SOME QUESTIONS ON THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

AND ON TOM PAINE

Note: From time to time, I'll post some questions about the readings like these.  Do with them what you wish.  I don't expect people to answer them, but they may help you focus your readings on some of the key issues of concern.

1. Do you think the Revolution was a struggle for the colonists' rights? If so, what rights? What is a right? What is a natural right? What is an unalienable right? If you have rights, where did they come from? How do you know that you actually have them?

2. Some theorists today contend that ideas of natural rights were (and perhaps still are) ways of hiding and preserving the power of small groups of upper-class white men. What do you think?

3. Compare the Declaration's ideals of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" with the French Revolution's declaration of "liberty, equality, fraternity" as its goals.

4. Can one pursue happiness only as an individual? Or can the "pursuit of happiness" be a collective goal?

5. Early eighteenth-century British authors Trenchard and Gordon were popular in America on the eve of the Revolution. (Link to some quotes from these authors.) What might explain their popularity? Do their views seem to justify the colonists' revolt?

6. What accounts for the popularity of Tom Paine's Common Sense?

7. Theodore Roosevelt called Tom Paine a "filthy little atheist," and during Paine's lifetime some were even less complimentary. What inspired this hatred?

8. What is Paine's ideal form of government?

9. Paine once said, "In all my publications I have been an advocate for commerce." He favored a strong banking system, a protective tariff for manufacturers, strong policies to control inflation, and westward expansion of white settlement. Are these the views of a radical?

10. In the selections from Paine's pamphlet on "Agrarian Justice" (1797) does he sound like an "advocate for commerce"?

11. What significance, if any, does the American Revolution have for us today?