1. 1
CHAPTER 1
TOBACCO, THAT BEWITCHING VEGETABLE:
DISCOVERY, PROLIFERATION, AND SENTIMENTS FROM 1492 TO 1799
Little did Christopher Columbus or the Europeans who followed him realize that
the worldwide cultivation and consumption of tobacco would be among the most
significant consequences of their voyages of discovery. Tobacco became a greater
economic discovery than all the gold in the New World. It supported entire colonies,
enabled a future nation to establish its roots, and, all the while, tobacco inspired great
hatred from various segments of the population. The uproar concerning tobacco's
deleterious effect on human health did not miraculously originate in the contemporary
United States. Indeed, it emerged soon after the use began to spread around the world.
To contradict the hatred of the bewitching vegetable, many hailed it as a panacea.
Friday, 12 October 1492, proved to be momentous in history. On that day,
Christopher Columbus's expedition received from the Arawak Indians of San Salvador, as
tokens of friendship, fruit, wooden spears, and certain dried leaves that had a distinct
aroma. Subsequently, the explorers introduced the latter into European culture and, in
turn, to the rest of the world. The significance of the leaves, however, eluded Columbus's
men, and they tossed the new botanical discovery overboard, while the sailors welcomed
the fruit. Three days later the expedition encountered a solitary individual in a canoe, who
carried with him bread, water, and the same kind of leaves, which he made a great show in
offering the crew. Columbus's journal entry for 15 October indicated that he had come to
realize that these dry leaves must be something highly valued among the natives, since they
also offered him some at San Salvador as a gift. In less than a month, Columbus learned

2. 2
the purpose of these strange leaves.1
On Tuesday, 6 November, Roderigo de Jerez and Luis de Terres returned home
from a three-day mission to the Cuban interior on a search for the Grand Khan of Cathay.
A crowd followed them back to the beach and swam out to the ship. The people carried
with them parrots, reed-darts, large balls of cotton, and the dried leaves to exchange for
memorials, scraps of broken pottery or Portuguese half-farthings. Roderigo de Jerez and
Luis de Terres brought with them the discovery of a village of approximately one thousand
people, which lay twenty-five miles inland from Gibara at present day Holquin, and an
understanding of the strange dry leaves held in such high esteem by the natives. The two
had been received with great display and reverence. On their way, they encountered many
people, both men and women, with a firebrand in hand and herbs, tobacco, wrapped in
maize or palm leaves to drink the smoke thereof. Inserting one end in a nostril, they
lighted the other from a firebrand and inhaled the smoke after which they passed it to a
companion or blew on the end to keep it burning.2
1
Maurice Corina, Trust in Tobacco: The Anglo-American Struggle for Power (New
York: St. Martins Press, 1975), 41; Robert K. Heimann, Tobacco and Americans (New
York: McGraw Hill Book Company, Inc., 1960), 6; Samuel Morison, Journals and Other
Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (New York: Heritage Press,
1963), 70; Joseph Clarke Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press, 1967), 3; Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History: The
Cultures of Dependence (New York: Routledge, Inc., 1993), 37.
2
Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 6, 267; Corina, Trust in Tobacco, 41; Charles
Elton, The Career of Columbus (London: Cassell and Company, Limited, 1892), 198, 208;
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "A New Counterblast," Atlantic Monthly, December
1861, 696; G. Cabrera Infante, Holy Smoke, (New York: Harper and Row Publishers,
1985), 2, 19: Washington Irving, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (New
York: John B. Alden, 1884), 129-131; Samuel Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1944), 261; Robert, The Story of Tobacco in

3. 3
These rolled cigars were called tobacos, a name which came to be applied to the
plant from which the objects had been constructed. When a party of these Indians left on a
trip, they charged small boys with the responsibility of keeping one or more firebrands
glowing in readiness for anyone who wanted a light. Halting approximately every hour
for a smoke, the Indians traveled great distances, which they attributed to fatigue-removing
powers in tobacco. Already prepared to witness wonders, astonishment still ruled the
Spaniards as they established the first reference in history to smoking tobacco. "The
Indians," they said, "value these dry leaves as being sweet-scented and wholesome, and use
them as a sort of incense for perfuming themselves." Columbus disliked the practice, but
his crew took some seeds back with them as evidence of the finding. Columbus's
objective had been to arrive at some opulent and civilized country of the East with which
he might establish trade and from which he could carry home a quantity of oriental goods
as a rich trophy of his discovery. Little could Columbus have known the long-term
economic impact of the dry leaves and seeds that he carried back to Europe.3
Later voyagers discovered tobacco use well established in the Western
Hemisphere. The earliest origins of tobacco smoking can be dated to relics of the Mayan
society of Central America from the first century B.C. The Quinche Mayans apparently
pioneered smoke-filled-room politics. Pine torches illuminated their council chambers,
while cigars passed from mouth to mouth. Their word zig equated tobacco, while zikar
America, 3; Morison, Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of
Christopher Columbus 90; J. B. Killebrew and Herbert Myric, Tobacco Leaf (New York:
Orange Judd Publishing Company, Inc., 1934), 3.
3
Ibid. Quote from Elton, The Career of Columbus.

4. 4
represented smoking, hence the Spanish word cigarro. Later, the Aztecs of Mexico and
the Arawaks of the Amazon Valley adopted similar tobacco rituals in their religious
practices. At the time of discovery, the Europeans not only found the natives smoking but
also chewing and snuffing, which may have been older practices than smoking because
they required less elaborate preparations.4
The various methods of use became evident with each new discovery. Upon his
arrival in 1499, at Margarita Island off the coast of Venezuela, Amerigo Vespucci reported
seeing the friendly but barbarous natives chewing green leaves, tobacco, like cattle to such
an extent that they could hardly speak. This supposedly combated thirst by encouraging
salivation. The islanders carried tobacco in gourds around their necks. In 1518, Juan de
Grijalva found the prototype for the modern cigarette in use in Yucatan, while the
widespread use of the cigarette in Mexico received confirmation with Hernando Cortez's
conquering of the Aztecs. Tubes made of tortoise shell, silver, wood, reed, or clay
substituted for paper. Cortez also noted that in Mexico the cultivation of tobacco
consisted of well-established agricultural practices, while in the Antilles Islands tobacco
grew uncultivated in the wild. In 1526, Fernandez Oviedo, the Spanish supervisor of
gold-smelting in the West Indies, published a history in which he referred to the inhalation
of smoke by the natives. They inhaled the smoke through a Y-shaped tube with each
prong in a nostril, while the end lay inserted into smoldering tobacco leaves.5
4
Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 6-7, 11; Corina, Trust in Tobacco, 41.
5
Cassandra Tate, "In the 1800s, Anti-Smoking Was a Burning Issue," Smithsonian,
July 1989, 110; Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 6-8, 267; Corina, Trust in Tobacco,
41-42.

5. 5
Later explorers, also, confirmed the widespread use and varying practices utilized.
The Frenchman Cartier, who traveled to Hochelaga (Montreal) in 1535, became interested
in the smoking habits of the Iroquois. Cartier reported that the Iroquois grew a certain
herb during the summer for a year-long provision. The Indians dried the herb in the sun
and wore it around their necks wrapped in a animal skin pouch with a hollow piece of stone
or wood like a pipe, which the French dubbed a calumet. When the time to use it arrived,
they made a powder of it and put the substance into one end of the pipe, set it on fire, and
sucked the smoke. Men seemed to have a complete monopoly on tobacco use. The
Iroquois said that it kept them warm and healthy. In 1540, Fernando de Alarcon
encountered natives at the mouth of the Colorado River and the Gulf of California carrying
pipes, which they used to perfume themselves like the inhabitants of Tobago whom he had
previously encountered. The North American Indians constructed pipes primarily of clay,
wood, lobster claws, and marble. Columbus's brother, while exploring Costa Rica in
1571, found a population of tobacco chewers; and Samuel de Champlain discovered plug
tobacco users on Santa Domingo at the end of the sixteenth century. Girolamo Benzoin,
who traveled in America from 1542 to 1556, wrote of the various names given to tobacco.
The Mexicans actually called it tobacco, the North American Indians referred to its petun,
and the inhabitants of the West Indies referred to the substance as yoli.6
The discovery of tobacco by the Europeans led to its proliferation around the globe.
Shortly after Cortez's expedition in 1519, the Spaniards carried tobacco with them to Peru
6
Kellebrew and Myrick, Tobacco Leaf, 3; Corina, Trust in Tobacco, 41-42;
Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 7-8.

6. 6
and Chile. European settlers provided the first market for tobacco. Las Casas
commented in 1532 that the Spaniards of Hispanola had taken up smoking although he
could not understand what taste or profit they found in it. Furthermore, Juan de Cardenas,
a physician, wrote during the late sixteenth century that tobacco use represented a common
practice among the white men of Mexico. He lauded tobacco as a human need not only
for the sick but also for the healthy. These Spaniards first used tobacco in the form of
cigars, but later they converted to the practice of packing it into tubes of silver or reed.
The real story of the global spread began when members of Columbus's crew, Roderigo de
Jerez and Ramon Pave, the latter a monk, carried the seeds back to Spain.7
The city fathers of Ayamonte still celebrate Roderigo de Jerez as the first person to
smoke in Europe. He took up the habit neither to impress a court or to cure an illness, but
simply because he enjoyed it. In the end, this attitude became the cornerstone of tobacco's
staying power, but in the short run, this did not help de Jerez. Out of the first smoking
incident, the first legal proceeding involving tobacco developed, initiated on ecclesiastical
grounds. The smoke coming from de Jerez's mouth and nose alarmed the townspeople.
They assumed that the devil had possessed him, and de Jerez found himself a prisoner of
the Inquisition.8
Soon afterward, farmers began to grow tobacco as a medicine to help people relax;
7
Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 15, 25; Corina, Trust in Tobacco, 42;
Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 261; Infante, Holy Smoke, 12.
8
Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America, 3-4; Heimann, Tobacco and Americans,
21-22, 26; Corina, Trust in Tobacco, 42-43; Tate, "In the 1800s, Anti-Smoking was a
Burning Issue," 108.

