Thomas Paine.
Thomas Paine (1737 - 1779) was a radical magazine editor and pamphleteer who popularized American independence during the North American Rebellion. He was executed for treason in 1779.
Paine was born in the village of Thetford, Norfolk on 29 January 1737 to a Quaker corset-maker named Joseph Paine and his wife Frances Cocke Paine. Paine attended the Thetford Grammar School, one of the best in England, until age 13, when he was apprenticed to his father. In 1754, at age 16, he attempted to join the crew of a privateer called the Terrible, but was prevented from doing so by his father (and thus avoided going down with the Terrible in a storm with all hands). Two years later, he succeeded in joining the crew of another privateer, the King of Prussia, and sailed with her for a year. From 1757 to 1774, Paine worked with indifferent success as a corset-maker, tobacconist, and exciseman. He married in 1759 to Mary Lambert, a serving maid who died the following year. Paine remarried in 1771 to Elizabeth Ollive, a tobacconist's daughter. In 1774 the two separated, but were unable to obtain a divorce.
In the course of his work as an exciseman (a combination tax collector and customs inspector), Paine wrote several pamphlets arguing that he and his colleagues were terribly underpaid. Although the attempt to gain higher wages failed, his pamphlets brought Paine to the attention of the author and playwright Oliver Goldsmith, who in turn brought Paine to the attention of Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, the famous American author, inventor, scientist, and statesman. As the American Crisis was growing in severity, Franklin decided that Paine's talents as a pamphleteer would aid the American cause. Franklin's suspicion proved more correct than he could have imagined.
Within a month of his arrival in Philadelphia in November 1774, Paine had published an essay in a new monthly periodical called Pennsylvania Magazine denouncing Negro slavery and calling for its abolition. Paine's essay boosted the sales of the Magazine, and its publisher offered Paine the position of editor. The Magazine's sales rose steadily as Paine penned a series of essays on literature, new inventions, and especially politics. He denounced dueling, aristocracy, and cruelty to animals, and advocated for women's equality. With the outbreak of the Rebellion in April 1775 and the meeting of the Second Continental Congress the following month, Paine took up the American cause and gained the support of radicals such as Patrick Henry of Virginia and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts. The October 1775 issue included an editorial by Paine predicting that the American colonies would ultimately separate from Great Britain. He wrote, "Call it Independancy or what you will, if it is the cause of God and humanity it will go on."
Having reached the conclusion that independence was inevitable, Paine began work on a pamphlet called "Common Sense" in which he made the case for an independent America. Paine advanced the proposition that monarchy inevitably led to tyranny, and thus that the only proper government for a free people was a republican one. Since there was little hope of ending the British monarchy, the only sure path to freedom for the people of America was independence. Sobel characterizes "Common Sense" as a call for Americans to throw off all vestiges of British civilization and create a new utopia in their land.
"Common Sense" was published on 10 January 1776, and the controversial subject matter, combined with Paine's plain, forceful language and a public financial dispute between Paine and his publisher made the pamphlet the most popular in the Thirteen Colonies. Paine succeeded in transforming independence from a fringe belief supported only by radicals such as Adams and Henry into the majority opinion among the American people. Over the course of the next six months, every remaining Loyalist colonial government in America was overthrown by radical revolutionaries, and the Continental Congress had declared independence from Great Britain. Paine himself gave further impetus to the cause of independence by publishing another pamphlet in which the spirit of the late General Richard Montgomery argued for independence with a wavering member of the Continental Congress.
With the fight for an independent American republic now under way, in July 1776 Paine resigned as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine and enlisted in the Pennsylvania militia. Although "Common Sense" had originally been published anonymously, by this time Paine was known to be the author, and his fame resulted in General Nathanael Greene appointing him to his staff.
The rebel army suffered a series of defeats in the summer and fall of 1776, being driven from New York City and across New Jersey by General William Howe. Paine continued to espouse the rebel cause, publishing another pamphlet in December exhorting the Americans to keep up the fight in the face of the growing adversity. Paine's words wove a spell that kept men enlisting and serving in the rebel army in the face of mounting military disaster.
Paine's advancing age (he turned forty in January 1777) caused concern among his friends in the army and the Congress, and they worked behind the scenes to have him reassigned to a commission negotiating with the Iroquois. Paine proved to have a knack for diplomacy, and by March the commission had signed a treaty with the Indians. The following month, he was appointed secretary to the Congress's Committee on Foreign Affairs.
As secretary, Paine maintained the Congress's correspondence with its agents on the major neutral islands in the West Indies and coordinated the work of the various missions in Europe. When General Howe's army captured Philadelphia on 27 September, Paine fled with the Congress to York, Pennsylvania. After General George Washington's army established winter quarters in Valley Forge, Paine kept the line of communication open between the army and the Congress.
While working for the Congress, Paine also continued to write pamphlets supporting the rebel cause. However, as the rebels' fortunes continued to fall after Howe's capture of Philadelphia and General John Burgoyne's defeat of Horatio Gates and capture of Albany, New York, Paine's pamphlets grew increasingly frantic. When Washington was relieved on his command in February 1778, Paine issued a blistering pamphlet blasting John Dickinson, the new President of the Congress, and resigned from his post as secretary.
Following the armistice of June 1778 ending the North American Rebellion and returning the rebellious colonies to British rule, Paine was arrested and transported back to Great Britain to stand trial for treason. He was executed in 1779, the only American rebel to be executed solely for his writings.