Comparison Of Pamphleteering And The American Revolution
On Pamphleteering and the revolution
The purpose of this paper will be to prove that the flow of information between individuals and the masses through the form of pamphlets helped create the ideological ground necessary for the war.
I will prove this by showing how the American colonies were uniquely suited for pamphlets to be effective, with a long history of both education and opinion
I will prove how influential writers used the pamphlet to disseminate ideas, and how this was not possible in other forms of media
-Thomas Paine
-Letters from a Pennsylvania farmer
A sense of community among the colonies
The Revolutionary war occurred for many reasons- economics, the need for expansion, etc. However, before it occurred there was a period of time wherein the contention between Britain and her colonies was expressed in a war of words. While the events that would set into motion the revolution occurred, there was constant commentary from the people who lived through them and those who merely had an opinion. …show more content…
These views were most often expressed by those who could in the form of a pamphlet- a cheaply printed booklet between eight and thirty pages long.
In this paper I intend to prove that the pamphlet was an instrumental part of the Revolution, helping to foment the political atmosphere to the point that men were ready to take up arms against Great Britain. These printed diatribes were unique and the nation would never see them play a role quite like this again in the course of its events, but for the time period they existed the pamphlet was uniquely suited for American consumption and allowed for some of the greatest thinkers behind the patriot and loyalist causes to expound on their views to the
masses. Thomas Paine is widely considered to be one of the most important ideologues to take up a pen in American history. His pamphlet Common Sense is perhaps the most widely reprinted of the era, and is still read today. No one else is able to evoke the ideals which would lead to the founding of America quite like Mr. Paine, an Englishman by birth and a man without much in means to the worlds. The words of Common Sense speak of the natural rights of individuals and the duties of the state, drawing on the Lockesian philosophy of a social contract. Locke published after the beginning of the revolutionary war, and probably did not have much influence on the continental congresses declaration of independence. It did have a profound effect on the common American people as evidenced by its unprecedented rate of publication. Framed in terms designed to be appealing to people of low education, Paine calls upon religious authority to justify his arguments for independence from the British. The medium he chose was particularly suited to express his message- he penned a lengthy diatribe that required multiple sources to be cited. This would have been impossible in a daily publication like the newspapers of the day, in that the feasibility of expressing so much in so little space would have been unlikely. The self published style embraced by Paine had a long history in both Europe and America- handbills detailing the political or merely self aggrandizing stylings of writers appeared almost immediately following the creation of the moveable text type printing press. The common characterization of these tracts were that they were almost all published to address contemporary issues, most often dealing with political or religious conflicts, and were aimed to address the common people. They were, unlike books, short enough that a series of repudiations and responses could be published, invoking a certain amount of academic discussion amongst the partisan ship. It was in America, however, that the pamphlet was most widespread and influential. The colonies population centers were much more distant and the people dispersed. Common political narratives were almost impossible to establish on a colony to colony basis, much less alone across the entire continent. The pamphlet, however, was instrumental in creating a common voice among the revolutionaries, and would come to shape the view many individuals would take on the political upheaval rampant throughout the decades preceding the revolution. When the committees of correspondence formed to address the needs of a patriot state, their foremost duty was to insure the publishing and distribution of party propaganda. Letters and reports of the war abroad were reprinted by these committees to ensure that even at the state and local level, all patriots felt involved in the process of revolution. Secondly, as no man at first could possess any other public honors than were bestowed upon him, so the givers of those honors could have no power to give away the right of posterity, and though they might say, "We choose you for our head," they could not, without manifest injustice to their children, say, "that your children and your children's children shall reign over ours for ever." Because such an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might (perhaps) in the next succession put them under the government of a rogue or a fool. Most wise men, in their private sentiments, have ever treated hereditary right with contempt; yet it is one of those evils, which when once established is not easily removed; many submit from fear, others from superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the king the plunder of the rest.
