More Tom Paine

Here’s Tom Paine, a guy with common sense.

(continued from this previous post)

But don’t worry. Big things were about to happen to Tom Paine. In London, he bumped into Benjamin Franklin (what are the odds?). Franklin must’ve liked that pamphlet. He wrote a nice letter of recommendation and told Paine to go seek his fortune in America. Remember, America was still the Thirteen Colonies back then. Paine sailed to Philadelphia and helped start up Pennsylvania Magazine with Ben Franklin’s son-in-law. He wrote more essays and pamphlets, including the blockbuster, Common Sense. It sold 500,000 copies! Common Sense was a criticism of the British government’s unfair taxation of her colonies and it made a persuasive argument for declaring independence from Great Britain—which the colonists did on July 4, 1776.

Contraband—goods which are brought into or taken out of the country secretly and illegally.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/contraband
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Paine
https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/1776-paine-common-sense-pamphlet
https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/resources/when-how

Back to the beginning of The Western Civ User’s Guide to Reading & Writing.

Don’t forget: I wrote another Western Civ User’s Guide! Back to the beginning of The Western Civ User’s Guide to Time & Space.