Letters From An American Farmer

James, a yeoman farmer and the author of the majority of the letters, is friendly and accommodating. He is also modest about these attributes, insisting to Mr. F.B. that “I gave you nothing more than what common hospitality dictated” (9). He is equally modest about his ability to write, expressing surprise that Mr. F.B. does not have “persons more enlightened and better educated” (9-10) with whom to exchange letters and declaring that the task of describing life in America requires “a variety of talents which [James does] not possess” (9). James is extremely humble and has only simple aims, claiming to have “never possessed nor wish[ed] to possess anything more than what could be earned or produced by the united industry of [his] family” (202), and to be satisfied with “the narrow circles in which [he] constantly revolve[s]” (38). He also claims to “envy no man’s prosperity,” wanting only “to teach the same philosophy to [his] children” so that they can “be like their father, good, substantial, independent American farmers” (38). It is interesting to note that, despite such celebrations of humble American lives, he is, initially at least, intimidated by the task of writing to Mr. F.B. precisely because his correspondent is an educated Englishman.

James is highly critical of Europe’s traditional hierarchies and exploitation of the poor, seeing America as a place where common people can live free, work for themselves, and build happy, humble lives. He repeatedly points out that America “is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing” (39-40), and suggests that Americans are all “united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws without dreading their power, because they are equitable” (40). He even goes so far as to declare America “the most perfect society now existing in the world” (40). One aspect of life in America that he especially values is the chance to commune freely with the natural world. He is fascinated by nature, and says that “the whole economy of what we proudly call the brute creation is admirable in every circumstance,” and compares favorably to “the imperfect systems of men” (35). However, to a degree, this changes towards the end of the book. After seeing “a Negro, suspended in [a] cage and left there to expire” (164), James, who is a slave owner but who deplores the more overt cruelty of Southern plantation slavery, begins to despair of humanity in general, asking “[t]he history of the earth! Doth it present anything but crimes of the most heinous nature[?]” (159). He includes nature in this morbid speculation, too, observing that “we often talk of an indulgent nature, a kind parent […] Yet if we attentively view this globe, will it not appear rather a place of punishment than of delight?” (160-61). Despite this, he still considers the natural “state of men in the woods” to be superior “to that of men in a more improved situation” (163). As the Revolutionary War draws nearer and James comes to be disillusioned with both Europe and America, it is with this idea in mind that he decides live with Native Americans so that he can “revert into a state approaching nearer to that of nature, unencumbered either with voluminous laws or contradictory codes” (201).