Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution. Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament. Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.
Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies. Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776. Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.
Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely. As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Projectchronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.
These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.
What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Norwich Packet (January 29, 1776).
“CASH GIVEN FOR Clean Linen Rags.”
Nathaniel Patten’s advertisement in the January 29, 1776, edition of the Norwich Packet was neither as lengthy nor as visually stimulating as some of his previous advertisements, but that may have been because he had a different purpose in running it. The “BOOKBINDER and STATIONER, at the East End of the Green,” did not provide a list of titles that he sold in this notice. Instead, he announced, “CASH GIVEN FOR Clean Linen Rags, Of any Kind, Old Sail Cloth,” and other remnants of textiles that could be recycled into paper. Similar calls for rags appeared frequently in early American newspapers, most often placed by the printers of those newspapers. Such advertisements often consisted of only one or two lines. Printers offered cash for rags without further explanation because readers knew exactly why they wanted the rags and how they would be used.
The proprietors of paper mills sometimes ran more elaborate advertisements requesting rags. Especially when colonizers enacted nonimportation agreements that disrupted the supply of paper coming from England, those advertisements depicted saving rags to produce paper as a patriotic duty and a means for all colonizers, including women, to support the American cause. Patten did not go into as much detail as John Keating did when promoting ‘THE FIRST Paper Manufactory Established in the city of New-York,” but he did say more than most printers. “As Paper is one of the most necessary Articles now wanted,” the bookbinder and stationer asserted, “it is hoped that all true Friends to America, will exert their utmost Endeavours to promote and encourage such Manufactory” in Connecticut. A lack of paper had indeed caused some printers to sometimes reduce the size of their weekly newspapers to half sheets (two pages) instead of full sheets (four pages) or miss publishing for a week or two. That was the situation in New England and beyond. Two days before Patten issued his call for rags in the Norwich Packet, for instance, John Pinkney, the printer of one Virginia Gazette, ran a notice in another Virginia Gazette to explain that he could not print his newspaper that week because he could not acquire paper.
The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.
The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.
These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.
Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.
These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.
Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (January 29, 1776).
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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (January 29, 1776).
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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (January 29, 1776).
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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (January 29, 1776).
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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (January 29, 1776).
Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution. Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament. Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.
Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies. Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776. Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.
Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely. As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Projectchronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.
These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.
Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (January 29, 1776).
**********
Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (January 29, 1776).
**********
New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (January 29, 1776).
Though Benjamin Franklin is often considered the patron saint of American advertising in the popular press, I believe that his efforts pale in comparison to the contributions made by Mathew Carey (1760-1839) in the final decades of the eighteenth century. Franklin is rightly credited with experimenting with the appearance of newspaper advertising, mixing font styles and sizes in the advertisements that helped to make him a prosperous printer, but Mathew Carey introduced and popularized an even broader assortment of advertising innovations, ranging from inventive appeals that targeted potential consumers to a variety of new media to networks for effectively distributing advertising materials. In the process, his efforts played an important role in the development of American capitalism by enlarging markets for the materials sold by printers, booksellers, and publishers as well as a host of other goods marketed by merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans who eventually adopted many of Carey’s innovative advertising methods. Mathew Carey will probably never displace Benjamin Franklin as the founder of American advertising in the popular imagination, but scholars of early American history and culture should recognize his role as the most important leader in eighteenth-century advertising among the many other activities and accomplishments of his long career in business and public life.
Mathew Carey (January 28, 1760 – September 16, 1839). Portrait by John Neagle, 1825. Library Company of Philadelphia.
Carey’s efforts as an advertiser were enmeshed within transatlantic networks of print and commerce. Though he did not invent the advertising wrapper printed on blue paper that accompanied magazines in the eighteenth century, he effectively utilized this medium to an extent not previously seen in America, Ireland, or the English provinces outside of London. The wrappers distributed with his American Museum (1787-1792) comprised the most extensive collection of advertising associated with any magazine published in North America in the eighteenth century, both in terms of the numbers of advertisements and the diversity of occupations represented in those advertisements. In Carey’s hands, the American Museum became a vehicle for distributing advertising media: inserts that included trade cards, subscription notices, testimonials, and book catalogues in addition to the wrappers themselves.
