Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine was an English-born American Founding Father, political philosopher and statesman whose pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783) helped inspire the colonists to declare independence from Great Britain. Born in Thetford, Norfolk, he came to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin. His Rights of Man (1791), a defence of the French Revolution against Edmund Burke, led to his conviction in absentia for seditious libel in 1792. Elected to the French National Convention, he was held in the Luxembourg Prison from December 1793 to November 1794, and in The Age of Reason he advocated Deism and argued against Christian doctrine.