Farming

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FARMING

Farmers in antebellum America were committed to a mix of subsistence and commercial production. Slavery and the cotton gin drove the rapid expansion of cotton farming in the South. Slavery and the plantation system also created profitable markets for northern farmers, particularly for the sale of corn and pork. Midwestern farmers increasingly specialized their production for local and regional markets, and the emerging railroad network carried farm products to eastern markets cheaply and efficiently. Northeastern farmers could not compete with Midwestern farmers who raised cattle, hogs, and grain, and they began to specialize in dairy, hay, and fruit production. Rapid technological change and settlement between

the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River also characterized agriculture during the antebellum years. Periodic economic depressions caused financial problems but most farmers experienced general economic improvement during the antebellum period. Prior to the Civil War, wars against the American Indians, forcible removal of American Indians from native lands, the war with Mexico (1846–1848), and the expansion to the Northwest were partly motivated by American desire for more agricultural territory.

When the Civil War began in April 1861, approximately half of the U.S. population of 31.4 million lived on farms. Agriculture provided seventy-five percent of the nation's exports by value. Three farmers out of four owned their own land. In the North and border states, self-sufficient farms prevailed, but farmers also produced for the market economy to make a profit by raising wheat, corn, oats, hay, hogs, and beef and dairy cattle. In the South, large-scale plantations emphasized specialized production of cotton, rice, tobacco, and sugar cane with the use of slave labor. Small-scale farmers often raised cotton or tobacco for the market and corn for home consumption and livestock feed.

In 1861 few people believed that agriculture would affect the outcome of the war for the Union or Confederacy. Northerners expected the war to end quickly in their favor by force of arms while Southerners anticipated British intervention to ensure cotton supplies for English textile mills and, thereby, Southern independence. Both sides soon found that the war dramatically affected agriculture and farm life. The Union blockade of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and Mississippi River prevented Northern farmers from shipping pork, corn, butter, wheat, oats, lard, and other commodities to Southern consumers who began to experience food shortages by early 1862.

war and society: southern agriculture

The Union blockade of the Mississippi River prevented Texas cattle from reaching Confederate markets, particularly New Orleans, and, thereby, cutting supplies of beef for soldiers and civilians. During the first two years of the war, many planters continued to raise cotton because they believed the conflict would increase prices. Confederate leaders, however, urged farmers and planters to increase corn, hog, and vegetable production to feed soldiers and civilians. Although many planters raised less cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar cane, by 1863, Confederate food shortages became critical.

Southern agricultural production declined because many farmers and their sons enlisted or were drafted into the army. Confederate women now assumed many farm jobs but they often could not handle tasks that demanded considerable physical labor, such as plowing and harvesting grain. Moreover, Confederate ironworks concentrated on weapons and stopped making farm equipment, and agricultural production declined as a result of inadequate planting and cultivating, and limited availability of harvesting implements. The Confederate armies often impressed slaves to build fortifications, or they were captured or ran away to nearby Union forces. The loss of slave labor further hindered agricultural production. Slave men and women also became increasingly reluctant to work in anticipation of their freedom after President Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, that became effective January 1, 1863.

The movement of farm and rural people to the cities worsened the agricultural and food problem. Northern forces drove an estimated 400,000 pro-Southerners from Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee, thereby increasing the demands for food on Southern farmers. Moreover, the Southern railroad system proved inadequate to transport agricultural products to the cities or the moving armies. By 1863, Confederate soldiers received only twenty-five percent of their allotted meat rations, and their horses had weakened due to insufficient grain and hay. Bread riots occurred in Atlanta, Richmond, and Petersburg, among other cities.

As food became scarce, agricultural prices increased rapidly. Soon inflated food prices became a major problem. Worthless Confederate paper money drove inflation. By 1862 many Confederate farmers refused to accept it as payment for their commodities, and they began to hoard food, all to the detriment of the soldiers and civilian population. Confederate farmers located near Union markets or advancing armies frequently traded across enemy lines because Northern buyers paid with paper money based on gold. The cost of goods that farmers needed also increased rapidly. In some areas farm implements and clothing increased two thousand percent.

