In one of the most rousing pamphlets of all time, Thomas Paine expounded on the need for American independence. It was "common sense," Paine alleged, forging his place in the pantheon of America's founders alongside such luminaries as Jefferson, Washington, and Adams. However, unlike those three men, Paine did not enjoy celebrity at the time of his death. Instead of being lionized, Paine was vilified by the very same individuals who once passed his pamphlet around as the gospel truth. But it was not Common Sense that got him excommunicated from the American canon; rather, it was his final work, The Age of Reason.

To understand The Age of Reason, one needs to understand the context. After the Revolutionary War, Paine returned to his native England before his controversial, pro-French Revolution leanings made him increasingly unpopular. Paine immigrated to France, where he was so revered that he helped draft two separate French constitutions. However, the French Revolution was a far more violent and turbulent conflict than was the American Revolution, with dozens of leaders jockeying for power and killing each other to get it. Paine ended up in prison during one fluctuation of power but turned this vicissitude into an opportunity. It was while he was in prison that Paine wrote The Age of Reason, his religious text.

The Age of Reason is not an inherently atheistic text, though that is how it was interpreted. Rather, the text espouses the same religious ideals that defined the Enlightenment, especially those ideals of the French Revolution, with its disestablishment of the Catholic Church as a national institution. Paine returned to America in 1802 and quickly fell out of favor in the new nation. Americans saw The Age of Reason as expressly anti-Christian, even though the actual philosophy of the text is closer to the deism practiced by Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers. But America of 1802 was very different from the America of the Revolution, as the Second Great Awakening was just rising. In this new, devoutly Protestant nation, men like Paine were not welcome, nor would have men like Jefferson been, if Jefferson had not adapted to the times and modified his public statements on religion. Jefferson, unlike Paine, had the good sense, politically speaking, to not publish his religious beliefs. Thus, Jefferson, unlike Paine, was able to publicly, at least, keep up with the times. Paine, on the other hand, was ostracized and denied the corridors of political power he had once helped make possible.

Ultimately, Paine was punished for being an anachronism in a world that passed him by. In 1809, Paine died in New York, largely forgotten and certainly not celebrated. And today, while Americans commemorate Common Sense, most schoolchildren know nothing of the man who wrote it.