Thomas Paine’s Common Sense

Its Transformative Impact on the American Revolution

An Essay

by

GBS jr

2023

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it. - The American Crisis (1776)

Abstract

This monograph reexamines the origins, arguments, and enduring influence of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the revolutionary pamphlet that helped transform colonial discontent into a collective demand for American independence. Originally developed as a college essay in 1982 and substantially revised and expanded over four decades, the study explores the uncertain political climate of 1775, Paine’s personal background as a self-made writer, and the rhetorical strategies that allowed him to communicate Enlightenment ideas to a broad colonial audience. Through close analysis, the work traces how Common Sense reframed the imperial crisis, accelerated the move toward separation, and helped shape foundational concepts of American political identity and democratic participation. Additional sections investigate the pamphlet’s reception among British authorities, its indirect role in encouraging foreign intervention, and the ways later historians and readers have interpreted its legacy. Ultimately, the monograph argues that Common Sense succeeded not merely because of what it said, but because of when and how it said it, speaking directly to ordinary Americans in a moment when history was still undecided and helping define the future they chose to fight for.

Author’s Note

This little monograph started its life as a college essay I wrote in 1982, back when I was a wide-eyed freshman trying to sound far smarter than I actually was. I wrote it for a history course, fully convinced that Thomas Paine had singlehandedly invented democracy and that my professor needed to hear all about it - at length. I saved the paper, partly out of pride and partly because I couldn’t believe I survived writing it.

Over the decades, that early draft has resurfaced at odd and sentimental moments; usually whenever I felt a rush of civic pride, or when I stood on the green at Lexington or peered over the stone wall at Concord and imagined how ordinary people became revolutionaries. Each visit reminded me that Paine’s voice wasn’t dusty or distant; it was loud, messy, and meant for people like us.

This current version is not the untouched 18-year-old effort - trust me, nobody needs to see that, but a much-reworked, expanded, and hopefully wiser take on the same questions that grabbed me back then. What does it take for a society to declare itself new? What convinces people to risk everything for an idea? And why do some words, written in cheap pamphlets by recent immigrants, change absolutely everything?

So here it is, forty-plus years later: new research, cleaned-up sentences, and only a faint trace of the overeager student who started it. If there’s anything valuable in these pages, I hope it’s proof that ideas encountered when we’re young don’t have to fade, they can grow right alongside us, and sometimes jump back out of a cardboard box to surprise us at exactly the right moment.

Introduction

The American Revolution, often remembered as an inevitable march toward independence, was in fact born from uncertainty, internal disagreement, and intellectual transition. Even after blood spilled at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Americans were not united around the idea of creating a new nation. Many colonists still held emotional, cultural, and economic ties to Great Britain, and leaders of the Continental Congress spoke the language of grievance and petition rather than separation. Into this unsettled landscape stepped Thomas Paine, a recent immigrant from England who had no aristocratic pedigree, no role in government, and no vested interest in the colonial elite. Yet in January 1776, he published a pamphlet that would transform revolutionary thinking.

Common Sense did not simply advocate independence; it reframed the entire colonial crisis, shifting it from a dispute between subjects and Parliament to a fundamental struggle between natural rights and hereditary tyranny. Using strikingly clear language and vivid emotional logic, Paine democratized political discourse and presented independence as both a moral imperative and a feasible objective. Historian Sean Wilentz argued that Paine’s pamphlet “did what generations of scholars and statesmen had failed to do: make independence common sense” (The Rise of American Democracy). The pamphlet offered ordinary Americans new conceptual tools; new ways of imagining identity, power, history, and destiny - and, in doing so, accelerated the creation of a political nation that did not yet quite exist.

This essay explores the context, creation, arguments, reception, and legacy of Common Sense, with special attention to the pamphlet’s effect on public opinion, its influence on political leaders, and its contribution to America’s emerging national identity. It also expands into a broader international and historiographical analysis, examining how other powers responded, or failed to respond, and how historians have interpreted the pamphlet’s significance in the centuries since 1776.

I. Political Uncertainty in 1775: The Pre-Paine Colonial Crisis

When Thomas Paine arrived in America in 1774, a revolution was not yet underway - at least not in the minds of most colonists. Riots, boycotts, and retaliatory British policies such as the Coercive Acts had created tension and outrage, but political allegiance remained divided. Many colonists believed British political culture; including representative government, commercial security, and constitutional rights; could still be recovered within the imperial system. The First Continental Congress had framed its demands in conciliatory language, and even after the battles at Lexington and Concord, the Continental Congress continued to petition the Crown for reconciliation.

