Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

Born in Normandy as a member of the French nobility, Hector St. John de Crevecoeur (born Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur) served in the French army that defended Quebec from the British during the French and Indian Wars. After the fall of Quebec, he moved south to the British colonies, where he took up farming, travel, and letter writing. During the five decades he spent in North America, Crevecoeur had many opportunities to visit and observe the far-flung colonies, which held his interest for showing the strengths and weaknesses of a people taming a virgin land and benefitting from political liberty.

Crevecoeur's "Letters" were a wide-ranging correspondence on colonial life first published in 1782. In one long and emotional passage, he describes the elegant life of Charleston, which in the colonial era was one of the wealthiest cities in North America...