The American Enlightenment was a philosophical movement that started in the 1700s and ended in the early 1800s.
During this period there were very famous personalities like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, but one name stands in the world of literature like Thomas Paine, no other pamphlet writer was more famous than Thomas Paine, his Common Sense swept the nation into a fury against British rule.
Thomas Paine was born on February 9, 1737 and died on June 8, 1809. He was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution and inspired the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Britain.
The life style of the first English settlers of America was with no doubt: Harsh. It was a very difficult situation, fleeing England from Religious prosecution an arriving to an known land with nothing more than their clothes, the wood from the ships and some tools, arms and provisions to live. The had to prevail against all the odds in a strange environment.
According to Paine in lines 101-120, if colonists acceded to Howe’s demand to relinquish their arm, they would:
Howe would make them receive mercy.
