Our Place in the Community and the World

Lisa Burton, the new President of the Thomas Paine Historical Association as of July 1st, is a respected community leader in Westchester. In 2025, she was an honoree of the New Rochelle Council of Community Services and later, was also honored by the local chapter of the NAACP.

After she retired from a career in law firm administration, she worked as Legislative Aide to former Westchester County Legislator Damon Maher. Most recently, she was Director of Government and Community Engagement for HOPE Community Services. She previously served for five years on the Board of the Boys and Girls Club of New Rochelle.

She is also active in New Rochelle Against Racism and for a period chaired a Committee of the Obama-initiated My Brothers Keeper program in New Rochelle. She has been a leader and District Governor in the global women’s service organization, Zonta International, including representing Zonta at the United Nations Commission on Status of Women.

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In April 2026, the Thetford Grammar School, where Thomas Paine was a pupil from 1744 to 1749, announced its closure effective August 31, 2026. This poses more questions than answers about the future of the historic structure and potential archives that must be resolved.

Thetford Grammar School is among the oldest schools in England and, according to the school’s website, “traces its origins to AD 631 when it is likely that Sigbert, King of the East Angles, provided a school for his court in Thetford.” Less conjecturally, the school’s Roll of Headmasters traces back to 1114, although the school has been dormant for long periods since that time.

The “Old School,” a former chapel, comprised the entire school at the time Paine attended. According to Paine in Rights of Man: Part the Second, “my parents were not able to give me a shilling, beyond what they gave me in education; and to do this they distressed themselves.” The curriculum included reading, writing, and arithmetic. He was also exposed to poetry for the first time, surely having great influence on his later work as a poet. At age 13, he left school to begin a corset-making apprenticeship with his father. That his formal education ended then was later weaponized by his political enemies.

The current Headteacher, Amanda Faye, told the BBC that the closure of the school was due to “the 20% VAT tariff on school fees, the removal of business rates relief, increased employer pension contributions, and the rising of the minimum wage and operating costs.”

In an unusual twist, in 2017, the school was sold for an undisclosed sum to China Financial Services Holdings, a company registered in Hong Kong and accused in the press of “direct links to both the CCP and the Chinese state.” This comes as part of a trend where dozens of private schools in the UK have been purchased by Chinese government-linked investors.

Former students, current staff, and local officials are currently trying to save the school. Readers of the TPHA Beacon may wish to subscribe to that group’s mailing list and ask how to help their cause. Most vital is that the landmark, or at least its records, be preserved and celebrated for its historical value, including its important connection to the immortal Thomas Paine.

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Learn how an international team of scholars unveiled over 300 newly-discovered works.

By Gary Berton and Scott Cleary

On June 30, 2026, just days before the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Princeton University Press will publish Thomas Paine: Collected Writings, a six-volume scholarly edition of Paine’s works and correspondence. This new edition—the most up-to-date—comes in a long line of editions of Paine’s works. At least three collections of Paine’s works were published by the end of the 1700s, and at least ten different editions of Paine’s works appeared in the 1800s, by editors with various political ideologies and agendas. The first genuine “collected” writings was published by the radical English publisher Richard Carlisle in England in 1819. For that, Carlisle was arrested and imprisoned for three years. Moncure Conway’s four-volume edition in the 1890s was the culminating event of the nineteenth-century editions.

FOLLOWING IN PAINE’S FOOTSTEPS

Paine had articulated a schema for a modern scholarly edition, thinking about how to organize volumes, and providing historical context to help readers understand his texts. That is what we have done in the Collected Writings. But Paine’s wish never came to pass before he died in 1809.

No such legal jeopardy threatened the current editorial board, which began this project in 2012, during the First International Conference of Thomas Paine Studies. At that conference, a group of Paine scholars came together and agreed that what was needed was a new and reimagined edition of Paine’s works and correspondence.

The standard edition of Paine’s works, Philip Foner’s two-volume Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, published in 1945,were definitely not complete, and really didn’t tell the story of Paine or his writings.Edited and published during WorldWarII,Foner’s edition served its purpose and was an admirable accomplishment on Foner’s part.But it has acted asthe definitive edition upon which dissertations, articles, and books have been written for nearly a century. For Paine studiesto grow, a new, modern collection was necessary.

