![]() ![]() And in conversation it was always added, since I more ancient in my memory," he wrote in 1807, "than the observation that arts, sciences, and empire had always travelled westward. ![]() In his old age, John Adams recalled his youthful intimations of the providential forces at work: Several other prominent American revolutionaries also talked as if they were actors in a historical drama whose script had already been written by the gods. And Thomas Jefferson's lyrical rendering of the reasonsįor the entire revolutionary enterprise emphasized the self-evident character of the principles at stake. Tom Paine, for example, claimed that it was simply a matter of common sense that an island could not rule a continent. On the inevitability side, it is true there were voices back then urging prospective patriots to regard American independenceĪs an early version of manifest destiny. No event in American history which was so improbable at the time has seemed so inevitable in retrospect as the American Revolution. ![]()
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