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What does “let it be told to the future …” mean?
“Let is be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and country, alarmed at one common danger, Camer forth to meet and to repulse it” (Paine, The American Crisis, Number 1)
Thomas Paine, a pamphleteer for the American Revolution, is using the fact that this text was read to the Continental Army on December 23, 1776, to create a parallel between winter and the hardship of war. Paine is saying that the American revolutionaries’ hope and virtue will sustain them through the winter and the war for independence. Furthermore, he is emphasizing the totality of the American people (from the city and the country) rising up against the British Empire (the “one common danger”).