested Cincinnatus depended on the avoidance of any appearance of self-promotion, or what he described to Young and others as “ostentation.” Washington trusted instead the power of his example in the reorganization of his estate and his private influence with leading agricultural improvement advocates in the United States and Great Britain.²⁵

By the time Washington closed his correspondence with Young, he had established connections with other British agriculturalists who were eager for the support of the new president. In 1790, David Erskine, the Earl of Buchan, sought Washington’s patronage for a new publication proposed by James Anderson, a leading Enlightenment figure in Edinburgh. The Bee, its title page announced, was “a work calculated to disseminate useful Knowledge among all ranks of people at a small expence,” and Anderson was intent on making advances in agriculture, manufactures, and the arts available to audiences usually neglected by literary enterprises. Washington was so impressed with the prospectus for the journal that he placed his own notice in New York’s Gazette of the United States to promote its circulation. In September 1791, Anderson sent Washington the first four volumes “as a small testimony of respect from a lover of mankind to one of their principal benefactors.” Washington became a subscriber, and Anderson became a trusted correspondent on whom Washington would continue to rely for information about agriculture and politics.²⁶

Fig 6.3   James Anderson, by Samuel Freeman, 1809. Anderson of Edinburgh published The Bee, which sought to bring knowledge of improvement to broad audiences. Washington promoted the journal in the United States and recommended Anderson for membership in the American Philosophical Society. Anderson sent Washington his publications on agriculture and plant specimens from around the world, and he hired a gardener to work at Mount Vernon. Photograph © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Sir John Sinclair, the chairman of the British Wool Society and a tenacious proponent of agricultural improvement in his native Scotland, introduced himself to Washington in 1792 by sending several published papers along with some queries about sheep husbandry in the United States. Washington apologized that his country could offer no valuable information regarding sheep, although he reported on his own efforts to improve the stock on his farms. Washington was intrigued by Sinclair’s proposal for a statistical study of Scotland, calling for a systematic collection of information about land, population, and agriculture in each county. Such a close examination must, Washington predicted, “result in greatly ameliorating the condition of the people—promoting the interests of civil society—and the happiness of Mankind at large.” When Sinclair in 1793 won support from Prime Minister William Pitt for the establishment of the Board of Agriculture, he led that body as its founding president in commissioning agricultural surveys for every county in Great Britain. Sinclair was confident that the work of the Board of Agriculture would benefit the United States as much as Great Britain, an opinion with which Washington fully concurred.27

By the time he initiated his correspondence with Washington, Sinclair had concluded that agricultural improvement in any nation depended on more than the experiments and investments of enlightened landowners; it required the encouragement of government. Since the 1770s, more and more British proponents of improvement had called for governmental support of research in agriculture and science. Lord Kames in The Gentleman Farmer proposed “A Board for Improving Agriculture,” in part to compensate for the anticipated loss of the American colonies, and Young’s inaugural volume of the Annals called for governmental support of research in the natural sciences. Sinclair encouraged Washington to seek congressional approval for a board of agriculture in the United States, and sent him the outline and instructions for the county surveys initiated by the British board. The more Sinclair learned about agriculture in the United States, the more convinced he was “that the Farmers of America want some Spur to acquire agricultural information, as well as a Spirit to communicate to others, what they have already acquired: In short, that they should read, speak, and write more, upon that Subject.” If Congress did not establish a board of agriculture, Sinclair suggested that a comparable private institution be established in Philadelphia to correspond with agricultural societies in each state. Washington thought that the creation of smaller societies, organized by the states, would build support for a national board, but the proposals for a Pennsylvania society, which he sent Sinclair, failed to win approval, offering further evidence that the United States fell far short of Great Britain in the organization of local agricultural societies and in governmental sponsorship of improvement.²⁸

