Thoughts on the American Revolution
...fore, he holds no control over his existence. Without privilege, a man has no citizenship, and without this, he cannot protect himself. As the colonists refused to pay more taxes and resisted the Coercive Acts, respected men such as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, sought to find a way to change Parliament’s decisions. In the year 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense. In his pamphlet, Paine attacked the authority of the king and made his argument for independence. The stunning remarks of Paine bolstered the confidence of the colonists and gave a strong boost towards America’s dying need for liberty. By stepping in where many feared to walk through, Americans set an example that would start the greatest event ever. In Common Sense, Paine encouraged men, that the greatest cause was all mankind, and the struggle for independence anticipated the beginning and celebration of a new world. “Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil…for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government…our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer” (Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1). Among these rights and freedoms that we deserve, is the power to have an equal voice within a free nation. This equalitarian society would be the framework to the Constitution of the United States, which states an individual’s personal rights. Paine was convinced that the American Revolution was a campaign for a well established central government, and that America was ultimately unconquerable. In an excerpt from Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis, he writes, “These are the times that try men’s soul’s. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman” (Thomas Paine, American Crisis, 1). These famous words inspired the patriots to continue in their fight against England. Jefferson’s expression of “all men” almost certainly meant all mankind in general. Because of this misunderstanding, many people were considered to be excluded in terms of the Declaration of Independence. Women and African Americans, free men and slaves alike, were discriminated and had no formal or political legal rights. In the letters written by Abigail Adams to her husband on women’s rights, she wrote “we are determined to forment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation (Abigail Adams, Women’s Rights 1776, 1).” Adams realized the limited roles women were allowed to play in the world and insisted, that a women’s role carried an ...