'', published in 1776
Common Sense (1776) Paine has a claim to the title
The Father of the American Revolution, which rests on his pamphlets, especially
Common Sense, which crystallized sentiment for independence in 1776. It was published in
Philadelphia on January 10, 1776, and signed anonymously "by an Englishman". It was an immediate success, with Paine estimating it sold 100,000 copies in three months to the two million residents of the 13 colonies. During the course of the American Revolution, one biographer estimated a total of about 500,000 copies were sold, including unauthorized editions. However, some historians dispute these numbers. Paine's original title for the pamphlet was
Plain Truth, but Paine's friend, pro-independence advocate
Benjamin Rush, suggested
Common Sense instead. Finding a printer who was daring enough to commit his print shop to the printing of
Common Sense was not easy. At the advice of Rush, Paine commissioned
Robert Bell to print his work. The pamphlet came into circulation in January 1776, after the Revolution had started. It was passed around and often read aloud in taverns, contributing significantly to spreading the idea of republicanism, bolstering enthusiasm for separation from Britain, and encouraging recruitment for the
Continental Army. Paine provided a new and convincing argument for independence by advocating a complete break with history.
Common Sense is oriented to the future in a way that compels the reader to make an immediate choice. It offers a solution for Americans disgusted with and alarmed at the threat of tyranny. Paine's attack on monarchy in
Common Sense was essentially an attack on King
George III. Whereas colonial resentments were originally directed primarily against the king's ministers and Parliament, Paine laid the responsibility firmly at the king's door.
Common Sense was the most widely read pamphlet of the American Revolution. It was a clarion call for unity against the corrupt British court, so as to realize America's providential role in providing an asylum for liberty. Written in a direct and lively style, it denounced the decaying despotisms of Europe and pilloried hereditary monarchy as an absurdity. At a time when many still hoped for reconciliation with Britain,
Common Sense demonstrated to many the inevitability of separation. Paine was not on the whole expressing original ideas in
Common Sense, but rather employing rhetoric as a means to arouse resentment of the Crown. To achieve these ends, he pioneered a style of political writing suited to the democratic society he envisioned, with
Common Sense serving as a primary example. Part of Paine's work was to render complex ideas intelligible to average readers of the day, with clear, concise writing unlike the formal, learned style favored by many of Paine's contemporaries. Scholars have put forward various explanations to account for its success, including the historic moment, Paine's easy-to-understand style, his democratic ethos, and his use of psychology and ideology.
Common Sense was immensely popular in disseminating to a very wide audience ideas that were already in common use among the elite who comprised Congress and the leadership cadre of the emerging nation, who rarely cited Paine's arguments in their public calls for independence. The pamphlet probably had little direct influence on the
Continental Congress' decision to issue a
Declaration of Independence, since that body was more concerned with how declaring independence would affect the war effort. One distinctive idea in
Common Sense is Paine's beliefs regarding the peaceful nature of republics; his views were an early and strong conception of what scholars would come to call the
democratic peace theory.
Loyalists vigorously attacked
Common Sense; one attack, titled
Plain Truth (1776), by Marylander
James Chalmers, said Paine was a political quack and warned that without monarchy, the government would "degenerate into democracy". Even some American revolutionaries objected to
Common Sense; late in life
John Adams called it a "crapulous mass". Adams disagreed with the type of radical democracy promoted by Paine (that men who did not own property should still be allowed to vote and hold public office) and published
Thoughts on Government in 1776 to advocate a more conservative approach to republicanism.
