Analysis: Letters from an American Farmer

Date: 1774

Author Name: de Crèvecœur, J. Hector St. John

Genre: letters; essay

Summary Overview

The following selection comes from Letters from an American Farmer, a collection of essays that give a firsthand account of various aspects of eighteenth-century American life. The letters, penned by the French American writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, explore topics such as farming, social customs, religion, education, and slavery. This particular excerpt illustrates the cleavage in the sociopolitical and economic circumstances of Europeans and Americans. More importantly, he attempts to define the term American and initiates the concept of America as a melting pot of people with diverse ethnic backgrounds. Individualism, a key topic in the document, reflects the growing influence of Enlightenment ideologies on the British colonies vis-à-vis the burgeoning Atlantic community. By juxtaposing the new American with the European, de Crèvecœur highlights several of the inadequacies of the European social and political order while hinting at a nascent American nationalism.

Document Analysis

In the years leading up to the American Revolution, male colonists of all socioeconomic backgrounds in British North America became more politically conscious. Whether colonists supported the causes of Loyalists or Patriots, many grew cognizant of concepts like tabula rasaand free will. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1762 work The Social Contract, which called for a government established by the will of the people, became enormously popular to enlightened thinkers. While Enlightenment ideologies certainly fostered cohesion among the radicals who fought for independence from Great Britain, they also had to overcome sharp ethnic disparities and different cultural traditions to coalesce around a new national identity. De Crèvecœur’s Letters from an American Farmer observes a new American nationalism that subverts previous ethnic and national identities. A new vision of masculinity, drawn from manual labor and taming nature, rewarded men through bread and citizenship. The European landscape, de Crèvecœur suggests, pointedly differed from American modernity. These conditions, when taken together, allowed men of diverse European backgrounds to converge and crystallize a new identity. De Crèvecœur discusses a new American race based on idealized forms of masculinity, modernity, and ethnic amalgamation, while simultaneously recognizing the peripheral role of women and non-Europeans to American nationality.

American Masculinity

In the early modern era, social standing largely determined one’s measure of masculinity. Men without land, lineage, or wealth lacked a political presence and therefore did not qualify as masculine in the eyes of others. Shifts in English society—namely the enclosure system—compounded the chasm between rich and poor. Men traveling to North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, could improve their situation through the acquisition of property. In British North America, a new formula for masculinity emerged. As de Crèvecœur suggests, maintaining control over one’s labor and taming nature became the new measure of masculinity, easing the availability of bread, or subsistence, and extending masculine consciousness to individuals of the lower social strata.

One of the essential elements for inclusion in a new American masculine identity involved performing physical labor. Labor, de Crèvecœur writes, “is founded on the basis of nature, self-interest.” Rural colonists, particularly farmers, maintained autonomy by way of their work. The output of a man’s labor, or that of his family, benefitted him directly. Excepting individuals in urban settings, de Crèvecœur explains that people “are all tillers of the earth,” describing them as “a people of cultivators.” Farming in the eighteenth century, without the use of modern machinery, proved no easy task. It often required support from one or more family members, including children or wives. He praised the women and children who “gladly help their father to clear those fields whence exuberant crops are to arise and feed and clothe them all.” Rural agricultural families largely became self-sustaining, producing the materials needed for subsistence. Those who labor faithfully, de Crèvecœur notes, “receive ample rewards” which allow them to acquire additional property. Property ownership not only denoted economic independence, but also, if of a sufficient quantity, enfranchised the owner. In mid-eighteenth century Virginia, for instance, a man became enfranchised after acquiring twenty-five acres of land.

Through land ownership, men prevailed against nature, clearing the land of foliage and forest to create a modern rural landscape. Defining British North America as “1500 miles” of coast and “200 [miles] wide,” de Crèvecœur remarks with pride that “an hundred years ago all was wild, woody and uncultivated.” Prosperous farms and grand cities emerged throughout the colonies in a matter of little over a century as a result of people’s victory over nature. Colonial products, like tobacco and wheat, became staples of the British Empire. The land’s abundance, de Crèvecœur suggests, had the ability to feed “millions” without reserve, unlike the starved lands in Europe. Along with the material benefits derived from the landscape, de Crèvecœur suggests that the land proffered therapeutic qualities. He writes, “the goodness and flavour of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow.” Put simply, men derived their masculinity from their environment just as they did through their labor and land ownership.

