In 1775 he wrote "Common Sense"--the book which was, as one historian
declares, the "clarion call for separation from England," and which
swept the country. Edmund Randolph drily ascribes American
independence first to George III and second to Paine. Five hundred
thousand copies of the pamphlet were sold, and he might easily have
grown rich on the proceeds, but he could never find it in his
conscience to make money out of patriotism, and he gave every cent to
the war fund.
This splendid fire-eating Quaker--is there anything stauncher than a
fighting Quaker?--proceeded to enlist in the Pennsylvania division of
the Flying Camp under General Roberdeau; then he went as aide-de-camp
to General Greene. It was in 1776 that he started his "Crisis," a
series of stirring and patriotic addresses in pamphlet form. General
Washington ordered the first copy read aloud to every regiment in the
Continental Army, and its effect is now history.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox has written of this:
"... Many of the soldiers were shoeless and left bloody
footprints on the snow-covered line of march.
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