The American Crisis Number 1 Slogans

During the America Revolution period, many pamphlets were written in support of or in opposition to the growing independence movement of the American colonies. One of these authors was Thomas Paine, a thirty nine year old English immigrant in 1776 who worked as a journalist in Philadelphia. Paine opposed King George III policies towards the colonies and supported independence of the American colonies. (Shi, Tindall 147) One of his pamphlets was “The American Crisis, Number 1”, which was written December 19th, 1776 in the New England area while he was marching with George Washington’s Continental Army. (Shi, Mayer 111) This was a difficult time for the American patriots, with many military setbacks and waning support from the colonies, the

Paine uses slogans and idioms to express the idea that difficult tasks often come with worthwhile rewards when the effort is successful. He continues that freedom from British’s tyranny is one of these challenges that must be achieved because failure would result in slavery of the colonies. Paine extends the support for this challenge by conveying that GOD would not abandon the colonies who tried to prevent the conflict many times. Finally, Paine dismissed any believe that GOD could side with the king because of his many crimes against the

Paige said, “Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny…” and make slaves out of the colonies. (Paine, 111) Paine calls the king a devil, a common murderer, a highwayman, a housebreaker and a lair. (Paine, 111) Later in the pamphlet, Paine said, “…Howe dared not risk a battle, and it is no credit to him…” and continued with “… but it is great credit to us, that, with an handful of men, we sustained an orderly retreat…”. Paine fails to mention the reason why the Americans were in retreat, it was because of early defeats at the hands of the British