--but we boast no feats
Of cruelty like Europe’s murdering breed--
Our milder epithet is merciful…
Gold, fatal gold, was the alluring bait
To Spain’s rapacious tribes--hence rose the wars
From Chili to the Caribbean sea,
And Montezuma’s Mexican domains:
More blest are we, with whose unenvied soil
Nature decreed no mingling gold to shine…
…more noble riches flow
From agriculture, and the industrious swain,
Who tills the fertile vale, or mountain’s brow
Content to lead a safe, a humble life…
In this passage is from pages 9 and 10 of Poems of Freneau, from his poem “The Rising Glory of America,” the speaker, Eugenio, is discussing what he calls the blessings and “more noble riches” of North America compared with those of South America. The speaker describes an image of war-torn South America, from Chile, to the Caribbean, including Mexico, fighting over what he calls the “fatal gold.” This seems appropriate, since after the discovery of the Maya in Mexico by Cortez, and the Incans in Peru by Pizarro, the Spaniards became obsessed with the wealth of the New World in the form of jewels, gold, and other precious metals. North America does not have overwhelming riches that are “boasted” to the rest of the world by Spain following the conquests. This blood-thirsty drive for wealth led the Spanish to ravage many tribes across South America, leading to wars that lasted for decades and decimated entire cultures within only a few years. The North American lands, however, were not rich in those kinds of jewels, as the speaker points out, but instead rich with soil that could grow many different kinds of crops successfully and abundantly.
The wealth of North America comes instead from the agriculture that the rich soil provides, and agriculture is the result of hard work. As the speaker goes on to point out, the gift of fertile soil is nothing without the hardworking farmer, the “industrious swain,” who is “content to lead a safe and humble life.” It is through his hard work that America is bestowed yet another kind of noble wealth: that of virtue earned through hard work and humble existence. This wealth is priceless, and timeless, unlike the wealth of material riches, which is fleeting. It is also industrious, built on hard work, which only adds to the nobility of the American farmer: their wealth does not come from stripping other people, mainly natives, of their materials, and instead comes from working the land to make grow riches from the soil.
It is that wealth of virtue, earned through the hard, honest work of the land, that Freneau seems so proud of in this particular work. Compared with the cruelty of the Europeans, especially the Spanish, the Americans are described as peaceful, wanting nothing more than to live free of the tyranny of England and the other nations of Europe. In taking a stand against Europe in this way, the American speakers in this poem see themselves as being more civilized, noble, and virtuous than their European brethren.
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