Enlightenment, Revolution, and the New Republic

This is Unit Five of American Literature, part one of two: the Enlightenment in America, and the writing that argued a country into existence. Unit four closed on a preacher holding a congregation over a fire. This unit changes the method. Where a Puritan read a fire as a judgment, an eighteenth-century writer reads a fact as evidence, and that is the governing idea part two pays off: every form here is addressed to a reader assumed capable of being convinced. So the period's characteristic products are the almanac, the pamphlet, the essay, the letter, the autobiography and the public declaration, and none of them is a sermon. We take the turn itself first, and the theology that came with it, then Franklin, who is the period's representative man and who invented several of these forms while inventing himself. Then the question a French farmer asked about what an American is. Then the two pamphlets that argued for independence, and the document that declared it, alongside the book by the same hand that contradicts it. Then the letters, and then a poet who took the Revolution's vocabulary of liberty and pointed it at her own seizure. By the end you will be able to describe the Enlightenment turn and deism. To account for Franklin's self-making and its forms. To state Crèvecoeur's question and Paine's two modes. To read the Declaration as an argument and name the contradiction beside it. And to treat letters as literature and place Wheatley's poems.

Two entries on the change of method: what replaced providence as the way of explaining things, and the theology that came with it.

Improvement by effort, not election.

AML 0401 From Providence to Reason: The Enlightenment Turn

The eighteenth century shifted the question from what God had decreed to what reason could discover. Writers still believed, but they argued from observation, and the anchor notes the period's optimism about human improvement: libraries, athenaeums and study groups founded for people who thought that they could get better. Reason displaced providence without abolishing God.

A made world, running by law.

AML 0402 Deism and the Clockmaker God

Deism holds that a rational God made an orderly world and then left it to run by its own laws, knowable by observation rather than by revelation. Several of the period's leading writers were deists, and the position explains why their religious language reads so differently from the Puritans'. Deism is a belief, not an absence of one.

Five entries on the period's representative man: a printer who made himself in public and left the instructions behind him.

A soap boiler's son, self-made.

AML 0403 Benjamin Franklin and the Invented Self

Born in Boston, the youngest son of a tallow chandler, Franklin was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer with a newspaper, and read everything the shop produced. Printer, scientist and diplomat, he became the period's proof that a man could make himself. The self-made man is partly Franklin's own invention.

A life told as problems solved.

AML 0404 The *Autobiography* as a Model of Self-Making

Franklin's *Autobiography*, published after his death, tells a life as a sequence of problems solved. It is written to instruct and was addressed first to his son, and it supplies the shape that countless later American memoirs use: a humble origin, an early error, a correction, a method, and public usefulness. The book teaches a pattern more than it confesses one.

Advice, compressed into one line.

AML 0405 Poor Richard and the Aphorism

Writing as Poor Richard, Franklin filled an almanac with sayings that compress advice into a line a reader will remember. The aphorism is the period's characteristic instrument: portable, quotable, and moral without being doctrinal. The persona let Franklin sell prudence while keeping his own name off it, so Poor Richard is a mask rather than Franklin's opinion entire.

A sermon on thrift, then ignored.

AML 0406 "The Way to Wealth"

In this piece of seventeen fifty-eight Franklin gathers the almanac's sayings into a speech by Father Abraham at an auction, stringing proverbs on industry and thrift together one after another. The crowd applauds and then buys extravagantly anyway, which is the joke Franklin has built into it. The ending undercuts the advice on purpose.

A chart of virtues, and a failure.

AML 0407 Franklin's Project of Moral Perfection

The anchor quotes Franklin's bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection: the virtues worked through one at a time, with a chart for marking faults. The anchor adds that he admits never learning some of them, and that is where the century's confidence meets its limit. The admission is part of the argument.

Four entries on the founding question and the pamphlets: a French farmer asking what an American is, and an Englishman arguing for independence.

A French farmer asks the question.

AML 0408 Crèvecœur: "What Is an American?"

Born in Normandy, Crèvecoeur came to North America in seventeen fifty-five, served as a surveyor and a cartographer, and bought a farm in Orange County, New York. His *Letters from an American Farmer* asks what an American is, and answers with a new man formed by new land. A Tory sympathizer, he left during the Revolution.

Many nations, melted into one.

AML 0409 The Melting Pot Before the Phrase

Crèvecoeur's answer is that individuals of all nations are melted into a new race, leaving behind ancient prejudices and manners for new modes of living. The formulation is a century older than the phrase melting pot, and the exam expects it attached to his name. His America is a country of farms, and it excludes the people held in slavery on them.

