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Excerpted from Jane Hampton Cook’s devotional book: Stories of Faith & Courage from the Revolutionary War.
Thomas Paine had a remedy for the pain he outlined in Common Sense. He called it independence. “The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth,” he gushed. After diagnosing the sickliness of the English constitution and its monarchy, Paine prescribed a remedy.
Paine challenged even “the warmest advocate for reconciliation” to show a single advantage in remaining connected to Britain. He argued that America’s goods would continue to fetch market prices in Europe. Staying connected to Britain would forever involve America in England’s wars with other nations—an America had no quarrels with. Not only that, Paine went as far to assert that the Almighty never intended for England to have authority over America. After all, he placed an ocean between them.
“O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!” he cried. “Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honor.” Paine also outlined a practical plan for a new government in America, one that established effective checks and balances among executive, legislative, and judicial branches. His plan abolished the monarchy and restored the divided houses of the English constitution.
Paine’s pamphlet became a best seller because it offered the cure Americans had been too afraid to taste, much less digest. “Some say 100,000 copies were published. Translate that into population rates today, that would be like selling twenty million books through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. That’s an awful lot of communicating,” said historian Gary B. Nash in an interview for The History Channel Presents: The American Revolution, 2006. “We don’t have a statue of Paine. He’s got to be the only founding father who has not been commemorated in marble and bronze because he was too radical,” contends Nash.
When Abigail Adams read Paine’s work she was as joyful as a patient fully recovered from an illness. Abigail wrote John in March 1776 about the potency of Paine’s prescription.
“I am charmed with the sentiments of ‘Common Sense,’ and wonder how an honest heart, one who wishes the welfare of his country and the happiness of posterity, can hesitate one moment at adopting them,” Abigail wrote.
Common Sense charmed the nation and gave them the remedy they needed. Hundreds were ready to stand with Paine as a “good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS of MANKIND and of the FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA.” Thomas Paine’s writing sparked a revolution of the minds and hearts in some. For others, Common Sense simply stoked the revolution already taking place.
PRAYER: Thank you for the freedom you have given our nation. Thank you for being my King, my Savior, my Lawmaker, and my Lord.
“For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; it is he who will save us.” (ISAIAH 33:22)
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