Letters From An American Farmer

James declares that the “easiest way of becoming acquainted with the modes of thinking, the rules of conduct, and the prevailing manners of any people” (107) is to study the treatment of their children. In Nantucket, the children “are gently holden by an uniform silk cord, which unites softness and strength” and are “corrected with tenderness, nursed with the most affectionate care” (107).

They learn from their parents’ example and “acquire a taste for that neatness for which their fathers are so conspicuous; they learn to be prudent and saving” (107). Until they are twelve, they attend school and “learn to read and write a good hand” (108). After this, they are “in general put apprentices to the cooper’s trade” before being “sent to sea” (108) at age 14, where they move “gradually through every station of rowers, steersmen, and harpooners” (109).

The first settlers “began their career of industry with a single whale-boat,” using the profits from their successful hunts “to purchase and prepare better materials” (109), gradually expanding their operations and the number of boats and resources available to them. They hunt far and wide and have “acquired a monopoly of this commodity,” their industriousness allowing them “to rival all their competitors” (110).

They are helped in the enterprise by their collective understanding of “the spirit of commerce” and because they “possess, like the generality of the Americans, a large share of native penetration, activity, and good sense” (111). This is thanks “[n]ot only to their national genius but to the poverty of their soil” (112), which encourages them to pursue a life based around the sea.

Martha’s Vineyard is a neighboring island “twenty miles in length and from seven to eight miles in breadth” (113). An early settler left a part of the island on which grew “many wild vines” to his favorite daughter and “thence it was called Martha’s Vineyard” (114). There are American Indians living on the island who “were very early Christianized” (113) by the settlers, and James believes them “by the decency of their manners, their industry, and neatness, to be wholly Europeans and in no way inferior to many of the inhabitants” (114).

The white settlers “are divided into two classes: the first occupy the land, which they till with admirable care and knowledge; the second, who are possessed of none, apply themselves to the sea, the general resource of mankind in this part of the world” (114). They hunt whales in “brigs of about 150 tons burden,” crewed by thirteen men who “have no wages; each draws a certain established share in partnership with the proprietor of the vessel” (115). In this way, they are equally “concerned in the success of the enterprise and all equally alert and vigilant” (115). After they kill a whale, the “next operation is to cut with axes and spades every part of her body which yields oil” (120); these whale parts are rendered down and the oil poured into barrels to be sold.

James believes that the “moral conduct, prejudices, and customs” of those who spend their lives at sea must “naturally be very different from those of their neighbors, who live by cultivating the earth,” giving them “no small desire of inebriation and a more eager pursuit of those pleasures, of which they have been so long deprived” (122). However, he finds that the sailors of Martha’s Vineyard do not engage in such behavior and, “[o]n the contrary, all was peace here, and a general decency prevailed throughout” (122).

The same is true all over the island, where James is “cordially received” and “treated with unaffected hospitality” (123). The inhabitants are industrious and James remarks that “[n]ever was a beehive more faithfully employed in gathering wax, beebread, and honey […] than are the members of this society” who all work “with great diligence, but without that servility of labour which I am informed prevails in Europe” (123). The island’s inhabitants all “possess a large share of good sense,” which is far more valuable than “[s]hining talents and university knowledge,” which “would be entirely useless here, nay would be dangerous” and “would lead them out of that useful path which is so well adapted to their situation” (124).

In Nantucket, “every man takes a wife as soon as he chooses, and that is generally very early” (127). The arrangements are simple and “no marriage articles are drawn up among us by skillful lawyers” (127). Their children are “born by the sea-side” and “by early plunging in it they acquire that boldness, that presence of mind, and dexterity which make them ever after such expert seamen,” while their father’s tales of hunting whales and life at sea “imprint on their opening minds an early curiosity and taste for the same life” (127).

The problem of “that exuberancy of population which must arise from so much temperance, from healthiness of climate, and from early marriage” on a small island is dealt with by people moving away, for “[e]migration is both natural and easy to a maritime people” (128). Many people born on the island have gone on to set up Quaker communities on the mainland while leaving a well-established community behind so that, “though this fruitful hive constantly sends out swarms, as industrious as themselves, yet it always remains full without having any useless drones” (131).

