Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was an English-born writer and political radical whose pamphlets helped drive both the American and French Revolutions.biography+2
Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, Norfolk, England, on 29 January 1737, to a Quaker father and Anglican mother, and received only modest formal schooling. After various jobs in England, including work as a stay‑maker and as an excise officer, he met Benjamin Franklin in London, who encouraged him to emigrate to North America.wikipedia+5
Paine arrived in the American colonies in 1774, settling in Philadelphia just as tensions with Britain were escalating toward revolution. Within months he was writing for local newspapers and quickly became known for his fiery, accessible prose in defense of colonial rights.ebsco+2
Paine’s most famous early work is the pamphlet Common Sense (1776), which forcefully argued that the colonies should break completely with the British monarchy and establish an independent republic. He followed it with the American Crisis series (1776–1783), essays written during the Revolutionary War to rally American morale; the first opened with the celebrated line “These are the times that try men’s souls.”mountvernon+2
After the American Revolution, Paine returned to Europe and wrote Rights of Man (1791–1792), defending the French Revolution and attacking hereditary monarchy and aristocratic privilege. The British government treated Rights of Man as seditious; Paine was charged with seditious libel, tried and convicted in absentia, and narrowly escaped arrest by fleeing to France.wikipedia+2
In France he was elected to the National Convention, aligned with the more moderate Girondins, and argued against executing King Louis XVI, calling instead for exile and opposing capital punishment. During his later years he published The Age of Reason (parts in 1794 and 1795), a deist critique of organized religion that sharply attacked traditional Christianity and the authority of the Bible.americanhistorycentral+4
Because Paine opposed the execution of Louis XVI and was associated with a moderate faction, the radical Jacobin regime in France had him arrested during the Reign of Terror in late 1793. He spent around ten to eleven months in prison in France, expecting execution at several points while other prisoners were taken to the guillotine.americanhistorycentral+3
Paine became deeply embittered toward George Washington, believing Washington had failed to intervene on his behalf while he was imprisoned. He later wrote a scathing letter attacking Washington’s character and accusing him of ingratitude and betrayal. His eventual release from prison in 1794 came largely through the efforts of James Monroe, then the American minister (ambassador) to France, who asserted Paine’s status as an American citizen and pressed French authorities to free him.kids.kiddle+4
In The Age of Reason Paine presented himself as a deist, affirming belief in a creator while rejecting revealed religion, church authority, and the divinity of scripture. He attacked organized churches as institutions that enslaved the mind and denounced what he saw as superstition in Christianity and other religions.ebsco+2
Paine returned to the United States in 1802 after years in Europe, but his reputation had suffered because of his religious views and political controversies. He died on 8 June 1809 in New York City, largely ignored and even despised by many former admirers; only a small number of people attended his funeral. His remains later became the subject of a bizarre saga in which they were disinterred and ultimately lost.wikipedia+1
Paine matters for several intertwined reasons:
He was one of the clearest popular voices for American independence, and Common Sense did as much as any single work to persuade ordinary colonists to support a complete break with Britain.battlefields+2
His writings articulated a radical, democratic strain of Enlightenment political thought, arguing for government based on the consent of the governed, natural rights, and even early forms of social welfare.ebsco+1
Rights of Man provided a powerful defense of revolution and republicanism in the face of conservative attacks, influencing debates about democracy in Britain, France, and beyond.mountvernon+2
The Age of Reason became a foundational text of modern freethought and religious criticism, helping to shape later secular and deist critiques of organized religion.kids.kiddle+2
More broadly, Paine’s career connects the American and French Revolutions, showing how revolutionary ideas and activists circulated across the Atlantic and helped define modern concepts of liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty.wikipedia+1
As a kind of transatlantic pamphleteer of revolution, Paine turned abstract Enlightenment ideas into vivid, accessible language that could move artisans, soldiers, and farmers as well as intellectuals, which is why his influence far outlasts his troubled later life.battlefields+2