In 2013 the newly formed editorial board began the painstaking process of organizing the edition. What works should be included? What works had Paine written that newly developed author-attribution software could help identify? What are the gaps in our knowledge of Paine, and how should those gaps be filled? What are the errors in the current editions of Paine’s works? How many letters had Paine actually written? Where might more Paine letters be found? Once we have gathered all the materials for the edition, what format should it take? How many volumes? How should the volumes be organized? Should the volumes be published all at once, or over the course a few years? Who should publish it? And who will pay for it?

WHERE TO BEGIN?

All of these questions and many more were addressed over the next 13 years. Zoom and in-person meetings and literally thousands of e-mails answered some questions and generated others. Research trips to French archives by our French editors, to British libraries by Marc Belissa, and to nearly every major archive east of the Mississippi River by Scott Cleary produced over 300 new works, poems, and pieces of correspondence.

A talk by Carine Lounissi in France sparked the interest of the Nimick Forbesway Foundation, which generously funded the edition for five critical years of research and editorial work. The prior relationship of Gregory Claeys with Princeton University Press, combined with Paine’s New Jersey connections, made the choice of publisher easy.

The nearly 200-page introduction by Gregory Claeys will reframe and re-imagine Paine, his intellectual development, and his global impact in radical new ways. Gary Berton’s expert knowledge of the author attribution software led our discussions of which works Paine may have written or co-written. Yannick Bosc’s expertise in Agrarian Justice and post-revolutionary France produced a slate of new French-language material.

Unlike other United States Founders, this is not called a “papers” project but a “collected writings,” largely because Paine held few official government positions, and therefore does not have a large quantity of documents which can be categorized as “papers.” We are certain that there are many more Paine works, poems, and letters yet to be discovered, which will be added to the digital edition of the Collected Writings, now in development with Princeton University Press.

A NEW PAINE FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

While volumes 5 & 6 offer some of the most interesting of Paine’s new writings, every volume contains new material, texts closest to Paine’s original intentions, and and extensive editorial commentary on both new and familiar Paine writings. For the first time, Paine’s complete literary, political, and religious references are noted, and the full context of Paine’s knowledge, intelligence, and cultural understanding are brought forward in every volume.

In their 2013 review of that First International Conference of Thomas Paine Studies, Ed Larkin and Betsy Erkkila noted that “One of the persistent themes of the conference was the atomization of scholarship on Paine… Paine scholarship is further divided between the French, the British, and the Americans.” This edition acknowledges both “atomization”and “division” as the historical realities of Paine scholarship and the very problems we hope to have addressed and transcended in order to present the most complete collection of Paine’s works and correspondence ever compiled in both print and digital editions. Paine famously wrote that we have it in our power to begin the world over again, and that, we hope, is what we have done.

An Overview

VOLUME 1: 1771-1782

Major American Revolutionary texts, complete annotations for Common Sense, all newspaper articles associated with the Deane Affair, and historically accurate numbering of Paine’s Crisis essays and Forester Letters.

VOLUME 2: 1782-1793 & POETRY

Paine’s contributions to American nation building in the post Revolutionary period, including essays and articles on taxation and the nation’s first bank. The volume also includes Paine’s first works on the French Revolution in both English and French, and a complete set of Paine’s poetry with new poems, and corrected titles.

VOLUME 3: 1793-1809

Paine’s navigation of his imprisonment and post-revolutionary France, and the writings surrounding his return to the United States in 1802. These involve the legacy of the American Revolution in Jeffersonian America, anti-federalist writings, and early nineteenth-century New York City politics. Also, notable works on deism, the emerging freethought movement, and the complete textual history of the “third” part of Age of Reason, and writings that display Paine’s varied interests and explorations.

VOLUME 4: CORRESPONDENCE 1765-1808

A near doubling of Paine’s correspondence, including never-before printed letters from Paine to his parents, Henry Laurens, Dewitt Clinton, Thomas Walker, and major figures of the French Revolution. The earliest letters come from Paine’s time in Lewes, England while he was an exciseman. Letters from Paine to James Monroe are thoroughly annotated, providing new insight into the events leading up to Paine’s imprisonment and eventual release. Paine’s enlightenment social network is greatly expanded, and his final letters to friends and acquaintances in New Rochelle, New Jersey, and New York City show Paine in the most intimate moments of his final days.