7. 7
and smoking for pleasure became a practice concentrated around seaports. While the use
quickly traveled to Portugal, it apparently took more than fifty years for it to spread north
of the Pyrenees. Apart from an isolated reference by a Belgian physician in 1554 about
growing it in his garden, the records of Andre Thevet and Jean Nicot seem to offer the
earliest evidence of the spread of tobacco to other European countries. During this time,
the plant flourished in the royal gardens of Portugal and Spain. Europeans' single-minded
pursuit of gold slowed the spread of tobacco use. Educated Europeans despised the
unbaptized Indians, and proved slow in adopting the custom of smoking or chewing
tobacco. Consequently, they initially failed to grasp the commercial potential of the
plant.9
By the middle of the sixteenth century, however, tobacco's spread began and once
commenced never stopped. Tobacco came to be considered as a divinely sent remedy for
all ailments of the human body and was used in powders, unguents, cathartics, clysters, and
dentifrices. As Joseph Clarke Robert phrased it in The Story of Tobacco in America, "A
disease ridden world rushed to worship at the shrine of the leaf." Christian clerics labeled
tobacco rituals as unacceptable black magic, while at the same time the Christian
apothecaries accepted tobacco medicine as brown magic. Therein lay the wedge that
pried open the Old World market.10
This wedge cut the path for tobacco's entry into France and Portugal, which pried
open the doors to the world. Andre Thevet brought the first tobacco, which he described
9
Ibid.
10
Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America, 4; Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 34.

8. 8
as a natural reliever of stress, to France in 1556, but Jean Nicot generally receives official
credit. Thevet, a Protestant, fled France for Brazil to avoid religious persecution, but he
returned in 1556 and planted tobacco seeds in his garden at Angouleme. Four years later
in 1560, Jean Nicot, the French ambassador to the court of Portugal, became interested in
the curative properties. Damiao de Goes, archivist for the Portuguese King, cultivated
tobacco in the royal gardens and called it "the holy herb of miraculous power." Nicot
received his seeds from de Goes. Nicot sent those seeds to Catherine de Medici via the
Cardinal de Lorraine with a letter stating that he had acquired an Indian herb that provided
relief for noli me tangere and fistulas that physicians called incurable. In the letter, Nicot
referred to tobacco as a panacea and a holy plant. The cardinal's gardener at Marmoustier
raised it according to Nicot's instructions. Tobacco supposedly cured many Frenchmen,
and it became popular in court circles. The botanical name for tobacco, nicotiana,
honored Nicot. Originally cultivated for medicinal purposes only, it took a half a century
for pleasure to play a part in French tobacco use.11
Once again the miraculous weed migrated from Portugal. Cardinal Prospero di
Santa Croce carried tobacco into Italy in 1561. Thereafter, its spread in Europe could not
be checked. Tobacco reached Germany in 1559, Holland in 1561, and had passed to
Switzerland, Austria, Turkey, Russia, Hungary, Poland, and Sweden by 1627. Tobacco
traveled to the Philippines by the late 1500s aboard the vessels of the Spanish explorer,
Magellan. Established regular trade in it with India existed within thirty years after
11
Higginson, "A New Counterblaste," 697; Quote from Heimann, Tobacco and
Americans, 13-14, 267; Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America, 4; Corina, Trust in
Tobacco, 42-43; Infante, Holy Smoke, 14.

9. 9
Columbus's discovery. Before the end of the 1500s, markets existed for Portuguese
tobacco in Japan, China, and the islands of Malay Archipelago, while early in the 1600s,
Portugal added Arabia and Abyssinia to its tobacco trade route. After Bartolomeo Diaz,
Vasco da Gama, and Cabral opened the sea lane around the Cape of good Hope, Portugal
enjoyed a monopoly along the east and west coasts of Africa. Tobacco penetrated that
continent as barter for the slave traders. By 1615, an Englishman described the trade as
"existing in America from Canada to the Straits of Magellan, in Africa from Barbary to the
Cape of Good Hope and on to the Red Sea, and in most kingdoms of the East Indies."12
Tobacco soon made its way to England. The first mention of tobacco in England
was in July 1565, when Sir John Hawkins issued a report about its use in Florida.
Hawkins wrote that "the Floridians, when they travel, have a kind of herb dried, which with
a cane and an earthen cup in the end, with a fire and the dried herbs put together, do suck
through the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith
they live four or five days without meat or drink." Later that same year, Hawkins carried
tobacco to England.13
The year 1586 proved pivotal in tobacco's popularization. Sir Walter Raleigh had
obtained permission in 1584, from Queen Elizabeth, to plant a colony in the New World.
He sent two vessels, which brought back favorable reports from the country along with
12
Quote from C.T., Advice on How to Plant Tobacco in England (London: Nicholas
Okhs, 1615; reprint, number 559, The English Experience Series. New York: Da Capo
Press, Inc. 1973), 12; Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 21, 25-26, 34, 38.
13
Quote from G. Melvin Herndon, William Tatham and the Culture of Tobacco (Coral
Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1969), 133-135, 248.

10. 10
examples of pearls and tobacco, as well as three "barbarian savages" to demonstrate the
Indian practice of smoking. Raleigh supervised the founding of the Roanoke Island
Colony, and there he learned how to smoke. Thomas Harriot, a scientist, served as his
instructor in the use of clay pipes. Harriot had written of the native plant that the Indians
cultivated and ground into a powder, which they placed in pipes, then set on fire, and
sucked the smoke. Harriot claimed that tobacco purged gross humours and opened all the
pores and passages of the body. Its use, he wrote, preserved the body from obstructions.
His proof lay in the assumption that the natives did not suffer from the afflictions of the
English. In 1586, Sir Francis Drake's flotilla returned from the New World with both
more tobacco and the survivors of Roanoke Island, who had adopted the habit from the
Indians. These people returned with the paraphernalia used with tobacco and an
acceptance of its general use for pleasure, but it took the high-profile Raleigh to make the
habit popular.14
Raleigh's smoking became the rage and talk of Elizabethan court circles. He
arranged for the planting of some "Nicotiana Rustica" in Ireland and later at Winchombe in
Gloucestershire and helped make smoking fashionable. Even the ladies around the court
began using pipes. Queen Elizabeth tried a pipe, but experienced an attack of nausea
which some attributed to a plot to poison her. The English used the Indian style of
handing a pipe from hand to hand throughout a group. The upper class relied on pipes of
14
Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America, 4-5; Corina, Trust in Tobacco, 33-34;
Herndon, William Tatham and the Culture of Tobacco, 133-135, 248; Heimann, Tobacco
and Americans, 17, 267; George Louis Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1908; reprint, Gloucester, Mass: Peter
Smith, 1959), 78.

11. 11
silver, and the lower ranks settled for those constructed of straw or walnut shell. The
English took up this habit despite exceedingly high prices that resulted in tobacco being
worth its weight in silver. The restrained elements of the country verbally denounced the
exaggerated displays of the fashionable young men who strutted down the aisle of St.
Paul's exhibiting tricks. The popularity of tobacco, nevertheless, flourished.15
Paul Hentzner traveled throughout England in 1598, and Monsieur Mission, a
hundred years later. Both referred to a perpetual use of tobacco. Mission suspected that
this practice rendered "the generality of Englishmen so taciturn, so thoughtful, and so
melancholy." By 1614, over seven thousand stores in London sold tobacco and the
cigar-store Indian had already appeared on the scene. Elegant ladies adopted a pose for
formal paintings that depicted them with pipe and snuff box in hand. Rochefort, a French
traveler, wrote in 1672 "that it was the general custom in the English homes to set pipes on
the table in the evening for females as well as males of the family and to provide children's
luncheon-baskets with a well-filled pipe to be smoked at school under the directing eye of
the master." By the time of the great plague in 1665, common belief held that smoking
afforded protection from the dire affliction. Boys at Eton College smoked daily during
the plague under penalty of a house master's whip for not participating.16
Tobacco's proliferation in England can also be measured in some not-so-favorable
15
Arthur Pierce Middleton, Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in
the Colonial Era (Newport News, VA: The Mariner's Museum, 1953), 94; Robert, The
Story of Tobacco in America, 5; Higginson, "A New Counterblaste," 697; Corina, Trust in
Tobacco, 34.
16
Quotes from Higginson, "A New Counterblaste," 697; Corina, Trust in Tobacco, 40.

12. 12
comments. In 1703, Lawrence Spooner wrote that "the sin of the Kingdom in the
intemperate use of tobacco swelleth and increaseth so daily that I can compare it to nothing
but the waters of Noah that swelled fifteen cubits above the highest mountains." The
Spectator described the snuff box as a rival to the fan among ladies in 1711. The belles of
Bath were pictured as entering the water in full bathing costume, each provided with a
small floating basket to hold a snuff box, a kerchief, and a nose gay. In 1797, Dr. Clarke
complained of the handing about of the snuff box in churches during worship "to the
scandal of the religious people." He also resented the large quantity of saliva ejected in all
directions, which prevented kneeling in prayer. Not in England or in Europe, however,
would "My Lady Nicotine" place her throne. The colonies of the New World enjoyed this
dubious honor.17
At the time of Virginia's founding, tobacco supplies in England arrived via the
Spanish-American colonies. Approximately ten years before the first shipment from
Virginia reached London, James I attempted to crush the market by ordering his High
Treasurer, the Earl of Dorset, to raise the duty on imported leaf from two pence per pound
to six shillings and eight pence per pound. A recent war with Spain left James intent on
stifling a resumption of smoking, which continued throughout the conflict in spite of a
blockade. Smuggling and the growing of English crops kept the habit supplied. The
English indulgence in Spanish-American tobacco led James I to author The Counterblaste
to Tobacco three years before the founding of Virginia. Sources agree that had he known
in 1606, when he issued the letters patent to the London and Plymouth adventurers, that the
17
Ibid. Quotes from Higginson, "A New Counterblaste," 697.

13. 13
resulting economy in Virginia would be tied to tobacco, he probably would not have issued
the charter. The Jamestown colony intended to supply gold, silver, naval stores, wines,
iron, potash, and silk, products that England had to import in great quantities from other
countries. These did not materialize. The great economic find in Virginia consisted of
tobacco, which in future years resulted in a chain of plantations strung along the river
ironically named for the most famous hater of tobacco, James I.18
Before the construction of the first plantation, however, a leader was needed to
discover tobacco's potential in Virginia. John Rolfe, born in Heachem, England in 1585,
arrived at the Jamestown Colony on 24 May 1610, as a member of Lord De La War's party
that met the famine and disease-ridden settlers on the James River leaving for
Newfoundland. Rolfe witnessed the Indians cultivating the native variety, Nicotiana
Rustica. Rolfe, however, liked the West Indian Nicotiana Tobacum and found the Rustica
too strong and biting. He married Pocahontas in 1611, and began studying the Indian
method for tobacco cultivation. Convinced that Nicotiana Tobacum would grow in the
region, Rolfe had some seeds brought from Trinidad. He planted the seeds in 1612, and as
Joseph Clarke Robert stated, "never was a marriage of soil and seed more fruitful."
Rolfe's first shipment set sail for England in 1613, on board the Elizabeth. Endowed with
a native soil and climate well suited to tobacco growth, the Virginians benefitted from the
fact that Europe had become habituated to tobacco a generation earlier. The high prices
18
Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System, 85-86; Corina, Trust in Tobacco,
31-32; Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America, 6; ibid., The Tobacco Kingdom:
Plantation, Market, and Factory in Virginia and North Carolina, 1800-1860 (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1938; reprint, Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, 1965), 4.

