email Crevecoeur

From: daniel bilar
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2012 7:56 AM
To: Lea Benson
Subject: Re: Donation Request

Ms Benson

I can tell you my first reaction when I was reading his
book. I muttered to myself: "What then is the American, this
new man?"

This is from 1783,  Michel-Guillaume-Jean De Crevecoeur.
Crevecoeur was a Frenchman who had served with Montcalm in
the French and Indian War and in 1765 decided to remain in
the New World.  For the next 15 years, he farmed in Orange
County, NY and wrote in 1783 Letters from an American
Farmer.  The following excerpt is from his third and most
famous letter, "What is an American?". The sentiments
especially in the last two paragraph will resonate with Dr
Jasser:

What is an American?
------------------------------

I wish I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts
which must agitate the heart and present themselves to the
mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he first lands on
this continent....

He 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 every thing, and of 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
manufacturers employing thousands, no great refinements of
luxury.  The rich and the poor are not so far removed from
each other as they are in Europe.

Some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth,
from Nova Scotia to West Florida.  We are a people of
cultivators, scattered over an immense territory,
communicating with each other by means of good roads and
navigable rivers, united by the silken bands of mild
government, all respecting the laws without dreading their
power, because they are equitable.  We are all animated with
the spirit of industry, which is unfettered, and
unrestrained, because each person works for himself.  If he
travels through our rural districts, he views not the
hostile castle, and the haughty mansion, contrasted with the
clay-built hut and miserable cabbin, where cattle and men
help to keep each other warm, and dwell in meanness, smoke,
and indigence.  A pleasing uniformity of decent competence
appears throughout our habitations.  The meanest of our
log-houses is a dry and comfortable habitation.  Lawyer or
merchant are the fairest titles our towns afford; that of a
farmer is the only appellation of the rural inhabitants of
our country.  It must take some time ere he can reconcile
himself to our dictionary, which is but short in words of
dignity, and names of honour.  There, on a Sunday, he sees a
congregation of respectable farmers and their wives, all
clad in neat homespun, well mounted, or riding in their own
humble waggons.  There is not among them an esquire, saving
the unlettered magistrate.  There he sees a parson as simple
as his flock, a farmer who does not riot on the labour of
others.  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; nor is this
pleasing equality so transitory as many others are.  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 traveled half the extent of this
mighty continent! ...

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? A country that had no bread for him,
whose fields procured him no harvest, who met with nothing
but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with
jails and punishments; who owned not a single foot of the
extensive surface of this planet? No! urged by a variety of
motives, here they came.  Every thing 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! Formerly they were not numbered in any civil
list of their country, except in those of the poor; here
they rank as citizens.  By what invisible power has this
surprising metamorphosis been performed? By that of the
laws, and that of their industry.  The laws, the indulgent
laws, protect them as they arrive, stamping on them the
symbol of adoption; they 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.
This is the great operation daily performed by our laws.
From whence proceed these laws? From our government.  Whence
that governments It is derived from the original genius and
strong desire of the people ratified and confirmed by
government.  This is the great chain which links us all,
this is the picture which every province exhibits, Nova
Scotia excepted.  There the crown has done all; either there
were no people who had genius, or it was not much attended
to: the consequence is, that the province is very thinly
inhabited indeed; the power of the crown, in conjunction
with the musketos, has prevented men from settling there.
Yet some part of it flourished once, and it contained a mild
harmless set of people.  But for the fault of a few leaders
the whole were banished.  The greatest political error the
crown ever committed in America, was to cut off men from a
country which wanted nothing but men!

What attachment can a poor European emigrant have for a
country where he had nothing? The knowledge of the language,
the love of a few kindred as poor as himself, were the only
cords that tied him: his country is now that which gives him
land, bread, protection, and consequence: Ubi panis ibi
patria, is the motto of all emigrants.  What then is the
American, this new man? He is either an European, or the
descendant of an European; hence that strange mixture of
blood, which you will find in no other country.  I could
point out to you a man, whose grandfather was an Englishman,
whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and
whose present four sons have now four wives of different
nations.  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 labours and posterity will one day cause great
change in the world.  Americans are the western pilgrims,
who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts,
sciences, vigour, and industry, which began long since in
the East; they will finish the great circle.  The Americans
were once scattered all over Europe; here they are
incorporated into one of the finest systems of population
which has ever appeared, and which will hereafter become
distinct by the power of the different climates they
inhabit.  The American ought, therefore, to love this
country much better than that wherein either he or his
forefathers were born.  Here the rewards of his industry
follow 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? Wives and children, who
before in vain demanded of him a morsel of bread, now, fat
and frolicsome, gladly help their father to clear those
fields whence exuberant crops are to arise to feed and to
clothe them all; without any part being claimed, either by a
despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord.  Here
religion demands but little of him; a small voluntary salary
to the minister, and gratitude to God; can he refuse these?
The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he
must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions.
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.