History 453 ADMBrown 23 September 1993Cultivating Values:Soil as Moral Foundation in Crevecoeur’s Letters of an American Farmer

In writing his Letters of an American Farmer Crevecoeur does not pretend to be

anything he is not. He is unfailingly blunt and exhaustive is his praise of the New

World, and admits quickly that he is “neither a philosopher, politician, divine or

naturalist, but a simple farmer” (49). His status as a farmer unquestionably shapes

his discussion of the land, yet his work is much more than a farmer’s journal or

manual. It operates on several levels as an example of and an invitation to the

modern enterprise, American style. In his first three letters, Crevecoeur describes

the soil in his new home as yearning to be cultivated, to be reshaped by the strong

plow of settlers, to provide unprecedented happiness for its occupants. In a few

short years after arrival, spent planting and harvesting, Crevecoeur suggests (85),

seven of twelve families are likely to attain startling benefits. It is a land where

work defines men, and where the soil defines work. By building this syllogism,

Crevecoeur explicitly describes the close connection between man’s soul and man’s

soil, and boldly endorses the aggressive modernism of his European

contemporaries. His life and his language revolve around, almost unite with, the

soil, and his letters are an expanded testament to that merging.

As Crevecoeur sees it, the soil is the key to breaking the chains of slavery

that burden so many European farmers. They work in a near feudal system,

providing more for their lords than for themselves, and the European land is

difficult and rock-laden anyway. “What a happy change it must be,” Crevecoeur

muses, “to descend from the sterile bleak lands where everything is barren and

cold...to rest on these [American] fertile farms” (86). The freedom to work one’s

own land is central to the development and progression of civilization, and it allows

the “strong vegetative embryo” (46) of American society the opportunity to redirect

humanity as a whole towards more honorable pursuits. The building of America,

therefore, is the rebuilding of all nations. “We are strangers to those feudal

institutions which have enslaved so many,” Crevecoeur’s minister observes (42)1.

Crevecoeur argues that “misguided religion, tyranny, and absurd laws depress

mankind” in Europe, but in America, men have “regained the dignity of our

species.” This discussion of regaining dignity, taken with many other discussions of

plant life, alludes to an Edenic image of man and his relationship with nature. To

Crevecoeur and Adam, the soil is for man to cultivate, since “we are a race of

cultivators” (43) who should “replenish the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28), or in

Crevecoeur’s echoing words, “replenish and embellish this boundless continent”

(43).

Clearly subscribing to this Biblical mandate, Crevecoeur seems to believe

the soil and the man together will yield unending fruit and wealth. The future, he

hopes, will provide more of the same, provided future farmers work as hard as

Crevecoeur. As such, Crevecoeur is able to optimistically link his son to his own

efforts, hoping only that his son “may perform the same operations for the same

purposes” (55) after Crevecoeur is no longer capable. He finds great joy in carrying

his boy with him as he plows the land; the boy is “perfectly happy and begins to

chat” (54). As moderns are wont to do, Crevecoeur further extrapolates from his

own success that what is good for him and his generation will be universally

rewarding years later. “The industry of subsequent ages, the energy of future

generations” (44) will continue to reap from the surface of the earth, but

Crevecoeur’s almost imperial spirit understands progress as a downward trend into

1It is difficult to tell how much of the Minister’s recorded observations are those of the Minister and how much are Crevecoeur’s, but Crevecoeur’s comments such as “What you say, minister, seems very true; do go on; I always love to hear you talk” seems to indicate Crevecoeur’s wholehearted agreement with his clergy.

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deep earth. There, he suspects, lie “subterranean riches” (44) beyond even his

active imaginings. In so predicting, Crevecoeur hints at replacing the fiery hell

once thought to be below the surface with another rich paradise waiting to be

cultivated by the “restless industry” of the future, and moves his hell to the infertile

Hebrides, “the hell of Great Britain, where all evil spirits should be sent” (89).

