What can you guys tell me about Thomas Paine?

Question

I'm doing an extensive report on Thomas Paine and I've done my research but I'm looking for fresh info. any ideas??? Thanks :)

Answer 1

Paine was a failure as a corset-maker, tax collector, seaman and clergyman but was adept at inventions and excellent at causing revolutions.

Paine was born in 1737 in Thetford, Norfolk, and the son of a corset-maker. He had a simple education, learning the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. At the age of thirteen he entered his father’s trade of corset-maker but at the age of nineteen gave it up as a bad job and went to sea. At the age of twenty-two, Paine settled in Margate where he married Mary Lambert but sadly his wife died the next year. Paine moved home to Thetford where he became an exciseman, collecting taxes for several years before he was dismissed for failing to check inventories of taxable items. Paine applied to become a clergyman in the Anglican Church and actually did some preaching before being fired for heresy. Paine married again but separated from his wife after a brief interval.

In 1774, Paine chanced to meet Benjamin Franklin in London, who advised him to seek his fortune in the American Colonies. Paine left for Pennsylvania where he obtained employment on a magazine. He published African Slavery in America, a scarifying indictment of the slave trade, and several other pamphlets in the same vein. In 1776, he published Common Sense, a fifty-page booklet that argued that the colonists should not only recoil at unjust taxation but should declare total independence. He had the ability to write in a clear concise form as opposed to the stylised rhetoric popular at the time. The pamphlet was an immediate success, selling half a million copies and persuaded the colonists to go for a full rebellion. The Declaration of Independence was ratified later that year on July 4th.

Paine wrote several other pamphlets on the same theme, in a series named The American Crisis. Washington ordered that these should be read to his troops before battle. At the end of the revolution, Paine was granted a farm in La Rochelle, New York State, where he spent his time in inventing, making a smokeless candle and a design for a bridge without piers.

In 1791, Paine returned to Britain where he published Rights of Man, a defence of the French Revolution and a plan for revolutions elsewhere. Paine was summoned for sedition but fled to France before he faced trial. In France, he was elected to the National Convention, despite the fact that he could not speak French. But Paine spoke out of turn concerning the French king, saying that he should be exiled and not executed, thereby earning himself a term of imprisonment.

Paine was broken by his prison term and, on release, returned to his farm in America. He found himself reviled by the local population as a deserter and a renegade and died in 1809, where he was buried on his farm. Ten years later, the reformer William Cobbett, exhumed his body and sent the bones back to his native soil for a hero’s burial. Sadly the coffin never arrived home. There is a mystery as to what happened to the bones. Some say that they were lost at sea, others that Cobbett had them in his possession at the time of his death and his executors buried them furtively. Some say that the bones were distributed amongst Paine’s many admirers.

Paine never had a funeral in Britain or an honoured grave but there is statue of him in Thetford. [King Street, Thetford, Norfolk IP24 2AN]. The effigy holds a quill pen in a solemn manner composing the book Rights of Man. Sadly, the book is upside down.

Answer 2

At Paine's death most U.S. newspapers reprinted the obituary notice from the New York Citizen, which read in part: “He had lived long, did some good and much harm.” This remained the verdict of history for more than a century following his death, but in recent years the tide has turned: on Jan. 30, 1937, The Times of London referred to him as “the English Voltaire,” and on May 18, 1952, Paine's bust was placed in the New York University Hall of Fame.

Answer 3

Paine was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution, and he was given honorary French citizenship. Despite his inability to speak French, he was elected to the National Convention, representing the district of Pas de Calais. He voted for the French Republic; but argued against the execution of Louis XVI, saying that he should instead be exiled to the United States of America: firstly, because of the way royalist France had come to the aid of the American Revolution; and secondly because of a moral objection to capital punishment in general and to revenge killings in particular.

Meet Napoleon and moved from admiration to condemnation as he saw Napoleon's moves towards dictatorship.

A leader in promoting republicanism and liberalism. He dismissed monarchy, and viewed all government as, at best, a necessary evil. He opposed slavery and was amongst the earliest proponents of universal, free public education, a guaranteed minimum income, and many other ideas considered radical at the time. In many ways, a man far in advance of his time.

Answer 4

I'm not sure that Yahoo! answers is the best place to go if you want fresh info on a guy who lived 225 years ago. Most of the people here are just going to tell you that he was gay/communist/actually a woman.
Either that or they'll just lie and make something up. Good luck with sorting through the B.S.

Answer 5

I saw a book on him in Canada in Chapters.

One interesting thing about the guy is that he believed that blacks should be included in considerations of rights and freedoms. Not sure how to get in depth on that, try wiki?

