Was Thomas Paine a Rebel?

Thomas Paine was born in 1737 in England, but he didn’t come to America until he was thirty-seven years; an opportune time to be part of the American Revolution. As the Norton Anthology says on page 629, “Paine’s early years prepared him to be a supporter of the Revolution. The discrepancy between his high intelligence and the limitation imposed on him by poverty and caste made him long for new social order.” Paine once said that a sermon heard when he was eight-years-old with “the cruelty inherent in Christianity and made him a rebel forever.”

At the age of thirteen, Thomas Paine had failed out of school. Shortly after he started apprenticing for his father and that he failed at also. At nineteen he ran off to sea. He ended up back in England as a tax officer, but he was fired from it twice in four years. In 1772, he wrote The Case of the Officers of Excise, which argued for a pay raise for officers. “In 1774, he met Benjamin Franklin in London, who helped him emigrate to Philadelphia.” as stated on Thomas Paine Brief Biography.

In Philadelphia, his career changed to journalism and Thomas Paine became very important. In 1776, he published Common Sense, a strong defense of American Independence. He tried to join the army, but wasn’t exactly good at it. But his pamphlet, The Crisis, encouraged the army. “This pamphlet was so popular that as a percentage of the population, it was read by or read to more people than today watch the Super Bowl.” as stated on in the biography. Paine explained his writing style as “plainness,” “‘It is my design,’ he wrote, ‘to make those who can scarcely read understand.” To fit the powers of thinking and the turn of language “as plain as the alphabet,” and to shape everything “to fit the powers of thinking and the turn of language to the subject, so as to bring out a clear conclusion that shall hit the point in question and nothing else.” as stated in the Norton Anthology on page 630.

He was shortly after removed from American offices and moved back to England where he was charged for treason. So then he decided to move to France and was made a citizen and made a member of the French revolution. After feeling sympathy for Louis XVI before his beheading he was imprisoned only to be saved by James Monroe and given back his American citizenship.

Thomas Paine had such an impact on American history, he is still to this day used as a example along with Washing and Thomas Jefferson. This video is an example:



Thomas Paine was a rebel but more important he was a revolutionary, through and through.

Thomas Paine. Nina Baym, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Seventh Edition: Volume A. New York: Norton, 2007. 629-630.