A Kind of Fate: Agricultural Change in Virginia, 1861-1920. (Book Reviews).

A Kind of Fate: Agricultural Change in Virginia, 1861-1920. By G. Terry Sharrer. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, c. 2000. Pp. xxiv, 256. $49.95, ISBN 0-8138-2569-5.)

Virginia was the main battlefield of the American Civil War. The presence of thousands of soldiers in a rural state was bound to alter agriculture irrevocably. Yet historians have paid little attention to the impact of wartime destruction and its aftermath on southern agriculture. G. Terry Sharrer, the curator of health sciences at the Smithsonian Institution and an agricultural economist, fills this gap. A Kind of Fate traces the agricultural history of two generations of Virginians from 1861 to 1920. Using contemporary farm journals, state and federal agricultural records, letters, diaries, and newspapers, Sharrer examines the disastrous effects of the Civil War on Virginia agriculture and the state's twentieth-century recovery.

The first three chapters of this book trace the fate of Virginia agriculture from 1861 through the early 1890s. Not only did Virginians lose $457 million in property and 15,000 men during the Civil War (p. 4), but the presence of the armies also unleashed livestock diseases that had a lasting effect on the state's farmers. Equine glanders and hog cholera, both apparently unknown before the war, wreaked havoc on the state's work stock and hog farming both during and after the war. These epizootics had a ripple effect: not only did they reduce farmers' profits, but the spread of hog cholera, for example, meant that families ate less meat, which led to malnutrition for many.

The postwar recovery was limited in part by late-nineteenth-century farmers' lack of understanding of microbiology as it applied to agriculture. As Virginians tried to recover after the war, they shifted to new and more diverse crops. The introduction of new crops in turn led to the emergence of new forms of plant disease. Many farmers mistakenly believed these problems were a result of poor soil fertility. Sharrer paints a bleak picture of postwar Virginia as a place where, no matter how hard they worked, most farm families never did better than sheer survival.

In the final three chapters of the book, Sharrer examines the development of the germ theory of disease and new research in plant biology that revolutionized farming. He traces the dissemination and application of this information through agricultural experiment stations and the work of Country Life Movement reformers. By 1915, says Sharrer, there were lots of new learning opportunities for Virginia farmers, most of them financed by the taxpayer. Thousands of Virginia farmers prospered in this new environment.

This is not a social history, although Sharrer does give some attention to Virginia farmers' ambivalence about late-nineteenth-century farmer movements, the fate of freedpeople, and the work of rural reformers in early-twentieth-century Virginia. His major focus is on the development of agricultural science and technology and the evolution of institutions designed to help farmers apply the new knowledge. The book also contains two very good photo essays and several useful charts, but I would have found some maps helpful in locating the various regions he details.

A Kind of Fate, with its careful examination of the impact of the war on Virginia farming, makes important contributions to both Civil War and agricultural history. But it will also be useful to anyone studying the transformation to capitalist agriculture and to students of the turn-of-the-century American South. The book adds another layer to our growing understanding of the diversity of the rural South.

MELISSA WALKER
Converse College