"You know that the unanimity of the States finally depended on the vote of Joseph Hewes, and was finally determined by him. And yet history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine! Sat verbum sapienti ["a word to the wise is sufficient"]."
— Thomas Paine

January 1, 1970

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Activists from the United StatesEssayists from EnglandPolitical activistsActivists from EnglandPolitical authors from England
Original Language: English

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John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson (22 June 1819); Adams was lamenting that Paine's Common Sense had received much more attention than the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, which Adams discovered in 1819, and in comparison to which he judged Paine's Common Sense to be "a poor ignorant, Malicious, short-sighted, Crapulous Mass". Sometimes only "History is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine" has been quoted, which makes it seem a statement of praise, rather than one