How Did The American Revolution Influence The Declaration Of Independence

Common Sense was written in January of the year 1776 by a man by the name of Thomas Paine. The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson in July of 1776.

The American Revolution is all too often confused with the War for Independence. As John Adams noted in a letter of 1815 to Thomas Jefferson, "What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington. The records of thirteen legislatures, the pamphlets, newspapers in all the colonies, ought to be consulted during that period to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the authority of Parliament over the colonies." This lesson examines the "Revolution in the minds of the people" that Adams described, focusing on Thomas Paine’s remarkably influential pamphletCommon Sense, published in January 1776 and reprinted 25 times in the next year, and the Declaration of Independence that it helped to inspire.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) wrote several books and pamphlets that greatly contributed to "delegitimizing" the claims to authority of the British state. Paine
A particularly important topic discussed in this module is the glaring contradiction between the claims to liberty and self-government made by the revolutionaries and the existence of the degrading practice of chattel slavery in many of the