George Washington Harvests His Hemp

It’s been about two decades since I first recall someone telling me that George Washington grew hemp for smoking. The only evidence anyone has ever offered to back up this assertion is the sort that appears in Harvey Wasserman’s article “Was Washington a Gay Pot Smoker?” from March 2009:

As for smoking, I know of no significant communication among the Founders extolling their “great weed.”

But in one of his meticulous agricultural journals, dated 1765, Washington regrets being late to separate his male hemp plants from his females. For a master farmer like George, there would be little reason to do this except to make the females ripe for smoking.

The medicinal uses of cannabis were known to the ancient Chinese. Thousands of years later, it’s inconceivable American growers would not indulge in its recreational powers.

Inconceivable to some who can’t imagine life without that recreation, I suppose. But I rarely see eighteenth-century Americans doing something just because the ancient Chinese did it.

Wasserman, a twenty-first century writer, couldn’t think of a reason to separate male from female hemp plants “except to make the females ripe for smoking,” so he projected his knowledge and priorities into the mind of an eighteenth-century planter. But we don’t have to do that.

Here’s cannabis cultivation advice from the entry on cannabis in The Gardeners Dictionary, published by Philip Miller in London in 1759:

In the Choice of the Seed, the heaviest and brightest coloured should be prefered, and particular Care should be had to the Kernel of the Seed, so that some of them should be cracked to see if they have the Germ or future Plant perfect; for in some Places the male Plants are drawn out too soon from the female; i.e. before they have impregnated the female Plants with the Farina; in which Case, though the Seeds produced by these female Plants may seem fair to the Eye, yet they will not grow. . . .

The first Season for pulling the Hemp is usually about the Middle of August, when they begin to pull what they call the Fimble Hemp, which is the male Plants; but it would be much the better Method to defer this a Fortnight or three Weeks longer, until these male Plants have fully shed their Dust, without which, the Seeds will prove abortive, produce nothing if sown the next Year, nor will those concerned in the Oil Mills give any Thing for them, there being only empty Husks, without any Kernels to produce the Oil. These male Plants decay soon after they have shed their Farina.

The second Pulling is a little after Michaelmas [29 September], when the Seeds are ripe: This is usually called Karle Hemp, it is the female Plants, which were left at the Time when the male were pulled.

And here are the relevant passages from Washington’s farm diaries in 1765:

7 [August]. Began to separate the Male from the Female hemp at Do [ditto for the part of his lands he called “Muddy hole”]—rather too late.

9. Abt. 6 Oclock put some Hemp in the Rivr. to Rot.

10. Seperated my Ewes & Rams but I believe it was full late—many of the Ewes having taken Ram.

3. Finish’d Sowing Wheat at the Rivr. Plantn. i.e. in the corn ground. 123 Bushels it took to do it.

15. The English Hemp i.e. the Hemp from the English Seed was pickd at Muddy hole this day & was ripe.

Began to separate Hemp in the neck.

17. Finishd Sowing Wheat in the Corn field, which lyes over the Run at the Mill 27 Bushl.

22. Put some Hemp into the Water about 6 Oclock in the Afternoon—note this Hemp had been pulld the 8th. Instt. & was well dryed, & took it out again the 26th.

4 [September]. Began to Pull the Seed Hemp but it was not sufficiently ripe.

Thus we see Washington ordered the male hemp plants pulled a couple of weeks before the female plants in the month of August—much as described in an agricultural manual published just six years before. The “English Hemp” at Muddy hole was harvested first, the crop “in the neck” later in the month. Crops in Virginia obviously came in earlier than those in Britain.

Washington’s next step was to have the stalks put in water to rot—part of extracting the valuable fibers. As even Wasserman admits, there’s not a word in the planter’s writings to indicate Washington gave any thought to smoking the buds. Nor did The Gardeners Dictionary or other eighteenth-century British farming manuals suggest doing that, no matter what people had discovered in ancient China.

[The thumbnail above shows an image by Daniel Baxter for Whole Health Magazine, featured at The I Spot.]

Washington, Jefferson, and Gingrich on Hemp: One of These Things Doesn’t Belong

Here’s a specialized dispatch from the campaign trail off Buzzfeed yesterday:

[Newt] Gingrich fielded a number of questions about drug policy, including one from a man who said that many in the Live Free or Die state don't like the federal government's involvement in stopping weed growing operations. "Would Thomas Jefferson or George Washington be arrested for growing marijuana?" the man asked.

Gingrich responded, "I think Jefferson and George Washington would strongly discourage you from growing marijuana, and their tactics to stop you would be more violent than they would be today."

Gingrich, a historian, did not mention that both Washington and Jefferson grew hemp on their plantations.

And would therefore be subject to arrest today because of U.S. anti-marijuana laws—which was the questioner’s point.

One comment on this story noted that Gingrich is now on record as saying that the first and third Presidents “would be more violent” against illicit farmers than today’s. That won’t endear him to the folks who want to believe the Obama administration is oppressive in order to explain why he makes them nervous. All in all, this remark looks like yet another example of how Gingrich’s hunger to claim intellectual authority trumps the value of thinking through what he’s about to say.

Hemp was a vital crop in the eighteenth-century British Empire mostly because its fibers were used in making the ropes that the Royal Navy and merchant fleet needed. Britain imported a lot of raw hemp from Russia, so the imperial and colonial governments encouraged planters to grow it domestically. Washington and Jefferson were among the many planters who responded and encouraged others to do the same.

Hemp was also a local government concern. John Gray served as Boston’s Surveyor of Hemp—a quality inspector—for many years before the Revolution. He was the owner of a large ropewalk in the South End as well as brother of the province’s royal treasurer.

When the Boston Whigs started their non-importation boycott of British goods to protest the Townshend duties in 1769, they specified that people could import as much hemp as they wanted because it was important for local ship-builders and mariners. The ship caught up in the second Boston Tea Party of March 1774 had brought in hemp as well as East India Company tea; locals welcomed the former, tossed out the latter.

But I heartily doubt that the New Hampshire man who asked Gingrich about marijuana had the domestic manufacture of rope in mind. And some of the folks who commented on that item at Buzzfeed repeated myths about Washington’s hemp-farming.

TOMORROW: Washington and his hemp crop.