What Is An American?

From Bill Bennett's American Patriot's Almanac:

When French-American J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur died on November 12, 1813, he left behind a vivid portrait of life on the eighteenth-century American frontier. Crèvecoeur had emigrated to the New World in 1755 and eventually settled on a farm in New York. His impressions, published in England in 1782 as Letters from an American Farmer, still offer insights about the American character:

What then is the American, this new man? . . . He is an American who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigor, and industry which began long since in the East; they will finish the great circle. . . . The American ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers were born. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labor … without any part being claimed, either by a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord. . . . 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 labor, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. This is an American.

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