Sublime

Paine rejected the idea that any man could be born to rule others, and he ridiculed the idea that an island should try to govern a continent. “Where…is the King of America?” Paine asked in Common Sense. “I’ll tell you Friend…so far as we approve of monarchy…in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free count... See more

The historian Bernard Bailyn has noted that “one had to be a fool or a fanatic in early January 1776 to advocate American independence,” but Paine’s work—“slapdash as it is, rambling as it is, crude as it is”—produced that magical effect.52 Common Sense was just the fillip needed by a demoralized Continental Army. In a letter to Washington, General

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