Thomas Paine’s Common Sense

Also called: Common Sense

The English-born Thomas Paine published a short pamphlet calling for independence in plain words; selling tens of thousands of copies that year, it turned opinion toward independence.

Even after fighting began, many colonists still hoped to reconcile with the king and win back their rights within the empire. On 10 January 1776 an anonymous pamphlet of some fifty pages, Common Sense, appeared in Philadelphia. Thomas Paine, who had arrived from England two years before, argued that it was absurd for an island to rule a continent, that hereditary monarchy itself was folly, and that the time for independence had come.

Written not as learned prose but in plain words fit to be read aloud in taverns and churches, it sold tens of thousands of copies that year and within months swung hesitant opinion toward independence. That winter, marching with the retreating army, Paine wrote The American Crisis to rally the soldiers: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”