Farming in Colonial America

Brian DeRosa

Professor Erika Seamon

AMST-203-01/Fall 2014

November 12th, 2014

Paper #3 Assignment

Becoming American: Ideals, Tensions, and Contradictions

Word- Farming

Europeans have been absolutely captivated by the American landscape and its culture from the nations very beginnings. This fascination was especially great in the late 1700’s, on the eve of the American Revolution. Writers like Crèveceour attempted to satisfy, “…an almost insatiable demand for all things American and confirmed…”^[1] One can’t help but question exactly why this came to be? After all, Europe was the pinnacle of sophistication and societal development in the 18th century. Why exactly did they become so fascinated with such an undeveloped, agrarian society? One in which “enterprise prevailed over class and fashion.”^[2] However, the answer to this question may be in America’s apparent weaknesses. What appear to be America’s flaws can also be its strengths. This essay affirms that Europeans most admired this simplicity and freedom inherent to American culture, and best exemplified through the labor of its farmers. Despite being fundamentally humble by definition, the American farmer is held in highest regard by his own countrymen and Europeans due to his complete control over his destiny.

J. Hector St. John De Crèvecoeur, for his time, would have been one of the best-travelled men in America. Crèveceour spent considerable time in all of America’s diverse regions. He provides a clear description of these regions in his work, Letters From an American Farmer. Crèveceour is arguably harshest on the people of America’s backcountry. “There, remote from the power of example and check of shame, many families exhibit the most hideous parts of our society.”^[3] What Crèveceour finds most despicable of the backcountry’s’ inhabitants is their lack of tangible production to society. The inhabitants of this region are hunter-gatherers. Crèveceour writes, “Hunting is but a licentious, idle life.”^[4] Hunters lack stability and the means to socially mobilize.

Comparable to the Backcountry in regards to Crèveceour’s criticism is that of Charles Town. Crèveceour sees Charles Town as a façade. He sees an evil despite the town’s “rich spoils”.^[5] The exploitation of slave labor that is used in this town, utterly disgusts Crèveceour. He writes, “Behold a people enjoying all that life accords most bewitching and pleasurable, without labor, without fatigue, hardly subjected to the trouble of wishing.”^[6] Crèveceour sees no dignity in labor if it comes through the exploitation of others.

For the purposes of keeping within this assignments length constraints, Crèveceour’s description of America’s North Eastern, coastal regions will not be discussed in any detail, especially considering he is quasi-indifferent to its culture.^[7] Crèveceour reserves his praise almost entirely for America’s middle settlement, farming society. “Those who inhibit the middle settlements…the simple cultivation of the earth purifies them.”^[8] When one examines Crèveceour’s contrasts of America’s regions in Letters From an American Farmer, the correlation between virtuosity and labor is more than transparent. To Crèveceour, one cannot live a fulfilling without laboring the earth. Thomas Jefferson shared this sentiment with Crèveceour.

Jefferson’s dream was for America to become a society of self-sufficient farmers.^[9] To him, this would not only give America the best chance of attaining international preeminence, but most importantly build an honorable and virtuous society. The late 18th century American landscape was bountiful in every sense of the word. Jefferson saw it as the responsibility of Americans to take advantage of this. “We have an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman. It is best then that all our citizens should be employed in its improvement…”^[10] Through this labor, Jefferson believes America will progress socially. He writes, “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.”^[11] Both Crèveceour and Jefferson draw strong parallels between virtuosity and farming.