From 1768 to 1774, when Thomas Paine sailed to America, he lived in the town of Lewes, England. In his honor, a conference was organized in Sussex, January 9- 10, 2026, by Thomas Paine: Legacy; the University of Sussex; and the Iona University Institute for Thomas Paine Studies. About 40 scholars and Paine admirers met to share research findings and explore Paine’s life, work, and global influence,with a special focus on the 250th anniversary of Paine’s seminal work, Common Sense. They were also treated to tours of the charming medieval town of Lewes, and enjoyed experiencing part of the conference inside Bull House, Paine’s residence while in Lewes, now open regularly as a historic site and an aspiring “center for democracy.”

This article seeks to capture the major themes and only partially summarizes the wealth of information and wide range of perspectives exchanged during two full days of formal sessions and informal discussions. A number of presentations drew attention to the mutual influences between Paine and radical thinkers supporting working-class and suffrage reform movements in England, Scotland and Ireland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Presentations also addressed the widespread influence of Paine’s ideas not only in England and America, but in France, Spanish America, and beyond. Starting with the German translation of Common Sense for the German community in Philadelphia, other Paine writings were thereafter translated into many languages. Participants often alluded to Common Sense as a living document, one that encourages people to think for themselves, evokes emotional responses, and deservesto be heard orally, as it often was when it was first published.

Presenters recognized Paine’s writing as a call to action against tyranny and dogma not only in 1776, but throughout the 19th century and one still relevant for our time.Paine was praised as a political philosopher who was practical in his approach to institutions and the work of good government, which he regarded as essential to protecting freedom and achieving equality.

Gregory Claeys, Professor Emeritus of History at Royal Holloway, University of London, and general editor of Paine’s new Collected Writings, delivered a keynote presentation entitled “Thomas Paine and Three Revolutions That Weren’t.” The presentation highlighted Paine’s roles in reform efforts in America, Britain, and France. Paine’s ideal was a universal democratic republic with limits on concentration of power and executive authority. He envisioned a forerunner to the modern welfare state, governed by a popularly elected legislature. As Claeys concluded, Paine’s ideal was unfulfilled in all three cases. In America, he was particularly disappointed by the Federalist constitution adopted in 1787.

PAINE AND THE JUNIUS LETTERS

A second keynote presentation was made by the respected political scientist and historian Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard. Like Claeys, Allen affirmed that Thomas Paine was forming his ideas and beginning to write eloquently long before he arrived in America. She described her discovery of a close relationship between Paine and Charles Lennox, the reformminded Duke of Richmond who lived near Lewes. Her research on Lennox will be published later in 2026 under the title Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat-and the American Revolution-Transformed Britain. Among other things, she looked closely at the Junius letters: seditious attacks on the British monarchy that called for universal male suffrage, published during the period from 1768-1772. The actual authors were kept secret, constituting a mystery for centuries. Allen has concluded that the Junius letters were underwritten by the Duke and that Paine was a key author of many of the letters, recruited by the Duke to advance his agenda. Allen reached her conclusions on the roles of the Duke and Paine in the Junius letters independently of the editorial team assembling Paine’s new Collected Writings, which also recognizes Paine’s hand in the Junius letters based on computer-assisted text analysis.

Paul Myles, member of the TPHA Board,reported on his continuing research into Paine’s early writing while in Lewes. Various presentations also examined Paine as a man with many gifts and a social being with varied friendships and influential networks throughout his career. His writings tell uslittle about his views on gender relationships. As one presenter described, he married a local Lewes woman and schoolteacher, Elizabeth Ollive, in 1771. Although their marriage dissolved in 1774, both the content of the separation agreement and the evident mutual respect between the two may provide an indication of Paine’s relatively enlightened perspective on women.

The enthusiasm and engagement of younger scholars in Lewes suggests that scholarship about Thomas Paine and exploration of the context and impact of his work will continue to yield new insights well into the future.

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In celebration of the 250th anniversary, a historic marker was recently placed at the Paine Monument adjacent to the TPHA Headquarters on North Avenue in New Rochelle, NY. The monument was first erected in 1839, with money raised through “public contributions.” It was situated just a few feet from where Paine was buried in 1809. His former 277-acre farm, a gift from the State of New York for his role in America’s independence, extended up the hill. The monument was repaired and rededicated on May 30, 1881. The bronze bust, sculpted by Wilson McDonald, was added to the monument and dedicated on May 30, 1899. It was rededicated in 1905, when the City of New Rochelle took ownership.

An iron fence protects the monument, and, as a result, many people do not know that all four sides of the obelisk have famous Paine-isms carved into the stone. The new marker shares these timeless messages.

ON THE WEST SIDE

“The world is my country… to do good is my religion”

Paine’s motto

“The palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”

Common Sense, January 10, 1776

ON THE SOUTH SIDE

Two long quotations cover this side. The top features the famous opening paragraph from Crisis I that begins:

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

The second offers the long first paragraph of Crisis XIII which begins:

“The times that try men’s souls are over and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished.“

ON THE NORTH SIDE

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”

Age of Reason, Part 1, Chap. 1

“It is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

Age of Reason, Part 1, Chapter 1

ON THE EAST SIDE

Two more long quotations from Age of Reason, Part 1, Chapter IX, cover this side. The first begins with:

“It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite.”

