 Greetings from the National Archives flagship building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank peoples. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's conversation with Bruce Ragsdale about his new book Washington at the Plough. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two programs coming up next week on our YouTube channel. On Monday, December 13th at 1 p.m., Jeremy Dauber will be here to discuss his book American Comics, which is the history of cartoons, comic strips, and graphic novels over the past century. And on Wednesday, December 15th at 1 p.m., we'll present a program entitled Anti-Federalists and the Bill of Rights. Professors Mary Sarah Bilder and Woody Holton will discuss the arguments of the Anti-Federalists and present day controversies over how we teach the Bill of Rights. In the summer of 1787, in the midst of the meeting of the Constitutional Convention, George Washington recorded an outing in his diary. Observing some farmers at work and entering into conversation with them, I received the following information with respect to the mode of cultivating buckwheat and the application of the grain. In his letters and diary entries throughout his life, Washington frequently makes observations on crops and farming practices. For his own Mount Vernon estate, he kept careful accounts, always seeking improvements in agricultural practices. One can read Washington's own words on Founders Online, a searchable website hosted by the National Archives through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Over time, Washington's ideas about agriculture and agricultural labor changed based on his own experiences and application of modern farming techniques. In today's program, we'll hear from author Bruce Ragsdale, whose new book, Washington at the Plough, discusses these changes and examines how Washington's passion for farming led him to question the reliance on enslaved labor. Bruce A. Ragsdale served for 20 years as Director of the Federal Judicial History Office at the Federal Judicial Center. The author of A Planters Republic, The Search for Economic Independence in Revolutionary Virginia, has been a fellow at the Washington Library of Mount Vernon and the International Center for Jefferson Studies. Now let's hear from Bruce Ragsdale. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. I'm delighted to have this opportunity to speak to the audience of the National Archives. And as the archivist said, I relied so heavily on Founders Online, a wonderful resource that has all the published correspondence of Washington and other founders that made it so accessible to do this research. The book is an attempt to write a full history of Washington's life as a farmer, a farming biography as it were. And his life as a farmer really still stands as the most important untold story about the most familiar of the founders. And I started this project with a conviction that no one can fully understand Washington without having some sense of why he preferred his life as a farmer so much, and also what he hoped to achieve for the new nation as a farmer, and the way he saw it as an additional kind of leadership in establishing the new United States. A British visitor to Mount Vernon in 1785 reported that Washington's greatest ambition following the American Revolution was to be considered the first farmer of America. Washington's been celebrated for many firsts. But the idea of first farmer of America is one that has been lost to our nation's memory. And I wanted to find out why that accolade would have been so important to Washington so soon after he had just led the Continental Army to victory and secured American independence. Why was it so important for him to turn to farming and his service to the nation? I also wanted to uncover a side of Washington that seldom evident in his military and political life. He considered farming the activity that was best suited to his disposition. He certainly enjoyed it more than any other activity. He said it was more rewarding than any string of military victories could ever be. And it reveals a private Washington that is often hard to discern elsewhere in his life. You find a man who is deeply connected to the natural world around him. You find an intellectual curiosity. And you find an engagement with a world of self-defined enlightened landowners on both sides of the Atlantic. It became a very important part of the person that Washington wanted to be. And what he wanted to bring to his farming at Mount Vernon. The farming for Washington was never just a private enterprise. Agriculture he thought would be one of the most important foundations of America's place in the world. Of its respectability among a community of nations. And he always, in all of his agricultural innovations over 40 years, he always was looking toward the larger direction of economic growth. A political economy that would be supported by different kinds of agriculture. First in the 1760s when he moves away from tobacco, which he abandoned since 1765 and makes his cash crop. He does that in no small part because he sees the opportunities outside the restrictions of empire. It was a crop that could be traded without the restrictions of the Navigation Act that encumbered the tobacco trade. And he saw it as a way of making Virginia more independent or self-directed. And then again after the Revolutionary War when he adopts a program of diversified farming that he thinks will be the foundation of the new nation's commercial prosperity. That it will provide the common commercial interests that will tie the nation together. And so farming was another demonstration of the kind of leadership that he had exercised as both a military and political leader. But I also wanted to reconstruct a side of the heroic Washington that is often forgotten about. That especially is represented in this famous sculpture by the French sculptor Houdon created for the