elf squarely in prison for over ten months. Once again it was outside help that saved him, this time in the form of the American Minister, James Monroe. Monroe claimed Paine as an American Citizen, and secured his release. From then on Paine would slide further and further into territory which marked him as merely a historical blip, rather then the rousing character he was. Paines’ last work The Age of Reason, was published in two parts, one just after his arrest an imprisonment and one shortly following his release. The book was written on Paines’ own religious beliefs, and started the uproar that eventually outlived even him. Heralded as the “Atheists Bible”, Paines’ beliefs seemed radical and inconceivable at the time. His denouncement of orthodoxy and many church held beliefs made him the most hated man of his time (John Lennons comparison of the Beatles to Jesus resulted in the same sort of uproar). Most all of his American friends deserted him after the books publication, and he decided to stay on in France for some time after his release from prison. In 1802 Thomas Jefferson arranged for his safe arrival in America. Paine quickly found that he’d been forgotten for everything but his “Atheist Bible”, and that most people had more of an angry impression then a working knowledge of that book. Alone and in poverty his last few years went without notice, marked only by an attempted assassination in 1804. In 1809 Thomas Paine died, one of America’s most noted men passing sadly in neglect. He lived on in infamy, his bones deported to England in 1819, and his burial site unknown to this day. Theodore Roosevelt helped keep the tradition of Paine loathing alive when he referred to Paine as a...”dirty little atheist”. To this day, you’ll find little more about Thomas Paine in classroom history books other then that he was the author of the Common Sense pamphlet. No ment...
