Lecture 17 J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur: National Identity and Letters from an American Farmer

I. A Strange Farmer: Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur (1735 –1813)

A. French Aristocrat

B. Tory Sympathizer

C. French Soldier

D. American Farmer

E. French Diplomat

II. Letters from an American Farmer (1782)

A. “What is an American?”

1. The most famous part of the Letters, which are narrated by an alter ego named “James,” is the “What is an American?” description, the first part reprinted in these exceprts.

2. So, what is an American? According to Crèvecœur, an American is an interesting kind of contradiction. There is a distinct American character, just as there is an English, French, or German character, yet you can become an American in fairly short order.

3. An American is basically a European who has adopted the American way—and that’s a curious thing. “In this great American asylum, the poor of Europe have by some means met together, and in consequence of various causes; to what purpose should they ask one another what countrymen they are? Alas, two thirds of them had no country. Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore affliction or pinching penury, can that man call England or any other kingdom his country?”

4. Crèvecœur states, very simply, that an American is a poor European refugee, and that poverty in Europe and opportunity in American give all these refugees essentially the same national character.

5. It’s actually better that these people be mixed—he says that New England would be better off if it weren’t quite so English, but doesn’t explain too much about why. It’s reasonable to assume that what he likes about the mixed group is their abandonment of their European character in favor of a new American identity.

6. Here is the clearest statement of it: “He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds.”

B. Self-Improvement, or How Europeans Become Americans

1. “Men are like plants; the goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow. We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit, the government we obey, the system of religion we profess, and the nature of our employment.”

2. This is a remarkable statement of the malleability of human character, exactly at a moment in which others are finding indelible elements of character in national origin and class—the fact that poor people can become prosperous and improve themselves in many different ways, rather than just economically, is news to Europeans. At precisely this moment, for instance, British policy toward the rising tide of crime in England is to declare a great number of people part of the “criminal class,” and to deal with them as permanently criminal in nature.

3. This issue loomed large in European imaginations, and to some extent, was responsible for the enormous interest in these letters. European opinion had divided between those who believed in a fixed class system and distinct types of people, and those who believed in the power of the individual to transform themselves.

C. Bourgeois Society

1. The economic basis of this transformation concerns Crevocoeur the most. Although he doesn’t use the term, he is describing an essentially bourgeois society, a society of landowners, however cheap the land may be bought, of people with established interests in business, no matter how primitive, and who have a certain combination of beliefs in their rights to continue these businesses, and an understanding of relations among themselves as economic in nature.

2. This may all seem fairly bland stuff to us, since our society has essentially the same ideological basis, but for a European, to have the fundamental social relations be economic, and for such a large majority to have an economic stake is something new.

D. Religious Life

1. He also notes what has been happening to religious beliefs. While many of the early immigrants, most notably the Puritans, were religious refugees and set up their communities on that basis, he notes that religion soon becomes a limited, circumscribed activity in America.

2. “As Christians, religion curbs them not in their opinions; the general indulgence leaves every one to think for themselves in spiritual matters; the laws inspect our actions, our thoughts are left to God. Industry, good living, selfishness, litigiousness, country politics, the pride of freemen, religious indifference, are their characteristics.” Basically, people leave each other alone in the religious areas, and bother each other only in legal and economic areas. Individuals may be religious, but the community is secular, and this represents a profound change from earlier manifestations. Such a community would never, for instance, have the Salem witch trials, not because people have become better or have changed their essential nature, but because the community is no longer defined by a common set of religious beliefs, and ministers no longer have the influence necessary to convince an entire town—and even a set of towns—to believe in witches to the extent necessary to prosecute them in court.

E. Descriptions of America

1. Even the landscape benefits: “Here he 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!”

2. Note that underneath it remains the fundamental idea of cultivation in the wilderness—the use indigenous peoples have made of the land doesn’t cross his mind, and when he meets them, he considers them lazy.

F. Slavery

1. But he does see the negative aspects of American life. He is shocked by slavery, and his encounter with a condemned man, a slave who has killed his overseer, is a horrifying scene of brutality.

2. He lives in New York; the scenes involving slavery take place in the South, Charlestown, South Carolina, in particular. This is a very rich place in the eighteenth century—a thriving port, where merchants and planters can exchange their goods for imports from Europe.

3. But they have developed a moral blindness that he finds deplorable: “Their ears by habit are become deaf; their hearts are hardened; they neither see, hear, nor feel for the woes of their poor slaves, from whose painful labors all their wealth proceeds. Here the horrors of slavery, the hardship of incessant toils, are unseen; and no none thinks with compassion of those showers of sweat and of tears which from the bodies of Africans, daily drop, and moisten the ground they till.

4. He even notes that the planters have instructed any visiting clergy that the subject is off limits.

G. Farewell to Britain