A pamphlet reached one in five Americans in three months
Thomas Paine published Common Sense in January 1776 without putting his name on it — and by spring it had changed what the revolution was actually for.
Before January 10, 1776, the Continental Congress was still officially arguing about taxes, not independence. Most colonial leaders framed their complaint as a quarrel with Parliament, not a rejection of the king himself.
Then Paine's pamphlet appeared. Sold for two shillings. Written in plain English without the Latin flourishes of formal political writing. Within three months it had sold roughly 100,000 copies in a country of 2.5 million people. George Washington read it aloud to his officers. John Adams found it maddening and brilliant.
Paine's core move was simple and devastating: he argued that monarchy itself was the problem, not any particular king's advisers or any particular Parliament. A king who inherited power from a father who inherited it from a grandfather had no legitimate authority over a free people. The argument sounds obvious now. In 1776 it was a rupture.
By reframing the debate from grievance to principle, Common Sense gave the revolution a different kind of goal — one that required independence rather than negotiation. Paine donated all his royalties to the revolutionary cause.
The speed at which an idea travels has always been shaped by the cost of copying it. In 1776, the cost was two shillings.