Mr. Jefferson's Sickle: Thomas Worthington and the Implementation of the Agrarian Republic
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Date
2015-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
In 1785 Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia that "those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people." Historians have always considered this the starting point for understanding Jefferson's ideal of an agrarian republic of yeomen farmers. Recently, scholars have called the ideal into question, pointing towards the expansion of chattel slavery into the early American west, particularly the Mississippi Valley. However, their methodology ignores the Northwest Territory and its free labor system entirely. This study asks the question: Was the Northwest Territory modeled on Jefferson's ideal, and if so, how was it achieved? Focusing on the political life of Thomas Worthington, Ohio's first Senator and one of Jefferson's protégés, it becomes clear that while Jefferson did not do much himself to create any such republic, his belief in it was extremely influential to those who read his Notes. Worthington led the statehood movement in Ohio, and as a Senator influenced reforms to federal land policy, all in his attempt to adhere to Jefferson's vision. By examining both the library catalog from his probate record and his personal correspondence, and cross referencing them with government policies he authored or supported, my research was able to reconstruct Worthington's ideological motives. I also analyzed the federal land sales in the territory from 1785 to 1804 in order to find the effects policy had on the quantity of sales, and who the land was being sold to. It is evident that Worthington and others were disappointed with earlier policies that put land in the hands of speculators, and worked diligently to enact policies that benefitted actual settlers. Also, as a delegate to Ohio's constitutional convention, Worthington supported the most democratic reforms in the country, granting almost universal adult white male suffrage to Ohio residents. These institutional reforms were critical to ensuring the uniformity needed to sustain Jefferson's agrarian republic. Perhaps more importantly, these institutions would later serve partly as the foundation for the growing divide between North and South throughout the antebellum period.
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Keywords
Land policy, Politics, Ohio Country, Democratization