UN-Common Sense
(written by an American)
By Dahni
© 2026, all rights reserved
An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Americans have been writing letters about what this country is since Crèvecœur’s Letters from an American Farmer. This is another letter. It is not a reply to anyone’s newsletter. It is UN-Common Sense from one of We the People.
Even before Thomas Paine’s first anonymous pamphlet of 1776, “Written by an Englishman,” a Frenchman, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, was already writing Letters from an American Farmer. Those letters were not printed until 1782. The writing came first. The press came later
Who
Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur (1735–1813), was a Norman Frenchman. Crève — krev (like “crepe” with a v, rhymes with “rev” and cœur — kur like “cur” in “curdle,” or a short “core”). He served as a mapmaker with Montcalm in the Seven Years’ War, then left the French army, took the name J. Hector St. John, became a British subject in New York, married, and farmed at Pine Hill in Orange County. He wrote as if he were a plain Pennsylvania farmer. He was not. He was an educated immigrant who had seen war, survey work, and the Hudson frontier. Later he went back to Europe and served as French consul in New York. The book made him famous on both sides of the Atlantic.
What
Twelve letters, written as if from Farmer James to an English gentleman who wanted to know what America was actually like. They describe farm life, plants and animals, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, Quaker habits, Charleston, and slavery. The letter people still quote is Letter III, “What Is an American?” — the new man who is “either a European, or the descendant of a European,” leaving behind rank and hunger, mixing nations, and being remade by land and work. He also wrote the country’s darker face: a slave dying in a cage in South Carolina, and a last letter in which the frontier farmer is torn apart by the Revolution and thinks of fleeing into the woods. It is not a victory pamphlet. It is a portrait that starts sunny and ends afraid.
Why
Europe was asking what this “new man” was, and whether the colonies were only a curiosity or a different kind of society. Crèvecœur wanted to show America as an asylum for the poor of Europe — no lords, no state church crushing the farmer, land a man could work as his own. He dedicated the English book to the Abbé Raynal, who had already called North America a refuge of liberty. He also wanted England to see the interior of the colonies, not just ports and politics. The war wrecked the farm idyll he had praised, which is why the last letter undercuts the first ones. The book became Europe’s first literary bestseller from an “American” author because it answered a live question: not how to win a war, but what kind of people this place was making.
But I take here for this series from the work of someone perhaps more familiar to us in the United States. Thomas Paine. Similar to Crèvecœur, Paine was not born here. Paine was born in England. But to make his more seem more credible, I think he just wanted to show the colonies that like them, he took their same vision of independence to heart. This is what I believe, more so than him just not wanting others to know that he wrote it.
He later said he wanted “the Doctrine, not the man.”
But paine wrote of common sense and he also supported George Washington efforts for Independence.
At first the work began as: Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America…
and it was identified as “written by an Englishman.”
Some later reprints put that line on the cover so it looks like part of the title.
“Written by an Englishman” is the first Philadelphia edition: printed and sold by Robert Bell, Third Street, 1776. Paine’s name was not on that title page. Later printings put his name on it. Cite the pamphlet as anonymous on the page, then attribute Paine in the credit. That is the historically honest form. This is in the public domain. Paine died in 1809; the first edition was printed in 1776.
Title page of Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America (Philadelphia: Printed, and sold, by R. Bell, in Third-Street, 1776). First edition, published anonymously as “Written by an Englishman.” Now attributed to Thomas Paine.
Image: New York Public Library Digital Collections, Rare Book Division.
“Common Sense” was perhaps more “common” in the day this was written, but still, many of our founders had opposition from even their friends and family. Still, they had pledged together their lives, fortunes and sacred honor and many last much. But beyond hope, they believed in hope facing the greatest military and might of the world at that time, The British Empire. Our founders pledges were for their posterity and we their offspring in a sense today, inherited such UN-alienable rights that among these are: “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Today, Common Sense is not so common, it seems to me, anymore. It is more UN-Common. This would make it more expensive, costly or precious.
My style is too capitalize UN like I have done in my book, RESET “An UN-alien’s Guide…” The prefix UN just means, “not”. Not as in we are not aliens, we are UN-aliens. We have have born here, we became subjects here like Crèvecœur and Paine, or we will become among the rest of us, We the People, an Apple of Gold.
We are UN-aliens, which is derived form the Declaration of Independence from 1776. “We are endowed by our Creator (“laws of nature” or “Nature’s God) with certain “unalienable” rights.
So there you have what I intend to do here. Perhaps lend some credibilty to thar facr that I am just as any of you, just a man, but one among us, We the People, an Apple of Gold in a Picture of Silver.”
These are my Letters.
I will not likely write a letter every day But when I do, I will Post them individually and link them here.
An Idea Whose Time Has Come — 3 September 2026
Links
gatheringplace.blog 