Thomas Paine's essay Common Sense was an extremely important influence when it came to American independence. Paine's essay supported independence, and it made a bold statement about it: he argued that supporting independence was "common sense."
The main contribution of this argument was bringing the idea of independence to a level that most people understood. He argued that it was not necessary to be very educated or sophisticated to be able to understand the advantages of independence. In this way, Paine engaged the common people, and therefore, greatly increased support for the independence movement.