Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine wrote the pamphlet that made American independence a popular cause and was later imprisoned by the French Revolution he supported. Born in Thetford in Norfolk in 1737, the son of a Quaker corset maker, he had little formal schooling, failed as a staymaker, a privateersman, a shopkeeper and an exciseman, and was dismissed from the excise twice — the second time for agitating for higher pay. Benjamin Franklin met him in London and gave him a letter of introduction. He arrived in Philadelphia in 1774, nearly dead from typhus, and became a magazine editor. Common Sense, published anonymously in January 1776, sold perhaps a hundred thousand copies within months in a population of two and a half million. It argued not for redress but for independence and for a republic, attacked hereditary monarchy directly as an absurdity, and did so in plain language aimed at ordinary readers rather than lawyers. He served in the army and wrote The American Crisis during the retreat across New Jersey, opening with the observation that these are the times that try men's souls; Washington had it read to the troops before Trenton. He went to France in 1790 and wrote Rights of Man defending the revolution against Burke, was convicted of seditious libel in Britain in absentia, and was elected to the National Convention. He opposed executing the king, was imprisoned by the Jacobins for eleven months, and narrowly escaped the guillotine. The Age of Reason, attacking organised religion, destroyed his reputation in America. He died in New York in 1809 with six mourners.
- Lived: 1737 CE – 1809 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: writer, pamphleteer, revolutionary
