Common Sense

Born in England in 1737, Thomas Paine tried several lines of work—privateer, corset maker, customs officer, teacher, tobacconist—before meeting Benjamin Franklin, who sponsored him to America in 1774. His first work there was as editor of Pennsylvania Magazine; under his guidance, it grew rapidly and became more political. Paine also began his career as a political pamphleteer: In 1775 he edited for the magazine—and presumably wrote—the anonymous essay “African Slavery in America,” which excoriated the practice as an outrage. His 1776 work Common Sense electrified his fellow colonists and helped produce a groundswell of support for the Declaration of Independence later that year.

Paine continued his pro-independence writings with a series of pamphlets called The American Crisis. He worked as a liaison to France and later moved there to support the French Revolution, especially with his book The Rights of Man. While the French revolutionaries at first admired him, their leadership turned on him—he argued against beheading the king, among other political errors—and he barely escaped the guillotine.

Along the way, Paine often got into squabbles with prominent figures, including George Washington and Napoleon. He published The Age of Reason in three parts between 1794 and 1807; it pleaded for rationality in religion and against Christian beliefs about revelation and miracles. The work was popular in America but condemned in England. A man before his time, Paine believed in scientific progress, a guaranteed minimum income, and a social safety net.

Paine also designed bridges that became a standard form in England and America. He worked on steam engines and invented a smokeless candle. Returning to America, Paine died, largely forgotten, in 1809.