Thomas Paine, Common Sense and a Plan for America

To the extent that historians give Thomas Paine credit for playing a significant role in the American Revolutionary Cause, it was his rousing call for independence in his widely read tract Common Sense, published January 9, 1776, that most agree was his chief contribution to America’s decision to separate from British rule. Paine turned up the heat of the debate, stirred the pot and brought to a boil the already simmering revolutionary thoughts taking hold in America by shouting out loud “TIS TIME TO PART.” Although most Americans did not know who the anonymous author of the pamphlet was at first, Paine yanked the arguments and whispers for independence loitering in the back alleys and flung them out onto the streets for all to read and hear.

“To the extent” because not all historians, or even some of Paine’s own contemporaries, acknowledged his pivotal role in spurring Americans toward independence. Pauline Maier in her book American Scripture, for example, downplayed Paine’s contributions, giving the credit to John Adams for pushing the independence movement forward.[1] And for his part, Adams, an early admirer (and jealous) of Paine’s writings and popular appeal, turned sour toward the man and his ideas over time (“a Star of Disaster”). Adams concluded there was nothing original in Paine’s pamphlet, that it only repeated “common place arguments for independence” that Paine picked up here and there as a newcomer to Philadelphia.[2]

There is some truth to Adams’s latter charge. Paine later admitted that until he arrived in America from England in December 1774 (carrying with him two letters of introduction by Benjamin Franklin whom he had met in London), he “had no thoughts of independence or of arms.”[3] That all changed with the breakout of hostilities the following April at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. By then, he had been serving several months as editor of Robert Aitken’s Pennsylvania Magazine and soon after was thinking of composing a pamphlet on the rising conflict.

To this day, Paine is mostly remembered for his fiery rebellious writings during revolutionary times, here in America and later on during similar periods of political upheaval in England and France. A rebel with a cause.