Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England, in 1737, and he worked as a corset maker and tax officer before Benjamin Franklin helped him move to the colonies in 1774. After Common Sense, he wrote The American Crisis, a series of essays that George Washington had read to his troops at a low point in the war, including the line about the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot. He later returned to Europe, where he defended the French Revolution in Rights of Man and was jailed in France during the Terror. He also wrote The Age of Reason, which criticized organized religion and cost him many friends. He returned to the United States, where he died in New York in 1809, and few people attended his funeral. In the years since, history has been kinder to him, and many now regard him as one of the sharpest political writers America has ever produced.
