ZadekpediaThomas Paine appears in three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, discussed by historian Harlow Unger and referenced by callers and host Bob Zadek. The excerpts present him as a founding-era writer whose pamphlets shaped the American Revolution, who refused money from his writings, and whose later work provoked controversy.
Common Sense and The American Crisis
In a 2019 episode on Benjamin Rush, Unger describes Paine meeting Rush in a bookstore. Paine had come to America as an enemy of royalty and was eager to help Americans gain independence. He was working on a pamphlet on liberty and independence and the horrors of divine right of kings, asking why a baby born of some woman should have the right to rule the world. He showed the pamphlet to Rush, who edited it and came up with the title Common Sense. Paine then delivered it to Washington on the banks of the Delaware opposite Trenton. Washington ordered it read aloud to all the troops the night before they crossed the Delaware and fought the Battle of Trenton, and it was credited with reviving the spirits of the dispirited troops after their defeat in Brooklyn. Founding Healer (2019)
When Zadek asks whether that book was Crisis, Unger corrects him: it was not a book but the first of a series of pamphlets called American Crisis, each coming out at different times during the Revolutionary War. The last one, after victory at Yorktown, said that the times that try men’s souls are over. Founding Healer (2019)
In a 2021 episode devoted to Paine, Zadek notes that most people know only two sentences about Paine—that he wrote Common Sense and that many read it—and that Paine has not gotten the attention of many historians. Zadek calls his influence on the Revolutionary era quite profound. Thomas Paine: Apostle of Liberty (2021)
Financial Sacrifice
Unger states that Paine could have made a lot of money from his essays but turned every penny over to Washington to send to Congress to buy food and supplies for the war effort. At the end of the war Paine was broke, as broke as when he first landed in America. Washington invited him to stay at the army camp for food and shelter, then wrote to the governors of each state and the President of Congress saying something had to be done for Paine. James Madison arranged for Congress to give Paine a sum of money, which Unger recalls as $200 or $300. Some states did nothing, but New York State gave Paine a 250-acre farm just north of New York City in New Rochelle, a farm that had been owned by a Tory farmer who had fled. That farm became Paine’s first owned home and his last one, the only home he ever owned. Thomas Paine: Apostle of Liberty (2021)
In the 2019 episode, Unger makes a similar point: Paine wrote the bestseller of the founding era in Common Sense but would not take any royalties, wanting the book to get out. Unger groups Paine with Benjamin Rush and Benjamin Franklin as men who subordinated their desire for money in favor of the public good. Founding Healer (2019)
The Rights of Man and the French Revolution
Unger says that shortly after the war Paine began writing his first true book, The Rights of Man, which upset kings and queens all over the world. In effect it took the words of the Declaration of Independence and the spirit of the American Revolution and turned them into a book that inspired the French. It set off some rioting in England, made Paine a good sum of money that allowed him to live comfortably, and inspired the French Revolution so much that when the revolutionary government of France took control and overthrew the king, they named him an honorary citizen of France and a member of the French National Assembly. Unger notes Paine could not speak a word of French, so everything had to be translated. Thomas Paine: Apostle of Liberty (2021)
Zadek mentions that Paine came within an eyebrow of being guillotined, saved only by the death of Robespierre, and then had to leave France in a hurry. Thomas Paine: Apostle of Liberty (2021)
The Age of Reason
Zadek describes The Age of Reason as a polemic against organized religion, which did not endear Paine to the American public at large or to many in the American elite. He says Paine did not enjoy overwhelming popularity in his later years after writing it, though he was most proud of it. Thomas Paine: Apostle of Liberty (2021)
Unger says Paine was sentenced to die because he fought the idea of executing the king, saying the king was very popular in America and that executing the man who had sent the army to help free the American people would endanger the friendship with America. It was while in prison that Paine started writing The Age of Reason, in which he saw Christianity as a continuation of the age of mythology. Unger says devout Christians and especially royalists hated the book, but Jefferson, Madison, and most of the founders thought it was terrific. Washington, Unger notes, died in 1799, before The Age of Reason. Thomas Paine: Apostle of Liberty (2021)
Across episodes
Paine is discussed at length in the 2021 episode with Harlow Unger and referenced in the 2019 episode on Benjamin Rush, where Unger describes Paine’s relationship with Rush and his refusal of royalties. A 2012 episode on the morality of capitalism includes a caller naming Paine alongside Jefferson and Franklin in a discussion of founding-era ideals and bait-and-switch government, but the guest, Tom Palmer, does not take up Paine specifically. The episodes show no development in the treatment of Paine between episodes; the 2019 and 2021 discussions come from the same guest and cover overlapping material. The Morality of Capitalism (2012)