In a chariot of light from the regions of day, The Goddess of Liberty came; Ten thousand celestials directed the way And hither conducted the dame. A fair budding branch from the gardens above, Where millions with millions agree, She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love, And the plant she named…

In 1774, an Englishman named Thomas Paine, having met Benjamin Franklin and received letters of introduction from him, immigrated to Pennsylvania and entered the print media industry. Paine’s ties to Franklin thrust him into revolutionary circles almost immediately, and, at his American friends’ urging, in early January 1776, he published an essay called “Common Sense.”…

Upon seceding from Britain, her thirteen former colonies immediately began to lay the foundations of an independent humanities tradition. One could argue, of course, that the process of creating a uniquely “American” literature was already well underway long before the Revolution even began—with William Bradford’s “History of Plymouth Plantation,” for example, or the poetry of…