14. 14
that prevailed in England bore practically no relation to the comparatively moderate cost of
production, which greatly stimulated the industry. The discovery constituted the most
momentous economic development in the history of seventeenth-century Virginia. It
solved the problem of finding a satisfactory product to ship to the "home" market in barter
for essential goods.19
Rolfe blended his plant with seeds from Venezuela and developed a new curing
process, which made the leaf even more popular in England. During 1615-1616, only
2,300 pounds of tobacco sailed from the English colonies to England compared to 50,000
pounds of the Spanish. By this time, however, tobacco had established itself as a money
crop, and local production focused almost exclusively on its cultivation. Virginians
placed plants in every nook and cranny, even the streets and marketplaces. By 1618, the
colony shipped 20,000 pounds to England, and in 1619, Virginia surpassed the Spanish
colonies in the amount of tobacco exported to England. The mother country was initially
disappointed that the only fruit of the New World was tobacco. Early English commercial
and fiscal policy toward tobacco developed out of a belief that the plant was harmful and
that the colony should be diverted from its production. The Virginia Company vigorously
resisted the concentration on a single crop. They shared James I's view of smoking and
feared that "the deceivable weed, which served neither for necessity or for ornament to life
might prove to be a passing fancy." Thomas Dale, the deputy governor, feared another
19
Robert, The Tobacco Kingdom, 3-4; ibid., The Story of Tobacco in America, 6-8;
Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System, 86; Corina, Trust in Tobacco, 31-32;
Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 267.

15. 15
starving time and mandated the growing of two acres of corn for every acre of tobacco.20
Persistent efforts continued to divert the colonies to the production of other
commodities. James I stated in 1624 that the colony would not prosper if it relied on
tobacco alone. In 1627, Charles I mirrored the sentiments of his father in a letter to the
governor and council of Virginia. He stated that it troubled him that the colony produced
no substantial commodity and was built wholly on smoke. Both of these requests for
change occurred after the colonies received a virtual monopoly from the crown. In 1620,
the government had forced English growers to cease the cultivation of tobacco, and in
1623, the Virginia and Bermuda companies received their monopoly by agreeing to restrict
tobacco shipments to England alone. With the exception of the English Civil War, this
remained the case until the Revolutionary War. The colonial industry grew at a rate that
worried English officials who viewed tobacco as a social evil, administrators who feared
food crops would be neglected, and planters who wanted to preserve extremely high prices.
By 1630, 500,000 pounds arrived at English ports from the New World.21
In 1631, the Privy Council instructed the West Indies, Bermudas, and Virginia to
curtail the production of tobacco because its great abuse notoriously devitalized both body
and courage. At the same time, however, Connecticut was settled in 1633 and tobacco
production began at Windsor, while George Calvert led the settlement of Maryland in 1634
20
Quote from Middleton, Tobacco Coast, 94; Robert, The Story of Tobacco in
America, 8-9; ibid., The Tobacco Kingdom, 5; Corina, Trust in Tobacco, 32; Beer, The
Origins of the British Colonial System, 86.
21
Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America, 9-10; Beer, The Origins of the British
Colonial System, 90.

16. 16
with an expressed purpose of raising tobacco and creating a haven for Catholicism.
Despite new tobacco lands being opened, Charles I wrote to Virginia in 1636 and 1637,
urging the colony to abandon tobacco and begin raising staples like hemp, flax, and
especially cotton. His instructions fell on deaf ears even though a collapse in prices
occurred in the 1630s, which led the planters to cut back on production and concentrate on
quality. Exports to England reached 1.4 million pounds in 1640.22
The colonists desired direct trade with the European continent, which was contrary
to mercantilism, and illegally traded with the Dutch during the English Civil War of the
1640s. The Navigation Acts of 1660 restricted the colonists to trading with England and
her dominions and attempted to curb this illegal trade. Even though the Acts contributed
to a depression in the tobacco lands from 1660 to 1680, colonists generally obeyed them.
All of the instructions of the crown against tobacco gained little attention because it
represented the most remunerative crop. Less bulky and heavy in proportion to value than
other staple commodities, tobacco better stood the heavy freight charges to Europe.
Inertia also played a key role. Even after initially high prices fell, the colonies did not
divert. Also, by the end of the seventeenth-century, British tobacco policy contained no
hint of moral opposition to the leaf, and no significant effort to curtail the tobacco industry.
The revenue proved too precious to a financially insecure crown.23
Within a century and a half of Columbus being given the strange dry leaves,
22
Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 267; Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial
System, 91, 95, 99; Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America, 9-14.
23
Ibid.

17. 17
tobacco had spread throughout virtually the entire world among men and women alike.
The voyages of discovery carried it around the globe, while English troops transported it
across Europe during the Thirty-Years War. As a gift from the New World, it proved
more valuable than gold. Its popularity spread despite an attempt to unite all Europe
against this indulgence during the seventeenth-century. Tobacco opponents and
proponents vigorously championed their positions on tobacco, whether as a panacea or one
of the sons of Satan. On the one hand, critics denounced it as the fertile progenitor of all
things physically injurious or morally contemptible. On the other, its use became
regarded as innocent, wholesome, pleasing, and comforting, adding to the happiness, while
subtracting nothing from the health of the body or from the elevation of the morals or the
clearness of the intellectual faculties. Kings, clergymen, and businessmen alternately
tried to tear down or raise up "My Lady Nicotine" as she sat proudly atop her throne in
Virginia.24
Although it grew wild in the New World, tobacco had represented an unknown
commodity in the Old. Europeans assumed that the natives received protection from
something in their natural environment because they possessed uncommonly good health
compared to themselves. Physicians, sailors, sages, and charlatans placed great faith in
tobacco and included it in an expansive list of treatments and as a cure for various diseases.
In 1500, Pedro Alvarez Cabrel, a Portuguese explorer, described tobacco as a holy herb
that could cure ulcerated abscesses, fistulas, sores, inveterate polyps, and many other
24
Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 261; Corina, Trust in Tobacco, 43; Higginson,
"A New Counterblast," 698; Killebrew and Myrick, Tobacco Leaf, 22.

18. 18
ailments. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, metaphysician, diplomat, and historian, imbued
tobacco with invaluable medicinal properties. Herbert wrote in his autobiography that he
had used it as a remedy against certain rheums and catarrhs. Priest Bernardino de
Sahagun, missionary to the Mexican Indians for sixty-one years, became the first person to
detect the difference between Nicotiana Rustica and Nicotiana Tobacum. He attributed
healing powers to tobacco for curing abscesses, sores, colds, snakebites, chills,
convulsions, skin eruptions, and internal disorders. Some explorers to South America
claimed that tobacco cured the wounds made by poisoned arrows. Nicolas Barre, a
member of the French colonizing group to Brazil in 1555, wrote that the natives sucked the
juice and inhaled the smoke of a plant they called petun. So doing allowed them to endure
hunger for eight or nine days. Another member of the expedition personally attested to
the plant's capacity as an appetite suppressant.25
Monardus, the Spaniard, likewise published a commentary on the extensive
medicinal qualities of tobacco. Monardus listed ailments that tobacco cured, including
headache, toothache, diseases of the breast, old coughs, asthma, joint pain, swellings, green
wounds and ulcers. Supposedly, it represented the supreme treatment for gangrene. He
claimed that in order to prove the claims, King Phillip II had injured the throat of a dog and
put hunter's poison in. Tobacco juice was then poured into the wound which was bound
with leaves; the dog healed. Juan de Cardenas maintained in the late sixteenth-century
that the soldiers in Mexico kept off privation, cold, hunger, and thirst by smoking, while all
25
Higginson, "A New Counterblast," 697; Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 9, 11,
13-15, 21, 23; Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System, 78; Tate, "In the 1800s,"
110; Goodman, Tobacco in History, 44.

19. 19
the inhabitants of the West Indies alleviated their discomforts by the smoke of this blessed
and medicinal plant. By the end of the New World's first century, herbalists and
physicians of Europe hailed tobacco as a panacea. Many of them had never so much as
seen a leaf of the plant. Prescriptions abounded all over Europe for asthma, gout, catarrah,
consumption, headache, and virtually everything else. Tobacco received acclaim as "the
most sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of man." Seldom
was it mentioned at this time without some reverent epithet. Each nation devised its own
pious name for this "divine plant and canonized vegetable."26
In 1602, Roger Marbecke penned A Defense of Tobacco, which constituted his
reply to the tract Work for Chimney-Sweepers: A Warning to Tobacconists. Following
the prevailing medical theory of the four humors, Marbecke pronounced that some
diseased by the dropsie, moist complexions, and maladies growing of superfluities of
humors received great help through tobacco use. He further stated that tobacco was good
for the scurvy, weak stomachs, rheumatic fluxes, and especially for poison. Tobacco
preserved the mouth, stomach, and throat, while keeping them cleaner and sweeter than
normal. The fume, according to the author, constituted no importance and possessed no
ability to do any great good or ill at all. Marbecke dismissed the idea that tobacco's great
heat and dryness posed risks by stating that hotter and drier things like pepper, ginger,and
26
Ibid. C.T., Advice on How to Plant Tobacco in England, 13-14; Quotes from
Higginson, "A New Counterblast," 697. The "holy" names assigned to tobacco included:
France-herbe sainte, herbe sacree, herbe propre a tous maus, panacee antarctique;
Italy-herba santa croce; Germany-heilig wundkraut; botanists-herba panacea, herba
sanctia; Gerard in his "Herbal"-sana sancta Indorum; Spenser in the "Faerie Queene" bids
his lovely Belphoebe" gather it as divine tobacco;" Lilly the Euphuist calls it "our holy herb
Nicotian."

