Avery Odelle Craven: Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural History of Virginia and Maryland, 1606–1860

Abstract

Avery Odelle Craven’s Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural History of Virginia and Maryland, 1606–1860, originally published in 1925, is a short, highly readable book with a significant place in American historiography. Craven, who died in 1980 at the ripe old age of 94, took classes as an undergraduate at Harvard with Frederick Jackson Turner, and at its core, Soil Exhaustion is an inversion of Turner’s famous ‘‘frontier hypothesis.’’ Whereas Turner proposed that the frontier forged key American traits such as ingenuity, hard work and self-reliance, Craven suggested that on balance, the frontier’s impact on early American history was iniquitous. ‘‘Frontiers, like those who come to sudden wealth, are inclined to be spendthrifts,’’ he observed (22). ‘‘All the natural resources of frontiers suffer... and the soils are no exception’’ (20). This central paradox, which Craven takes as his starting point, will be familiar to anyone who has read at all widely in the early American literature. From the 17th century to the early 19th, travelers and residents alike lamented the profligate, destructive nature of American husbandry. ‘‘The American planters and farmers ... are the greatest slovens in Christendom,’’ ran a representative comment from 1775, ‘‘their eyes are fixed upon the present gain, and they are blind to futurity’’ (Anonymous 1775, 145, 148; quoted by Craven: 21). With respect to the American South, the most common explanations offered by historians for this sorry state of affairs have been threefold, all of them morally weighted: the uniquely soil-depleting nature of tobacco; the easygoing, improvident Southern temperament; or the pernicious effects of slavery. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, from state papers and plantation diaries to the letters of Thomas Jefferson and the writings of travelers like William Strickland and the Duc de la RochefoucauldLiancourt, Craven constructs a more nuanced account emphasizing the role of markets, government policies and the ever-present lure of fresh lands to the west. Craven divides his subject into three periods: Colonial (1606–1783), Post-Revolutionary (1783–1820) and Agricultural Revival (1820–1860), with an initial chapter on ‘‘Soil Fertility and Soil Exhaustion’’ setting forth the terms and issues for discussion. The basic outline of this story is broadly familiar. In the colonial period, early strong markets for tobacco in England encouraged planters to develop a primary reliance on that crop; Crown policy, the use of slave and indentured labor, a scarcity of livestock, and a cycle of indebtedness to English merchants combined to transform that reliance into an absolute dependence. The most common food crop, corn (maize), was also a heavy feeder, placing additional burdens on the land. The lack of good plows led to the formation of a shallow hard pan; heavy seasonal rains washed away unprotected soil. Tobacco was by no means consistently profitable through this period, but given poor infrastructure planters had few alternatives. The basic ‘‘rotation’’ was to clear the trees, plant 3–4 years of tobacco followed by 3–4 years of corn and/or wheat, and then abandon the fields to spontaneous reforestation. As a result, western expansion began early, with tobacco production constantly in search of fresh lands. A few planters experimented with alternative cash crops such as hemp, indigo and flax; others sought to supply a growing domestic and, eventually, overseas market for grain and flour. But it was not until the Napoleonic Wars that wheat became a significantly profitable crop in eastern North America. L. B. Sayre (&) Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University, P.O. Box 208209, New Haven, CT 06520-8209, USA e-mail: laura.sayre@yale.edu