TECHNOLOGY-ASSISTED ATTRIBUTIONS

Two volumes that expand our knowledge of Paine’s output in tumultuous times.

VOLUME 5: SUPPLEMENTARY WRITINGS, 1758-1772

One of two volumes compiled with the aid of computer-assisted technology to determine anonymous, pseudonymous, and co-written Paine texts. Includes Paine’s earliest writings, reflecting his deep immersion into British Whig politics of the 1760s and participation in some of the most famous political writings of the eighteenth century: the Junius Letters. It also includes Paine’s writings from the North Briton and other British political journals.

VOLUME 6: SUPPLEMENTARY WRITINGS, 1772-1808

More computer-assisted technology to determine anonymous, pseudonymous, and co-written Paine texts. This volume includes many of Paine’s writings on revolution from before 1774, as well as Paine’s attempts at addressing the legacy of the American Revolution and confronting Thomas Jefferson about the issue of slavery.

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Throughout his life, Paine talked about compiling a complete edition of his own works, and it is clear from his correspondence that he always saw this as a signature achievement. He first mentioned it in a 1779 letter to Henry Laurens, a South Carolina politician and then president of the Continental Congress. “I intend this winter to collect all my Publications, beginning with Common Sense and ending with the Fisheries, and publishing them in two Volumes, Octavo, with notes. I have no doubt of a large Subscription.”

Paine needed money and hoped readers were willing to pay for it, but he also understood that his own works, while meritorious on their own, are better understood in the larger context of a history of the Revolution itself. The ultimate purpose was to celebrate revolutionary history as much as his own writing.

After the American Revolution, Paine’s years were filled with building both physical and metaphorical bridges, supporting revolution in France, and planning revolution in England and Ireland. When Paine returned to America in 1802 at Thomas Jefferson’s invitation, he again thought of a collected works. In an 1803 letter to Jefferson, Paine wrote “with what I have in manuscript will make four, or five octavo Volumes, and publish them by subscription.” He did not succeed, but did not abandon the idea.

In 1805, again to Jefferson, Paine, having clearly thought about his collected works project, laid out a clearer scheme: “I judge the Collection I speak of will make five volumes Octavo of four hundred pages each at two dollars a Volume to be paid for on delivery; The three first volumes will be political and each piece will be accompanied with an account of the state of affairs at the time it was written whether in America, France or England which will also shew the occasion of writing it. The two last Volumes will be theological and those who do not chuse to take them may let them alone. They will have the right to do so by the conditions of the subscription. I shall also make a miscellaneous Volume of Correspondence, Essays, and some pieces of Poetry which I believe will have some claim to originality.”

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Proto-Drafts and the Early Formation of the Declaration of Independence

The drafting of the Declaration of Independence is most often narrated as a linear sequence of events: the Continental Congress appointed a Committee of Five; an initial draft was prepared; the committee reviewed it; and Congress debated and revised the text before adoption in early July 1776. This account, drawn largely from Jefferson’s later recollections and supported by surviving drafts, describes the formal phase of composition. Yet this narrative has also come to function as an origin story.

By treating the appointment of the Committee of Five as the beginning of the Declaration’s creation, historiography has tended to conflate the onset of formal drafting with the emergence of textual formation itself. This assumption leaves a significant stage unexplored: the period preceding committee appointment in which ideas, language, and possibly written formulations circulated informally and helped shape the framework that Congress ultimately authorized for drafting.

Rather than challenging the established historical record, this study proposes that it is incomplete. The later recollections of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson describe what may be understood as Phase II of the process: the moment when Congress formally assumed responsibility for producing a Declaration and delegated the task to a committee. The central question addressed here is whether a Phase I existed: an earlier, informal stage of development that preceded congressional delegation, and what material traces of that stage may still be discerned. In this article, the term “proto-draft” refers to provisional writings, such as memoranda, frameworks, or draft statements, circulated for evaluation or adaptation prior to formal committee drafting, rather than to a complete or authoritative declaration text.

Revolutionary Print Culture & Informal Drafting Practices

By 1776, political argument in British North America was deeply embedded in print culture. Pamphlets, broadsides, newspaper essays, and open letters functioned not only as vehicles of persuasion but also as sites of experimentation. Political ideas were frequently articulated in provisional textual forms that were intended to be revised, adapted, or absorbed into other documents.

