Tom Paine's War

In 1776, one man’s words—and the determination of American patriots—allowed our nation to survive its first crisis. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the Declaration of Independence marked the birth of the United States. But two essays of that era appealed even more directly to Americans’ feelings. In January 1776, Thomas Paine—a recent immigrant to America —published Common Sense . His straightforward argument upended the fraud of monarchy and dismantled the idea of aristocratic privilege that h