Isaac Newton Becomes Abraham Lincoln’s First Commissioner of the Department of Agriculture

On June 30, 1862, the Senate confirmed Isaac Newton as Abraham Lincoln’s first Commissioner of the Department of Agriculture, which Lincoln had signed into existence a month earlier. Having come to despise the hard labor of his early years on subsistence farms, Lincoln had always favored government intervention to help people better their condition and looked for ways to bring science to agriculture.

In his first annual message to Congress on December 3, 1861, Lincoln wrote:

Agriculture, confessedly the largest interest of the nation, has not a department nor a bureau, but a clerkship only, assigned to it in the Government. While it is fortunate that this great interest is so independent in its nature as to not have demanded and extorted more from the Government, I respectfully ask Congress to consider whether something more can not be given voluntarily with general advantage…While I make no suggestions as to details, I venture the opinion that an agricultural and statistical bureau might profitably be organized.

Congress took the hint. With his Republican Party in control and uncooperative Southern representatives no longer an impediment to action, Congress passed a bill creating the Department of Agriculture. Its goal was to institutionalize science in agriculture and thus put farming on the path to the future.

The bill stipulated that the goal of the new independent department, sent to the President by the aptly named Galusha Grow, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Solomon Foot, President of the Senate pro tem, stipulated that the role of the new independent Department was:

to acquire and to diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and to procure, propagate, and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants.

In his next annual message to Congress, Lincoln eagerly reported that he had “caused the Department of Agriculture of the United States to be organized.” The new Department would develop scientific experiments, collect statistics, test new seeds and plants, and disseminate any knowledge gained to agriculturists. [cite From the bill] As innovative variations were developed, seeds, cereals, and cuttings would be distributed to farmers for widespread propagation. New knowledge on nutrition, soil management, tilling strategies, and crop rotation would also be relayed to the farmers so they could improve crop yields for a growing nation. Lincoln’s vision of bringing scientific benefits to the people would begin.

Lincoln called Agriculture his “people’s department.” Isaac Newton—no relation to the famed English astronomer, mathematician, and physicist—was an agriculturist who had made acquaintance with Lincoln while selling farm products to the White House. Derided early on for his lack of formal education, Lincoln took a liking to him, perhaps because he could relate to his initiative and self-schooling. Newton turned out to be well suited for the job.

Near the end of 1862, Newton sent a 54-page handwritten account to Lincoln, the first annual report from the Department. After describing the history of agriculture through the ages, Newton reported excellent harvests of crops across the northern states even with the loss of many men serving the war effort. He noted that the North, with its free labor, was faring better than the South, whose slave labor system harmed fertility and agricultural yield.

Newton went on to tout agricultural science advancements made by inventor Jethro Tull (horse drawn hoe, mechanical seed drill, improved plow), chemist Sir Humphrey Davy (Elements of Agricultural Chemistry), agricultural writer Arthur Young (Annals of Agriculture), and the reapers of John Henry Manny and Cyrus McCormick, with which Lincoln was already familiar from his legal career. Reiterating Lincoln’s Wisconsin speech, Newton noted that agricultural progress requires “a more thorough Knowledge and practice…as a Science and an Art.”

All of this would eventually lead to a more thorough education of the farmer in physical science and political economy. In too much of the nation, Newton wrote, farmers continued to cultivate depleted soil, thus necessitating the application of manure as fertilizer in an unwinnable battle against soil nutrient exhaustion. Using science, including proper tilling practices, crop rotation, and nutrient preservation, he argued, agriculture could provide greater consistency and magnitude of production for decades to come.

Lincoln had successfully turned his much-maligned farming drudgery into a department that would transform American agriculture.

[Adapted from a work in progress]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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