Crevecouer Quotes from Letter III, Letters of an American Farmer, 1782

 

He [European immigrant] is arrived on a new continent; a modern society offers itself to his contemplation, different from what he had hitherto seen.  It is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess everything, and of a herd of people who have nothing.  Here are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion . . . The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe . . . we are all tillers of the earth.

 

We have no princes, for whom we toil, starve, and bleed; we are the most perfect society now existing in the world.  Here man is free as he ought to be.

 

Everything [in America] has tended to regenerate them [the poor who fled Europe]; 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 mold, 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!

 

What then is the American, this new man? . . . 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.  He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater.  Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.

 

Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labor; his labor is founded on the basis of nature, self-interest; can it want a stronger allurement?