Essays From West of 98: The Yeoman’s Ideal
Why did Jefferson promote the "yeoman farmer"? Did he actually believe in this vision?
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📷: new childrens’ farming exhibit at the Museum of the West Texas Frontier
What did Thomas Jefferson think about farmers? To anyone who looks up quotes by Jefferson about farmers and rural life, this seems like a dumb question. Jefferson endorsed the farmer—specifically the small farmer—more powerfully than any other president on record. Among other lines, Jefferson described farmers as the chosen people of God1 and the most precious part of a state.2
But did Jefferson actually believe this?
Jefferson glorified the “yeoman farmer” as the ideal citizen of the new republic for which he worked so hard to help create. Jefferson envisioned and advocated for a society and economy built around the small farmer and landholder. Yet, Jefferson himself was no small landholder. His Monticello plantation sprawled across 5,000 acres in Virginia. Jefferson was no yeoman farmer either. He did not personally undertake cultivation of his fields of tobacco, wheat, and other groups in the age before mechanization and several decades even before John Deere introduced the modern steel plow in 1837. Instead, he relied on the toil of hundreds of enslaved people for his labor.
So was Jefferson just a fraud in his ideals? Jefferson’s skeptics have questioned, criticized, and even dismissed his ideal of the yeoman farmer. They contend that it was mere propaganda that he did not believe and that this agrarian sentiment was used to enrich Jefferson and others in the American aristocracy of large landowners. It warrants mentioning that this criticism does not come from agrarian-minded types who did not find Jefferson to be a true believer. There are no farmers shouting “he doesn’t even go here” (gold star if you catch that reference without clicking the link) about Jefferson. No, the critics from Jefferson’s era came from his nemeses the Federalists, who favored the centralization of economic and political power. In later generations up to the present day, Jefferson’s ideal of the yeoman farmer is attacked by those who see agrarian life as a relic of the past and who favor industrialization, urbanization, and technology. In essence, Jefferson is decried as a fraud by people who refuse to accept or agree with his ideas in the first place. Unfortunately, Jefferson’s deep moral failings on the slavery matter provide suitable ammunition for their criticisms.
I won’t pretend that I am unbiased on the matter. Certainly, I favor a set of political and economic ideals that would benefit rural America, but I don’t feign objectivity on the matter. However, I believe that Jefferson WAS sincere on the matter and that he truly did value the yeoman farmer as a core citizen of the new republic.
Professor Joshua Hochschild makes a keen observation as to Jefferson’s motivation and authenticity: the yeoman farmer model promoted the decentralization of economic power in a manner consistent with Jefferson’s beliefs of decentralized political power. Jefferson was suspicious an skeptical of ALL attempts to consolidate power (economic and political alike) and the manner in which consolidation of power imperiled an entire society.
Thomas Jefferson was not a yeoman farmer himself but he knew the yeoman farmer stood for something significant. The yeoman farmer was independent. The yeoman farmer could provide a life for himself and his family, no matter what the knuckleheads in the halls of government power did or did not do, and no matter how big business fared in the distant urban centers.
Times have changed since Thomas Jefferson’s era. In many ways, life is much better. Thomas Jefferson’s yeoman farmer ideal was never achieved, in part because not all our Founding Fathers shared his vision or his enthusiasm for the vision. That doesn’t mean he was wrong, though.
We can see that by looking at the antics of the knuckleheads in the halls of government power and in big business. Consolidation of power runs rampant, much to Jefferson’s chagrin. With that consolidation comes a loss of independence. Those things are only permanent until they’re not.
It’s time to revive Jefferson’s vision and restore the independence in life to our families and communities. That way, no matter what the knuckleheads do, we will be just fine.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the Rural Church and State and West of 98 podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found.
"Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.” Quote from “Notes on the State of Virginia”
Letter to James Madison, dated October 28, 1785