Thomas Paine

In France Paine was elected a deputy to the National Convention, and he generally voted with the moderate faction known as the Girondins. By favoring the exile, rather than the execution, of King Louis XVI, however, he offended Maximilien de Robespierre, the leader of the radical faction, and he was imprisoned from December 1793 until November 1794, three months after Robespierre’s downfall; Paine then regained his National Convention seat. Part I of his book The Age of Reason was published while Paine was still in prison; he published Part II in 1795 and a portion of Part III in 1807. Paine’s writing was seen as a promotion of atheism, despite the fact that Paine objected only to organized religion. The misinterpretation of this work resulted in Paine gaining ill repute as an atheist and in the alienation of most of his old friends. In 1802 Paine returned to the United States with the help of President Thomas Jefferson, and found that people there had a negative opinion of him as well. He died in New York City and was buried on his farm in New Rochelle. Ten years later journalist William Cobbett moved his remains to England; they were subsequently lost.