Unlike Young, who found much of what Washington reported about American farming to be incomprehensible, Sinclair quickly recognized in the agriculture of the United States a vast potential for shared knowledge and valuable trade between the new nation and Great Britain. After consulting Enoch Edwards, an accomplished Pennsylvania farmer resident in London, Sinclair in August 1793 forwarded to Washington and Jefferson a detailed account of American agricultural practices that the British should adopt and of American commodities that might be the basis of reciprocally advantageous trade. Sinclair anticipated that these agricultural and commercial ties would surely lead the two nations “to an understanding together, that a treaty of Commerce beneficial to both might be formed, & that every remnant of prejudice or jealousy would soon be completely done away.” As James Anderson had similarly envisioned in his prospectus for The Bee, Sinclair imagined the former opponents in war joined in a new kind of empire based on culture and identity. With a proper treaty, “those who speak the language of England, might soon attain, as much power abroad and happiness at home, as any wise nation can aspire to.”²⁹

Although Washington recognized the same potential for reciprocal benefits of trade, he had no illusions about the obstacles to any treaty guaranteeing peaceful commerce and protection against commercial discrimination by Great Britain or France, particularly after the outbreak of war between those nations in 1793. In the spring of 1794, as John Jay traveled to Great Britain with instructions to negotiate a commercial treaty, Washington conceded to the Earl of Buchan that the conflicts in Europe, which he called “a continual state of disquietude,” placed “the prospect of peace too far off & the promised millennium at an awful distance from our day.” At such time as nations abandoned their “provocations to war” and sought “to excel each other in acts of Philanthropy; industry and œconomy; in encouraging useful arts & manufactures,” they would be able to promote a liberal exchange of “the products of one country & clime for those of another.” For Washington, the shared project of improvement remained the likeliest foundation of a sustainable peace. Sinclair again emphasized to Washington the cultural bonds that remained between the nations, even in the face of commercial conflict, “for though our Governments are now distinct, the People are in fact the same, without any possible inducement to quarrel, if they knew their respective interests.”³⁰

Through much of Washington’s presidency, Anderson, Sinclair, and Buchan offered the most influential perspectives on the British culture of improvement. Like Lord Kames in The Gentleman Farmer, these Scottish correspondents all felt an urgency about the project of improvement that struck a resonant note with Washington, who shared an acute sense of his own country’s backwardness compared with the husbandry of England. Sinclair and Anderson offered Washington different but complementary perspectives on British agriculture in the 1790s, with Sinclair emphasizing policy and governmental support and Anderson focused on science and findings emerging from a global exchange of studies of the natural world. The Earl of Buchan, a patron rather than a practitioner of agriculture and science, emphasized political economy and the unique opportunities for the United States to escape the contests of Europe. Buchan’s wish for the United States was that it be prosperous and happy enough to “be little heard of in the great world of Politics,” and advised Washington that nothing was as likely to contribute to that outcome “as agricultural & mechanical improvements,” and the spread of science and literature among the people. In his reply, Washington quoted those words as an expression of his own conviction that the United States should have no involvement with the contests of European nations, and should focus instead on the peaceful exchange of commodities “with all the inhabitants of the earth.” Buchan further encouraged Washington to use his public office to promote a national program of education and “Union with the Red Natives,” in a general policy of enlightened leadership that would make the United States a model for other nations. Anderson recognized that public affairs must be Washington’s priority, but he urged Washington not to ignore agriculture, which had its own public benefit as the first among “those branches of knowledge that tend to promote the peace of society.”³¹