This is supposing the present race of kings in the world to have had an honorable origin; whereas it is more than probable, that could we take off the dark covering of antiquity, and trace them to their first rise, that we should find the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners of preeminence in subtlety obtained him the title of chief among plunderers; and who by increasing in power, and extending his depredations, overawed the quiet and defenseless to purchase their safety by frequent contributions. Yet his electors could have no idea of giving hereditary right to his descendants, because such a perpetual exclusion of themselves was incompatible with the free and unrestrained principles they professed to live by. Wherefore, hereditary succession in the early ages of monarchy could not take place as a matter of claim, but as something casual or complemental; but as few or no records were extant in those days, and traditionary history stuffed with fables, it was very easy, after the lapse of a few generations, to trump up some superstitious tale, conveniently timed, Mahomet like, to cram hereditary right down the throats of the vulgar. Perhaps the disorders which threatened, or seemed to threaten on the decease of a leader and the choice of a new one (for elections among ruffians could not be very orderly) induced many at first to favor hereditary pretensions; by which means it happened, as it hath happened since, that what at first was submitted to as a convenience, was afterwards claimed as a right. England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones, yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It certainly hath no divinity in it. However, it is needless to spend much time in exposing the folly of hereditary right, if there are any so weak as to believe it, let them promiscuously worship the ass and lion, and welcome. I shall neither copy their humility, nor disturb their devotion. Yet I should be glad to ask how they suppose kings came at first? The question admits but of three answers, viz., either by lot, by election, or by usurpation. If the first king was taken by lot, it establishes a precedent for the next, which excludes hereditary succession. Saul was by lot, yet the succession was not hereditary, neither does it appear from that transaction there was any intention it ever should. If the first king of any country was by election, that likewise establishes a precedent for the next; for to say, that the right of all future generations is taken away, by the act of the first electors, in their choice not only of a king, but of a family of kings for ever, hath no parallel in or out of scripture but the doctrine of original sin, which supposes the free will of all men lost in Adam; and from such comparison, and it will admit of no other, hereditary succession can derive no glory. For as in Adam all sinned, and as in the first electors all men obeyed; as in the one all mankind were subjected to Satan, and in the other to Sovereignty; as our innocence was lost in the first, and our authority in the last; and as both disable us from reassuming some former state and privilege, it unanswerably follows that original sin and hereditary succession are parallels. Dishonorable rank! Inglorious connection! Yet the most subtle sophist cannot produce a juster simile.
As to usurpation, no man will be so hardy as to defend it; and that William the Conqueror was an usurper is a fact not to be contradicted. The plain truth is, that the antiquity of English monarchy will not bear looking into. But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the foolish, the wicked; and the improper, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions. Another evil which attends hereditary succession is, that the throne is subject to be possessed by a minor at any age; all which time the regency, acting under the cover of a king, have every opportunity and inducement to betray their trust. The same national misfortune happens, when a king worn out with age and infirmity, enters the last stage of human weakness. In both these cases the public becomes a prey to every miscreant, who can tamper successfully with the follies either of age or infancy. The most plausible plea, which hath ever been offered in favor of hereditary succession, is, that it preserves a nation from civil wars; and were this true, it would be weighty; whereas, it is the most barefaced falsity ever imposed upon mankind. The whole history of England disowns the fact. Thirty kings and two minors have reigned in that distracted kingdom since the conquest, in which time there have been (including the Revolution) no less than eight civil wars and nineteen rebellions. Wherefore instead of making for peace, it makes against it, and destroys the very foundation it seems to stand on. The contest for monarchy and succession, between the houses of York and Lancaster, laid England in a scene of blood for many years. Twelve pitched battles, besides skirmishes and sieges, were fought between Henry and Edward. Twice was Henry prisoner to Edward, who in his turn was prisoner to Henry. And so uncertain is the fate of war and the temper of a nation, when nothing but personal matters are the ground of a quarrel, that Henry was taken in triumph from a prison to a palace, and Edward obliged to fly from a palace to a foreign land; yet, as sudden transitions of temper are seldom lasting, Henry in his turn was driven from the throne, and Edward recalled to succeed him. The parliament always following the strongest side. This contest began in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and was not entirely extinguished till Henry the Seventh, in whom the families were united. Including a period of 67 years, viz., from 1422 to 1489. In short, monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that kingdom only) but the world in blood and ashes. 