2. Who was Thomas Paine? Thomas Paine was an author, radical, intellectual, Revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was born January 29, 1737. He was married to Mary Lambert in September 27, 1759. Mary died in childbirth. From 1772 to 1773, Paine joined excise officers asking Parliament for better pay and working conditions, publishing, in summer of 1772, The Case of the Officers of Excise. In 1776 Paine published his most famous work, Common Sense, which used rhetoric to cause resentment in the Crown.
3. What did Paine do during the Revolution? In the early months of the war Paine published The Crisispamphlet series, to inspire the colonists in their resistance to the British army. To inspire the enlisted men, General George Washington had The American Crisis read aloud to them. Paine supported becoming secret allies with France. In 1781 he accompanied Colonel John Laurens to France so that they could be made allies with the French. His meetings with the French were conducted with Benjamin Franklin.
4. How did Paine found the U.S.? Paine returned to the U.S. in the early stages of the Second Great Awakening and a time of great political partisanship. The Age of Reasonthat he wrote, gave ample excuse for the religiously devout to dislike him, and the Federalists attacked him for his ideas of government stated in Common Sense, for his association with the French Revolution, and for his friendship with President Jefferson. Also still fresh in the minds of the public was his Letter to Washington, published six years before his return. Upon his return to America, Paine penned 'On the Origins of Freemasonry.'