The second begins with:

“Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in immensity of the creation.”

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Common Sense, published in January 1776, is well known for its strong advocacy of independence from Britain. Less known, but of vital importance, is Paine’s insistence that it is essential to create republics in which the people as a whole—not any one person— are sovereign. Ridiculing the unwritten English “Constitution” that all American factions then cherished as a repository of their rights, Paine asserted that democratic government is properly created only through written constitutions based on the equality of all people and framed by and for the people themselves and for their happiness and freedom. He affirmed in Common Sense that “in free countries the law ought to be King.”

Paine envisioned a single legislative chamber, subject to frequent direct elections by the people, that controlled any executive and judiciary departments. He stressed the urgency of establishing a “Charter” immediately, for a “continental form of government…while we have it in our power.”

Beyond prescribing in detail the elements of a future democratic America governed by a written Constitution, Paine made the case in Common Sense for immediate and unified action by the colonists to fight for their independence from Britain, including these eight key messages.

1. Not only should every American care about the assault on their natural rights, but the cause of America is “the cause of all mankind.” Paine stressed that the choices made by Americans in 1776 would affect all who come after them, repeatedly emphasizing the urgency of action. He appealed to their idealism, offering a thought exercise in which people could meet sequestered in a “state of natural liberty” and shape a society starting from fresh principles in which all would remain “perfectly just toeach other.”
2. Government is necessary because people are not always good. To be free, they therefore need security, especially protection from others. But, Paine pointed out, government can cause intolerable suffering as evidenced by the excesses of monarchy and all systems of hereditary succession. All people are equal, and no one has the right to set himself up as a monarch and presume that his descendants will be worthy of leadership. Monarchs are isolated from, and don’t really know the interests of the people. If they are minors, or aged, they can easily be manipulated by those around them. Paine drew on the lessons of history to support his argument and cited the Bible’s rejection of monarchy.
3. Paine asserted that Britain’s claim ofproviding protection for America served only Britain’s interests. Paine believed America was most interested in trade and that, as long as America remained a colony of Britain, it would be drawn into European wars. Those born in America were not enemies of France and Spain and an independent America would beat peace with France and Spain.
4. Reconciliation with Britain was not possible; there must be a final separation. It was absurd for an island to govern a continent that was three or four thousand miles distant.
5. As an independent nation, Paine believed, the American continent could be “the glory of the earth.” He saw it as the“asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. ”Significantly, Paine called for religious tolerance and diversity of religious opinions.
6. For Paine, the events of April 1775 (the battles in Lexington and Concord) and other “barbarous” actions of Britain further demonstrated the impossibility of reconciliation. Reconciliation would only lead to more revolt later and to dissension among the colonies that were beginning to unite behind a continental government—colonies that were strong in numbers and natural resources. The challenge of fighting for America’s independence should not be left to future generations.
7. In Common Sense, Paine explicitly called for a “declaration of independence.” He asserted that assistance to the American cause from other countries such as France and Spain would come only if America pursued independence rather than reconciliation.
8. Paine saw the potential for America to reopen trade and reconciliation with Britain on different terms, once independence was achieved. He ended Common Sense with an inspiringcall for all to join together as good citizens and friends.

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Thomas Edison, among the most famous men of the early 20th century, played a vital role in restoring the public reputation of Thomas Paine. A great admirer of Paine since his youth, Edison attended the 1925 groundbreaking ceremony for the Thomas Paine Memorial Building in New Rochelle. 

Pulitzer Prize winning political biographer Edmund Morris, in his 2019 Edison, tells how Edison found Paine as a child in Michigan before the Civil War. Edison’s father, a “radical, randy, secessionist,” Morris writes, “had ‘larned’ him the complete works of Thomas Paine when he was still a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad.” 

Edison’s affinity for Paine led him to befriend William van der Weyde at the Thomas Paine National Historical Association. To introduce van der Weyde’s 1925 biography, The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, he wrote: 

“I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine’s books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was thirteen. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which showed from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us…. 

“Many a person who could not understand Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp…. 

“He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea by which other men often express the name of deity…. 

“He conceived and designed the iron bridge and the hollow candle, the principle of the modern central draught burner. The man had a sort of universal genius. He was interested in the diversity of things.”

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By Barbara Crane

Invited by President Monroe to commemorate the American Revolution and to celebrate America’s friendship with France, the Marquis de Lafayette sailed back to America in 1824 and devoted a year to his “Farewell Tour” of all 24 states at the time. He was accompanied by Fanny Wright. 

Celebrating the 2024 bicentennial of Lafayette’s visit to New Rochelle, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association (TPNHA) and the Huguenot & New Rochelle Historical Association (H&NRHA) in cooperation with the American Friends of Lafayette (AFL) and the City of New Rochelle will offer free events on Sunday, August 18, such as a re-enactment of Lafayette’s welcome in New Rochelle and Westchester County.   

