Thomas Paine Thomas Paine’s sensational pamphlet Common Sense advanced the popular debate on independence. Paine remained a provocative pamphleteer, writing The Rights of Man in revolutionary France, followed by The Age of Reason, which to many seemed to avow atheism. In 1802, he returned to the United States; although welcomed by Thomas Jefferson, Paine was spurned by nearly everyone else for his irreligiosity. He died in obscurity in 1809.
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA/Bridgeman Images.