He writes A Supernumerary Crisis. 

1785   Paine is granted $3,000 by Congress in recognition of his service to the nation. 
1787   Paine travels to Europe. 
1788   In England, Paine secures a patent for an iron bridge design. He corresponds with Edmund Burke. The Marquis de Lafayette drafts “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.” 
1789   The United States Constitution, ratified in 1788, takes effect. The French Revolution begins at the Bastille in Paris. 
1791   In England, Paine publishes the first part of Rights of Man, in part a response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). The treatise is banned, yet more than 200,000  copies are sold in England alone.
1792   Fleeing charges of treason, Paine goes to France. The second part of Rights of Man  is published. Paine is made an honorary
   French citizen and a delegate to the National Convention. 
1793   The Reign of Terror begins in France. Paine is declared an enemy of France and is arrested by Maximilien Robespierre. 
1794   Robespierre is executed, ending the Reign of Terror. Paine publishes The Age of Reason  to great controversy. James Monroe, the newly appointed American minister to France, secures Paine’s release from prison.
1795   The essay “Dissertations on First Principles of Government” is published. 
1796   The second part of The Age of Reason  is published. Paine’s influence with the American leadership wanes following articles attacking Washington and America.
1797   Paine’s last major treatise, Agrarian Justice,  is published.
1799   George Washington dies. 
1802   Paine returns to America. He publishes open letters attacking the Federalist government. 
1803   The American government purchases the Louisiana Territory from France. Paine divides his time between New York City and his farm in New Rochelle. His health begins a long decline. 
1809   Thomas Paine dies on June 8. 

INTRODUCTION

Thomas Paine, one of America’s most illustrious immigrants, arrived in Philadelphia at the end of 1774 with high hopes, no money, and a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin. Like many who had already decamped from Great Britain to the colonies, Paine left behind him a record of failure with frequent job switches, multiple bankruptcies, and two marriages ending in death and separation. At age thirty-seven, he was an obscure figure, no different in his outward aspect from the hundreds of men and women who sailed into Philadelphia every year. But Paine brought with him powerful talents and a forceful personality. Quickly he secured a writing job and gained access to the liveliest political circles in the colonies’ preeminent city. The publication of Common Sense (1776) fourteen months later turned him into a celebrity. During the next two decades, Paine inspired his admirers and vexed his critics with the publication of Rights of Man (1791-1792), The Age of Reason (1794), and Agrarian Justice (1797).

The port city where Paine disembarked had far fewer people than London, but it radiated prosperity. Within the previous two decades a building boom had doubled the number of houses. It abounded with petty enterprises, wide open to all comers with a dynamism not to be found in all of Great Britain. The presence of enslaved men and women shocked Paine, but the numerous servants, day laborers, and apprentices signaled to him the success of this busy hub in Britain’s far-flung commerce. The English Quaker leader and founder of the Pennsylvania colony William Penn had laid out his green country town in a grid pattern situated between the Schuykill and Delaware Rivers. A century of sustained development had filled in the space with wharves, warehouses, and workshops where artisans, their family members, and servants crowded into the upper floors. New town houses attested to the wealth of some merchants and crown officials who distinguished themselves from others with their elegant dress, handsome carriages, and liveried servants. Yet political participation had broadened widely in the 1750s and ’60s. And if Benjamin Franklin’s career can serve as a gauge, ambition had few checks when mixed with determination, talent, and the capacity for hard work.

The self-made man who moved smartly from apprentice to journeyman to master and possibly beyond to become an entrepreneur, like Franklin, held up a model for Paine. The animation and intelligence he exuded undoubtedly account for the fact that Franklin, then in England serving as a colonial agent, gave Paine a letter of introduction to his son-in-law, in which he wrote that Paine was “an ingenious worthy young man” suitable for employment as “a clerk or school teacher.”1 Franklin and Paine, both sons of artisans and apprenticed in their early teens, had many things in common: a keen interest in the new science, zeal to work for the betterment of society, and a fine writing style. Yet they differed in one striking characteristic: Franklin strove to fit into the social order, while Paine raged at its injustices.