THE ORACLE OF THE REVOLUTION: THOMAS PAINE
While often overlooked or marginalized by modern historians, the American Revolution, in many ways, begins with Thomas Paine. The Marquis de Lafayette said, “A free America without her Thomas Paine is unthinkable.” Paine wrote the famous pamphlet, Common Sense, which is called “by far the most influential tract of the American Revolution” by not a few historians, who also maintain that it influenced Jefferson’s writing of the Declaration of Independence.