John Dickinson’s widely circulated Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania urged caution, warning his countrymen in 1768 that independence would bring “confusion and bloodshed” and that the colonies must remain “dutiful” even while resisting unconstitutional acts. A full decade later, Dickinson still argued that breaking from Britain was “a measure fraught with ruin.” His moderate position mirrored the views of many landowners, merchants, and clergy who believed the empire, though flawed, remained preferable to the unknown.

King George III’s brusque rejection of the Olive Branch Petition in late 1775 hardened minds, but it did not instantly shift public consensus. As historian Pauline Maier emphasizes, “independence was not the logical conclusion of events, but one of several competing possibilities” (American Scripture). Some colonists favored continued protest, others feared economic collapse should trade with Britain be severed, and many were immobilized by uncertainty.

Paine recognized that for independence to succeed, colonists needed not only a political justification but a psychological conversion, a redefinition of loyalty itself. It was this emotional transformation that Common Sense hastened.

II. Thomas Paine: A Radical Immigrant with a Radical Voice

Thomas Paine’s effectiveness derived partly from his personal history. Born in Thetford, England, in 1737, Paine never enjoyed the privileges available to the colonial elite. The son of a corset maker, he spent much of his early life at sea or in minor civil service roles, struggling with debt and disappointed ambition. His emergence from England’s artisan class profoundly shaped his perspective. Unlike the educated lawyers and elite planters who led much of the American protest movement, Paine knew firsthand how it felt to exist outside the centers of political power.

Benjamin Franklin encountered Paine in London and immediately saw potential in his restless intellect and biting pen. Franklin encouraged him to sail for Philadelphia, giving him a letter that helped secure Paine a position as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine. Through this role, Paine honed his skill at making complex questions intelligible to a broad audience. His essays and editorials ranged widely, from critiques of slavery to arguments for educational reform, and exhibited a distinctive tone: plain, bold, and direct.

Paine also carried with him intellectual influences from dissident Britain; radical Whig thought, Enlightenment individualism, and Quaker egalitarianism. These influences shaped his conviction that political legitimacy lay not in tradition or bloodline but in the consent of free individuals. Yet it was his background, not merely his reading, that enabled him to speak in the language of ordinary mechanics, shopkeepers, and farmers.

John Adams later wrote, half admiring and half chiding, that Paine’s pamphlet “struck with a force that no classical flourish could equal.” Adams saw Paine’s lack of polish as vulgar; others saw it as liberation.

III. The Content and Themes of Common Sense

1. Paine’s Indictment of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession

A defining feature of Common Sense is its radical rejection of monarchy as a moral and political institution. Paine did not merely criticize George III for abuses; he condemned kingship itself as “the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry.” This irreverence shocked readers accustomed to treating the Crown with deference. Paine argued that monarchy violated natural equality, asserting that “in the beginning of the world, we had no king; the world was poor, but it was free.”

This was a revolutionary claim in the eighteenth century, when most political theory assumed that authority flowed from established hierarchies. Historian Eric Foner notes that Paine’s argument “de-sacralized monarchy” and thereby “broke the emotional bonds between Americans and Britain” (Tom Paine and Revolutionary America). His attack destabilized the cultural habits that tied colonists to the empire.

2. Reframing America’s Relationship to Britain

Paine shattered the sentimental metaphor that had linked Britain to America as “mother” and “child.” With biting simplicity, he wrote, “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America.” This reframing accomplished two goals: it neutralized the emotional power of imperial loyalty and emphasized the diversity and independence of the colonies.

Most memorably, Paine appealed to geography as destiny: “There is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.” The metaphor became one of the most widely repeated lines in revolutionary discourse, turning the physical scale of America into a political argument.

3. Making Independence Practical

Independence had long seemed impractical to many. Paine directly confronted these fears. He argued that commerce with Europe would continue regardless of British policy because nations pursue economic interest above loyalty. He declared that “our present numbers are sufficient to repel the British force” and outlined a plan for constructing a navy from available timber and maritime talent.

In doing so, Paine did not merely advocate rebellion - he normalized it. Gordon Wood observes that Paine “gave Americans confidence in their own abilities precisely when such confidence was lacking,” transforming anxiety into action (The Radicalism of the American Revolution).

4. Imagining a Democratic Republic

Paine’s final argument was visionary. He believed that America offered a chance to begin “the world over again” by creating a republic based on representation, rotation in office, and written constitutions. “The law is king,” he insisted, inverting the dominant European doctrine that the king makes law.

Unlike many revolutionaries, Paine saw political equality not as a distant ideal but as an urgent project. His willingness to imagine a government shaped by the people rather than the privileged set him apart—even from sympathetic contemporaries like Adams, who did not trust the public to govern itself without check.

