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J. Hector St. John de CrèvecœurLetters From An American Farmer
Nonfiction | Collection of Letters | Adult | Published in 1782A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaLetters I-IIIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Letter I Summary: “Introduction”
James opens the first letter to Mr. F.B. by questioning the idea that, “because I received you with hospitality and kindness, you should imagine me capable of writing with propriety and perspicuity” (9). James downplays his own warmth and generosity, remarking that he “gave [F.B.] nothing more than what common hospitality dictated” and argues that the “knowledge I acquired from your conversation has amply repaid me” (9).
Throughout much of the letter, James continues to downplay his suitability to meet Mr. F.B.’s request that he write him letters detailing his life as an American farmer. He claims that “the task requires […] a variety of talents which I do not possess” (9) and expresses surprise that “in the course of your American travels you should not have found out persons more enlightened and better educated” (9-10) with whom to exchange letters.
James’s wife mirrors his skepticism, laughing and asking James, “would’st thee pretend to send epistles to a great European man” (10) who “knows most of our famous lawyers and cunning folks; who hath conversed with many king’s men, governors, and counsellors” (10-11). She argues that Mr. F.B. surely “means to jeer thee!”, and insists that James “read this letter over again, paragraph by paragraph” (11) in search of signs of mockery. James, his wife, and their local minister all read the letter and conclude that it was written with “a sober earnest intention” (11).
Although he turns down James’s request for assistance because “he hath no time to spare, for that like the rest of us, he must till his farm” (10), the minister is encouraging. Responding to F.B.’s suggestion that “writing letters is nothing more than talking on paper,” F.B. says that James is perfectly qualified and should write “exactly in the same language as if [Mr. F.B.] was present” (11); that way, even if the letters “be not elegant, they will smell of the woods and be a little wild” (12). He mirrors this remark later, when he says that James will be a “more entertaining” correspondent “dressed in your simple American garb than if you were clad in all the gowns of Cambridge” (17).
The minister also speaks extensively on why the subject of life in rural America should be of interest to Mr. F.B. He comments that “a good and enlightened Englishman would be more improved” (12) by studying American life where “everything is modern, peaceful, and benign,” than Rome and Italy, where “all the objects of contemplation […] must have a reference to ancient generations and to very distant periods” (13). While “the half-ruined amphitheatres and the putrid fevers” of Italy “must fill the mind with the most melancholy reflections,” in America, “everything would inspire the reflecting traveler with the most philanthropic ideas” (13).
In America, the minister asserts, “Nature opens her broad lap to receive the perpetual accession of newcomers and to supply them with food,” providing a place in which Americans “have in some measure regained the ancient dignity of our species: our laws are simple and just; we are a race of cultivators; our cultivation is unrestrained; and therefore everything is prosperous and flourishing” (13). He reflects on this connection further when he observes that James “will appear to [Mr. F.B.] something like one of our wild American plants […] which an European scholar may probably think ill-placed and useless” (17), but which is actually strong and glorious in its natural form.
Impressed with his remarks, James exclaims “Oh! Could I express myself as you do, my friend” (14), and the minister tells James that “[y]ou can write full as well as you need” and “your letters at least will have the merit of coming from the edge of the great wilderness” (15). Through this, the minister manages to “quite persuade” (15) James to write to Mr. F.B.
James’s wife is still skeptical, however, and urges him not to talk about his letter: “for God’s sake let it be kept a profound secret among us” (18). James’s wife mirrors this sentiment later, when she tells James to keep it “as a great secret as if it was some heinous crime” (19). She reminds James that his father “was a plain-dealing, honest man […] of few words” (19) and worries his letter writing will make them no longer be seen as a “warm substantial family” with “fat and well clad […] Negroes” (20).
Letter II Summary: “On the Situation, Feelings, and Pleasures of an American Farmer”
James observes that the lives of English and American farmers differ in ways both positive and negative because, “[g]ood and evil […] are to be found in all societies” (23). However, James is content with his life and “thank[s] god that my lot is to be an American farmer instead of a Russian boor or an Hungarian peasant,” who are “condemned to a slavery worse than that of our Negroes” (23).
Despite this, James had considered selling the farm when he was younger, feeling that “it afforded but a dull repetition of the same labours and pleasures” (24). He decided against it, however, after wondering, “[w]hy should not I find myself happy […] where my father was before?” (24). He is grateful to his father for having left him the farm and done all the work “from the first tree he felled to the finishing of his house” (25).
Finding a wife was key to James being content on the farm because his wife “rendered my house all at once cheerful and pleasing” and made him feel that he “did not work for [him]self alone” (24). Likewise, he declares that “never was there a charm that acted so quickly and powerfully” (25) than the birth of his first son.
Whenever James leaves home, he is delighted to return. He celebrates the “[p]recious soil” on which his farm exists, asking, “by what singular custom of law is it that thou wast made to constitute the riches of the freeholder?”, and wondering, “What should we American farmers be without the distinct possession of that soil?” (26), which provides their food, drink, and clothing. He recalls how his father converted the “formerly rude soil […] into a pleasant farm” and how “in return, it has established all our rights; on it is founded our rank, our freedom, our power as citizens” (26). Such rumination is, James believes, “the true and the only philosophy of an American farmer” (26).
