Browsing: Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 1

John Adams apparently first acquired and read Thomas Paine's Common Sense on his return journey to the Continental Congress early in February 1776, for on the 18th he wrote his wife from Philadelphia: “I sent you from New York a Pamphlet intituled Common Sense” (p. 348, below; see also note 1 at p. 349). Even though Adams often acquired duplicates of books and pamphlets over the course of many years, this copy of the second edition of Common Sense from his collection of books in the Boston Public Library could be the one sent to Mrs. Adams, since this edition had {p. R17} been printed and advertised by late January 1776; see Richard Gimbel, Thomas Paine: A Bibliographical Check List of “Common Sense” with an Account of Its Publication, New Haven, 1956, p. 26, 65–66. The Adamses frequently commented on this influential polemic by Paine, and in the spring of 1776 John Adams wrote his Thoughts on Government expressly to counteract, not Paine's arguments for independence but “a form of Government I considered as flowing from simple Ignorance, and a mere desire to please the democratic Party in Philadelphia” ( Diary and Autobiography , 3:331). Adams conceded that Paine was a more effective stylist than he himself was, but, “this Writer has a better Hand at pulling down than building” (to Mrs. Adams, 19 March 1776, p. 363, below).

This copy of Common Sense has received rough usage and is mutilated at the end of the text. Moreover, when it was cropped for binding the early notation in an unidentified hand at the head of the titlepage, “Adams Library,” was partially cut off.