The ongoing dialogue with the three representatives of the Scottish Enlightenment, like Washington’s correspondence with Edward Newenham of Ireland, reflected a faith in a kind of universality of improvement that bound together these elite circles in Europe and the United States. Through much of the 1780s and 1790s, Newenham offered Washington his commentary on conflicts in Europe. Washington agreed that the recurring wars made clear that “Mankind are not yet ripe for the Millenial State,” but soon after Virginia’s ratification of the Constitution, he assured Newenham of his hope that “the United States of America will be able to keep disengaged from the labyrinth of European politics & Wars.” The month before he departed for his inauguration as president, he wrote Newenham again. Through his innovations and experiments as a farmer, he explained, “I have only been made more sensible, upon every new tryal, that this count[r]y is susceptible of various and great improvements in its agriculture. It is on that resource it must depend essentially for its prosperity.” Commerce and the useful arts would be important adjuncts, but farming would fix the new nation’s place among nations. Washington’s continued communications with these like-minded correspondents in Great Britain and Ireland reaffirmed his determination to maintain the neutrality of the United States during his presidency and deepened his conviction that his estate was uniquely prepared to demonstrate the agricultural productivity that would secure the nation’s advantages in transatlantic commerce.³²

Sinclair and Anderson, like Arthur Young before them, answered Washington’s continuing demand for agricultural knowledge. Washington asked James Anderson to send any books that explained principles and combined practice with theory. Having regrettably spent so much time away from his farms, he confessed to Anderson that he felt he must rely on the experience and knowledge of others. Anderson kept Washington supplied with his own publications about farming in Great Britain, including Essays Relating to Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and with books that reflected his curiosity about agriculture and plant life from around the world, particularly the distant parts of the expanding British empire. Washington asked Sinclair to instruct his bookseller to continue sending the county surveys, more than eighty of which were in Washington’s library at the end of his life, and Sinclair sent additional sets for Washington to distribute. Sinclair also forwarded records of the proceedings of the Board of Agriculture and his own publications, which Washington added to his library.³³

Washington’s relationships with the British agriculturalists established new ties between improvement advocates in the two countries. Young relied on Washington to deliver volumes of the Annals of Agriculture to the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, and Washington offered to assist in the Philadelphia reprinting of British county surveys from the Board of Agriculture, just as he had promoted subscriptions to The Bee. The Board of Agriculture elected Washington and John Jay to be its first honorary members from the United States. Washington’s agricultural observations reached a broader British audience when Sinclair, without Washington’s knowledge, introduced their correspondence into the official minutes of the Board of Agriculture and included several letters from Washington in the published records of the board. Washington in turn introduced the board officers to Richard Peters, “one of the most judicious farmers within my reach,” and he circulated Sinclair’s reports among federal officeholders in Philadelphia. When an honorary board member, William Strickland, traveled to the United States to prepare an agricultural survey, Sinclair recruited Washington to advise him on his travels, which included a visit to Mount Vernon. Washington introduced Strickland to leading farmers in Maryland and Virginia, including Jefferson, who welcomed him to Monticello. Washington sponsored Anderson and Buchan as members of the American Philosophical Society, to which they were admitted in 1794, and both contributed publications and maps to the society. When Tobias Lear traveled to England and Scotland to explore private business opportunities, Sinclair welcomed him as a kind of agricultural emissary of Washington at a reception in London with leading advocates of improvement, including Arthur Young and the American expatriate Enoch Edwards. Washington stood at the center of this transatlantic community of improvement, and his stature and practical commitment to farming reinforced the ties between the two nations.³⁴

The British agricultural correspondents expanded Washington’s already far-reaching network of seed and plant exchange. The collection and sharing of plant material became a central object of Great Britain’s expansion of its geographical reach in the decades after 1760, and this scientific curiosity about new regions was closely linked to the system of agricultural improvement based on enclosure and the management of large estates. Washington became a beneficiary of and participant in the wide net cast by the British in their pursuit of useful plants. Alexander Anderson, the director of the British botanical garden on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent, sent Washington a parcel of seeds and a request to distribute them to Henry Laurens in South Carolina and Bishop James Madison in Virginia. Washington sent word to Jamaica that he would like a sample of the breadfruit plant recently introduced from the South Pacific, and he received thirty-nine different plants as well as catalogs of plants cultivated in Jamaica’s botanical garden. James Anderson, an ardent collector and distributor of seeds, introduced himself to Washington by offering the seeds that would yield the first Swedish turnips, or rutabagas, cultivated in the United States. Anderson shared his view with Washington that the collection and exchange of plants from all over the world were essential to increasing agricultural productivity and especially food supplies, even if the great majority of experiments with them failed. The benefits of introducing broad clover, turnips, and potatoes in Great Britain, and rice to America, were so great as to demand more experiments with the sorts of exotic seeds he sent Washington—tartarian buckwheat to feed cattle and a sesame that he thought might be grown for its oil in the warmer climate of the Carolinas. Anderson sent Washington a type of turnip seed from Tibet, by way of former British governor-general of India Warren Hastings, who, “whatever may have been his conduct in his public station,” was a “promoter of science and the useful arts.”³⁵

