WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.279 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I have to say, 00:00:02.339 --> 00:00:05.679 looking at the stack of documents and research 00:00:05.679 --> 00:00:08.400 we have on the desk today, it feels like we're 00:00:08.400 --> 00:00:11.019 about to open a cold case file that's been sitting 00:00:11.019 --> 00:00:13.580 dusty in the archives of American history for 00:00:13.580 --> 00:00:16.440 way, way too long. It really does feel like a 00:00:16.440 --> 00:00:18.280 cold case or, you know, maybe a missing persons 00:00:18.280 --> 00:00:21.300 case, considering how this story ends up. Exactly. 00:00:21.339 --> 00:00:24.519 We are tackling a figure today who is. quite 00:00:24.519 --> 00:00:27.399 frankly, a walking contradiction. He's a man 00:00:27.399 --> 00:00:29.980 who you could argue is the single most important 00:00:29.980 --> 00:00:32.259 founding father in terms of, you know, actually 00:00:32.259 --> 00:00:34.079 getting the revolution off the ground. He's the 00:00:34.079 --> 00:00:36.320 guy who provided the spark. Right. Without him, 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:39.380 that whole powder keg might never have exploded, 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:41.380 or at least not in the way that it did. Right. 00:00:41.460 --> 00:00:43.920 But here is the kicker, and this is the statistic 00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:45.500 that just blew my mind when I started reading 00:00:45.500 --> 00:00:48.240 the prep material. This man was the best -selling 00:00:48.240 --> 00:00:51.560 author of the entire 18th century. He was, for 00:00:51.560 --> 00:00:53.240 a time, probably the most famous American in 00:00:53.240 --> 00:00:57.320 the world. And yet when he died, do you know 00:00:57.320 --> 00:00:59.920 how many people showed up to his funeral? It's 00:00:59.920 --> 00:01:02.299 a heartbreaking number. It's six. Six people. 00:01:02.380 --> 00:01:04.000 And we're not talking about some private, you 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:06.060 know, family only ceremony. We're talking about 00:01:06.060 --> 00:01:09.760 a man who was essentially ostracized by the very 00:01:09.760 --> 00:01:12.260 nation he helped create. The contrast is just 00:01:12.260 --> 00:01:14.719 so stark. We are, of course, talking about Thomas 00:01:14.719 --> 00:01:18.629 Paine, the man who. Historians think likely coined 00:01:18.629 --> 00:01:21.129 the name United States of America, the man whose 00:01:21.129 --> 00:01:23.170 words were read to the troops at Valley Forge 00:01:23.170 --> 00:01:25.510 to stop them from deserting. And yet by the end 00:01:25.510 --> 00:01:28.109 of his life, he was a pariah. So our mission 00:01:28.109 --> 00:01:31.269 today is to unpack this radical life. And radical 00:01:31.269 --> 00:01:33.030 is absolutely the right word. His life reads 00:01:33.030 --> 00:01:35.269 less like a history textbook and more like a 00:01:35.269 --> 00:01:37.170 tragedy mixed with some kind of wild adventure 00:01:37.170 --> 00:01:39.590 novel. I mean, looking at the outline, we have 00:01:39.590 --> 00:01:42.849 failed corset making. We have escapes from execution 00:01:42.849 --> 00:01:46.109 by a chalk mark. We have. Pirates. Well, privateers. 00:01:46.250 --> 00:01:48.049 We have a feud with George Washington and we 00:01:48.049 --> 00:01:50.930 have this very, very bizarre, almost gothic horror 00:01:50.930 --> 00:01:53.709 story about his stolen bones. The saga of the 00:01:53.709 --> 00:01:56.750 bones is the perfect, weird ending to a life 00:01:56.750 --> 00:01:59.230 that just refused to fit into any neat box. But 00:01:59.230 --> 00:02:02.069 you're right. To understand pain is to understand 00:02:02.069 --> 00:02:06.709 the power of words and the price of sticking 00:02:06.709 --> 00:02:08.569 to your principles when the world changes around 00:02:08.569 --> 00:02:11.009 you. So let's dive in. And we have to start at 00:02:11.009 --> 00:02:13.650 the beginning. And the beginning is surprisingly... 00:02:14.689 --> 00:02:16.969 Well, ordinary. Actually, ordinary might be a 00:02:16.969 --> 00:02:19.370 bit generous. It was kind of a disaster. It was 00:02:19.370 --> 00:02:21.689 a real struggle. Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, 00:02:21.750 --> 00:02:24.650 England in 1737. And if you have a picture in 00:02:24.650 --> 00:02:26.729 your head of a founding father, you know, the 00:02:26.729 --> 00:02:28.969 marble statue, the wealthy Virginia plant, or 00:02:28.969 --> 00:02:31.750 the Harvard -educated lawyer, you just have to 00:02:31.750 --> 00:02:33.689 delete that image completely. Paine was none 00:02:33.689 --> 00:02:35.590 of those things. He was working class. Deeply 00:02:35.590 --> 00:02:38.419 working class. His father, Joseph Paine... And 00:02:38.419 --> 00:02:40.379 it's worth noting the spelling in the early records 00:02:40.379 --> 00:02:44.139 is P -A -I -N, without the E, was a tenant farmer 00:02:44.139 --> 00:02:46.939 and a staymaker. Okay, we need to pause on staymaker, 00:02:47.039 --> 00:02:48.599 because I saw this in the notes and I had to 00:02:48.599 --> 00:02:50.539 look up what that actually meant. It's not just 00:02:50.539 --> 00:02:52.939 making clothes, is it? No, no, it's industrial 00:02:52.939 --> 00:02:55.800 labor. Stays are the stiffening structures that 00:02:55.800 --> 00:02:58.680 go inside women's corsets. In the 18th century, 00:02:58.860 --> 00:03:00.960 that meant working with whalebone. You'd have 00:03:00.960 --> 00:03:03.479 to heat it, bend it, stitch it into this heavy 00:03:03.479 --> 00:03:05.979 canvas. It was physically demanding, smelly. 00:03:06.430 --> 00:03:09.430 Really repetitive work. It was a trade, but not 00:03:09.430 --> 00:03:12.129 a glamorous one at all. And his mother, Frances, 00:03:12.389 --> 00:03:16.849 was Anglican, but his father was a Quaker. That 00:03:16.849 --> 00:03:20.530 religious mix seems really important. given Paine's 00:03:20.530 --> 00:03:22.870 later reputation. It's crucial. Quakers in that 00:03:22.870 --> 00:03:25.669 era were, you know, very distinct. They believed 00:03:25.669 --> 00:03:28.430 in the inner light, this idea that God communicates 00:03:28.430 --> 00:03:31.669 directly to every individual, not through a priest 00:03:31.669 --> 00:03:34.650 or a bishop or some church hierarchy. So anti 00:03:34.650 --> 00:03:36.969 -authority from the start. Very anti -hierarchy. 00:03:37.129 --> 00:03:39.469 They were often pacifists and they believed in 00:03:39.469 --> 00:03:41.689 a kind of spiritual equality that was incredibly 00:03:41.689 --> 00:03:44.689 radical for the class stratified society of England. 00:03:44.909 --> 00:03:47.189 And you see that DNA all over Paine's writing. 00:03:47.289 --> 00:03:54.430 He had this natural DNA. But he wasn't spending 00:03:54.430 --> 00:03:56.830 his youth debating theology. He was pulled out 00:03:56.830 --> 00:03:58.889 of school pretty young, wasn't he? Very young. 00:03:59.030 --> 00:04:01.889 He attended Thetford Grammar School, but his 00:04:01.889 --> 00:04:05.379 formal education ended when he was 13. 13, that's 00:04:05.379 --> 00:04:08.960 it. That's it. At 13 years old, he was apprenticed 00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:12.659 to his father. He was in the shop bending whalebone. 