Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Letters from an American Farmer, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom and Government
Farming, Land, and Love of Nature
Emigration, Hard Work, and Success
Religion in America
Colonization, Atrocity, and Apathy
Summary
Analysis
James writes that Charles Town is the Lima of the northern hemisphere. Like Lima, it is the capital of its hemisphere’s richest province (South Carolina). Charles Town is situated at the confluence of two navigable rivers, so its wharfs are busy with trade. The wealthiest planters in the region flock here. Because the city sits on a narrow neck of land, it can’t expand, and houses are therefore costly. The hot climate makes it particularly dangerous to overindulge in pleasures like eating, but many, especially the men, are content to do so anyway, living “a short and a merry life.”
Charleston, South Carolina, was founded in the late 1600s and was the South’s biggest, richest city by Crèvecoeur’s time, as well as one of the American colonies’ most bustling ports. Its thriving cotton and rice trades drew heavily on the labor of enslaved people. Though James will go on to criticize slavery, his distaste for slavery seems perhaps more connected to his disdain for idle, indulgent lifestyles (which wealthy planters exemplified) than to his concern for the rights and dignity of enslaved people.
Themes
There are three main classes of people in Charles Town: lawyers, planters, and merchants. Lawyers rule this society, because no one’s land title or will is valid apart from their say-so. James observes that the nature of American laws and love of freedom tends to make Americans litigious. He supposes that in a century’s time, the law profession will become as powerful in America as the Church is in Peru or Mexico.
This isn’t the first time that James has written disapprovingly of lawyers and the law profession. Interestingly, he consistently draws a connection between the blessings of freedom and Americans’ tendency to sue over their cherished property rights, suggesting that as important as freedom is, its impact on people’s character isn’t always positive. Americans like to sue so much that James predicts that lawyers will essentially become America’s priestly class in the future—that property-owning fills the place in American culture that religion does in other cultures.
Themes
Though Charles Town is full of happiness and festivity, it is also full of misery—the misery of its enslaved people, to which the wealthy have become numb and oblivious. Yet it’s because of enslaved labor that the wealthy have become rich. The contrast between the carefree lives of the rich and the suffering of the enslaved has often disturbed James. Africans are ripped away from their families, sold like cattle, and forced by threat of violence to work for strangers.
James quickly points out the glaring disparity between the privileges of Charleston’s wealthy and the abject oppression of its enslaved people. The ease of rich people’s lives is all the more shocking to him because it wouldn’t be possible if not for the cruelly exploited labor of the enslaved—yet the rich continue to live as if they’re unaware of that fact, or don’t care.
Themes
Literary Devices
If an enslaved man is allowed to become a father, his misery is only increased, as he regrets the extra burdens thereby placed upon his wife. Instead of getting to indulge in the natural joys of parenthood, they are forced to become hardened to their children’s suffering. This is how Carolina’s planters get rich, and James cannot imagine living in peace if he participated in such a system.
Throughout the letters, James shows interest in various expressions of family life, and his observations about enslaved families are especially poignant—unlike him, getting to enjoy watching his children’s growth and future prospects, enslaved parents have more heartache than joy to look forward to.
Themes
Literary Devices
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James acknowledges that the northern colonies have enslaved people, too, and while he hopes for their emancipation, he believes that their situation is much better than that of southern enslaved people: he claims they are well clothed and fed, cared for in sickness, and generally live as part of their masters’ families. Many are taught reading, writing, and religion and are permitted to marry and have a semblance of a family life.
James effectively views northern and southern slavery as two different institutions, with the northern form being regrettable but, on the whole, much more benign than the southern form. While the lives of enslaved people in the North often did look different in various respects, James glides over the fact that these people are still enslaved, and they only enjoy life’s basic necessities if and when their owners choose to grant them.
Themes
James asserts that, contrary to what some have claimed, the hearts of Black people are just as noble and sensitive as those of white people. Yet the circumstances they’re forced into don’t allow them to cultivate their inner lives. It’s no wonder, then, he says, that many are resentful and focused on revenge.
