This paper explains that America began as a conglomerate of individuals
seeking religious freedom and criminals seeking to
establish a new life, but the nation gradually began to evolve into a more
clearly defined social network with hierarchies of status. The author points out that the farmer, Crevecoeur, credited England for the success of America, but, clearly, the inhabitants are once-removed and different in character from the originators of the American nation. The paper relates that Equiano wrote that race in the absence of class and
heredity was a marker of status and usually not a positive one.