Agriculture has always been a particularly fine training-ground
for statesmen. To persons who do not watch it closely, it may seem
monotonous. In reality, while the sum of the conditions of one year
tally closely with those of another, the daily changes and variations
create a variety which must be constantly watched and provided for. A
sudden freshet and unseasonable access of heat or cold, a scourge of
hail, a drought, a murrain among the cattle, call for ingenuity and
for resourcefulness; and for courage, a higher moral quality. Constant
comradeship with Nature seems to beget placidity and quiet assurance.
From using the great natural forces which bring to pass crops and the
seasons, they seem to work in and through him also. The banker, the
broker, even the merchant, lives in a series of whirlwinds, or seems
to be pursuing a mirage or groping his way through a fog. The
farmer, although he be not beyond the range of accident, deals more
continually with causes which regularly produce certain effects. He
knows a rainbow by sight and does not waste his time and money in
chasing it.

No better idea of Washington's activity as a planter can be had than
from his brief and terse journals as an agriculturist. He sets down
day by day what he did and what his slaves and the free employees did
on all parts of his estate. We see him as a regular and punctual man.
He had a moral repugnance to idleness. He himself worked steadily and
he chided the incompetent, the shirkers, and the lazy.

A short experience as landowner convinced him that slave labor was the
least efficient of all. This conviction led him very early to believe
in the emancipation of the slaves. I do not find that sentiment or
abstract ideals moved him to favor emancipation, but his sense of