SOURCE: “Crèvecoeur Revisited,” in Journal of American Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1975, pp. 129-44.

In the following essay, Cunliffe explores the contrasting tone and content of Crèvecoeur's two major publications about America: Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America. The first is optimistic and patriotic; the second is pessimistic and critical.

I

Almost every twentieth-century discussion of American history, literature, culture or character makes reference to J. Hector St John de Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer, a book first published in 1782. Anthologies usually find space for an excerpt from Crèvecoeur.¹ A particular favourite is the third chapter, ‘What Is An American?’ Here is the best-known, the most-quoted, the almost tediously familiar paragraph from that chapter:

What, then, is the American, this new man? He is neither an European nor the descendant of an European … He is an American, who, leaving behind him...