1) Social Change and the Revolution 2) Tom Paine—British Failure and International Revolutionary

1. 1) Social Change and the Revolution2) Tom Paine—British Failure and International Revolutionary History 350 April 10, 2013

2. Announcements • Instructions for the discussion forums and the first discussion forum prompt are now online here. They can also be found on Blackboard. • Topic options for the short paper due on June 3 are also online, here. • I won’t be able to keep my office hours next Monday, April 15.

3. Justifying Revolution • “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” • “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” • “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

4. Vigilance or Conspiracy Theory? The Radical Whig Heritage • “Radical Whig” thought: Power vs. Liberty (excerpts here) • Fringe figures in Britain, heroes in the colonies • Power as aggression • Threats to liberty • Taxation • Standing armies • Denial of free speech and press • Threats to property rights • Resistance as duty John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon’s essays.

5. Revolution as Millennium • Evangelical Religion and Political Change • The Great Awakening 1730s and 1740s • Democratizing Religion? • Expanding political participation? • The Revolution as “God’s own cause.” • Revolution to change the whole world from “a vale of tears into a paradise of God.”

6. Revolution as Consumer Protest • Imported luxuries as threats to personal independence and integrity • Non-importation as an organizing strategy

8. “Address to the Ladies” 1767 Boston Address to the LADIES. Young ladies in town, and those that live round, Let a friend at this season advise you : Since money's so scarce, and times growing worse Strange things may soon hap and surprize you : First then, throw aside your high top knots of pride Wear none but your own country linnen ; of Oeconomy boast, let your pride be the most What, if homespun they say is not quite so gay As brocades, yet be not in a passion, For when once it is known this is much wore in town, One and all will cry out, 'tis the fashion ! And as one, all agree that you'll not married be To such as will wear LondonFact'ry : But at first sight refuse, tell'em such you do chuse As encourage our own Manufact'ry. No more Ribbons wear, nor in rich dress appear, Love your country much better than fine things,

9. A Revolution in Ideas and Feelings? • Popular Sovereignty--End to Monarchy • Constitution to Guarantee Rights, not to Grant Rights • From Deference to Individualism? New Yorkers pull down a statue of King George III.

10. A Revolution in Social Structure? • Pre-Revolutionary America as a “smiling country” “Here he beholds fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields, an immense country filled with decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody and uncultivated!. . . A modern society offers itself to his contemplation, different from what he had hitherto seen. It is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess every thing and of a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very visible one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, no great refinements of luxury. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe.”

11. Tensions in the “Smiling Country” • A “land-population-wealth” crisis • Pressure on the land Declining soil quality Dividing the farm Limits on Westward migration • Declining urban opportunity • Planter overextension and debt

12. Who Won the Revolutionary War? Who Lost? • “Who should rule at home?” • Westward expansion • Democratization of office holding and voting • Limited advances for white women

13. Who Won? Who Lost? • The Revolution and African Americans: • Gradual emancipation in the North • Expansion of slavery in the plantation South • Jefferson’s criticism of the slave trade, deleted from his draft of the Declaration of Independence • Native Americans and the European American onslaught

14. Paradoxes of Paine • Failure and Fame • American nationalist and international revolutionary • Radical and "advocate for commerce"

15. A Life of Disappointments 1737-1774 • A conflicted childhood • Limited formal education • A Staymaker’s Life? • A widower and a divorcé • Working for the Man: Paine as tax collector Engraving of a staymaker at work, 1782

16. Paine Commemorated in Lewes, England

17. Paine Complains

18. To America 1774 • A letter of recommendation from Ben Franklin for work as a tutor, clerk or assistant surveyor • A sickening voyage • Paine’s Philadelphia • Editing the Pennsylvania Magazine

19. Common Sense • From “Plain Truth” to Common Sense • Publication January 1776 • Popularity—100,000 (?) sold in first year • George Washington: Common Sense is “working a powerful change…in the Minds of many Men.” • Criticisms: John Adams calls it “a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted crapulous mass.”

20. Tone and Style: Reason and Rage • Language: “As it is my design to make those that can scarcely read understand, I shall avoid every literary ornament and put it in language as plain as the alphabet.” • “Plain truth. . . in plain terms” • Biblical References • First person plural “What is it that wewant?” • Personifying the enemy: King George III as a “royal brute” • Demanding immediate action

21. Common Sense: The Message • Independence • Republican Government • American Nationalism