A man’s ability to provide subsistence for his family further distinguished American masculinity from European models, according to the author. De Crèvecœur, while not coming from an impoverished background himself, explains that the British North American population consists largely of immigrants or their descendants who had lacked economic stability in Europe. As a result, they pursued economic independence in various colonies where land and greater personal autonomy was a possibility. Large waves of European immigrants journeyed to the “American asylum,” which welcomed “the poor of Europe” to partake in forging a new race of people. In his third letter, de Crèvecœur invokes a Latin proverb, Ubi panis ibi patria, or, “Where there is bread, there is my country,” underscoring the importance of owning one’s labor and, more importantly, controlling its harvest. Ties through language or tradition, he explains, mattered little when people “were mowed down by want, hunger, and war.” Germans comprised the largest group of immigrants to venture to America during the first half of the eighteenth century. Induced to leave Europe by a combination of rampant warfare and little opportunity for economic advancement, Germans flocked to British North America in the thousands. The situation in Europe, de Crèvecœur writes, could render a man “a wretch,” leaving him devoid of masculinity, subject to the “frowns of the rich,” and without the means to earn bread. These hardships, he explains, severed immigrants’ loyalty to their nation of origin.

Whereas de Crèvecœur’s notion of masculinity evaded the majority of male immigrants in the British colonies during their residency in Europe—a result of the elite’s monopoly on defining what was masculine as well as a socioeconomic system that excluded all but a subset of the population—de Crèvecœur argues that America offers the elements necessary for men to become masculine. He calls the process a “metamorphosis,” or evolution, made possible by colonial laws. While in Europe, laws derived from various parliamentary bodies or absolutist rulers, in colonial North America, people helped formulate colonial laws. De Crèvecœur explains that colonial governments work in sync with the people, providing incentives for hard work, the possibility for land purchase, and the acquisition of “the title of freemen.” The homology of colonial governments helped crystallize a “great chain” that “links” British North America.

European Feudalism Contrasted with American Modernity

De Crèvecœur grew up in a socially segregated society. The French social order in the eighteenth century was divided into three groups: the clergy, the aristocracy or nobility, and the commoners. Born to an influential aristocratic family, de Crèvecœur witnessed social divisions as a child and the inequities that resulted from them. Though commoners comprised the majority of the population throughout Europe, they received no tangible compensation for their toils. The concentration of wealth in the hands of a small percentage of the population represented, to de Crèvecœur, an image of the past that remained irreconcilable with modernity. Conversely, the British North American colonies—aided by fertile land and just laws—provided a more favorable picture.

In Letters, de Crèvecœur contrasts modernity to a European system that operates on decadence and is funded by the subjugation of a significant portion of the population. The prevailing justification in the eighteenth century for maintaining rigid social divisions was a belief that it was God’s will. Absolutist monarchs claimed that their position derived from divine rule; nobility, by extension, maintained that their privileged position also derived from God’s good will. French king Louis XIV and his palace in Versailles represent, perhaps, the most fervent example of aristocratic decadence. Costing approximately 116 million livres, the palace could house several thousand people. Courtiers took up residence at the palace, performing a symbolic role as the king’s court. European aristocracy, which consisted of nobles and elite members of the clergy, exercised control over the rural peasant populations by way of their labor. De Crèvecœur writes that the rural European terrain functioned under a system comprised of “the hostile castle, and the haughty mansion” that drew their wealth from peasants residing in “the clay-built hut and miserable cabbin.” Unlike the colonial freemen, peasants did not own the produce derived from their labors. Rather, landlords rented peasants small tracts of land for farming. The laborers turned over a significant portion of the produce to the landlord to pay for the rent. This arrangement, he notes, resulted in “penury, and useless labour,” leaving peasants “afflicted by a variety of miseries and wants.” Whereas “a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord” could revel in “great refinements of luxury,” a large segment of the population remained destitute.

