USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The popularity of Common Sense made it tough for colonial leaders to take a halfway stance against the British. As John Adams wrote to his wife in April 1776: “Common Sense, like a ray of revelation, has come in seasonably to clear our doubts, and to fix our choice.” As Thomas Jefferson biographer Joseph J.

Detailed explanation-2: -John Adams thought otherwise. During his retirement years, he was fond of saying that the War for Independence was a consequence of the American Revolution. The real revolution, he declared, had taken place in the minds and hearts of the colonists in the fifteen years prior to 1776.

Detailed explanation-3: -Written by Thomas Paine, an unknown Englishman who had emigrated only fifteen months earlier, it burst upon the scene like a meteor-a “disastrous meteor, ” wrote John Adams, who felt Paine’s inflammatory call for independence would undermine the deliberative work of the Continental Congress.

Detailed explanation-4: -A Harvard-educated lawyer, he early became identified with the patriot cause; a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, he led in the movement for independence. During the Revolutionary War he served in France and Holland in diplomatic roles, and helped negotiate the treaty of peace.