Within Emerson's essay, "Nature," the "Declaration of Independence," and "Letters from an American Farmer" by Crevecour there are many common themes. The main topics found in each of these writings is the idea that with the development of a new country, new laws and new institutions must be established, and old ideologies and philosophies must be discarded.
             Emerson's essay, "Nature," describes what is needed for a new country to develop. "There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship." This conveys the point that America is a new land, and therefore requires new laws and institutions to allow it to grow. This essay emphasizes the idea that "habit and tradition have become a way of living secondhand, by the truths and ideas of other times, and a barrier against the souls insights." From here it can be taken that people often live by what they have learned from people in the past, rather than learning it on their own. Emerson is trying to further his idea of the necessary establishment of new laws for a new country. He says that if America were to recycle the ideas of England, or any other country for that matter, then they become a country that does not stand for what the people believe in. They would have then created a dictatorship as opposed to the democratic ideas that they were targeting. This is Emerson's view on what must be done in the development of a new country.
             The bulk of the "Declaration of Independence," discusses reasons of why the colonies should separate from England. These reasons are persuasively argued, to convince the American people that they desire independence. One of the key points is that the Americans need independence since the British weakened them by "taking away our characters, abolishing our most valuable law, and altering fundamentally the forms of our [their] new...