Alexander Hamilton once said that “If [the legislature] may banish at their discretion all those whom particular circumstances render obnoxious, without hearing or trial, no man can be safe.”
The following essay was written by Stewart Truelsen of the American Farm Bureau. It exemplifies a part of history that has been buried and demonized in recent decades; but should have meaning to us on the July Fourth.
Tobacco Played Pivotal Role in American History
By Stewart Truelsen
John Rolfe cultivated the first commercial crop in America in 1612. By the mid-1680s, exports to Britain reached 28 million pounds. In “An Empire of Plants,” the Musgraves note that “the new sense of prosperity on the mainland, combined with an increasing antipathy to their British masters, set the colonists on the long road that would eventually lead to the establishment of the United States of America.” Without tobacco, American independence might not have occurred on history’s schedule, if at all. We owe plenty to the founding fathers of this country, and they most certainly would acknowledge the importance of their tobacco crops.
No legal crop has been more vilified than tobacco because of the linkage between tobacco products and health problems. But to the colonists who struggled to gain a foothold in this new land, tobacco was a godsend. In the future, it may reclaim some of that luster through biotechnology. Scientists are using the plant to produce a protein for a vaccine against cervical cancer.
In their book, “An Empire of Plants – People and Plants that Changed the World,” Toby and Will Musgrave recognize tobacco as one of seven plants that changed the world. The others are tea, sugar, cotton, opium, quinine and rubber. These plants were a big reason for much of the world’s exploration and expansion.
“And while the apparent connections between tobacco smoking and life-threatening illnesses has left a legacy of complex law suits in the United States, it is ironic that the nation’s founding colonies were largely sustained by the profits from the ‘tawny weed’ itself,” say the authors.
According to “An Empire of Plants,” the colonists at Jamestown struggled with finding something of value. They tried growing hemp, flax, dye crops, vines and mulberry trees for silk production. It wasn’t until they grew tobacco that their fortunes changed dramatically. “They were now literally able to plant money and watch it grow,” say the authors. No wonder money used in the Revolutionary War was stamped with a tobacco leaf.
Almost from the beginning though, the native American plant was controversial. The explorer Rodrigo de Jerez, was the first person to light up a smoke in Spain after observing it among natives in Cuba. But Jerez was thrown in prison for frightening people with the smoke coming out his mouth and nose. By the time he was released, smoking was widespread in Spain.
Tobacco was hailed by some as having great medicinal powers, a claim that modern science may yet substantiate. One of the claims was that it would ward off bubonic plague. England’s King James I objected to the smell of tobacco smoke and sought to discourage tobacco use. The king’s subjects paid little attention to him and went right on smoking. James decided to tax them for it by imposing a hefty duty on imports. His personal distaste for tobacco led to a remarkable discovery that has enriched governments to this day: tobacco taxes.
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