00:04:12.800 --> 00:04:15.479 I mean, can you imagine? He was looking at a 00:04:15.479 --> 00:04:18.399 future of just grinding manual labor, and he 00:04:18.399 --> 00:04:21.360 clearly hated every minute of it. He must have, 00:04:21.420 --> 00:04:23.959 because at age 19, the notes say he did something 00:04:23.959 --> 00:04:26.699 completely out of left field. He ran away to 00:04:26.699 --> 00:04:29.680 sea. He did. He enlisted on a ship called the 00:04:29.680 --> 00:04:31.920 King of Prussia. And this wasn't the Royal Navy. 00:04:32.060 --> 00:04:35.310 This was a privateer. Yes. And we should probably 00:04:35.310 --> 00:04:37.329 explain what that means because privateer sounds 00:04:37.329 --> 00:04:39.529 sort of dashing and romantic. It sounds like 00:04:39.529 --> 00:04:41.350 a gentleman pirate, right? Right. But it was 00:04:41.350 --> 00:04:43.370 essentially a state -sanctioned pirate. Britain 00:04:43.370 --> 00:04:45.810 was on the brink of the Seven Years' War, so 00:04:45.810 --> 00:04:47.810 the government would issue what they called letters 00:04:47.810 --> 00:04:50.790 of marquee to private ship owners. These letters 00:04:50.790 --> 00:04:53.290 gave them legal permission to attack enemy merchant 00:04:53.290 --> 00:04:56.230 ships, mostly French ships, and steal their cargo. 00:04:56.509 --> 00:04:59.350 So he was signing up for legalized armed robbery 00:04:59.350 --> 00:05:01.589 on the high seas. That's a great way to put it. 00:05:01.610 --> 00:05:04.110 It was incredibly dangerous work. I mean, disease, 00:05:04.430 --> 00:05:08.290 storms, combat. For a boy raised in a pacifist 00:05:08.290 --> 00:05:10.930 Quaker household, this was just a massive rebellion. 00:05:10.930 --> 00:05:13.730 It really shows you he had this wild streak, 00:05:13.829 --> 00:05:16.829 or at least a desperate, desperate need to escape 00:05:16.829 --> 00:05:19.449 the crushing boredom of Thetford. But he didn't 00:05:19.449 --> 00:05:21.829 stick with the pirate life for long. He came 00:05:21.829 --> 00:05:25.009 back to Britain in 1759. He did. He tried to 00:05:25.009 --> 00:05:27.149 settle down. He became a master staymaker himself. 00:05:27.250 --> 00:05:30.509 And he set up a shop in Sandwich in Kent. He 00:05:30.509 --> 00:05:32.189 was, you know, trying to do the respectable thing. 00:05:32.389 --> 00:05:34.329 And this is where the tragedy really starts to 00:05:34.329 --> 00:05:36.389 creep in. Yeah. Because looking at this timeline, 00:05:36.629 --> 00:05:39.790 he just cannot catch a break. No, he really can't. 00:05:39.810 --> 00:05:42.410 He married a woman named Mary Lambert in 1759. 00:05:42.610 --> 00:05:44.550 But his business collapsed almost immediately. 00:05:44.810 --> 00:05:47.230 The economy was bad. They had to move to Margate 00:05:47.230 --> 00:05:49.810 to try to find work. Mary went into early labor. 00:05:49.930 --> 00:05:52.230 And in the 18th century, without modern medicine, 00:05:52.449 --> 00:05:55.199 well, both she and the child died. That is just 00:05:55.199 --> 00:05:57.540 devastating. He's in his early 20s. His business 00:05:57.540 --> 00:06:00.339 has failed. He's completely broke. And he's just 00:06:00.339 --> 00:06:02.720 lost his wife and his child. It's the kind of 00:06:02.720 --> 00:06:05.519 trauma that either breaks you or it radicalizes 00:06:05.519 --> 00:06:08.980 you. For Payne, it really seems to have left 00:06:08.980 --> 00:06:11.310 him adrift. He was just looking for a purpose. 00:06:11.529 --> 00:06:13.949 He eventually left the corset trade for good 00:06:13.949 --> 00:06:16.889 and got a job as an excise officer. The tax man. 00:06:17.029 --> 00:06:19.610 The most hated man in England. Which is deeply, 00:06:19.649 --> 00:06:22.050 deeply ironic considering he becomes the voice 00:06:22.050 --> 00:06:24.310 of the American Revolution against British taxes. 00:06:24.550 --> 00:06:27.790 The irony is profound. But you have to understand 00:06:27.790 --> 00:06:30.529 the job. He was stationed in places like Grantham 00:06:30.529 --> 00:06:33.269 and Alford. His job was to patrol for smugglers 00:06:33.269 --> 00:06:36.129 and collect duties on goods like brandy, tea, 00:06:36.250 --> 00:06:39.529 and tobacco. But he wasn't very good at playing 00:06:39.529 --> 00:06:41.769 the bureaucratic game. I saw in the notes he 00:06:41.769 --> 00:06:43.870 was fired. What happened there? He was dismissed 00:06:43.870 --> 00:06:47.589 in 1765 for claiming to have inspected goods 00:06:47.589 --> 00:06:50.370 he did not inspect. So he was just rubber -standing 00:06:50.370 --> 00:06:53.189 the paperwork. Exactly. He was stamping the goods 00:06:53.189 --> 00:06:54.750 without actually doing the physical inspection. 00:06:55.230 --> 00:06:57.129 Maybe he was lazy. Maybe he thought the rules 00:06:57.129 --> 00:06:58.709 were stupid. Or maybe he was just trying to be 00:06:58.709 --> 00:07:00.870 efficient. But whatever the reason, he got caught. 00:07:01.089 --> 00:07:03.149 He begged for his job back, though, right? He 00:07:03.149 --> 00:07:05.449 did. He wrote a petition to the Board of Excise 00:07:05.449 --> 00:07:08.189 and was eventually reinstated. But it really 00:07:08.189 --> 00:07:10.810 shows a pattern. He did not respect authority 00:07:10.810 --> 00:07:13.509 just because it was authority. He drifted around 00:07:13.509 --> 00:07:15.790 a bit. He even taught school in London for a 00:07:15.790 --> 00:07:18.689 while. And then he got posted to Lewis in Sussex. 00:07:18.829 --> 00:07:21.170 And it seems like Lewis is where he starts to 00:07:21.170 --> 00:07:24.740 become Thomas Paine. political thinker. Lewis 00:07:24.740 --> 00:07:27.360 was a unique town. It had this strong tradition 00:07:27.360 --> 00:07:29.800 of debate and even anti -monarchist sentiment. 00:07:30.319 --> 00:07:32.839 Payne got involved in local civic matters. He 00:07:32.839 --> 00:07:35.480 served on the town's governing body. But most 00:07:35.480 --> 00:07:37.860 importantly, he started organizing his fellow 00:07:37.860 --> 00:07:40.139 workers. This is the case of the officers of 00:07:40.139 --> 00:07:43.199 excise, his first real political writing. Published 00:07:43.199 --> 00:07:46.360 in 1772. And it wasn't a call for revolution, 00:07:46.579 --> 00:07:49.680 not at all. It was a labor dispute. He was arguing 00:07:49.680 --> 00:07:52.560 that excise officers like him were severely underpaid. 