state capital in Richmond. And that was the celebration of Washington as the American Cincinnati's. His return from the army to farming recalled the example of the Roman general who had left his farm to defend the Republic in battle and then refused an offer of arbitrary power and returned to his life as a farmer. In the 18th century the image of Cincinnati at La Plow was held as an ideal of civic virtue and Washington at La Plow became a similar representation made all the more powerful by his actual preference for farming and his deep engagement in farming at Mount Vernon after 1783. And the presentation that Houdon has here he is showing Washington not just as he takes off his military cloak and hangs up his sword but also with the plow that's at his feet and the plow at his side that is awaiting his life as a farmer. And this representation of Washington at the plow is especially notable because Houdon in consultation with Franklin and Jefferson and some input from Washington decided to present Washington in modern dress rather than the classical dress associated with Cincinnati of the ancients. And instead of the ancient plow that was always associated with Cincinnati Houdon presents Washington with a drill plow, a new innovative kind of plow. Washington designed one like this. It was manufactured by the enslaved carpenters and blacksmiths at Mount Vernon. And this becomes another representation of Washington's service through his embrace of the plow. Washington is also associated with the plow and he retires from resigns as president in 1797. In this image that was created to celebrate that event Washington is surrendering the symbols of power on the throne of liberty but with his last hand he gestures to Mount Vernon and waiting for him at Mount Vernon is the plow with the yoke of oxen. And so as these themes and images suggest Washington after 1783 is effectively farming on the public stage that he's being closely watched by both Europeans and Americans celebrated as Washington's the plow, this idea of a farmer doing the public good. And that notion of the public good frames many of the expectations of Washington as a farmer. He places greater emphasis on the civic benefits of the agricultural improvements he introduces. But those expectations also frame his new reckoning with slavery in the years following the Revolutionary War. And it's here in his life as a farmer more than any other dimension of his life that we can discern how Washington ultimately confronted the paradox of slavery and freedom that runs throughout the founding period. And it's as a farmer that we can find the most detailed record of his changing attitudes toward slavery. The story of Washington, the farmer is the story of Washington made slavery. Farming and enslaved labor were inseparable to Washington throughout his entire life as a farmer. And he once wrote that he didn't like to even think about slavery, let alone write about it or talk about it. But in fact, he thought about slavery all the time and he thought about it and wrote about it in terms of his management of the enslaved agricultural labor at his own estate. And it's there in that record that you can see both the change in attitude and also the record of his daily interactions with the enslaved laborers whom he supervised and controlled. And then finally, when Washington does ultimately decide to search for some way to emancipate the enslaved people he controls, the only record we have of that process and thought process is through his record of farming and his reorganization of Mount Vernon. It is here in this example of this document of Washington made in 1799 toward the end of his life. He gave a detailed description of various enslaved laborers at Mount Vernon. This document's only in the last 10 years come to light. It was acquired by Mount Vernon and it's in the library there. It's available on their website. And what's really interesting about this document is that he gives such a detailed description of individual laborers and what he sees as their strength. It also makes clear that he defines these individuals largely through their labor and largely through their value to him. But it shows a kind of close personal connection and engage personal engagement that is not available in any place other than in these farming records. When I started the research for this book, I thought I had a pretty good true sense of the trajectory of Washington's life as a farmer. But what I now think are two of the most important contributions of the book came largely as surprises as I undertook the research. And the first of those surprises is the depth of Washington's commitment to British agriculture to British models of agricultural improvement. And in the middle decades of the 18th century, transformation of farming in Great Britain had brought about remarkable increases in productivity. And as soon as Washington becomes a full-time farmer in 1759 after he leaves the Virginia Regiment, he's determined to adopt many of those practices from British husbandry to bring it into Virginia to create a new kind of farming and new kind of agriculture at Mount Vernon that would open up new kinds of opportunities and provide a new role for him. And he learns about these new techniques almost entirely through books. Beginning in 1759, he starts to order new books through his tobacco merchants in London. This is one of the most important. This is Thomas Hale's Complete Body of Husbandry. And he not only reads his books into his library and takes extensive notes, but we can very specifically trace experiments that he undertakes, changes in cultivation that he undertakes soon after he receives this and other books. He develops one of the largest libraries of practical British treatises in Virginia at the time. And he learns about a practical agriculture through these, but he also learns about a whole culture of farming that was promoted by a new type of