Thomas Paine

  

       Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England on January 29, 1737 and died on June 8, 1809. He was an influential writer of essays and pamphlets. His father was a quaker and he had an anglican mother. Thomas received a not so formal educate, but he did learn how to read and write. When he was 13 years old, he began working with his father as a corset maker and later on started working as an officer, hunting smugglers and collecting tobacco and liquor taxes. He did not succeed in this work and his life in England was very much full of failures.

       Around 1760, his wife and child both died at childbirth, and his company of corset making didn't go too well and went down. In 1772,  he published "The Case of The Officers of Excise" this was an article in defense of a higher pay for all excise officers. This was his first political work, and in 1774, he got fired from the excise office. Luckily for him, he met Benjamin Franklin who advised him to move to America, and so he did. He arrived in Philadelphia in 1774, the job he got when he first got there, was helping to edit the Pennsylvania Magazine. At this time he had already started writing and publishing several articles. 

       Five months after his arrival in America, the most important event on the most famous work he did would occur. After the battles in Lexington and Concord in 1775, which were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary war Paine argued that America shouldn't just revolt against taxation, but what they should do is demand their Independence from Britain completely. He mentioned this in a pamphlet called "Common Sense" which was printed on January 10, 1776. This pamphlet was very powerful, it changed people's ideas and pushed them towards wanting Independence. He mentioned three important things in this pamphlet and those were; declare Independence from Great Britain, to become a Republican State Government and to Unite the States.