Claire Delacroix

#2

Tom Paine, the intellectual father of the American Revolution, was the prime maker of public opinion in the New World at the end of the eighteenth century. The most influential American pamphleteer of that period, he was also far more -- a "radical" who proposed a democracy in England; a member of the French revolutionary government; an inventor; a secret drinker; above all, an extraordinary, complex character. Rebel! covers Paine's entire life, from his beginnings in rural England to his death in the United States of America. Born into a poor family, Paine at first followed his father's trade of corset-maker. Seeking to improve his lot, he became an exciseman, but lost that position when he started to write radical political pamphlets. It was on the advice of Benjamin Franklin that he emigrated to the colonies, where he edited a magazine in Philadelphia. Paine supported the Revolution not only as the pamphleteer whose Common Sense roused the populace but as an enlisted man in the Continental Army as well. After America's triumph over Britain, Paine, an inveterate seeker of popular causes, returned to the land of his birth and got into trouble by proposing the abolition of the monarchy there. Fleeing to France, where post-revolutionary excesses were in full swing, he was welcomed as a hero of American independence and made a member of the National Convention and a citizen of France. Paine counseled moderation at a time when immoderation was the rule; jailed during the Reign of Terror, he came close to losing his head on the guillotine. When, freed at last, he returned to America, he was denounced as an atheist for the views he expressed in The Age of Reason. In later life, he became increasingly cantankerous and thus made many enemies. In his loneliness he was unable to recognize the truth that thousands revered him. In Rebel! Samuel Edwards vividly recreates the political issues of the American Revolution as seen and influenced by the man who, perhaps more than anyone else, was responsible for swaying public opinion in favor of the war. Tom Paine was both an intellectual and a man of action. Accustomed to turmoil, he thrived only in adversity; always a center of controversy, he often generated it with his radical and innovative social and political ideas. Among his friends in America were George Washington, Samuel Adams, James Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson; in France he was welcomed by Napoleon. Rebel! is filled with people, places, events, and a generous selection of Paine's writings. - Jacket flap.