From George Washington to Landon Carter, 8 November 1796
To Landon Carter
Philadelphia 8th Novr 1796
Sir,
The letter you have been so good as to favor me with—dated the 27th Ulto—found me in this City immersed in papers, & preparing for the approaching Session, & busy Scenes with Congress.1 Let this be my apology then for doing little more, at present, than to give your letter, and its enclosure, an acknowledgment. A time will soon come, I hope, when I can do more; and be in a situation to profit from the relat[io]ns you may give me of your further experiments. Permit me in the meanwhile, to ask your solution of the following questions being a warm fr[ien]d myself to green in preference to naked fallows.
1st Have you continued the alternate growth of Pease & Wheat, since the year 1794, in the field referred to in your printed letter2 of the 29th of January of that year?3
2dly In that case what has been the product of your Crops in it since?
3dly Has the field received any other aid than what you suppose it has derived from the leguminous Crop & mode of cultivating it?
4th If not, what is the present condition of the field? Is it Improving, or otherwise?
5th Would the Pease have yielded as well on a stiff Loam, or clay, as on such light or Sandy land as you have described yours to be?
6th Did you drop them by hand, or by means of a drill Plough?4
7th As there is a great variety in the tribe of Indian Pease, which kind of them have you cultivated? Some run, and extend their vines so far as soon to impede the operations of a Plough.
8th Is there always a ready sale of them? and at what price?
9th Could as many be bought now, or in the course of the ensuing winter as would sow, or plant, at the distances, and in the manner you recommend, a field of about 70 Acres?5
10th At what period would you choose the Pease should be planted or Sown?
11th In that case when would they be suff[icient]ly ripe to harvest? or, in other words, how long do they usually remain on the ground?
12th By your sketch and the letter also it is not expressed whether more than one plowing is given after the Pease are planted and there is a disagreemt betw[ee]n the two—the 1st throwing the mold to, and the 2d from the Pease. Is one Plowg sufficient (especially if the season is moist) to prevent the ground from being foul with grass & hard, as well as with large weeds, thereby rendering it unfit for the reception of Wheat?6
13th What is meant in the 4th paragraph of the sketch, by the words “about the time of its sunning”? and when does this sunning happen?7
14. As by the rotation wch is here contemplated the fields may be always in Culture, what propn of Pasture or graising gr[oun]d wd you give to the Farm of any given Size.
I will make no apology, Sir, for giving you the trouble of answering these queries.8 The Gazette containing your printed letter to the Agricultural Society in Culpeper, is returned; with my thanks to you for giving me the perusal of it. If the experiment, mentioned in the sketch, has been continued on the same field, as successfully as it appears to have been commenced, there can be no rotation more simple; no dressing (if it is efficient) so cheap—nor any profit from field cultivation greater if progressive as you conceive it to be. With much esteem I am Your obliged, and Obedient Hble Servant
Go: Washington
ADfS, DLC:GW; LB, DLC:GW.
1. After a month-long stay at Mount Vernon, GW returned to Philadelphia on 31 October. The second session of the Fourth Congress began on 5 Dec. 1796.
2. On the ADfS, GW inadvertently wrote “letler.”
3. The queries in this document relate to the content of Carter’s letter of 29 Jan. 1794 to a Culpeper agricultural society, and its attached “sketch of a course of an Indian pea fallow” (Carter to GW, 27 Oct., and notes 2 and 5 to that document). In the 1794 letter, Carter had recommended an Indian pea crop as a means to protect soil from overexposure to sunlight and wrote about the rotation of “peas and wheat every year, from the same field.”
4. A drill-plough or drill-machine is a “machine for sowing seed in drills, now usually having contrivances for drawing furrows and for covering the seed when sown” ().
5. On the ADfS, GW wrote the next five queries below his signature and indicated their insertion here.
6. GW wrote a similar observation in a note to the “sketch” that Carter had transmitted with his letter to GW of 27 Oct. (see n.5 to that document).
7. Carter later informed GW that the editor of The Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg Advertiser, who published Carter’s 1794 letter and attached sketch, erroneously printed the word “sunning” in the sketch instead of the correct word “running” (see Carter to GW, 18 Dec.).
8. Carter replied to GW’s queries in his letters to him of 29 Nov. and 13 and 18 December.