Thomas Paine

Biography

Thomas Paine was born Thomas Pain on February 9, 1737, in Thetford, Norfolk, England, as the son of a Quaker corset maker. He went to Thetford Grammar School but left formal education at thirteen to work in various jobs, including his father's corset-making business and later as an excise officer. His early years were full of professional setbacks and two marriages, first to Mary Lambert, who died in 1760, and then to Elizabeth Ollive in 1771, ending in separation. Despite these struggles, Paine developed a strong interest in political philosophy and science, which would shape his career. A chance meeting with Benjamin Franklin in London changed his life: with letters of introduction from Franklin, Paine moved to the British American colonies in 1774, arriving in Philadelphia just as revolutionary ideas were gaining momentum.

In the colonies, Paine quickly became known as a writer and editor, contributing to the Pennsylvania Magazine. His 47-page pamphlet, Common Sense, published in January 1776, became an immediate hit and is credited with rallying public support for American independence. Written in clear, simple language instead of the formal, complex style typical of the time, it sold hundreds of thousands of copies and reached nearly every literate American Patriot. Paine followed this with the American Crisis pamphlet series, the first of which began with a famous line about testing the human soul, and which George Washington had read aloud to his troops at Valley Forge.

After the American Revolution, Paine returned to Britain in 1787, where events in France caught his attention. When Edmund Burke published his conservative critique of the French Revolution, Paine replied with Rights of Man in 1791, strongly defending republican government and universal human rights. The British government, led by William Pitt the Younger, saw the work as seditious, and a warrant was issued for Paine's arrest in 1792. He fled to France in September, where, despite not speaking French, he was elected to the National Convention. His time in France became dangerous as the Revolution radicalized: he was imprisoned in Luxembourg Prison in December 1793 on the orders of Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier of the Committee of General Security, narrowly escaping execution during the Terror.

While in prison, Paine worked on The Age of Reason, where he argued for deism and against organized religion, published in two parts in 1794 and 1795. The work alienated many of his former supporters in America, especially those with traditional religious beliefs, and led to a decline in his public reputation later in life. After his release in 1794, with help from the American minister James Monroe, Paine stayed in France until 1802, when he returned to the United States at the invitation of President Thomas Jefferson. He spent his final years in relative poverty and social isolation, dying on June 8, 1809, in Greenwich Village, New York. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame after his death in 2013.