How did Paine's "Common Sense" influence Americans?

Although you don't mention Paine in your original question, I am assuming you are asking about his pamphlet "Common Sense." In this pamphlet, published in early 1776, Paine argued forcefully for the American colonies to become independent from Great Britain. It became a huge bestseller, and it inspired Americans to seek to become an independent republic. Even though tensions were high and there was an armed conflict (ie the Revolutionary War) between the British and...

Although you don't mention Paine in your original question, I am assuming you are asking about his pamphlet "Common Sense." In this pamphlet, published in early 1776, Paine argued forcefully for the American colonies to become independent from Great Britain. It became a huge bestseller, and it inspired Americans to seek to become an independent republic. Even though tensions were high and there was an armed conflict (ie the Revolutionary War) between the British and the Americans going on at the time the pamphlet was published, many people still wanted a resolution in which the colonies would remain part of the British empire. In other words, they hoped that the British would lower taxes and let the Americans run their affairs more freely, but weren't thinking in terms of starting their own nation. However, the pamphlet, which was written in simple language easily understood by the common person, made such a persuasive case for independence that many became convinced this was the way to go and that the colonies could survive on their own. It used Enlightenment thinking that separated government from a top-down God-ordained hierarchy to argue for a Republic, attacked monarchy and hereditary aristocracy as parasitic, and even sketched out a rudimentary way a representative congress could be structured to run the country in the absence of a king. While we adopted these ideas in forming the United States, and while they seem natural and moderate to us now, it would be difficult to overstate how radical they were at this time, when they only workable governmental models most people were familiar with were based on kingship.