gentleman, self-professed gentleman farmer in Great Britain. As the frontispiece on the right side illustrates, these gentlemen farmers often connected their efforts with the great agriculturalists of antiquity, people like Bertrand and Pliny. They often presented their improvements as a kind of civic, even patriotic service that they were undertaking experiments that would lead common farmers to improve their land. And Washington found in this culture of farmer a new role for the Virginia planter, that the Virginia planter could be a take on this role of demonstrating new kinds of farming that would diversify farming and would open up new kinds of commercial opportunities. What's even more surprising is that this commitment to British husbandry increases over time and has become stronger and stronger after the Revolutionary War, after independence from the Empire. Washington is still deeply committed to these British models and in 1785 he announces that he wants to undertake a complete course of husbandry as practiced in the best farming counties in England. This is not just cultivation methods or new crops. This is a very elaborate, complicated system of crop rotations integrated with livestock management and especially restoration of the soil, stewardship of the soil. And it leads him to redesign the entire agricultural landscape over thousands of acres at Mount Vernon. It also leads him to demand that the enslaved construct a whole new infrastructure of farming, including what Washington thought were the largest barns in the United States they probably were all constructed on the basis of very sophisticated British models. At the same time, Washington begins correspondence with some of the most important agriculturalists in Great Britain and they really become his confidants and guides as he implements new types of farming after 1785. But the second and closely related surprise was the enormous effort that Washington expended in trying to adapt enslaved labor to this complicated course of British husbandry. And this is a merger of British notions of enlightened farming with enslaved labor that really is unique to Washington. No one else is trying to do it on the scale that he has. And it's a challenge that he understands is also unique to him. During the Revolutionary War, Washington on a couple of occasions in private correspondence says that he wants to be done with managing enslaved labor that he wants to be done with relying on enslaved labor for agriculture. And those comments combined with a few remarks in the 1780s that he supported the principle of gradual abolition. He persuaded many historians that from the Revolution on Washington is is trying to extricate himself from the institution of slavery that he sees the future of American agriculture going in a different direction. In fact, from the time that he adopts this new style of forming of farming in 1785, he takes a number of very decisive actions to make to increase his reliance on enslaved labor, and to adapt that labor to new kinds of farming, find new value in the enslaved labor that he has acquired for at Mount Vernon. He relies on enslaved overseers at four of the five plantations at Mount Vernon that are involved with commercial agriculture. He tries to replace the hired white artisans who he had paid to do various kinds of skilled trades with enslaved laborers at Mount Vernon, especially carpenters who would make the agricultural implements with bricklayers who would help build these tremendous agricultural structures and work with the carpenters in these complicated joinery. Most of the enslaved laborers, of course, were working in the fields and Washington imposes a new kind of specialization of labor, and it's a specialization of labor by gender. He puts more and more of the agricultural work, the field work, on responsibility of the enslaved women, whereas more and more of the enslaved men are working as artisans and craftsmen. But it's a very carefully constructed program to take the labor that he had at Mount Vernon, the enslaved labor, and to apply it to new kinds of farming. Washington understood that what he was trying to do was unprecedented, and certainly he was not going to get any advice or suggestions from the British agricultural treatises he wrote that he read. And he devises a new kind of supervision of the enslaved that is original to him, and then allows him to supervise labor much more closely than he ever had before. He devises these weekly work reports, which eventually are kept in the format of bookkeeping format, even though there's no money being transferred and not know a monetary value is being recorded, but rather each plantation is indebted for the number of labor they had and then credited for the work that those laborers did over the course of a week. He received these every week, usually prepared on a Saturday, and from 1785 until the end of his life, and they allow him to exercise enormous supervision and control over the enslaved even when he is not at Mount Vernon. As president of a resident in Philadelphia, he devoted most Sundays to reviewing these work reports and writing a very detailed instructions for his farm manager in response to that. These reports are just one example of the many kinds of records that Washington kept about his estate. He had a pension for all kinds of recordkeeping. Those records collectively make Mount Vernon probably the best documented a state in the Chesapeake in the 18th century, and it also made possible writing a book like this. Here's an example of the kind of exactitude and detail that he would offer his farm manager. This is his architectural design for an innovative barn for treading wheat with horses, a 16 sided barn of very complicated construction. And this is at the bottom is he provides exact details on how the lumber was to be cut. He explains which lumber was to be gathered on the estate, which was to be bought from Alexandria. But he put this