Crevecoeur is a late eighteenth-century Romantic enthusiast.  Be patient with him.  His style can  be overwrought, but his images are arresting and the fantasy-story he tells in the last chapter will amaze you.
  Read actively.  Even in these selected pages some passages can be skimmed while others deserve careful reading and rereading.

Here are some questions to organize your thinking about this reading:

1)  What are the elements of Crevecoeur’s personal happiness in Letter 2?  Which of them seem to be essential?

2)  In Letter 3, what distinguishes "American" life from European?  What, if anything, do these distinguishing features have in common?  Where do they come from?  Are they based on principles, decisions, historical accidents, or all three?

3)  In what senses is the territory Crevecoeur describes a "borderland"?

4)  What does Crevecoeur see as ideal relations between humans and "Nature"?  What’s the point of the anecdotes in Chapter 2?

5)  What accounts for Crevecoeur’s extreme agitation at the beginning of Letter 12?  (It’s more than the physical threat of war.)

6)  What elements of his ideal pastoral life does Crevecoeur hope to preserve among the "Indians"?  How?

7)  What is there about "Indian" society that makes him think his experiment will work?  What does he most fear?  Why?

8)  How does Crevecoeur deal with slavery?  How does he reconcile the attitudes expressed in Letter 9 with his own role as a slave master?