Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
Slothfulness of the People. Indian corn is of so great increase,
that a little Pains will Subsist a very large Family with Bread,
and then they may have meat without any Pains at all, by the Help
of the Low Grounds, and the great Variety of Mast that grows on
the High-land. The Men, for their parts, just like the Indians,
impose all the Work upon the poor Women. They make their Wives
rise out of their Beds early in the Morning, at the same time that
they lye and Snore, till the Sun has run one third of his course,
and disperst all the unwholesome Damps. Then, after Stretching and
Yawning for half an Hour, they light their Pipes, and, under the
Protection of a cloud of Smoak, venture out into the open Air;
tho’ if it happens to be never so little cold, they quickly return
Shivering into the Chimney corner. When the weather is mild, they
stand leaning with both their arms upon the corn-field fence, and
gravely consider whether they had best go and take a Small Heat at
the Hough; but generally find reasons to put off till another time.
Thus they loiter away their Lives, like Solomon’s Sluggard, with
their Arms across, and at the Winding up of the Year Scarcely have
Bread to Eat. To speak the Truth, tis a thorough Aversion to Labor
that makes People file off to N Carolina, where Plenty and a Warm
Sun confirm them in their Disposition to Laziness for their whole
Lives.[146]
One thing Colonel Byrd noted everywhere: the lazy lubbers wanted
chiefly to be let alone; they dreaded the possibility of falling within
the Virginia line; they were content in their Eden, and had no wish to
exchange their freedom for the stricter rule of the Old Dominion:
Wherever we passed we constantly found the Borderers laid it to
Heart if their Land was taken into Virginia; they chose rather
belong to Carolina, where they pay no Tribute, either to God or
to Caesar.... Another reason was, that the Government there is
so Loose, and the Laws so feebly executed, that, like those in
the Neighbourhood of Sydon formerly, every one does just what
seems good in his own Eyes.... Besides, there might have been
some Danger, perhaps, in venturing to be so rigorous, for fear of
undergoing the Fate of an honest Justice in Corotuck Precinct. This
bold Magistrate, it seems, taking upon to order a fellow to the
Stocks, for being disorderly in his Drink, was, for his intemperate
zeal, carry’d thither himself, and narrowly escap’d being whipp’t
by the Rabble into the Bargain.[147]
They are rarely guilty of Flattering or making any Court to their
governours, but treat them with all the Excesses of Freedom and
Familiarity. They are of Opinion their rulers woul’d be apt to grow
insolent, if they grew Rich, and for that reason they take care to
keep them poorer, and more dependent, if possible, than the Saints
of New England used to do their Governours.[148]
To the student of colonial politics such glimpses are suggestive.
They reveal how early was the popular distrust of magistrates and
government; and they serve to explain the most striking characteristic
of Revolutionary political practice--the movement to minimize the
power of the judiciary and the executive, and magnify the power of
the legislature; to keep authority within the control of the local
democracies. “Every one does just what seems good in his own Eyes”--in
this attitude of social _laissez faire_ that throve on a diet of corn
pone and salt pork was the origin of the coonskin democracy of Old
Hickory that was to bring eventual disaster to the plans of gentlemen.
III • The Frontier • Land of Promise
Quite another picture of the frontier was likely to be painted by
the eighteenth-century democrat. In the well-known _Letters_ of
Crèvecœur, and in the recently published _More Letters from an American
Farmer_,[149] is an analysis of frontier life and its creative
influence upon the emerging American character, far more sympathetic
and thoughtful than the casual narratives of Madam Knight and Colonel
Byrd. The author was a cultivated Norman-French gentleman, who about
the year 1759 or 1760 entered the English colonies from Canada, was
a surveyor for a time near Albany, a resident of Pennsylvania and of
Ulster County in the province of New York, eventually acquired a farm
of 120 acres in Orange County which he named “Pine Hill,” married
Mehetabel Tippet of Yonkers, and became a competent tiller of the soil
as well as a lover of country life. In disposition he was active and
energetic, curious concerning the ways of nature and society. In Canada
he had joined the army as lieutenant under Montcalm and was sent on a
map-making expedition to the wilderness beyond the Great Lakes, and
traveled from Detroit as far south as the Ohio River. After quitting
Canada following the fall of Quebec, he traveled from Nova Scotia
through the English colonies to the extreme south, and perhaps visited
Bermuda and Jamaica, noting keenly the country and the manners of the
people. Perhaps no other man before the Revolution was so intimately
acquainted with the French and English colonies as a whole, with their
near background of frontier and the great wilderness beyond, as this
French American; and it was from long and intimate contact with the
realities of colonial life that he wrote those comments that have
preserved his name to the present.
