The following is an installment of “On This Day,” a new series celebrating America’s 250th anniversary by following the actions of Gen. George Washington, the Continental Congress, and the men and women whose bravery and sacrifice led up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Jan. 9, 1776
Thomas Paine was still a relative newcomer to the colonies, having arrived in 1774, but he was already fully committed to their cause of liberty from the Crown. After becoming editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine in 1775, Paine began, on the evening of Jan. 9, 1776, the anonymous distribution of a 47-page pamphlet, signed simply, “By an Englishman.”
In it, Paine said plainly, and without flourish, what many colonists believed but few yet dared to say aloud.
The introduction today is still riveting:
“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath undertaken in his own right, to support the parliament in what he calls theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either. In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise, and the worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are injudicious, or unfriendly, will cease of themselves unless too much pains are bestowed upon their conversion. The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the author.”
He would go on to demolish any arguments against seeking independence and encourage one to be declared.
In a truly free society, Paine wrote, “The law ought to be king.”
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The pamphlet, titled Common Sense, came nine months after the battles of Lexington and Concord and at a time when uncertainty had plagued the patriots after the military action in Quebec had failed.
The pamphlet sparked a sensation unlike anything seen before, making the case, with striking brevity, that America should declare immediate independence from Great Britain. Common Sense single-handedly electrified public opinion, selling out at once and rekindling the revolutionary spirit.
Its impact stood in sharp contrast to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, which was still debating reconciliation even as Paine unleashed a popular fever for separation.