Agriculture, Geology, and Society in Antebellum South Carolina

The Private Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 1843

Title Details

Pages: 386

Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in

Formats

Paperback

Pub Date: 11/01/2012

ISBN: 9-780-8203-4166-8

List Price: $36.95

Agriculture, Geology, and Society in Antebellum South Carolina

The Private Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 1843

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  • Description
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 decades before the outbreak of the Civil War in the Charleston harbor.

About the Author/Editor

Edmund Ruffin (Author)
EDMUND RUFFIN (1794–1865), a Virginia planter and slaveholder, is widely regarded as the "father of soil science" in the United States.

William M. Mathew (Editor)
WILLIAM M. MATHEW is a senior fellow in history at the University of East Anglia. He is also the author of Edmund Ruffin and the Crisis of Slavery in the Old South: The Failure of Agricultural Reform (Georgia). His other books include The House of Gibbs and the Peruvian Guano Monopoly.