An American Way of Farming

NARRATOR: Whether in the thick of war or the commotion of the presidency, George Washington always has time to handle the affairs of Mount Vernon. As a Virginia planter, Washington seeks to be at the cutting edge of agricultural improvement. His letters and library reveal a growing interest in science, innovation, and planting techniques throughout his life. But there is a dark side to Washington's agricultural experimentation. At the time of his death in 1799, over 300 enslaved men, women, and children lived at Mount Vernon. This forced labor fueled Washington's success as a planter. Today on the Secrets of Washington's Archives, we're browsing an unusual copy of Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs, given to Washington by his close friend and author, John Beale Bordley. Bordley and Washington's correspondence urges us to remember the silent and untold stories of the enslaved people that lie at the core of Mount Vernon's history as a plantation. And now your host, Dr. Anne Fertig. 

ANNE FERTIG: Welcome to the Secrets of Washington's Archives. In this podcast series, we're celebrating the 10th anniversary of the George Washington Presidential Library by bringing you inside the vault to see George Washington's books and the secrets that might be hidden inside. Today we're looking at Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs by John Beale Bordley, a close friend of Washington who shared many of Washington's quirks when it came to correcting his books. But also a man who shared many of Washington's views on slavery and labor. As we read this book today, remembering that much of the agricultural labor was performed here at Mount Vernon by the enslaved community. 

Joining me today to talk about George Washington's agriculture in the enslaved community at Mount Vernon is Jesse MacLeod, Associate Curator here at Mount Vernon. So welcome, Jesse. 

JESSIE MACLEOD: Thanks, Anne. It's great to be here.

FERTIG: It's wonderful to have you as a curator, as somebody who works with a lot of the objects here at Mount Vernon. 

MACLEOD: Can you tell us a little bit about what you do here specifically? Yeah, so as you mentioned, as curators, we work with the Fine and Decorative Arts collection. So that's essentially paintings, prints, ceramics, silver, furniture, textiles, all the stuff that makes up our collection of Washington items. So we work on furnishing the house and the outbuildings

with those objects, or appropriately historical objects. And then we also work on exhibits in our museum. And that's where I come to this topic because I was the lead curator for our exhibit on slavery, Lives Bond Together, which opened a few years ago. And in that process, I did a lot of research and writing on Washington's views on slavery, what life was like for the enslaved community and agriculture here at Mount Vernon.

FERTIG: Agriculture was a subject that was very near and dear to Washington's heart as we all know. He was very, very interested in what they would have called agricultural improvement. This idea of using these up and coming scientific experimentation to learn how to increase agricultural yield. And he owned quite a number of books to my understanding on agriculture.

MACLEOD: Yeah, so about 14% of Washington's library was comprised of agricultural books, and that was second only to politics, economics, and law, that category, and it was about equal to the number of books on the topics of religion and philosophy. So it was right up there. And he also took copious notes on those books. Washington occasionally wrote in his books, but more often he would take notes on separate pieces of paper or in separate notebooks. So we have hundreds and hundreds of pages of his notes where he carefully is recording the things that he learned from those volumes. 

FERTIG: And I think that's really important to note. It might be second to all these political tracks, but when it comes to the evidence we have of him reading and interacting with these books, it definitely ranks up there. We know that he was discussing agriculture with his friends. We know that he was taking these notes. We know he was implementing a lot of those practices here at. Mount Vernon. You mentioned the botanical garden, which is one of my favorite garden spaces because that was where he was experimenting. He was growing a lot of plants from abroad and seeing how well they would do in Virginia soil. And he was taking notes and doing his own experiments, which is a really fascinating tie to the book that we are talking about today, which is titled Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs by a man named John Beale Bordley.

So just to describe who Bordley was and what this book is, Bordley was actually a close friend of Washington's. His daughter would actually be best friends with Washington's step-granddaughter, Eleanor Park Custis. And so the families were close, and they communicated often. Bordley wrote extensively on agriculture, and he was really determined to come up with an American mode of agriculture because Washington very much was interested in these kind of emerging practices from Britain, whereas Bordley saw creating an American agriculture as kind of a patriotic institution we can say. 

