Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was an English-born political writer and revolutionary. The son of a Quaker staymaker in Norfolk, he was dismissed from the excise service before Benjamin Franklin helped him emigrate to Philadelphia in 1774. Common Sense, published in January 1776, turned the American colonies toward independence, , and The American Crisis sustained the army through the war. In Europe he wrote Rights of Man in answer to Burke, was outlawed in England, sat in the French National Convention, narrowly escaped the guillotine and wrote The Age of Reason, whose attack on organized religion cost him most of his American friends. He died in New York, nearly forgotten.