In comparison to the social setting of Europe, the American colonies exhibited several signs of modernity. Eschewing concepts of divine right in favor of enlightened ideologies, de Crèvecœur charts a connection between nature and a society that functions according to individual labor. He writes, “We have no princes, for whom we toil, starve, and bleed: we are the most perfect society now existing in the world.” A man’s natural state, he remarks, is that of a freeman working in tandem with the earth. Although social divisions existed in the colonies, de Crèvecœur remarks that the “rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other.” In other words, whereas in Europe peasants lived in clay huts while lords resided in manors, Americans dwelled in homes of “pleasing uniformity.” Even the poorest of these homes provided their owner comfort and protection from the natural elements.

Colonists abandoned “ancient prejudices” that marginalized all but a few of the population and adopted a “new mode of living” based on new visions of masculinity and updated conceptions of honor, the sense of which was often drawn from labor. Drawing strength from nature, the “new man” created a modern society by developing and implementing new principles, ideas, and opinions. Modernity successfully fused the integrity and dignity of the farmer with the intellectual currents of the sciences and arts. Therefore, Americans not only lauded the farmer who wore homespun apparel but also the academic. Taken together, America proffered a social landscape that was sharply different from European models.

The New American Man

Like de Crèvecœur, historians have noted the heterogeneous makeup of colonial North America in the years leading up to the American Revolution. By the early eighteenth century, immigrants from Scotland and Germany eclipsed English immigration. Of equal importance was the forced migration of thousands of Africans. African slaves in southern colonies significantly outnumbered white colonists, a result of the growing need for slave labor to produce staple crops. Moreover, the presence of American Indians, while considerably diminished from the seventeenth century, nevertheless constituted another layer of ethnic diversity. In describing the new American, de Crèvecœur draws exclusively from European immigrant populations, reflecting his Eurocentric perspective in defining American nationalism. By defining an American race as solely derived from Europeans, de Crèvecœur excludes American Indians and Africans from the American national identity.

De Crèvecœur observes that the new American evolved from an amalgamation of a variety of European ethnicities. Acting as a tour guide to his reader, his fictional character, James, writes that Americans “are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes.” An exception to the ethnic diversity, James suggests, is New England; he explains that that area remained primarily in the hands of the British. While de Crèvecœur was correct in that Englishmen did constitute a large percentage of the population in those colonies, immigrants started to chip away at those majorities by the mid-eighteenth century. Marriage across ethnic borders helped erase cultural divisions. James boasts of knowing a family with English, Dutch, and French ties, a result of each generation marrying across ethnic boundaries. He explains that “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men,” abandoning all adverse qualities and “ancient prejudices and manners.”

In spite of de Crèvecœur’s call for an end to social segregation, his definition of the American man marginalized American Indians and Africans, free and enslaved. Though he opposed slavery, a fact confirmed by his joining the Société des Amis des Noirs, he did not include blacks in his composition of the new American race, explaining that “Americans were once scattered all over Europe.” Indian populations continued to lose influence with colonists, as European immigrants continued to push west, bringing with them grains and animals that wrought unprecedented changes to the environment and affected Indian hunting patterns and access to trade goods like furs. African slaves, under the threat of corporal punishment, toiled on tobacco, rice, and wheat plantations, built roads and homes, worked as house servants, and a variety of other tasks. Despite these contributions, de Crèvecœur excluded them from a part in the American project.

De Crèvecœur observed the emergence of American nationalism. As articulated in his third letter, he felt America to be a perfect society, made possible by individuals shedding past prejudices and social divisions. A new masculinity, driven by labor and taming nature, afforded men the ability to provide food for themselves and families as well as the opportunity to become freemen. A European society fraught with opulence and surviving on the toils of the peasantry paled in comparison with a modern American landscape that rewarded men for their work through land and citizenship. De Crèvecœur believed that the new American, however, derived exclusively from European blood. American Indians and Africans performed no substantial role in the race’s creation.

Bibliography

Butler, Jon. Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000. Print.

de Crèvecœur, J. Hector St. John. More Letters from the American Farmer: An Edition of the Essays in English Left Unpublished by Crèvecœur. Ed. Dennis D. Moore. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1995. Print

---. Sketches of Eighteenth Century America: More “Letters from an American Farmer”. Ed. Henri L. Bourdin, et al. New York: Blom, 1972. Print

Nye, Robert. Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Print.