America’s First ‘Viral’ Post Was Published on This Day in 1776, When Thomas Paine’s Common Sense Sparked a Revolution

It was Philadelphia in the winter of 1776. In the few years prior, the colonies’ faraway owner, Britain, had imposed taxation without representation and the so-called Intolerable Acts; colonists had convened at two Continental Congresses; and British and American troops had battled for the first time at Bunker Hill.

Revolutionary sentiment had been brewing throughout the American colonies for some time and was near boiling in the Northeast. Still, many colonists had not seriously considered separating from the mother country—until a history-making pamphlet was published in the City of Brotherly Love on January 10, 1776.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, “addressed to the inhabitants of America,” was a 47-page dynamo presenting the recently immigrated Englishman’s clear case for America’s independence from Britain. Paine’s words flew off the shelves, selling tens of thousands of copies within weeks.

The text has been called America’s first viral communications event: Its content gripped and inspired Americans, who loudly read it aloud on the street and in bars, spreading Paine’s message.

In short, Paine’s argument was that given Britain’s tyrannical rule, the only way forward for the American colonies was to become an independent country. He tore down the idea of monarchy, questioning the legitimacy of kings like George III, who, like all other British kings, was seen as divinely ordained to rule.

“The divine right of kings is a lie; monarchy runs against God’s plans,” Paine wrote. “For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever.”

Paine encouraged colonists to unite against their colonial overlord and take their independence, then decide as a people who should govern them, as is their “natural right.” He accused those opposed to American independence of “opening a door to eternal tyranny,” reminding readers of the suffering Britain had inflicted upon them in the colonies and asserting that most of the colonies’ economic problems could be solved by separating from Britain.

Just half a year after Common Sense hit the presses, the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia—a move certainly influenced by Paine’s writing, which inspired its chief author, Thomas Jefferson. Later that same year, when the colonies were on their backs, Paine wrote lin American Crisis the famous words: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

“Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph,” he added. By the end of the American Revolution, Paine was regarded as a national hero.

In the following decades, however, he became an outcast: The public didn’t approve of Paine’s belief that organized religions promoted false representations of God, controlled the faithful and hoarded money. When Paine died in June 1809, only six people attended his burial in New Rochelle, New York.

When Paine first published Common Sense, he did so anonymously, fearing he’d be punished for treason if identified. He donated the royalties to the Continental Army. In time, Paine allowed for free reproduction of the pamphlet, ensuring its message was spread even further. By the end of the American Revolution, the pamphlet which was at first attributed simply to “an Englishman” had sold up to half a million copies.

Or had it? Despite being hailed as the most viral work of its time, the true extent of Common Sense’s publication is contested. Paine himself claimed that over 100,000 copies of the pamphlet were in circulation, and a later biographer inflated the claim to “half a million.” That led a longstanding myth that a full 20 percent of recorded colonists probably owned a copy of Common Sense in 1776. But historian Ray Raphael notes these figures are implausible and writes that, given scant record-keeping at the time, “we simply do not know how many copies were sold.”

Viral or no, Paine’s message resounded with colonists hungry for independence. But the exact extent of his publishing phenomenon has yet to be confirmed.

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.