https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/thomas-paine
Thomas Paine was an England-born political philosopher and writer who supported revolutionary causes in America and Europe.
Published in 1776 to international acclaim, “Common Sense” was the first pamphlet to advocate American independence.
After writing the “The American Crisis” papers during the Revolutionary War, Paine returned to Europe and offered a stirring defense of the French Revolution with “Rights of Man.”
His political views led to a stint in prison; after his release, he produced his last great essay, “The Age of Reason,” a controversial critique of institutionalized religion and Christian theology.
Thomas Paine was born January 29, 1737, in Norfolk, England, the son of a Quaker corset maker and his older Anglican wife.
Paine apprenticed for his father but dreamed of a naval career, attempting once at age 16 to sign onto a ship called The Terrible, commanded by someone named Captain Death, but Paine’s father intervened.
Three years later he did join the crew of the privateer ship King of Prussia, serving for one year during the Seven Years’ War, we know it as the French and Indian War.
In 1768, Paine began work as an excise tax officer on the Sussex coast. In 1772, he wrote his first pamphlet, an argument tracing the work grievances of his fellow tax officers. Paine printed 4,000 copies and distributed them to members of British Parliament.
In 1774, Paine met Benjamin Franklin, who is believed to have persuaded Paine to immigrate to America, providing Paine with a letter of introduction. Three months later, Paine was on a ship to America, nearly dying from a bout of scurvy.
Paine immediately found work in journalism when he arrived in Philadelphia, becoming managing editor of Philadelphia Magazine.
He wrote in the magazine–under the pseudonyms “Amicus” and “Atlanticus”–criticizing the Quakers for their pacifism and endorsing a system similar to Social Security.
Paine’s most famous pamphlet, “Common Sense,” was first published on January 10, 1776, selling out its thousand printed copies immediately. By the end of that year, 150,000 copies–an enormous amount for its time–had been printed and sold. (It remains in print today.)
“Common Sense” is credited as playing a crucial role in convincing colonists to take up arms against England. In it, Paine argues that representational government is superior to a monarchy or other forms of government based on aristocracy and heredity.
The pamphlet proved so influential that John Adams reportedly declared, “Without the pen of the author of ‘Common Sense,’ the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”
Paine also claimed that the American colonies needed to break with England in order to survive and that there would never be a better moment in history for that to happen. He argued that America was related to Europe as a whole, not just England, and that it needed to freely trade with nations like France and Spain.
As the Revolutionary War began, Paine enlisted and met General George Washington, whom Paine served under.
The terrible condition of Washington’s troops during the winter of 1776 prompted Paine to publish a series of inspirational pamphlets known as “The American Crisis,” which opens with the famous line “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
Starting in April 1777, Paine worked for two years as secretary to the Congressional Committee for Foreign Affairs and then became the clerk for the Pennsylvania Assembly at the end of 1779.
Paine didn’t make much money from his government work and no money from his pamphlets–despite their unprecedented popularity–and in 1781 he approached Washington for help. Washington appealed to Congress to no avail, and went so far as to plead with all the state assemblies to pay Paine a reward for his work.
Only two states agreed: New York gifted Paine a house and a 277-acre estate in New Rochelle, while Pennsylvania awarded him a small monetary compensation.
The Revolution over, Paine explored other pursuits, including inventing a smokeless candle and designing bridges.
Paine published his book Rights of Man in two parts in 1791 and 1792, a rebuttal of the writing of Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke and his attack on the French Revolution, which Paine supported.
Paine journeyed to Paris to oversee a French translation of the book in the summer of 1792. Paine’s visit was concurrent with the capture of Louis XVI, and he witnessed the monarch’s return to Paris.
Paine himself was threatened with execution by hanging when he was mistaken for an aristocrat, and he soon ran afoul of the Jacobins, who eventually ruled over France during the Reign of Terror, the bloodiest and most tumultuous years of the French Revolution.
In 1793 Paine was arrested for treason because of his opposition to the death penalty, most specifically the mass use of the guillotine and the execution of Louis XVI. He was detained in Luxembourg, prison.
https://www.bartleby.com/400/prose/453.html
So how did Paine survive his death sentence? Here in his own words is the answer.