IV. A New Political Language for a New Public

One of Paine’s most lasting achievements lay in rhetorical invention. While earlier colonial pamphlets had relied on appeals to English constitutional law or classical analogies, Paine recognized that ordinary Americans did not think, or feel, in those terms. He deployed biblical references rather than Latin maxims, common experience rather than inherited authority.

Abigail Adams praised this communicative power, writing that Paine had “convinced multitudes who could not have been moved by the arguments of [learned] gentlemen.” The pamphlet’s readability - astonishingly high for the period—enabled it to circulate orally. Militia officers read it aloud around campfires; taverns and community halls hosted impromptu readings.

Robert Ferguson argues that Common Sense became “the first American bestseller” because it “spoke the language of those it sought to persuade” (The American Enlightenment, 1750–1820). Paine democratized not merely politics but political communication.

V. How Common Sense Shifted the Political Landscape

The pamphlet’s effect was electric. Reprints and extracts appeared in dozens of colonial newspapers. Ordinary citizens began petitioning their colonial assemblies demanding independence. By spring 1776, states that had previously balked at the idea; Virginia, North Carolina, and Massachusetts among them, authorized their delegates to vote for separation.

John Adams later admitted, despite his personal misgivings, that the pamphlet “swept through the continent with astonishing rapidity.” George Washington wrote to Joseph Reed in April 1776 that Common Sense had done “a powerful change in the minds of many men.”

In May 1776, Congress took the decisive step of recommending that states form new governments independent of Britain, a move that closely mirrored Paine’s plan. Less than two months later, Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence. Bernard Bailyn writes that “It is difficult to imagine the Declaration without Common Sense,” because the pamphlet had already prepared the public to accept, and demand, the logic Jefferson articulated (The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution).

VI. Common Sense and the Formation of American National Identity

Paine’s pamphlet not only helped win independence, it helped define what independence meant. In a society divided by region, religion, ethnicity, and class, Paine offered a unifying theory of identity based not on ancestry but on shared rights. “The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind,” he declared, linking American struggle to human progress.

Jill Lepore argues that in this line, Paine “made the American cause universal before it was truly national” (These Truths). His work contained the seed of a national creed grounded in equality, possibility, and moral purpose.

The egalitarian impulse of Common Sense contributed to long-term democratization. Many states abolished feudal landholding practices such as entail and primogeniture during the war. New constitutions placed sovereignty explicitly in the hands of the people. The suspicion of concentrated executive power, later softened and refined in the federal Constitution, was also directly traceable to Paine’s writings.

VII. Limitations and Critiques

Paine’s vision was expansive and innovative, but it was not comprehensive. The world he imagined excluded many inhabitants of the colonies, including enslaved Africans, Native American nations, and women. Although Paine personally abhorred slavery, as his later writings on African emancipation demonstrated, he did not confront it in Common Sense, likely to preserve the fragile coalition for independence.

Federalists later criticized Paine’s embrace of popular sovereignty. Adams complained that Paine’s ideas promoted “levelling” and would result in “democracy run wild.” Alexander Hamilton and others viewed Paine’s suspicion of executive power as naïve and dangerous, and the Constitution’s complex system of checks and balances reflected that concern.

Economic historians note that Paine underestimated the fiscal challenges of building a navy and waging an extended war. Still, these oversights reflect the speed and improvisation with which Paine wrote, a pamphlet intended to ignite movement, not craft policy detail.

VIII. Why Common Sense Succeeded Where Others Failed

Paine succeeded when others faltered for several key reasons. First, his timing was impeccable: he wrote when tensions were high, but before positions crystallized. Second, he combined logic and emotion. Where learned writers appealed to constitutional theory, Paine appealed to justice, dignity, and moral outrage, equally powerful forces. Third, he used a language that crossed class boundaries. Fourth, he offered not merely a critique but a positive blueprint, a republic, a national identity, and a vision of America as the vanguard of liberty.

Paine recognized that history turns not only on ideas but on their accessibility. He made rebellion imaginable by making it speakable.

IX. Common Sense in the Eyes of the World: International Reaction and Historiographical Legacy

1. Britain’s Reaction: Ridicule and Alarm

British leaders recognized Common Sense as a threat almost immediately. Loyalist pamphleteers denounced Paine as a “quack,” a “mad democrat,” and a “cobbler’s apprentice.” John Wesley, the Methodist founder and staunch loyalist, published Calm Address to Our American Colonies in direct opposition, arguing that rebellion violated Christian duty. British newspapers mocked Paine’s ideas as dangerously leveling. Yet ridicule masked real alarm: if Americans accepted Paine’s premise that government derived from the people, monarchical legitimacy everywhere might crumble.