20. 20
cloves received regular use with no ill effects. Tobacco cleared the head so that a man
could easily think. It helped to make overweight men lean because it dulled the appetite.
Tobacco helped the stomach by relaxing it of overmuch moisture, which was considered
bad for this anatomical area. Tobacco's heat also assisted the stomach by taking away
cold, which hindered digestion. Tobacco by its curing faculty accomplished a great good
for man by taking away the cause of the ague as other purgations did. When taken by a
sick person, tobacco drew the sickness out with itself, while it did no harm to the healthy
humors as it left them clear an unspotted. Tobacco removed the moisture that should be
given to the dryness of melancholy, which kept all things in good tune and temper and
contributed to wisdom. Marbecke, however, stated that tobacco must be taken in
moderation like wine, because overuse of any good thing generated bad results. Also, he
presented that abuse by the user should not bring dispraise on the otherwise good object
that is abused.27
Another commentary concerning the use of English tobacco, Advice on How to
Plant Tobacco in England, was composed by an author known only as C.T. in 1615. This
publication possessed little relation to an instruction manual on how to cultivate the leaf.
C.T. began by bemoaning that "the treasure of this land(England) is vented for smoke."
He, however, went on to state that tobacco was somewhat tolerable because it kept many
ships and mariners employed, added knowledge of the West Indies, and bred good
mariners. The people should look after the English treasury by teaching English citizens
27
Rober Marbecke, A Defense of Tobacco (London: Richard Field, 1602; reprint,
number 33, The English Experience Series. New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1968) 11-13,
16-17, 19-21, 23, 54, 65.

21. 21
how to sow, plant, and perfect this "drug." This statement had a direct relationship to the
fact that tobacco was being sold for its weight in silver. The author stated that if taken in
smoke then tobacco helped headaches, vertigo, dizziness, all pains of the joints, all
affections of the head, watering of the eyes, toothache, kept off gout, and it took away
redness of the face. If taken at sea, tobacco assisted those with the burning fever, scurvy,
it opened obstructions, and treated the falling sickness profitably. Vomiting could be
cured with the syrup, while the oil that drops from a pipe killed tetters.28
According to C.T., "God hath given the herb for a remedy to those poor people that
lack salt, wine, and spice, that often swim in rivers and dive under water, that go naked and
are beaten with rainshowers, that feed abundantly on fruits, that suffer hunger and thirst,
and that live in a region violently hot." He stated, however, "that in England we use wine,
spices, and salt with our meat, powder flesh and fish with it, and thereby dry up and suck
out the corrupt and harmful moisture. We have strong beer and ale, cover our bodies with
garments, and are pressed with cold for three quarters of the year, so we do not need such
drying fume at all." C.T., however, supported his belief in the medicinal use because
those with decaying bodies, older people, those people oppressed with moisture, those
beset with a cough, those that have cold stomachs, and those inclined to the gout could all
use it as a singular remedy.29
Others of the day also expounded on the great qualities of that wonderful herb.
Clufins used it to treat old putrid ulcers, gangrene, scabies, and clouds in the eyes. Gerald
28
C.T. Advice on How to Plant Tobacco in England, 2-3, 16.
29
Ibid., 18-19.

22. 22
in his history of plants highly recommended the use of tobacco. For deep wounds and
punctures it brought up the flesh speedily, while for simple cuts it kept the corruption out
and drew the lips of the wound together. Tobacco cured dizziness, migraine headaches,
coughs, and asthma. Spaniards and Indians used tobacco because it opened the body and
let out the heat by the pores. It helped avoid sperfluous moisture due to eating fruits,
drinking water, and lack of salt, while it stayed both hunger and thirst and refreshed them
after great travel and hard work. Spanish physicians and priests cured sores, ulcers, and
the venom of poison arrows by mixing it with sea water. The people of Virginia said that
God created man, woman, maize, and then tobacco. The Virginians believed that when in
danger of drowning in foul water that if they threw tobacco into the water then the billow
would fall and grow less. Captain Underhill of the Pequot War boasted that he received
his assurance of salvation "while enjoying a pipe of that good creature, tobacco." Oliver
Cromwell supported tobacco use. His soldiers blew smoke in the face of Charles I and
then at Cromwell's funeral they smoked in his honor. This praise even made it to the stage
in Henry Fielding's The Grub Street Opera in 1731. In his work, Fielding claimed that
doctors, lawyers, and soldiers all owed their skill to tobacco.30
The church controversy, which revolved largely around the uncleanliness of
churches and the odor, was settled in the affirmative for tobacco. This followed many
early papal bulls condemning the use. In 1669, Benedeto Stella wrote:
The use of tobacco is necessary for priests,
monks, friars, and other religious who must
30
Ibid., 12-15; Quote from Higginson, "A New Counterblast," 698; Richard Harp,
"The Poisonous Weed," Journal of American Culture, 11 (Winter 1988): 59.

23. 23
and desire to lead a chaste life, and repress
those sensual urges that sometimes assail them.
The natural cause of lust is heat and humidity.
When this is dried out through the use of tobacco
these libidinous urges are not felt so powerfully.
This support followed the fact that many popes took up the habit. In 1725, Pope Benedict
XIII permitted the use of tobacco in Saint Peter's, while in 1779, the papacy opened its own
tobacco factory. The luster of tobacco faded by the end of the eighteenth century, but it
continued to be included in the materia medica. Many Victorian physicians believed that
heated smoke of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar killed germs. Numerous people also believed in
its ability as a disinfectant and a prophylactic. The praise of tobacco, however, was
balanced by the attacks leveled against it.31
Anti-tobacco sentiments in the 1500s were limited and centered around its heathen
origin. In 1541, Girolamo Benzoin, an Italian, traveled to Central America and wrote his
description of tobacco use by the natives. "They hold the smoke in as long as they can.
There are some who take so much of it that they fall down as if they were dead and remain
for the greater part of a day or night unconscious. See what a pestiferous and wicked
poison from the devil it is." Manuel de Nobrega, who Robert Heimann aptly termed a
"conscientious objector," journeyed to Brazil in 1549, to convert the heathen natives. He
stated that whites should not use tobacco even if they liked it because it imitated the
heathen unbelievers. Even if needed for medical purposes a person should not use it,
because saving the heathen mattered more. Until the end of the 1500s, physicians
prescribed tobacco for medicinal purposes only and frowned on its use for pleasure or
31
Quote from Goodman, Tobacco in History, 77-78; Tate, "In the 1800s," 110.

24. 24
relaxation. Only as a medicinal object did tobacco receive serious attention from the
Europeans. Writers of the time slighted tobacco because of its association with heathen
ritual and, therefore, in the sight of God-fearing Christians constituted evil. Individuals
that smoked for pleasure during this century were made to feel a sense of sin.32
While the beginning of the 17th century saw tobacco consumption for sybaritic
purposes begin, it also witnessed the start of true literary opposition. The increased use
generated strong opposition based on sanitary, moral, and economic grounds. Some felt it
a wasteful expense, an unproductive consumption, and a drainer of England's precious
metals because it reduced the credit balance from trade with Spain. Malynes complained
that when tobacco was imported nothing but smoke remained. He stated that tobacco cost
high rates and hindered the importation of bullion. Also, it caused home commodities to
be sold at a loss by the buyers of tobacco, which caused the price of commodities to be
abated and the realm to lose money.33
The previously mentioned literary work, Work for Chimney Sweepers: A
Warning to Tobacconists, was published in 1602. Penned anonymously under the name
Philaretes, this work represented the first major literary attack on tobacco use. According
to the author, no method or order existed in the use or custom of tobacco and no good could
come of anything without order. Immoderate and disorderly usages generated offense.
While tobacco received sanctity as a holy herb in Europe, Philaretes stated that its pagan
32
Quotes from Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 10, 5, 20, 26; Corina, Trust in
Tobacco, 43.
33
Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System, 79-80.

25. 25
origins among the heathen labelled it as a food of the devil. "This herb seemed to be first
found out and invented by the devil, and first used and practiced by the devils priests, and
therefore not to be used by us Christians. It stinks in a high degree that it breeds great
offense to nature. It is fiery, hellish, burning, scorching, and out of Pluto's forge."34
According to the work, the natural offices and functions of the body were
perverted, while the mouth, throat, and stomach became sinks for the filth and superfluous
excrements of the whole body. Tobacco's attack on the stomach prevented good
nourishment. Tobacco dried the natural moisture and destroyed the natural heat of the
body, which resulted in sterility, barrenness, crudities, rheumes, infinite maladies, and
great stores of undigested and crude humors. An augmenter of melancholy, tobacco
caused many great diseases and hurtful impressions on the human body. The weed was
not void of venom and it seemed to be an enemy to the life of man. Violent vomits, great
gnawings, torments of the guts, defect of feeling, loss of sight, and giddiness of the head all
proved its danger to those in good health. Tobacco possessed a stupefying and
benumbing quality according to the author.35
Generated by "the wisest fool in Christendom," the next and most famous literary
assault on tobacco, "A Counterblaste to Tobacco," was disseminated in 1604 by James I.
Also authored anonymously under the name of Phiaretes, James considered papism and
tobacco to be the biggest evils facing his realm and he determined to cure his kingdom of
34
Infante, Holy Smoke, 112; Quotes from Arbecke, A Defense of Tobacco, 9-12,
17-18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 32, 38, 43, 49, 57, 61-62; Goodman, Tobacco in History, 76-77.
35
Ibid.

26. 26
this evil weed. The Counterblaste also served as an attack on Sir Walter Raleigh, who
James personally loathed, for making fashionable in England a custom so vile and stinking,
which received derivation from barbarous and unclean Indians. It constituted a miracle to
James how the use of what he called a common herb that grew anywhere, springing from
so vile a ground as godless Indians, and brought in by a father so generally hated was still
alive.36
James began with a discourse on how the valor of the English in wars had provided
them with peace. Peace had provided them with wealth, while peace and wealth brought
out a general sluggishness that made them wallow in all sorts of idle delights and soft
delicacies. The clergy had become lazy and negligent. The gentry and nobility were sold
to their private delights. According to James it fell to the king to purge the
"politickebody" of all its diseases, but there existed some corruptions so base that they
were too low for the law and too meane for the king to look at. They were, however,
corruptions as well as the great ones. "An ant is an animal as well as an elephant," while
"a toothache is a disease as well as the plague." For these base corruptions the general
populace must act as the physician and in James's opinion there existed no more base and
hurtful a corruption than the vile use of taking tobacco.37
James next attacked the origins of tobacco. It was not brought into the country by
36
Quote from Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 47; Robert, The Story of Tobacco in
America, 5-6; Tate, "In the 1880s," 108; Infante, Holy Smoke, 112; Corina, Trust in
Tobacco, 33; Harp, "The Poisonous Weed," 59.
37
James I, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, (London: R.B., 1604; reprint, number 181,
The English Experience Series. New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1969), 2-4.