And so he had sent Washington to the love of his books, including this one in 1799, which he unfortunately sent just a few months before Washington's death. We know Washington had read Bordley's other books; we unfortunately don't know if he managed to get to this one before he passed away. But my favorite thing in it, and I don't know if this is the same for you, but Bordley sends this book to George Washington, General George Washington, former president of the United States. And he fills the book with notes. It's his own book, but he's written hundreds of these little annotations in the book. 

MACLEOD: Yeah, and I've got to imagine that for somebody as much of a micromanager and as detail-oriented as George Washington was, I think he would have appreciated that. 

FERTIG: It's really funny, because if you look at Bordley's notes, typically in these books, they had what they called errata, which were these little print mistakes that you were supposed to correct. And Washington actually did go through and correct a lot of them in his own books. That's one of the few examples of marginalia we have. Bordley has done the same before he even gives it to Washington, but then he adds more errata to the list of errata, and then he goes through and he adds even more corrections throughout the book. So he's really, really obsessed with making sure it's absolutely perfect before it gets to Washington. He's making sure that typos are corrected. He's making sure that notes are expanded just in case Washington didn't understand what he was saying in his own work. He's fixing the errata. But we also know George Washington did that as well.

He was a very meticulous man. He did occasionally, not often, but occasionally fix mistakes in his works. How did that translate from Washington, the meticulous reader, to Washington as the overseer of this plantation? 

MACLEOD: So Washington was very meticulous and was very measured in many ways. But he was also known by those who were close to him as having a really bad temper. So he could actually explode when he got upset. And you don't see that often, but there's a quote from Thomas Jefferson, and I'm not gonna remember the exact words, but it's essentially that Washington was very composed until he wasn't. And there are some references to enslaved people, which, bearing the brunt of that, which would make sense because they're the lowest in status beneath Washington. The consequences for him getting angry in that context are less than with his social equals, although there are references in the cabinet room of him showing his wrath to people he was displeased with. But yeah, there are a couple of references to Washington. You know, Isaac, an enslaved carpenter, recalled that Washington slapped him across the face because he had cut a log to the wrong size.

There is also an account from somebody recalling that when Washington had his manservant bring his boots every morning, if they weren't appropriately polished, you know, that individual would get the boot around the head. Washington was also very concerned about enslaved people staying where they were supposed to stay on his estate, especially around the mansion house. Even though there were 90 people living and working around the house, there were certain areas that he wanted to remain pristine and not necessarily associated with labor. I mean, one of those was the Bowling Green, which is this vast expanse of grass that extends out on the west side of the house. And there is an account of somebody having walked across that grass. And Washington measures the size of the footprints and then has everybody come forward and measures their shoes to determine who the culprit was. So his micromanaging could take a rather dark form when it came to him managing enslaved people. 

And what's also true is that Washington wasn't always the one who was managing them. They were under overseers when Washington was, well, all the time, but especially when Washington was away during the presidency. So it's interesting the extent to which that character trait of Washington's of being meticulous and measured, you know, that comes out in his plans, but in his actions, it doesn't always go the way you might expect.

FERTIG: And he was even trying to manage to some degree when he was in the presidency in Philadelphia, away from Mount Vernon. 

MACLEOD: Absolutely. He wrote detailed letters every week and then would get annoyed when he didn't get prompt answers to his questions or if something he had commented on wasn't addressed. So he was really trying to manage from afar. And like we've said, he was most interested in being the head of Mount Vernon rather than the head of the United States, even though he took that role very, very seriously and had huge contributions in that arena. But he always, admittedly, said that he wished he could be back at Mount Vernon. So he was very conflicted, especially when he had to be away. 

FERTIG: But what's also very interesting about this book is that Bordley, like Washington, was an enslaver. And Bordley just is very interested in Washington in agricultural improvement and experimentation. But nowhere in this book does he actually mention the enslaved laborers who would be actually doing this labor. So the things he's talking about, crop rotation, new fertilization methods with gypsum, realistically, it wouldn't have been Washington or Bordley doing that labor.

