AMERICAN REVOLUTION

    Cards (16)

    • 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)'
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