Six months before the Declaration of Independence was signed, an anonymous pamphlet went the colonial era’s version of viral. Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America argued, in fervent prose, for independence from Britain, calling the cause of America “the cause of all mankind.” It was an immediate bestseller. No one readily guessed its author was a newly immigrated Englishman named Thomas Paine. He’d left school at 12, failed in marriages and at making a living, and had barely survived typhus during the transatlantic journey. Yet here, in a nascent republic, he made his mark. In plain language, Paine declared that the colonies would thrive under economic freedom, that an island ruling a continent was absurd, and that monarchical systems were abnormal and oppressive. “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,” he wrote, “yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
This incendiary document is part of a new exhibit, War of Words: A Citizen’s-Eye View of the Revolution, at Houghton Library (May 18 through August 7). About 60 items explore what “the people of the period would have used to learn about the events of the Revolution,” notes John Overholt, curator of the Hyde collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson and early books and manuscripts. Documents on display also include an original copy of the Declaration of Independence (see below) printed on paper made from pulped rags (only 26 of the estimated 200 initially printed are known to exist today). Colonists would have read it as a public poster or in a local newspaper, Overholt says. So crucial was the document, he adds, that its first signer, John Hancock, sent copies to leaders of the Continental Army so the troops would know what they were fighting for. Six years earlier, Paul Revere’s propagandistic 1770 engraving (see below) depicting what would come to be known as the Boston Massacre had sent that message in graphic terms: British soldiers are portrayed as a firing squad, and the colonists as their hapless victims. In organizing the exhibit, Overholt wanted to emphasize not just the history, but the tone. “Showing the kinds of publications and images of the period, how people were expressing themselves and reporting the news,” he says, seemed like “something that visitors would find relatable.”