MACLEOD: Right, and you see that in a lot of the agricultural treatises, especially that are coming from England because, of course, the system of labor there was entirely different. But even then it's all aimed at the gentleman farmer, at the person who's in charge of these methods, and there's very little about the actual people who are engaging in the work on a day-to-day basis. And as we see with Washington, the new systems that he implements have an enormous effect on the daily lives of those he enslaves but you don't necessarily get a sense of that just from reading the volumes themselves. 

FERTIG: Can you tell us how specifically this might have impacted the lives of the enslaved community? 

MACLEOD: So when Washington comes back from the American Revolution, his plantation is a disaster and he really sets about trying to organize things and get things up to date and combined with his newfound interest in this what was called the new husbandry or this British mode of agriculture. He implements this wide scale change in the organization of all of his farms. So this means creating new fields, changing the types of fences that are used, changing the types of livestock that are kept, changing the crops that are grown, implementing these elaborate seven-year rotations of crops with different types of fertilizer. And it means that enslaved laborers are having to learn all of these new skills. They've been engaging in the same type of labor for many years. Many of them are very experienced, but they're having to encounter this entirely new system. They're also having to be surveilled much more closely because Washington is extremely invested in the success of this new system. 

And one of the things that he implements in the 1780s is a system of farm reports where the overseers on each farm, or Washington himself occasionally, if he's home, record essentially what every single able-bodied enslaved person is doing every day that they're supposed to be working. And so their life is much more heavily monitored under this new system because Washington is really invested in making sure that it is efficient and profitable. And of course, surveillance is part of the system of slavery generally, but this really heightened it because of the way that Washington wanted to structure his estate. So those are just a couple examples.

FERTIG: And this whole system of farm reports plays into what Bordley is doing as well, because with these new experimentations, and Bordley's book on essays is basically a series of essays about experiments that he has done on his own plantations and whether they succeeded or not. And so he was experimenting the same things, like crop rotation. He promoted an eight-field system of crop rotation, as opposed to the seven-field. He was experimenting with using clover as a cover during these crop rotations and using different types of fertilizer, and that required those copious notes. So that type of surveillance was deeply wound into the scientific system of experimentation at the time. 

MACLEOD: Absolutely. 

FERTIG: So can you tell us a little bit about agriculture here at Mount Vernon? Can you describe those agricultural spaces here? 

MACLEOD: So Mount Vernon changed a lot over the course of Washington's residence. He was here for 45 years. The time period that we interpret today on the estate is 1799, so it's kind of the culmination of all of his efforts to transform the estate. And I'm sure we'll talk a bit more about those efforts later on. But in 1799, Mount Vernon consisted of 8,000 acres. There were 3,300 cultivated acres. The estate was organized into five different farms. So the agriculture was largely happening on the four outlying farms, with the fifth farm being where George Washington lived. And there was labor happening there, but it tended to be trades like blacksmithing and carpentry and textile work. So Washington in 1799, on those outlying farms, he was having the enslaved laborers grow crops like wheat and corn primarily.

There were also some other agricultural or you might say horticultural spaces that were a bit closer to the house. So there were two gardens that visitors can see today. The kitchen garden, sometimes called the lower garden, where enslaved gardeners grew vegetables for use in the Washington's kitchen. And then the upper garden or the ornamental garden, which was much more of a showpiece for Washington to plant beautiful flowers and hedgerows and to show off for his guests.

And then Washington also had a botanical garden where he showcased samples that people sent him from around the world. So those were smaller scale horticultural spaces, not so much the large scale agriculture, which was largely happening on the outlying farms. 

FERTIG: And about how many people would have been working on these farms? 

MACLEOD: So in 1799, there were 317 enslaved people, men, women, and children living across those 8,000 acres. There were about 90 stationed at the mansion house, so the remainder were working in agricultural work on those outlying farms. So in 1799, you've mentioned several times, right, this is the year that we interpret here at Mount Vernon. What was the status of abolition, and how might that have differed between Virginia, where Washington was, and Maryland, where Bordley was?

