Key figures: Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Bell
Summary
Thomas Paine was born on January 29, 1737, in Thetford, Norfolk, England, the son of a Quaker staymaker. His early career in England was marked by repeated professional failures: he worked variously as a corset maker, sailor, schoolteacher, and excise officer, and was twice dismissed from the excise service. In 1772 he wrote a petition on behalf of excise officers seeking better pay, which brought him into contact with political pamphlet writing. After his second dismissal and the dissolution of his second marriage, Paine met Benjamin Franklin in London. Franklin provided him with letters of introduction and advised him to emigrate to America, which Paine did, arriving in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774.
In Philadelphia, Paine found immediate employment editing the newly founded Pennsylvania Magazine, which he helped build into one of the most widely read periodicals in the colonies. By late 1775 he had begun drafting what would become Common Sense. The pamphlet was published on January 10, 1776, by printer Robert Bell in Philadelphia. Paine initially released it anonymously, signed only “Written by an Englishman,” because its contents — open advocacy for complete independence from Britain — constituted potential treason. His authorship was publicly confirmed on March 30, 1776. The 47-page pamphlet was divided into four sections: a philosophical argument against monarchy and hereditary succession grounded partly in biblical reasoning; a critique of the English Constitution; a direct argument for American independence; and an assessment of America’s military and economic capacity to sustain a republic.
Common Sense spread rapidly across the thirteen colonies, reprinted by numerous publishers after Robert Bell produced the first edition. Paine claimed 120,000 copies sold within the first three months; historians’ estimates vary between 75,000 and 500,000 circulated copies within the first year in America and Europe, including German and Danish translations. The pamphlet’s accessible, sermon-like prose reached audiences beyond the literate elite, uniting ordinary colonists with political leaders around the idea of independence. John Adams, while critical of Paine’s radical democratic vision, acknowledged its explosive popular impact. Loyalist writers including the Reverend Charles Inglis and James Chalmers published point-by-point rebuttals, indicating the pamphlet’s direct challenge to the established order.
Paine’s influence on the Continental Congress’s deliberations in the spring and summer of 1776 was widely recognized by contemporaries. George Washington ordered Common Sense read aloud to his troops. The pamphlet reframed the colonial conflict from a dispute over parliamentary taxation to a principled struggle for self-government and natural rights, directly preparing public opinion for the Declaration of Independence adopted on July 4, 1776. Paine continued his service to the revolutionary cause in 1776 by enlisting as a volunteer aide-de-camp to General Nathanael Greene and beginning his American Crisis series, the first number of which — opening with “These are the times that try men’s souls” — was published in December 1776 and read to Washington’s troops before the Battle of Trenton.
Significance
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was the most widely circulated pamphlet of the American Revolution and, relative to population, the best-selling title in American publishing history. By making the case for independence in plain language accessible to the general colonial public, it transformed what had been a constitutional dispute into a popular revolution. The pamphlet bridged the gap between the colonial intellectual elite and ordinary citizens and created the political climate in which the Continental Congress could adopt the Declaration of Independence. Paine’s methodology — engaging mass audiences through cheap, widely distributed print — established a model for political communication that influenced democratic movements well beyond 1776.