The Revolution broke in upon his peaceful life with disastrous
consequences. He took no part in the preliminary disputes, and was
under grave suspicion by his neighbors in Orange County and by the
British. He was thrown into prison in New York by his Majesty’s
officers, where his health was undermined and he was reduced to extreme
straits. Finally permitted to sail for Europe without his family, he
was shipwrecked off the coast of Ireland, but reached London where
he disposed of his manuscripts, and eventually got over to France
in August, 1781. After the peace he returned to America to find his
wife dead, his children scattered, and his farmhouse burnt. For a
time he was French consul at New York, where he interested himself
in establishing a packet service between France and America, and
in the improvement of agricultural methods, amongst other ways by
the establishment of botanical gardens. He was a scientific farmer,
introducing the system of cover crops into America and endeavoring to
introduce potato culture into France. He was a corresponding member of
the Académie des Sciences and the Royal Agricultural Society of Paris,
and a member of the Société d’Agriculture, Sciences, et Arts de Meaux,
and of the Société d’Agriculture de Caen. In 1790 he returned to France
where he died in 1813.
Underneath the discursive chat of his letters is the firm fabric of
economic fact. In the background of his thinking Crèvecœur was quite
definitely Physiocratic, in his warm humanitarianism as well as in his
agrarian bias. As the kindly Frenchman studied the ways of colonial
society and contemplated the future, he asked himself the question,
what was the American as he was perceptibly differentiating from his
European ancestors? That a new race was emerging in this new country,
he was convinced; and that it was not in consequence chiefly of a new
mixture of blood--although that was not without its influence--he
likewise believed. A more potent influence was at work and that
influence was environment. Crèvecœur was something of an economic
determinist who sought to explain laws, customs, institutions--the
pattern of the social web--by an inquiry into economic factors. _Mann
ist was er isst._ “Men are like plants; the goodness and flavor of the
fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they
grow. We 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 mode of our employment.”[150] Transplanted from the
meager opportunities of the old world to the rich soil and ample spaces
of America, the European undergoes a subtle transformation.
The rich stay in Europe, it is only the middling and the poor that
emigrate. 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 ... 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 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 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 vegetable 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 surprizing metamorphosis been performed? By that
of the laws of their industry ... his country is now that which
gives him land, bread, protection, and consequence: _Ubi panis ibi
patria_, is a motto of all emigrants.... Here the rewards of his
industry follow with equal steps in the progress of his labor; his
labor is founded on the basis of nature, _self-interest_; can it
want a stronger allurement?[151]
From economic individualism in presence of unexploited natural
resources, he deduces the natural emergence of a new American
psychology that differentiates the colonial from the European peasant.
If “from involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless
labor,” the emigrant “has passed to toils of a very different nature,
rewarded by ample subsistence”; if he has left off being a peasant and
become a free-holder and citizen; will not this man “entertain new
ideas, and form new opinions”? He possesses a stake in society; his
horizons broaden, his ambitions quicken; this is his country.
An European, when he first arrives, seems limited in his
intentions, as well as in his views; but he very suddenly alters
his scale ... he no sooner breathes our air than he forms new
schemes, and embarks in designs he never would have thought of
in his own country. There the plenitude of society confines many
useful ideas, and often extinguishes the most laudable schemes
which here ripen into maturity.[152]
He begins to feel the effects of a sort of resurrection; hitherto
he had not lived, but simply vegetated; he now feels himself a
man, because he is treated as such; the laws of his own country
had overlooked him in his insignificancy; the laws of this cover
him with their mantle. Judge what an alteration there must arise
in the mind and thoughts of this man; he begins to forget his
former servitude and dependence, his heart involuntarily swells and
glows; this first swell inspires him with those new thoughts which
constitute an American.... From nothing to start into being, to
become a free man, invested with lands, to which every municipal
blessing is annexed! What a change indeed! It is in consequence of
that change that he becomes an American.[153]
_He_ is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient
prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the mode of life