“These are the times that try men’s souls.” When Thomas Paine started his essay, “The American Crisis,” to support Washington’s army with these words, he had already written the tract, “Common Sense,” in which he excoriates George III as a petty tyrant. “Common Sense” has been called “the writing that sparked an American Revolution,” and it is only one of several revolutionary works we should read on this national holiday.

You can find “Common Sense” in the local libraries or at http://www.earlyamerica.com. When you do read Paine’s essay, step back a moment and consider it as a piece of writing. Who is Paine writing for? What level of education does he assume in his readers? How is it organized? How would such an essay be read today?

Use the same questions for “The American Crisis.” After his great opening paragraph where he writes of “the summer soldier and sunshine patriot” who only fights when the weather is good, Paine then defends Washington who has suffered one defeat after another since his success in Boston earlier in the year.

It helps, of course, to know that after this second essay was printed on Dec. 19, 1776, Washington went on to defeat the Hessians at Trenton, crossing the Delaware at night as in the famous painting. Seldom has propaganda been followed up so quickly with victory. You will find the entire story of the year in David McCullough’s book, “1776.”

In between these two essays of Paine another document was published in that year. “The Declaration of Independence” is world famous, but I have always wondered how many of us have actually read it. It, too, is available at the above Web site.

Jefferson, its main author, called his work “an expression of the American mind,” and we all know the lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

I suspect most of us, however, are not aware that most of the Declaration is a diatribe against George III. The king is condemned, among other misdeeds: for forbidding “his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance”; for making “judges dependent on his will alone”; “for depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury”; “for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses”; and so on.

The Declaration of Independence is a masterpiece of argumentative writing. Jefferson uses anaphora above, beginning successive lines again and again with the same phrase. He uses a crescendo of verbs to make a point, e.g. “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.” He finishes with a magnificent tricolon of ideas linked together: “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

Many nowadays might say “so what” to such artifices of writing. The authors of “The Federalist,” Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison, used these same rhetorical techniques to persuade the various states to ratify the Constitution. See http://www.foundingfathers.info/federalistpapers/.

These 85 essays deserve reading, at least in part. Here we can see how the minds of three of the brightest Founding Fathers worked to defend the Constitution. I do not expect people to read them all (I haven’t), but read at least one by each of the three to see how they differ in style, content and logic.

Also keep in mind that the Constitution had not been ratified yet when the Federalist essays were written. It is not the document that we have today. There is no Bill of Rights attached. It is a work in progress.

We should also reread the Constitution on this day. It is a subtle document, as the Supreme Court has made us all aware of recently. It, too, is available at either Web site mentioned.

What I have found most interesting lately in the Constitution is that the protection of a writ of habeas corpus was not in the Bill of Rights, but was a part of the original in Article I, Section 9: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Protection from seizure without legal proof and procedure was deemed that important by the writers of the Constitution.

Of interest, too, is the famous Second Amendment, subject to another recent Supreme Court decision. May I recommend, though, that you read all of the Bill of Rights, especially amendments IV, V and IV, and reflect on how the inhabitants in our prison at Guantanamo Bay have been treated.

Fortunately we have been protected over 232 years by these documents. They are our living heritage. Once a year, at least, we should go back and read them again.



Ralph Mohr taught English and Latin at Marshfield High School for 31 years. He welcomes comments regarding the column at rmohr1565@charter.net.