Independence argued in common words.

AML 0410 Thomas Paine and *Common Sense*

An English corset-maker's apprentice turned excise officer, dismissed after petitioning Parliament for a living wage, Paine reached America in seventeen seventy-four. *Common Sense*, published in seventeen seventy-six, argued for independence in plain language addressed to ordinary readers rather than to lawyers. Its plainness is a political choice about audience.

Written to be read to soldiers.

AML 0411 *The American Crisis* and the Rhetoric of Emergency

*The Crisis* began in seventeen seventy-six with the sentence about times that try men's souls, distinguishing the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot from those who stand now. Written to be read aloud to troops, it uses short clauses, direct address, and a contrast a listener can hold in the head. The style is designed for the ear.

Four entries on Jefferson and the letter: a declaration built like a legal brief, the book that contradicts it, and correspondence as a literary form.

Premise, right, evidence, conclusion.

AML 0412 Jefferson and the Declaration as Prose

Jefferson read Newton, Harrington, Hobbes, Locke and Voltaire, and his library later founded the Library of Congress. The Declaration of seventeen seventy-six states a premise, derives a right from it, lists the evidence, and concludes, which is why it reads as an argument rather than as a proclamation. The document's form is that of a legal brief.

The same hand, the other book.

AML 0413 *Notes on the State of Virginia* and Its Contradiction

In *Notes on the State of Virginia*, published in seventeen eighty-five, Jefferson catalogues his state's geography and its people, and sets out views of Black Americans that contradict the Declaration's own premise. He held people in slavery while writing that all men are created equal. The contradiction sits in his own two documents.

Politics and the farm, one paragraph.

AML 0414 John and Abigail Adams: The Letter as Literature

The letters between John and Abigail Adams across the Revolutionary years, which the witness prints from seventeen seventy-four onward, carry politics, farm management, illness and affection inside the same paragraph. They are the period's best evidence that private correspondence was a literary form. Letters were written in the expectation that they would be kept.

Two founders, arguing by post.

AML 0415 The Adams–Jefferson Correspondence

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, allies in seventeen seventy-six and rivals afterwards, resumed writing to each other in old age and exchanged letters on politics, religion, reading and death until both of them died on the same Fourth of July. The correspondence is the Revolution arguing with itself in retrospect. Both men died on that same day, in eighteen twenty-six.

Three entries to close the part: a poet who had to prove she wrote her own work, and what she did with the Revolution's vocabulary.

Examined before she could publish.

AML 0416 Phillis Wheatley: The Poet and the Proof

Enslaved in Africa at seven or eight and bought by the Wheatleys of Boston, Phillis Wheatley read the Bible, the Latin classics and English poetry, learning most from Pope's couplets and from Milton. Her first poem appeared in seventeen sixty-seven, and Boston men examined her, doubting she had written her own work. That examination was the condition of publication.

Eight lines, with a turn inside.

AML 0417 "On Being Brought From Africa to America"

Wheatley's eight-line poem of seventeen seventy-three thanks mercy for bringing her from a pagan land, and then turns to remind Christians that Black people, black as Cain, may be refined and join the angelic train. Readers have argued ever since about how much that turn undoes the opening. The poem's irony is contested.

Their words, turned on her capture.

AML 0418 Wheatley to Washington, and to the Earl of Dartmouth

Wheatley addressed a poem to the Earl of Dartmouth in seventeen seventy-three that grounds her love of freedom in her own seizure from her father's home, and another to General Washington in seventeen seventy-six. She wrote inside the Revolution's vocabulary and pressed it toward her own case. The Dartmouth poem names the kidnapping directly.

That is the Enlightenment and its founders. Part two takes the writers who held them to what they had written. You can describe the turn from providence to evidence, an age that founded libraries because it believed people could get better, and the deism that made a rational God who left an orderly world to run by law. You can account for Franklin, who was a tallow chandler's youngest son and became the proof that a man could make himself, and for the forms he worked in: an autobiography written to instruct, an almanac of aphorisms behind a mask, a speech on thrift whose hearers buy extravagantly anyway, and a chart of virtues he admits he never finished. You can state Crèvecoeur's question and his answer about many nations melted into one, and note whom that answer leaves out. You can distinguish Paine persuading a general reader from Paine writing for a voice in a camp. You can read the Declaration as premise, right, evidence and conclusion, and set *Notes on the State of Virginia* beside it. And you can place Wheatley, examined before she could publish, turning the Revolution's own words onto her own seizure.