I often tell students that probably the most difficult aspect of learning American history is not learning dates, or names, or that people simply used different technology, it's in understanding that people's worldview was often VERY different from our own. I think you've really hit something here; something that we see in some early 19th century (and possibly 18th century; I'm not as familiar with it) literature: the idea of the "free and independent" person. I don't romanticize the past at all. Life and work on isolated farms was often backbreaking and intellectually deadening, and sometimes people died like flies. However, when the majority of Americans gave up land ownership and some measure of food-independence for the shaky security of a paycheck it was the start of a different worldview-maybe not a new one because many people in the "old countries" had been dependent in one way or another- but it really altered worldview of later generations of Americans.