McKay, "Jefferson and Madison: Two Farmers Talking"

Farms and farming have always played a central role in American politics. But as Jack McKay explores in this essay, few presidents have thought as much about farming on a day-to-day basis as did Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The third and fourth presidents were both landowning slaveholders, living in close proximity to each other in Virginia. Jefferson and Madison exchanged friendly letters for decades, and as McKay reveals, much of that correspondence focused on material matters affecting their agricultural operations. 

Jack McKay is a retired lawyer and part time historian in Washington, D.C., and is the author of a recent article in the Journal of Supreme Court History titled “Livingston v. Jefferson and Jefferson v. Marshall—Defending an Ex-President.”

We welcome essays that apply the stories and methodologies of our allied fields to the issues that currently affect our daily lives. If you are interested in contributing, please contact Adrienne Petty (ampetty@wm.edu), Shane Hamilton (shane.hamilton@york.ac.uk) , or Cherisse Jones-Branch (crjones@astate.edu). This post should be cited as: Jack McKay, “Jefferson and Madison: Two Farmers Talking,” The Short Rows, 12 November 2024. https://www.aghistorysociety.org/ahs-blog/mckay-jefferson-and-madison-two-farmers-talking

Jefferson and Madison: Two Farmers Talking

Jack McKay

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were not only critical actors in the early years of America; they were also farmers. Each had inherited a large estate in Virginia’s Piedmont. Jefferson’s Monticello was about 30 miles from Madison’s Montpelier, a half-day journey by carriage. Jefferson had a second large plantation at Poplar Grove, near Lynchburg. Jefferson and Madison derived their income from their farms, although they did none of the actual farm work; that was left to a substantial enslaved population.

Figure 1: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefflife.html#038a - crop rotation plan, at  https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/images/vc10.jpg

Nevertheless, Jefferson viewed himself as a “farmer, soul and body,” and described Madison as “the best farmer in the world….” Both sought to apply scientific methods to their farms, with particular emphasis on crop rotation, which Jefferson viewed as “the most important of all the questions a farmer has to decide.”[1] As part of his scientific approach, Jefferson kept a highly detailed Farm Book from 1774 until his death in 1826, in which he recorded, among other things, everything he planted, when, and how the crop fared. The two men were fast friends, and one succeeded the other as president. Not surprisingly, the rich correspondence between the two addressed many weighty matters. But the men also communicated frequently about subjects that have dominated conversations between farmers since the beginning of cultivation —the weather, pests, and expanding operations. Their correspondence reveals how they addressed the mundane but critical issues arising on their farms in letters written during the 16 years of their consecutive presidencies.

One remarkable aspect of that correspondence is how farming news was mixed with the discussion of major national and international issues. In one letter, Jefferson combined a scathing attack on Chief Justice John Marshall with news about the effect of drought on his wheat and oat crops.[2] In December 1811, Jefferson expressed his view that only the death of King George III could avoid war between the United States and Great Britain; his next sentence was about a “bad fall for our wheat.”[3] During the War of 1812, Jefferson urged Madison to use gunboats to break the British blockade of the Chesapeake while also reporting on an insect attack at Monticello.[4]

Also remarkable is the absence, from the hundreds of letters exchanged in this period, of any mention of the slavery issue or of any enslaved person whose work produced the income that permitted the two presidents to follow political and intellectual careers. During his lifetime, Jefferson owned some 600 enslaved persons, with over 130 working at Monticello at any given time. About 100 toiled at Madison’s Montpelier. Jefferson characterized the dilemma of the southern slaveholder as follows: “we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. [J]ustice is in one scale, and self preservation in the other.”[5] Both men published rewards for runaways, and neither man freed a single enslaved person during his lifetime. While expressing revulsion at the notion of slavery, they accepted it as an economic and cultural necessity not worthy of discussion in their news from the farm. While they focused in these letters on the weather—which they could not control—they said nothing about manumission of the enslaved people that tilled their plantations—something within their control but economically unacceptable.

