Larding the lean Earth : soil and society in nineteenth-century America / Steven Stoll.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stoll, Steven.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Soil conservation--United States--History--19th century.

Soil conservation.

Soil fertility--United States--History--19th century.

Soil fertility.

Agriculture--Environmental aspects--United States--History--19th century.

Agriculture.

Land settlement--United States--History--19th century.

Land settlement.

History.

Agriculture--Environmental aspects.

United States.

Physical Description:

xii, 287 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Hill and Wang, 2002.

Summary:

A major history of early Americans' ideas about conservation Fifty years after the American Revolution, the yeoman farmers who made up a large part of the new country's voters faced a crisis. The very soil of American farms seemed to be failing, and agricultural prosperity, upon which the Republic was founded, was threatened. Steven Stoll's passionate and brilliantly argued book explores the tempestuous debates that erupted between "improvers," who believed in practices that sustained and bettered the soil of existing farms, and "emigrants," who thought it was wiser and more "American" to move westward as the soil gave out. Stoll examines the dozens of journals, from New York to Virginia, that gave voice to the improvers' cause. He also focuses especially on two groups of farmers, in Pennsylvania and South Carolina. He analyzes the similarities and differences in their farming habits in order to illustrate larger regional concerns about the "new husbandry" in free and slave states. Farming has always been the human activity that most disrupts nature, for good or ill. The decisions these early Americans made about how to farm not only expressed their political and social faith, but also influenced American attitudes about the environment for decades to come. "Larding the Lean Earth is a signal work of environmental history and an original contribution to the study of antebellum America.

Contents:

Prologue: Litchfield: In which the author sets foot in his subject 3

Forming the Furrow Slice: On soil and civilization 13

An Ethic of Permanence: Agricultural improvement and the history of the early Republic 19

Laying Waste: The critique of American land use 31

Panic: Why 1819 marked a new beginning for rural reform 41

Dunghill Doctrines: Convertible husbandry defined, and English origins 49

Island States: What explains an attitude of scarcity in a time of abundance? 69

Another World: The ethic of the northern improved farm 74

Hints to Emigrants: John Lorain asserts a new American agronomy 96

Fleece and Bounties: Merino sheep usher farmers into the manufacturing economy 108

Oldfield: Slavery and the agroecology of South Carolina 120

"Our Most Fatal Loss": The erosion of land and population in the southern Piedmont 143

A Mouth Full of Ashes: Edmund Ruffin's desperate synthesis 150

Toward Conservation: George Perkins Marsh and after 173

Robinson's Prairie: The legacies of improvement 185

Striving after Harmony: Was there ever a stable agriculture in North America? 209

Epilogue: Fredericksburg: The modern meaning of Amish farming 215.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [253]-274) and index.

ISBN:

0809064316

OCLC:

49403086