Improving farmers in the United States also sent Washington rare seeds, such as the Nankeen cotton seeds that John Jay forwarded after receiving them from a planter conducting experiments in South Carolina. Some seeds arrived through diplomatic channels, including the Barbary wheat and melon seeds sent by Joel Barlow when he was the American consul in Algiers. Thomas Pinckney and Rufus King, in their respective terms as United States minister to Great Britain, served as semi-official channels through which British agriculturalists transmitted to Washington their letters and gifts. Washington rarely reciprocated with gifts of his own seeds, at least beyond Virginia and Maryland, unless he received a specific request. Lafayette asked Washington to procure various seeds of trees, grasses, and curious plants from Kentucky for use in the garden of Louis XVI. Lafayette also introduced Washington to André Michaux, a prominent French botanist, who visited Mount Vernon as part of his world tour, on behalf of Louis XVI, to make a complete study of trees and plants. From France, Gouverneur Morris sent Washington seeds from the garden of the king. These varied exchanges greatly expanded Washington’s knowledge of plants and connections with a world of improvement beyond the United States, and they heightened his awareness of the audience and expectations for his pursuit of the New Husbandry at Mount Vernon.³⁶

The most important public demonstration of Washington’s commitment to agricultural improvement was at his estate, which he designed to display his knowledge and innovation for the remarkable range of visitors who came to meet him. Like the owners of the large improved estates of Great Britain, Washington pursued an aesthetic ideal of farming that extended beyond the imposing agricultural buildings to the landscape itself, and, as on British estates, he aspired to embed agricultural improvements in the countryside as though they were part of a natural order. As early as the 1710s, Joseph Addison in The Spectator had proposed the erasure of distinctions between an estate’s park and its farms, and the ongoing consolidation of large estates in Great Britain encouraged the placement of improved farms within a unified and carefully constructed landscape, epitomized by the expansive designs of Capability Brown. Massive drainage projects and the elimination of “wastes” were intended to beautify the countryside at the same time that they opened new land to cultivation. Trees, planted in almost unimaginable numbers, framed the working fields and further integrated the farms into their natural surroundings. Sheep pastures blurred the distinction between parks and farmyards. The success of British improvement projects would be celebrated as much for the aesthetic beauty of the agricultural landscape and the neatness of the farm buildings as for the productivity of cultivation and the utility of new breeds of livestock. The redesign of the countryside was accomplished through the application of an enormous amount of labor to create an essentially new landscape that embodied the rational order of scientific agriculture and displayed the landowner’s cosmopolitan learning.³⁷

Before and during the Revolutionary War, Washington made initial efforts to blend the working landscape of his estate with the more refined areas surrounding his residence by opening views from the Mansion House to outlying plantations. As he completed the redesign of Mount Vernon’s plantations in the late 1780s, Washington opened other woods to create vistas to and from the Mansion House. He explained that he wanted the ground cleared outside a pasture along the road from Gum Spring “that you might see the Mansion house as soon as you should enter the little old field beyond it.” Along the grandest vista, from the west gate to the Mansion House, Washington wanted the path, more than one hundred feet wide, to be plowed and sown with buckwheat, followed by timothy or orchard grass, which would place crops representative of his new farming along the route by which most visitors approached the house. Washington sketched for his farm manager a “second Visto” from the Mansion House to Muddy Hole branch, which was to be prepared provisionally, so that he could assess the view upon his next arrival home. Washington’s aide and biographer, David Humphreys, described the effect of another fashioned view from the Mansion House to River Plantation; “on the opposite side of a little creek to the Northward, an extensive plain, exhibiting cornfields & cattle grazing, affords in summer a luxurious landscape to the eye.”³⁸

