In 1776, America was a hotbed of enlightenment and revolution. Thomas Paine not only spurred his fellow Americans to action but soon came to symbolize the spirit of the Revolution. His elegantly persuasive pieces spoke to the hearts and minds of those fighting for freedom. He was later outlawed in Britain, jailed in France, and finally labeled an atheist upon his return to America.
"No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style; in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple unassuming language."--Thomas Jefferson "No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style; in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple unassuming language." -Thomas Jefferson Thomas Paine was born in Norfolk, England, on January 29, 1737. He received a basic education in history, mathematics, and science, but left school at age 13 to apprentice in his father's corsetmaking shop. In 1757, he spent time at sea aboard the privateer ship King of Prussia, and later found employment as a journeyman staymaker in London. All the while, Paine continued to study on his own, influenced by the work of two leading figures of the Enlightenment, Isaac Newton and John Locke. He began writing political pamphlets, and at the urging of Benjamin Franklin, emigrated to Philadelphia in 1774 to work as an editor for The Pennsylvania Magazine. In 1776, he published Common Sense, which called for America's political freedom from England. The pamphlet sold more than 150,000 copies in three months. Paine next published The American Crisis during the Revolutionary War, inspiring George Washington to read it to his troops at Valley Forge. By the end of the Revolution, however, Paine's influence had run its course, and he fell out of political favor. He returned to Europe, where he published his treatise Rights of Man, which led to his arrest on charges of high treason. Disillusioned with life abroad, he returned to the U.S. to find himself vilifed as an agitator and atheist. He died in obscurity in New York City in 1809. Introduction
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath undertaken in his own Right, to support the Parliament in what he calls Theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either.
In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise, and the worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are injudicious, or unfriendly, will cease of themselves unless too much pains are bestowed upon their conversion.
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the
author.
P. S. The Publication of this new Edi