Jefferson and Madison were consequential presidents. But as farmers, they faced risks and benefits common to most of their constituents. This close contact with the life of the average American is in stark contrast to the great divide today between political leaders and the people they seek to represent. Such a concurrence of interests will likely never be seen again in a country as diverse as America.

The Weather

No topic on farming was more frequently addressed than the weather—principally rainfall. Then as now (absent irrigation), rain—too much or too little—could make or break a crop.

Lack of rain was the most common topic. Jefferson addressed drought on numerous occasions in writing to Madison. The year 1806 was particularly dry. In May 1806, Jefferson wrote that “[t]he drought here is distressing. The crop of oats irrecoverably lost; the May wheat little better.” By July 1806, he described the drought as “excessive;” the rivers and creeks had been converted to “stagnant pools,” leading to a great deal of sickness. “All Charlottesville drinks out of one scanty spring which is constantly muddy, & more & more springs are failing daily.”[6]

In June 1810 Jefferson wrote that “our sufferings from drought have been extreme.” The rain was “too late for the oats. Very little will be high enough to cut.” Corn “tho lower than ever known has still time to yield a good crop.” Madison faced similar circumstances: “[t]he drought here is equal to what you experience, and I find by newspaper paragraphs, that it is nearly universal.[7]

In 1813 there was only one rain between April and July; the dryness and heat had a drastic effect on harvesting the wheat crop. Jefferson wrote that he had “seen harvests lost by wet, but never before saw one lost by dry weather.” Corn was “never seen so low before at this date.” “Our gardens are totally burnt up….” Jefferson said he had suffered more than his neighbors and would not get half a crop. He later characterized the drought in more dramatic terms: “I hope your fields have been more fortunate than ours which … present an aspect never seen since the year 1755 when we lost so many people by famine….”[8]

Rains that came at the right time and in the right amount were described as “pretty” or “divine” or “fine.” But too much rain was almost as bad as too little. A flood in August 1807 swept away all the mills in Jefferson’s neighborhood and caused great losses of growing and harvested crops. The wheat crop of 1812 was deluged by 10 inches of rain and then a very destructive hail. More rain during harvesting that year made it impossible to thresh and injured already harvested crops.[9]

Insects

Figure 2: https://i.etsystatic.com/12078436/r/il/193d26/6050165886/il_1140xN.6050165886_jnp4.jpg Jefferson’s Farm Book (cover)

The insect that most threatened Jefferson and Madison’s farms was the so-called Hessian fly, a midge whose larvae attack the wheat planted in the fall as it matures in the spring. The insect has been a serious threat since colonial times. In 1797 the fly invaded Mount Vernon, and in 1801 Jefferson reported that it was “laying waste” to all the wheat near Washington.[10]

The ravages of the fly were the subject of much correspondence between Jefferson and Madison. In 1813, Monticello was hit hard by the fly, leading Jefferson to write that much of his wheat had been killed by frost with the “fly destroying the remainder.” An infestation was even worse in 1817: “Such swarms of the Wheat fly were never before seen in this country.”[11]

Madison’s crops suffered as well. In 1808 he wrote that his wheat made a “wretched figure” and would not make even a one-third crop. “The Hessian fly is certainly the chief cause.” In 1814, the parts of his fields “under the depredation of the Hessian fly… must be greatly reduced, and may be in a manner destroyed.”[12]

Jefferson and others experimented with a variety of husbandry tactics to deal with the pest. The best answer turned out to be controlling the planting date. After initially resisting the idea that the date of planting was significant, Jefferson recorded in his farm book that the proper seeding date was October 10 to November 9. Crops planted before or after those dates were “subject to the fly.”[13] Attention to the planting date remains a method for controlling the Hessian fly in Virginia.

New Ventures: Merino Sheep

Something of a Merino sheep craze hit the United States during Jefferson’s presidency. Jefferson and Madison were right in the middle of it.

Spain had long maintained tight control of its Merino sheep, famous for the quality of their wool. Some Merinos began to appear in the United States after Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808. However, the Embargo Act of 1807, which drastically limited trade with Europe, required Americans to become self-sufficient and created something of a frenzy for a breed with finer wool than domestic sheep were producing. As Jefferson wrote, “we are eager to get into the Merino race of sheep.”[14] That goal was realized in 1810 when Jefferson and Madison each received a pair of Merinos (ram and ewe).