No one, “having accumulated riches,” moves away simply “to exchange their barren situation for a more sheltered, more pleasant one on the main[land],” or to “[l]ive sumptuously” (131) elsewhere. In fact, “they would be filled with horror at the thought” because they “abhor the very idea of expending in useless waste and vain luxuries the fruits of prosperous labour” (132).

There “are but two congregations” in the area, one Quaker and one Presbyterian, and the “two sects live in perfect peace and harmony with each other” with “neither idle drones, voluptuous devotees, ranting enthusiasts, nor sour demagogues” (133). Quakers and Presbyterians “love and mutually assist each other in all their wants,” and all “cheerfully obey the same laws and pay the same duties” (137). There are only two doctors and no more are needed by the community because “[t]emperance, the calm of passions, frugality, and continual exercise keep them healthy” (134).

There is “[o]ne single lawyer” on the island but he is “seldom employed as the means of self-defence and much seldomer as the channel of attack” (135). The people of Nantucket “live without any military establishments, without governors or any masters but the laws,” and even then, many live their entire lives without ever having to “apply to the law either for redress or assistance” (136). The law simply provides “general protection of the individuals,” and “is purchased by the most moderate taxes […] and by the trifling duties incident in the course of their lawful trade (for they despise contraband)” (136).

There is one more “peculiar characteristic of this community”: “there is not a slave […] on the whole island” (137). Although “slavery prevails all around them,” the inhabitants of Nantucket “have given the world a singular example of moderation, disinterestedness, and Christian charity in emancipating their Negroes” (137).

Simplicity is central to the Quakers’ lives, and they are “strongly attached to plainness of dress, as well as to that of language,” which is sometimes “ungrammatical, yet should any person […] attempt to speak more correctly, he would be looked upon as a fop or an innovator” (139). Similarly, if anyone were to wear “a long coat made of English cloth on any other than the First Day (Sunday), he would be greatly ridiculed and censured […] [and] looked upon as a careless spendthrift, whom it would be unsafe to trust” (139).

Considering idleness to be “the most heinous sin that can be committed,” the Quakers keep themselves busy at all times, and “an idle man would soon be pointed out as an object of compassion, for idleness is considered as another word for want and hunger” (140). The women are also industrious. They spin “an abundance of wool and flax, and would be forever disgraced and looked upon as idlers if all the family were not clad in good, neat, and sufficient homespun cloth” (144). In addition, with the men often away at sea, “their wives in their absence are necessarily obliged to transact business, settle accounts, and, in short, to rule and provide for their families” (141).

This does not mean that “the Nantucket wives are turbulent, of high temper, and difficult to be ruled,” as they are “comply[ing] only with the prevailing custom of the island” (143). They do, however, practice the “singular custom” of “taking a dose of opium every morning,” and James struggles to understand “how a people always happy and healthy […] should want the fictitious effects of opium to preserve that cheerfulness to which their temperance, their climate, their happy situation, so justly entitle them” (144-45).

The “young fellows” of the island “assemble with the girls of the neighborhood” and eschewing “cards, musical instruments, and songs,” entertain each other with “stories of their whaling voyages” (142) and other talk. James considers that it is “no wonder, therefore, that they marry so early” (142) and observes that as soon as they marry, “they cease to appear so cheerful and gay,” as “the new rank they hold in the society impresses them with more serious ideas than were entertained before” (143).

The inhabitants of Nantucket are “an unmixed English breed” and most “are the descendants of the twenty-seven first proprietors who patented the island” (145). Although they are welcoming, the island “is not a place where gay travelers should resort in order to enjoy that variety of pleasures the more splendid towns of this continent afford” (146). A visitor from Europe would find a gathering on Nantucket “without a fiddle, without a dance, without cards” to be “an insipid assembly and [rank] this among the dullest days he had ever spent” (147).

James recalls visiting “a single family without a neighbor” living in isolation among nature, “perfectly unconnected with the great world, and far removed from its perturbations” (148). The family “were perfectly at ease and seemed to want for nothing” (149), and James again considers the superiority of life in America, observing that, while “we have neither ancient amphitheaters, gilded palaces, nor elevated spires, we enjoy in our woods a substantial happiness which the wonders of art cannot communicate” (150).