USDA set to mark 150th anniversary
Source: Washington post
In the aftermath of staggering casualties suffered during the bloody Union victory at Shiloh, federal armies were advancing cautiously on the critical Confederate rail center of Corinth, Miss., on May 15, 1862. On the same day in Washington, President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation creating a Department of Agriculture.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s birth 150 years ago Tuesday in the midst of the Civil War was part of an enormous expansion of the federal government during the conflict, one that reflected both a response to the great national crisis and a determination by Lincoln to forge ahead with the business of the nation despite the war.
“Agriculture, confessedly the largest interest of the nation, has not a department nor a bureau, but a clerkship only, assigned to it in the Government,” Lincoln had complained in his first annual message to Congress a few months earlier.
Lincoln suggested an agriculture bureau would suffice, but an enthusiastic Congress passed legislation establishing a department to be headed by a commissioner.
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