00:07:52.959 --> 00:07:55.259 Here's this really detailed pamphlet explaining 00:07:55.259 --> 00:07:57.860 that if you pay tax collectors starvation wages, 00:07:58.199 --> 00:08:00.779 you're practically forcing them to take bribes 00:08:00.779 --> 00:08:02.879 from smugglers just to survive. That's actually 00:08:02.879 --> 00:08:04.800 a very sophisticated argument for a guy with 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:06.540 just a grammar school education. He's talking 00:08:06.540 --> 00:08:09.160 about systemic incentives. It is. He printed 00:08:09.160 --> 00:08:12.720 4 ,000 copies. He spent a whole winter in London 00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:15.259 standing outside Parliament handing them out 00:08:15.259 --> 00:08:18.560 to MPs. He was lobbying. He was trying to work 00:08:18.560 --> 00:08:21.379 within the system to fix a real grievance. And 00:08:21.379 --> 00:08:23.399 how did the system respond? The system crushed 00:08:23.399 --> 00:08:26.680 him. Parliament ignored him completely. And because 00:08:26.680 --> 00:08:28.980 he had spent all that time in London lobbying 00:08:28.980 --> 00:08:31.480 instead of doing his job, he was fired from the 00:08:31.480 --> 00:08:35.179 Excise Service again in April 1774. So let's 00:08:35.179 --> 00:08:37.000 just take Sakhir for a minute. He's 37 years 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:40.100 old. He's been fired twice. He failed as a corset 00:08:40.100 --> 00:08:42.440 maker. He tried to run a tobacco shop in Lewis, 00:08:42.600 --> 00:08:45.179 and that failed too. He's separated from his 00:08:45.179 --> 00:08:48.240 second wife, Elizabeth Olive, and he has to sell 00:08:48.240 --> 00:08:50.600 all of his household possessions just to avoid 00:08:50.600 --> 00:08:53.200 debtor's prison. By every single standard of 00:08:53.200 --> 00:08:55.379 his society, Thomas Paine was a total failure. 00:08:55.600 --> 00:08:58.299 He was destitute. He was a nobody. If he had 00:08:58.299 --> 00:09:00.539 died in 1774, he would have been buried in a 00:09:00.539 --> 00:09:02.340 pauper's grave and we would never, ever have 00:09:02.340 --> 00:09:04.080 heard his name. But he makes one connection, 00:09:04.220 --> 00:09:07.299 one handshake that changes everything. In London, 00:09:07.419 --> 00:09:09.740 through his interest in science, he'd met a mathematician 00:09:09.740 --> 00:09:12.779 named George Lewis Scott. And Scott introduced 00:09:12.779 --> 00:09:15.259 him to a man who was in London representing the 00:09:15.259 --> 00:09:17.539 American colonies. Benjamin Franklin. The doctor 00:09:17.539 --> 00:09:20.700 himself. Franklin was the most famous American 00:09:20.700 --> 00:09:22.700 in the world at that point. A total celebrity. 00:09:23.019 --> 00:09:27.009 And he meets this scruffy, angry... but incredibly 00:09:27.009 --> 00:09:30.210 articulate Englishman. And for some reason, Franklin 00:09:30.210 --> 00:09:32.789 saw potential in him. Franklin was the ultimate 00:09:32.789 --> 00:09:35.769 talent scout. He really was. He saw a spark in 00:09:35.769 --> 00:09:38.669 Payne. Maybe he liked his bluntness, his lack 00:09:38.669 --> 00:09:41.490 of deference. Franklin wrote a letter of recommendation 00:09:41.490 --> 00:09:44.250 for Payne. He suggested he move to Philadelphia. 00:09:44.809 --> 00:09:47.350 He wrote to his son -in -law in America, The 00:09:47.350 --> 00:09:50.149 bearer, Mr. Thomas Payne, is very well recommended 00:09:50.149 --> 00:09:52.789 to me as an ingenious, worthy young man. That 00:09:52.789 --> 00:09:54.610 letter was basically a golden ticket. It was 00:09:54.610 --> 00:09:57.740 a lifeline. Payne got on a ship in October 1774. 00:09:58.259 --> 00:10:00.299 But even the journey was a complete disaster. 00:10:00.700 --> 00:10:03.740 The ship's water was contaminated. Typhoid fever 00:10:03.740 --> 00:10:06.259 broke out. Five passengers died on the crossing. 00:10:06.679 --> 00:10:08.779 When they docked in Philadelphia that November, 00:10:09.059 --> 00:10:11.139 Payne was so sick he couldn't walk. He had to 00:10:11.139 --> 00:10:13.500 be carried off on a stretcher. It's just amazing 00:10:13.500 --> 00:10:16.320 to think how fragile history is. If that fever 00:10:16.320 --> 00:10:18.399 had been just a little bit worse, there's no 00:10:18.399 --> 00:10:21.860 common sense. It hangs by a thread. But he survived. 00:10:22.059 --> 00:10:24.320 He was nursed back to health, partly thanks to 00:10:24.320 --> 00:10:26.539 Franklin's connections. And once he was on his 00:10:26.539 --> 00:10:28.960 feet, he looked around in America and he found 00:10:28.960 --> 00:10:31.440 a place where a guy like him could finally fit 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:34.100 in. He becomes an editor pretty quickly. Yes. 00:10:34.240 --> 00:10:37.639 In early 1775, he became the editor of the Pennsylvania 00:10:37.639 --> 00:10:40.279 Magazine. And he turned out to be brilliant at 00:10:40.279 --> 00:10:42.799 it. He grew the readership massively. He wrote 00:10:42.799 --> 00:10:45.320 about everything, science, marriage, politics, 00:10:45.419 --> 00:10:47.960 you name it. And he didn't waste any time getting 00:10:47.960 --> 00:10:51.159 radical. I saw a note about an essay called African 00:10:51.159 --> 00:10:55.000 Slavery in America. Yes. Published in March 1775. 00:10:55.159 --> 00:10:57.799 It wasn't signed, but Benjamin Rush, another 00:10:57.799 --> 00:11:00.659 key founding father, attributed it to pain. It 00:11:00.659 --> 00:11:03.899 called slavery an execrable commerce. Execrable. 00:11:03.960 --> 00:11:06.279 That's a strong word. It means attestable. He 00:11:06.279 --> 00:11:09.139 called it an outrage against humanity and justice. 00:11:09.639 --> 00:11:12.409 And this is so important because, well. Many 00:11:12.409 --> 00:11:14.929 founders were slave owners who talked a good 00:11:14.929 --> 00:11:18.110 game about liberty. Paine was a dedicated abolitionist 00:11:18.110 --> 00:11:20.490 from the very start. He believed rights were 00:11:20.490 --> 00:11:22.350 universal. If they applied to him, they applied 00:11:22.350 --> 00:11:25.129 to everyone. So he is establishing himself as 00:11:25.129 --> 00:11:28.909 a powerful voice. But then comes January 1776, 00:11:29.250 --> 00:11:32.539 the moment everything changes. Common sense. 00:11:32.740 --> 00:11:34.980 The pamphlet that sparked the fire. Now, we all 00:11:34.980 --> 00:11:37.000 learn about common sense in school, but I feel 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:39.200 like we gloss over just how radical it was for 00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:41.919 its time. Can you set the scene for us? What 00:11:41.919 --> 00:11:46.100 was the mood in the colonies in early 1776? This 00:11:46.100 --> 00:11:47.899 is the crucial context. The war had actually 00:11:47.899 --> 00:11:50.039 already started. The battles of Lexington and 00:11:50.039 --> 00:11:53.159 Concord happened in April 1775. The Battle of 00:11:53.159 --> 00:11:55.019 Bunker Hill happened in June, so people were 00:11:55.019 --> 00:11:57.539 already shooting at each other. But, and this 00:11:57.539 --> 00:12:00.200 is a huge but, Most colonists were not fighting 00:12:00.200 --> 00:12:01.820 for independence. What were they fighting for 00:12:01.820 --> 00:12:03.600 then? They were fighting for their rights as 00:12:03.600 --> 00:12:05.639 Englishmen. They wanted a return to the status 00:12:05.639 --> 00:12:08.759 quo. They blamed Parliament and the King's ministers 00:12:08.759 --> 00:12:11.899 for the bad taxes, but they still toasted King 00:12:11.899 --> 00:12:14.440 George III at dinner. The prevailing hope was 00:12:14.440 --> 00:12:17.399 that the king would step in and fix things. They 00:12:17.399 --> 00:12:20.340 saw themselves as loyal subjects who were just 00:12:20.340 --> 00:12:22.940 being mistreated by some corrupt bureaucrats. 00:12:23.019 --> 00:12:25.279 So the idea of breaking away completely was... 00:12:25.279 --> 00:12:27.200 Well, it was a fringe idea. It was terrifying. 00:12:27.539 --> 00:12:30.240 It was treason. And practically speaking, it 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:33.019 seemed impossible. Britain was the greatest superpower 00:12:33.019 --> 00:12:35.220 on Earth. And then Paine publishes Common Sense. 