Advisor: Robert A. Ferguson, George Edward Woodberry Professor in Law, Literature and Criticism, Columbia University, National Humanities Center Fellow. Show
Lesson ContentsHow did Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense convince reluctant Americans to abandon the goal of reconciliation with Britain and accept that separation from Britain — independence — was the only option for preserving their liberty?UnderstandingBy January 1776, the American colonies were in open rebellion against Britain. Their soldiers had captured Fort Ticonderoga, besieged Boston, fortified New York City, and invaded Canada. Yet few dared voice what most knew was true — they were no longer fighting for their rights as British subjects. They weren’t fighting for self-defense, or protection of their property, or to force Britain to the negotiating table. They were fighting for independence. It took a hard jolt to move Americans from professed loyalty to declared rebellion, and it came in large part from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Not a dumbed-down rant for the masses, as often described, Common Sense is a masterful piece of argument and rhetoric that proved the power of words. TextThomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776 [Find more primary sources related to Common Sense in Making the Revolution from the National Humanities Center.] Text TypeLiterary nonfiction; persuasive essay. In the Text Analysis section, Tier 2 vocabulary words are defined in pop-ups, and Tier 3 words are explained in brackets. Text ComplexityGrades 9-10 complexity band. For more information on text complexity see these resources from achievethecore.org. Click here for standards and skills for this lesson. X Common Core State Standards
Advanced Placement US History
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition
Teacher’s NoteThis lesson focuses on the sections central to Paine’s argument in Common Sense — Section III and the Appendix to the Third Edition, published a month after the first edition. We do not recommend assigning the full essay (Sections I, II, and IV require advanced background in British history that Paine’s readers would have known well). However, students should be led through an overview of the essay to understand how Paine built his arguments to a “self-evident” conclusion (See Background: Message, below.) Lead students through an initial overview of the essay (see Background). To begin, they could skim the full text and read the pull-quotes (separated quotes in large bold text). What impression of Common Sense do the quotes provide? What questions do they prompt? Then guide students as they read (perhaps aloud) Section III of Common Sense and the Appendix to the Third Edition (pp. 10-19 and 25-29 in the full text provided with this lesson). Proceed to the close reading of three excerpts in the Text Analysis below. (Note that part of Excerpt #3 is a Common Core exemplar text.) This lesson is divided into two parts, both accessible below. The teacher’s guide includes a background note, the text analysis with responses to the close reading questions, access to the interactive exercises, and a follow-up assignment. The student’s version, an interactive worksheet that can be e-mailed, contains all of the above except the responses to the close reading questions.
Teacher’s GuideBackgroundThe man at right does not look angry. To us, he projects the typical figure of a “Founding Father” — composed, elite, and empowered. And to us his famous essays are awash in powdered-wig prose. But the portrait and the prose belie the reality. Thomas Paine was a firebrand, and his most influential essay — Common Sense — was a fevered no-holds-barred call for independence. He is credited with turning the tide of public opinion at a crucial juncture, convincing many Americans that war for independence was the only option to take, and they had to take it now, or else. Common Sense appeared as a pamphlet for sale in Philadelphia on January 10, 1776, and, as we say today, it went viral. The first printing sold out in two weeks and over 150,000 copies were sold throughout America and Europe. It is estimated that one fifth of Americans read the pamphlet or heard it read aloud in public. General Washington ordered it read to his troops. Within weeks, it seemed, reconciliation with Britain had gone from an honorable goal to a cowardly betrayal, while independence became the rallying cry of united Patriots. How did Paine achieve this? 1. Timing.Over a year elapsed between the outbreak of armed conflict and the Declaration of Independence. During these fifteen months, many bemoaned the reluctance of Americans to renounce their ties with Britain despite the escalating warfare around them. “When we are no longer fascinated with the Idea of a speedy Reconciliation,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in mid-1775, “we shall exert ourselves to some purpose. Till then Things will be done by Halves.”1 In addition, there remained much discord among the colonies about their shared future. “Some timid minds are terrified at the word independence,” wrote Elbridge Gerry in March 1776, referring to the colonial legislatures. “America has gone such lengths she cannot recede, and I am convinced a few weeks or months at furthest will convince her of the fact, but the fruit must have time to ripen in some of the other Colonies.”2 In this environment, Common Sense appeared like a “meteor,” wrote John Adams,3 and propelled many to support independence. Many noted it at the time with amazement.
