Larding the Lean Earth Soil and Society in

A Major History of Early Americans' Ideas about Conservation Fifty years after the Revolution, American farmers faced a crisis: the failing soils of the Atlantic states threatened the agricultural prosperity upon which the republic was founded. "Larding the Lean Earth explores the tempestuous debates that erupted between "improvers," intent on sustaining the soil of existing farms, and "emigrants," who thought it wiser and more "American" to move westward as the soil gave out. "Larding the Lean Earth is a signal work of environmental history and an original contribution to the study of antebellum America.

Steven Stoll is an assistant professor of history at Yale University.

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Maps	p. xiii
Prologue: Litchfield: In which the author sets foot in his subject	p. 3

Forming the Furrow Slice: On soil and civilization	p. 13
An Ethic of Permanence: Agricultural improvement and the history of the early Republic	p. 19
Laying Waste: The critique of American land use	p. 31
Panic: Why 1819 marked a new beginning for rural reform	p. 41
Dunghill Doctrines: Convertible husbandry defined, and English origins	p. 49

Island States: What explains an attitude of scarcity in a time of abundance?	p. 69
Another World: The ethic of the northern improved farm	p. 74
Hints to Emigrants: John Lorain asserts a new American agronomy	p. 96
Fleece and Bounties: Merino sheep usher farmers into the manufacturing economy	p. 108
Oldfield: Slavery and the agroecology of South Carolina	p. 120
"Our Most Fatal Loss": The erosion of land and population in the southern Piedmont	p. 143
A Mouth Full of Ashes: Edmund Ruffin's desperate synthesis	p. 150
Conclusion	p. 166

Toward Conservation: George Perkins Marsh and after	p. 173
Robinson's Prairie: The legacies of improvement	p. 185
Striving after Harmony: Was there ever a stable agriculture in North America?	p. 209
Epilogue: Fredericksburg: The modern meaning of Amish farming	p. 215
Notes	p. 227
Bibliography	p. 253
Index	p. 275
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Larding the Lean Earth Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America

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