Crevecoeur

Crevecoeur St. John de Crevecoeur, a French Agriculturalist, came over to America in the mid eighteenth century. He wrote the Letters From An American Farmer to inform a friend in England about the way of life in the British Colonies of America. Letter IX gives a brief account of Charlestown, South Carolina and the lives of the plantation owners and their slaves. Charlestown is one of the richest colonies in all of America and it is not full of gold or silver but commodities like indigo or rice. These products create an industry far greater than any mines could produce. (223) In order for this industry to prosper, plantation owners need many workers to cover such vast properties. The owners buy slaves that are brought over from Africa to do all the labor on the farm. Crevecoeur visits these plantations and he cannot believe how the slaves are treated. “Oh Nature, where art thou'—Are not these blacks thy children as well as we.” (227) He cannot understand how the slaves can be treated worse than animals. “They are arranged like horses at a fair, they are branded like cattle, and then driven to toil, to starve, to languish for a few years slaves, people, owners, treated, one, life, crevecoeur, work, while, way, plantation, much, different, colonies, cannot, america, about, whites, turn, suffering, stop, starve, sleep, side, plantations, own, over, others, night, luxuries, live, industry, goes, far, families, eat, charlestown, believe, 226, years, wrote, write, worse, working, workers, woes, wealth, warmest, visits, vast, unfortunate