INTRODUCTION + READING ASSIGNMENT + WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Assignment 11:
THOMAS PAINE, JOHN & ABIGAIL ADAMS, THOMAS JEFFERSON

Literary production during the Revolutionary period centered around a body of polemical pamphlets and political documents out of which was hammered the new nation's political identity. Much later, as they became available, the memoirs and letters of the founders further illustrated the terms by which this identity was forged. That body of writings is massive, involving thousands of columns of print in newspapers, separately printed pamphlets and broadsides, as well as personal papers. From it, we here focus on just a miniscule--but perhaps representative--sampling of these texts.

From the very beginning of the conflict with England in the 1760s, the most insightful writers of columns, pamphlets and broadsides had moved well beyond the issues of taxation, legal rights, and abuses by English militiamen. Of much greater concern were questions such as these:

  • Had America truly achieved the cohesion, and the independent wisdom, of a nation-state?

  • What were both the benefits, and the dangers, of Empire; and was the new nation destined to become imperial?

  • What were the rights of man? In particular, were there indeed universal rights guaranteed by Nature, rather than being merely the transient expressions of this or that culture?

In pursuing these issues, writers of the Revolutionary period completed the transformation of the colonies into a single, secular culture. It was as if the sermons and religious tracts of the Puritan period, with all their concern for establishing the New Jerusalem, had undergone this remarkable translation: the Puritan quest for spiritual salvation was rewritten to mean a quest for liberty.

In addition to these questions, the great writers of the Revolutionary period were concerned, like Franklin in The Autobiography, to find a via media, or "middle path": to balance reason with emotion, the rights of man with the needs of the state, the ideal of a central American government with the reality of thirteen distinct colonies, and the ideal of a literate and worldly civilization with the reality that 18th century America was still a predominantly rural and agrarian culture. All of these needs and potentials for balance and stability were on the minds of writers like Paine, Jefferson, and John and Abigail Adams. Their writings are rationalistic, and steeped in the tradition of Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke. Yet their writings are also filled with passionate exclamation. Paine's simple, declarative sentences are nevertheless given over to possibilities for stylistic excess, when appropriate. In such tendencies of style and thought we begin to see the structures and the dimensions of American culture at this crucial stage.

Reading Assignment
  1. Thomas Paine, Common Sense (pp. 691-699) and The Crisis (pp. 699-705).
  2. John and Abigail Adams, letters (pp. 675-691).
  3. Thomas Jefferson, from The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson (pp. 712-719).
Writing Assignment
  1. According to Paine's Common Sense, in what ways had England behaved like a bad "parent," and why were Americans justified in rejecting her?

  2. Aside from these rather more abstract, metaphorical reasons for Independence, covered above in #1, what are the concrete, practical reasons Paine advances on behalf of the cause, in both Common Sense and The Crisis?

  3. In The Crisis, Paine claims: "There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one" (page 704). Certainly one of his goals was to ask his reader to let "his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves" (page 693), thus to synthesize intellect and passion. Now, looking back through his writings, ask: When does Paine "overdo" the language somewhat, giving powerful expression of his feelings? That is, when and how does his style become most impassioned?

  4. Now, turn to the letters of John and Abigail Adams, and pursue a similar set of questions:

    1. What are the practical reasons both for and against Independence set forward by the Adamses letters?

    2. Abigail Adams writes to her husband that "Man is a dangerous creature" (page 682). How is this view of Man similar to yet different from the Puritans' view? Also, in this and surrounding letters, what do they believe should be done to contain that danger?

    3. Note that Abigail refers to herself as "Portia" and frequently finds parallels between events of the day and those of classical Rome and monarchical Europe. Using two instances of that strategy, discuss how she employs these parallels to good effect.

  5. Now the "Declaration of Independence." Examine the revisions to paragraph 2 of the "Declaration" (indicated by underlining, on page 715-716), and write a paragraph or two discussing the effect of those changes.

  6. According to the "Declaration," what specific factors justify a colony to throw off the authority of its parent state?
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