SOURCE: “J. Hector St. John Crèvecoeur: A Monarcho-Anarchist in Revolutionary America,” in American Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 2, Summer, 1979, pp. 204-22.

In the following essay, Jehlen analyzes the apparent contradiction between Crèvecoeur's admiration for America and his opposition to the American Revolution.

The author of Letters from an American Farmer boasted that in America “we have no princes, for whom we toil, starve and bleed: we are the most perfect society now existing in the world.”¹ But he opposed the American Revolution and remained loyal to the English crown, though his French origin alone should have made him its opponent. Before the war he had declared that immigrants to America could never be expected to remain committed to European societies that condemned them to “involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labour.” His dignity as well as the fruits of his labors secured here, the new American must...