MACLEOD: So, Virginia and Maryland were pretty similar in that they both had economies that were largely based on slavery, they had large agricultural plantations. In 1800, the population of Virginia was about 50% enslaved people, and in Maryland it was about a third. So it was pretty similar. The state of abolition, generally, by 1799, there was an active abolition movement. There were prominent voices that were calling for abolition, but it didn't necessarily have the political power that you think of going into the antebellum years into the 19th century. So it's a lot of individual voices, and occasionally societies or religious groups like the Quakers who are calling for abolition. But you have a lot of people like Washington and like Boardley who express discomfort with slavery, acknowledge that it's not really a moral system, but also their entire livelihood in the structure of their plantations is dependent on enslaved labor. And so there's this contradiction. And you see Washington wrestling with that throughout the 1780s and 90s as he's increasingly becoming opposed to slavery on a theoretical level, but on a practical level, still extremely reliant on it. 

Washington, as a young man, was a pretty typical Virginia plantation owner. He was born into a family that held enslaved people. He inherited enslaved people from his father and from his older brother. So in the 1750s and 60s, as he's first coming to Mount Vernon and building up his land and reputation, he doesn't seem to express any doubts about slavery. Similarly, in the larger world that he's part of, abolition was hardly a prominent part of the conversation. It's the American Revolution that really changes things for Washington and for the abolition movement more largely. So Washington during the war starts to question slavery. Some of those questions are around economic issues. He doesn't feel like it's the most efficient system because enslaved people aren't necessarily motivated because they don't have the same interest in the success of the state. And likewise, Washington had ended up with enslaved people that he didn't necessarily need to work his fields. And so that economic peace was part of it. But he also starts to recognize the moral failings of the system of slavery. So he, coming out of the revolution, says that he doesn't want to separate enslaved families. He doesn't want to purchase or sell enslaved people any longer. So he starts to really recognize the inhumanity of the system in some ways.

So by the 1780s, you see Washington in private correspondence writing to friends and family that he would support legislation that would gradually end slavery. Washington never called for radical abolition, never called for immediate abolition. He was very much a law and order guy. So any support of abolition came within the legal context. And you see him making certain changes, like instructing overseers not to issue physical punishments without first trying other methods of so-called correction. In the extent to which that actually made a difference, is questionable. But you see him start to question things. But as we discussed before, Washington's entire livelihood was wrapped up in the system of slavery, and there wasn't really a way that he could see for him to extricate himself from it.

So ultimately, what he does decide to do is to put in his will an emancipation clause that would free the enslaved people that he owned at Martha's death. She ultimately ends up freeing them a little earlier, which we can also talk about. It gets to be quite complicated. He also didn't have the legal authority to free everybody who was at Mount Vernon. But in any case, that emancipation clause was kind of the culmination of his changing views on slavery. 

FERTIG: And it's interesting, too, since we're talking about John Beale Bordley in comparison, who, according to his daughter, who wrote memoirs much later in life, also considered the institution to be abhorrent and was opposed to it, though, primarily on those economic grounds and that he did not think that slavery yielded the best agricultural results, which is very different from thinking that slavery is wrong for moral reasons. It's still wrapped up within his own economic success. 

And I believe at his death, he had a much more complicated will, where he set some people free and others were sent to a type of indentured servitude with the idea that eventually they would be emancipated. Of course, we don't know. We don't have the same records about Bordley that we do about George Washington. And we're quite lucky that we do have so much on the enslaved community here at Mount Vernon. Can you talk about the records that we have about the enslaved community here at the George Washington Presidential Library? 

MACLEOD: Yeah, as you said, we are extremely fortunate to have an enormous amount of documentation of the enslaved community. So often, sites are lucky to even have a list of names, or even a number of enslaved people who labored at a particular site. But for us, we can actually piece together biographies of many, many people. And we have numerous references for almost everybody who was enslaved here. And those range from comprehensive lists that George Washington made in 1786 and 1789, where he wrote down the name, as well as work assignment, location, family relationships for every single person who was here. So those are enormously helpful in just getting a snapshot of the population at a moment in time.

