Letters from an American Farmer Themes

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur writes Letters from an American Farmer mostly in the voice of James, a fictional Pennsylvanian in the 1770s. Repeatedly in the letters, James asserts that America offers more freedom than anywhere else on Earth, and that the life of the American farmer exhibits that freedom in a unique way. (It’s important to note that James speaks for the European, property-owning majority and not for enslaved people or the…

In one sense, land has a very practical purpose in Letters from an American Farmer. It’s the basis for “the true and the only philosophy of an American farmer”—that is, owning and cultivating land gives someone standing and a voice in the world. This status contrasts starkly with the oppression of serfs in Russia, which Crèvecoeur describes in the voice of Iwan, a Russian traveler, in Letter XI. Because serfs are bought and…

Crèvecoeur was a deist (a philosophy that emphasized human reason and observation of nature and downplayed divine revelation), and that perspective is clear in James’s remarks on religion throughout the Letters. In particular, James sees religious indifference as characteristic of Americans. He explains that when emigrants arrive in America, they’re often fervent members of a specific Christian denomination, but that the more they intermingle with neighbors from different sects, the less religiously distinctive…

The Letters’ attitude toward oppressed and colonized peoples is complex. James takes the existence of slavery in America somewhat for granted. That is, he calls slavery a great evil that should be eradicated eventually, yet in the meantime, he finds it acceptable to enslave people himself, as long as he treats them humanely. In his Letter IX on Charleston, South Carolina, James laments that colonial planters have become wealthy due to the labor of…