In 1776, There Was No Such Thing as an American

Correction — the Common Sense sales figure

Written: “It sold hundreds of thousands of copies and changed minds by the thousand.”
Problem: The “hundreds of thousands” figure fails scrutiny as an unqualified statement of fact. It traces to Paine himself — who claimed 120,000 in three months and had every incentive to inflate — and to a biographer a century later who put it at 500,000. Ray Raphael's judgment is that “we simply do not know how many copies were sold.”
Narrated instead: “It became a sensation — read aloud in taverns, passed hand to hand, reprinted in town after town — and changed minds by the thousand.” The undisputed fact — enormous, unprecedented reach — is kept; the disputed number is dropped from the narration entirely.

Where the two gates disagree, and why we are telling you: the on-screen card in Chapter III does carry a figure — “≈120,000 copies in three months” — cleared by the later typeset gate on three independent sources (the National Constitution Center, Brandeis University Special Collections, and the Library of Virginia). That gate also corrected the figure the writer had drafted, from 100,000 up to 120,000, and it kept the ≈ qualifier deliberately, precisely because the scholarly debate about inflation of these counts is real and unsettled. So: the narration makes no numerical claim, and the card makes a qualified one. Both were sourced; neither is asserted as a precise count. If you want the skeptical case, it is source 20 below, and we recommend reading it.

Hedge — the weight of tea destroyed at the Boston Tea Party

Written: “dumped ninety thousand pounds of British tea into Boston Harbor.”
Finding: The standard figure is 342 chests, more than 92,000 pounds — about 46 tons. “Ninety thousand” rounds slightly low.
Narrated instead: “dumped more than ninety thousand pounds of British tea into Boston Harbor.”

Hedge — the death toll at Valley Forge

Written: “thousands died of cold, hunger, and disease.”
Finding: The National Park Service and others put deaths at roughly 1,700–2,000, and disease — not cold or hunger directly — was the biggest killer; about two-thirds of the deaths fell in the warmer spring months. “Thousands” sits at the low edge and misattributes the cause.
Narrated instead: “where as many as two thousand perished — most of them from disease.”

National archives and federal collections — gold sources

1. “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription.” National Archives, America's Founding Documents. archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
2. “The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription.” National Archives. archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
3. “The Bill of Rights: A Transcription.” National Archives. archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript
4. “Articles of Confederation (1777).” National Archives, Milestone Documents — quoted directly at build. archives.gov/milestone-documents/articles-of-confederation
5. “Continental Congress, 1774–1781.” Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. history.state.gov/milestones/1776-1783/continental-congress
6. “What Happened at Valley Forge.” National Park Service, Valley Forge National Historical Park. nps.gov/vafo/learn/historyculture
7. “The Boston Massacre.” National Park Service. nps.gov/articles/000/boston-massacre.htm
8. “The Boston Massacre Trial.” National Park Service — the five victims, named. home.nps.gov/articles/000/boston-massacre-trial.htm
9. “History & Culture.” National Park Service, Minute Man National Historical Park — Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775. nps.gov/mima/learn/historyculture
10. Library of Congress — Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention collections, consulted for the imperial-debt and tax-act sequence, the Articles, and the Convention. Collection-level consultation; individual records for the images used are listed in the attributions table below.

Presidential sites and historic houses

1. “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery.” Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. monticello.org/slavery
2. “First Continental Congress.” George Washington's Mount Vernon, Digital Encyclopedia. mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory

Museums, historical societies and battlefield trusts

1. “The Destruction of the Tea.” Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. bostonteapartyship.com/the-destruction-of-the-tea
2. “Boston Massacre Site.” The Freedom Trail Foundation. thefreedomtrail.org/trail-sites/boston-massacre-site
3. “Battle of Saratoga.” American Battlefield Trust. battlefields.org/learn/revolutionary-war/battles/saratoga
4. “America's First 'Viral' Post.” Smithsonian Magazine, on the publication of Common Sense. smithsonianmag.com/smart-news
5. Massachusetts Historical Society — consulted on the Sons of Liberty, the non-importation boycotts and Shays' Rebellion; also the holder of Jefferson's Farm Book, shown on screen.
6. White House Historical Association — consulted on Jefferson and the people he enslaved.
7. Brandeis University, Special Collections and the Library of Virginia — the two corroborating sources for the Common Sense print-run card.

Constitutional reference

1. Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 — the Slave Trade Clause, with the three-fifths and Great Compromise material. National Constitution Center, Interactive Constitution. constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/article-i
2. “Articles of Confederation.” National Constitution Center, Historic Document Library. constitutioncenter.org/historic-document-library
3. “Articles of Confederation, 1777.” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. gilderlehrman.org/history-resources

Scholarly work and journals

1. Jari Eloranta and Jeremy Land, “Hollow Victory? Britain's Public Debt and the Seven Years' War.” Essays in Economic and Business History vol. 29 (2011), pp. 101–118 — the source for the £133,000,000 debt card, read in full text. ebhsoc.org/journal/index.php/ebhs/article/view/215
2. “Thomas Paine's Inflated Numbers.” Journal of the American Revolution, March 2013 — the source that removed the Common Sense sales figure from the narration. allthingsliberty.com/2013/03/thomas-paines-inflated-numbers
3. Ray Raphael, on the unknowability of Common Sense print runs — “we simply do not know how many copies were sold.”
4. Smith College, Climate in Arts and History — on the winter encampment at Valley Forge, 1777–1778, consulted for the seasonal distribution of deaths.
5. English Short Title Catalogue W31710 and the Lilly Library, Indiana University — edition identification for The American Crisis, Number I.

Primary text

1. Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Philadelphia: R. Bell, January 1776).
2. Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, Number I (Philadelphia: Melchior Styner and Charles Cist, December 19, 1776). Scan: University of Pennsylvania, Colenda Digital Repository. colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p3z893h19
3. The Federalist, Number I (New York: J. and A. M'Lean, 1788). Scan: Boston Public Library via the Internet Archive. archive.org/details/federalistcollec00hami · catalog record: Library of Congress
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Concord Hymn” (1837) — the origin of “the shot heard round the world,” written sixty-two years after the event.

Encyclopedic and general reference

1. “Boston Massacre.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com/event/Boston-Massacre
2. “Boston Tea Party.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com/event/Boston-Tea-Party
3. “Three-fifths Compromise.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com/topic/three-fifths-compromise
4. “Valley Forge.” History.com. history.com/articles/valley-forge
5. “Common Sense.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense
6. “Boston Massacre.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Massacre
7. “Boston Tea Party.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
8. “First Continental Congress.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Continental_Congress
9. “Thomas Jefferson and slavery.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery