Thomas Paine

On February 9, 1737, in Thetford, Norfolk, England, Thomas Paine was born to a Quaker staymaker and an Anglican mother. He worked as an excise officer, teacher, and shopkeeper before meeting Benjamin Franklin in London and sailing to Philadelphia in 1774 with Franklin's encouragement. The move placed him in the center of American print culture just as imperial crisis turned toward revolution.

In January 1776 Paine published Common Sense, a pamphlet that attacked monarchy and argued directly for independence from Britain. Later in 1776 he began The American Crisis series, whose opening lines circulated with George Washington's army during some of the war's bleakest months. He also wrote Rights of Man and other political works that extended Revolutionary arguments into transatlantic debates over representation, reform, and democracy.

Paine's writing reshaped the political language that surrounded the Declaration of Independence and the broader cause of republican government. His arguments remained visible in later democratic reform movements, in debates over the First Amendment, and in the popular style of American political persuasion.