together at one of the busiest times of his presidency. This is this document was sent to his manager a week before he was elected to a second term. And as he came back from the fields one day in the 1780s and he creates this remarkable count of seeds of how many seeds are in a pound and a bushel how many seeds of the various crops are needed to so various acres. And he's it's looking for an exactitude and a new kind of an efficiencies through this really quite remarkable attention to detail. He brought that same attention to detail and many of the records related to the enslaved, particularly in the work reports that I just shown. And then also in the record of the provisions of the enslaved the clothing food. And those kind of detailed records aside from the correspondents are really what make possible some reconstruction of the lives and the work of the enslaved. That record is always imperfect because it is kept almost entirely by Washington and his white managers, rather than any input from the enslaved themselves. But these these kind of plantation records and accounts allow for a much broader reconstruction of the work of the enslaved and many historians once thought was possible. And it gives some tantalizing view of people you'd like to know far more about the one person I would love to have better records for and know more about this man named David Gray. David Gray was an enslaved overseer. He had started out as a field worker. He later learned how to cradle wheat which was an especially valued trade or craft and Washington was trying to train the enslaved to do it rather than to hire white traders to do it at an enormous expense. And then in 1770, David Gray is made an overseer only the second enslaved overseer of the farm where he had worked. He continues this overseer for 30 years. He works on several different of the farms. Over that time he probably knew the land and the patterns of farming better than anyone, maybe better than Washington because Gray was there as a supervisor of labor and a farming during the long years that Washington was away in the revolution and again as president. So all the records and the many references to David Gray. This document is the only one that has any indication of his mark is quite literal mark that he apparently was not able to write, but we do have this one receipt that he marks is in receipt for having been paid for by Poultry that he raised for Martha Washington, just after the death of George Washington, and that mark is the one indication of Gray himself. He was able to like the other enslaved overseers great received some small cash payments from Washington, and he apparently used those to buy poultry that he could then sell. He also, after the death of Washington and the sale of the livestock, maybe Gray was able to purchase a cow or quite remarkable purchase for an enslaved person, but he was not able to purchase his own freedom or in any other way gain it. And he was one of the so called Dower slaves, those that were controlled by the Custis estate, Washington was able to use their labor during his marriage to Martha Custis. But upon his death and Martha's death, the Dower slaves were divided among the Custis grandchildren and David Gray remained enslaved for all of this attention to detail. So that Washington never loses sight of a much grander aspirational vision of farming that he's trying to implement at at Mount Vernon. It was a great deal of agricultural society of Philadelphia society for improving agriculture, of which Washington was inducted as an honorary member and she was in a great deal of correspondence and gained a lot of practical assistance from. And it presents this this very aspirational notion of what farming will contribute to the nation. I presented the goddess of agricultural is here presented with a crown of 13 stars. This improvement society like Washington was focused. They had a vision for agriculture in the United States but it was focused primarily on trying to bring the best of British agriculture to to the new United States. Washington from the later years of his service in the Revolutionary War, he starts to talk about make references to the vine and fig tree of life under the vine and fig tree and anticipation of his life after the Revolutionary War. And he sees those biblical references including the many about turning swords into plowshares this is representative of a new kind of peaceful era that he think will be based on agricultural improvement and a shared culture of agricultural improvement with other nations and particularly great, great Britain. He bonds with a lot of British agriculturalists in their mutual rejection of the mercantilism that they think had led to war. And, and that they believe that they're in this joint effort, and they engage in an almost global exchange of agricultural knowledge and of agricultural plant material agricultural implements. This this image here of what's called General Washington's jackass hardly seems like the start of a new era of enlightened exchange, but in fact it was that this is this is a documentation of Washington's first improvement project after the Revolutionary War. He decided that he wanted to breed mules, and that mules were supposed to be superior to all other draft animals in their endurance and their longevity, and also in the cost of their upkeep, and he decides he wants to procure a Spanish jackass, which was considered the best animal from which to breed mules, but they were prohibited from export from Spain. And when he sends out some letters trying to find out how he might get one, it sets in play a whole network of highest level of diplomatic circles in, in, in Europe, and it also attracts the attention of the King of Spain, Charles, King Charles III recognizes that this is a new way of supporting their ally in the Revolutionary War, and he orders that one of our two of the prize animals would be sent to Washington in the