Judging from his language, however, Crevecoeur himself is more than

content with his new world. Free from feudalism, happy in his work, and coupled

with a loving wife, Crevecoeur paints for his audience the first visions of the

American dream. It is indeed a dream, as Crevecoeur and others expect nothing

will interfere with the modern project. “Everything is modern, peaceful, and

benign,” Crevecoeur’s minister notes, and adds, strangely, “Our religion does not

oppress the cultivators” (42). There are early indications, however, that the

cultivators will soon become oppressors, and build a religion from the soil. “The

American is a new man, who acts on new principles,” he writes. These new

principles, at their worst, are imperial and cruelly aggressive. Crevecoeur’s

language often sequentially feminizes and victimizes nature. The imagery, taken to-

gether, is incessant in its coital representation of the soil. “Here [in America]

Nature opens her broad lap to receive the perpetual accession of newcomers and to

supply them with food,” Crevecoeur declares of the projected “fields of future

cultivation and improvement” (42-43). And through this feminized soil, “mankind

will have leisure and abilities to penetrate deep [into] the bowels of this continent”

(44). Crevecoeur’s declaration that a settler “becomes an American by being re-

ceived in the broad lap of our Alma Mater,” (70) almost sounds like a father

explaining a transition into manhood. Such activity, no doubt, will create “ravishing

scenes... everywhere” (62). Considering the continuous stream of almost rapacious

language her husband employs, it is no wonder Mrs Crevecoeur “would not have

[Crevecoeur] pass for what the world calleth a writer” (48).

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Even so, Crevecoeur reserves glowing language for the two most important

elements in his life, his family and his soil. His audience might wonder which is

nearer his heart. When returning from abroad, he returns home feeling warm

towards his family, but this emotion he “often suppress[es] as useless and foolish.”

His soil, on the other hand, “the bright idea of property, of exclusive right, of

independence, exalt[s]” his mind. Crevecoeur’s near apotheosis of the soil follows

from thoughts of his family. He clearly delineates its significance in his life, and

speaks for all other American farmers as well.

Precious soil, I say to myself, by what singular custom of law is it that thou wast made to constitute the riches of the freeholder? What should we American farmers be without the distinct possession of that great soil? It feeds us, it clothes us; from it we draw even a great exuberancy, our best meat, our richest drink; the very honey of our bees comes from this privileged spot. (55)

The soil’s value to his life is comprehensive and deep-reaching. Its effect on him is

so deep reaching, in fact, he at times metaphorically merges with it. He collapses

his entire environment into the soil, while considering himself and others a product

of it, since they are so dependent on the literal products of the land. “Men are like

plants,” he argues. “We are nothing but what we derive from...the climate we

inhabit...and the nature of our employment” (71). This belief is fundamental to the

understanding of the soil’s significance to Crevecoeur and, presumably, other

American farmers. Crevecoeur’s climate and employment is the earth. In his own

mind, he eats, breathes, and works nothing but the soil and its fruit. This might

lead his audience (or Crevecoeur himself) to believe he is nothing but a derivative

of the soil, but it is the farmer’s peculiar place to be not only in many ways a

product of the land, but also its cultivator, its embellisher. He feels a responsibility

to work the earth, to labor intensively, until he has provided for his family. But his

feeling of responsibility cannot be satiated anywhere but in the fields. “When I

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went to work in my fields, I worked with more alacrity and sprightliness; I felt that I

did not work for myself alone, and this encouraged me much” (52). Indeed,

Crevecoeur at last appears nearly addicted to the soil, as though it consumes him

as he plows into it. “I am so habituated to draw all my food and pleasure from the

surface of the earth which I till that I cannot, nor indeed am I able to, quit it” (90).

Continuing to believe that whatever is best for him is best for all, Crevecoeur

expects the same zealotry in other settlers. If cultivation is the greatest virtue or

“the true and only philosophy of an American farmer,” (55) then sloth is the worst

vice. Repeating in many forms his Psalmic “Go thou and work and till; thou shalt

prosper, provided thou be just, grateful, and industrious” (90), Crevecoeur decries

the “licentious idle” woodsmen who do not work the soil as he does, and therefore

live mostly meaningless lives. To Crevecoeur, the woodsmen cannot derive from

the land the new principles, the new religion, that he does, so they are less

substantive and less human. While Crevecoeur discusses how “religious

indifference becomes prevalent,” (73) he is unwilling to accept the alternate belief

systems of the woodsmen. In the woods or at its edge, “men appear to be no better

than carnivorous animals of a superior rank” (72). These “half-cultivators and half-

hunters” are “our bad people” (77-78).

For Crevecoeur, the soil becomes savior. The land in America offers work

and salvation to those who need it most, and the necessity of cultivation establishes

a new set of principles, a new value system. In Crevecoeur’s eyes, settlers become

better men, truer Americans through their farming. The idle hunters, the

Scotsman, the Europeans who “are held in less estimation than...useless lapdogs”

(84), can give meaning to their lives in the land where “the idle may be employed,

the useless become useful, and the poor become rich” (80). It is the land where

the American farmer at once subdues and yields to the soil beneath his plow.

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1687 words

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