Thomas Paine, a reluctant British tax collector and failed businessman who arrived in America on the eve of the Revolution, published Common Sense on this day in history, January 10, 1776.
“In the following pages, I will provide nothing but simple facts, clear arguments, and common sense,” Payne wrote.
“America's cause is, in a significant sense, the cause of all mankind.”
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This Explosives Treaty stimulated a revolution in the minds of the American people. It implored the colonists to support the ongoing heroic rebellion against the British crown in Massachusetts.
At the time, the American Revolutionary War was in its early stages. The Massachusetts Minutemen routed the British at Concord in her April 1775 and pursued the redcoats to Boston.
A commemorative sculpture depicting a smiling face of Thomas Paine lists his dates of birth and death, and reads, “The world is my country, and my religion to do good.” It has been written that religious and legal officials have defended themselves from his attacks. Image, 1815. From the New York Public Library. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
An army of New England farmers, now under the command of General George Washington of Virginia, besieged British forces at Boston during the winter of 1775–76.
“Common Sense” wrote the script for the next chapter. The piece was so popular that it inspired the Declaration of Independence just six months later.
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The book was simple in language but deep in philosophy, and was published in the form of a pamphlet to incite the mob, which was popular at the time.
“We have the power to remake the world,” Payne wrote gravely.
The New Testament concept of a new beginning for fallen humanity served as the spiritual foundation of the Revolutionary War generation. Paine filled his work with references to the failures of the Old Testament kings.
“We have the power to remake the world.” — Thomas Paine
“Paine's 'Common Sense' made an irrefutable argument for separation from Great Britain, stating that revolution was not only achievable but inevitable,” writes the Thomas Paine Society.
“Letters to newspapers throughout the colonies quoted Paine as saying: 'Nothing else has been said,' Boston resident Andrew Elliott wrote to a friend in London. He wrote: “I don't know what Britain could do to prevent that.''
Pamphlet cover of Common Sense by Thomas Paine, 1776. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images)
Many of Common Sense's scathing critiques of tyrannical and unaccountable governments ring as true today as they did in 1776.
“Society in every state is a blessing, but government is a necessary evil at its best and intolerable at its worst,” Paine wrote.
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Paine's Call to Intellectual and Physical Arms ”It sold 120,000 copies in the first three months and 500,000 by the end of the revolution,” reports the National Constitution Center.
“The colony's estimated population (excluding African Americans and Native Americans) was 2.5 million.”
Common Sense sold 66 million copies, which is the equivalent of America's population today.
This is similar to a book that sold 66 million copies in today's US population, making Common Sense perhaps the best-selling work in US history.
Paine ridiculed the idea that monarchy was a legitimate form of government. It was a truly revolutionary concept for a race that had been ruled by strongmen, tyrants, and hereditary rulers since the beginning of time.
UNITED KINGDOM – CIRCA 2003: Portrait of Thomas Paine (Thetford, England, 1737 – New York, USA, 1809), British revolutionary, politician and intellectual. Oil on canvas, George Romney (1734-1802), 1876, 40×30 cm. National Portrait Gallery, London. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)
“There is something deeply absurd about the structure of the monarchy,” Mr. Payne wrote. “The king's state closes him off from the world, but the king's work demands a thorough knowledge of the world.”
Paine was born on February 9, 1737 in Thetford, England.
Common sense's scathing critique of tyrannical and unaccountable governments seems as true today as it was in 1776.
“He then took a job as an excise officer, hunting smugglers and collecting liquor and tobacco taxes. He was not great at this job or any of his other early jobs; , his life in England was marked by repeated failures,'' writes Biography.com.
“In the spring of 1774, Paine was fired from the Excise Department and began to think his future was bleak. Fortunately, he soon met Benjamin Franklin, who encouraged him to immigrate to America. He immediately gave letters of introduction to people who wanted to immigrate to America.'' -A nation was formed. ”
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Like many people before him and millions of others after him, Payne found new hope in America.
He arrived in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774, just six months before protests turned into war at the battles of Lexington and Concord.
In his first effort in America, Paine published a scathing indictment of the global slave trade.
Replica of the Declaration of Independence. Some scholars claim that Thomas Paine was involved in drafting the Declaration of Independence. (St. Petersburg)
This Englishman reserved the greatest monarchical ridicule, especially for the British Crown.
Payne wrote of the Norman invaders who defeated the Anglo-Saxon king Harold in 1066 that “no one in his sense could say that their claim under William the Conqueror was a very honorable one. ” he wrote.
“There is something very absurd about the constitution of a monarchy.” — Thomas Paine
“For a French bastard to come ashore with armed bandits and establish himself as King of England in defiance of the consent of the natives is frankly very despicable and ingenious; There is no divinity at all.”
“Paine's persuasive arguments against the monarchy and British rule spread like wildfire throughout the colonies and swayed public opinion toward independence,” writes the Thomas Paine Society.
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George Washington declared, “Common Sense has been found to be effecting powerful changes in the minds of many people. Few pamphlets have had such a dramatic influence on political events.” did.
Some scholars claim that Paine played a silent role in drafting the Declaration of Independence. True or not, his contribution to the revolutionary cause was far from over.
He published Crisis at a time when Washington's army was in tatters after repeated defeats and the cause of independence was on the verge of collapse.
Washington crosses the Delaware River near Trenton, New Jersey, Christmas 1776. George Washington, 1732-1799, first president of the United States. From History of England and Scotland, published in 1882. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images)
“These are the testing days of the human soul,” Paine famously wrote with poetic passion on December 23, 1776.
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. Yet there is the consolation that the fiercer the conflict, the more glorious the victory.”
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Two days later, on Christmas night, Washington led his army in a daring raid across the Delaware River and captured the British Crown's Hessian outpost at Trenton, New Jersey.
The “crisis” had now turned in favor of America and in favor of Paine's “Cause of All Mankind.”
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