Although he asks Mr. F.B. not to laugh at “an artless countryman tracing himself through the simple modifications of his life” (26-27), he goes on to celebrate the simple act of ploughing his fields with his son, and the natural lives of his chickens and the trees, insects, animals, and birds that surround him.
He finds significant themes in the study of the animals around him, celebrating the bees and “their government, their industry, their quarrels, their passions” (31) and remarking that the songbirds’ care for their mates and young “remind me of my duty could I ever forget it” (34). He concludes that “the whole economy of what we proudly call the brute creation is admirable in every circumstance” and compares favorably with “the imperfect systems of men” (35).
James sees similar significance in his relationship with his cattle. He believes that their behaviors and inclinations “are exactly the same as among men,” and so are in need of governance, concluding that “the law is to us precisely what I am in my barn-yard, a bridle and check to prevent the strong and greedy from oppressing the timid and weak” (30).
In closing his letter, James suggests that an educated man would not be interested in further details of his life on the farm but that “the narrow circles in which I constantly revolve” (38) are enough to satisfy him. He concludes by stating “I envy no man’s prosperity,” and hopes only to “to teach the same philosophy to my children” so they can “be like their father, good, substantial, independent American farmers” (38).
Letter III Summary: “What is an American?”
James observes that America “is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing” (39-40). He celebrates the fact that America has “no aristocratic families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion,” and declares that Americans are “united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws without dreading their power, because they are equitable” (40). He considers America to be “the most perfect society now existing in the world” (40).
James explains that America’s citizens are “a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes” (41). He speculates that “the poor of Europe” cannot truly consider their country of origin, which “had no bread for him” to truly be “his country,” but can now do so in “this great American asylum” (41). While “[i]n Europe they were as so many useless plants […] mowed down by want, hunger, and war,” in America, “by the power of transplantation, like all other plants they have taken root and flourished” (42). He declares that “[t]he American ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers were born” (43)
James explains how “religious indifference becomes prevalent” (47) in Europeans when they become Americans. He notes that when “any considerable number of a particular sect” live together and build a temple “[n]obody disturbs them” as long as they “are peaceable subjects and are industrious” (47) while, if “they are mixed with other denominations, their zeal will cool for want of fuel” (48). Consequently, in America, “the strict modes of Christianity as practiced in Europe are lost” (48), and “religious indifference is imperceptibly disseminated from one end of the continent to the other, which is at present one of the strongest characteristics of the Americans” (50).
James suggests that “[m]en are like plants; the goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow,” adding that “[w]e 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” (44). Following this, he believes that different parts of America produce different types of people. Those “who live by the sea” are “more bold and enterprising,” and “neglect the confined occupations of the land” (44). Those “who inhabit the middle settlements” are “very different” because “the simple cultivation of the earth purifies them” (45).
The people of “the great woods,” who are “still father beyond the reach of government” (45), are “often in a perfect state of war; that of man against man” (46). They are “no better than carnivorous animals of a superior rank, living on the flesh of wild animals” (46). Subsisting through hunting, they “neglect their tillage” (51), while “[t]he chase renders them ferocious, gloomy, and unsocial” (50). They are “a mongrel breed, half civilized, half savage,” and represent America’s “feeble beginnings and barbarous rudiments” (46).
In America, everyone is given a chance to flourish, and a new citizen will find that “[i]nstead of being a vagrant, he has a place of residence,” and the space to farm and work, “which extinguishes all European prejudices, [so that] he forgets that mechanism of subordination, that servility of disposition which poverty had taught him” (58). James believes that Scottish settlers are most likely to prosper because they “are all industrious and saving […] [and] want nothing more than a field to exert themselves in” (61).
James illustrates this through the tale of “honest Andrew” (79). Andrew emigrates from “the island of Barra” (72) in Scotland, along with his family. Arriving with little, he works hard for others and eventually, with James’s help, secures some land. His neighbors all come together to help him clear the land and build a house. From extreme poverty, he now finds himself with a farm and a home, “unencumbered with debts, services, rents, or any other dues,” thanks to “sobriety and industry, when united with good land and freedom” (82).
Letters I-III Analysis
The first letter introduces the book’s main character, James, a fictional yeoman farmer and the author of the letters. James is friendly, humble, and accommodating. He is quick to dismiss the gratitude of Mr. F.B., suggesting that he “gave [F.B.] nothing more than what common hospitality dictated” (9), and is modest, even insecure, about his ability to write adequate letters. He claims that it requires “a variety of talents [James does] not possess” (9), and is surprised that Mr. F.B. does not instead exchange letters with “persons more enlightened and better educated” (9-10). Interestingly, although James will go on to celebrate America’s egalitarianism and the virtues of humble farmers, much of his insecurity about writing comes from the fact that he is writing to an educated Englishman.
