Common Sense

Thomas Paine was an English-born political writer, revolutionary pamphleteer, and advocate of republican government whose words helped shape the American Revolution and later echoed through democratic and radical movements on both sides of the Atlantic. Born in Thetford, England, in 1737, Paine emigrated to America in 1774 with the encouragement of Benjamin Franklin. Within little more than a year, he produced Common Sense, the pamphlet that made him one of the most important public voices for American independence.Paine's writing was powerful because it combined political theory with direct popular appeal. He rejected monarchy, hereditary privilege, and political submission in language ordinary readers could understand and repeat. His later works included The American Crisis, which helped sustain revolutionary morale, Rights of Man, written in defense of the French Revolution and democratic reform, and The Age of Reason, a controversial critique of organized religion from a Deist perspective. Paine remains a central figure in the history of liberty, republicanism, democratic thought, revolutionary politics, and the literature of political persuasion.