The centerpiece of this generously annotated book is the diary kept by the celebrated agricultural reformer Edmund Ruffin during the eight months in 1843 when, at the request of Governor James Henry Hammond, he conducted an economic survey of South Carolina, traveling to every corner of the state to examine the different farming methods in use and the resources available for their improvement. Ruffin s succinct and pointed narrative, driven by a passionate interest in the perpetuation of slavery, recaptures for the modern reader the physical and social environment of the Palmetto State two...
The centerpiece of this generously annotated book is the diary kept by the celebrated agricultural reformer Edmund Ruffin during the eight months in 1...
In 1818, Edmund Ruffin, then a young Virginia planter, began conducting chemical and rotational experiments on his Coggin s Point plantation on the James River. His findings became the basis for the most progressive and sophisticated reform proposals to be formulated in the slaveholding South. Tracing Ruffin s passionate advocacy of both agricultural reform and slavery, William M. Mathew pinpoints in this book many of the contradictions that underlay the economic and social structures of the antebellum South."
In 1818, Edmund Ruffin, then a young Virginia planter, began conducting chemical and rotational experiments on his Coggin s Point plantation on the Ja...
