There was at least one reason why Paine's brief pamphlet is believed to be "the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era". The reason is, while the average Colonist was more educated than their European counterpart, European and Colonial elites agreed that common people had no place in government or political debates. By aiming for a popular audience, and writing in a straightforward and simple way, Paine made political ideas tangible for a common audience. This brought average Americans into political debate, creating a whole new type of political language. Also, illiterate colonists could hear Common Sense read at public gatherings, thus bringing even the illiterate into this new political world. Paine's new style of political writing avoided using complex Latin phrases, instead opting for a more direct, concise style that helped make the information accessible to all. Thusly, Paine's "incendiary" words were heard even by those common folk who had never learned to read. Paine feels that the true “King of America” should be the laws that govern our country, because he says that “in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King”. I personally agree with Paine and his opinions on all of this being common sense, and I believe that many American’s at that time did as well, simply because they all did eventually come to the agreement that the King of America should be America’s people and not Britain’s.
Here are a few of the accusations made by our Founding Fathers against King George the Third of England in the Declaration of Independence in 1776: He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the civil power. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. Basically, Jefferson is claiming that the King of Great Britain has leaded a series of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having led to the absolute tyranny over the State’s. Unfortunately, the Declaration of Independence did not change the lives of women or slaves other than that it put the idea in people’s mind that everyone should be equal, which helps out the slaves and women later on in history.
Phillis Wheatley is writing a letter to Samson Occum and claiming that to her it is rather obvious that the freedom of slaves should go hand in hand with the freedom of America from the oppressive British government. Wheatley believes that God implanted a Love of Freedom in everyone and feels that all people are against oppression. She describes the opposite actions of those who claim to want freedom for all men, yet do not have those feelings towards women or slaves as a “strange absurdity”. Wheatley had a reluctance to write about slavery, which perhaps was because she had conflicting feelings about the institution. In this poem in the Great Awakening book pgs. 222-223, I feel that she praises slavery because it brought her to Christianity, but, she also feels that slavery is indeed a cruel fate. Jefferson felt that her poetry was not good enough and that it jeopardized his assumptions about African Americans’ intellectual inferiority to European Americans.
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