In addition to the views he devised from across the working plantations to the Mansion House, Washington ordered secondary avenues to be cut from the intersecting roads to the farmyards at the center of each plantation so that travelers could see his improvement projects. His 1793 survey of the five farms shows the bold, tree-lined avenue approaching the large barn and the surrounding buildings at Union Farm. Within the boundaries of the estate, new lanes and fences created sight lines to prominent structures, such as from the gates of Dogue Run farm to its barn and from the Union Farm barn to the gristmill along Dogue Creek. Washington redoubled the efforts, begun by Lund during the Revolutionary War, to line the principal roads and farm lanes with trees. He preferred the native cedar, which grew in abundance on the estate, and honey locust, the seeds of which he sent from Philadelphia. When seedlings from the cedar berries painstakingly gathered by enslaved workers failed to survive the summer heat, Washington instructed his farm manager to direct the work of digging mature trees out of the frozen ground and transplanting them along the new lanes. Trees were also important ornamental elements in the working parts of the estate, such as along the millrace. When Washington created new fields, he directed that scenic groves of trees remain in place, especially where they were within important lines of sight, even if they interfered with efficient plowing.³⁹

Washington’s attention to the appearance of the agricultural landscape went well beyond grand vistas and the architecture of barns. He was determined to maintain the neatness of fields, fences, and working areas of his estate. British visitors commented on the weed-filled fields of farms in the United States, and Washington insisted that his fields should not be hardened by “trash.” In a letter to Anthony Whitting he wrote, “There is no greater eye sore to me than to see foul meadows.” The concern was in part practical; the common practice of leaving a field untended for a year between grain crops only hardened the land, and the foul meadows were as destructive of plows and scythes as they were objectionable to the observer. In another letter to Whitting, Washington approvingly cited the authority of John Lambert, an English farmer who immigrated to the United States, and who attributed the poor lands and disappointing crops he saw to the weeds he found everywhere. The remedy was constant plowing to eradicate the weeds and to prepare the ground for grasses. Washington reminded a later manager, “all grasses ought to be sown on clean & well prepared ground, especially those near a dwelling house, w[hi]ch attract the eyes of all visitors.”⁴⁰

No component of the landscape figured more persistently in Washington’s mind than living fences. In part to conserve the finite resources of timber on the estate, Washington planned to replace post-and-rail fences, which he called dead fences, with living ones created by planting hedges of an impassable mix of trees and shrubs. The decrepit condition of so many of the wooden fences was a blight on a landscape that Washington wished to make neat and clean, and their maintenance required the diversion of labor that could otherwise be applied to more productive work. During winter months, enslaved men and women at the outlying plantations regularly spent days repairing existing fences, and overseers were required to inspect wooden fences twice weekly. Rough-hewn fences, often made of fallen timber, also stood as a rude contrast to the hedging recommended by the British treatises from which Washington learned about the New Husbandry.⁴¹

