He bought a sizable farm in the Greycourt area of Chester, New York, a small town in Orange County.

Accompanied by his son, he entered British-occupied New York City, where he was imprisoned as a suspected American spy for three months.

The book quickly became the first literary success by an American author in Europe and turned Crèvecœur into a celebrated figure.

His work provided useful information and understanding of the "New World" that helped create an American identity in the minds of Europeans by describing an entire country, rather than another regional colony.

He applied the Latin maxim "Ubi panis ibi patria" (Where there is bread, there is my country) to early American settlers.

He once praised the middle colonies for "fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields... decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody, and uncultivated."

The original edition, published near the end of the American Revolutionary War, was rather selective in the letters that were included, omitting those that were negative or critical.

With regard to French politics, Crèvecœur was a liberal and a follower of the philosophes and dedicated his book to Abbé Raynal, who he said "viewed these provinces of North America in their true light, as the asylum of freedom; as the cradle of future nations, and the refuge of distressed Europeans.

"[5] In 1883, his great-grandson, Robert de Crèvecœur, published a biography[6] for which he used previously unpublished letters and manuscripts passed down by the family.

Although it received little notice in France, its existence came to the attention of W. P. Trent of Columbia University, who in 1904 published a reprint of Letters of an American Farmer.

[10] The success of his book in France had led to his being taken up by an influential circle, and he was appointed the French consul for New York, including the areas of New Jersey and Connecticut.

Anxious to be reunited with his family, he learned that his farm had been destroyed in an Indian raid, his wife was dead, and his two younger children missing.

He stayed in the house of his friend William Seton,[11] who, as the last royal public notary for the City and Province of New York, had helped to secure his release in 1780 from the prison he was kept in.