Episode 30: Revolutionary journalist and whistleblower Thomas Paine (part 2)

Part 2 of our series on revolutionary journalist Tom Paine, award-winning historian Harvey J. Kaye continues expounding on the profound, widespread influence of Paine's inspirational and incendiary pamphlet Common Sense. Kaye also delves deeply into Paine's series of These are the times that try men's souls "American Crisis" pamphlets and how those galvanizing works radically changed the fortunes of the colonial insurrectionists.

Professor Kaye, in his unique and colorful style, walks us through Paine's time in the Continental Army, his role as a whistleblower and his trips to Paris to secure funding to finance the war effort.

We also discuss Paine's post-war years in the nascent US republic - most notably his plans for an iron bridge. Indeed, iron bridges that would serve as a means of uniting the new thirteen states all the more firmly. 

We end our part 2 discussion on Paine's return to London and Paris and his writing of the revolutionary "Rights of Man" pamphlets that offered a biting, but cogent response to Edmund Burke's pamphlet, "Reflections on the Revolution in France."