The Confederate government attempted to control inflation by regulating farm prices, particularly those paid by agents who purchased agricultural commodities, such as meat, grain, and hay. Farmers, however, complained that Confederate purchasing agents or impressment officers paid prices below those offered on the open market and with nearly worthless paper money, which Confederate creditors often refused to accept for the payment of farmers' bills. Impressment agents often left Confederate farmers with too few horses, mules, cattle, hogs, and forage to remain viable farm operations. Confederate and Union armies also took livestock, grain, hay, and foodstuffs from Southern farmers as they passed through an area and tore down fences for firewood. During the last year of the war, foraging Confederate troops pillaged Southern farms as wantonly as Union raiders.

war and society: northern agriculture

Northern farmers did not experience invasion and the loss of property, crops, and livestock, except for Confederate forays near Antietam in 1862 and Gettysburg in 1863. Although farmers suffered a temporary loss of Southern markets when the war began, the Union army quickly provided a steady and lucrative market for them. An extensive railroad system carried agricultural commodities from the farms to food processors, the army, and urban consumers. Farmers increased production of commodities needed by soldiers. Some farmers began to specialize in the production of wheat, corn, hay, horses, and dairy and beef cattle. Border state and Northern farmers, particularly in Connecticut, increased tobacco production to cover the loss of Southern supplies. Wood and flax production increased, stimulated by high prices, and textile manufacturers wanting to offset the loss of Southern cotton, although Union troops captured considerable cotton stores.

The North had a larger population, and enlistments and draft inductions to the army proved less draining to agricultural labor. Approximately half of Northern farm families sent men to the army. Immigrants often took their places as hired labor with no loss of production resulting. Many Northern farm women replaced husbands and sons in the fields, and high wartime prices enabled farmers to purchase agricultural implements, such as reapers, mowers, horse rakes, and planters, that their wives operated to ease and speed their work. Rapid technological adoption helped expand production and reduced the need for hired labor.

agriculture, war, and public policy

The Union Congress passed three important acts in 1862 that affected all farmers after the Civil War. Southerners had opposed this legislation because it threatened to open the West to the creation of non-slave states, thereby reducing Southern political power in Congress, or because they believed the acts would prove costly, bureaucratic, and increase the power of the federal government at the expense of the states. On May 15, President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill that created the United States Department of Agriculture, which became the most important scientific agency devoted to improving agriculture during the late nineteenth century.

The act authorized the department to acquire, test, and distribute new seeds and plants, conduct practical and scientific experiments, collect agricultural statistics and other information beneficial to farmers, and publish its findings in an annual report. Congress also approved the Homestead Act, which Lincoln signed on May 20. It authorized the federal government to provide 160 acres of pubic domain free to any head of a household, male or female, twenty-one years of age or older who was a citizen or who had filed for citizenship and who would live on it for five years and make improvements. On July 2, Lincoln also signed the Morrill Land-Grant College Act. It authorized the creation of state colleges where agriculture and mechanical arts would be taught to improve farm life.

agriculture and the legacy of war

When the war ended in 1865, Southern farmers confronted a host of problems that would take years to solve. In areas of Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and the Carolinas where the armies had moved or fought, houses, barns, and fences lay in ruin, fields stood abandoned, livestock had been killed or captured, and farm equipment was worn out or destroyed. The slave labor force that had tended the fields and livestock had been freed. The emancipation of four million slaves brought significant capital and credit losses to their owners and the necessity to convert slave-based farm and plantation operations to free or hired labor after the war. Some 260,000 Confederate soldiers, mostly farmers, had been killed. In contrast, Northern farmers used high wartime prices to pay debts, buy new equipment, and purchase land. For them the Civil War brought prosperity.

After the Civil War, American agriculture experienced rapid technological change. In the North, the Corn Belt spread west across the Midwest. Farmers moved onto the Great Plains, many taking advantage of the Homestead Act. They increasingly specialized with a single crop, and farmers gave less attention to self-sufficiency and more to surplus production for the market economy. Specialized agricultural production tied farmers to bankers, railroads, and businessmen in ways that often caused discontent and encouraged agricultural organization and protest. In the South, farmers primarily remained reliant on cotton, but the sharecropping system held many farmers in a state of poverty and near peonage. Thus, the Civil War contributed to the transformation of American agriculture and American society: Western migration expanded; Northern farmers became more commercial and capitalistic; and in the South, decades of economic decline followed the end of slavery and the new system of sharecropping.