Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
For all his utopian depictions of colonial life, John de Crevecouer does write realistically of slavery, and like Paine's government comparison, Crevecouer also describes a loss of societal morals to commerce, concerning the issue of slavery. Of Carolina, he writes,
Carolina produces commodities, more valuable perhaps than gold, because they are gained by greater industry; it exhibits also on our northern stage, a display of riches and luxury, inferior indeed to the former, but far superior to what are to be seen in our northern towns" (Crevecouer 166).
He then goes into great length regarding the lifestyle of the citizens, describing their homes, how they feast and dine, enjoy luxuries and galas, and how this entire culture and commerce is built on the backs of slaves. He claims, "they neither see, hear, nor feel for the woes of their poor slaves, from whose painful labours all their wealth proceeds. Here the horrors of slavery, the hardship of incessant toils, are unseen" (Crevecouer 168).
Paine writes that as emigrants arrive and become comfortable within their lives, society will change, stating, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; and this remissness, will point out the necessity, of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue" (Paine pp).
While describing the monarchy, Paine wonders how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished...
Paine never swayed in his writings, never contradicted, never flowered or over-demonized an issue. John de Crevecouer writes that there are few crimes and life is seemingly ideal, however, his writings of slavery are filled with graphic details of horrendous practices, and believes that it would be more humane if slaves were not allowed to father children because this only increased their misery. Paine would have spared the details and simply called for an end of slavery.
Thomas Paine was a man of action, while Hector St. John de Crevecouer was an observer. Paine sounded the alarm, while Crevecouer chronicled. However, Crevecouer might be considered more a republican than Paine, because Paine was more anit-government, not merely anti-monarchy. Both wrote passionately about the new nation in which they lived and both writings are important documents for future generations, yet, Paine's work appears to have more value regarding the history of America and its call for independence, while Crevecouer's is a journal of American life, including minute details of everyday existence. One is a call for arms, while the other propagandizes.
Works Cited
Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. http://earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/commonsense/text.html
Hector St. John de Crevecouer. Letters from an American Farmer; and,
Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America. Penguin Books. 1981; Pp. 67, 68, 166, 168.
Works Cited
Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. http://earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/commonsense/text.html
Hector St. John de Crevecouer. Letters from an American Farmer; and,
Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America. Penguin Books. 1981; Pp. 67, 68, 166, 168.
People often confuse the American Revolution for the War for Independence. Although they share similar motives and similar actions, they are not one in the same. As John Adams made note of in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1815, "What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution" (Bailyn, 1967, p. 1). He goes on to explain the war was more of a
Thomas Paine was born on January 29, 1737 at Thetford, Norfolk, England. He was known as the Anglo-American political philosopher. He lived in a poor family where his father, a Quaker, was only a corsetiere and his mother, an Anglican, was an ordinary housewife with abnormal behavior and very moody. It is said that Thomas was close to his father more than his mother because you can notice in his
Paine's decision to write of high philosophical and political issues in common speech, and of used "graphic metaphors and his simple sentence structure [to] reflect a language understood at the time by common Americans," (Moss & Wilson, ed) has much the same purpose as a translation of the Bible from Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic into Latin, which is to say the need to initiate common people into profound truths. Paine
Mr. Corbett I am writing to express concern about the new Pennsylvania voting laws. You are undoubtedly no stranger to the media's coverage of the laws, which could cause as many as 700,000 -- three-quarters of a million -- voters under the age of thirty to become disenfranchised. The non-white residents of Pennsylvania are the ones most directly affected by the new law, which is why I am writing to
Letter Birmingham Response to the Letter from Birmingham Jail It is difficult to imagine being in the position Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was in when he wrote this letter. Though it was far from the only time he was arrested during his campaigning for civil rights, the "Birmingham Campaign" that led to this arrest was one of the larger movements of civil disobedience that King helped to lead, and the weight
The Sons of Liberty, a clandestine network of individuals dedicated to the freedom of enterprise and the fairness of government that the British Crown once stood as the protector of, have caused enough damage with their secretive acts to both the Crown and the forces here that oppose it. Would it not be better to move their actions from the shadows they have been forced into do to the label