Thomas Paine

Born January 29, 1737
Thetford, England
Died June 8, 1809
New York, New York

American writer, political leader, reformer

Thomas Paine was one of the first writers to realize the power of the press in bringing about political reform. Paine's writings greatly influenced the American Revolution (1775–83) and the French Revolution (1789–99). In them he expressed his beliefs that man is rational and basically good but corrupted by society, that all men are equal, and that justice is dependent on a nation's economic system.

Thomas Paine was born on January 29, 1737. His father, Joseph Pain (Thomas later added the final "e" to his last name) was a Quaker, a member of the Society of Friends. Quakers like young Paine's father distrusted both religious and governmental authority. Thomas's mother, Frances Cocke Pain, known for having been bad-tempered and a bit strange, was eleven years older than her husband.

His family was poor and young Thomas Paine received very limited schooling during his unhappy childhood. "Tom" Paine, as he was known, lived near the gallows where poor people were sometimes hanged for such offenses as stealing food to feed their families. On the other hand, wealthy people who committed serious crimes, such as murder, often went free; therefore, Paine came to learn that often there was one law for the rich and another for the poor.

At age thirteen, Paine went to work for his father, learning the difficult trade of making corsets, intricate under-garments of whalebone worn by wealthy women. Young Paine soon grew restless and went on to hold a variety of odd jobs. He went to sea at age nineteen. But after seeing what a hard life it was, he returned a few months later and went to work for a manufacturer in London, England.

In 1759, Paine wed Mary Lambert, who worked as a maid for a wealthy family. Little is known about the couple's marriage, but within a year Mary Paine died, leaving Paine a widower. Although some historians claim she and her baby died in childbirth, others point out that a great deal of mystery surrounded Mary Paine's death. Paine never wrote about this experience or about women in general.

Career failure, divorce, and the move to America

While working at various jobs, Paine read widely and educated himself in politics and science. He tried his hand at making a living by tracking down smugglers and trying to collect taxes from them. He lost this job when he published a paper arguing that higher wages for tax collectors would help stop corruption in the tax collecting service. For seventeen years he worked unsuccessfully at this and other jobs, including schoolteacher, tobacco shop worker, and grocer.

In 1771, Paine married Elizabeth Ollive, ten years his junior. He and Elizabeth separated three years later for reasons he never revealed, even to his friends. After that Paine had many close relationships with women but never remarried.

In 1774, the thirty-seven-year-old Paine met Benjamin Franklin see entry, who was then representing America's interests in England, and the great patriot advised Paine to relocate to America. Franklin, who wrote of "the genius in his eyes," provided the young man with letters of recommendation to show to possible employers in the New World.

Paine's writings spur on American independence

In 1774, the tall, muscular Paine sailed for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a journalist with the Pennsylvania Magazine. In 1775, he wrote a pamphlet criticizing slavery in America as unjust. In Philadelphia, he met the patriot Benjamin Rush see entry, who suggested that he write a pamphlet urging America to declare its independence from England. On January 10, 1776, Paine published the fifty-page pamphlet Common Sense. Fearing what might happen to him if he became known as the author of the pamphlet, Paine published it anonymously (without his name). Common Sense included a number of statements that would make the British consider Paine a traitor, including his reference to King George III see entry as "the Royal brute of Great Britain."

At that time, Americans were split on the question of whether or not to declare independence. Paine wrote in an easy-to-understand style that England was overtaxing them, that the English form of government with the king at its head was corrupt, and that there was little sense in an island thousands of miles away governing the American continent.

Joins army, works for U.S. Congress

Common Sense, a call to action, became wildly popular almost immediately, selling half a million copies. Historian James Stokesbury pointed out in A Short History of the American Revolution that "It was an astonishingly successful piece of propaganda, not less so because it convinced those who were already half-convinced anyway." (Propaganda is material used to persuade people to support a particular point of view.) Continental army general George Washington see entry himself said it turned the tide in favor of independence.

When the Revolutionary War started to go badly for the Americans in 1776, Paine joined the ill-equipped Continental army and took part in the retreat of George Washington and his troops across New Jersey away from the British army. That year, Paine also published the first of sixteen Crisis papers, which appeared between 1776 and 1783. The papers encouraged the practice of patriotism so eloquently that George Washington ordered that they be read to every American soldier for inspiration.

The Crisis began with the challenging first line, "These are the times that try men's souls." Paine continued, "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot [those who display their patriotism only in good times] will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny [absolute power], like hell, is not easily conquered…. The heart that feels not now, is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole… he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."

In 1777, to give Paine some means of support, the U.S. Congress appointed him Secretary of the Committee of Foreign Affairs. He was forced to resign from the post in 1779 because he published some secret information.

Plagued by financial problems

For the next two years, Paine worked as a clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, using part of his salary to start a fund to help provide for needy soldiers. He also published a number of writings. Over the years, Paine's writings sold very well. But he always refused to accept profits from them because he said it would cheapen their value, and he wound up living in poverty after the American Revolution ended in 1783. He applied to the U.S. Congress for financial help, but his enemies there buried the request.

Paine was appreciated by many Americans for his eloquence and for his devotion to the cause of independence, but he was also widely criticized for some of his political and religious writings. In his book about Paine entitled Man of Reason, writer A. Owen Aldridge described Paine as "vain, opinionated and hypersensitive," traits that did not add to his popularity. Because of the contributions Paine had made to the United States, the state of Pennsylvania gave him some money and the state of New York provided him with a farm in New Rochelle, New York.