27. 27
a king, great conqueror, or learned doctor, but by barbarous Indians to be a preservative or
an anti-dote for the pockes, a filthy disease that these barbarians were subject to because of
the unclean constitution of their bodies. Just as it had been the Indians that brought his
vile disease into Christendom, so likewise they had delivered the vile anti-dote. Three of
the savages traveled as guests to England to demonstrate tobacco's use. James thought it a
pity that they had died, but the custom had survived. For certainly as such customs that
trace their origin from a godly or honorable ground and received importation by some
worthy, virtuous, and great person were held in great reverence and account. So then
something originating from barbarity should bring disgrace to a country by an
inconsiderate and childish affection for novelty.38
The people needed to consider what made them imitate the beastly manners of the
wild, godless, and slavish Indians. James asked if a people, who had disdained to imitate
Spain and France, would now abase themselves by imitating the Indians, who "are slave to
the Spaniards, refuse of the world, and as yet aliens to the Covenant of God." James
attempted to shame the English by asking why they did not also imitate the Indians by
walking naked, by wearing feathers, and by denying God and adoring the devil. James
believed that if the users reconsidered its origins they would repudiate the use of tobacco
and he called on them to consider the false and erroneous grounds that the liking of tobacco
used as a foundation. Also, they needed to consider what sins before God and foolish
vanities before the world were committed by tobacco's use.39
38
Ibid., 5-8.
39
Ibid.

28. 28
James next discussed two of the "deceitful grounds" based on the deceivable
appearance of reason. First, common belief stated that the brains of all men were
naturally cold and wet and as a result all dry and hot things including tobacco helped them.
To this James replied that the proposition and assumption received erroneous support and
therefore the conclusion also generated false results. Four complexions made up man and
although all were present in the body, each area had an affinity for a certain kind, which led
to overall harmony. Application of the contrary nature to any of these areas interrupted
their function and generated hurtful results for the whole body. James likened this
argument to saying that since the heart contained vital spirits and moved perpetually that a
man should place a heavy stone on his chest to stop the palpitation. The chest would be
bruised and the heart would gain no comfort from this contrary cure. Tobacco, according
to the author, possessed not simply a dry and hot quality, but a certain venomous faculty
joined with its heat, which made it an antipathy against nature. This antipathy received
personification in the "hateful" smell it created. The proper organ for conveying a sense
of smelling to the brain, the nose served as an infallible witness whether an odor was
healthful or hurtful to the brain.40
The second argument grounded in the deceivable appearance of reason consisted of
claims that tobacco contained the ability to purge both the head and stomach of rheumes
and distillations by spitting and voiding phlegm. James stated that the fallacy here could
easily be shown. Even as smoky vapors sucked up the sun stayed in the lowest and coldest
regions of the air and were then contracted into clouds, which turned into rain and other
40
Ibid., 8-12.

29. 29
watery meteors, so the stinking smoke sucked up by the nose and imprisoned in the cold
and moist brains was turned and cast out again in watery distillations. As a result the
person received the purging of nothing.41
Two "deceitful grounds" based on the mistaken practice of general appearance
were discussed. The first of these consisted of the argument that a whole people would
not have taken a general liking to tobacco if they had not by experience found it to be good
for them. James answered this by declaring how easily the minds of any people could be
fooled by the foolish affection of any novelty. According to James, a man could no sooner
bring any new form of apparel from beyond the seas that it spread from hand to hand not
because it contained any needful commodity, but because it became a fashion. The king
of dramatic examples stated:
let one or two of the most famous masters of
mathematics in any of the two famous
universities but constantly affirm any clear
day that they see some strange apparition
in the sky and they will be affirmed by the
greatest part of the students of that professor.
So loath will they be to be thought inferior
to their fellows either in depth of knowledge
or sharpness of vision.42
Secondly, the claim existed that by taking tobacco many found themselves cured of
diverse diseases and no man ever received harm thereby. James countered this by
claiming that some had taken tobacco when their disease was at its apex and then it
followed the natural course of declining back to health. Also, what a patient thinks and
41
Ibid.
42
Ibid., 12-16.

30. 30
the strengthening of his spirits could help cure him. If a man, however, smoked himself to
death the people said that it must have been from some other disease. "So do old harlots
thank their profession for their long lives." They said that the job was healthful, but never
mentioned the many that died in the flower of their youth. Also, old drunkards thanked
their drinking for their many years, while no mention existed of the many that drowned in
drink before they grew half as old. James referred to it as an absurdity to think that any
one thing cured all sorts of diseases, because what cured one disease likely caused harm to
the person in another instance. "Omnipotent tobacco," however received acclaim for
curing all sorts of diseases in all persons at all times.43
The author of The Counterblaste blamed tobacco for corrupting the brain and
causing over quick digestion, which filled the stomach full of crudities. When tobacco
received use at all times during the day, it weakened the head and stomach, caused the
members to become feeble, and dulled the spirits, while in the end "as a drowsie lazy
belly-god" the individual fell into a lethargy. Tobacco left an oily and unctuous kind of
soot in men that was discovered in smokers upon opening them up after death. Many in
the kingdom were no longer able to forbear the use of tobacco, like a drunk could not stand
to be sober. They became habitual users, which resulted in many sins and vanities. They
embodied the sin of lust because they could have no recreation without tobacco. It
constituted vanity and uncleanness that at the table, a place of respect, men unashamedly
sat and puffed the smoke of tobacco, which came to rest on the dishes and loomed in the
air. These people disabled themselves from the duties of the maintenance of honor and
43
Ibid.

31. 31
safety for king and commonwealth. None were able to serve in the wars that could not at
times endure the lack of food and sleep, but these individuals could not go without their
tobacco. In this custom people received disengagement from their goods. Some gentry
spent 300-400 pounds per year on "this precious stink."44
James next dealt with the social issue that came to surround tobacco use. He
affirmed that many became forced to use tobacco without desire partly because they were
ashamed to appear singular and partly to be like the man that ate garlic even though he did
not like it, so that he would not have to smell it on his friends' breath. Tobacco use
represented a point of good fellowship and anyone that refused to take a pipe among his
friends was accounted peevish and no good company at all, which he compared to the
tipplers. Moreover, a husband felt no shame to "reduce thereby his delicate, wholesome,
and clean complexioned wife to that extremitie that she must also corrupt her sweet breath
or else resolve to live in perpetual stinking torment." James called it a great contempt of
God's good gifts that the sweetness of breath received willful corruption by stinking
smoke. James told the citizens that they possessed a reason to be ashamed and to cease the
use of that novelty, which made them wondered at by all foreign civil nations and all
strangers. James closed his work with what became probably the most famous description
of tobacco and tobacco use. "A custom loathesome to the eye, hatefull to the nose,
harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof neerest
resembling the horrible stigian smoke of the pit that is bottemless.45
44
Ibid., 17-21.
45
Ibid., 22-23.

32. 32
Following The Counterblaste, William Vaughn published the Pennyless Parliament
of Threadbare Poets in 1608. Common knowledge held that keepers of brothels used
tobacco pipes as signs to indicate the nature of their houses and according to this work,
"Many, for want of wit, shall sell their freehold for tobacco pipes and red petticoats."
Vaughn accused many of losing their wits and the use of their senses through the use of
tobacco. Vaughn coupled smoking and drinking as twin vices and desired to have
common takers of tobacco thrown out of the country with those addicted to the vice of
drunkenness. Vaughn claimed that men must be mad and gone crazed in the brain to suck
the smoke of a weed. The previously mentioned author of Advice on How to Plant
Tobacco in England, C.T., supported the connection between tobacco and drinking. He
stated that taking tobacco with wine made it the cause of many accidents and diseases
because wine altered tobacco's properties.46
C.T. carried his arguments to a patriotic level. He attacked additives made by the
Spanish and Portuguese to all their tobacco, which they supposedly did to hide the bad
leaves and was claimed to be unhealthful and extremely dangerous. The author asserted
that the Spanish observed that the English liked a good color in and a biting in the nose
from their tobacco, so they added these poisons. C.T. pronounced that, while this would
not happen instantly, many thousands of Englishmen were poisoned in any one year. He
further stated that if people saw how the Spanish slaves touched their sores and pockie
ulcers with the same hand that they worked on the tobacco with, they would not so often
46
Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System, 80; C.T., Advice on How to Plant
Tobacco in England, 18.

33. 33
use tobacco. C.T. asserted that tobacco destroyed the youth that took it without cause.
Every hour of the day it made them tender and unable to endure air. Tobacco made them
dull, sleepy, brought them a toothache, marred their teeth, beget in them a drought, and as a
result a desire to drink, which he declared to be an entrance into drunkenness. The
tobacco opened the body and made way for the wine to dry up the liver. It hastened old
age, which was why the Indians forbade children to take it until they had married and had
children. James I supported these nationalistic assertions in 1620, when he commanded
planters in England to cease the production of tobacco. James declared that it was more
tolerable that it should be imported among other vanities from across the sea than tobacco
be allowed to be planted in the realm, thereby to abuse and misemploy the soil of his
kingdom.47
Dr. Tobias Venner in 1621, stated that tobacco overthrew the senses with an
astonishment and stupidity of the whole body, while that same year the House of Commons
passed a declaration that tobacco and ale were now inseparable in the base vulgar sort.
They said these two accompanied idleness, drunkenness, sickness, and the decay of estates.
Charles I inherited the views of his father, James I, and on 6 January 1631, he proclaimed
that tobacco ought to be used only as a drug and not so vainly as the evil habit of recent
times. Also, this proclamation prevented the importation of tobacco from anywhere but
the colonies. This he said prevented the vending of solid English commodities in return
for smoke. In 1635, the master of one of the Cambridge Colleges admonished all scholars
to avoid places where wine, ale, beer, or tobacco were sold, while in 1639, Charles I again
47
Ibid., 4-5, 19; Herndon, William Tatham, 252-254.

