January 1776 - Challenges, Changes, and 'Common Sense'

It's January 10th, 1776. American Independence is 176 days away.    In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the same city where the Second Continental Congress had been meeting since the previous summer, an anonymous pamphlet has begun circulating among the population of the city.    To say that this not exactly short, 20,000 word essay, was an immediate sensation would be an extreme understatement. Within 3 months an estimated 120,000 copies had been sold throughout the American colonies. By the end of the year nearly half a million had been sold. Tens of thousands more had been read to crowds in public gatherings    With each copy that circulated among the masses of the colonial population, an idea began to gain momentum, an idea would have been unthinkable even a year earlier - that the final solution to the war against Britain was not reconciliation but the total independence of the American colonies.    The document, destined to become perhaps the single most important piece of writing of the entire revolution outside of the only actual declaration of independence itself, had a simple but evocative title - Common Sense.