Common Sense

Front Cover
Broadview Press, 2004 M03 16 - 252 pages

When Common Sense was published in January 1776, it sold, by some estimates, a stunning 150,000 copies in the colonies. What exactly made this pamphlet so appealing? This is a question not only about the state of mind of Paine’s audience, but also about the role of public opinion and debate, the function of the press, and the shape of political culture in the colonies.

This Broadview edition of Paine’s famous pamphlet attempts to reconstruct the context in which it appeared and to recapture the energy and passion of the dispute over the political future of the British colonies in North America. Included along with the text of Common Sense are some of the contemporary arguments for and against the Revolution by John Dickinson, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson; materials from the debate that followed the pamphlet’s publication showing the difficulty of the choices facing the colonists; the Declaration of Independence; and the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776.

 

Contents

Responses to Common Sense
151
Political Documents
217
Paines American Crisis
241
Suggestions for Further Reading
251
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Edward Larkin is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Delaware. He is the author of Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution (Cambridge, 2005). His current scholarship focuses on loyalism and empire in the early United States.

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