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by Thomas Paine (Author), Ben Ponder (Editor)
On January 9, 1776, an anonymous pamphlet was published in Philadelphia. In the months that followed, American colonists went from pursuing reconciliation with Great Britain and professing devotion to King George III to declaring themselves absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown. Common Sense was the chief catalyst for that transformation, the most consequential shift in public opinion in the history of democratic government. This 250th Anniversary Edition reproduces the text of the Bradford/Towne printing of February 14, 1776 - the edition Thomas Paine himself supervised, expanded, and considered definitive - held in the Charles Deering Library at Northwestern University. It includes an introduction by Ben Ponder, Ph.D., tracing the rhetorical and historical transformation Common Sense catalyzed, and a chronology of key events leading to American independence.
