AMERICAN REVOLUTION

• Thomas Paine


  1737–1809: political theorist
• Thomas Paine was born in Norfolk, England
• Common Sense (1776)


  • Differentiating society and government: the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices
  • Attack on monarchy (George III)
• Rights of Man (1791)

  • A representative government with enumerated social programs to remedy the numbing poverty of commoners through progressive tax measures
  • Pamphlet in the movement for reform in Britain in the 1790s and for the opening decades of the nineteenth century
• Thomas Jefferson


  American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher
• Thomas Jefferson was born in Shadwell, Virginia
• Jefferson's views on society and government

  • Citizens have "certain inalienable rights" and "rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others"
  • Prohibited individuals in society from infringing on the liberty of others, but also restrained itself from diminishing individual liberty as a protection against tyranny from the majority
  • Individual liberties were the fruit of political equality, which were threatened by arbitrary government
• Jefferson's views on democracy

  • The expression of society and promoted national self-determination, cultural uniformity, and education of all males of the commonwealth
  • Supported public education and a free press as essential components of a democratic nation
• Jefferson's religious views


  • Influenced by Deists: "I am Christian, in the only sense in which [Jesus] wished any one to be"
  • Christian: one who followed the simple teachings of Jesus
• Jefferson's views on slavery


  • Felt slavery was harmful to both slave and master, but had reservations about releasing slaves from captivity, and advocated for gradual emancipation
  • In 1779, he proposed gradual voluntary training and resettlement to the Virginia legislature, and three years later drafted legislation allowing slaveholders to free their own slaves
  • In 1784, Jefferson proposed the abolition of slavery in all western U.S. territories, limiting slave importation to 15 years
• Benjamin Franklin


  Printer, inventor and philosopher
• Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts
• Benjamin Franklin


  • A practical man
  • Experiments and Observations on Electricity, the work that won him the Copley Medal, the 18th-century equivalent of the Nobel Prize
  • Helped draft the Declaration of Independence and was one of its signers
• Benjamin Franklin: '"There never was a good war or a bad peace" (Letter to Sir Joseph Banks)'
• Benjamin Franklin: '"Don't throw stones at your neighbors, if your own windows are glass" (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1736)'
• Benjamin Franklin: '"Well done is better than well said" (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1737)'