2. Message.What made Common Sense so esteemed and “enlightening”? Some argue that Common Sense said nothing new, that it simply put the call-to-war in fiery street language that rallied the common people. But this trivializes Paine’s accomplishment. He did have a new message in Common Sense — an ultimatum. Give up reconciliation now, or forever lose the chance for independence. If we fail to act, we’re self-deceiving cowards condemning our children to tyranny and cheating the world of a beacon of liberty. It is our calling to model self-actualized nationhood for the world. “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” Paine divided Common Sense into four sections with deceptively mundane titles, mimicking the erudite political pamphlets of the day. But his essay did not offer the same-old-same-old treatise on British heritage and American rights. Here’s what he says in Common Sense:
A month later, in his appendix to the third edition, Paine escalated his appeal to a utopian fervor. “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” he insisted. “The birthday of a new world is at hand.” 3. Rhetoric.“It is necessary to be bold,” wrote Paine years later on his rhetorical power. “Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it. Say a bold thing that will stagger them, and they will begin to think.”4 Keep this idea front and center as you study Common Sense. As an experienced essayist and a recent English immigrant with his own deep resentments against Britain, Paine was the right man at the right time to galvanize public opinion. He “understood better than anyone else in America,” explains literary scholar Robert Ferguson, “that ‘style and manner of thinking’ might dictate the difficult shift from loyalty to rebellion.”5 Before Paine, the language of political essays had been moderate. Educated men wrote civilly for publication and kept their fury for private letters and diaries. Then came Paine, cursing Britain as an “open enemy,” denouncing George III as the “Royal Brute of England,” and damning reconciliation as “truly farcical” and “a fallacious dream.” To think otherwise, he charged, was “absurd,” “unmanly,” and “repugnant to reason.” As Virginian Landon Carter wrote in dismay, Paine implied that anyone who disagreed with him “is nothing short of a coward and a sycophant [stooge/lackey], which in plain meaning must be a damned rascal.”6 Paine knew what he was doing: the pen was his weapon, and words his ammunition. He argued with ideas while convincing with raw emotion. “The point to remember,” writes Ferguson, “is that Paine’s natural and intended audience is the American mob…. He uses anger, the natural emotion of the mob, to let the most active groups find themselves in the general will of a republican citizenry.”7 What if Paine had written the Declaration of Independence with the same hard-driving rhetoric?
Text AnalysisExcerpt #1Close Reading QuestionsImagine yourself sitting down to read Common Sense in January 1776. How does Paine introduce his reasoning to you? Why does he write “I offer nothing more” instead of “I offer you many reasons” or “I offer a detailed argument”? How does Paine ask you to prepare yourself for his “common sense” arguments? What does he imply by saying a fair reader “will put on, or rather than he will not put off, the true character of a man”? In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense: and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader than that he will divest [rid] himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer [permit] his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves: that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day. PARAGRAPH 55 This paragraph begins with one of the most famous hyperboles in American writing. A hyperbole is an overstatement or exaggeration to emphasize a point. What are the two examples of hyperbole in this paragraph? With the hyperboles, how does Paine lead you to view the “cause” of American independence? What tone does Paine add with the phrases “The sun never shined” and “even to the end of time”? Let’s consider Paine as a wordsmith. How does he use repetition to add impact to the first part of the paragraph? Paine ends this paragraph with an analogy: What we do now is like carving initials into the bark of a young oak tree. What does he mean with the analogy? The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. ’Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent – of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. ’Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed time of continental [colonies’] union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters. PARAGRAPH 58 Paine includes multiple repetitions in this paragraph. What word repetition do you find? What sound repetitions do you find? Read the sentences aloud. What impact does the repetition add to Paine’s delivery? Paine compares the attempts to reconcile with Britain after the Battle of Lexington and Concord to an old almanac. What does he mean? By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new area for politics is struck; a new method of thinking hath arisen. All plans, proposals, etc., prior to the nineteenth of April, i.e., to the commencement of hostilities [Lexington and Concord], are like the almanacs of the last year which, though proper [accurate] then, are superseded and useless now. Whatever was advanced by the advocates on either side of the question then, terminated in one and the same point, viz. [that is], a union with Great Britain. The only difference between the parties was the method of effecting it — the one proposing force, the other friendship; but it hath so far happened that the first hath failed and the second hath withdrawn her influence. PARAGRAPH 59 Paine compares the goal of reconciliation to an “agreeable dream [that has] passed away and left us as we were.” Why doesn’t he aim harsher criticism
here at the goal of reconciling with Britain? With this in mind, what tone does he lead the reader to expect: cynical, impatient, hopeful, reasonable, impassioned, angry? How does his tone prepare the resistant reader? While Paine promises a fair appraisal,