| “One hundred and sixty-eight persons were taken out of the Luxemburg in one night, and a hundred and sixty of them guillotined the next day, of which I know I was to have been one; and the manner in which I escaped that fate is curious, and has all the appearance of accident. | 5 |
| The room in which I was lodged was on the ground floor, and one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened outward and flat against the wall; so that when it was open the inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary when it was shut. I had three comrades, fellow-prisoners with me, Joseph Vanhuile, of Bruges, since president of the municipality of that town, Michael Robins, and Bastini, of Louvain. | 6 |
| When persons by scores and hundreds were to be taken out of prison for the guillotine, it was always done in the night, and those who performed that office had a private mark or signal by which they knew what rooms to go to, and what number to take. We, as I have said, were four, and the door of our room was marked unobserved by us, with that number in chalk; but it happened, if happening is a proper word, that the mark was put on when the door was open and flat against the wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night, and the destroying angel passed by it. A few days after this Robespierre fell, and the American ambassador arrived and reclaimed me and invited me to his house. | 7 |
While in Prison, Paine began work on his two-volume treatise on religion, The Age of Reason, which was published in 1794 and 1795, with a third part appearing in 1802.
The first volume was a criticism of Christian theology and organized religion in favor of reason and scientific inquiry. Though often mistaken as an atheist text, The Age of Reason is actually an advocacy of deism and a belief in God.
The second volume is a critical analysis of the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible, questioning the divinity of Jesus Christ.
The Age of Reason marked the end of Paine’s credibility in the United States, where he became largely despised.
In addition to his attack on religion, he also wrote a letter to George Washington lashing out at the President whom he blamed for not coming to his rescue in France.
By 1802, Paine was able to sail to Baltimore. Welcomed by President Thomas Jefferson, whom he had met in France, Paine was a recurring guest at the White House.
Still, newspapers denounced him and he was sometimes refused services. A minister in New York was dismissed because he shook hands with Paine.
Paine died on June 8, 1809, in New York City, and was buried on his property in New Rochelle.
Paine’s remains were stolen in 1819 by British radical newspaperman William Cobbett and shipped to England in order to give Paine a more worthy burial. Paine’s bones were discovered by customs inspectors in Liverpool, but allowed to pass through.
Cobbett claimed that his plan was to display Paine’s bones in order to raise money for a proper memorial.
He also fashioned jewelry made with hair removed from Paine’s skull for fundraising purposes.
Cobbett spent some time in Newgate Prison and after briefly being displayed, Paine’s bones ended up in Cobbett’s cellar until he died.
Estate auctioneers refused to sell human remains and the bones became hard to trace.
Rumors of the remains’ whereabouts sprouted up through the years with little or no validation, including an Australian businessman who claimed to purchase the skull in the 1990s.
In 2001, the city of New Rochelle launched an effort to gather the remains and give Paine a final resting place. The Thomas Paine National Historical Association in New Rochelle claims to have possession of brain fragments and locks of hair.
In Harvey J. Kaye’s recent book, in Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. Kaye identifies Paine as a “radical democrat” and dubs him the father of two centuries of leftists, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Franklin D. Roosevelt and C. Wright Mills (far left Columbia University Prof.).
“Paine,” Kaye writes, “had turned Americans into radicals—and we have remained radicals at heart ever since.”
As Kaye sees it, Paine laid an ideological foundation for such modern liberal bulwarks as education grants and pensions for the elderly, not to mention railing against the abuses of “the propertied, powerful, and pious.”
Today, Paine’s words still resonate in thundering tones. Their leading point—that the Colonies should unite to throw off the rule of the king—we now take for granted, because it came to pass. But another theme of Common Sense leaps out at us today because it is the object of so much contention.
With a mystical fervor, Paine argued that the new nation possessed an inherent virtue that would spark a fire to burn the old order down. “The cause of America,” he wrote, “is in a great measure the cause of all mankind…. We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
But the left is hardly alone in claiming Paine. He is also a neoconservative hero for his assault against the tyranny of established governments and his call to spread democracy—if necessary, at gunpoint.
After many decades as an official abomination—Theodore Roosevelt dismissed him as a “filthy little atheist”—Paine has had a resurgence recently, in no small part because figures like Ronald Reagan embraced him, entranced by his narrative of America’s special destiny.
Yet trying to enlist Paine as a modern-day liberal or conservative is impossible to do.
The themes of his life clearly resonate today, not because he can be neatly summed up, but because he provoked basic debates that still define our national life: How should the American experiment in democracy evolve, and how should it apply abroad?
Which rights are natural to all people, and which can be assigned or revoked by the state?
What role should institutional religion play in national life?
Perhaps no subject of Paine’s is more relevant than that last one, and perhaps none is more discouraging for the left.
Paine’s triumph came when he cast America as the cradle of freedom and the executioner of tyranny.
He fell from favor when he denounced the country as fallen and fearlessly took on the great, quiet power of American life: organized religion.
This helps explain why both sides in today’s debate may claim Paine, and why one evokes the revolutionary hero of 1776 and the other the disheveled old revolutionary who couldn’t find a place to rest his weary bones.