Eighteenth-century legislative and committee practice likewise relied heavily on informal written submissions. Draft resolutions, memoranda, and proposed statements of principle often circulated privately before being formalized. Such texts were not typically preserved once their immediate utility had passed. The absence of surviving early drafts, therefore, does not imply their nonexistence; rather, it reflects the disposability of working documents in a period before systematic archival preservation, a feature common to eighteenth century legislative and political practice.

The Problem of the “First Draft”

Standard narratives tend to treat Jefferson’s “Rough Draft” as the beginning of the Declaration’s textual history. Yet even within the established documentary record, this assumption is unstable. Editorial commentary in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson acknowledges that portions of the Rough Draft were copied from earlier texts, including material previously written in other contexts. As Julian P. Boyd demonstrated in his reconstruction of the Declaration’s textual evolution, the surviving Rough Draft itself presupposes an earlier compositional layer, fragments of which survive only partially, confirming that the extant manuscript tradition does not capture the document’s full drafting history.

What remains unclear is whether earlier texts existed that were not authored by Committee of Five members and that circulated beyond Congress’s private papers. The possibility of such texts has received little sustained attention, largely because the evidentiary record is fragmentary. Nevertheless, fragmentary evidence is precisely what survives from informal drafting processes.

The Sherman Copy’s Verso Inscription

The most significant material trace bearing on this question appears on a working draft copy associated with Roger Sherman. On the verso of this document is a contemporaneous inscription describing the text as “a beginning perhaps,” noting that it was “Copied from Original,” and recording that the copying occurred “with T.P.’s permission.”

Several features of this inscription merit careful attention. The phrase “a beginning perhaps” signals provisionality. It does not describe a final draft, but a starting point; precisely the language one would expect for a proto-draft. The explicit distinction between the copy and an “Original” indicates textual derivation rather than composition, implying the existence of a prior written text no longer extant. The reference to permission suggests that the “Original” was associated with an identifiable individual who exercised control over its use. Importantly, the inscription makes no claim about authorship of the Declaration itself. Its evidentiary value lies in documenting a procedural act: the copying of a prior text for consideration or use in drafting.

The Early Working Title & National Framing

The Sherman copy bears the heading: “A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress Assembled.” This same formulation appears in other early drafts, including John Adams’s fair copy and Jefferson’s Rough Draft. The presence of this fully articulated national designation at such an early stage is noteworthy, presupposing a unified political identity, representative legitimacy, and a national, rather than colonial, subject. That this framing appears consistently across the earliest surviving drafts suggests that it was not improvised during committee revision but inherited from an earlier conceptual layer.

The Plausibility of Thomas Paine as “T.P.”

The initials “T.P.” on the Sherman inscription cannot be identified with certainty. With this in mind, Paine emerges as the most historically plausible candidate when contextual factors are considered. By early 1776, Paine was one of the most influential political writers in the colonies, actively engaged in arguing for independence at a national scale, closely connected to figures operating in and around Congress, and known for producing texts intended to catalyze action rather than to establish personal authorship.

This article does not claim that Paine authored the Declaration. Rather, it argues that Paine is a historically plausible figure to associate with a lost proto-draft that circulated informally prior to committee drafting.

Toward a Proto-Draft Selection Model

Taken together, the evidence supports a restrained but consequential inference: there is material evidence of a pre-committee textual layer; that layer already contained mature national framing; the Sherman inscription records a copying act from a prior “Original”; and the initials “T.P.” plausibly correspond to a known political writer engaged in national-level argumentation. The convergence of these facts is consistent with a drafting process in which multiple provisional texts circulated informally and for further development.

Comparable proto-textual stages are well documented in the drafting of several revolutionary-era state constitutions, where multiple provisional drafts, sometimes originating outside formal drafting bodies, circulated prior to adoption, though only the final texts were preserved in the official record. Such practices were consistent with broader legislative norms, in which informal draft texts and memoranda routinely preceded formal committee action and were rarely preserved once superseded. The possibility that a provisional declaration framework originated outside the formal drafting committee appears ordinary rather than exceptional within eighteenth-century practice.