Located at the hub of a network of printers and booksellers, Carey advocated the use of a variety of advertising materials, some for consumption by the general public and others for use exclusively within the book trade. Subscription notices and book catalogues, for instance, could stimulate demand among potential customers, but exchange catalogues were intended for printers and booksellers to manage their inventory and enlarge their markets by trading surplus copies of books, pamphlets, and other printed goods. Working with members of this network also facilitated placing advertisements for new publications in the most popular newspapers published in distant towns and cities.
Carey also participated in the development of advertising appeals designed to stimulate demand among consumers in eighteenth-century America. He targeted specific readers by stressing the refinement associated with some of his publications, while simultaneously speaking to general audiences by emphasizing the patriotism and virtue associated with purchasing either books about American history, especially the events of the Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution, or books published in America. In his advertising, Carey invoked a patriotic politics of consumption that suggested that the success of the republican experiment depended not only on virtuous activity in the realm of politics but also on the decisions consumers made in the marketplace.
For my money, Carey is indeed the father of American advertising. Happy 266th birthday, Mathew Carey!
“I cannot publish such Advertisements as ought to have appeared this Week.”
John Pinkney should have printed and distributed an edition of his weekly newspaper, the Virginia Gazette, on January 27, 1776, but he did not. Instead, he placed a notice in the newspaper printed by John Dixon and William Hunter, also named the Virginia Gazette. “AFTER having received so many Instances of public Favour,” he explained, “I should think myself inexcusable did I not make known the Reason why I do not this Week publish a Gazette.” It turned out that he experienced the same disruption in his supply of paper that many other printers faced during the first year of the Revolutionary War. He did not publish a new issue “owing to a Disappointment in receiving Paper from the Northward.” In their own notice on the next page, Dixon and Hunter confirmed that “a stock of printing-paper … at this time is very scarce” and acquiring it involved “an infinite deal of trouble and expence in transporting it from Pennsylvania.” Pinkney claimed that “no human Prudence could have prevented” the situation.
He also informed readers that “Next Week … or in a short Time, I expect a very considerable Quantity” and when it arrived he would “endeavour to make up for all Deficiencies.” Through “unwearied Diligence,” he would continue to collate and disseminate items of “instructive Amusement” and “every Piece of authentic Intelligence.” He concluded with an acknowledgement for advertisers: “It gives me the greatest Uneasiness that I cannot publish such Advertisements as ought to have appeared this Week, but as far as a Restitution of Money can atone for the Disappointment, it shall be made.” Advertising was an important revenue stream for most printers who published newspapers. This “Restitution of Money” put Pinkney in an even more precarious position, especially since Dixon and Hunter indicated that paper “cannot be had without cash.” Pinkney could not purchase paper on credit. He managed to get his hands on enough paper to print a new issue on February 3, as promised in his notice, but most likely did not continue printing for long after that. The February 3 edition is the last known. Disruptions in Pinkney’s supply of paper likely played a significant role in his Virginia Gazette folding.
What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Pennsylvania Evening Post (January 27, 1776).
“An author, without a name, hath asserted absolute falsehoods.”
The dispute over publishing the second edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense continued in an advertisement in the January 27, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post. Robert Bell, the publisher of the first edition, and William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, the printers designated by Paine to publish a new edition with additional materials, ran competing advertisements on January 25. The Bradfords’ advertisement included a note that informed the public that the author had not authorized Bell to publish a second edition, yet the enterprising printer and bookseller moved forward with the project anyway. That advertisement ran once again on January 27.