look how he describes the two options in the last sentence. In this vein, Paine chose DEPENDENCE instead of RECONCILIATION for Option 2 (staying with Britain). RECONCILIATION suggests the calm and rational agreement of two grownups, but Paine wants you to view reconciliation as the defeatist choice of spineless subjects who could never take care of themselves. In other words, DEPENDENCE. [Note: Paine does call the two options “independence” and “reconciliation” elsewhere in Common Sense, but he meant to avoid them here.] As much hath been said of the advantages of reconciliation, which, like an agreeable dream, hath passed away and left us as we were, it is but right that we should examine the contrary [opposing] side of the argument and inquire into some of the many material injuries which these colonies sustain, and always will sustain, by being connected with and dependent on Great Britain. To examine that connection and dependence, on the principles of nature and common sense, to see what we have to trust to [expect] if separated, and what we are to expect if dependent. PARAGRAPH 60 Activity: The Metaphor of YouthStudy Paine’s metaphors that compare the colonies’ readiness for independence to a child’s maturation into adulthood. Here Paine rebuts the first argument for reconciliation—that America has thrived as a British colony and would fail on her own. How does he dismiss this argument? Paine follows his utter rejection of the argument with an analogy. Complete the analogy: America staying with Britain would be like a child _______. Paine goes one step further in the last sentence. What does he say about America’s “childhood” as a British colony? I have heard it asserted by some that as America hath flourished under her former connection with Great Britain, that the same connection is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true; for I answer roundly that America would have flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power had anything to do with her. PARAGRAPH 61 Excerpt #2Close Reading QuestionsHere Paine challenges his opponents to bring “reconciliation to the touchstone of
nature.” What does he mean? (A “touchstone” is a test of the quality or genuineness of something. From ancient times the purity of gold or silver was tested with a “touchstone” of basalt stone.) At the start of this paragraph Paine mildly
faults the supporters of reconciliation as unrealistic optimists “still hoping for the best.” By the end of the paragraph, however, they are cowards willing to “shake hands with the murderers.” How did he construct the paragraph to accomplish this transition? Paraphrase
the first challenge (sentences 2–5). Paraphrase the second challenge (sentences 6–11). With what phrase does Paine condemn those who would still hope for reconciliation even if they were victims of British violence? Note how
Paine weaves impassioned questions through the paragraph: “Are you only deceiving yourselves?” “Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands?” How do these questions intensify his challenges? Rewrite sentences #4 and #11 to change the second-person “you”
to the third-person “he/she/they.” How does the change weaken Paine’s challenges? Use this worksheet to examine Paine’s use of questions as persuasive devices throughout Common Sense, specifically the rhetorical question and the hypophora (questions with implied or stated answers, used for rhetorical impact). Men of passive tempers [temperaments] look somewhat lightly over the offenses of Britain and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, “Come, come, we shall be friends again for all this.” But examine the passions and feelings of mankind. Bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature and then tell me whether you can hereafter love, honor, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you cannot do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves and by your delay bringing ruin upon posterity? Your future connection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honor, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you say you can still pass the violations over [ignore or underrate them], then I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of [without] a bed to lie on or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and, whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant. PARAGRAPH 77 Excerpt #3
Close Reading QuestionsAt this point, Paine pleads with his readers to write the constitution for their independent nation without delay. What danger do they risk, he warns, if they leave this crucial task to a later day? What historical evidence does Paine offer to illustrate the danger? As his plea escalates in intensity, Paine exclaims “Ye that oppose independence now, ye know not what ye do.” To what climactic moment in the New Testament does he allude? Paine heightens his apocalyptic tone as he appeals to “ye that love mankind” to accept a mission of salvation (alluding to Christ’s mission of salvation). What must the lovers of mankind achieve in order to save mankind? NOTE: “A government of our own is our natural right” asserts Paine at the beginning of this excerpt. Six months later Thomas Jefferson asserted the same right in the opening of the Declaration of Independence. This Enlightenment ideal anchored revolutionary initiatives in America and Europe for decades. A government of our own is our natural right, and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced that it is infinitely wiser and safer to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance. If we omit it now, some Massanello* may hereafter arise who, laying hold of popular disquietudes [grievances], may collect together the desperate and the discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, finally sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge. Should the government of America return again into the hands of Britain, the tottering situation of things will be a temptation for some desperate adventurer to try his fortune; and in such a case, what relief can Britain give? Ere [before] she could hear the news, the fatal business might be done, and ourselves suffering like the wretched Britons under the oppression of the Conqueror [William the Conqueror in 1066]. Ye that oppose independence now, ye know not what ye do. Ye are opening a door to eternal tyranny by keeping vacant the seat of government…. O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her.—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind. * Thomas Anello, otherwise Massanello, a fisherman of Naples, who after spiriting up his countrymen in the public marketplace against the oppression of the Spaniards, to whom the place was then subject, prompted them to revolt, and in the space of a day become King. [footnote in Paine] PARAGRAPHS 104, 107 Follow-Up Assignment
Vocabulary Pop-ups[including 18th-c. connotations]
1. Benjamin Franklin, letter to Silas Deane, 27 August 1775. Full text in Founders Online (National Archives).↩ *For a helpful discussion of Paine’s response to the “horrid cruelties” of the British in India, see J.M. Opal, “Common Sense and Imperial Atrocity: How Thomas Paine Saw South Asia in North America,” Common-Place, July 2009. Images courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Library.
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