Conclusion

The absence of surviving proto-drafts of the Declaration ofIndependence should not foreclose inquiry into its earliest stages of formation. Informal drafting, textual circulation, and selective adaptation were standard features of eighteenth-century political practice, and their traces are often indirect. Historians have long recognized that key manuscript stages in the Declaration’s formation were likely discarded once superseded, reflecting standard eighteenth-century documentary practice rather than archival anomaly.

By attending to procedural evidence, such as the Sherman inscription and the early appearance of settled national framing, historians can begin to reconstruct a missing stage in the Declaration’s creation. This stage does not undermine established narratives but enriches them, offering a more realistic account of how foundational political texts come into being.

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Paine’s May 8, 1776 Forester Letter

Edited with Commentary by Richard Briles Moriarty

Common Sense moved many towards declaring independence from Britain. But the Pennsylvania Assembly was controlled by those advocating continued dependence on Britain. To neutralize demands to restructure, through a Convention, how Pennsylvania was governed, the Assembly scheduled and created new seats to be chosen in a May 1, 1776 election. A sthe election approached, it was expected to result in a majority supporting independence. Surprising everyone, the “dependent faction” prevailed, threatening to doom the independence movement. Paine and other radicals sought to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Through a May 8, 1776 “Forester” letter, Paine argued that the Assembly itself was illegitimate. Excoriating Quakers who supported reconciliation for travelling “to the summit of inconsistency” so rapidly “as to acquire autumnal ripeness by the first of May,” he warned that their “rotting time” approached. Broadening his assault to the entire “dependent faction,” Paine sought to expose “inconsistency, partiality, and injustice” of that faction, and “like an honest man, who courts no favor, to shew to them the dangerous ground they stand upon” as reflected in the “probable consequences of the late election.”

Paine declared all Assembly members must “take an oath of allegiance to serve the same King against whom this province, with themselves at the head thereof, are at war.” Hypocrisy, Paine roared, never rose “to such a pitch as this!”

By pretending moderation, “we are running into the most damnable sins. It is now the duty of every man from the pulpit and from the press, in his family and in the street to cry out against it. Good God! Have we no remembrance of duty left to the King of Heaven! No conscientious awe to restrain this sacrifice of sacred things? Is this our chartered privilege? This our boasted constitution, that we can sin and feel it not?” Yet that “sin lies not” with the “people” but with “the fountain head” and the delusions it has imposed on others.” The “guilt centers in a few, and flows from the same source, ”that failed to protect Pennsylvania in recent frontier conflicts.

While those favoring independence “had to sustain the loss of those good citizens who are ”fighting in Canada, theTories“ by never stirring out, remain at home to take the advantage of elections” and “Germans, of property, zealots in the cause of freedom, were likewise excluded for nonallegiance.” Yet “the tory non-conformists, that is, those who are advertised as enemies to their country, were admitted to vote on the other side” which is a “strange contradiction indeed!” Adding in Quakers who were “duped by the meanest of all passions, religious spleen,” the “combined impact allowed the” proprietary dependants to support the British and Proprietary power against the public. Despite “having many of our votes rejected, others disqualified for non-allegiance, with the great loss sustained by absentees, the maneuver of shutting up the doors between seven and eight o’clock, and circulating the report of adjourning and finishing the next morning, by which, several were deceived,” the candidates favoring independence did surprisingly well.

Those favoring independence “have stood the experiment of the election, for the sake of knowing the men who were against us. “Alas, what are they!”

What Were the Forester Letters?

In February 1776, a month after Common Sense was published, Congress deep-sixed a draft Committee Report that emphasized how deeply Congress desired reconciliation with Britain because that draft contains hints that independence was an alternate option. While some colonial legislatures cautiously loosened their instructions to Congressional delegates to allow them to consider independence options, Pennsylvania, New York and other colonies persisted in instructing their delegates to actively resist any such efforts. With William Smith, writing as “Cato” in Pennsylvania newspapers, arguing forcefully for reconciliation, the fervor created by Common Sense was insufficient. Paine remained silent as Smith’s published letters piled up. He finally let loose, from March 28, 1776 on, with his Forester letters. Before the May 1 election, Paine focused on refuting arguments made by Smith. After that disastrous election, he did not just shift gears. Paine drove a new vehicle aimed at eliminating the Assembly and transforming Pennsylvania’s government into one controlled by radicals and strongly supporting independence. Without the efforts of Paine and other radicals, July 4 would likely now be just another date on the calendar.

