Fasttrack to America's Past
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Page 67
 Page 67 - Thomas Paine's Common Sense

The reading selection

   This reading contains selections from Common Sense, the booklet by Thomas Paine that moved many Americans to support the movement for independence.  It was first published in January 1776.

   Thomas Paine became one of the key figures of the American Revolution because of Common Sense and his later writings supporting the fight for independence.  He had failed in England at business (corset making) and marriage, and decided to make a new life in America after meeting Benjamin Franklin in London.
   With Franklin's help, he found work in a print shop in Philadelphia.  He wrote the short book while living there, and published it anonymously at first.  It instantly became a hit in the colonies, and Paine expanded it for new editions. 


The picture

   The drawing shows Thomas Paine.  After the Revolution began, Paine continued writing and raising money to support the fight for independence.


Group discussion questions

   Paine makes several good arguments for breaking the colonies away from Great Britain.  These include:

  • There are no advantages to being connected to Great Britain, but many disadvantages.
  • Dependence on Great Britain tends to pull the colonies into European wars and disputes.
  • England and America are geographically separated, so there is no proof that God wanted them connected.
  • England is too far away to manage the colonies.
  • Small island nations should not rule continents.
  • America can be a place safe from the tyranny found in the rest of the world.
  • America can create a better form of government.
   Paine states that freedom has little chance in most parts of the world.  Even in England, he argues, freedom had been warned "to depart."  (History has shown that to be an overstatement, of course.) 
   America, Paine says, has the opportunity to create a new and better form of government, with "the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth."  It can become "an asylum for mankind" and the principles of freedom.






Copyright Notice

   Copyright 2018 by David Burns.  All rights reserved.  Illustrations and reading selections appearing in this work are taken from sources in the public domain and from private collections used by permission.  Sources include: the Dover Pictorial Archive, the Library of Congress, The National Archives, The Hart Publishing Co., Corel Corporation and its licensors, Nova Development Corporation and its licensors, and others.  Maps were created or adapted by the author using reference maps from the United States Geological Survey and Cartesia Software.  Please see the home page for this title for more information.