Before the famous crossing of the Delaware on the way to victory at Trenton in late 1776, General George Washington ordered officers to read Paine's The American Crisis to the Continental Army.

George Washington was amongst the wide readership of Paine's writings. It has been estimated that nearly 50,000 copies of the pamphlet appeared in the colonies in the years leading to the Revolution.

Paine wrote clearly and simply in order to reach the common masses and his ideas contributed greatly to spreading enthusiasm for independence from Great Britain. Paine claimed that the colonies should sever their ties to England once and for all, establish a democratic government with a written constitution, and thus gain the advantages of free trade and freedom from being constantly dragged into European wars. While many other writers spoke of England trampling on the British rights of colonials, but believed King George III would soon rectify the wrongs done to the colonies, Paine argued that the entire British system was fundamentally based on a tyranny of aristocracy and monarchy. As anger at Great Britain deepened and armed conflict erupted in the American colonies, Paine wrote his most famous pamphlet, Common Sense, which appeared in January 1776. After brief stints as a sailor and tax official, Paine was introduced to Benjamin Franklin in London in 1774 and subsequently moved to Philadelphia. Paine was born in 1737 in Thetford, England. In addition, Paine constantly agitated for democratic reforms not only in the United States, but also in France and England as well, and helped link the dramatic transformations of the various nations in the northern Atlantic world during the late 1700s.

Evidenced in the title of his most famous pamphlet, Common Sense, Paine wrote in a manner that appealed to the masses, not just American elites. Yet Paine's popularity was based not solely on original ideas, but rather his feverish level of activity and style of writing. One of the most influential writers during the American Revolution, Thomas Paine also helped shape the political ideologies of George Washington.

Thomas paine 1776