Thomas Paine - the Polemic

Thomas Paine (1736 – 1809) English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. 

He authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution 

And inspired the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. 

His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights.

Historian S.K. Padover described him as "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".

1774: Paine migrated to the British-American colonies with the help of Benjamin Franklin.

Virtually every rebel read his powerful pamphlet Common Sense (1776), which crystallized the rebellious demand for independence from Great Britain.

His The American Crisis (1776–1783) was a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series.

1790s Paine lived in France, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution.

1791 He wrote Rights of Man, a defense of the French Revolution against its critics.

His attacks on Anglo-Irish conservative writer Edmund Burke 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, worried by the possibility that the French Revolution might spread to England, had begun suppressing works that espoused radical philosophies.

Paine's work, which advocated the right of the people to overthrow their government, was duly targeted, with a writ for his arrest issued in early 1792.

Paine fled to France in September where, despite not being able to speak French, he was quickly elected to the French National Convention.

1793 Paine was arrested and was taken to Luxembourg Prison in Paris.

While in prison, he continued to work on The Age of Reason (1793–1794).

1794 James Monroe, future US President, used his diplomatic connections to get Paine released.

Paine became notorious because of his pamphlets.

The Age of Reason, in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and free thought and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular.

1797 Pamphlet, Agrarian Justice discussing the origins of property and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income through a one-time inheritance tax on landowners.

1802 he returned to the U.S. where he died on June 8, 1809.

Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.