If Tom Cruise was Born on the Fourth of July, then he can thank Thomas Paine, who can be said to have been born on January 10, 1776, with the publication of his incendiary essay Common Sense. In this pamphlet, which he priced cheaply (at two shillings), Paine argued passionately for independence from England, and he wrote in a direct style that readers could understand. Common Sense relieved the political constipation of the Second Continental Congress, which was stalled between reconciliation and independence. The seventy-seven-page pamphlet blasphemed the English king as a royal brute and obliterated the arguments opposing independence. Furthermore, it presented the issues in terms of utmost gravity: “The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected.”
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