For many British farmers, especially on the large estates consolidated in the most recent phase of enclosure, hedges were nearly synonymous with fences. Hedging fences, or hedgerows, had been used in England for centuries, but they came to define the look of the countryside only in the second half of the eighteenth century, when they were encouraged by Parliament and used to demarcate new fields and pastures on improved farms. Thomas Hale’s A Compleat Body of Husbandry, which guided Washington’s earliest improvements, declared of hedges that “no article, in the husbandman’s whole concern, is of more importance, … they are the defence and guard of all the rest.” Washington first directed a concerted effort to plant hedges as fencing during the Revolutionary War, when he instructed Lund Washington to experiment with cedar, honey locust, and hawthorn for hedging. Washington later included willows, Lombardy poplar, and sycamores in the mix, and he encouraged his manager to establish nurseries for raising the hedging plants. Once the cedar trees were transplanted and large enough, Washington wanted them plashed, a technique of interweaving branches he had seen demonstrated by William Bartram at his famous garden in Philadelphia. Washington intended to combine live fences and ditches to replace all the wooden fences that separated fields and marked the perimeters of the plantations.⁴²

Hedging was one of the essential skills Washington expected of the English farmer he wanted to hire as he began his new course of farming in 1785, and he entrusted James Bloxham with the care of the honey locusts, transplanted by the thousands to establish live fences at the Ferry and French’s plantations. Washington noted in his excerpts from Kames’s The Gentleman Farmer that “the advantages of the white thorn for fence above every plant is well understood,” and he subsequently ordered English seed, which he also gave to Bloxham to cultivate for fencing. From The Farmer’s Compleat Guide, Washington copied advice on the best plants for hedging, including furse, which he ordered from Ireland for further experiments.⁴³

The establishment of fencing hedges as prescribed in the British literature became a fixed determination of Washington, who accused a succession of managers of disregarding the live fences and treating them as “a Subordinate object.” Washington reminded Whitting, “I mean to make hedging a business, and a primary one.” To his several white overseers, Washington wrote in 1793 with an almost inexplicable hyperbole, “There is nothing I more ardently desire; nor indeed is there anything more essential to my permanent interest, than raising of live fences … Yet nothing has ever been, in a general way, more shamefully neglected or mismanaged.” He insisted that the planting of live fences was more important and potentially more profitable than increasing his crops of grain. If forced to choose between abandoning his lucrative fishery for a year or postponing work on his hedging projects, “I should not hesitate a moment in giving up the first; for I would make every thing yield to the latter.”⁴⁴

Washington was not alone in his expectation of the benefits of live fences. The Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture in 1785 offered one of its first premiums to encourage the production of thorn and honey locust seeds for hedging, but for Washington, the transition to live fences assumed an exaggerated significance as a measure of his success as an enlightened farmer. The establishment of the hedges depended on the landowner’s knowledge of plants and understanding of landscape design, as well as the close management of laborers. The hedges, enhancing the landscape with their neatness and a simulation of natural order, represented much of what Washington most prized about British husbandry and stood in stark contrast to the unkempt appearance of farms in Virginia. Washington explained to Whitting that the living fences were not just a way to conserve timber and labor, they were meant to be “ornamental to the Farm, & reputable to the Farmer.”⁴⁵

As this reference to reputation suggests, the design of the agricultural landscape at Mount Vernon framed the public display of Washington’s innovative farming. In Great Britain, the most prominent estate owners who embraced agricultural improvement established “Home Farms” at which they actively participated in farming and demonstrated the results of experiments and the merits of new methods of cultivation. Washington similarly set aside the Mansion House farm for experiment and display of what he called his rural amusements, rather than commercial production of grain, but he conceived of the entire estate as a kind of Home Farm for the display of the husbandry he hoped would serve as testament to his accomplishments and as an example for the public. He fashioned the landscape of the working farms to accentuate the benefits of improvement. An Italian visitor was struck by “the spectacle of a broad expanse of cultivated terrain contrasting with the adjacent hills still clad in ancient oaks and lofty pines.”⁴⁶