Figure 3: https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.antidotetomerino00misc/?sp=7&r=-1.453,-0.125,3.907,1.912,0 “Antidote to the merino-mania now progressing through the United States, 1810, Library of Congress”

With breeding Merinos in hand, Jefferson expanded his vision far beyond his own flock. He proposed an elaborate scheme to Madison to spread Merinos throughout Virginia: distribute full blooded rams produced at Monticello and Montpelier, one to each county, until each county was covered. He calculated it would take seven years to “see my own state entirely covered with this valuable race at no expense to the farmers.”[15]

Madison was fully supportive. Indeed, Madison invested more in the Merino venture than Jefferson.

Jefferson’s philanthropic plan to populate the state with Merino sheep proved unnecessary. Once Spain’s control was lost, Merinos flooded the United States. Twenty thousand Merinos entered the country in a two-year period. “The Merino fever is so entirely spent, that our country people will not even accept of them, preferring those breeds giving most wool to what gives the finest.”[16] Even Jefferson lost interest. By March 1813, Jefferson had only two Merino ewes.

Farmers and the War of 1812

Ex-president Jefferson had very specific advice for President Madison on how important farmers were to the war effort.

Jefferson advised Madison that farm prosperity was essential to support of the war in a country at a time when 90% of the population lived in rural areas. “Open markets is the first object towards maintaining the popularity of the war.” Farmers’ support of the war will be regulated by markets and prices, “not by the successes or disasters of the war.” People will go through with a war if “they can dispose of their produce.” If they cannot, they will “clamor for peace.” If the farmer saw his crop rot in the barn, “it would sicken him of war.” Jefferson captured his sentiments in one phrase: The price of grain “is the true barometer of the popularity of the war.”[17]

Unfortunately, there is no way to test Jefferson’s theory. Farm prices did indeed increase during the war, but those gains were likely offset by increased costs in manufactured goods because of the British blockade.

Conclusion

While a number of American presidents have had a connection to a farm or ranch, few had a life as dependent on agriculture as did Jefferson and Madison. Their letters show that neither was far removed from the vicissitudes of farm life even while serving as president. In contrast to the common image of them as towering political figures of early America, their exchanges reveal how much their lives were grounded in the down-to-earth realities experienced by their constituents.

[1] Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Pinckney, 8 September 1795; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams, ed. (Philadelphia, 1874) 1:473; Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, 28 July 1793. Each of the letters cited herein may be found in Founders Online, a project of the National Archives.
[2] Thomas Jefferson to James Madison 25 May 1810.
[3] Jefferson to Madison 31 December 1811.
[4] Jefferson to Madison 21 May 1813.
[5] Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 22 April 1820.
[6] Thomas Jefferson to James Madison 11 May 1806; 19 May 1806; 26 July 1806.
[7] Jefferson to Madison 27 June 1810; Madison to Jefferson 4 June 1810.
[8] Jefferson to Madison 13 July 1813; 15 August 1813.
[9] Jefferson to Madison 4 September 1806; 2 September 1806; 3 June 1811; 16 August 1807; 25 May 1812; 10 August 1812.
[10] Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph 16 November 1801; Monticello, Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia: Hessian Fly, https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/hessian-fly/ .
[11] Jefferson to Madison 21 May 1813; Jefferson to William Johnson 10 May 1817.
[12] Madison to Jefferson 2 June 1808; 10 May 1814.
[13] Jefferson Encyclopedia: Hessian Fly.
[14] Jefferson to Marquis de Lafayette 24 February 1809.
[15] Jefferson to Madison, 25 March 1810; Jefferson to Joseph Dougherty, 24 May 1810. Dougherty was Jefferson’s White House coachman.
[16] Jefferson to Joseph Dougherty 15 August 1813.
[17] Jefferson to Madison 5 August 1812; 17 April 1812; 24 June 1812; 21 May 1813.