34. 34
called upon his subjects to moderate their use of tobacco. On the scientific front, Samuel
Pepys in 1665, reported in his diary that an experiment at the Royal Society showed that a
drop of the distilled oil of tobacco could kill a cat. Anti-tobacco sentiments in England
declined through the remainder of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth
century due to the English crown's dependence on the revenue it generated. The rest of
the world, however, had its own battle with the weed.48
Louis XIII prohibited the sale of tobacco in France except on prescription by a
physician. Both civil and ecclesiastical law prohibited tobacco's use in Russia. Smokers
received floggings, while the nostrils of repeat offenders were slit and persistent users were
exiled to Siberia. In India the Mogul Emperor, Jahangir, wrote a treatise against tobacco
and violators there received nose slittings. In Persia users were tortured, impaled, and/or
decapitated. In 1614, 150 people apprehended for buying and selling tobacco against the
Shogun's command were in jeopardy for their lives according to an Englishman's letter.
The Emperor of China issued an edict in 1638, that made the use or distribution a crime
punishable by decapitation. A Papal Bull in 1642, by Urban VIII threatened
excommunication for individuals who used tobacco in church. In 1690, Pope Innocent
XII did the same. The Sultan Ahmed I of Turkey ordered the noses of smokers to be
pierced with pipestems, while his son, Murad IV, became the most violent anti-smoking
monarch. Murad, who forbade smoking in 1663, prowled the streets of Istanbul
incognito. He accosted suspected sellers by begging them to sell him a small quantity at a
48
Harp, "The Poisonous Weed," 59-60; Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial
System, 80-82.

35. 35
rate in excess of market. Murad swore secrecy, but if the dealer fell for the ruse he was
beheaded on the spot by Murad. The body remained at the site as a warning to others.
Sandys, the traveller, witnessed a Turk led through the streets of Istanbul mounted on a
donkey with a tobacco pipe thrust through his nose. In 1665, Simon Paulli published an
attack on tobacco. He disapproved of any use of tobacco and called for it to be renamed
Herba Insana. Paulli advocated its total destruction.49
Tobacco received a similar, but far less violent reception among the New England
colonists. Before the Massachusetts Bay Company incorporated the settlers grew some
tobacco, while after incorporation the company strictly opposed it. On 17 April 1629,
company representatives wrote the colony's authorities announcing an order which forbade
all new settlers from planting tobacco. Old planters were allowed to continue planting
because the company feared angering them. The sale or use within the colony was
prohibited except in cases of an urgent medical need and this had to be done privately. In
1632, the colony enacted a law that prohibited the public use of tobacco under penalty of a
fine, while in 1633, tobacco users became classified
as idlers, vagrants, and unprofitable persons, a criminal offense in the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. The General Court decreed:
No person, householder, or other, shall spend
his time idly or unprofitably, under pain of such
punishment as the court shall think meet to inflict,
49
Gordon Dillon, "Thank You for Not Smoking: The Hundred Year War Against the
Cigarette," American Heritage 32 (Feb.-March 1981), 94-107; Beer, The Origins of the
British Colonial System, 82; Corina, Trust in Tobacco, 39; Heimann, Tobacco and
Americans, 26, 38; Tate, "In the 1800s," 108; Higginson, "A New Counterblast," 698;
Goodman, Tobacco in History, 77.

36. 36
and the constables of every place shall use special
diligence to take knowledge of offenders in this
kind, especially of common coasters, unprofitable,
fowlers, and tobacco takers, and are to present the names.
This decree was enforced. In 1634, the fine rose for public consumption and no one could
use tobacco even in a private home if company was present. Innkeepers were fined for
allowing the use on their premises. A prohibition, which allowed only sales at wholesale
for export, was enacted in 1635 that prevented the purchase of tobacco in the colony.
Repealed in 1637, this law returned in 1638 due to an increase in consumption. The new
law removed the ability to consume tobacco in the fields except when traveling or at meal
times under a penalty of twelve pence. Individuals could not use it in or near a house,
barn, hay, or corn rick under penalty of ten pence. A penalty of six pence was also enacted
for use in an inn unless the use happened in a private room.50
The legal code of Connecticut classified tobacco users with common idlers and
individuals hunting birds for mere pleasure. In 1647, a Connecticut act divided tobacco
users into two categories, occasional smokers or complete abstainers and those habitually
addicted to the practice. Individuals of the first class could not use tobacco if under
twenty years of age unless they possessed a certificate from a doctor to the effect that it
would be beneficial plus a license from the court. Those in the second class were
forbidden to indulge publicly or in any house if in the company of more than one person.
The law allowed no use of tobacco in open fields or the woods except on journeys of ten
50
Quote from David Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 158; Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial
System, 82-84; Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America, 105; Dillon, "Thank You for Not
Smoking," 96.

37. 37
miles or more. A citizen could smoke at the ordinary time of repast, dinner, but no more
than two people could use tobacco in the same house at the same time. This followed a
New Haven act in 1646, that imposed a fine of six pence for public tobacco use. In 1655,
a Connecticut act declared tobacco off-limits in the streets, yards, or about the houses of
any plantation or farm in the state, near or about town, or in the meeting house under
penalty of eighty-four pence per pipe or occurrence, which was given to the informer.
Those individuals who lacked the money to pay the fine received a visit to the stocks.51
Governor William Kieft, who felt it a waste of time, banned smoking in New
Amsterdam in 1639. The citizenry, however, largely ignored him and virtually the entire
male population of the city camped outside his home and smoked. Sentiments, however,
varied among the citizenry. Mary Rowlandson published A True History of the Captivity
and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson in 1682. In this work she stated that the Indian
captors offered her tobacco, but she refused. Rowlandson called tobacco a bait that the
devil laid to make men lose their precious time. Tobacco was, according to the author, a
bewitching thing. When she used tobacco in the past, even after two or three pipes she
was ready for another.52
Tobacco was believed to possess certain medicinal properties, but the common use
for purposes of self-indulgence was opposed. The practice became associated with
51
Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 83; Dillon, "Thank You for Not Smoking," 96;
Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America, 105; Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial
System, 84.
52
Harp, "The Poisonous Weed," 63; Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System,
85; Heimann, Tobacco and Americans, 84, 186, 267.

38. 38
excessive drinking and other forms of intemperance. All these fulminations of the
seventeenth century, however, had little effect. Home cultivation and informal sale to
neighbors continued to grow along with maritime commerce. Colonial courts often
closed their eyes to the circumvention to the crown's duty on tobacco.53
By the eighteenth century, New England's laws, largely ignored after members of
the clergy took up the habit, fell into disuse or were repealed. Massachusetts repealed its
laws, while Connecticut's faded away. The revenue generated became too valuable to all
involved. Certain religious leaders, however, kept up the fight. Cotton Mather in his
Manuducito ad Ministerium in 1726, allowed some medicinal benefits, but emphasized
moderation. Mather said that an appropriate motto for a snuff box was "A Leader to the
Coffin." Methodists allowed no smoking, chewing, or snuffing. Their directions to
Band Societies were "to use no needless self-indulgence; such as taking snuff or tobacco,
unless prescribed by a physician." Anti-tobacco, however, only truly arrived in America
after the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Rush published the first significant anti-tobacco
document in America in 1798, titled Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical. In a
section of the book called "Observations upon the influence of the Habitual use of Tobacco
upon Health, Morals, and Property," Rush described the horrible effects that tobacco had
on the stomach, nervous system, and oral cavity. Rush proclaimed that the use was filthy,
expensive, and tended toward idleness, uncleanliness, and poor manners. He drew a cause
and effect relationship between tobacco and alcohol. Tobacco use caused thirst and this
53
Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System, 85; Heimann, Tobacco and
Americans, 84, 186, 267; Harp, "The Poisonous Weed," 63.

39. 39
thirst was only quenchable with strong drink. When taken between meals, tobacco lead to
intemperance and drunkenness.54
Thus, the table was set for the coming of the nineteenth-century anti-tobacconists.
From its discovery tobacco generated numerous reactions among the various peoples of the
world. It had traveled from an unknown region of the world to the entire globe in a
relatively short time. From those dry leaves presented to Columbus in 1492, great
industries and even entire colonies sprang to life. Modern attacks on tobacco did not rise
independently from a universal attack of conscience and health awareness. It began as the
proliferation of tobacco began to trouble certain segments of the populace. Attacks in
England and the colonies tended toward legislation and written condemnation, while in
Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia attacks tended toward violence. An unnamed
Italian physician stated in 1713, "this vice will always be condemned and always be clung
to."55
Little could he have realized at the time how correct his words were.
54
Dillon, "Thank You for Not Smoking," 96; Quotes from Harp, "The Poisonous
Weed," 60; Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America, 105-106.
55
Tate, "In the 1800s," 117.

40. 40
CHAPTER 2
THE WEED: ANTI-TOBACCO SENTIMENTS IN
PERIODICAL LITERATURE, 1800-1870
Unlike modern reformers, anti-tobacconists of the nineteenth century knew the
history of their battle against that pernicious weed, tobacco. The individuals fighting
tobacco in the nineteenth century knew the literature and history of those who had assailed
the weed before them, so they were even more puzzled that the plant was used. In his
book Tobacco in History: The Cultures of Dependence, Jordan Goodman has said, "To
speak of an early movement in the United States would be an exaggeration since the
movement was perhaps no more than the publication, at irregular times, of the
Anti-Tobacco Journal between 1857 and 1872. The main thrust was its uncleanliness.”56
Contrary to the opinion of Goodman, anti-tobacco attacks in periodical literature from
1800-1870 embodied many different views of tobacco's perceived evil. They attacked it
as an agricultural evil, social evil, physical evil, and moral evil. Although their actions
receive no recognition in the contemporary era, the people of the nineteenth century
presented many of the same arguments as modern reformers as well as some exaggerated
ideas. As tobacco's production grew so did the attacks.
Next to cotton, tobacco represented the most important staple in the United States
during this period. The importance of the crop represented a growth in domestic usage as
well as an export crop. The growth of domestic use can be seen from the fact that exports
did not grow from 1790 to 1840. In 1790, 118,460 hogsheads of tobacco were exported,
56
Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History: The Cultures of Dependence (New York:
Routledge, 1933), 118.

