American History -- Thomas Paine Modern Examination

American History -- Thomas Paine

Modern examination of the roots that birthed this nation illuminates with steadfast clarity the manner, importance, and weight of the movements of the past. Bernard Bailyn knows this firsthand; in his analysis of Common Sense, he not only studies the historiography of Thomas Paine's revolutionary pamphlet, but by placing himself in retro-active historical context, he is able to find age-old movement in the piece to share with the political historian today. Inside the Englishman's pamphlet on logic and politics, he finds not just a call for revolution, but instead a greater amass of the smaller pleas for transition that, when united under the banner of intellectual outreach and historical debate, reaffirms the common sense Pain purported two hundred and thirty years ago.

In The Most Uncommon Pamphlet of the Revolution: Common Sense, Bailyn supports the widely held belief that Thomas Paine's pamphlet that urged America to war against England is among the most brilliant pieces of sociopolitical thought from not only that era, but all of history. While most historians weigh themselves down with the examination of Common Sense as the motivating literature for revolution, Bailyn finds new debate. To thoroughly set the stage for his discussion, he provides a great deal of background regarding the social climate of the colonies up to and upon the distribution of the pamphlet. "That a war of some sort was in progress was obvious, but it was not obvious what the objective of the fighting was." (36) Indeed, the colonies were decidedly split over how to respond to what they felt were the constrained promises for unrequited liberties from the British Crown. To this point in time, the only successful democratic experiment involved the British model, and its rejection by the colonies was just as nebulous in conception as in practice. " ... No one had ever cast doubt on the principle that liberty, as the colonists knew it, rested on -- had in fact been created by -- the stable balancing of the three essential socioconstitional orders, the monarchy, the nobility, and the people at large, each with its own appropriate organ of government ... " (37) In fact, what Paine succinctly pointed out was the failure of the colonies to fit inside the pre-established operable regime, and that a paradigm change was necessary merely to overcome this understanding.

Paine made clear that, despite the confusion abounding across the ocean from him in England, America's option was simple. "But Paine was certain he knew the answers to all these questions," Bailyn recounts. " ... And the immediate impact that Common Sense had was in large part simply the result of the pamphlet's ringing assertiveness; its shrill unwavering declaration that all the right was on the side of independence and all the wrong on the side of loyalty to Britain." (37) Wisely, Bailyn makes clear the understandable trepidition with which many Americans approached the debate, but it was in his position as the observer, and with unwaivering assurance, that he was able to provide for the American community the tangible universe of their many claims that, when compiled together, had a very logical answer.

Bailyn importantly notes that this call for independence was situated in the greater text of a fine orator, whose lingual skills provided the great literary prowess that added heat to the punch of his argument. Powerful, dramatic, entertaining, and full of imagery, Bailyn paints a picture of the historical text as the antithesis of pale drudgery for which so many social texts are known, but instead as the commentary relief that bears the obvious. It is in that last power, the ability to make clear that which is almost already known, that Bailyn esteems Paine's work the most. "The great intellectual force of Commone Sense lay not in its close argumentation on specific points but in its reversal of the presumptions that underlay the arguments, a reversal that forced thoughtful readers to consider, not so much a point here and a conclusion there, but a wholly new way of looking at the entire range of problems involved." (40) In his synthesis of the debate, Pain wins Bailyn's utmost respect.