explain how Common Sense is organized, what each section is for, and how its purpose, themes and rhetorical features made it a foundational American document.
Instruction
In January 1776 the war with Britain had been going on for nine months, and most colonial leaders still said they were fighting for their rights as Englishmen, not for independence. Then a pamphlet appeared in Philadelphia, signed only “Written by an Englishman.” Its author was Thomas Paine, who had arrived from England little more than a year before. Common Sense was reprinted up and down the colonies, read aloud in taverns and army camps, and argued over everywhere. (Historians disagree about how many copies were sold; treat any single number you see online with caution.) Within six months, Congress had declared independence. This unit begins here because Paine shows, in one short book, how an American argument is built.
Why a foundational document? RI.11-12.9 asks you to analyze seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century U.S. documents for their themes, purposes and rhetorical features. A document is foundational when later Americans keep arguing with it. Paine’s claims — that government exists to protect freedom and security, that hereditary power is irrational, that America has a mission for “all mankind” — are still being cited, attacked and revised.
The structure. Paine does not start with the king. He starts with first principles and works outward:
- Of the Origin and Design of Government: why people form governments at all. Society comes from our wants; government from our wickedness. The simpler the government, the easier it is to repair.
- Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession: an attack on kingship itself, using scripture and ridicule. If one king is good, why should his son be?
- Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs: the practical case. Reconciliation will fail; distance makes British rule absurd; the time to separate is now.
- Of the Present Ability of America: can the colonies actually win? Paine argues about ships, debt and population.
Notice the logic of that order. By the time readers reach the king, they have already agreed that government is a “necessary evil” to be kept simple, and that inheriting power is foolish. The conclusion — independence — then feels like common sense rather than rebellion. The structure itself is part of the argument (RI.11-12.5).
Plain style as a strategy. Paine wrote for farmers and artisans, not lawyers. He uses short declarative sentences, homely analogies (an island governing a continent), and a direct address to the reader. Compare the Declaration of Independence six months later, with its long periodic sentences. Both are persuasive; they imagine different readers.
An older American argument. Paine was not the first to claim a mission for America. In 1630 John Winthrop, leading Puritan settlers to Massachusetts, told them in a lay sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” that they would be “as a city upon a hill” with “the eyes of all people” upon them (spelling modernized; the text was not printed until 1838, and historians still debate exactly where he delivered it). Winthrop’s mission is a covenant with God and a community bound by duty; Paine’s is a cause of “all mankind” grounded in natural rights. Both claim the world is watching. Keep both in mind: later American writers will borrow each.
Images as argument (RI.11-12.7). Twenty-two years earlier, Benjamin Franklin printed a woodcut in the Pennsylvania Gazette (1754): a snake cut into eight pieces labeled with colony initials, above the words “Join, or Die.” Compare what the image argues with what Paine’s words argue. The image makes one claim instantly; the pamphlet makes many claims in sequence. Ask what each medium can do that the other cannot.
Reading older prose. Use context before the dictionary (L.11-12.4.a). “Pleads for separation” — the sentence’s subject is “every thing that is right or natural,” so pleads means argues in favor of, as a lawyer pleads a case.
Reading: Paine’s opening and closing moves
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Philadelphia, 1776), Introduction; ‘Of the Origin and Design of Government’; ‘Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs’ · Public domain
Read each passage aloud. Which ones reason, which ones feel, and which ones do both?
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.
In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.
Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.
Every thing that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ‘TIS TIME TO PART.
Formative check
Work through these before moving on. They are not graded — they tell you, and your teacher, whether the standard below has landed yet.
Paine’s pamphlet is a case for independence. Where do you think it starts?
What is the main purpose of the section ‘Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession’?
Paine’s island-and-continent sentence is an argument from analogy.
Build your argument map: for each of Paine’s four main sections, write one sentence on its purpose, one quotation, and one sentence on why it comes where it does. Then compare Franklin’s ‘Join, or Die’ with Paine’s final section: what does each medium do that the other cannot?
How confident are you that you can explain how the structure and style of Common Sense serve its purpose?