The community gathering will feature local dignitaries, a Lafayette re-enactor, ceremonies, and family-friendly fun from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., all at Ruby Dee Park in front of the New Rochelle Public Library.  

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette (Lafayette) and Thomas Paine were closely aligned in the period leading up to the French Revolution.  Paine lectured Lafayette and Jefferson in Paris in 1789 on democratic principles. In 1790, Lafayette sent the Key to the Bastille to George Washington through Thomas Paine.   

All Lafayette Tour events in New Rochelle are free. 

For details, visit CelebrateLafayette200.org

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By Barbara Crane

Easily missed in the bustling streets of Greenwich Village today is a small bronze plaque installed almost 100 years ago in honor of Thomas Paine. The memorial is at 59 Grove Street in a building now standing on the location of Paine’s death in 1809. 

Historical accounts indicate starting in 1802, Paine had a house on Herring Street, now 309 Bleecker Street, the site of a modern commercial building. 

Paine likely was happier in Greenwich Village than on his isolated farm in New Rochelle. Freethinkers in the Village clearly admired him. To honor The Age of Reason, a short city street nearby in 1828 was renamed as Reason Street. Today it’s called Barrow Street. 

The building now at 59 Grove Street, built in 1839, opened its doors in 1928 as a restaurant (and speakeasy) called Marie’s Crisis Cafe. Marie DuMont, a French national, named it for The Crisis papers Paine wrote to support the American Revolution. The establishment still operates today as a popular Village piano bar known for sing-along showtunes. 

Marie DuMont inset the 1928 Paine plaque beside the entrance to the brick building. 

Samilla Love Jameson Heinzmann designed the plaque. The Indiana-born artist was a member of the Greenwich Village Historical Society,, founded in 1922 by Catherine Clivette, wife of artist and magician Merton Clivette. Their daughter, Juanita, known as the “Sappho” of the already Bohemian Village, read a poem at the unveiling of the plaque. 

Barbara Crane serves on the TPNHA Board. She thanks and credits Sarah Bean Apmann at Village Preservation and Tom Miller at Daytonian in Manhattan, with additional information from Maria’s Crisis Cafe.

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By Barbara Crane 

My interest in Thomas Paine began when I moved to New Rochelle in 2016 after retirement from decades advancing women’s reproductive health, rights and justice around the world. My earlier academic work had focused on international politics and development, with special attention to the role and influence of transnational networks and policy coalitions, later also designated by scholars as “epistemic communities” – all before the Internet made such networks a feature of the global landscape. 

I found myself in New Rochelle living near the historic sites associated with Paine — the 18th century cottage he lived in briefly from the farm he was granted after the Revolution, the 1839 Monument and the 1925 memorial building constructed in his honor by the Thomas Paine National Historical Association. 

Little did I know my curiosity about these historic sites, owned by two different associations, would draw me into volunteering and an ongoing quest for knowledge about Paine’s political thought and influences on the American and French revolutions. 

As I learned more, I discovered things about Paine that resonated with my interests and experience. 

He was a central figure in an early transnational network of revolutionaries and reformers influenced by thinkers of the Enlightenment, especially in America, France, and Britain — including Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, the Marquis de Condorcet, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Their impact eventually extended to those fighting oppression in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and beyond. Paine’s elaboration of the principles of democracy, human rights, equality, and social justice in Common Sense (1776), The Rights of Man (1791) and other works, reflected the reciprocal influences among members of this network at the time. 

Paine was a friend of the early British feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. They met in the late 1780s in London and moved in the same circles there and later in Paris. She published A Vindication of the Rights of Men in 1790, a critique of Edmund Burke’s writing on the French Revolution. Paine published Rights of Man, also a critique of Burke, in 1791. In 1792, Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Like Paine, she was inspired by the French Revolution and went to France in 1792, where she remained during the worst of the Reign of Terror until 1795. 

Paine’s work, The Age of Reason, initiated while he was imprisoned in France, was fundamental to the emergence of the 19th century Freethought movement in the United States that drew abolitionists, labor groups, women suffragists, birth control activists and those who stood for separation of church and state. 

As one who has worked for reproductive freedom, I learned the role of the Freethought movement in resisting the Comstock Act, a draconian 1873 law that treated disseminating information and means to prevent pregnancy as obscene, including access to contraception and abortion methods. The fight against Comstock was critical to the 1884 founding of the TPNHA. 

The Comstock Act is still on the books and never repealed, despite court decisions. It’s again being invoked in Texas and New Mexico by opponents of reproductive freedom to restrict access to safe abortion. 

Paine’s radical thinking about democracy, human rights and equality put him at odds with more conservative Founding Fathers, leading to personal attacks on him, causing him to be discounted by many mainstream historians. 

I am convinced we need to revive his fervor and his confidence in the power of Enlightenment ideas when understood by all citizens. TPNHA contributes to this goal for society. s Barbara B. Crane, PhD is a political scientist and independent consultant, retired from a career in global women’s reproductive health. She serves as Vice President on the TPNHA board.

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