Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic

325 Pages·2020·6.539 MB·English

by  Ariel Ron

Grassroots Leviathan
StudieS in early american economy and Society
from the library company of philadelphia
Cathy Matson, Series Editor
Grassroots Leviathan
Agricultural Reform and the Rural North
in the Slaveholding Republic
ARIEL RON
Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
© 2020 Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2020
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ron, Ariel, 1978– author.
Title: Grassroots leviathan : agricultural reform and the rural north in the
slaveholding republic / Ariel Ron.
Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. | Series: Studies in
early American economy and society from the Library Company of Philadelphia |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002937 | ISBN 9781421439327 (hardcover) | ISBN
9781421439334 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Agriculture and state—New England—History—19th century. |
Agriculture—Economic aspects—New England—History—19th century. |
Agriculture—Government policy—New England—History—19th century.
Classification: LCC HD1773.A3 R66 2020 | DDC 338.10974/09034—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002937
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
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including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer
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To the memory of my grandparents, who lived history more than most
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contentS
Series Editor’s Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
In Medias Res 17
Part I rIse of the agrIcultural reform movement
1 The Limits of Patrician Agricultural Reform 27
2 Agricultural Reform as a State-Building Social Movement 44
Part II the makIng of northern economIc natIonalIsm
3 Economic Nationalism in the Greater Rural Northeast 73
4 Henry C. Carey and the Republican Developmental Synthesis 96
Part III toward a natIonal agrIcultural PolIcy agenda
5 A Crisis of Agricultural Expertise 121
6 From “Private Enterprise” to “Governmental Action” 144
Part Iv agrIcultural reform versus the slaveocracy
7 Movement into Lobby 169
8 The Sectionalization of National Agricultural Policy 190
Epilogue 213
Abbreviations 229
Notes 231
Essay on Sources 293
Index 299
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SerieS editor’S foreword
In this latest title in the series Studies in Early American Economy and Society,
a collaborative effort between Johns Hopkins University Press and the Library
Company of Philadelphia’s Program in Early American Economy and Society
(PEAES), Ariel Ron provides a groundbreaking study of farmers in the north-
ern states between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Grassroots Levi-
athan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic chal-
lenges head-on the long-standing arguments about a declining rural population
in the face of advancing industrialization. Instead of a receding “yeoman” pres-
ence in the shaping of the American national identity and growing state and
federal powers over the republic, Ron’s compelling narrative places northern
farmers at the core of economic and political development. Rather than por-
traying farmers as the premier voice for reducing the power of government, he
urges us to see that agricultural Americans were deeply enmeshed with the rise
of state institutions and shifting political economy in the decades before the
Civil War.
Indeed, northern American farmers built a massive agricultural reform
movement in the early republic. Made up of northern middle-class farmers,
rural businessmen, local political leaders, and publicists, the reformers cast off
references to self-sufficient yeomen and traditionalist farming strategies. Instead,
a new discourse of “scientific agriculture” gained strength. The new vision fore-
saw an active role for government in reshaping the countryside into locales of
intensive, technologically innovative, and profitable farming. And the move-
ment enlisted a massive popular base to build and energize institutional re-
forms to meet such goals, a “grassroots leviathan” that hailed not from factory
manufacturing or canal building but from the countryside.
Ron has read an impressive array of agricultural journals and reports, indi-
vidual farmers’ diaries and account books, and agricultural organizations’ inter-
nal records stretching across dozens of county archives. These sources provide
the basis for arguments that shake up our long-standing perspectives about
northern farmers and demonstrate their deepening influence on the national