'Tis a form of government which the word of God bears testimony against, and blood will attend it. If we inquire into the business of a king, we shall find that (in some countries they have none) and after sauntering away their lives without pleasure to themselves or advantage to the nation, withdraw from the scene, and leave their successors to tread the same idle round. In absolute monarchies the whole weight of business civil and military, lies on the king; the children of Israel in their request for a king, urged this plea "that he may judge us, and go out before us and fight our battles." But in countries where he is neither a judge nor a general, as in England, a man would be puzzled to know what is his business. The nearer any government approaches to a republic, the less business there is for a king. It is somewhat difficult to find a proper name for the government of England. Sir William Meredith calls it a republic; but in its present state it is unworthy of the name, because the corrupt influence of the crown, by having all the places in its disposal, hath so effectually swallowed up the power, and eaten out the virtue of the house of commons (the republican part in the constitution) that the government of England is nearly as monarchical as that of France or Spain. Men fall out with names without understanding them. For it is the republican and not the monarchical part of the constitution of England which Englishmen glory in, viz., the liberty of choosing a house of commons from out of their own body — and it is easy to see that when the republican virtue fails, slavery ensues. My is the constitution of England sickly, but because monarchy hath poisoned the republic, the crown hath engrossed the commons? In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived. A common thread that runs across the essays we read in Young’s Anthology is that the colonies before the revolution were swept up in a period of social unrest. Whether the lines were divided along class, religion or economics, between loyalists and patriots or uneasy neighbors, the fact of the matter is that the Revolution was precipitated in a moment of great upheaval. The fact that there was an air of dissent at this moment is not overly surprising- it would take such a great deal of social upheaval to break the ties of language, religion and spilled blood the colonies and Great Britain shared. This great upheaval did not, however, divide strictly along the lines of loyalist and revolutionary. Rather the societal stresses were felt on along the changing class dynamics that had been brewing for possibly decades but only were given voice through the rapid politicization in the years before the revolution. The essays assigned to us referenced three different communities in colonial America, separated by hundreds of miles and not sharing much in common as far religion or and economics. The authors we read described how each community dealt with rising societal pressures of the coming revolution, and how each in turn was changed by this. Among the estates of New York, a power struggle emerged between the tenant farmers and their Dutch landlords as the latter struggled to retain their aristocratic privileges and control over the former. In the south, the elegant and extravagantly material lifestyles of the upper class inspired a counter movement of spiritual revival among the yeoman farmers, and in Boston, the very heart of the movement that would one day grant the colonies independence, a divide was growing between the wealthy leaders of the resistance and the artisans, mechanics, and dockworkers who provided the muscle behind the movement. What these three scenarios have in common together is that there was a common element of economics leading to the turmoil that can be tied to the rise of the modern middle class.
The purpose of this paper will be to prove that the flow of information between individuals and the masses through the form of pamphlets helped create the ideological ground necessary for the war.
I will prove this by showing how the American colonies were uniquely suited for pamphlets to be effective, with a long history of both education and opinion
I will prove how influential writers used the pamphlet to disseminate ideas, and how this was not possible in other forms of media
-Thomas Paine
-Letters from a Pennsylvania farmer
A sense of community among the colonies
The Revolutionary war occurred for many reasons- economics, the need for expansion, etc. However, before it occurred there was a period of time wherein the contention between Britain and her colonies was expressed in a war of words. While the events that would set into motion the revolution occurred, there was constant commentary from the people who lived through them and those who merely had an opinion. …show more content…
These views were most often expressed by those who could in the form of a pamphlet- a cheaply printed booklet between eight and thirty pages long.
