Van Buren Denslow said of Paine: “If a set of opinions could be entitled to a place among political philosophers by reasons of millions having come to believe in and praise them, then Paine would stand, more than any other, as the founder of the American school of political philosophy.”
Thomas Paine and the Declaration of Independence Read Post »
Thomas Paine’s strong antislavery stand was hardly appreciated and often unknown to those “in the trenches,” the 19th century abolitionists who were actually fighting the peculiar institution in antebellum America. Reasons for this ignorance can easily be found.
Paine’s Anti-Slavery Legacy Read Post »
Paine purposed to realize for every individual, as much as possible, the God-given natural rights and liberty of mankind. Such a goal for any nation, Paine believed, is best and most easily accomplished through the agency of a constitution that by its sequence of adoption and substantive content.
Thomas Paine’s View of Constitutions Read Post »
Jefferson turned a blind eye to slavery, rooted in fake subjective science, while Paine saw humanity as one whole: “The world is my country, my religion is to do good.” In this sense, Kindness in Paine’s writings is the end product of the Enlightenment, waiting for realization.
A Tale of Two Toms: Jefferson and Paine’s Radically Different Visions of America Read Post »
Little has been written about the political party formed after Paine’s return from the battlefield in January 1777, the Whig Society. The Society was perhaps the first revolutionary party in modern history.
THE WHIG SOCIETY IN AMERICA Read Post »
Paine is the benchmark, the inspiration, the guide, the inspirer of the secular democratic trend in world history. His legacy is all around us: in Black Lives Matter, in separation of church and state, in the sanctity of government for, of and by the people, in civil and human rights.
Speech at the Juneteenth Event at the Thomas Paine Memorial Building June 19, 2021 Read Post »
The sale of 150,000 copies within a matter of months furnished Thomas Jefferson with the proof of a national resolve that encouraged him to fit Paine’s reasoning to the writing of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.
It is well known that Paine came close to losing the fight to establish democracy within the ruling circles in the American Colonies, because of the wish of John Adams, an American Federalist Congressman, who wanted to have a monarchy in the new United States of America. Paine would never have accepted this, because, to him, democracy was everything.
With the evidence presented, it is not inconceivable that Paine, with remarkable perception and clearheaded purpose, wrote the original draft of the Declaration of Independence. In view of his denunciation of slavery, literary style and similarity of his essay to the deflated clause, the theory of his authorship is plausible.
Was the Declaration of Independence Ghost-Written? Read Post »
I did not think I should discover additional facts to further lend support to my thesis. I am happy to have found this evidence, which irrefutably proves Paine’s direct connection with the Declaration of Independence, that I am constrained to make it the subject of this special article.
