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 enslaved people, while remaining numb to the sufferings of those very people. As an example, he tells a horrible story of a Carolina planter who left an enslaved man in a cage to die because the man had killed his overseer. James describes the dying man’s sufferings in affecting detail, and he refuses to even relate the plantation owner’s words in his own defense. And yet, he apparently doesn’t do anything to dissuade the slave owner or help the tortured man himself.
James also doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that many native people suffered violence or were defrauded of their lands when they first came into contact with colonists. Even when those encounters were friendly, like when Quakers settled on the island of Nantucket, huge numbers of Native Americans succumbed to new scourges like smallpox or alcoholism; therefore they face growing obscurity and probable extinction. Still, James generally presents a favorable view of Native Americans. In the book’s final letter, James even plans to flee the American Revolution by taking refuge with his family in an Indian village, trusting that the villagers will be more hospitable and peaceful than most Europeans. Yet his attitude is complicated; on one hand, he holds an admiring, even romanticized view of Native American life (it’s perfectly apolitical and peaceful), but on the other hand, he dreads his young children becoming fully “Indian” in their habits and would never allow his daughter to marry a non-European. In both his attitudes about the evil of slavery and oppression of Native Americans, then, James acknowledges atrocities while not showing much willingness to confront them, and often betraying his own racist beliefs in the process.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Colonization, Atrocity, and Apathy ThemeTracker
Colonization, Atrocity, and Apathy Quotes in Letters from an American Farmer
Here are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, […] no great manufactures employing thousands, no great refinements of luxury. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe. Some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth, from Nova Scotia to West Florida.
The chosen race eat, drink, and live happy, while the unfortunate one grubs up the ground, raises indigo, or husks the rice, exposed to a sun full as scorching as their native one, without the support of good food, without the cordials of any cheering liquor. This great contrast has often afforded me subjects of the most afflicting meditations.
We have slaves likewise in our northern provinces; I hope the time draws near when they will be all emancipated, but how different their lot, how different their situation, in every possible respect! They enjoy as much liberty as their masters; they are as well clad and as well fed; in health and sickness, they are tenderly taken care of; they live under the same roof and are, truly speaking, a part of our families.
Oppressed with the reflections which this shocking spectacle afforded me, I mustered strength enough to walk away and soon reached the house at which I intended to dine. There I heard that the reason for this slave’s being thus punished was on account of his having killed the overseer of the plantation. They told me that the laws of self-preservation rendered such executions necessary, and supported the doctrine of slavery with the arguments generally made use of to justify the practice, with the repetition of which I shall not trouble you at present. Adieu.
“I am glad to see that thee hast so much compassion; are there any slaves in thy country?” “Yes, unfortunately, but they are more properly civil than domestic slaves; they are attached to the soil on which they live; it is the remains of ancient barbarous customs established in the days of the greatest ignorance and savageness of manners and preserved notwithstanding the repeated tears of humanity, the loud calls of policy, and the commands of religion. The pride of great men, with the avarice of landholders, make them look on this class as necessary tools of husbandry, as if freemen could not cultivate the ground.”
You may therefore, by means of anticipation, behold me under the wigwam; I am so well acquainted with the principal manners of these people that I entertain not the least apprehension from them. I rely more securely on their strong hospitality than on the witnessed compacts of many Europeans.