Lord North is rumored to have remarked privately that Paine’s pamphlet “has done more mischief than any other writing ever published in America.” Whether apocryphal or not, the comment reflects contemporary anxieties.

2. France: A Quiet Interest Becomes Open Support

While France did not officially comment on Common Sense, French diplomats watched its distribution with interest. Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, writing under diplomatic cover, noted that Paine’s pamphlet “prepared the spirits for what is to follow.” French elites understood that American independence weakened Britain, and Paine’s argument for alliance helped make French intervention possible. In 1778, France became the first foreign power to recognize the United States—a development Paine anticipated in his argument that European powers would support any new republic.

3. Other European Currents

Enlightenment thinkers across Europe responded more slowly. In the Netherlands, where republicanism already had strong roots, Paine’s pamphlet circulated among political clubs advocating constitutional reform. In Spain, it was formally banned. In Britain’s remaining colonies; Canada, Jamaica, India; the text circulated clandestinely, sparking fear among imperial administrators that Paine’s “contagion of rebellion” might spread.

4. The Long Historiography: How History Has Judged Common Sense

Historians have interpreted Common Sense in several waves:

Early Republic:

Paine became a hero to radicals but a villain to conservatives. His later attacks on Christianity in The Age of Reason damaged his reputation. Theodore Roosevelt called him “a filthy little atheist,” illustrating the cultural backlash.

Progressive Era:

In the early 20th century, scholars rediscovered Paine as a champion of democratic and working-class interests. Vernon Parrington praised Paine as the voice of “the ordinary man.”

Modern scholarship:

Today, Paine is recognized as indispensable. Eric Foner, Sean Wilentz, and Jill Lepore frame him not only as a revolutionary, but as a cultural translator, turning Enlightenment abstraction into political mobilization.

Many historians now argue that without Common Sense, independence would likely have come - eventually - but perhaps not with the same speed, popular legitimacy, or democratic aspiration.

Conclusion

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense stands among the most consequential texts in American, and modern, political history. Published at a moment when colonial opinion was fragmented and uncertain, the pamphlet provided ordinary Americans with a language, a logic, and a moral vision for independence. Paine dismantled loyalty to monarchy, redefined national identity, and offered a blueprint for republican self-government. He did not merely reflect public opinion - he shaped it.

The international reverberations of the pamphlet testify to its transformative power. Britain feared its implications, France saw strategic promise, and later revolutionaries in Ireland, Haiti, and Latin America drew inspiration from Paine’s simple assertion: power belongs to the people. In the centuries since, Common Sense has been alternately celebrated, ignored, condemned, and revived - but never forgotten.

The true measure of Paine’s influence lies not only in what happened after Common Sense appeared, but in how it reshaped the possible. It turned rebellion into responsibility, colonists into citizens, and history into destiny. Paine’s final claim, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” remains the most American sentence ever written.

Annotated Bibliography

Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. 1776.

The foundational primary source. Provides Paine’s arguments against monarchy, for independence, and for constructing a republic. Central quotations support nearly every analytical claim.

Adams, John. The Adams Papers. Massachusetts Historical Society.

Diaries and correspondence reveal elite skepticism of Paine’s rhetoric yet acknowledgment of its political power. Illustrates internal divisions among revolutionary leaders.

Washington, George. The Papers of George Washington. University of Virginia Press.

Washington’s letters document how Common Sense circulated among soldiers and shifted wartime morale, deepening its influence beyond Congress and political elites.

Foner, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. Oxford University Press, 1976.

The definitive intellectual biography. Explores Paine’s class background, rhetoric, and ideological evolution. Essential for understanding Paine’s populism.

Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. Knopf, 1997.

Analyzes how public opinion shaped, and was shaped by, the independence movement. Demonstrates that independence was not predetermined before Paine.

Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Vintage, 1991.

Places Common Sense within the larger transition from monarchical deference to democratic self-government. Shows lasting cultural transformation.

Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy. W.W. Norton, 2005.

Traces the long trajectory of American democratic development, identifying Paine as a pivotal early figure in mass political mobilization.

Lepore, Jill. These Truths: A History of the United States. W.W. Norton, 2018.

Broad national history that situates Paine as a pioneer of American universalist rhetoric. Supports interpretation of his work as foundational to national identity.

Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Harvard University Press, 1967.

Classic study linking revolutionary rhetoric to Enlightenment ideas. Shows how Paine absorbed and popularized long-gathering ideological trends.

Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin. Correspondence (1776–1778).

Letters from the French court that show early French awareness of Paine’s pamphlet and its strategic implications for weakening Britain.

Wesley, John. A Calm Address to Our American Colonies. 1775.

Loyalist pamphlet offering theological opposition to rebellion. Included to contrast Paine’s egalitarian theology with loyalist moral reasoning.