Sophia Rosenfeld argues that Paine was highly innovative in his use of the commonplace notion of "common sense". He synthesized various philosophical and political uses of the term in a way that permanently impacted American political thought. He used two ideas from
Scottish Common Sense Realism: that ordinary people can indeed make sound judgments on major political issues, and that there exists a body of popular wisdom that is readily apparent to anyone. Paine also used a notion of "common sense" favored by
philosophes in the Continental Enlightenment. They held that common sense could refute the claims of traditional institutions. Thus, Paine used "common sense" as a weapon to de-legitimize the monarchy and overturn prevailing conventional wisdom. Rosenfeld concludes that the phenomenal appeal of his pamphlet resulted from his synthesis of popular and elite elements in the independence movement. According to historian
Robert Middlekauff,
Common Sense became immensely popular mainly because Paine appealed to widespread convictions. Monarchy, he said, was preposterous and it had a heathenish origin. It was an institution of the devil. Paine pointed to the
Old Testament, where almost all kings had seduced the Israelites to worship idols instead of God. Paine also denounced aristocracy, which together with monarchy were "two ancient tyrannies". They violated the laws of nature, human reason, and the "universal order of things", which began with God. This was, Middlekauff says, exactly what most Americans wanted to hear. He calls the Revolutionary generation "the children of the twice-born" because in their childhood they had experienced the
Great Awakening, which, for the first time, had tied Americans together, transcending denominational and ethnic boundaries and giving them a sense of patriotism.
Possible involvement in drafting the Declaration of Independence working draft of the
Declaration of Independence, dated June 24, 1776, copied from the original draft by
John Adams for
Roger Sherman's review and approval While there is no historical record of Paine's involvement in drafting the
Declaration of Independence, some scholars of Early American History have suspected his involvement. As noted by the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, multiple authors have hypothesized and written on the subject, including Moody (1872), Van der Weyde (1911), Lewis (1947), and more recently, Smith & Rickards (2007). The degree to which Paine was involved in formulating the text of the Declaration is unclear, as the original draft referenced in the Sherman Copy inscription is presumed lost or destroyed. However, John Adams' request for permission of "T.P." to copy the original draft may suggest that Paine had a role either assisting Jefferson with organizing ideas within the Declaration, or contributing to the text of the original draft itself.
Naming the United States Historians connect Paine to the rise of the national title "United States of America". Writing as "Republicus" in the June 29, 1776, issue of the
Pennsylvania Evening Post, he urged Congress to adopt the name so the new polity could present itself as a nation, and the phrase reached a wider audience days later in the Declaration. Paine contrasted the prevailing habit in which revolutionary leaders used "united States" as a descriptive phrase for their coalition with the diplomatic urgency of 1776. He argued that only a capitalized title would show foreign governments that the colonies had formed a single American nation ready to negotiate alliances. Historian James H. Hutson situates the letter within widespread June 1776 anxiety that Britain might broker a partition treaty before Congress acted. The "Republicus" appeal echoed Paine's broader call for shared sacrifice and collective identity by urging readers to embrace a national name that implied reciprocal obligations among the colonies. Within weeks he carried the same urgency into
The American Crisis. To inspire his soldiers, General
George Washington had
The American Crisis, first
Crisis pamphlet, read aloud to them. It begins:
Foreign affairs In 1777, Paine became secretary of the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs. The following year, he alluded to secret negotiation underway with France in his pamphlets. His enemies denounced his indiscretions. There was scandal; together with Paine's conflict with
Robert Morris and
Silas Deane, it led to Paine's expulsion from the Committee in 1779. However, in 1781, he accompanied
John Laurens on his mission to France. Eventually, after much pleading from Paine, New York State recognized his political services by presenting him with an estate at
New Rochelle, New York and Paine received money from Pennsylvania and from Congress at Washington's suggestion. During the Revolutionary War, Paine served as an aide-de-camp to the important general,
Nathanael Greene.
Silas Deane Affair In what may have been an error, and perhaps even contributed to his resignation as the secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, Paine was openly critical of Silas Deane, an American diplomat who had been appointed in March 1776 by the Congress to travel to France in secret. Deane's goal was to influence the French government to finance the colonists in their fight for independence. Paine largely saw Deane as a war profiteer who had little respect for principle, having been under the employ of Robert Morris, one of the primary financiers of the American Revolution and working with
Pierre Beaumarchais, a French royal agent sent to the colonies by King Louis to investigate the Anglo-American conflict. Paine uncovered the financial connection between Morris, who was Superintendent for Finance of the Continental Congress, and Deane. Wealthy men, such as Robert Morris,
John Jay and powerful
merchant bankers, were leaders of the Continental Congress and defended holding public positions while at the same time profiting off their own personal financial dealings with governments. Paine left the Committee without even having enough money to buy food for himself. Much later, when Paine returned from his mission to France, Deane's corruption had become more widely acknowledged. Many, including Robert Morris, apologized to Paine, and Paine's reputation in Philadelphia was restored.
