Thomas Paine

For other people with the same name, see Thomas Paine (disambiguation).

Thomas Paine
Portrait c. 1792
Born
Thomas Pain

(1737-02-09)February 9, 1737 (N.S.)
Thetford, Norfolk, England
DiedJune 8, 1809(1809-06-08) (aged 72)
Greenwich Village, New York City, U.S.
Spouses
  • Mary Lambert
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1759; died 1760)​
  • Elizabeth Ollive
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1771; sep. 1774)​
EraAge of Enlightenment
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Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain;[1] February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736][Note 1] – June 8, 1809) was an English-born American Founding Father, French Revolutionary, inventor, and political philosopher.[2][3] He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), two of the most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he helped to inspire the colonial era patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain.[4] His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of human rights.[5]

Paine was born in Thetford, Norfolk, and immigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. Virtually every American Patriot read his 47-page pamphlet Common Sense,[6][7] which catalyzed the call for independence from Great Britain. The American Crisis was a pro-independence pamphlet series. Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. While in England, he wrote Rights of Man (1791), in part a defense of the French Revolution against its critics, particularly the Anglo-Irish conservative writer Edmund Burke. His authorship of the tract led to a trial and conviction in absentia in England in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel.

The British government of William Pitt the Younger was worried by the possibility that the French Revolution might spread to Britain and had begun suppressing works that espoused radical philosophies. Paine's work advocated the right of the people to overthrow their government and was therefore targeted with a writ for his arrest issued in early 1792. Paine fled to France in September, despite not being able to speak French, but he was quickly elected to the French National Convention. The Girondins regarded him as an ally; consequently, the Montagnards regarded him as an enemy, especially Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier, the powerful president of the Committee of General Security.[8] In December 1793, Vadier arrested Paine and took him to Luxembourg Prison in Paris. He completed the first part of The Age of Reason just before he was arrested. Mark Philp notes that "In prison Paine managed to produce (and to convey to Daniel Isaac Eaton, the radical London publisher) a dedication for The Age of Reason and a new edition of the Rights of Man with a new preface." James Monroe used his diplomatic connections to get Paine released in November 1794.[9]

Paine became notorious because of his pamphlets and attacks on his former allies, who he felt had betrayed him. In The Age of Reason and other writings, he advocated Deism, promoted reason and freethought, and argued against religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular.[10][11][12][13] In 1796, he published a bitter open letter to George Washington, whom he denounced as an incompetent general and a hypocrite. He published the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1797), discussing the origins of property and introducing the concept of a guaranteed minimum income through a one-time inheritance tax on landowners. In 1802, he returned to the U.S. He died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral, as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity[14] and his attacks on the nation's leaders.

  1. ^ Ayer, Alfred Jules (1990). Thomas Paine. University of Chicago Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0226033396. Archived from the original on February 5, 2021. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
  2. ^ Kreitner, Richard (February 9, 2015). "February 9, 1737: Thomas Paine Is Born". The Almanac. Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. Retrieved October 1, 2022.
  3. ^ Van Doren, Carl (February 8, 1922). "Book critic: Religion and Belief by Thomas Paine, The Roving Critic". The Nation. Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. Retrieved October 1, 2022.
  4. ^ Henretta, James A.; et al. (2011). America's History, Volume 1: To 1877. Macmillan. p. 165. ISBN 978-0312387914. Archived from the original on October 16, 2015. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  5. ^ Solinger, J.D. (2010). "Thomas Paine's Continental Mind Archived February 24, 2021, at the Wayback Machine." Early American Literature 45 (3), 593-617.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hitchens was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Kaye, Harvey J. (2005). Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. New York City: Hill & Wang. p. 43. ISBN 978-0809093441. Within just a few months 150,000 copies of one or another edition were distributed in America alone. The equivalent sales today would be fifteen million, making it, proportionally, the nation's greatest best-seller ever.
  8. ^ Lessay, Jean (1987). L' Américain de la convention: Thomas Paine, professeur de révolutions, député du Pas-de-Calais. Paris: Libr. Acad. Perrin. ISBN 978-2-262-00453-8.
  9. ^ https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-21133
  10. ^ Paine, Thomas (2014). "Of the Religion of Deism Compared with the Christian Religion, and the Superiority of the Former over the Latter (1804)". In Calvert, Jane E.; Shapiro, Ian (eds.). Selected Writings of Thomas Paine. Rethinking the Western Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 568–574. doi:10.12987/9780300210699-018. ISBN 978-0300167450. S2CID 246141428. Archived from the original on August 27, 2016. Retrieved August 7, 2021.
  11. ^ Fischer, Kirsten (2010). Manning, Nicholas; Stefani, Anne (eds.). "'Religion Governed by Terror': A Deist Critique of Fearful Christianity in the Early American Republic". Revue Française d'Études Américaines. 125 (3). Paris: Belin: 13–26. doi:10.3917/rfea.125.0013. eISSN 1776-3061. ISSN 0397-7870. LCCN 80640131 – via Cairn.info.
  12. ^ Gelpi, Donald L. (2007) [2000]. "Part 1: Enlightenment Religion – Chapter 3: Militant Deism". Varieties of Transcendental Experience: A Study in Constructive Postmodernism. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock. pp. 47–48. ISBN 9781725220294. Archived from the original on January 22, 2023. Retrieved January 22, 2023.
  13. ^ Claeys, Gregory (1989). "Revolution in heaven: The Age of Reason (1794–95)". Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (1st ed.). New York and London: Routledge. pp. 177–195. ISBN 978-0044450900. Archived from the original on December 30, 2023. Retrieved December 23, 2021.
  14. ^ Conway, Moncure D. (1892). The Life of Thomas Paine Archived September 4, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. Vol. 2, pp. 417–418.


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