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Authors
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
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Moncure D. Conway, who edited The Writings of Thomas Paine, 4 vols. (1894–96), wrote the best life of Paine (1892). H. H. Clark’s Thomas Paine: Representative Selections (1944) contains a very helpful introduction. Crane Brinton’s entry in The Dictionary of American Biography (1933) is justly admired. Cecil Kenyon’s “Where Paine Went Wrong,” American Political Science Review 45 (1951), is a challenging critical assessment, as is Eric Foner’s Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976). More recent biographies are by David F. Hawke (1974) and John Keane (1995).
Born in England to a Quaker father and an Anglican mother, Thomas Paine experienced as a child the injustice of the social caste system: he was a highly intelligent boy who was largely self-taught, having been limited by his poverty and social standing. Educated until he was thirteen, he then apprenticed in his father's corset shop until he went to sea at nineteen. Once back in England, Paine worked variously as a tobacconist and grocer, a teacher, and an exciseman who taxed goods for the government and organized other excisemen to demand a raise in salary from Parliament. At thirty-five, he came to Philadelphia with letters of introduction from Benjamin Franklin; there he supported himself as a journalist, speaking out against slavery and publishing Common Sense (1776), a pamphlet in which he encouraged Americans to separate from Britain. During the Revolution, he published a series of sixteen pamphlets called Crisis, the first of which ("These are the times that try men's souls") was read to and inspired Washington's troops. Although Paine was rewarded for his stirring writing with several political appointments, he misused his privileges and ended up losing his appointments. Returning to England in 1787, he composed Rights of Man (1791-1792), a tract against hereditary monarchy, was consequently accused of treason, and fled to France, where he was imprisoned for speaking out against the execution of Louis XVI. Rescued by American ambassador James Monroe, Paine returned to New York, where he lived out his life in poverty.
Questions for Discussion and Writing
Common Sense (1776) helped to establish the rhetorical style of American political writing. If you have been reading American literature chronologically, Common Sense may strike you as verbal revolution, an affirmation of plain speech and simple language as well as of the principles of the rebellion against England. The English language has two great word-streams in it: the Romantic stream, which poured in through Latin and French; and the Anglo-Saxon, which gives us a vast legacy of taut, strong, vivid words. Unlike many of his eighteenth-century contemporaries, Paine favored the Anglo-Saxon--and American public discourse, from the Preamble to the Constitution through the Gettysburg Address and the "I have a dream" speech, has followed his lead.
1. At the opening to Common Sense, Paine tells us that he has "studiously avoided everything that is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof." Describe the advantages and disadvantages of adopting that strategy in 1776. Describe moments in which American leaders have adopted a similar strategy.
2. At what points in Common Sense do Paine's views of America echo Crèvecoeur's? For example, how does Paine see the American wilderness and its pattern of settlement as an advantage not only in dealing with this crisis but in creating a new and viable nation?
3. Comment on the "common sense" of the paragraph that begins "But, admitting that we are all of English descent, what does it amount to?" Compare Paine's reasoning here to his thinking in other passages in Common Sense.
4. Although Paine is very much an Enlightenment writer, does his prose echo any values or aspirations that you saw expressed in seventeenth-century writers? Are there any connections between the New England Puritan tradition and Paine's writing in Common Sense?