We also have those work reports that I mentioned, which don't always name specific people, but often do. And particularly, it names when enslaved people were unable to work. So it might mention that Kate was not working because she was what they often called “in childbed”, or she had just had a baby. So that gives us an enormous amount of data, because then we can look at the list that Washington made, see that she has a child who's however many years old, and we know the week that that child was born. So we can really reconstruct people's lives in an incredibly detailed way. And then we also just have a lot of letters from Washington that talk about slavery. We were saying before how Washington was really interested in his agricultural books. Washington loved farming. He loved agriculture. He was much more excited about that than being president, honestly. And in the 1790s, when he's away in first New York and then Philadelphia, he is writing back to Mount Vernon constantly. He's getting those farm reports. He's writing with instructions. He's commenting on what specific enslaved people were doing. And so those references are incredibly useful, too, to just get snapshots of what was happening at particular moments in time. 

FERTIG: And I think that's a great note about Washington. At his heart, he saw himself as a farmer first. And within this class of gentlemen farmers, as you mentioned earlier, right, with this influence from the British husbandry. But also taking in some of these new American methods as well. When it comes to Bordley, we have letters Washington wrote where he's talking about Bordley's methods. And he's like, I don't know if they're going to work. But I think eventually later on, he started implementing some of these new agricultural methods, like using clover covers in his crop rotations because of that interest and of that approach to improving his land and being the best kind of farmer that he felt he could be. 

MACLEOD: He was always interested in innovation. And that's true across different areas of his life, but especially with agriculture. And as we said, he had the luxury of deciding that he wanted to implement whatever new plan or rotation or scheme or order this new fangled plow from England, even though it was much heavier than the previous plows. And the enslaved laborers had no choice but to carry out those plans. I mean, they didn't stand to benefit from any increased productivity of the plantation or not in any real meaningful sense. So it's interesting to think about Washington's passion for agriculture and then the unintended, or in some cases, intended consequences. 

FERTIG: So that happened to the farms at Mount Vernon after his death? And what happened to the enslaved community that were working and living on those farms? 

MACLEOD: When Washington died, he leaves his plantation first to Martha, but then to his nephew, because he and Martha didn't have any biological children of their own. So Martha dies about three years after George, two and half years. And at that point, the plantations inherited by Bushrod Washington, who was a Supreme Court justice, as well as Washington's nephew. And over the course of the 19th century, Mount Vernon is home to a series of collateral Washington descendants, kind of nephews, great nephews. And many of them suffer from financial problems and end up selling off large portions of the estate. So Mount Vernon, as Washington envisioned it, at its height in that last year of his life, was never really the same after that.

In terms of the enslaved community, as I mentioned, Washington does put in his will a provision that would free the enslaved people that he owned after Martha died. There's one exception to that. He freed his personal manservant, William Lee, immediately. And he notes that that was because of Lee's faithful services during the American Revolution. But everybody else he directs be freed at Martha's death. Martha, in this new situation where the freedom of this large group of people who she's surrounded with is dependent upon her demise, fears for her safety, and we actually have evidence of that, and she ultimately decides to free them earlier. So as of January 1st, 1801, the 123 individuals who Washington owned directly were freed. 

Things become complicated because Washington did not have the legal authority to free 153 of the people who were enslaved here. That's because they were owned by the estate of Martha's first husband, Daniel Park Custis. And as Custis's widow, Martha had life rights to these individuals, to their labor, but she didn't have the legal authority nor did her second husband to free or sell them. They were essentially bound to pass to the heirs to the Custis estate. So when Martha died in 1802, those 153 people were dispersed to her four grandchildren. So you have a lot of families where, say the husband was freed or the wife and children were freed and then the wife and children or the husband remained enslaved. And so you have a lot of families who are separated across that process.

And then to make matters even more complicated, there were also a group of about 40 individuals who Washington was renting from a neighbor of his. And so upon Washington's death, those individuals reverted back to that neighbor. So much is made of Washington's emancipation provision, you know, as perhaps it should be, but the story is really much more complicated and much more bittersweet. 

