American colonists had been petitioning the British Parliament for over a decade for redress of what they viewed as infringements on their rights as British subjects. John Adams later recounted in an 1818 letter to Hezekiah Niles that over the course of 12 years Americans gradually moved away from petitioning for redress to actually considering Independence. The culminating influence on the public mind came with Thomas Payne’s pamphlet “Common Sense” which came out in January of 1776 and made a powerful and persuasive case for Independence.