Summary:

Thomas Paines cry to the American people to get rid of the pesky British Rulers. Even though he was a Deist, he cleverly used Biblical references to appeal to a larger audience. It worked. Selling over half a million copies (a hell of a lot in those days), it was believed to be "the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era". Basically, by writing this pamphlet, Paine spurred on Americans to take on the British. Before then, they had been umming and ahhing over why they should be independent, and Paine, in one fell swoop, gave them the reasons.