Letters from an
American Farmer
(1782)
Michel St. John de
Crevecoeur
Biography
• Born Michel Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur
• In 1735 around Caen, France
• Came to North America by way of England in 1755
• Served with Montcalm’s forces during the assault on For
William Henry
• Settled in upstate New York in 1759
• Became a British subject in 1764
• Married in 1770 to Mehitable Tippet
• Returned to France during the Revolution in 1780
• Letters from an American Farmer published in 1782
– Wrote under pseudonym J. Hector St. John
• Returned to North America and learned his wife had died and
children were living with neighbors
• Crevecoeur was French consul in New York City from 1783 to
1790
• Returned to France in 1790 and remained there until his death
in 1813
Some Historical Context
• Crevecoeur lauded the
American Farmer
– “we are a people of cultivators”
• The American Revolution
• Crevecoeur was targeting
Europeans as his audience
– “What attachment can a poor
European emigrant have for a
country where he had nothing?”
“his country is now that which
gives him land, bread,
protection, and consequence.”
Michel St. John De Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American
Main Points:
Main Point #1: European immigrants are transformed by their transplantation to
America. American society has more quality and more opportunities for self
advancement. Americans derive more benefit from their labor than their
European counterparts. The greater possibility to receive just reward for one’s
labor has inspired the American immigrant and has improved his standard of
living. They can even aspire to become land owners, and thus free men!
• “We [Americans] are all animated with the spirit of an industry which is
unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself.”
• “[American society] is not composed as in Europe, of great lords who possess
everything, and a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocratical
families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible
power giving to a few a very visible one; no great manufactures employing
thousands, no great refinements of luxury. The rich and the poor are not so far
removed from each other.”
• “Urged by a variety of motives, here [European immigrants] came. Everything
has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of living, a new social
system; here they are become men: in Europe they were as so many useless
plants, wanting vegetative mould, and refreshing showers; they withered, and
were mowed down by want, hunger, and war; but now by the power of
transplantation, like all other plants they have taken root and flourished!”
Michel St. John De Crevecoeur’s
Letters from an American
Main Points:
•
“A pleasant uniformity of decent competence appears
throughout our habitations.”
•
“[Immigrants to America] receive ample rewards for their
labours; these accumulated rewards procure them lands, those
lands confer on them the title of freemen, and to that title every
benefit is affixed which men can possibly require.”
•
“Ubi panis ibi patria [The land I work is my country], is the motto
of the emigrants.”
•
“Here [in America] the rewards of [the immigrant’s] industry
follows with equal steps the progress of his labour; his labour is
founded on the basis of nature, self-interest; can it want a stronger
allurement?”
•
“From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and
useless labour, he has passed to toils of a very different nature,
rewarded by ample subsistence. –This is an American.”
Michel St. John De Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American
Main Points:
Main Point #2: American immigrants
are transformed by settling in America,
and ergo America is transformed into a
melting pot.
•
“[Americans] are a mixture of
English, Scotch, Irish, French,
Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From
this promiscuous breed, that race
called Americans have arisen…”
•
“Here [in America] individuals of all
nations are melted into a new race
of men, whose labours and posterity
will one day cause great changes.”
Michel St. John De Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American
Main Point #3: Americans are farmers on the edge of a great continent
with untold promise.
•
“Some few towns excepted, we [Americans] are
tillers of the earth, from Nova Scotia to West Florida.
We are a people of cultivators, scattered over an
immense territory,…united by the silken bands of mild
government, all respecting in laws, without dreading
their power, because they are equitable.”
•
“Here [the American immigrant] beholds fair
cities, substantial villages, extensive fields, an
immense country filled with decent houses, good
roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an
hundred years ago all was wild, woody, and
uncultivated!”
•
“Many ages will not see the shores of our great
lakes replenished with inland nations, nor the unknown
bounds of North America entirely peopled. Who can
tell how far it extends? Who can tell the millions of
men whom it will feed and contain? For no European
foot has as yet travelled half the extent of this mighty The American Yeoman
continent!”
Historical Significance
• The document gave an idealized view on the way of
life for an American
– Attempts to define “what is an American?”
• The document was important to the poor European,
giving him hope that he too could succeed in a new
land.
• It praises the idea of a melting pot and the making of
a new society: “…individuals of all nations are melted
into a new race of men.” “That strange mixture of
blood, which you will find in no other country….”