While James tries to sound open-minded here by pointing out that the hearts of Black and white people don’t fundamentally differ (and compared to plenty of contemporary writers, he was), it's not clear that James has any personal relationships with Black people. Indeed, his assertions that they harbor vengeful and resentful attitudes, or otherwise lack developed inner lives, are just uninformed, racist assumptions.
Themes
A few years ago, a new clergyman arrived in Charles Town and preached that his congregants should not be so severe toward their enslaved people, and that Christianity teaches them to be compassionate. James says one of the congregants objected that church members don’t want to be told how to treat their enslaved people. The clergyman stopped.
In European and American slaveholding societies, some Christian preaching ultimately proved to be a significant factor in changing minds about slavery, but this anecdote makes it clear that even conscientious clergymen could be intimidated by the powerful who stood to lose if slavery was abolished.
Themes
James says it’s true that many societies have practiced slavery throughout history; but history is filled with terrible crimes, to the degree that human beings seem to have a perverse love of bloodshed. Humans love to talk about virtue when they’re at leisure, but in active life, they cast aside any virtues that get in the way of their desires.
It's a bit hard to follow James’s line of thought in this passage, especially since it’s a departure from his typical writing style. Basically, he is saying that although there’s historical precedent for the practice of slavery, that’s not an argument in its defense, since human beings have done all kinds of horrible, wretched things throughout history. Ultimately, humans seem to be inclined to do whatever gets them what they want, no matter how much they philosophize about virtue in the abstract.
Themes
Literary Devices
James remarks that the world seems more like a place of punishment than reward, and that those punishments seem to disproportionately fall on the innocent. And every region of the world seems to have its share of unique vices, leaving few truly desirable places. Even otherwise pleasant regions are cursed with slavery, despotism, and superstition. Most of the world prefers tyranny to liberty, and nations commit bloodshed against one another.
This passage is interesting in light of Crèvecoeur’s deist outlook, which tends to take an optimistic view of human nature. Here, through James, he pessimistically reflects that much of the world is subject to various forms of oppression and warfare. Note that this is how James follows up his remarks on slavery.
Themes
Given this survey of human nature, James wonders why we assume that nature intends us to be happy. If the reader wonders why James sounds so melancholy, the following account will explain his mood. While in South Carolina, he was invited to dine with a planter one day. To get there, he took a pleasant path through the woods. As he walked, he was suddenly startled by a noise and saw a cage suspended from a tree. Inside the cage was a Black enslaved man who’d been left there to die. His body was covered with wounds, and birds and insects had repeatedly attacked him, leaving him blind.
The reason for James’s dark musings becomes clear. It’s not clear whether the story of the caged, tortured man has a basis in Crèvecoeur’s own life or if it’s entirely fictional, but either way, the author obviously intends for this story to horrify readers and dispose them to hate and denounce slavery. Though the man’s full story isn’t yet known, he has evidently been brutalized. The horror of his situation contrasts jarringly with the natural beauty James had been admiring till now.
Themes
The man heard James’s approach and begged for water. Horrified, James complied. The man thanked him but wished James could poison him to put him out of his misery; he had been trapped there for two days. Later, at the planter’s home, James learned that the man was being punished for killing his overseer. The planter’s household defended this barbaric act on the grounds of “self-preservation” and offered the usual pro-slavery arguments, but James will not bother his reader with these.
The trapped man’s full story confirms that he is being tormented by the plantation owner. The shocking story is obviously meant to stick in the reader’s memory and bother their conscience regarding the ongoing practice of slavery at the time, but it raises less obvious questions, too. From what James relates, it’s clear that he thinks the slaveowner’s arguments are wrong and even morally reprehensible; yet it isn’t clear that James tries to change his mind, much less intervenes to help the suffering enslaved man. So, it’s curious that the strongly antislavery Crèvecoeur frames this section as he does—it’s possible that he is subtly critiquing the overall apathy and hypocrisy of northern slaveowners like his character James, but it’s also possible that Crèvecoeur himself has a blind spot here.
Themes
Literary Devices
