Research Paper on:
Customs and Habits that Form the American Character

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Tocqueville, his writings not as well known as those of Benjamin Franklin, but J. Hector St. John de Cr?vecoeur in the late 1700s laid the foundations for what was to  be considered the American character over the next two centuries. His ideas of what it meant and what it was like to be an American can be heard today, resounding  in the speeches of politicians urging the rejection of new "isms" in favor of "traditional values" and in the exhortations of our parents and grandparents, longing wistfully for the America  they knew and loved. Though the typical American of the time probably came no closer to de Cr?vecoeurs vision of the "new man" than does the American of today, it  struck a chord with both Americans and Europeans alike which has stood the test of time. Whether true or not, de Cr?vecoeurs mirror became the one by which Americans viewed  themselves and the glass through which the world viewed them, for the next two centuries. In describing what he felt was Americas character, he wound up shaping it irrevocably,  setting a goal toward which many a "true American" would strive and teach their progeny to emulate. De Cr?vecoeur came to America in 1755 and fell in love with what  he saw. After the poverty, political and religious strife and injustice he had seen in Europe, he saw the American as "the new man (Anonymous PG)." He married and took  up life as a farmer in Orange County, N.Y. He opposed the Revolutionary War and fled to France at its outbreak, but while there he wrote what was to become  the definitive treatise on what it was to be an American, "Letters from an American Farmer," in 1782. It was de Cr?vecoeur who came up with the concept of America