"Public Good" In 1780, Paine published a pamphlet entitled "Public Good", in which he made the case that territories west of the 13 colonies that had been part of the British Empire belonged after the Declaration of Independence to the American government, and did not belong to any of the 13 states or to any individual
speculators. A
royal charter of 1609 had granted to the
Virginia Company land stretching to the Pacific Ocean. A small group of wealthy Virginia land speculators, including the Washington, Lee, and Randolph families, had taken advantage of this royal charter to survey and to claim title to huge swaths of land, including much land west of the 13 colonies. In "Public Good", Paine argued that these lands belonged to the American government as represented by the Continental Congress. This angered many of Paine's wealthy Virginia friends, including
Richard Henry Lee of the powerful Lee family, who had been Paine's closest ally in Congress,
George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison, all of whom had claims to huge wild tracts that Paine was advocating should be government owned. The view that Paine had advocated eventually prevailed when the
Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was passed. The animosity Paine felt as a result of the publication of "Public Good" fueled his decision to embark with
Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens on a mission to travel to Paris to obtain funding for the American war effort.
Funding the Revolution Paine accompanied Col. John Laurens to France and is credited with initiating the mission. It landed in France in March 1781 and returned to America in August with 2.5 million
livres in silver, as part of a "present" of 6 million and a loan of 10 million. The meetings with the French king were most likely conducted in the company and under the influence of
Benjamin Franklin. Upon returning to the United States with this highly welcomed cargo, Paine and probably Col. Laurens, "positively objected" that General Washington should propose that Congress remunerate him for his services, for fear of setting "a bad precedent and an improper mode". Paine made influential acquaintances in Paris and helped organize the
Bank of North America to raise money to supply the army. In 1785, he was given $3,000 by the
U.S. Congress in recognition of his service to the nation.
Henry Laurens (father of Col.
John Laurens) had been the ambassador to the
Netherlands, but he was captured by the British on his return trip there. When he was later exchanged for the prisoner
Lord Cornwallis in late 1781, Paine proceeded to the Netherlands to continue the loan negotiations. There remains some question as to the relationship of Henry Laurens and Paine to Robert Morris as the Superintendent of Finance and his business associate, Thomas Willing, who became the first president of the Bank of North America in January 1782. They had accused Morris of profiteering in 1779 and Willing had voted against the Declaration of Independence. Although Morris did much to restore his reputation in 1780 and 1781, the credit for obtaining these critical loans to "organize" the Bank of North America for approval by Congress in December 1781 should go to Henry or John Laurens and Paine more than to Morris. In 1785, Paine was elected a member of the
American Philosophical Society. In 1787, Paine proposed an iron bridge design for crossing the
Schuylkill River at Philadelphia. Having little success in acquiring funding, Paine returned to Paris, France seeking investors or other opportunities to implement his, at the time, novel iron bridge design. Because Paine had few friends when arriving in France aside from
Lafayette and Jefferson, he continued to correspond heavily with Benjamin Franklin, a long time friend and mentor. Franklin provided letters of introduction for Paine to use to gain associates and contacts in France. Later that year, Paine returned to London from Paris. He then released a pamphlet on August 20 called
Prospects on the Rubicon: or, an investigation into the Causes and Consequences of the Politics to be Agitated at the Meeting of Parliament. Tensions between England and France were increasing, and this pamphlet urged the British Ministry to reconsider the consequences of war with France. Paine sought to turn the public opinion against the war to create better relations between the countries, avoid the taxes of war upon the citizens, and not engage in a war he believed would ruin both nations. ==France and
Rights of Man==