00:12:35.919 --> 00:12:39.059 And he just shatters that entire illusion. He 00:12:39.059 --> 00:12:41.700 attacks the king directly. He calls George III 00:12:41.700 --> 00:12:45.080 the royal brute of Britain. I love that insult. 00:12:45.179 --> 00:12:47.620 The royal brute. It's so direct. It's brilliant 00:12:47.620 --> 00:12:49.740 branding, isn't it? It just strips away all the 00:12:49.740 --> 00:12:52.990 majesty. He argued that the whole idea of hereditary 00:12:52.990 --> 00:12:56.289 monarchy was absurd. He famously said that having 00:12:56.289 --> 00:12:59.110 a hereditary ruler is as ridiculous as having 00:12:59.110 --> 00:13:01.389 a hereditary mathematician. Just because your 00:13:01.389 --> 00:13:03.490 dad was smart doesn't mean you are. And he used 00:13:03.490 --> 00:13:05.730 the Bible to do it, which was genius. He knew 00:13:05.730 --> 00:13:08.549 his audience. Americans at the time were a deeply 00:13:08.549 --> 00:13:11.289 religious people. So he used the Old Testament 00:13:11.289 --> 00:13:13.429 to show that when the ancient Israelites asked 00:13:13.429 --> 00:13:16.429 for a king, it was considered a sin against God. 00:13:16.879 --> 00:13:19.639 He turned the king from a benevolent father figure 00:13:19.639 --> 00:13:23.120 into a usurper, an enemy of God's will. But it 00:13:23.120 --> 00:13:25.019 wasn't just the argument, was it? It was the 00:13:25.019 --> 00:13:28.360 style. Our mission for this deep dive mentioned 00:13:28.360 --> 00:13:31.330 his plain writing style. That was the revolution 00:13:31.330 --> 00:13:34.210 within the revolution. Before Paine, political 00:13:34.210 --> 00:13:37.110 pamphlets were written by lawyers for lawyers. 00:13:37.389 --> 00:13:39.990 They were dense. They were full of Latin phrases, 00:13:40.110 --> 00:13:42.970 full of complex legal precedents. You basically 00:13:42.970 --> 00:13:45.350 needed a degree to understand them. Paine wrote 00:13:45.350 --> 00:13:47.169 for the guy in the tavern. He wrote for the farmer 00:13:47.169 --> 00:13:49.610 in the field. He used short sentences. He used 00:13:49.610 --> 00:13:52.250 metaphors people actually understood. He democratized 00:13:52.250 --> 00:13:54.789 the debate. He did. He took politics out of the 00:13:54.789 --> 00:13:56.789 elite drawing room and put it right in the street. 00:13:56.929 --> 00:13:59.850 And the sales were just insane. Give us the numbers. 00:14:00.210 --> 00:14:03.129 He estimated it sold around 100 ,000 copies in 00:14:03.129 --> 00:14:05.269 the first three months. Some biographers think 00:14:05.269 --> 00:14:07.470 it eventually reached half a million copies by 00:14:07.470 --> 00:14:09.330 the end of the war. And the population of the 00:14:09.330 --> 00:14:11.190 colonies was only about two and a half million 00:14:11.190 --> 00:14:14.129 people at the time. Exactly. Proportionally, 00:14:14.129 --> 00:14:16.169 that would be like a book selling tens of millions 00:14:16.169 --> 00:14:18.889 of copies today. It was everywhere. If you couldn't 00:14:18.889 --> 00:14:22.009 read, someone read it to you out loud. It completely 00:14:22.009 --> 00:14:24.769 crystallized public opinion. It shifted the entire 00:14:24.769 --> 00:14:28.610 conversation from Redress of grievances to independence. 00:14:29.190 --> 00:14:31.210 It's interesting, though, that not all the founders 00:14:31.210 --> 00:14:34.070 loved it. John Adams really had a problem with 00:14:34.070 --> 00:14:37.289 Paine. Oh, Adams. Adams hated Paine's populism. 00:14:37.450 --> 00:14:40.909 Adams wanted independence, absolutely. But Adams 00:14:40.909 --> 00:14:43.590 was a conservative at heart. He believed in order, 00:14:43.769 --> 00:14:47.450 hierarchy, checks and balances. Paine was arguing 00:14:47.450 --> 00:14:51.070 for a radical democracy, universal manhood suffrage, 00:14:51.149 --> 00:14:54.600 no property requirements to vote. To a guy like 00:14:54.600 --> 00:14:56.500 Adams, that sounded like mob rule. What did he 00:14:56.500 --> 00:14:58.759 call it? A crappulous mask. A crappulous mask. 00:14:59.059 --> 00:15:01.860 Adams famously said, without the pen of the author 00:15:01.860 --> 00:15:03.980 of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would 00:15:03.980 --> 00:15:06.279 have been raised in vain. So he admitted pain 00:15:06.279 --> 00:15:08.980 was necessary, but he really did not like him. 00:15:09.039 --> 00:15:10.960 He thought he was too dangerous, too democratic. 00:15:11.279 --> 00:15:13.759 But Washington saw its value. Washington found 00:15:13.759 --> 00:15:16.240 it incredibly useful. It gave his soldiers a 00:15:16.240 --> 00:15:18.590 reason to fight. Suddenly, it wasn't just about 00:15:18.590 --> 00:15:20.570 taxes anymore. It was about building a whole 00:15:20.570 --> 00:15:22.909 new world. Speaking of building a new world, 00:15:23.049 --> 00:15:24.950 let's talk about the name, the United States 00:15:24.950 --> 00:15:27.350 of America. This is a detail I absolutely love. 00:15:27.549 --> 00:15:30.649 Before Paine, people would say the United Colonies 00:15:30.649 --> 00:15:35.590 or just America. But in June of 1776, Paine wrote 00:15:35.590 --> 00:15:38.269 a letter in the Pennsylvania Evening Post under 00:15:38.269 --> 00:15:41.129 the pseudonym Republicus. He did love a pseudonym. 00:15:41.230 --> 00:15:44.529 He did. Common sense was just signed by an Englishman. 00:15:44.970 --> 00:15:47.350 In this Republicans letter, he argued that to 00:15:47.350 --> 00:15:50.110 get foreign aid from France and Spain, they needed 00:15:50.110 --> 00:15:52.269 to be a real nation, not just a bunch of rebellious 00:15:52.269 --> 00:15:54.809 colonies. And he wrote, I shall rejoice to hear 00:15:54.809 --> 00:15:57.250 the title of the United States of America. He 00:15:57.250 --> 00:15:59.370 wrote it in all caps. He emphasized it. He was 00:15:59.370 --> 00:16:01.970 branding the new nation. He understood that words 00:16:01.970 --> 00:16:04.590 create reality. If you start calling yourself 00:16:04.590 --> 00:16:07.090 a United States, you start acting like one. That 00:16:07.090 --> 00:16:10.860 brings us to late 1776. The branding is great. 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:13.360 The Declaration of Independence is signed. But 00:16:13.360 --> 00:16:15.919 the war itself is going terribly. It's a complete 00:16:15.919 --> 00:16:18.840 disaster. Washington has been kicked out of New 00:16:18.840 --> 00:16:21.659 York. He's retreating across New Jersey. The 00:16:21.659 --> 00:16:24.899 army is shrinking by the day. Disease is rampant. 00:16:25.299 --> 00:16:28.379 Morale is at zero. It really looks like the revolution 00:16:28.379 --> 00:16:30.200 is going to be crushed before the first winter 00:16:30.200 --> 00:16:33.080 is even over. And pain is there, on the ground. 00:16:33.340 --> 00:16:35.919 He's traveling with the army. He's serving as 00:16:35.919 --> 00:16:37.980 an aide -de -camp to General Nathaniel Greene. 00:16:38.460 --> 00:16:41.620 He sees the retreat firsthand. He sees the footprints 00:16:41.620 --> 00:16:44.039 in the snow stained with blood from soldiers 00:16:44.039 --> 00:16:46.559 who don't have proper boots. And he starts writing 00:16:46.559 --> 00:16:49.620 again. He writes The American Crisis. The story 00:16:49.620 --> 00:16:52.139 is he wrote it on a drumhead by the light of 00:16:52.139 --> 00:16:54.600 a campfire. And the opening line is just iconic. 