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However, Paine’s valedictions changed over the course of the late 1780s. In a letter to Kitty Nicholson Few, he simply signed off with “Thomas Paine”—but only after writing “God bless you all! and send me safe back to my much loved America!” A letter to Jefferson closed with “I remain yours affectionately.” In 1790, Paine continued to sign his letters to friends with variations on “I am my dear friend yours very affectionately.” For more formal occasions, or addressing those in more elevated positions whom he respected, he would still use some variant of “your humble servant” such as in a letter to George Washington of October 26, 1789, where he signed it “your most affectiona. obedient Hblservant.”

For those to whom he bore some resentment or hostility, he omitted any valediction, adding only his signature. We see this in a letter to John King (1793), Gouverneur Morris(1794), and Daniel Isaacs Eaton (1795). But Paine’s most famously assertive valediction can be seen in his letter to Home Secretary Henry Dundas (of Britain), reproaching the latter for issuing a proclamation that sought to suppress “seditious” writings. Here, Paine signs his letter with great aplomb, writing “Not your obedient humble Servant, But the contrary, THOMAS PAINE.” A far cry indeed from his earlier valedictions!

Later in life, a new signature appeared: “Yours in friendship.” Less courtly, but so much more heartfelt!

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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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The TPHA Cartoon collection offers viewers a vivid journey of how Paine’s public image has morphed over the last 250 years. Although there were some positive portrayals of Paine early on, his many enemies, both in Britain and America, eventually took aim at him with vitriolic, often violent imagery, seeking to defame him and attack his allies to quash his message of representative democracy and reason.

The gallery overflows with 1790s cartoons and sketches attacking Paine that were funded by the British monarchy. Created by famous political cartoonists like James Gillray, James Sayers, and Isaac Cruikshank, these images are often vicious, showing Paine’s execution and torture, or portraying him as a demon or in the form of a variety of beasts.

Curated from the British Museum, the Library of Congress, the American Philosophical Society, the New York Public Library, Truth Seeker magazine, the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, and others, our Paine editorial cartoons gallery is a colorful visual carnival. Although we are adding images on an ongoing basis, at this point we have over 130 Paine cartoons arranged in chronological order, spanning from the earliest we have discovered so far, made in 1777, all the way up to a sample of cartoons from Polyp’s 2022 graphic novel PAINE: a Fantastical Visual Biography.

It is a delight to watch new generations of Paine supporters use political art to resurrect hisimage in counterpoint to the negativity of the 18th century, and, with it, his message. The political cartoons of the Truth Seeker magazine’s Watson Heston are a triumph of pro-Paine advocacy that are perhaps without equal. The 1880s illustrations by Joseph Keppler and Adolph Schwarzmann also reflect the era’s optimism and a changing public image of Paine.

PAINE’S REDEMPTION

By the 20th century, Paine illustrations turned less poisonous. Instead, we see Paine reflected in glory in a fresco by Mexican painter Diego Rivera’s 1933 mural at Rockefeller Center (eventually plastered over by Nelson Rockefeller); a 1938 postage stamp from Poland to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution; and Paine portrayed as Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.

TPHA now hasthe largest collection of Paine cartoons and artwork to be found anywhere. Explore the galleries and the ever-evolving landscape of Paine’s legacy. If you find other political cartoons or images that our missing from our collections, please reach out to share them with us at info@thomaspaine.org.

See the TPHA Cartoon collection now!

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Back in 2020, I was asked by the South Coast Rail Partnership (SCRP) if I could create a poster exhibition about Thomas Paine in the four waiting rooms in Lewes Railway Station. I was keen to tell the story of two men, Thomas Paine and General Gage, Britain’s Commander-in-Chief in North America at the outbreak of the American Revolution. Both had strong links to Lewes, Paine residing here from 1768 to 1774 and the family seat of the Gage family at Firle just five miles east of Lewes. Covid struck and froze the work but I recently suggested that we could mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by resurrecting the project.

The posters were hung in late December 2025, this time badged as a TPHA project with my having recently joined its Board. As I hung the posters, public engagement was immediate! People kept asking questions while I hung them! It was very heartening as I had no idea that it would work at all. The challenge was to give enough information without too much detail. Judging from the initial responses I think we got the right balance.

Here are the posters:

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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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