United States. The one that survived was named Royal Gift. And when he comes in, he's almost a kind of celebrity in his own right. He's pictured here in this Massachusetts farmers almanac. And also his journey from Massachusetts where he's landed to Mount Vernon is covered in the newspapers, and he attracts the interest of other agricultural improvers throughout the United States ranging from John Jay in New York to the political elite in Charleston, South Carolina, who all want to bring their mares for breeding with Royal Gift at, at, at Mount Vernon. And over the next 15 years, Washington participated in this global network of of scientific and agricultural exchange that extends mostly through the patterns of the British Empire, but also through diplomatic channels of of the United States. He received seeds and plants from all over the world. He is planting wheat from Cape Colony in Southern Africa from the Barbaric coast and in Africa, he even receives weight that was sent to him by agricultural in Great Britain, that supposedly was seed that had been given by Catherine the Great of Russia to George III. And so Washington is connected with this whole world of both improvement and also exploration of the natural world and exchange of plant exchange. It also includes agricultural implements. He gets plows from from Great Britain. And most importantly, it includes even more books to add to his library. And he again returns to his practice of taking detailed notes from agricultural treatises that he can apply those lessons to performing at Mount Vernon. In, in return, Washington welcomed many, many visitors to him who pilgrimage to Mount Vernon, and he offered them a view of an agricultural landscape and unlike anything else in the United States. This is the famous five farm maps, five farms map that he draws in 1793. And it shows the extent to which he had completely reworked the landscape at Mount Vernon to incorporate British, British farming. And the visitor from one of the visitors, people who came to Mount Vernon recognized that it just looked different from any other farms in the United States, particularly those in Virginia. A visitor from Europe couldn't believe that Washington had not been to Europe because he had so completely absorbed the ideas of agricultural landscape. And also the visitors recognize the civic purpose of what Washington was trying to do. The new French minister to the United States came to Mount Vernon and walks with Washington on a circuit of all the farms and he wrote back later and said that the barns that he was building were a monument to patriotism that these were showing the way for other American farmers. And this is a detail from that map which shows that he also was creating vistas and views that connected the different farms. And so in other words, it's it's agriculture on display to the visitors. Here is the farm with the long tree lined alley that went to the grandest barn that he built of all at Union Farm. And then in this image of Mount Vernon that was painted by Savage in in the late 1780s or early 90s was one of the very few that showed the housing that was provided for enslaved families to the right of Mount Vernon is what was known as the house for families. And when these visitors who came to Mount Vernon, of course, not only saw the agricultural improvements but they saw the large number of enslaved laborers who are carrying out Washington's innovations who were responsible for the changes and innovations that he had brought to Mount Vernon. And just just as agriculturalists on both sides of the Atlantic recognize the powerful symbol of the general turned farmer. So, a new generation of anti slavery advocates. And Washington convinced that Washington's support for their cause and Washington's emancipation of his own enslaved laborers would add immeasurably to the abolitionist movement and encourage other people to join with him or at least that's what they thought. Washington becomes one of the most important objects of the appeals of these abolitionists that he becomes their special target among all the founders. The first appeal was that's documented is from Lafayette, who invited Washington to join him in an experiment to educate enslaved laborers to be self supporting and independent tenants on the land. And Washington received other personal appeals from religious leaders, such as the Methodist clergy who wanted him to support a petition for gradual abolition in Virginia or the Quaker leaders who came to him in New York to ask him to as president to support petitions to Congress for the freedom of slaves. And the French abolitionist, Jean-Pierre Brousseau came to Mount Vernon with a very special appeal that he wanted Washington to establish and be the leader of a new abolitionist society in Virginia. And Brousseau, like many of the others who appealed to Washington, would they recalled the language of liberty from the revolution and they called on Washington as the hero of American liberty to now extend that kind of liberty to be enslaved laborers at his estate. And hopefully that that would then lead to further emancipation of enslaved laborers throughout the United States. And Brousseau called Washington said it was appropriate that the man he called the savior of America would become the liberator of hundreds of thousands of enslaved blacks in the United States. And these appeals to Washington, including some that were harshly critical in the press, continue through throughout his life. And apart from the very few private comments that Washington makes and supported gradual abolition, the change in his attitude towards slavery is really only evident in his record of farming and his record as as an agricultural improvement. And in the years after he first heard the appeals of abolitionists, he attempted institutes new ways of managing enslaved labor and he attempts to shield the enslaved from the worst and most inhumane parts of