00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:58.159 These are the times that try men's souls. The 00:16:58.159 --> 00:17:00.580 summer soldier in the Sunshine Patriot will, 00:17:00.740 --> 00:17:03.580 in this crisis, shrink from the service of their 00:17:03.580 --> 00:17:05.809 country. It's a challenge. He's calling them 00:17:05.809 --> 00:17:08.049 out. He's saying it's easy to be a patriot when 00:17:08.049 --> 00:17:09.750 it's sunny and things are going well. But who 00:17:09.750 --> 00:17:12.849 are you when it's dark? Washington was so moved 00:17:12.849 --> 00:17:15.250 by it that he ordered it to be read to all the 00:17:15.250 --> 00:17:17.549 troops before they crossed the Delaware to attack 00:17:17.549 --> 00:17:19.769 Trenton. And that was the turning point of the 00:17:19.769 --> 00:17:22.349 war. It really was. And Paine's words were the 00:17:22.349 --> 00:17:25.329 soundtrack to that victory. So we have Paine 00:17:25.329 --> 00:17:28.799 as the voice of the revolution. But then, as 00:17:28.799 --> 00:17:31.799 seems to be the pattern with him, things get 00:17:31.799 --> 00:17:35.359 messy. We move into part three, diplomat and 00:17:35.359 --> 00:17:39.839 troublemaker. Paine was never, ever good at playing 00:17:39.839 --> 00:17:42.339 politics. He was a truth teller. And that is 00:17:42.339 --> 00:17:44.799 a very dangerous thing to be in any government. 00:17:45.099 --> 00:17:48.400 This is the Silas Dean affair. This seems complicated, 00:17:48.579 --> 00:17:50.700 but can you boil it down for us? OK, the simple 00:17:50.700 --> 00:17:53.619 version is this. Silas Dean was an American diplomat 00:17:53.619 --> 00:17:55.819 in France. His job was to get supplies for the 00:17:55.819 --> 00:17:58.720 war. Paine, who was the secretary to the Committee 00:17:58.720 --> 00:18:01.779 on Foreign Affairs, which was a big job, he discovered 00:18:01.779 --> 00:18:03.940 that Dean was charging Congress for supplies 00:18:03.940 --> 00:18:06.220 that the French king had actually intended as 00:18:06.220 --> 00:18:08.380 secret gifts. So Dean was basically pocketing 00:18:08.380 --> 00:18:10.779 the money. War profiteering. That's what Paine 00:18:10.779 --> 00:18:13.460 concluded. And Paine, being Paine, couldn't just 00:18:13.460 --> 00:18:16.539 stay quiet. He saw this as corruption, as a betrayal 00:18:16.539 --> 00:18:18.819 of the revolution. So he published all the details 00:18:18.819 --> 00:18:21.220 in the newspaper. There was a catch. A big one. 00:18:21.380 --> 00:18:24.490 A huge catch. In the process of proving that 00:18:24.490 --> 00:18:27.430 Dean was a crook, Payne cited secret documents 00:18:27.430 --> 00:18:29.930 that revealed France was sending aid before they 00:18:29.930 --> 00:18:32.490 had officially signed a treaty of alliance. France 00:18:32.490 --> 00:18:35.849 was still technically neutral. Payne just outed 00:18:35.849 --> 00:18:38.230 their entire secret operation to the world. Whoops. 00:18:38.430 --> 00:18:41.950 Yeah. Big whoops. The French minister was furious. 00:18:42.750 --> 00:18:45.329 Congress was deeply embarrassed. They had to 00:18:45.329 --> 00:18:47.849 fire Payne to save face and preserve the alliance. 00:18:48.210 --> 00:18:50.289 He went from being a high -ranking government 00:18:50.289 --> 00:18:52.990 official to being completely disgraced. He was 00:18:52.990 --> 00:18:54.869 even physically assaulted in the street by some 00:18:54.869 --> 00:18:56.690 of Dean's merchant friends. He just couldn't 00:18:56.690 --> 00:18:59.349 help himself, could he? He valued the truth more 00:18:59.349 --> 00:19:01.309 than the diplomatic game. And the really tragic 00:19:01.309 --> 00:19:03.490 part is later evidence showed that Payne was 00:19:03.490 --> 00:19:06.609 right all along. Dean was corrupt, but Payne 00:19:06.609 --> 00:19:09.390 was the one who paid the price. He ended up broke 00:19:09.390 --> 00:19:12.339 again and out of a job. But he keeps going. He 00:19:12.339 --> 00:19:14.859 goes back to France in 1781 with John Lawrence 00:19:14.859 --> 00:19:17.059 to help get more money. He helps set up the Bank 00:19:17.059 --> 00:19:19.180 of North America. He's always trying to be useful 00:19:19.180 --> 00:19:22.000 to the cause. And eventually, he does get some 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:25.799 recognition. When the war finally ends, the state 00:19:25.799 --> 00:19:28.220 of New York gives him a farm in New Rochelle. 00:19:28.519 --> 00:19:32.059 Congress gives him $3 ,000. He finally has a 00:19:32.059 --> 00:19:34.039 home and some security. He could have retired 00:19:34.039 --> 00:19:35.839 right then. He could have just been a gentleman 00:19:35.839 --> 00:19:38.509 farmer. He absolutely could have. but his brain 00:19:38.509 --> 00:19:40.670 just would not turn off. And this brings us to 00:19:40.670 --> 00:19:43.490 what the outline calls the scientific interlude. 00:19:43.609 --> 00:19:46.019 I love this part. He decides he's going to build 00:19:46.019 --> 00:19:48.880 bridges. Literally. He became obsessed with the 00:19:48.880 --> 00:19:52.279 idea of single span iron bridges. At the time, 00:19:52.279 --> 00:19:54.720 bridges were either wood or stone. Stone was 00:19:54.720 --> 00:19:57.240 incredibly expensive. Wood rotted and needed 00:19:57.240 --> 00:20:00.000 constant repair. Payne designed this innovative 00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:02.720 single span iron bridge that could cross the 00:20:02.720 --> 00:20:05.339 Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. That was incredibly 00:20:05.339 --> 00:20:07.940 high tech for the 1780s. It was cutting edge 00:20:07.940 --> 00:20:09.420 engineering. He couldn't get the funding for 00:20:09.420 --> 00:20:12.660 it in America. So in 1787, he sailed back to 00:20:12.660 --> 00:20:15.660 Europe, first to France. then to England to find 00:20:15.660 --> 00:20:18.259 investors for his bridge project. He was showing 00:20:18.259 --> 00:20:20.619 off his models to the Royal Society. He was hanging 00:20:20.619 --> 00:20:23.279 out with scientists. He also invented a smokeless 00:20:23.279 --> 00:20:25.799 candle and worked on early steam engines. He 00:20:25.799 --> 00:20:28.259 was a true Enlightenment man. But while he is 00:20:28.259 --> 00:20:30.980 in Europe trying to sell his bridge idea, history 00:20:30.980 --> 00:20:34.319 intervenes again. The French Revolution. 1789, 00:20:34.660 --> 00:20:37.559 the Bastille falls. And Paine, who was right 00:20:37.559 --> 00:20:40.059 there, is pulled back into the political vortex. 00:20:40.559 --> 00:20:42.980 And this leads to his next great work, Rights 00:20:42.980 --> 00:20:45.599 of Man. This was a direct response to Edmund 00:20:45.599 --> 00:20:48.640 Burke. Burke, who was a famous British politician, 00:20:48.920 --> 00:20:51.000 wrote a book called Reflections on the Revolution 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:53.319 in France, which was a scathing attack on what 00:20:53.319 --> 00:20:55.400 was happening, calling it chaos and anarchy. 