Common Sense

Upon reading this document, and drawing comparisons to the Declaration of Independence which was the focus of the previous post this document has been extremely influential to the formation of the country. It is a well constructed document that in a lot of ways sums up the way many if not most of the colonists felt, regarding ill treatment from British rule. This document also stated that the purpose of the struggle and the revolution as a way to obtain independence and democracy for for the colonist. In my opinion this document was much more effective in rallying people around the idea of independence than the actual Declaration of Independence was, Paine addressed many of the same points but they were written in a much more personal level than the declaration was. One thing I found as strange after reading both documents is that both pretext descriptions of the documents (referring to page 5) have mentions of original sin. The Declaration of Independence's original sin was slavery and the act of ignoring it in the final draft, and in Thomas Paine's 'Common Sense' it refers to the king uses the idea of "divine law" (pg 5 Trodd). Although I found this document very interesting, I still think its strange that people at that time period could be so inspired to fight for independence while remaining in a culture that denied others the right to be free (slaves).