Answer 6

Para o administrador da NASA, ver Thomas O. Paine. Thomas PaineThomas Paine (janeiro 29, 1737 - junho 8, 1809) era um intelectual Inglês-Americano, um scholar, um revolucionário, um deist e um thinker político e religioso, que gastassem muito de seu tempo em América e em France. Um pamphleteer radical, Paine antecipado e ajudado fomentar a volta americana com suas escritas poderosas, a maioria de sentido notàvelmente comum, um panfleto incendiary que advoga a independência do reino de Grâ Bretanha. Um advogado do liberalism e um Freemason [citação necessitada], esboçou sua filosofia política nas direitas do homem, escritas ambos enquanto uma resposta a Edmund Burke a vista da volta francesa e como um treatise político geral da filosofia as well as o sentido comum, de um treatise nos benefícios da liberdade pessoal e limitou o governo, em que considera a sociedade uma respresentação de ideals humanos, e o governo um evil necessário. Na justiça Agrarian discutiu para um formulário de provisões do estado de bem-estar e da segurança social para a soma velha, e importanta para que os jovens ajustem-nos acima em sua carreira do adulto. Paine era também noteworthy para sua sustentação do deism, fazendo exame seu formulário em seu treatise na religião da idade da razão, assim como para seus clientes da testemunha ocular das voltas francesas e americanas.

Biography
Paine was born on 29 January 1737, to impoverished parents: Joseph Paine, a Quaker, and Frances Cocke Paine, an Anglican, in Thetford, Norfolk, eastern England. His sister Elizabeth died at seven months. Paine, who grew up around farmers and uneducated people, left school at the age of 12. He was apprenticed to his father, a corsetmaker, at 13, apparently failing at this as well. At 19, Paine became a merchant seaman, serving a short time before returning to England in April 1759. There he set up a corset shop in Sandwich, Kent. In September of that year, Paine married Mary Lambert. His business collapsed soon after. His wife became pregnant, and, following a move to Margate, Mary went into early labour. Neither his wife nor their child survived.

In July 1761, Paine returned to Thetford where he worked as a supernumerary officer. In December 1762, he became an excise officer in Grantham, Lincolnshire. In August 1764, he was again transferred, this time to Alford, where his salary was £50 a year. On 27 August 1765, Paine was discharged from his post for claiming to have inspected goods when in fact he had only seen the documentation. On 3 July 1766, he wrote a letter to the Board of Excise asking to be reinstated. The next day the board granted his request to be filled, upon vacancy. While waiting for an opening, Paine worked as a staymaker in Diss, Norfolk and later as a servant (records show he worked for a Mr. Noble of Goodman's Fields and then for a Mr. Gardiner at Kensington). He also applied to become an ordained minister of the Church of England and, according to some accounts, he preached in Moorfields.

In 1767, Paine was appointed to a position in Grampound, Cornwall. He was subsequently asked to leave this post to await another vacancy and he became a schoolteacher in London. On 19 February 1768, Paine was appointed to Lewes, East Sussex. He moved into the room above the 15th-century Bull House, a building which held the snuff and tobacco shop of Samuel and Esther Ollive. Here Paine became involved for the first time in civic matters when Samuel Ollive introduced him into the Society of Twelve, a local elite group that met twice a year to discuss town issues. In addition, Paine participated in the Vestry, the influential church group that collected taxes and tithes and distributed them to the poor. On 26 March 1771, at age 36, he married his landlord's daughter, Elizabeth Ollive.

Paine lobbied Parliament for better pay and working conditions for excisemen, and in 1772 he published The Case of the Officers of Excise, a 21-page article and his first political work. In September 1774, Paine met Benjamin Franklin in London. Franklin advised Paine to emigrate to the British colonies in America, and wrote him letters of recommendation. Paine left England in October, arriving in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 30, 1774[1]. Just before he left, Paine and his second wife (with whom he did not get along) were legally separated.

Paine barely survived the transatlantic voyage. The drinking water on the ship was so bad that typhoid fever killed five passengers, and Paine was too ill to leave his cabin when he arrived in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin's physician, who had arrived to welcome him to America, literally had to pick up Paine and carry him off. It took the doctor six weeks to nurse Paine back to health.

Paine was also an inventor, receiving a patent in Europe for the single-span iron bridge. He developed a smokeless candle[2][3], and worked with John Fitch on the early development of steam engines. This aptitude for invention, coupled with his originality of thought, found him an advocate more than a century later in Edison who championed Paine and helped rescue him from his relative obscurity.

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