what he thinks of the most inhumane aspects of slavery. He resolves not to be involved in the purchase or sale of enslaved laborers. He resolves to protect the families of the enslaved. He insists that his managers provide adequate food and medical care. And he also tries to discourage the use of violent punishment, especially in a violent punishment used in coercion for the coercion of labor. And in a way that mirrored similar efforts in the Caribbean and among other people, including Thomas Jefferson, he thought he could make slavery more rational and humane. Washington in some ways thought he could try to improve slavery like he was improving agriculture. But by making these resolutions and guaranteeing some minimal protections of obviously Washington return increases his demand for labor. And he thinks that in return he that the enslaved people owe him what he calls their duty to work from sun up to sundown and to do all of the labor that they are physically capable of carrying out. So I said, it's difficult to write about slavery at Mount Vernon because of the silences that are imposed on the enslaved, the fact that they are not able to leave their own mark in the record. But as I worked on this project I came to recognition that Washington created his own silences that make it further difficult to document his life as an enslaver and his changing attitudes towards slavery. When Lafayette first approached him about the experiment to prepare the enslaved for freedom, Washington replies that it gives some vague support and affirmation that he'd like to help him. But he also says that any discussion that should wait till you're at Mount Vernon and that becomes a pattern where Washington reserves for conversations that are undocumented, any kind of detailed talk about steps away from slavery, any kind of consideration of emancipation or or freedom for the enslaved. And it's that record that makes the study of Washington as a farmer so important for understanding his eventual path to emancipation of the enslaved. And it's in this famous map that I had already shown of the five farms was actually created as Washington's first step toward what he thought would be a program that would allow him to emancipate the enslaved, or at least find some other kinds of of less brutal dependency for them. And he creates this map in 1793 as part of a very elaborate plan that he has to lease his farms to scale British farmers who would come and take over his improvements, continue his improvements, but who would not rely on enslaved labor. And that the money they provided Washington he hoped would allow him to free the enslaved. He suggests at one point that they might then work as hired laborers. Other people who advised him said that they might be able to work as tenants, but it's all part of this plan that he puts forth in 1793 and draws this map as a way of showing the British farmers what would be available for them to lease. And how Washington got to this point is somewhat harder to document, but there's definitely a change that takes place during his presidency. And that he comes to the recognition that the kind of agricultural system that he wants to implement, the kind of enlightened agriculture that he hopes to implement at Vernon is incompatible with slavery. And as president he gets a much broader perspective on American agriculture and he begins to understand the ways in which reliance on slavery separated Virginia and Maryland from other parts of the country to the north that were engaged in the same kind of farming but without the reliance on slavery. And it's particularly his residents in Pennsylvania where he closely observes farming while he's there as president. And he comes to the conclusion that Pennsylvania has improved agriculture much more than Virginia, not because they have greater advantages, the soil is better. Rather he concludes that is because Pennsylvania has provided for the gradual abolition of slavery and that Virginia has not but that he's convinced Virginia and Maryland will need to adopt that gradual abolition if they were going to keep up and compete with the improved farming of Pennsylvania. Of course, Washington understood that the Virginians were not going to he acknowledges that to Brasau and others that Virginians are not going to endorse gradual abolition. And at that point, he decides that he's going to have to try to find a way to do it himself. And it was first through this plan of leasing the farms to British farmers was a wildly impractical idea. He refused to lease the farms to any American farmers, said he wouldn't hand it over to the slobberly farmers of the United States. And despite the support of a number of British correspondents and trying to recruit people it never, it never happens. And so Washington is left to his own actions and just in the summer of 1799. And just five months before his unexpected death, Washington drafted the will that would provide for the freedom of more than 120 enslaved people at Mount Vernon. And he ensured that the enslaved ones freed would those that were older and firm would be cared for that the young would be trained to take care of themselves and be soft supporting. But beyond that he offered no, he offered no principle statement of opposition to slavery, and he never explains what it was he was hoping to accomplish whether he expected other people to follow his actions, but they didn't. And as he rightly anticipated probably that very few Virginians would would share his ideal and it would not lead to a wave of emancipation as the abolitionists at home. Several, just in closing several years after he resumed his life as as a full time farmer after the Revolutionary War. Washington and wrote said that the life of the husband was the most delectable life of all. He said that to see plants rise from the earth and flourish by by the superior skill and bounty of the labor of hills that contemplated mind with ideas