In this paper I intend to prove that the pamphlet was an instrumental part of the Revolution, helping to foment the political atmosphere to the point that men were ready to take up arms against Great Britain. These printed diatribes were unique and the nation would never see them play a role quite like this again in the course of its events, but for the time period they existed the pamphlet was uniquely suited for American consumption and allowed for some of the greatest thinkers behind the patriot and loyalist causes to expound on their views to the
masses. Thomas Paine is widely considered to be one of the most important ideologues to take up a pen in American history. His pamphlet Common Sense is perhaps the most widely reprinted of the era, and is still read today. No one else is able to evoke the ideals which would lead to the founding of America quite like Mr. Paine, an Englishman by birth and a man without much in means to the worlds. The words of Common Sense speak of the natural rights of individuals and the duties of the state, drawing on the Lockesian philosophy of a social contract. Locke published after the beginning of the revolutionary war, and probably did not have much influence on the continental congresses declaration of independence. It did have a profound effect on the common American people as evidenced by its unprecedented rate of publication. Framed in terms designed to be appealing to people of low education, Paine calls upon religious authority to justify his arguments for independence from the British. The medium he chose was particularly suited to express his message- he penned a lengthy diatribe that required multiple sources to be cited. This would have been impossible in a daily publication like the newspapers of the day, in that the feasibility of expressing so much in so little space would have been unlikely. The self published style embraced by Paine had a long history in both Europe and America- handbills detailing the political or merely self aggrandizing stylings of writers appeared almost immediately following the creation of the moveable text type printing press. The common characterization of these tracts were that they were almost all published to address contemporary issues, most often dealing with political or religious conflicts, and were aimed to address the common people. They were, unlike books, short enough that a series of repudiations and responses could be published, invoking a certain amount of academic discussion amongst the partisan ship. It was in America, however, that the pamphlet was most widespread and influential. The colonies population centers were much more distant and the people dispersed. Common political narratives were almost impossible to establish on a colony to colony basis, much less alone across the entire continent. The pamphlet, however, was instrumental in creating a common voice among the revolutionaries, and would come to shape the view many individuals would take on the political upheaval rampant throughout the decades preceding the revolution. When the committees of correspondence formed to address the needs of a patriot state, their foremost duty was to insure the publishing and distribution of party propaganda. Letters and reports of the war abroad were reprinted by these committees to ensure that even at the state and local level, all patriots felt involved in the process of revolution. Secondly, as no man at first could possess any other public honors than were bestowed upon him, so the givers of those honors could have no power to give away the right of posterity, and though they might say, "We choose you for our head," they could not, without manifest injustice to their children, say, "that your children and your children's children shall reign over ours for ever." Because such an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might (perhaps) in the next succession put them under the government of a rogue or a fool. Most wise men, in their private sentiments, have ever treated hereditary right with contempt; yet it is one of those evils, which when once established is not easily removed; many submit from fear, others from superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the king the plunder of the rest.
This is supposing the present race of kings in the world to have had an honorable origin; whereas it is more than probable, that could we take off the dark covering of antiquity, and trace them to their first rise, that we should find the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners of preeminence in subtlety obtained him the title of chief among plunderers; and who by increasing in power, and extending his depredations, overawed the quiet and defenseless to purchase their safety by frequent contributions. Yet his electors could have no idea of giving hereditary right to his descendants, because such a perpetual exclusion of themselves was incompatible with the free and unrestrained principles they professed to live by. Wherefore, hereditary succession in the early ages of monarchy could not take place as a matter of claim, but as something casual or complemental; but as few or no records were extant in those days, and traditionary history stuffed with fables, it was very easy, after the lapse of a few generations, to trump up some superstitious tale, conveniently timed, Mahomet like, to cram hereditary right down the throats of the vulgar. Perhaps the disorders which threatened, or seemed to threaten on the decease of a leader and the choice of a new one (for elections among ruffians could not be very orderly) induced many at first to favor hereditary pretensions; by which means it happened, as it hath happened since, that what at first was submitted to as a convenience, was afterwards claimed as a right. England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones, yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It certainly hath no divinity in it. However, it is needless to spend much time in exposing the folly of hereditary right, if there are any so weak as to believe it, let them promiscuously worship the ass and lion, and welcome. I shall neither copy their humility, nor disturb their devotion. Yet I should be glad to ask how they suppose kings came at first? The question admits but of three answers, viz., either by lot, by election, or by usurpation. If the first king was taken by lot, it establishes a precedent for the next, which excludes hereditary succession. Saul was by lot, yet the succession was not hereditary, neither does it appear from that transaction there was any intention it ever should. If the first king of any country was by election, that likewise establishes a precedent for the next; for to say, that the right of all future generations is taken away, by the act of the first electors, in their choice not only of a king, but of a family of kings for ever, hath no parallel in or out of scripture but the doctrine of original sin, which supposes the free will of all men lost in Adam; and from such comparison, and it will admit of no other, hereditary succession can derive no glory. For as in Adam all sinned, and as in the first electors all men obeyed; as in the one all mankind were subjected to Satan, and in the other to Sovereignty; as our innocence was lost in the first, and our authority in the last; and as both disable us from reassuming some former state and privilege, it unanswerably follows that original sin and hereditary succession are parallels. Dishonorable rank! Inglorious connection! Yet the most subtle sophist cannot produce a juster simile.
