As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’ve started a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. This week, Jonathan remembers Thomas Paine’s bestseller Common Sense and its case for independence. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here. —The Editors
Uncommon Common Sense
Had the writer Thomas Paine published Common Sense in the age of social media rather than in January 1776 amid what he called the Age of Reason, some commenters would surely have noted—using one of the more irritating idioms of the internet—that he had dared to say “the quiet part out loud”: America needed to sever ties with Great Britain.
This week marks the 250th anniversary of Paine’s Common Sense beginning its remarkable run as the bestseller of the American Revolution. The 20,000-word pamphlet sold tens of thousands of copies and reached a far larger audience as colonists shared its memorable words with family members and friends in homes and taverns.
Although the 13 colonies were far down the path to independence by January 1776, few people still dared to declare support for it, and none could have done so with Paine’s flair. “There is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island,” he wrote. “In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet; and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverse the common order of nature, it is evident that they belong to different systems. England to Europe: America to itself.” To his mind, the shots fired at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, had rendered talk of reconciliation ridiculous. “The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ’TIS TIME TO PART.”