00:20:55.640 --> 00:20:58.819 Paine read it and was absolutely furious. He 00:20:58.819 --> 00:21:02.160 wrote Rights of Man in 1791 as a direct rebuttal 00:21:02.160 --> 00:21:04.640 and a defense of the revolution. And if common 00:21:04.640 --> 00:21:07.039 sense was radical, Rights of Man was. I mean, 00:21:07.059 --> 00:21:09.440 it was on another level entirely. It went so 00:21:09.440 --> 00:21:12.400 much further. In common sense, he attacked a 00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:16.039 specific king. In Rights of Man, he attacked 00:21:16.039 --> 00:21:18.460 the entire concept of the past having any right 00:21:18.460 --> 00:21:21.160 to rule the present. He wrote, and this is a 00:21:21.160 --> 00:21:30.680 key line, He's basically saying tradition doesn't 00:21:30.680 --> 00:21:32.980 matter. He's saying the dead have no rights. 00:21:33.019 --> 00:21:35.839 Only the living have rights. He advocated for 00:21:35.839 --> 00:21:38.559 a republic, a written constitution, social welfare 00:21:38.559 --> 00:21:41.660 programs. The book sold nearly a million copies. 00:21:41.920 --> 00:21:43.589 And the British government was not. happy about 00:21:43.589 --> 00:21:45.950 they were terrified they were convinced a revolution 00:21:45.950 --> 00:21:48.269 was going to start in london they indicted him 00:21:48.269 --> 00:21:51.509 for a seditious libel they hired spies to follow 00:21:51.509 --> 00:21:54.049 him everywhere he went mobs were organized to 00:21:54.049 --> 00:21:56.670 burn him in effigy in towns all across england 00:21:56.670 --> 00:21:58.730 this is where the poet william blake comes into 00:21:58.730 --> 00:22:01.309 the story yes the famous poet and artist the 00:22:01.309 --> 00:22:03.390 story goes that blake met pain at a dinner party 00:22:03.390 --> 00:22:05.990 and warned him do not go home tonight they are 00:22:05.990 --> 00:22:09.619 coming to arrest you Paine took the advice, and 00:22:09.619 --> 00:22:12.680 in September 1792, he got on a boat and fled 00:22:12.680 --> 00:22:14.799 to France. He escaped by the skin of his teeth. 00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:18.839 By mere hours. He was tried in absentia in England 00:22:18.839 --> 00:22:22.500 and convicted of treason. He was now an outlaw 00:22:22.500 --> 00:22:25.019 in his own birth country. He could never go back. 00:22:25.279 --> 00:22:28.160 But in France, he's a hero. A total superstar. 00:22:28.400 --> 00:22:31.339 He was made an honorary citizen, and despite 00:22:31.339 --> 00:22:33.160 not speaking a word of French, he was elected 00:22:33.160 --> 00:22:35.809 to the National Convention. That is just wild. 00:22:36.029 --> 00:22:38.390 He is a member of parliament in a country where 00:22:38.390 --> 00:22:40.269 you can't speak the language. He had to have 00:22:40.269 --> 00:22:43.049 his speeches translated and read aloud by other 00:22:43.049 --> 00:22:45.609 delegates. But his presence was hugely symbolic. 00:22:45.609 --> 00:22:48.150 He was the author of Common Sense, the man who 00:22:48.150 --> 00:22:50.430 helped create the American Republic. But the 00:22:50.430 --> 00:22:52.529 French Revolution wasn't the American Revolution. 00:22:52.710 --> 00:22:54.950 It got dark. Very, very quickly. It got very 00:22:54.950 --> 00:22:57.950 dark. The Jacobins, the radicals led by Maximilian 00:22:57.950 --> 00:23:00.369 Robespierre, started to take over. They wanted 00:23:00.369 --> 00:23:03.410 blood. They put the king, Louis XVI, on trial 00:23:03.410 --> 00:23:05.710 for his life. And this is the moment where Paine 00:23:05.710 --> 00:23:07.950 proves his integrity again, doesn't he? The man 00:23:07.950 --> 00:23:10.930 who hates kings with a passion votes to save 00:23:10.930 --> 00:23:14.529 the king's life. It stunned everyone. Paine argued 00:23:14.529 --> 00:23:17.210 that execution was immoral. He was fundamentally 00:23:17.210 --> 00:23:20.089 against the death penalty. And he made a practical 00:23:20.089 --> 00:23:23.079 point as well. Louis XVI had helped the American 00:23:23.079 --> 00:23:26.539 Revolution. He was an ally. Paine stood up and 00:23:26.539 --> 00:23:29.539 said, let's not kill him. Let's exile him to 00:23:29.539 --> 00:23:31.940 America. He wanted to send the king of France 00:23:31.940 --> 00:23:33.480 to live in Philadelphia. He thought he could 00:23:33.480 --> 00:23:35.160 live there as a private citizen, maybe learn 00:23:35.160 --> 00:23:38.069 how to be a Democrat. That is wildly optimistic, 00:23:38.329 --> 00:23:41.269 to say the least. It absolutely infuriated the 00:23:41.269 --> 00:23:43.970 Jacobins. Jean -Paul Marat interrupted the reading 00:23:43.970 --> 00:23:46.210 of Paine's speech, shouting that the translator 00:23:46.210 --> 00:23:48.390 was lying because he couldn't believe Paine would 00:23:48.390 --> 00:23:51.109 say such a thing. But Paine stood his ground. 00:23:51.559 --> 00:23:54.140 And that single vote put a massive target on 00:23:54.140 --> 00:23:56.940 his back. It did. The king was executed. The 00:23:56.940 --> 00:23:59.900 reign of terror began. The Jacobins started rounding 00:23:59.900 --> 00:24:02.000 up and executing all of their political enemies. 00:24:02.440 --> 00:24:04.660 Paine was a foreigner, and he was allied with 00:24:04.660 --> 00:24:07.460 a moderate faction, the Girondins. In December 00:24:07.460 --> 00:24:10.819 of 1793, he was arrested. This brings us to part 00:24:10.819 --> 00:24:13.759 five, the chalk mark. This has to be the lowest 00:24:13.759 --> 00:24:16.180 point of his entire life. He was thrown into 00:24:16.180 --> 00:24:18.859 Luxembourg prison. It was basically a waiting 00:24:18.859 --> 00:24:21.039 room for the guillotine. People were being taken 00:24:21.039 --> 00:24:23.140 out in batches every single day and beheaded. 00:24:23.680 --> 00:24:27.059 Payne was 56. He was sick with a fever and he 00:24:27.059 --> 00:24:29.980 was watching his friends die one by one. And 00:24:29.980 --> 00:24:32.220 while he's in there, what is the United States 00:24:32.220 --> 00:24:34.880 doing, the country he helped create? Nothing. 00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:38.579 This is the great betrayal. The U .S. ambassador 00:24:38.579 --> 00:24:40.900 at the time was a man named Gouverneur Morris. 00:24:41.160 --> 00:24:43.700 Morris was a federalist who hated Paine's radical 00:24:43.700 --> 00:24:46.819 ideas. He thought Paine was a dangerous anarchist. 00:24:46.920 --> 00:24:49.559 And Morris essentially just let him rot in that 00:24:49.559 --> 00:24:51.960 prison. He made no effort to claim him as an 00:24:51.960 --> 00:24:54.039 American citizen. And Washington. Washington 00:24:54.039 --> 00:24:56.680 stayed silent. Washington was president. He was 00:24:56.680 --> 00:24:58.420 trying to keep the U .S. neutral in the wars 00:24:58.420 --> 00:25:00.200 between Britain and France. He didn't want to 00:25:00.200 --> 00:25:02.900 anchor either side. So he sacrificed Paine for 00:25:02.900 --> 00:25:06.250 diplomatic convenience. Payne sat in that cell 00:25:06.250 --> 00:25:08.329 for months, waiting for a letter from his old 00:25:08.329 --> 00:25:10.509 friend George Washington that never came. That 00:25:10.509 --> 00:25:12.230 must have just broken his heart. It broke his 00:25:12.230 --> 00:25:14.329 heart and it filled him with a rage that would 00:25:14.329 --> 00:25:17.170 fester for years. But first, he had to survive. 