Between 1754 and 1815, agriculture remained the most important sector of the North American economy. Although many thinkers, such as Thomas Jefferson, believed that agriculture made North American farmers independent both politically and economically, the nature of agricultural production tied farmers to the Atlantic world. Despite regional differences, therefore, the upheaval of revolution and war spreading across the Atlantic had a direct impact on agriculture in the British colonies and later the United States.

The southern colonies were the most profitable part of the British empire in North America because of their agricultural products. Tobacco exhausted the soil and often had fallen in price, but it provided income to the Crown and made fortunes for many British merchants. In fact, in the years immediately before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War (1775-83), prices generally rose for tobacco. Because it was a crop that demanded intensive work, tobacco growing was heavily dependent on the labor of slaves. South Carolinians produced rice and indigo and also relied on slave labor. After 1783 there were changes. Following a trend that began before the war, tobacco lost ground as more Chesapeake planters turned to wheat and other grains. Eli Whitney's 1793 invention of the cotton gin, which efficiently separated the seeds from cotton, transformed southern agriculture by making it possible to grow short-staple cotton profitably. South Carolina, and then a growing belt of states to its west, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, produced more and more cotton. In 1791 about 2 million pounds of cotton was grown in the United States; by 1820 the cotton crop had increased to over 127 million pounds. By that time, cotton comprised a third of all exports from the United States. These exports helped to drive the economy's expansion and, since most of the cotton was shipped to Great Britain to supply its textile factories during the Industrial Revolution, further tied the United States to trans-Atlantic trade. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) added an area of sugar production in the lower Mississippi Valley, where the owners of sugar plantations relied on the use of slave labor. Securing the mouth of the Mississippi also encouraged the spread of cotton production west and provided another outlet for the export of cotton from New Orleans.

Colonists north of the Mason-Dixon line were mainly farmers, but they never produced a single cash crop equivalent to tobacco, rice, sugar, or cotton. Instead, northerners produced a variety of foodstuffs based on grains and livestock; fishing and lumber were also important. Northern farmers exported their produce to the West Indies, Europe, and even the South. They also sought new lands to the west, fueling the great migration across the Appalachian Mountains and the settlement of the Ohio Valley. Starting in the 1790s, and then accelerating after 1803, western farmers sent their produce--often pork and grain--down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers for export through the port of New Orleans.

Historians have debated when and how farmers became involved in the market and viewed agriculture as a capitalist enterprise. The rural transition to capitalism--centering on the production of agricultural commodities for distant markets--accelerated in the second half of the 18th century and really took off after 1800. We can see this transition in the increased use of cash as a means of exchange, greater specialization in production, and the spread of consumerism. Traditionally, people in the countryside had relied on barter and informal agreements for the exchange of labor. By 1800 such personal relationships were being replaced by impersonal cash exchange, either noted in account books in dollars and cents, or transacted with the actual use of money--often notes printed by the many new banks. Simultaneously, farmers began to focus on specific areas of production. When many eastern farmers could no longer compete with the more productive lands in the West, they turned to specialization, either by centering on fruits and vegetables--which could not be shipped over long distances--or engaging in dairying to supply milk, butter, and cheese. Farmers also became less self-sufficient, relying on the market to purchase many items that might have previously been made at home. Typically, a farmer in the 1790s and early 1800s might sell pork, wheat, butter, leather, or tallow to a storekeeper and purchase textiles, earthenware, rum, sugar, salt, glass, paper, and gin. These tendencies began in the Northeast and then later moved west and south.

War created an upheaval that influenced agricultural production in the North and South, greatly affecting the rural economy. The imperial crisis and the Revolutionary War disrupted exports of the southern cash crops and led to some havoc among food-producing farmers. At times, farmers who grew grain or raised livestock could reap profits as prices rose with the demands of hungry armies. At other times, the ravages of war could destroy crops and devastate farms. Agriculture revived slowly in the 1780s and became fairly robust by 1790. The wars of the French Revolution (1789-99) in Europe and the West Indies, especially after 1793, tended to further increase the value of agricultural food exports. However, this trend was liable to disruption, especially during the Quasi-War (1798-1800) crisis and after the Embargo of 1807. Agricultural production was also hurt by the War of 1812. Some farmers, especially those near the front lines between Canada and the United States, could profit from supplying the troops of both sides. For others, however, especially as the British tightened a blockade that cut off overseas trade and curtailed interregional shipping, the war created glutted markets in some areas and scarce markets in others. Tobacco, for example, became nearly worthless since it was almost impossible to send it to distant markets.

Although slaves and hired labor worked on some farms, most farmers relied on family labor. As northern states emancipated their slaves, the region--including the area north of the Ohio River--became even more devoted to free labor. Despite the fact that many poor white farmers did not own slaves, southerners simultaneously became more devoted to slavery. European-American women did not usually labor in the fields, although African-American women did. European-American women centered their activities in the barnyard and household, areas in which they were crucial to the productivity and profitability of agricultural enterprise. Often, the special labor of women in the churning of butter, the production of homespun, and, in New England, even the making of brooms, added vital capital to the farm family.

Bibliography:

1) Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990)

2) John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985)

3) Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860 (Englewood Cliffs: N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1961)

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