The Declaration of Independence

Following Jefferson’s style, write a declaration of independence for teenagers. Include a brief declaration of teen rights, a list of at least ten complaints and a concluding statement of independence.

THOMAS PAINE (1737-1809)

Thomas Paine, intellectual, scholar, revolutionary and idealist, is widely recognized as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was the most democratic representative of the American Enlightenment movement.

Paine was born in Norfolk, England in the family of a poor artisan, and tried many trades to obtain a livelihood. His father could not afford to give him an education, so when he was sixteen, he went to sea and served two years as a sailor. When he returned to England, he found employment in Sussex as a tax-collector. Here he learned social science at first hand seeing the hardships of the tax-burdened masses. Driven to despair by utter poverty, he addressed Franklin, then in London, and on his advice went in 1774 to America. Arriving in Philadelphia, he almost immediately plunged into the political struggle.

Paine advocated a liberal world view, considered radical in his day. He dismissed monarchy, and viewed all government as, at best, a necessary evil. He opposed slavery and was amongst the earliest proponents of social security, universal free public education, a guaranteed minimum income, and many other radical ideas now common practice in most western democracies. In 1775 he published his pamphlet “COMMON SENSE” which urged the separation of the American colonies from England. It was Paine who proposed the name ‘United States of America’ for the new nation. During the War of Independence he wrote “THE CRISIS” (1776-1783), a series of pamphlets, containing topical comments on the events of the revolutionary war against England.

The first “Crisis” paper, published on December 23, 1776, began with the famous words:

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

General Washington himself found it so uplifting that he ordered it to be read to all his troops.

He took an active part in the bourgeois revolution in France and was elected to the National Convention. While in France, he wrote “THE RIGHTS OF MAN”, a political essay.

He returned to the USA in 1802. Persecuted for his democratic views and freethinking in matters of religion, he died in poverty.

Paine's “Declaration of the Rights of Man”can be approached from his most telling points:

1. Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on public utility.

2. The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.

3. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can any individual, or any body of men, be entitled to any authority which is not expressly derived from it.

These three points are similar to the “self-evident truths” expressed in the United States Declaration of Independence. In line with his views on individual human rights, when the French called for the execution of the monarch Paine suggested that the monarch be exiled to America, where he would then have to work for a living. This suggestion was ignored and Robespierre had the monarch imprisoned and sentenced to death.

CHECK YOUR KNOWLEDGE:

1. How would you describe Paine’s life?

2. When and where was T. Paine born?

3. What role did B. Franklin play in Jefferson’s life?

4. How did Thomas Paine fight in the American Revolution?

5. What did Paine do in France?

6. What were Paine’s famous works written before and during the Revolution?

7. What ideas did Paine express in his pamphlets?

8. What was George Washington’s reaction on the “Crisis”?

9. Describe the last years of Paine’s life.

THE POET OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION:

PHILIP FRENAU (1752-1832)

The son of a New York wine merchant of French descent, Philip Freneau had a stormy life; he was a student, rebel, poet, journalist, trader, sailor, war-prisoner and government clerk. He received a classical education at school, at 16 he entered Princeton University. In 1769 Freneau’s friends at the university organized a society in which the young people could express their political and philosophical ideas. Among his friends were James Madison (the future president), Hugh Brackenridge (a future novelist), Henry lee (a future cavalry general in the Revolution).

At the outbreak of the American bourgeois revolution Freneau wrote several satires against the English. Freneau fought as a militiaman during the Revolutionary War. In 1780 he was captured by the British and put in a British prison-ship, the horrors of which he described in the poem “THE BRITISH PRISON- SHIP” (1781), published after he had been released in exchange for English prisoners. His political poems, including "Eutaw Springs," "American Liberty," "A Political Litany," "A Midnight Consultation," and "George the Third's Soliloquy," earned him the title of the poet of the American Revolution.

Freneau edited a number of journals during his life. When Thomas Jefferson helped him establish the anti-Federalist “National Gazette” in 1791, Freneau became the first powerful, crusading newspaper editor in America. As a poet and editor, Freneau adhered to his democratic ideals. His popular poems, published in newspapers for the average reader, regularly celebrated American subjects. "The Virtue of Tobacco" concerns the indigenous plant, a mainstay of the southern economy, while "The Jug of Rum" celebrates the alcoholic drink of the West Indies, a crucial commodity of early American trade and a major New World export.

During the last years of his life he criticized severely the anti-democratic character of the American bourgeois state. During the Anglo-American War of 1812 he wrote a number of poems against England.

Read the poem. Define its theme and idea.

TO THE AMERICANS

(1755)

If to control the cunning of a knave,

Freedom respect, and scorn the name of slave;

If to protect against a tyrant’s laws,

And arm for vengeance in a rightful cause,

Be deemed Rebellion – ‘tis a harmless thing:

This bugbear name, like death, has lost its sting.

Though his political poetry was his most important contribution to American letters, he is remembered also for his lyrical poems, of which “THE INDIAN BURYING GROUND” is an example of sentimentalism in American poetry. Freneau commanded a natural and colloquial style appropriate to a genuine democracy, but he could also rise to refined neoclassic lyricism in such works as "The Wild Honeysuckle"[11] (1786). Philip Freneau, in this poem, was expressing his dream of a paradise in nature, or rather, on the new continent of America. His dream was the originality of the paradise on the earth, i.e. the USA. The wild honeysuckle is something of freedom, tranquility, nature, and of no convention, no suppression, no traditional or anything beyond the pure nature. This poem is not only a mere description of nature, but something ideal in the poet's construction of a real paradise of human beings. This paradise is of real freedom, pure nature, total independence, grand beauty.

CHECK YOUR KNOWLEDGE:

1. How did the years, spent at the university, influence Freneau’s life?
2. What did the poet do during the Revolution?
3. What is characteristic of Freneau’s poetry?
4. Why is Freneau considered to be the poet of American Revolution and the Father of American poetry?