Page 152 - American Stories, A History of the United States

rebellion. And in America, Virginia’s royal governor Lord Dunmore further under-
mined the possibility of reconciliation by urging the colony’s slaves to take up arms 5.1
against their masters. Few did so, but the effort to stir up black rebellion infuriated
the Virginia gentry.
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) pushed the colonists closer to forming an independent 5.2
republic. In England, Paine had failed at various jobs, but while still in England, Paine
had the good fortune to meet Benjamin Franklin, who presented him with letters of
introduction to the leading patriots of Pennsylvania. At the urging of his new American 5.3
friends, Paine produced Common Sense in 1776, an essay that became an instant best- Common sense Revolutionary
seller. In only three months, it sold more than 120,000 copies. Paine confirmed in tract written by thomas Paine in
forceful prose what the colonists had not yet been able to state coherently. 1776. it called for independence 5.4
Common Sense stripped kingship of historical and theological justification. For and a republican government in
America.
centuries, the English had maintained the legal fiction that the monarch could do no

Read the Document Thomas Paine, “Common Sense” (1776)

Thomas PainE the message of thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense was clear and direct. Paine’s
powerful argument called for “the Free and independent states of America.” He assured ordinary Americans not
only that they could live without a king, but also that they would win the war.
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