As to usurpation, no man will be so hardy as to defend it; and that William the Conqueror was an usurper is a fact not to be contradicted. The plain truth is, that the antiquity of English monarchy will not bear looking into. But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the foolish, the wicked; and the improper, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions. Another evil which attends hereditary succession is, that the throne is subject to be possessed by a minor at any age; all which time the regency, acting under the cover of a king, have every opportunity and inducement to betray their trust. The same national misfortune happens, when a king worn out with age and infirmity, enters the last stage of human weakness. In both these cases the public becomes a prey to every miscreant, who can tamper successfully with the follies either of age or infancy. The most plausible plea, which hath ever been offered in favor of hereditary succession, is, that it preserves a nation from civil wars; and were this true, it would be weighty; whereas, it is the most barefaced falsity ever imposed upon mankind. The whole history of England disowns the fact. Thirty kings and two minors have reigned in that distracted kingdom since the conquest, in which time there have been (including the Revolution) no less than eight civil wars and nineteen rebellions. Wherefore instead of making for peace, it makes against it, and destroys the very foundation it seems to stand on. The contest for monarchy and succession, between the houses of York and Lancaster, laid England in a scene of blood for many years. Twelve pitched battles, besides skirmishes and sieges, were fought between Henry and Edward. Twice was Henry prisoner to Edward, who in his turn was prisoner to Henry. And so uncertain is the fate of war and the temper of a nation, when nothing but personal matters are the ground of a quarrel, that Henry was taken in triumph from a prison to a palace, and Edward obliged to fly from a palace to a foreign land; yet, as sudden transitions of temper are seldom lasting, Henry in his turn was driven from the throne, and Edward recalled to succeed him. The parliament always following the strongest side. This contest began in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and was not entirely extinguished till Henry the Seventh, in whom the families were united. Including a period of 67 years, viz., from 1422 to 1489. In short, monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that kingdom only) but the world in blood and ashes. 'Tis a form of government which the word of God bears testimony against, and blood will attend it. If we inquire into the business of a king, we shall find that (in some countries they have none) and after sauntering away their lives without pleasure to themselves or advantage to the nation, withdraw from the scene, and leave their successors to tread the same idle round. In absolute monarchies the whole weight of business civil and military, lies on the king; the children of Israel in their request for a king, urged this plea "that he may judge us, and go out before us and fight our battles." But in countries where he is neither a judge nor a general, as in England, a man would be puzzled to know what is his business. The nearer any government approaches to a republic, the less business there is for a king. It is somewhat difficult to find a proper name for the government of England. Sir William Meredith calls it a republic; but in its present state it is unworthy of the name, because the corrupt influence of the crown, by having all the places in its disposal, hath so effectually swallowed up the power, and eaten out the virtue of the house of commons (the republican part in the constitution) that the government of England is nearly as monarchical as that of France or Spain. Men fall out with names without understanding them. For it is the republican and not the monarchical part of the constitution of England which Englishmen glory in, viz., the liberty of choosing a house of commons from out of their own body — and it is easy to see that when the republican virtue fails, slavery ensues. My is the constitution of England sickly, but because monarchy hath poisoned the republic, the crown hath engrossed the commons? In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived. A common thread that runs across the essays we read in Young’s Anthology is that the colonies before the revolution were swept up in a period of social unrest. Whether the lines were divided along class, religion or economics, between loyalists and patriots or uneasy neighbors, the fact of the matter is that the Revolution was precipitated in a moment of great upheaval. The fact that there was an air of dissent at this moment is not overly surprising- it would take such a great deal of social upheaval to break the ties of language, religion and spilled blood the colonies and Great Britain shared. This great upheaval did not, however, divide strictly along the lines of loyalist and revolutionary. Rather the societal stresses were felt on along the changing class dynamics that had been brewing for possibly decades but only were given voice through the rapid politicization in the years before the revolution. The essays assigned to us referenced three different communities in colonial America, separated by hundreds of miles and not sharing much in common as far religion or and economics. The authors we read described how each community dealt with rising societal pressures of the coming revolution, and how each in turn was changed by this. Among the estates of New York, a power struggle emerged between the tenant farmers and their Dutch landlords as the latter struggled to retain their aristocratic privileges and control over the former. In the south, the elegant and extravagantly material lifestyles of the upper class inspired a counter movement of spiritual revival among the yeoman farmers, and in Boston, the very heart of the movement that would one day grant the colonies independence, a divide was growing between the wealthy leaders of the resistance and the artisans, mechanics, and dockworkers who provided the muscle behind the movement. What these three scenarios have in common together is that there was a common element of economics leading to the turmoil that can be tied to the rise of the modern middle class.