How did Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" aid American Patriots in the war against Britain?

Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet called Common Sense that was published in January 1776. In this pamphlet, Thomas Paine explained why the colonists should become independent from Great Britain. This pamphlet was an important factor in gaining support for the fight against Great Britain that was about to occur.

Before this pamphlet was written, there were many people in the colonies who thought that the colonists shouldn’t break free from Great Britain. These people felt it was unlikely the colonists would win. Some of them felt that Great Britain was justified in governing the colonies as they saw fit to do. Other people feared there might be chaos if the colonists were to win the war and then to begin governing themselves. This pamphlet changed the narrative.

Thomas Paine wrote this pamphlet in a way that was understandable to the colonists. After reading this pamphlet, more colonists became convinced that they should declare independence from Great Britain. They began to see that the British were really mistreating them. They began to believe that declaring independence was the proper course of action. Without this pamphlet, it is possible the colonists wouldn’t have had enough support from their own people to successfully launch and win the Revolutionary War.

How did Paine's "Common Sense" influence Americans?

Although you don't mention Paine in your original question, I am assuming you are asking about his pamphlet "Common Sense." In this pamphlet, published in early 1776, Paine argued forcefully for the American colonies to become independent from Great Britain. It became a huge bestseller, and it inspired Americans to seek to become an independent republic. Even though tensions were high and there was an armed conflict (ie the Revolutionary War) between the British and the Americans going on at the time the pamphlet was published, many people still wanted a resolution in which the colonies would remain part of the British empire. In other words, they hoped that the British would lower taxes and let the Americans run their affairs more freely, but weren't thinking in terms of starting their own nation. However, the pamphlet, which was written in simple language easily understood by the common person, made such a persuasive case for independence that many became convinced this was the way to go and that the colonies could survive on their own. It used Enlightenment thinking that separated government from a top-down God-ordained hierarchy to argue for a Republic, attacked monarchy and hereditary aristocracy as parasitic, and even sketched out a rudimentary way a representative congress could be structured to run the country in the absence of a king. While we adopted these ideas in forming the United States, and while they seem natural and moderate to us now, it would be difficult to overstate how radical they were at this time, when they only workable governmental models most people were familiar with were based on kingship.