Common Sense was Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet urging American independence, a work recalled during America250.
Paine published the pamphlet anonymously in Philadelphia in January 1776. Written in direct, accessible prose, it attacked hereditary monarchy and argued that the American colonies should become independent from Great Britain.
Common Sense helped make the case for independence understandable to a broad reading public. It appeared months before the Declaration of Independence and contributed to the political climate in which Congress considered separation.
The pamphlet is often confused with Paine’s later work The American Crisis, a series of writings that began during the Revolutionary War, or with Rights of Man, which Paine published during the French Revolutionary era. Common Sense was specifically the independence argument published in early 1776.