Ep. 261: Thomas Paine's rise and fall

Thomas Paine arrived in America in 1774 with little to his name and a long record of personal failure behind him. Within a year, he wrote Common Sense, one of the most influential political pamphlets in history, helping to ignite the American Revolution and catapulting Paine into the American history hall of fame.

But by the end of his life, he was widely reviled, politically isolated, and personally abandoned. Once celebrated as the voice of liberty, he died an outcast, mourned by only six people at his funeral.

How does one man become the voice of the American Revolution and end up forgotten? To explore Paine's complicated legacy, we are joined by Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland and author of The American Revolution and the Fate of the World.

Timestamps: 

00:00 Intro  

02:41 Thomas Paine's early life

10:32 Paine's arrival in America

20:02 What did Paine argue in Common Sense?

25:11 Why Common Sense was so revolutionary

36:31 The American Crisis and the Revolutionary War

41:35 Why Paine returned to London and wrote The Rights of Man

49:19 Exile from Britain, imprisonment in France, and writing The Age of Reason

01:01:27 Why America turned its back on Paine

01:12:09 Paine's final days

01:18:50 How should we understand Paine's legacy today?

01:26:58 Outro

Read the transcript here. 

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