Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet Common Sense urged the Thirteen Colonies to seek independence from Great Britain.
Paine published the 47-page work anonymously in Philadelphia on January 10, 1776. Written in clear, forceful prose, it attacked monarchy and hereditary succession while presenting independence and republican government as practical alternatives. The pamphlet reached readers beyond elite political circles and was often read aloud in taverns and meeting places.
Common Sense became an immediate sensation and helped make full independence a central public issue in the months before the Declaration of Independence. Paine later became publicly identified as its author on March 30, 1776.
It is often confused with Paine’s later writings. The American Crisis was a wartime series begun in December 1776, while Rights of Man was a defense of the French Revolution published in 1791 and 1792. Plain Truth was a loyalist response by James Chalmers, not Paine’s independence pamphlet.