"Fifty years after the Revolution, American farmers faced a crisis. The soils of the Atlantic states seemed to be failing, and some feared that the agricultural prosperity upon which the Republic was founded was threatened. Larding the Lean Earth explores the tempestuous debates that erupted between "improvers," who believed in practices that sustained and bettered the soil of existing farms, and "emigrants," who looked instead to the unbroken lands of the West as their soils gave out." "Steven Stoll here presents original research into ideas at the foundation of American conservationist thought. Drawing on dozens of journals that gave voice to the improvers' cause, he brings to life a critical political dispute that has been neglected for far too long. Focusing on two groups of farmers, in Pennsylvania and South Carolina, and analyzing the similarities and differences in their agriculture, Stoll illustrates all the larger regional concerns that the "new husbandry" faced in both free and slave states."--Jacket.