Home > U.S. Immigration and Migration > Crèvecoeur, Hector St. John de

Excerpt from Letters from an American Farmer

Written in 1782

A French immigrant writes about the advantages of being an American

"The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury and useless labour, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. — This is an American."

In 1782, a French immigrant to North America, Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735–1813), published a series of essays titled Letters from an American Farmer. It was one of the first presentations of the idea that settlers in the newly independent United States would constitute a new nationality based on a shared dream of freedom and equality. The American, he declared, would be distinct from the various European nationalities from which...