American Literature to 1820. Native American literatures in oral performance. Early American Political Essays.

Native Americans spoke hundreds of distinct languages, engaged in different religious practices, and structured their cultures in extraordinarily diverse economic and political forms. Native American literatures originated in oral performance, which were offered to audiences as dramatic events in time and language for the ear. Unlike the Europeans, most did not use a written alphabet.

Native American literature, also called Indian literature or American Indian literature, the traditional oral and written literatures of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. These include ancient hieroglyphic and pictographic writings of Middle America as well as an extensive set of folktales, myths, and oral histories that were transmitted for centuries by storytellers and that live on in the language works of many contemporary American Indian writers.

The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were political leaders and statesmen who participated in the American Revolution by signing the United States Declaration of Independence, taking part in the American Revolutionary War, establishing the United States Constitution, or by some other key contribution. Within the large group known as the "Founding Fathers", there are two key subsets: the "Signers of the Declaration of Independence" (who signed the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776) and the “Framers of the Constitution”. FF: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton.

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was an author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

“Common Sense” is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine. “Common Sense”, signed "Written by an Englishman", became an immediate success. Common Sense presented the American colonists with an argument for freedom from British rule at a time when the question of independence was still undecided. Paine wrote and reasoned in a style that common people understood; forgoing the philosophy and Latin references used by Enlightenment era writers, Paine structured “Common Sense” like a sermon and relied on Biblical references to make his case to the people.

“The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology” is a deistic pamphlet by Thomas Paine that criticizes institutionalized religion and challenges the legitimacy of the Bible, the central sacred text of Christianity. It was a bestseller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. British audiences, however, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French Revolution, received it with more hostility. “The Age of Reason” presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature rather than as a divinely inspired text. It promotes natural religion and argues for the existence of a creator-God.

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