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How Did Thomas Paine Influence The Declaration Of Independence

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Thomas Paine was an English American writer and pamphleteer whose “Common Sense” and other writings helped influenced the American Revolution, and the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Paine was born in the small village of Thetford in England on January 29, 1737. His father was a middle-class tradesman. At this time only upper-class men received an education while Paine received a short basic education for six years. He studied, English, Latin, Greek and math before he started to work with his father in the family business. In 1757, he began supporting himself as a staymaker (a person who makes corsets), living for two years first in London, then Dover, then Sandwich, where he married Mary Lambert in 1759. Within a year, she passed away. …show more content…

After he wrote his pamphlet, he was fired from his job. Paine moved to London. He met Benjamin Franklin in the Headstrong club, a debating club that met every month in the White Hart Hotel. Paine became such a good debater that hardly anyone could win an argument against him. Franklin and others noticed that Thomas Paine spoke with a deep passion and even a rage about how Britain was taking advantage of America and how the abused English people were treated in their everyday life. He also shared the Americans' complaints against the King. With the help of Benjamin Franklin, he advised Paine to migrate to the American colonies, arriving in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774. That same year, he and his wife were divorced. After he arrived to the American colonies, he had his pamphlet Common Sense published in 1776. It became an immediate success, quickly spreading 100,000 copies in three months to the two million residents of the 13 colonies.The pamphlet placed blame on the British government for the distress of the colonies. Paine’s writing stated that Britain was taking advantage of America through taxes and by using its corrupt power to keep the colonists in submission. It was his writings that provided the inspiration necessary for many colonists to support the movement for independence from Britain. Paine had no idea that his writing of

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