"Things in the Womb of Time": Ideas of American Independence, 1633 to 1763

Abstract

J N January I776 Thomas Paine's Common Sense appeared, the first thoroughly reasoned argument for immediate American independence from Great Britain. Paine was not an original thinker. His strength as a political pamphleteer was his ability to articulate more clearly-and in memorable, ringing phrases-what others had said and were thinking. Paine asserted that I have never met with a man, either in England or America, who hath not confessed his opinion, that a separation between the countries, would take place one time or other.' Allowing for the pamphleteer's overstatement, Paine's observation of the perception of inevitability was accurate. Indeed, even before the crisis of the I76os, the prospect of American independence had been a matter of frequent comment. The discussion of separation from Britain, especially after I750, had provided a pool of arguments and a specification of conditions under which the event might happen, given the appropriate occasion. In some respects, the recent insistence of historians upon the reluctance of the Americans to consider independence, coupled with the reaction against so-called whig history that viewed everything in the colonial period as prologue to revolution, has obscured the obvious.2 While colonial developments must be seen on their own merits and not as acts of proto-revolution, many contemporary participants and observers regarded Anglo-American conflict leading to American independence as a central theme, particularly of the late colonial period. Moreover, this conviction helped produce a climate of opinion that had