Common Sense by Thomas Paine, read by Professor Joanne Freeman

Thomas Paine first published Common Sense anonymously on January 10, 1776. A powerful argument for independence from Great Britain, the pamphlet was an immediate sensation, sold and read widely and, proportionate to the population of the colonies at the time, is the bestselling and most widely circulated title in American history. More info

Two copies of the pamphlet from the Beinecke Library are on view this winter in temporary exhibit from December 13, 2019, to January 20, 2020. The title page of the first edition, printed by Robert Bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is on view along with an opening to pages in the second edition. The pages on view show some of the third section of the pamphlet, “Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs.”

Joanne Freeman, Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale University, a leading historian of the politics and political culture of the Revolutionary era and early national periods of American history, reads a selection of the text from the original copies:

"But where says some is the King of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king."