ating an order of capitalists, was leveled directly at our prosperity, and [that
we had] the magnanimous perseverance to get rid of its authors?’’ (–).
The real work ofAratorwas antimercantilist doctrine and especially agro-
nomic observations dedicated to reversing the decline of farming in the
coastal plain. The latter business compelled Taylor to admit that the arro-
gant Yorkshireman had been more or less correct in his conclusions after
all, even though, Taylor confessed, ‘‘his veracity is insufferable’’ (). Taylor
insisted that his own experience and observations of ‘‘many farms for above
forty years,’’ combined with his mastery of available data (‘‘general facts’’),
were more authoritative than a foreigner’s observations. So he finally con-
ceded that he ‘‘agree[d] with Strickland in opinion, ‘that the agriculture of
the United States affords only a bare subsistence—that the fertility of our
lands is gradually declining—and that the agriculture of Virginia has ar-
rived to the lowest state of degradation’ ’’ ().
The essays that becameAratorbegan to appear as early as in a
Georgetown newspaper, soon, apparently, after Taylor had acquired and
read William Strickland’s work. Here, then, and again in book form in
and in several subsequent printings over the following five years, the sage of
Caroline pronounced a crisis of ‘‘our habit of agriculture, of which emigra-
tions are complete proof ’’ (–). Collectively, Taylor’s essays contained
historical exposition that led to the large questions of his day: If planter
agronomy, modeled so consciously after the British modern farming ‘‘revo-
lution’’ in East Anglia during the second half of the eighteenth century
really worked, then why declining fertility along the South Atlantic littoral?
Why decaying and abandoned villages in tidewater Virginia? Why were so
many Virginians hastening to new lands in former Indian nations? Taylor
was deeply vested in his native tidewater place—its society, its church, its
history, and its dirt. InAratorhe took his stand for conservation, for pros-
perous stability, and for civilization as he understood it. Thus, in making
himself (however modestly) the evangelist of tidewater salvation, Taylor
simultaneously rendered himself the first important southern declension-
ist historian.
Taylor’s answers to the painful questions included, first and at length,
unfriendly and unwise government. Then there was slavery: ‘‘Negro slavery
is a misfortune to agriculture, incapable of removal, and only within reach
of palliation’’ (). Africans were ignorant, ineffective workers and danger-
ous potential rebels, as recently witnessed in ‘‘St. Domingo’’ (Haiti). The
necessary evil of slavery might be endured (by white planters) only by im-
posing wise order and daily management of labor: ‘‘Slaves are docile, useful