which are more easy to be conceived then expressed was a kind of poetic expression we don't normally associate with Washington, but it's one that you find throughout his vision of farming, and it was that ideal of a natural bounty. And of the rural landscape and the dignity of labor that it originally attracted him to the model of British husbandry in the 1760s, and that had guided his further adoption of British style husbandry in the 1780s. And visitors to Mount Vernon coming into the most public room this is the freeze in the new room at Mount Vernon Washington decorated both the walls and the ceiling with sort of the symbols of this kind of improved agriculture and lightened agriculture that he had adopted from Great Britain. He also was convinced that his engagement with that enlightened world of of of agricultural improvement would bring about a new kind of peace. And this is for the top crowning decoration of Mount Vernon this vein that he designed at the piece of dove. Again, recalling the scriptural prescriptions to learn war no war as part of the turning into plowshares. And then he was convinced that this agricultural improvement would allow the new nation to both engage in peaceful commerce, and also it would establish a kind of political stability based on with the stewardship of the land that discouraged haphazard movement of the West. But that ideal of rural life remains in her out Washington's life remained in conflict with a system of labor that depended on coercion and a denial of individual liberty. And in this book I tried to recover not just, but I think it's an essential dimension of Washington as a farmer. I've also tried to show how his pursuit of a particular model of agricultural improvement, ultimately and uniquely to him convinced him that slavery had no place in an enlightened and commercially prosperous new nation. Thank you. I have a few questions here at time to answer. Very good question that many people have asked is, it says, can you discuss if the cultivation of various crops such as weed as opposed to other crops affected the number of enslaved workers Washington needed. And many people have thought so and I've written in the past that once he transitions to wheat that he no longer has the need for as many enslaved laborers but that's not true. He finds productive employment for enslaved laborers. He actually continues to buy enslaved laborers after he transitions to read. Because wheat, as he implements it depends on a much greater diversity of crafts. And so he employs more of the enslaved in these crafts. He's building a whole infrastructure at the farm of barns and and also there is just more work to maintain the kind of fields that are necessary wheat requires far more land than than tobacco as a crop it requires less work on a daily basis than tobacco but it requires far more land. And so Washington actually increases his need for enslaved laborers or his demand for enslaved laborer after the transition to wheat. And through most of his life he is able to find productive work for the enslaved laborers, and that it's only in the mid late 1790s that he finally decides that he has more labor than he can productively employed. Another question, did Washington's agricultural activities affect his presidency, I would say yes, very much so. And he sees himself as sort of agricultural representative of the United States. He puts together a remarkable survey of American agriculture. It's not a part of his official duties. But he receives a request from a leading agriculturalist and very frightened Arthur Young, and Washington calls on a number of the leading farmers who were also part of the government. Most notably Thomas Jefferson, and he puts together this extensive report on American farming. He also tries very hard to get Congress to endorse an institution comparable to what the British Parliament had established. A Board of Agriculture that would do surveys of agriculture like the one he had carried out but would also recommend national legislation. So he begins to see a more active role for government in the promotion of agriculture. Congress does not pass that Board of Agriculture chose great disappointment. And let me see what else is here. A question, did enslaved laborers help manage Mount Vernon during the war? Washington has two enslaved overseers who are running plantations who are supervising the farming and the labor at those plantations, Morris at the Doverun Plantation, and David Gray, the man I had spoken about who is then at Muddy Hole Plantation. And they play a very important role in trying to find some way of increasing revenue during the Revolutionary War when markets are interrupted. He has them grow tobacco, he had given up tobacco, but he thinks maybe he could make some money from that. And he instructs both of those of the two overseers who are involved in because they had been involved with tobacco before. And he's really successful as an experiment more because of disruption of tobacco markets, rather than the work of. So Christian here were black laborers, Washington's only slaves. There's no one enslaved in Mount Vernon who is not black. But what is important is to recognize that Washington's ever entirely dependent on slave labor. He throughout his life hires a number of white skilled craftsmen usually, and also indentured servants. He is purchasing in the time and service of indentured servants throughout his time as a farmer. What's interesting is that after 1785, he requires most of those indentured servants as part of their contract with him to also train enslaved laborers in their craft. There'd be bricklaying or ditchers who are the people who drain the fields and maintain the boundaries of the plantation. That's all the questions that we have here. And if there aren't any others, I just want to thank you all for listening to this. And I hope you found it. That's something new about George Washington. So thank you.