Paine lived quietly on his farm for a few years, working on several inventions that interested him. In 1787, Paine visited England and France to raise funds to build in America an iron bridge he had designed. Although it was eventually built, as a financial venture the bridge was a failure for Paine.

Publishes Rights of Man in France

In 1789, a revolution broke out in France. Paine supported the cause of the French rebels against King Louis XVI see entry, and he voiced that support in his book The Rights of Man, various editions of which were published in 1791 and 1792. Paine explained in his book the source of European discontent with their forms of government. He pointed out that they suffered from poverty, illiteracy (they were unable to read or write), unemployment, and frequent wars.

Rights was tremendously popular in England, France, and America, becoming one of the best-selling books of all time. It also enraged powerful people in England because it encouraged Englishmen to take up arms against their king. The British government put out a royal proclamation against Paine's writings, and a dummy of him was burned in London. Paine was charged with treason but he escaped imprisonment by fleeing to France in 1792.

The ups and downs of Paine's life in France

In 1792, when Paine arrived there, France was in the process of establishing a constitutional monarchy to limit the power of kings. Although he spoke no French, Paine was invited to take part in drawing up the new constitution. But then King Louis and Queen Marie-Antoinette tried to flee the country. They were arrested, tried for treason, and despite Paine's protests, beheaded.

Control of the French government then passed into the hands of Maximilien de Robespierre. Annoyed at Paine's protests over the execution of the king and queen, Robespierre had him imprisoned. He might have been executed himself, but future president James Monroe, then representing the United States in France, secured his release in late 1794 after Paine spent eleven months in prison. Paine was bitter that then-president George Washington had not gotten him released sooner, and he said so in a long Letter to George Washington, published in 1796.

Besides his interest in politics, Paine also had a strong interest in matters of religion. During his stay in prison, he began to write the book the Age of Reason, which defended religions that were based on rational thought (see box on p. 354). It was published in two parts in 1794 and 1796.

Unwelcome in America

In 1802, Paine returned to the United States at the invitation of patriots Thomas Jefferson see entry and James Monroe, both of whom admired him. Because of his writings, many Americans scorned Paine, holding him responsible for the period of large-scale murder that had occurred in France under Robespierre. History shows, however, that Paine had done his best to prevent the bloodbath.

Another matter in which Paine was misunderstood was in his religious beliefs. Although certain critics of his day blasted him for not believing in God, Thomas Paine was not an atheist, but a Deist, who celebrated man's reason, as were many leaders of the American independence movement, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

When he returned to America, Paine discovered that some people had all but forgotten him, while many old friends, such as Samuel Adams and Benjamin Rush, had abandoned him because of his criticism of organized religion. He continued to write on politics and in opposition to religious superstition.

Comes to a sad end

In his final years, Thomas Paine, now poverty-stricken, in poor health, and treated as an outcast, wandered from place to place. He wore old, sometimes soiled clothing, and drank too much alcohol. He died in New York City on June 8, 1809, at the age of seventy-two.

Although Paine was to live in history as a hero of freedom-loving people everywhere, a statement written about him at the time of his death read, "He had lived long, did some good and much harm." Paine was buried at his farm in New Rochelle. Ten years later, journalist William Cobbitt brought Paine's remains back to England for burial but the remains later disappeared.

For More Information

Aldridge, A. Owen. Man of Reason: the Life of Thomas Paine. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1959.

Boatner, Mark M, III. "Paine, Thomas." Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994, pp. 825-28.

Coolidge, Olivia. Tom Paine, Revolutionary. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969, pp. 187, 194.

Hawke, David Freeman. Paine. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

Meltzer, Milton. Tom Paine: Voice of Revolution. New York: Franklin Watts, 1996.

Stokesbury, James L. A Short History of the American Revolution. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1991, pp. 87, 115-16.

Vail, John. Thomas Paine. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990.

Web Sites

Leemhuis, Benni. "A Biography of Thomas Paine." Based on The American Revolution—an.HTML project. [Online] Available http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/B/tpaine/paine.htm (accessed on 1/06/00).

Deism and Thomas Paine

The eighteenth century in France, England, and America, known as the Age of Enlightenment, provided new ways of thinking about the world, including the religious realm. Some Americans followed the lead of French thinkers who rejected traditional ideas about God as the source of all knowledge in the world, and turned instead to human reason. The religion of Deism flourished at the end of the Revolutionary War.

Deists adopted nature itself as a sort of impersonal god that served as the principle that organized all life. They rejected the idea that the Bible was the source of God's sacred word, as well as traditional images of God. Although the Deists were small in number, many members of traditional religions viewed them as a menace. They feared that a spread of Deism would mean losing the threat of divine punishment for sin, which might bring about the downfall of traditional religion and lead society into moral confusion or even chaos.

After Thomas Paine returned to America in 1802, the Deistical Society in New York, whose members shared his religious beliefs, hoped that he would stay with them and use his powers of writing to further their cause. Though he was happy occasionally to write for their journal, The Prospect, he desired to write for a larger audience. Near the end of his life, Paine was approached several times to reject the deistic beliefs that had caused him to suffer much scorn and embrace traditional Christianity, but he never did.