41. 41
while 119,484 hogsheads left for foreign markets in 1840. Between these periods there
was a large drop in exportation with the high year being 1810, which saw 84,134
hogsheads exported. In 1842, eight states produced over one million pounds of tobacco
with Virginia leading the way with 59,277,369 pounds. To meet the rising domestic
demand, tobacco production rocketed between 1850 and 1860. In 1850, eight pounds of
tobacco were raised per inhabitant in all the states and territories. This grew to fourteen
pounds per inhabitant by 1860. Production grew from approximately 200 million pounds
in 1850 to approximately 434 million pounds in 1860. Virginia, Tennessee, and North
Carolina combined to produce 200 million of the total in 1860. Kentucky, Missouri, and
Ohio led the Western States, which produced a total of 173,758,788 pounds in 1860. This
growth took place during and represented a cause of the two agricultural reform
movements that occurred by the mid-nineteenth century.57
Single crop agriculture had as its goal the obtaining of the greatest possible return
of the one staple regardless of the effects on the land. The consequences of repeated
cultivation of one crop on the same plot were increased by the meager tillage of the period.
This tillage consisted of barely more than scraping the surface of the ground. This
resulted in soil erosion, lessening of plant food materials, an increase in soil toxicity, and
the growth of harmful soil organisms. This practice was common where land was
plentiful and capital and labor sparse. One piece of land was worn out and then another
57
A hogshead equals approximately 1,000 pounds during this period. "American
Tobacco," Commercial Review of the South and West, October 1846, 249; "The Figures
and Figuratives of Tobacco," American Review: A Whig Journal, December 1845, 650;
"Tobacco Culture," Debow's Review, July 1870, 606; "The Tobacco Trade," Commercial
Review of the South and West, July 1846, 47.

42. 42
was moved to. The crisis came in Virginia and North Carolina when wasteful methods
learned in a time of land abundance carried over to a period of scarce new plots. This
method of cultivation was challenged by two reform movements in 1790-1815 and
1830-1860, which sought to instill the ideas of crop rotation and diversification and the
application of fertilizers. The goal consisted of plantation self-sufficiency. This single
crop system, while not peculiar to tobacco, was viewed by reformers as a symbol of all that
was bad in the staple crop formula. These pleas for diversification represented a
continuance of the early colonial objections to the primacy of tobacco with the neglect of
food crops.58
Dickie Doger, undoubtedly a pseudonym, called for the vanquishing of this deadly
enemy to the prosperity of the beloved Old Dominion in 1848, while the unnamed author
of "The Figures and Figuratives of Tobacco" in 1845 said, "as a trophy to his mighty
prowess, the demon of tobacco can point with all safety to the exhausted lands of Virginia."
The constant battle cry of agricultural attacks on tobacco was that it exhausted the soil
more than any other crop. Tobacco required the richest soil available and even the richest
highlands were said to be unable to stand a third crop in succession. Tobacco removed
large amounts of mineral matter, especially salts of potassa, so rapidly that even new virgin
lands soon succumbed to its exhausting actions and the worn out lands could support only a
growth of scrub pine. John Dumpling, another pseudonym, wrote in the Southern Planter
in 1848 that no part of Virginia ever went to ruin so fast as the tobacco growing areas.
58
Joseph Clarke Robert, The Tobacco Kingdom: Plantation, Market, and Factory in
Virginia and North Carolina, 1800-1860 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1938;
reprint, Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, 1965), 23-25.

43. 43
Dumpling said that in Brunswick and other southside counties that there were many worn
out tracts with good houses on them, which had been left unsold by their owners. The
owners had moved off to the west with their slaves and "tobacco, the great mother of ill
thrift, was the main cause.59
John Hartwell Cocke, in a series of articles in the Southern Planter, which in 1860
became bound in one volume called Tobacco, the Bane of Virginia Husbandry, supported
Dumpling's assertions. Cocke wrote that every homestead from the Atlantic border of
Virginia to the head of the Tidewater with several tiers of counties above this line
represented a mournful monument to tobacco's destructive powers. This area once
produced all the tobacco grown in Virginia, but was now so reduced and impoverished that
according to Cocke it had not produced as much as a hogshead for market in many years.
Tobacco was the "besom of destruction" that had swept over this once fertile region and
reduced it to a condition too poor to remunerate the labor employed in tobacco's
production. Cocke stated "in their natural state one of the loveliest regions on Earth, now
presents a standing monument against the ruthless destroyer, in a wilderness of piney old
fields and gullied hillsides, hitherto the acknowledged fruits of the tobacco culture."60
59
"American Tobacco," Commercial Review of the South and West, 251; Dickie
Dodger, "Dumpling on the Tobacco Crop," Southern Planter, December 1848, 377; John
C. Draper, "Tobaccophagoi and Tobaccophagism" Galaxy, June 1870, 753; John
Dumpling, "Dumpling on the Tobacco Crop," Southern Planter, September 1848, 259;
Ibid., "Dumpling on the Tobacco Crop," Southern Planter, September 1857, 535; "The
Figures and Figuratives of Tobacco,," American Review, 649; Asa Smith, "The Enemy of
Virginia," International Magazine, 1 March 1852, 312; T.B. Thorpe, "The History and
Mystery of Tobacco," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, June 1855, 7-8.
60
John Hartwell Cocke, Tobacco, the Bane of Virginia Husbandry (Richmond:
MacFarlane and Fergusson, 1860), 4, 18-20, 22; Ibid., "Tobacco the Bane of Virginia

44. 44
Continuing in this vein, an unnamed author in Edmund Ruffin's Farmers Register
published a treatise in 1835 on the exhausting effects of the weed. The author began with
the sentiment that although tobacco had been a great source of wealth to the area and the
country in a commercial sense, it had accomplished more to spoil and impoverish Virginia
than all other crops produced there. At first settlement land lay abundantly before the
settlers and every inducement led them to produce tobacco, but the situation changed.
Two generations had yet to pass away since the settlement of middle Virginia and the
author called on his readers to examine the situation of the soil there. The area presented
the appearance of decrepitude and premature old age. The once grand forests lay felled at
the feet of tobacco planters, while the fields "are lacerated with the plough of the ruthless
cultivator, and our whole country presents a scene of melancholy." The author stated that
so paralyzing were the effects of the crop upon the resources of a country that it required a
long time for the inhabitants "to accommodate their feelings, habits, and prejudices to a
change so radical and enter with spirit and energy into a system calculated to restore their
exhausted lands, and retrieve their fallen fortunes." Duty called for every intelligent
planter to abandon his present gain and do all in his power to diminish the cultivation of the
crop and to renovate the already abused soil. Sound policy demanded a reduction of the
crop. According to the author, it did not require the spirit of prophecy to divine that the
time was soon to come when planters would be driven by necessity to quit the crop or
forsake the country.61
Husbandry, No. 3," Southern Planter, May 1859, 265.
61
"On the Effects of the Tobacco Crop on the Agricultural Interests of Virginia,"

45. 45
Asa Smith detailed tobacco's exhausting effects on the family as well as the soil.
Smith stated that in eastern Virginia the old Virginia gentleman had disappeared. He had
been pushed out by the exhaustion of the soil caused by tobacco, which left only a growth
of pine. The old gentleman had left because he found his "old fields" rapidly increasing,
while his tobacco crop diminished each year. This forced the gentleman to move hearth
and home to find better soil and markets. The children of cultivators received the
impoverishing effect of tobacco. These children grew up in great affluence with servants
all around, which caused them to contract expensive habits and made them unfit for the
hardships of life when adversity came to them. Their parents most often did not think that
there could come a time when they would all be thrown out and forced to earn a living by
their own exertions, but experience showed that this was the inevitable fate with tobacco
cultivation. Year after year productive land grew "old." When the head of the household
died, his holdings were divided among the children and after them another split took place.
The soil during this time became poorer with each year and each subdivision caused the
remaining good land to be split and used up faster. This went on until a general
exhaustion was realized and the family became scattered across the country; the females
socially unfit for contact with the world and the males branded as spend thrifts because
they could not make a living on the land that their fathers had. John Taylor in his "Arator"
supported this idea when he stated that "it starves the earth by producing but little litter and
it starves its cultivators by producing nothing to eat. The soil it feeds on must necessary
Farmers Register, March 1835, 601.

46. 46
become cadaverous, and its cultivators squalid."62
Other exhaustive properties of tobacco were regularly articulated. Tobacco was
accused of exhausting more of the virtue of manures than any other crop. Tobacco hills
spoiled horizontal plowing and left washing rains to do their worst, while the fine chopping
of the ground and its not being rolled like wheat and oats made the washing worse. Also,
the finest available fuel wood was gathered and burned on plant beds. For every unit of
plant patch land at least three times that much forest land had to be cleared for burning,
fencing, and letting in the sun. This represented a huge consumption and waste of timber
and a ruinous consumption of an essential article of rural economy. Good husbandry
called for a course of tillage that afforded the largest share of profit and comfort from the
products of the soil and afforded a reasonable prospect of maintaining or increasing the
productive powers of the soil for an indefinite time. To continue to produce this crop
which led to a regular diminution in productiveness was a road to ultimate sterility. The
growth of tobacco, formerly the object of every farm, had disappeared on the most
improved or improving farms, and according to Asa Smith, western Virginia would
continue to improve so long as the cultivation of tobacco was resisted.63
A call to reduce tobacco cultivation also centered around the labor involved in its
production. John Hartwell Cocke called tobacco the most laborious and troublesome crop
62
Smith, "The Enemy of Virginia," 312, 314; John Taylor, "Arator," Farmers
Register, 31 December 1840, 755.
63
Cocke, Tobacco, the Bane of Virginia Husbandry, 5, 19; Ibid., "Tobacco the Bane of
Virginia Husbandry, No. 2," Southern Planter, March 1859, 130; Dumpling, "Dumpling on
the Tobacco Crop," 259; A. Gleaner, "A Glance at the Farming of Albermarle," Farmers
Register, September 1834, 235; Smith, "The Enemy of Virginia," 312.