In response, Bell submitted a new advertisement to the printing office. An even more prominent headline proclaimed, “The SECOND EDITION of COMMON SENSE,” followed by a list of the four sections that appeared in the first edition. That overview had been part of most of Bell’s advertisements, as well as an epigraph from “Liberty,” a poem by James Thomson. In response to the address “To the PUBLIC” in the Bradfords’ advertisement, Bell added his own address “To the PUBLIC.” In it, he explained that in the previous edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, “an author, without a name, hath asserted absolute falsehoods.” At the time, Paine remained anonymous (and, for the first time, this advertisement described his political pamphlet as “WRITTEN BY AN ENGLISHMAN”). Bell objected to the claims that Paine made that “he gave directions and orders to the publisher of the first edition not to proceed.” For his part, Bell declared that “[a]s soon as the printer and publisher discovered the capricious disposition of the ostensible author, he disclaimed all future connexion,” perfectly content to break ties with Paine. Furthermore, “by the publication of a second edition which he advertised in a news paper, [Bell] immediately declared his desirable independence from the trammels of catch-penny author-craft, whose cunning was so exceeding great as to attempt to destroy the reputation of his own first edition, by advertising intended additions before his earliest and best customers had time to read what they had so very lately purchased.” That certainly was not a flattering portrait of Paine. The contents of Common Sense gave colonizers a lot to discuss. The dispute in the newspaper advertisements gave them even more.
Undaunted, Bell testified that he “neither heard nor received any orders not to proceed, there [the author’s] assertions must be far from truth.” In addition, Bell further dismissed Paine’s expectations for the publication of a second edition, stating that “if he had either heard or received any such directions or orders, he most certainly would have treated them immediately with that contempt which such unreasonable, illegal, and tyrannic usurpations over his freedom and liberty in business deserved.” Bell launched one more tirade: “When Mr. ANONYMOUS condescendeth again to puff his pamphlet … and to reduce a price which himself had a share in making, his brother bookseller, who scorneth duplicity in business or sentiment, wisheth he may find out a more eligible mode of proving his attachment to principles than to lay the foundations of his generosity in the despicable ebullitions of dishonest malevolence.” Bell was annoyed that Paine promoted the Bradfords’ edition as “one half of the price of the former edition,” a suggestion that Bell overcharged when, according to Bell, the author and the publisher set the price in consultation with each other. A lower price for the Bradfords’ edition was not truly “generosity,” especially when inspired by “despicable ebullitions of dishonest malevolence” rather than a desire to make the pamphlet more accessible to the public. Clearly, Paine’s address “To the PUBLIC” did not cause Bell to back down but instead to double down on printing and marketing his second edition of Common Sense.
The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.
The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.
These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.
Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.
These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.
Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution. Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament. Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.
Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies. Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776. Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.
Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely. As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Projectchronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.
These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.
What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?
Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy (January 26, 1775).
“Leather-Dresser and Breeches-Maker, from BOSTON.”
William Dawes, Jr., a “Leather-Dresser and Breeches-Maker, from BOSTON,” placed an advertisement in the January 26, 1776, edition of Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy. Just as Isaiah Thomas had moved his printing press from tumultuous Boston to the relative security of Worcester just as the Revolutionary War began, Dawes relocated to the inland town. According to his advertisement, he now ran a shop “in WORCESTER,” adjoining a tavern and near the jail. Since he was a newcomer, he could not expect that prospective customers knew his location, so he identified familiar landmarks to help them find him. He had on hand “a quantity of choice good mill-washed leather, [and] deer and sheep skins, dressed in the best manner,” selling them either individually or “by the quantity.” Dawes processed or “manufacture[d]” the leather himself, allowing him to “supply any customer on the most reasonable terms he can afford them.” To that end, he sought “sheep skins, with the wool on or off,” and offered cash to his suppliers.
Under other circumstances, identifying himself as an artisan “from BOSTON” would have told prospective customers something about his origins and suggested that he possessed the skills and knowledge of changing styles that allowed him to run a business in one of the largest urban ports in the colonies. While that was still the case in this advertisement, noting that he was “from BOSTON” likely resonated in another way. The residents of that town had endured a lot during the imperial crisis, especially after the Boston Port Act closed the harbor to commerce on June 1, 1774, in retaliation for the destruction of tea the previous December. The situation became even more precarious once the fighting began at the battles at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. A siege of Boston ensued. The Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington as commander of the Continental Army and dispatched him to lead the American forces that surrounded Boston. Early in the siege, the Sons of Liberty and other leaders negotiated with General Thomas Gage for an exchange, allowing Loyalists to enter Boston and Patriots and others to depart. Dawes may have been among those refugees in search of better fortunes and greater safety in other towns in New England. By introducing himself as a “Leather-Dresser and Breeches-Maker, from BOSTON,” he may have hoped to play on the sympathies of prospective customers, giving them one more reason to support his shop in Worcester.