FERTIG: And I think that's such a good point because Martha's 153 were split between her four grandchildren as well. So they were all being sent to very, very different places as well. And that had a big effect on the lives of these people and these families who were torn apart against their will. 

MACLEOD: Absolutely. And you see, for example, the family of Isaac and Kitty, Isaac was the head carpenter. He was owned directly by Washington, so he was emancipated, but his wife Kitty and their nine daughters, because status passed through the maternal line, they were owned by the Custis estate. And so he was separated from his wife and children, but then on top of that, at least one member of their family was assigned to each of the four grandchildren. So they were separated on this massive scale. And the grandchildren generally lived in the area. They had estates in Washington, D.C., in Northern Virginia, and Maryland, but they were still miles apart. And the ability of enslaved people to travel across those landscapes to see family members would have been very limited. So that separation, I think, shouldn't be understated. It was quite massive and affecting for those who experienced it.

FERTIG: And I think that's so important to recognize as we talk about things like agriculture and that kind of mode of experimentation and that drive to improve in this period was deeply, deeply entwined with these other questions of enslavement and labor and human rights in this period. So even as we read Bordley and we might not see Bordley mentioned explicitly enslaved labor, once again, we knew, right? He was using enslaved labor on his plantations. George Washington was using enslaved labor on his. And it is absolutely something they would have calculated into their modes of agriculture. 

MACLEOD: Absolutely. And I'll just add, in this conversation, we're trying to make that visible. One of our goals here at Mount Vernon is to make that visible to our visitors as they've come here. Many people come here just because it's Washington's home. They know he was the first president. They know he was General in the revolution. But they may not think about the fact that this place was operated by more than 300 enslaved people. 90% of the residents of Mount Vernon in the 1790s were enslaved. So you can't talk about Mount Vernon without talking about the labor and the presence of these individuals. So hopefully in the work that we're doing, in all aspects, whether it's the podcast or the museum exhibits or interpretation we present to our guests, we're helping to make those stories visible and bring those lives to light.

FERTIG: Yeah, and a note to our listeners. If you're interested in learning more about this subject, you can check out on our website from the George Washington Presidential Library, the podcast, Intertwined, which tells the story of the enslaved community through eight of its members here at Mount Vernon through George Washington's lifetime. And also available on our website is our database of the enslaved community here at Mount Vernon where you can learn about some of these individuals and where they were living and what they were doing and find those references in those original primary documents to their lives. 

If you want to see Bordley's many, many, many annotations in this book for yourself, be sure to check out the video companion, also titled, The Secrets of Washington's Archives, available at georgewashingtonpodcast.com, or from the Mount Vernon YouTube page. 

NARRATOR: To learn more about the lives, stories, and labor of the enslaved community at Mount Vernon, be sure to check out our podcast, Intertwined: The Enslaved Community at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, available wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Told through the biographies of Sambo Anderson, Davy Grey, William Lee, Kate, Ona Judge, Nancy Carter-Quander, Edmund Parker, and Caroline Branham, this eight-part podcast explores the lives and labors of Mount Vernon's enslaved community and how we interpret slavery at the historic site today.

Did you know Mount Vernon members get new episodes of Secrets of Washington's Archives two weeks early? And that's not the only benefit. Members can enjoy other exclusive bonuses, including bonus episodes, members-only events, and a subscription to Mount Vernon Magazine, full of articles about George Washington and early American history. To learn more, go to georgewashingtonpodcast.com and click Members.

The Book featured in this podcast is Essays and notes on husbandry and rural affairs by John Beale Bordley. The MVLA purchased this book in 1963 from Mrs. John H. Garrigues and her sister, Miss. Mary H. Obdyke.The Secrets of Washington's Archives is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association and CD Squared, hosted by Dr. Anne Fertig, researched by Jesse MacLeod, and Dr. Anne Fertig, narration and audio production by Curt Dahl at CD Squared. The music featured in this podcast is from the album No Kissing in School, produced by the Colonial Music Institute. You can listen to more from this album and other productions of the Colonial Music Institute on Spotify.