47. 47
known to agriculture. Tobacco required eighteen months to get to market whereas wheat
needed ten months and corn eight months. It was also asserted that these grain crops
represented a less laborious and more pleasant type of work than the tobacco crop. For six
months both the old and new crops had to be simultaneously taken care of. This created a
drain on available labor and a congestion in the storage houses because the old crop had to
be removed before the new one came in. Cocke called this "a conjunction of double
trouble, incident to no other crop but tobacco." He went on to state that the crop was
worked on for eighteen months to buy bread and meat for the producers family for one
year, while one years labor and manure could produce more than enough of these and save
six months work. According to Cocke, the "vigilance required to keep down the suckers
and destroy the tobacco worms is unparalled in the history of any other crop." Also, it was
a peculiarity and trouble of tobacco that it did not all ripen at once like grain, but ripened in
succession over a protracted period of time.64
The perceived excessive drudgery of the crop supposedly possessed the effect of
discouraging white labor and encouraging slave labor. Tobacco required a constant labor
of cultivation and represented a constant source of anxiety for the planter. Also, the
planters attention was almost completely taken up by tobacco. John Dumpling described
the process:
The months from March to January are spent
preparing and nursing plant beds, hoeing and
hilling tobacco ground, planting and replanting,
64
Quote from Cocke, Tobacco, the Bane of Virginia Husbandry, No. 2," 129,
131-133; Ibid., Tobacco, the Bane of Virginia Husbandry, 3; "The Tobacco Trade,"
Commercial Review of the South and West, 49.

48. 48
suckering, priming, weeding, worming, cutting,
scaffolding, housing, firing, striping, tying, and
prizing. With constant watchfulness all the time
to profit by or guard against accidents by the
weather.
After and during these activities, preparation of the next crop began and the old crop
eventually went to market. In support of this an article in the Farmers Register stated that
the constant and unremitting attention required throughout the year left no time or labor for
the effectual improvement of the soil. It was the "`leisure time' of the farmer judiciously
used that is most profitable to his land and his income and of leisure time tobacco permits
none at all."65
John Taylor raised tobacco for two years before becoming one of its chief
opponents. Originally published in 1809 or 1810 his "Arator" article received
republication in the Farmers Register in 1840. Taylor emphasized the labor involved
above everything else. Taylor stated that it would surprise even old planters to see an
exact account of the labor utilized by an acre of tobacco and the preparation of the crop for
market. The old planter:
would be astonished to discover how often he
had passed over the land and the tobacco, through
his hands, in fallowing, hilling, cutting off hills,
planting, replanting, topping, suckerings,
weedings, cuttings, picking up, removing out
65
First quote from Dumpling, "Dumpling on the Tobacco Crop," September 1848,
258-259; Ibid., "Dumpling on the Tobacco Crop," September 1857, 533; Second quote
from Gleaner, "A Glance at the Farming of Albemarle," 235-236; "On the Effects of the
Tobacco Crop on the Agricultural Interests of Virginia," Farmers Register, 601; Thorpe,
"The History and Mystery of Tobacco," 8.

49. 49
of the ground by hand, hanging, striking,
stripping, stemming, and prizing, and that the
same labor, devoted to almost any other
employment, would have produced a better
return by ordinary success, than tobacco does
by even the best crop produced.
A comparison of labor cost utilized on an acre of tobacco and its preparation for market
versus an acre of corn or wheat and its preparation for market demonstrated to Taylor the
loss involved in growing tobacco. This, he concluded, was merely taking into account the
annual profit and not adding in the formidable obstacle it constituted to the improvement of
the soil.66
Reformers claimed that the value of a tobacco plantation grew less every year.
John Dumpling said that the planter continually turned his capital into income, "He was
ripping the goose." The tobacco market was the object of speculation and whim. Its ups
and downs were so uncertain that no one could get a consistent price, which led reformers
to refer to the market as a lottery and put forth the idea that no one could solidly better
himself by getting a lottery prize. An ironic situation existed that, when the planter
achieved the largest crops, he gained the least profit. Abundance kept down the price
consequently not paying the planter for the increased wear and tear on his land or the extra
expense of cultivation. Some planter families always depended on a good price and spent
accordingly. They estimated their income based on the highest price ever received and
not the average. Their fineries served as a testament to this. So the planter grew poorer
whether high prices came about or not. Low prices only served to increase the pace of his
66
Quote from Taylor, "Arator," 755; Robert, The Tobacco Kingdom, 25-26.

50. 50
descent into poverty. Some close-fisted tobacco planters, however, tried to keep their
expenses down and saved money, which they spent on new land, slaves, or by lending it.
According to Dumpling these planters did not enjoy life the way they ought to because they
forgot that the best investment of wealth was in improving land already owned.
Reformers expounded that if planters would cut production in half they would realize more
profit, live in greater plenty, and have the opportunity to improve their land. Also, many
articles could be made by the planters that they currently had to buy with money made in
the hardest possible way, tobacco culture. Buying these articles instead of making them
created artificial scarceness and inflation for the necessities of life. John Taylor
exclaimed that "changing from tobacco to other crops would insure a return to profit and a
return of comfort, far exceeding that to which the tobacco district has been accustomed."67
Taylor continued by exposing that while tobacco's profit was small or nonexistent,
its ability to starve everything else exceeded that of any other crop. John Hartwell Cocke
exclaimed that "tobacco is the idol god of the plantation, before which everything else is
thrown down and trodden under foot." For tobacco's requirements everything else had to
yield and other crops got only the leavings of this "insatiable consumer of labor, manure,
and time" and were literally starved. Tobacco monopolized the resources of the plantation
to such a degree that only a stinted allowance of manure remained for the garden and a
small patch of Irish potatoes. All other departments of the plantation were starved due to
67
First quote from Dumpling, "Dumpling on the Tobacco Crop," September 1848,
259; Ibid., "Dumpling on the Tobacco Crop," September 1857, 534; "On the Effects of
the Tobacco Crop on the Agricultural Interests of Virginia," Farmers Register, 601;
Second quote from Taylor, "Arator," 755.

51. 51
the double pressure of having two tobacco crops on hand at the same time. This left little
time for corn or oat crops, which led to haste and neglect in working on them. They were
hurried out of the way to get back to tobacco. Tobacco and grass crops were
irreconcilable enemies, which led Virginia to be a large customer for Northern hay. It was
no wonder to Cocke that a crop, which required so much labor and received so much
preferential treatment, starved all the others.68
Tobacco was accused of being the unfriendliest of all crops to the improvement of a
farm. It was a complete monopolist of manure, which often led to the woodland being
robbed of dead leaves and of its top soil to fatten the tobacco ground. Whole tracts lost
their nutriment to take care of tobacco. Wheat's only chance to benefit from manures
came when it was planted on tobacco land. Then it got the "pet's leavings." A small part
of a plantation could be kept rich for a limited time by concentrating all the fertilizer on it,
but this was at the expense of the whole and eventually of the small part. Considerable
attention needed to be paid to the other parts. If not, manure would cease to be found on
the plantation and general exhaustion and barrenness followed. A proper farming system
embraced the largest practical range of productions. The antagonist of good farming,
tobacco, did not allow this. Cocke even drew a distinction between farmers and
tobacco-planters based on this. "Farmers produce their own meat and bread with some to
spare to sell. Tobacco-planters must buy their meat from western drovers and bread from
68
Quote from Cocke, Tobacco, the Bane of Virginia Husbandry, 4, 7-8, 11; Ibid.,
"Tobacco, the Bane of Virginia Husbandry, No. 2," 130; Ibid., "Tobacco the Bane of
Virginia Husbandry, No. 3," 264-265; Dumpling, "Dumpling on the Tobacco Crop,"
September 1857, 534; Taylor, "Arator," 755.

52. 52
their neighbors. Farmers can afford to spare manure to keep a grass lot or meadow which
give the comforts of a dairy. Tobacco-planters will hardly spare a bushel of manure from
the insatiable tobacco crop to make a square in a garden big enough to raise Irish potatoes."
Dumpling referred to tobacco as a deadly foe to good farming and to thrifty husbandry.
He accused tobacco-planters of numerous slovenly farming practices. Examples of which
were no clover, plaster, lime, or compost heaps, bad fences, shabby comfortless dwellings,
rickety barns and stables, while fields in gullies commonly attended the crop.69
Tobacco's starvation tactics did not cease with other crops, but according to Cocke
extended to people and animals. "It is no wonder then that...itself being neither meat,
drink, nor clothing for man or provender for stock, should also starve both man and beast."
Cocke continued that it was a common condition of tobacco plantations after they had used
a quarter or half acre of cowpen turnip patch to be without any vegetables or greens for
many weeks in the spring until the season for wild sallet came to relieve "the sufferers of
tobacco starvation." The starvation inflicted on man, however, paled in comparison to
what it did to domestic animals. A full crop of tobacco caused a short crop of corn. The
tobacco crop afforded no provender for domestic animals, which reduced the stock of a
plantation to the offal of a scanty corn crop. According to Cocke, man was such a creature
of habit that he came to regard starved cattle as the natural order in the spring, and to put up
with stinted household comforts to the degree of taking his coffee without milk for many
69
First quote from Dumpling, "Dumpling on the Tobacco Crop," September 1848,
258-259; Ibid., "Dumpling on the Tobacco Crop," September 1857, 533; Smith, "The
Enemy of Virginia," 314; Second quote from Cocke, "Tobacco the Bane of Virginia
Husbandry, No. 2," 130-131.

53. 53
weeks in the winter because the cows had gone dry by Christmas. This resulted from
having no hay and being required to live on chaff and dry straw since the natural grasses
had been killed by frost. Corn stalks were soon picked and no shucks could be spared
from the work oxen, because no other product on the plantation could sustain them. Use
of shucks and nubbins for the oxen resulted in the pigs being deprived of their traditional
food. This starved the smoke house, so pork had be bought. The corn crib was starved to
such a degree that a large portion of tobacco proceeds went to buy corn. Due to a lack of
corn the planter bought his meat and bread, while a lack of grass to raise them on caused
the planter to buy his mules and work horses.70
Agricultural reforms were not the only source of attacks on the kingdom. Social
assaults on the weed's fortress abounded in the periodical literature of the time. Tobacco
use was compared to the Egyptian plague of frogs because it existed everywhere and in
everything. The unnamed writer of "The Figures and Figuratives of Tobacco" wrote that
everything "eatable and drinkable, all that can be seen, heard, felt, or understood is
saturated with tobacco. The very air we breath is but a conveyance of this poison into the
lungs." The Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review and American Quarterly Review
both stated that tobacco represented the most remarkable product of nature. Although it
was unsightly and offensive, it had in the short period of about three-hundred years
conquered the entire world into a bondage more debasing and irrevocable than any tyranny
or superstition had ever generated. All literary, governmental, religious, and medical
70
Quote from Cocke, Tobacco, the Bane of Virginia Husbandry, 11; Ibid., "Tobacco
the Bane of Virginia Husbandry, No. 3," 264-265.