Professor of History and American Studies Its incendiary language and simple format made it popular throughout the colonies, helping to radicalize many Americans and pushing them to seriously consider the idea of declaring independence from Britain. Published in January of 1776, it condemned monarchy as a bad form of government, and urged the colonies to declare independence and establish their own form of republican government. As Paine himself says in the entry for January 20: “The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion.” The Daily Thomas Paine should prove equally incendiary and inspirational for contemporary readers with an eye for politics, even those who prefer the tweet to the pamphlet.Portrait of Thomas Paine by Auguste Millière, 1880 / National Portrait Gallery, WashingtonĪ focus on the best-selling pamphlet of the American Revolution: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, discussing Paine’s life and the events that led him to write his pamphlet. Paine was a master of political rhetoric, from the sarcastic insult to the diplomatic aperçu, and this book offers a sleek and approachable sampler of some of the sharpest bits from his oeuvre. Gray argues that we are living in a moment that Thomas Paine might recognize-or perhaps more precisely, a moment desperate for someone whose rhetoric can ignite a large-scale social and political transformation. The Daily Thomas Paine offers a year’s worth of pithy and provocative quotes from this quintessentially American figure. Today, we are living in times that, as Paine famously said, “try men’s souls.” Whatever your politics, if you’re seeking to understand the political world we live in, where better to look than Paine? In his influential pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis, Paine codified both colonial outrage and the intellectual justification for independence, arguing consistently and convincingly for Enlightenment values and the power of the people. More than just a founding father, he was a verbal bomb-thrower, a rationalist, and a rebel. Thomas Paine was the spark that ignited the American Revolution.
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