Visitor after visitor noted that Mount Vernon looked different from other farms in the United States, and especially from other plantations in Virginia. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, recently arrived from England, came to Mount Vernon after a journey through Virginia and reported that “Good fences, clear grounds and extensive cultivation strike the eye as something uncommon in this part of the World.” Another English visitor, Samuel Vaughan, found “the farms neat, kept perfectly clean & in prime order.” A Polish statesman was surprised to learn that Washington had never left America, since the appearance of the house and estate suggested “he had seen the most beautiful examples in England of this style.” A British Army officer visiting Mount Vernon several years after the death of Capability Brown recognized that Washington was “laying out his grownds with great tast in the English fashion. Brown was he alive and here would certainly say this spot had great Capabilities.” The same officer paid Washington the highest compliment he might have desired by declaring, “It is the compleatest farm Yard and he appears to be the compleatest Gentleman farmer I have ever met in America and perhaps I may Add England.”⁴⁷

Many of the visitors recognized how these agricultural improvements enhanced the reputation of the great man they came to honor. When Samuel Powel, the founding president of the Philadelphia agricultural society, visited Mount Vernon with his wife, Elizabeth, they accompanied the Washingtons on a ride to four of the estate’s plantations and observed the treading out of wheat. “The General,” Powel found, “pays great Attention to husbandry & is, with reason I believe, said to be the best Farmer in the State.” In November 1788, the new French minister to the United States, the Comte de Moustier, arrived at Mount Vernon with several prominent French guests and asked to see the barn being constructed according to the design of Arthur Young. From there, the party continued on foot with Washington to visit the gristmill, walking a circuit of seven miles before returning to the Mansion House. Moustier thought the model of farming at Mount Vernon, presented as an example for the citizens of the United States, heightened Washington’s renown as a hero. “The Barn which you have built is a true monument of Patriotism,” he concluded, “as it is intended to preserve the produce of a new mode of cultivation, which will greatly conduce to the happiness and prosperity of a people who are to form a nation.” In support of Washington’s improvements, Moustier went on to recommend a varnish for the wood of the barn, a preferred arrangement of the cattle stall, and, after consulting the Encyclopédie, a recipe for the mortar between the bricks.⁴⁸

Fig 6.4   Detail, frieze above the doorway in the New Room, Mount Vernon. For the completion of the largest and most refined room in the Mansion House, Washington worked with a skilled plasterer to design agricultural themes for the stuccowork. The crossed rake and scythe on the frieze complemented the images of wheat and harvest implements featured in the ceiling medallions. Courtesy of Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.

When visitors entered the mansion, they saw in the New Room the agricultural motifs that ornamented the most elegant space in the house. Begun in 1774 and completed only in 1787, the New Room, with its Palladian window and large collection of pictures, was a display of architectural fashion and aesthetic taste. On the walls and ceiling was stuccowork, which Washington understood to be “the present taste in England.” Washington hired John Rawlins, an English-born plasterer who had executed extremely fine stuccowork in Annapolis, and on a visit to Mount Vernon in September 1785, Rawlins discussed with Washington the design for the ornamentation of the New Room. Unlike the room’s English-made mantelpiece, with its classical pastoral scenes that Washington deemed too elegant for his “Republican stile of living,” the agricultural imagery Rawlins developed in consultation with Washington reflected the new course of husbandry recently initiated at Mount Vernon and the georgic vision of farming. The design for the moldings in each corner of the ceiling included images of the essential implements associated with the cultivation and harvest of wheat: a rake and pitchfork; a spade and pick; a sickle with a sheaf of ripe wheat; and a scythe and flail for threshing. Surrounding the room was a frieze with a repeated pattern of a crossed rake and scythe.49

Atop the Mansion House, crowning the cupola that had long sat unfinished, Washington placed a weathervane of his own design. Instead of a directional arrow, Washington chose the silhouette of a bird “with an olive branch in its Mouth,” and “with spread wings.” The weathervane was crafted by Joseph Rakestraw in Philadelphia during the summer of the Federal Convention and delivered to Mount Vernon for installation before Washington returned home in late September 1787. The gilded dove of peace, visible on approach to the Mansion House, signaled to visitors the aspiration of Washington to offer his agricultural estate as a fulfillment of the scriptural instruction to turn swords into ploughshares and make war no more.⁵⁰