00:25:17.869 --> 00:25:20.450 And this brings us to the famous chalk mark story. 00:25:20.769 --> 00:25:23.769 Tell us this. It feels like something straight 00:25:23.769 --> 00:25:26.309 out of a movie script. So at the height of the 00:25:26.309 --> 00:25:28.230 terror, the jailers would come around at night 00:25:28.230 --> 00:25:30.250 with a list of who was scheduled to be executed 00:25:30.250 --> 00:25:33.069 the next morning. They would mark the cell door 00:25:33.069 --> 00:25:35.809 of the condemned with chalk, usually a cross 00:25:35.809 --> 00:25:38.849 or a number. It was a mark of death. Right. Payne 00:25:38.849 --> 00:25:40.950 was in a cell with a few other men and he was 00:25:40.950 --> 00:25:43.769 very sick with a fever. His cell door had been 00:25:43.769 --> 00:25:47.150 left open to let some air in. Now, the door was 00:25:47.150 --> 00:25:49.799 heavy. and it opened outwards into the corridor, 00:25:50.079 --> 00:25:52.680 pressing flat against the outer wall. Okay, I'm 00:25:52.680 --> 00:25:54.900 visualizing this. The jailer came by, checked 00:25:54.900 --> 00:25:58.200 his list, and he chalked Payne's door. But because 00:25:58.200 --> 00:26:00.380 the door was open, he put the mark on the side 00:26:00.380 --> 00:26:02.539 of the door that was facing the corridor, which 00:26:02.539 --> 00:26:04.980 was actually the inside face of the door when 00:26:04.980 --> 00:26:07.500 it was closed. So when they shut the door for 00:26:07.500 --> 00:26:09.720 the night? The mark was on the inside of the 00:26:09.720 --> 00:26:12.180 cell, hidden from view. So the next morning, 00:26:12.200 --> 00:26:14.410 the execution squad comes down the hall. They 00:26:14.410 --> 00:26:16.269 walk down the hall. They look at all the closed 00:26:16.269 --> 00:26:18.690 doors. They don't see a mark on Payne's door. 00:26:18.809 --> 00:26:21.210 They walk right past him and take the men from 00:26:21.210 --> 00:26:23.970 the other cells. He slept through his own execution 00:26:23.970 --> 00:26:26.529 because of a simple geometry error. It was a 00:26:26.529 --> 00:26:30.730 miracle, pure chance. And a few days later, Robespierre 00:26:30.730 --> 00:26:33.970 fell from power. The terror ended. Payne survived. 00:26:34.549 --> 00:26:36.650 Eventually, James Monroe, the future president, 00:26:36.869 --> 00:26:38.829 became a new ambassador and got him released. 00:26:39.170 --> 00:26:42.009 But Payne was a changed man. He was deeply bitter. 00:26:42.490 --> 00:26:44.509 And he was also angry at organized religion, 00:26:44.769 --> 00:26:47.569 which he felt had enabled so much tyranny. And 00:26:47.569 --> 00:26:49.869 while he was in prison, he wrote his most controversial 00:26:49.869 --> 00:26:53.950 book, The Age of Reason. This is part six, Controversial 00:26:53.950 --> 00:26:56.509 Ideas. And this is the book that really destroyed 00:26:56.509 --> 00:26:59.319 his reputation in America. Why? Because it was 00:26:59.319 --> 00:27:01.700 a frontal assault on the Bible. Paine was a deist. 00:27:01.779 --> 00:27:04.079 He believed in God. He would look at the stars 00:27:04.079 --> 00:27:06.240 in the universe and see evidence of a creator. 00:27:06.519 --> 00:27:09.220 But he rejected organized religion. He rejected 00:27:09.220 --> 00:27:11.779 miracles, prophecies, and the divinity of Jesus. 00:27:12.059 --> 00:27:14.680 He called the Bible the word of a demon. He did. 00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:17.359 He went through it and pointed out all the violence, 00:27:17.579 --> 00:27:20.200 the contradictions, the obscene stories in the 00:27:20.200 --> 00:27:23.279 Old Testament. And in the 1790s, America was 00:27:23.279 --> 00:27:25.619 going through a major religious revival, the 00:27:25.619 --> 00:27:28.480 Second Great Awakening. So this book was just 00:27:28.480 --> 00:27:31.140 shocking. He was immediately branded an atheist, 00:27:31.420 --> 00:27:34.140 which he wasn't, but the label stuck. People 00:27:34.140 --> 00:27:36.759 who had loved common sense were now publicly 00:27:36.759 --> 00:27:39.980 burning the age of reason. He just could not 00:27:39.980 --> 00:27:41.740 read The Room, could he? He didn't care about 00:27:41.740 --> 00:27:43.640 The Room. He only cared about what he thought 00:27:43.640 --> 00:27:46.200 was the truth. And then on top of that, he wrote 00:27:46.200 --> 00:27:50.519 Agrarian Justice in 1797. This is his big economic 00:27:50.519 --> 00:27:53.140 proposal. This is my favorite of his later works. 00:27:53.240 --> 00:27:56.829 It is so unbelievably ahead of its time. Payne 00:27:56.829 --> 00:27:59.289 argued that poverty was not a natural state. 00:27:59.450 --> 00:28:02.089 He said it was created by civilization and specifically 00:28:02.089 --> 00:28:04.789 by the concept of private property. He said the 00:28:04.789 --> 00:28:06.970 earth belongs to everyone in common. Exactly. 00:28:07.049 --> 00:28:09.769 He said that when an individual owns a piece 00:28:09.769 --> 00:28:12.170 of land, they are excluding everyone else from 00:28:12.170 --> 00:28:14.609 their natural inheritance. So they owe a kind 00:28:14.609 --> 00:28:17.710 of ground rent back to society for that privilege. 00:28:17.990 --> 00:28:19.720 And what do you want to do with that money? He 00:28:19.720 --> 00:28:22.559 proposed creating a national fund and he wanted 00:28:22.559 --> 00:28:25.680 to use that fund to give every single person, 00:28:25.779 --> 00:28:29.859 man or woman, Rich or poor, a lump sum of 15 00:28:29.859 --> 00:28:32.940 pounds sterling when they turn 21. A capital 00:28:32.940 --> 00:28:35.180 grant to get started in life. A nest egg for 00:28:35.180 --> 00:28:37.579 everyone. And on top of that, he wanted to give 00:28:37.579 --> 00:28:40.019 every person over the age of 50 an annual pension 00:28:40.019 --> 00:28:42.819 of 10 pounds for the rest of their life. He basically 00:28:42.819 --> 00:28:45.059 invented Social Security. And universal basic 00:28:45.059 --> 00:28:48.779 income in 1797. But of course, the wealthy elite 00:28:48.779 --> 00:28:51.019 thought this was absolute madness. They called 00:28:51.019 --> 00:28:53.259 it leveling. They called it theft. It was just 00:28:53.259 --> 00:28:55.759 too radical. So he has alienated the church. 00:28:55.799 --> 00:28:57.039 He has alienated the church. alienated the wealthy, 00:28:57.240 --> 00:28:59.599 and then he decides to go after the most popular 00:28:59.599 --> 00:29:02.099 man in America. The letter to George Washington. 00:29:02.339 --> 00:29:05.519 In 1796, still furious about being abandoned 00:29:05.519 --> 00:29:08.119 in that French prison, he finally let all of 00:29:08.119 --> 00:29:11.359 his anger out. He published a scathing open letter 00:29:11.359 --> 00:29:13.579 accusing Washington of being incompetent as a 00:29:13.579 --> 00:29:15.579 general and treacherous as a friend. We told 00:29:15.579 --> 00:29:18.339 him a hypocrite, an imposter. He wrote, the world 00:29:18.339 --> 00:29:20.400 will be puzzled to decide whether you are an 00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:23.220 apostate or an imposter. You just do not talk 00:29:23.220 --> 00:29:25.779 about George Washington that way in 1790s America. 