Thomas Paine was born in 1737 in England. His parents had vary different religions, with his mother being Anglican and his father being a quaker. This aspect of his parents influenced Paine, particularly with how Quakers were very strictly pacifists, while Anglicans supported war as long as the fight involved a just cause.
Thomas Paine had a relatively normal education system for the time, and became a corset maker under his father. A corset maker is someone who sews linen around either wood or metal to give the women of the time a good posture while maintaining a respectable fashion style.
Paine then went on to become a government tax officer, but wasn’t receiving adequate compensation for his work. In 1772, he requested that parliament increased the wages for individuals in his profession, and was denied. This seems to be the point where Paine develops negative emotions for the British government lack of consideration and equality. Paine would later get fired from his job as a tax collector.
In what was very common for the time, Paine would feel many more negative emotions when his wife and child both died together as a result of childbirth. This would make his hatred for the rich elites of England even more obvious. Paine would use this fuel as well as his intelligence to get Ben Franklin of all people to give him letters of recommendation to reach the colonies in America.
Paine arrived in America at the beginning of the American revolution. He wrote Common Sense (1776) utilizing all of the information that he’d gained through his life experiences in England to rally public support and prove why colonists cannot be loyalists. He showed how corrupt and perhaps even tyrannical the government in England was, and he proved why America couldn’t just became another pawn in England’s game.
Thomas Paine also had some other works that aren’t quite as famous, but still remained important in America’s fight. “The American Crisis” (1776) was a wake up call to America to fight for it’s independence. The most famous quote from The American Crisis was when Paine says “These are the times that try men’s souls”. Which proves how in times of hardship, people’s courage can help them persevere.
After American independence, Paine found himself drifting back to Europe, where he would write “The Rights of Man” (1791). These unprecedented ideas were heavily scrutinized, and when Paine should have been honored for his modern political philosophy, he was instead imprisoned by the French and almost killed by the infamous guillotine, but was saved by the future 5th president James Monroe, who at the time was a U.S Minister that supported France.
All of these factors led Thomas Paine to no longer be a very popular guy anymore. The original support he received from Common Sense wasn’t given to his later works. Ultimately, Thomas Paine died in 1809 in New York City with virtually nobody important going to his funeral. Paine was ultimately ignored by Americans at the time before his death even though he was essentially a celebrity during the American revolution, as well as being famous today.
Sources:
Philp, Mark. “Thomas Paine.” Stanford.edu, 18 July 2013, plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/paine/. Accessed 13 Oct. 2025.
Foner, Philip. “Thomas Paine | Biography, Common Sense, & Rights of Man.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 10 Oct. 2025, www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Paine.
Independence Hall Association. “Thomas Paine.” Ushistory.org, 2020, www.ushistory.org/paine/.
“Tom Paine’s Two Radicalisms.” City Journal, 23 Mar. 2023, www.city-journal.org/article/tom-paines-two-radicalisms. Accessed 15 Oct. 2025.