Another important character, the local minister, challenges James on this, arguing that while James’s letters may “be not elegant, they will smell of the woods and be a little wild” (12). Introducing the celebration of humble, virtuous American identity that James will later continue, he argues that James should write “exactly in the same language as if [Mr. F.B.] was present” (11) and that he will be a “more entertaining” correspondent “dressed in your simple American garb than if you were clad in all the gowns of Cambridge” (17). Himself a humble man who, like the rest of us, […] must till his farm” (10), it is the minister who first begins to suggest that the American character is industrious, sober, and modest, and to argue that the simple, fair life of early Americans is superior to the rigid hierarchies and exploitative social conditions of Europe. He suggests that, in America, “everything is modern, peaceful, and benign,” and “would inspire the reflecting traveler with the most philanthropic ideas,” and argues that Americans “have in some measure regained the ancient dignity of our species,” living humbly with “simple and just” laws (13).
The minister’s declarations also include the first examples of what is one of the book’s key symbolic and thematic concerns: the relationship between the character of a people and the environment in which they live. This is most apparent in his suggestion that James “will appear to [Mr. F.B.] something like one of our wild American plants […] which an European scholar may probably think ill-placed and useless” (17), something which both alludes to Americans taking on or being shaped by the natural world around them and highlights differences between America and Europe.
Like the minister, James’s wife is only present in any substantial manner in this letter, although James makes reference to her throughout. She provides a counterpoint to the minister’s enthusiasm, first telling James that Mr. F.B. must be mocking him and later urging James to keep his writing “as a great secret as if it was some heinous crime” (19). Her motivation in this is propriety and what can be seen as an exaggerated version of James and the minister’s celebrations of simple, humble farming life. Although James and the minister see no harm in his letter writing, and do not credit it with disturbing his life or character, James’s wife is convinced that it undermines his status, reminding James that his father was “was a plain-dealing, honest man […] of few words” (19) and worrying that they will no longer be seen as a “warm substantial family” (20).
The second and third letters pick up the themes and symbols presented in the first letter. The focus on the differences between Europe and America is made explicit in James’s pronouncement that America “is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing” (39-40). The criticism of European hierarchy and celebration of American egalitarianism continues throughout much of the book, and appears again in these chapters with observations about America having “no aristocratic families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion,” and a “mild government” and a legal system so “equitable” that everyone respects the laws “without dreading their power” (40). De Crèvecoeur also employs the motif of the relationship between the environment and the people and society that exist within it to further highlight this point. He describes Europeans who emigrate to America as “so many useless plants” while still in Europe; however, these Europeans change upon moving to America: “by the power of transplantation, like all other plants they have taken root and flourished” (42). Such symbolic connections between the natural world and American society—and particularly the idea of America as a fertile place where both plants and people can thrive in ways not recognized or allowed in Europe— appear throughout the book.
James declares that in America “the strict modes of Christianity as practiced in Europe are lost” (48), another key difference between the two locations, and one that he presents as related to the absence of rigid hierarchies and the way Americans are “united by the silken bands of mild government” (40). However, he does not only present these things as material differences between Europe and America but as factors that help to shape American identity. This absence of oppression or financial obligation to ruling classes is presented as allowing Americans to develop a humble life concerned with living peaceably and simply with the natural world, with little concern for wealth or power. Offering himself as an example of this view of the world, James declares, “I envy no man’s prosperity” and hopes only to “to teach the same philosophy to [his] children” so they can “be like their father, good, substantial, independent American farmers” (38). In the third letter, he also presents “honest Andrew” (79) as an example of the American character and the differences between Europe and America. Moving from the poverty of the Scottish islands, Andrew manages to build himself a freeholding of his own both through his own “sobriety and industry” (82) and the generosity and welcome of his fellows, all presented as central aspects of American identity.
The motif of relationships between the environment and the people who live within it appears again in relation to the subject of American identity, as James highlights the importance of self-sufficient farms and the “formerly rude soil” (26) on which they are established. He credits this with having “established all our rights; on it is founded our rank, our freedom, our power as citizens” (26). Reinforcing such a simple, pastoral life as a central part of American identity, he argues that such considerations are “the true and the only philosophy of an American farmer” (26).
This idea appears again in the notion that people living in different landscapes, and subsisting in different ways, have different characters. James argues that those “who live by the sea” are “more bold and enterprising” (44) and those who live in the woods are “ferocious, gloomy, and unsocial” (50), while farmers like himself are “very different” because “the simple cultivation of the earth purifies them” (45). Often, James presents the natural world as an example of what humans should aspire to achieve, looking at the industry of bees or the care of birds and concluding that “the whole economy of what we proudly call the brute creation is admirable in every circumstance” and superior to the “the imperfect systems of men” (35). However, the symbolic significance of the natural environment is perhaps most explicit in James’s pronouncement (which mirrors the minister’s earlier statements) that “[m]en are like plants; the goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow” (44), which directly states the belief that the environment itself shapes the people and society that live within it.
