TY  - BOOK
AU  - Ragsdale,Bruce A.
TI  - Washington at the plow: the founding farmer and the question of slavery 
SN  - 9780674246386
PY  - 2021///
CY  - Cambridge, Massachusetts
PB  - The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
KW  - Washington, George,
KW  - Agriculture
KW  - Virginia
KW  - Experimentation
KW  - History
KW  - 18th century
KW  - Slave labor
KW  - Mount Vernon (Estate)
KW  - Slavery
KW  - Slaves
KW  - Emancipation
KW  - Mount Vernon (Va. : Estate)
KW  - Biographies
KW  - lcgft
N1  - Includes bibliographical (pages 297-343) references and index; Introduction: The life of a husbandman -- The experiments of a Virginia planter -- The agricultural foundations of Independence -- Mount Vernon in wartime -- New farming in a new nation -- Enslaved agricultural labor at Mount Vernon -- Cincinnatus and the world of improvement -- The farmer president -- Agriculture and the path to emancipation -- Epilogue: The reputation of a farmer
N2  - "George Washington spent most of his time farming, often employing experimental methods. Washington saw slave-powered scientific agriculture as the key to the nation's prosperity. Bruce Ragsdale argues that it was slave labor's inefficiency as much as its inhumanity that finally convinced Washington to emancipate the men and women bonded to him"--
ER  -