00:29:25.980 --> 00:29:28.150 Not if you want to have any friends left. That 00:29:28.150 --> 00:29:31.589 letter was the final nail in the coffin. When 00:29:31.589 --> 00:29:33.509 Payne finally returned to the United States in 00:29:33.509 --> 00:29:36.750 1802, invited by President Jefferson, he was 00:29:36.750 --> 00:29:39.890 a pariah. How bad was the reception? It was brutal. 00:29:40.029 --> 00:29:43.289 The Federalist newspapers attacked him mercilessly. 00:29:43.630 --> 00:29:46.529 They called him a loathsome reptile and a drunken 00:29:46.529 --> 00:29:49.829 infidel. Old friends shunned him. People wouldn't 00:29:49.829 --> 00:29:52.289 shake his hand on the street. He was old, he 00:29:52.289 --> 00:29:54.309 was in poor health, and he was drinking far too 00:29:54.309 --> 00:29:57.309 much. And the final insult came a new Rochelle 00:29:57.309 --> 00:30:00.670 on his own farm. In 1806, he went to vote in 00:30:00.670 --> 00:30:02.970 a local election. And the officials at the polling 00:30:02.970 --> 00:30:05.150 place turned him away. They said he wasn't a 00:30:05.150 --> 00:30:07.390 citizen. The man who named the country. They 00:30:07.390 --> 00:30:09.450 argued that because he had accepted honorary 00:30:09.450 --> 00:30:12.269 French citizenship, he had forfeited his American 00:30:12.269 --> 00:30:14.589 status. And Gouverneur Morris, his old enemy 00:30:14.589 --> 00:30:17.190 from Paris, was there and just let it happen. 00:30:17.269 --> 00:30:19.750 It was a complete and utter humiliation. And 00:30:19.750 --> 00:30:23.130 he dies in 1809. In Greenwich Village, New York 00:30:23.130 --> 00:30:26.299 City. on june 8th the obituary was just cold 00:30:26.299 --> 00:30:29.380 he had lived long did some good and much harm 00:30:29.380 --> 00:30:32.400 that was it and the funeral this brings us right 00:30:32.400 --> 00:30:34.400 back to where we started he had wished to be 00:30:34.400 --> 00:30:36.640 buried in the quaker cemetery but because of 00:30:36.640 --> 00:30:38.619 his writings against the bible they refused him 00:30:38.619 --> 00:30:41.900 so he was buried in a corner of his farm in new 00:30:41.900 --> 00:30:45.799 rochelle and six people came two were black freedmen 00:30:45.799 --> 00:30:48.339 paying their respects to his abolitionist views 00:30:48.339 --> 00:30:50.779 a french woman named marguerite de bonneville 00:30:50.779 --> 00:30:53.640 who had cared for him and her children That was 00:30:53.640 --> 00:30:58.140 it. No state funeral. No cannons. No eulogies 00:30:58.140 --> 00:31:00.680 from famous men. It's a silence. But the story 00:31:00.680 --> 00:31:02.259 doesn't end there, does it? We have to talk about 00:31:02.259 --> 00:31:05.980 the bones. The bones. So in 1819, a British radical 00:31:05.980 --> 00:31:08.359 journalist named William Cobbett, who used to 00:31:08.359 --> 00:31:11.339 hate pain but then became a huge admirer, decided 00:31:11.339 --> 00:31:13.579 that pain was being neglected and that his proper 00:31:13.579 --> 00:31:15.980 resting place should be England. So he just... 00:31:16.250 --> 00:31:18.630 He went to the farm in New Rochelle in the middle 00:31:18.630 --> 00:31:21.170 of the night, dug up the coffin, and took Payne's 00:31:21.170 --> 00:31:23.730 bones. He packed them in a box and sailed back 00:31:23.730 --> 00:31:26.670 to Liverpool. What on earth was the plan? He 00:31:26.670 --> 00:31:29.309 wanted to build a massive memorial, a shrine, 00:31:29.549 --> 00:31:31.849 to Payne. He thought the British working class 00:31:31.849 --> 00:31:33.950 would flock to it and be inspired to revolution. 00:31:34.869 --> 00:31:37.289 But it completely backfired. People just thought 00:31:37.289 --> 00:31:40.559 it was ghoulish and creepy. The town crier in 00:31:40.559 --> 00:31:43.720 Thetford, Payne's birthplace, refused to even 00:31:43.720 --> 00:31:46.460 announce the arrival of the bones. So Cobbett 00:31:46.460 --> 00:31:49.019 is now stuck with a skeleton in his attic. Literally. 00:31:49.339 --> 00:31:51.680 He kept the bones in a trunk until he died in 00:31:51.680 --> 00:31:54.420 1835. And then his estate was auctioned off. 00:31:54.559 --> 00:31:57.480 And in the chaos, the bones were separated. Separated. 00:31:57.480 --> 00:31:59.319 You mean lost. They were lost. They just vanished. 00:31:59.900 --> 00:32:01.920 Over the years, people have popped up claiming 00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:05.119 to have his skull or hand or his jawbone. There 00:32:05.119 --> 00:32:07.400 are bizarre rumors that they were made into buttons. 00:32:07.740 --> 00:32:11.119 But the truth is, nobody knows. There is no grave. 00:32:11.400 --> 00:32:13.740 Thomas Paine is scattered to the winds. My country 00:32:13.740 --> 00:32:16.400 is the world. It's weirdly fitting for him, isn't 00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:18.440 it? He couldn't be contained by one plot of land, 00:32:18.539 --> 00:32:21.220 even in death. So what is the legacy then? Because 00:32:21.220 --> 00:32:24.559 despite the lost bones, his ideas, so many of 00:32:24.559 --> 00:32:27.420 them, they won in the end. They absolutely did. 00:32:28.279 --> 00:32:31.259 Abraham Lincoln was a huge fan. His direct, plain 00:32:31.259 --> 00:32:33.839 writing style was heavily influenced by pain. 00:32:34.099 --> 00:32:36.019 Thomas Edison called him one of the greatest 00:32:36.019 --> 00:32:39.839 Americans. His ideas on social security, on secular 00:32:39.839 --> 00:32:42.559 government, on universal human rights, they are 00:32:42.559 --> 00:32:45.779 the bedrock of modern democracy, even if we don't 00:32:45.779 --> 00:32:48.200 always credit him for them. He was the guy who 00:32:48.200 --> 00:32:50.619 could tear down the old house, even if he didn't 00:32:50.619 --> 00:32:52.619 quite know how to live in the new one he'd designed. 00:32:52.839 --> 00:32:55.539 He was a perpetual revolutionary. He was uncomfortable 00:32:55.539 --> 00:32:58.740 in peacetime. He needed a crisis to fight, a 00:32:58.740 --> 00:33:01.339 tyrant to overthrow. So here's a final thought 00:33:01.339 --> 00:33:04.279 for you, for the listener. Paine wrote that his 00:33:04.279 --> 00:33:07.660 generation would be the atom of a new world. 00:33:08.059 --> 00:33:10.119 He really thought they were building a kind of 00:33:10.119 --> 00:33:13.160 utopia. If you walked into America today, what 00:33:13.160 --> 00:33:15.410 would you think? He'd love the technology. He 00:33:15.410 --> 00:33:17.369 would adore the Internet. It's the ultimate common 00:33:17.369 --> 00:33:20.170 sense distribution method. But I think he'd look 00:33:20.170 --> 00:33:22.250 at the massive income inequality, the worship 00:33:22.250 --> 00:33:24.349 of political figures, the fact that we still 00:33:24.349 --> 00:33:27.009 haven't solved poverty, and he'd grab a pen. 00:33:27.250 --> 00:33:29.589 He'd start writing Common Sense Part 2. And he'd 00:33:29.589 --> 00:33:31.329 probably get himself canceled for it within a 00:33:31.329 --> 00:33:33.730 week. He absolutely would. But maybe we need 00:33:33.730 --> 00:33:35.430 a little bit of that energy now and then. We 00:33:35.430 --> 00:33:38.029 always do. thanks for joining us on this deep 00:33:38.029 --> 00:33:41.109 dive into the incredible radical life of Thomas 00:33:41.109 --> 00:33:44.430 Paine it has been a wild ride from start to finish 00:33:44.430 --> 00:33:46.769 keep asking questions we'll see you next time